Every workday while the set is new, Insight takes a quick look at a deck featuring the latest additions from Phyrexia: All Will Be One. Big news for an old Pauper combo strategy: If you want to loop Myr Retriever, you first need to find a second copy. And Myr Kinsmith does exactly that!
is a tutor effect, something that rarely sees print at common unless it is limited to a very specific card, like . In this case you can merely find another Myr, but another Myr is all you need to give a huge consistency boost to Altar Combo.
You can best compare this Pauper strategy to Modern's late deck. Both of them "do stuff" with and a fancy mana source artifact. How the combo works is not that complicated actually:
- Play .
- Have one in the graveyard and one in play.
- Sacrifice Myr Retriever to generate two mana. Return the one in your graveyard to your hand. Cast it. Sacrifice, return, cast again, and repeat.
What you have here is a mana-neutral infinite loop, providing you with infinite storm count. The usual way to turn this into a win is , a card that effectively generates one Golem token for each three artifacts you cast. Alternatively, or , at least in tabletop Magic, gives you infinite life off it. I didn't include any in the main deck below because I'm trying to push the limits of a hypothetical build centered on Myr Kinsmith.
Also, you don't need any extra life when you kill on the spot and don't require the combat step to win. Keep in mind that you can turn infinite Golems into infinite colorless mana via Altar and can further filter it through . This is where enters the picture …
With infinite (black) mana, you can loop Blood Fountain alongside Myr Retriever and any other creature and draw your library with the Blood tokens. At this point you could use anything to kill, for example . But I prefer to simply make the third piece in the Retriever/Fountain/X loop. The Kinsmith can search for it, cannot counter it, and the deck obviously has infinite ways to recur it.
| Myr Altar Combo, Pauper |
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| Main Deck | Sideboard |
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