“Combo” used to be something of a third rail in Commander, but today I’m going to lay out a taxonomy of the decks that use it to win. We’ve come as long way — I wouldn’t have considered writing an article about it a year ago. Back then, no one liked the “combo player” and would only admit, at the very most, to “running one in case the game goes long.” In a particularly liberal playgroup, you might get something as tolerant as “we’re fine with Combo as long as it’s not a dedicated ‘combo deck.’” Combo was, the conventional wisdom went, the ultimate boring way to end an interesting game. In the past year and a half or so, though, I’ve noticed a change. As the format as has gotten faster, as decks have gotten better, people have gotten more tolerant.

Part of that change is that the average Commander deck has gotten better. As decks have improved, the average Commander game has gotten shorter. Having a game end suddenly because some set of cards go infinite now means that a 40-minute game ended instead of a two-hour one. It’s not cutting the game much shorter than a Craterhoof Behemoth would have, so Combo stops looking like an antisocial jerk’s way of killing the fun and more like just another way to win. But it’s more complicated than that: Combo isn’t one way to win; it’s actually more like four.

A combo ends the game, but decks use combos as game-enders in a variety of ways. A taxonomy of those ways matters whether you’re building, or playing against, a deck that tries to end the game with a combo. While we’re at it, it’s worth mentioning that I’m going to be using the term “combo” in this article to refer only to those combinations of cards which, more or less, end the game. I know there’s an ongoing debate about how to divide “combos” from “synergies” from “engines,” but I’m not going to address it. If some grouping of cards makes the rest of the table scoop, that’s sufficient for our purposes.

Let’s start by talking about the most obvious type:

1. ANT-Like Combo Decks

What They Are:

What most of those people are talking about when they talk about “dedicated combo decks.” Probably the most recognizable type of combo deck, ANT-like combo decks are only trying to go off, and go off early. They are ANT-like in that they have a game plan that is essentially similar to Legacy ANT (Ad Nauseam–Tendrils) Storm decks. Specifically, they are strong because they are fast. They play a short game, and try and win by racing to go off. Examples of this kind of deck include, obviously enough, most decks that run Ad Nauseam as a win condition and most decks that run Storm cards as their kill (though there are caveats to this). Less obviously, many Selvala, Heart of the Wild lists (especially those trying to go infinite off Phyrexian Dreadnought and similar creatures), Animar, and Arcum Dagsson lists are actually ANT-like decks in that they focus on doing something broken early enough that other decks can’t effectively counter-play against them.

How to Build Them:

Remember that most of the cards in the deck don’t need to be good topdecks on turn four when you have a board state. You don’t totally intend for there to be a turn four, and board states are for chumps. You’re looking for cards that pay off now. These are decks where, for instance, Signets are often substantially worse cards than Lotus Petal. Sure, a signet taps for one every turn, but getting one turn ahead now without a loss of tempo will often be more important. Powerful mid-to-late-game threats like Consecrated Sphinx are easy cuts because you’re not looking to assemble a resource advantage over time; you’re looking to sculpt the top ten or so cards of your deck into a shape that ends the game as soon as possible.

How to Play Them:

Get a sense of how far you are from going off and what it would take for you to get there. ANT-like decks often make substantial, and unusually powerful, use of tutors and knowing what things to fetch and when requires a deep knowledge of the contents of your deck and the value of a topdeck. Knowing, for instance, whether to cash in a Vampiric Tutor in your opening hand to draw Sol Ring, or to hold it to tutor for a business spell like Ad Nauseam or Mind’s Desire, will often be the difference between winning and losing for a Storm deck.

How to Play Against Them:

Know what, and when, not to play. Nekusar Wheels will often make you draw twenty cards over the course of its kill turn. If you can predict that turn and keep mana up, then any removal you draw will be available to disrupt the turn. Way too often I see people frantically commit their hands to board against Wheel decks because “otherwise I’ll lose it.” But being tapped out on the critical turn often means that you’ll have made the choice to lose the game instead of discarding a sweet creature. The Wheels example is unusually stark, but the principle holds elsewhere: often ANT-like decks can be stopped with one or two well-timed pieces of removal, you just need to be holding up mana on the right turn. Learn to predict that turn. ANT-like decks are often glass cannons, but you need to be able to predict when they’re going to fire.

