With the release of
Repel Darkness comes a revival of one of my favorite combo decks, the twist combo. In this particular version we are trying to assemble a 3 card combo of
Stained Honor,
Belligerent Yeti, and
Repel Darkness. Stained honor reduces our Belligerent Yeti's twist cost to 0, and Repel Darkness makes our yeti unable to die, so we can twist him as many times as needed to ping our opponent to death.
Standard avenue to victory is to chew through the deck with
Evenhanded Golem and company, get to 6 power and then drop all 3 combo pieces from hand on the same turn.
Aymar, Dark Summoner allows us to accelerate that plan allowing us to combo completely out of hand on turn 4 or as early as turn 3 if we expose the Aymar on turn 2. The curse that the opponent plays from Aymar gives us a window to repel our yeti before the curse hits him, so he lives and twists and kills our opponent.
The market for me so far has been mostly two cards.
Last Chance and
Curtain Call. Curtain call in the market gives us a backup plan to finding repel darkness in the maindeck. Last chance is great for recovering exploited combo pieces or just for grabbing back dead grenahens to dig a little further and chump one more time. The other three spots all seem very flexible. I currently have
Razorquill in there as a "double" for yeti, though you do need two honors on board to make this infinite, but, sometimes that's how the deck spits the cards out and you see multiple honors and no yeti. Then
Sinister Rumors for a flexible 2nd dark return that can sometimes be bad
Suffocate. And finally
Sabotage as a way to preemptively fight fast interaction that trainwrecks the combo turn.
So, if you really like mouse clicking and/or screen tapping, this is the deck for you. At a generous rate of three clicks per 1 point of damage once the combo is assembled, you can reasonably expect to be clicking 60-80 times upon piecing together the combo. Less clicks required if your dorks have gone face or if your opponent gives you the respect concede.
Belligerent Yeti
x4
2
Cull the Deck
x4
2
Dark Wisp
x4
2
Devour
x4
2
Evenhanded Golem
x4
2
Exploit
x4
2
Grenahen
x4
2
Master Cartographer
x4
2
Repel Darkness
x4
2
Temple Scribe
x2
2
Vine Grafter
x4
3
Aymar, Dark Summoner
x4
5
Stained Honor
x4
Primal Sigil
x1
Shadow Sigil
x2
Time Sigil
x4
Crest of Mystery
x4
Crest of Wisdom
x4
Feln Painting
x4
Feln Vow
x4
Seat of Mystery
x1
Seat of Wisdom
x1
View Deck on Shiftstoned
Should we wait to have to Aymar on the board before playing the Golem ?
EDIT: That all being said, I could totally see there being a glimpse version of the combo and it being viable/better than this version.
EDIT: One additional thing to mention about velocity and crests. In most cases, it's usually correct to draw your cards and then crest so your scout has more contextual information. In this deck, most of the time, you want to crest, and then dig. Because if we already have 2 of our pieces, there is only 1 card in the whole deck we actually want to see. So we would usually rather bottom anything that isn't the combo piece we're looking for or one of our high velocity cards.
EDIT: My first inclination is to remove Sinister Rumors for Send an Agent as it kills Tocas at fast speed and is flexible enough to hit other potential problem cards. Also gives us a fast removal option for the mirror, which is set to become more prevalent on ladder as the Expedition Open finishes up over the next day and a half.
I run into a couple of Tocas, even a double Tocas, that's why I use fall to ruin, and it already saved me against some aggressive decks, that could put lots of big units, or flyers, or overwhelm, since all our units are so small, so for these scenarios I prefer a full board clear than just a single removal, but yeah, it's expensive. I took out seek answers, I found it almost useless, In your case is sabotage..
I agree Stained Honor should have a restriction to prevent the infinite loop. Nothing should be "infinite" in a card game.
EDIT: To add to this. The two units involved die to every single (throne playable) fast removal in the game. They are small statted, low cost, and single faction. They die to everything. You just need to be playing some form of fast interaction. Or have a fast clock. Or have a decent clock with disruption. Negates on the repel darkness are as good as fast removal on either of the units.
I'm fine with OTKs existing if you actually have to fight the opponent the whole game to pull them off, but here it's just dig, dig, dig, click, click, click, win.