2. High-Tide-Like Combo Decks

What They Are:

A cousin to ANT-like decks, and a close enough cousin that casual observers often can’t tell the difference. High Tide is a Legacy Storm deck with strong superficial similarities to ANT (a deep bench of cantrips for hand sculpting, a Storm card as a win condition), but major differences in playstyle. Whereas ANT wants to go off early, and plays only Duress and Cabal Therapy to try and charge past disruption, the motto of High Tide is “go off as late as you can.” Every turn the Tide deck spends sculpting its hand will let it build a combo turn that can actually overcome any disruption the opponent is holding. It’s still a deck that is wholly built around assembling the combo but where ANT is a blitz, High Tide is a tactical offensive with three contingency plans.

In Commander most Storm decks are hybrids of ANT-like and Tide-like, tilting one way or the other according to the preferences of their builders. This is partially because singleton magic doesn’t let you run four copies of the cards that would let you fully commit to either archetype and so necessitates a hybrid style. Obviously, pretty much all decks which use High Tide as a combo piece are Tide-like, although they will usually bear little resemblance to the Legacy version of the deck. The real revelation is which other decks are also Tide-like in practice despite not having obvious features like “Storm cards” or “High Tide.”

Many Leovold decks, for instance, are Tide-like. Once you’ve pulled off Leovold + Windfall (an interesting liminal case for what things count as a combo, incidentally), every turn you can prolong the game by will tend to put you further ahead. As such, Leovold decks place a high priority on landing the non-lethal combo early so that they can start the phase of the game where they’re amassing resources to pull off the killing turn. Another non-obvious Tide-like deck is the UG or UGx Palinchron deck. From outside, a Palinchron deck often looks like some kind of value deck. From the inside, Palinchron is the combo, but experienced pilots know that there’s no reason to rush into comboing off if another topdeck might net them a way to back up the combo with disruption or protection. Don’t trigger Palinchron + Panharmonicon this turn. Just use Panharmonicon + Raven Familiar to dig for more resilience. You can always go off tomorrow.

How to Build Them:

Embrace the longer game. Freed from the demands that every card must be maximally impactful in the effort to go off as soon as possible we can run more interaction. Plus, we can run cards that focus on outpacing the resource-accumulation plans of other players rather than be cashed out rapidly for value. There’s substantially more variation among Tide-like decks, but a few constants remain: 1) engines and cards which accrue card advantage let you build unstoppable combo turns, and 2) a fairly focused suite of interaction and removal that focuses not on the generic business of answering threats but the specific business of answering the kinds of cards that can stop your eventual bid for the win. It’s a lot easier to protect a combo with a Negate than a Swords to Plowshares.

How to Play Them:

Strike a balance between the deck’s ability to go off early, and the increased resilience gained by going off late. Remember, there’s no prize for winning three turns before someone else would’ve. You’re likely still a dedicated combo deck, so you can land early wins but you have a lot more game than, say, the ANT-like Animar deck that draws a Wild Cantor on turn six because your cards are actually supposed to be good topdecks. On turn six, your Time Spiral + High Tide only just hit maximum effectiveness. Bide your time, but be ready to go for it when an opening presents itself.

How to Play Against Them:

Hamper their resource development. They win by being able to pick a turn when your shields are down (or close to down) and tell you that this is the turn you have to stop them. Ensuring that they don’t have a commanding resource advantage prevents them from making that call confidently, and can back them into playing their combo without backup and just praying no one has the disruption. That’s where you want them to be. It’s tempting, for instance, to look at mid-game resource development plays like Gilded Lotus and say, “Why counter the enabler when you can counter the payoff?” The answer is never perfectly clear-cut, but Tide-like decks will tend to be susceptible to countering the Lotus.

Closing Notes

I’ve only covered about half the ground in this taxonomy, but this is a decent place for a break. ANT- and Tide-style decks are, after all, what most people are thinking of when they think of “combo” decks. They are decks where all roads lead, either quickly or eventually, to the specific combinations of cards that end the game.

In the next installment, things start to get weirder. I’m going to focus on combo-using decks which are not as easily explained merely by reference to their existing competitive archetypes in sixty-card magic: Prison and UW Control. Yes, really.