This Broken New Combo Deck May Be Standard's Best Deck

This past weekend, we had our first official Standard Challenges after the release of Eldraine, and one deck caught many player's eyes. Looking like a weird take on Domain, a lot of people were puzzled at the deck's curve as it was super high, with only a few cards being below 5 mana (and most of them being 7). Sounds like a deck building mistake, right? Well, this deck not only won Saturday's Standard Challenge in the hands of Rex_Iudex, it nearly won Sunday's Challenge in the hands of BomatCourier. What deck am I talking about? Let's take a look.

1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Haunted Ridge
1 Shipwreck Marsh
4 Cemetery Desecrator
1 Stormcarved Coast
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
3 Jetmir's Garden
3 Raffine's Tower
3 Spara's Headquarters
1 Xander's Lounge
3 Ziatora's Proving Ground
1 Go for the Throat
4 Herd Migration
4 Leyline Binding
3 Phyrexian Fleshgorger
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Atraxa, Grand Unifier
2 Lukka, Bound to Ruin
1 Mirrex
2 Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness
4 Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom
4 Virtue of Persistence
4 Bramble Familiar

Sideboard
1 Parasitic Grasp
4 Mirrorshell Crab
1 Phyrexian Fleshgorger
1 Fade from History
1 Atraxa, Grand Unifier
2 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
1 Thrun, Breaker of Silence
1 Lukka, Bound to Ruin
2 Kogla and Yidaro
1 Up the Beanstalk

As you can see, this deck's curve is very high, but it has a trick - not all of these high cmc cards can only be cast for high cmc amounts! [Leyline Binding]] is an honorary one drop in any 5 color deck as it is the main draw to pursue these strategies, but for even more removal, there's also four Virtue of Persistence // Locthwain Scorn. These alone can help you stabilize into the mid game, but for more plays, the deck has four Bramble Familiar (more on this later) and three Phyrexian Fleshgorger which operates as a 3 mana 3/3 Lifelink, Menace for this strategy.

Even with all these cards that are deceptively cheap, the deck construction is still weird and the combo is far from obvious. So how does it work?

The Combo

The reason the deck is constructed so strangely is to abuse Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom.

When this enters the battlefield, you get to search your library for two cards that are cmc four or less, cast one, draw the other. In normal 5 color decks, this never ended up being good enough as the effect and the flip side were too weak for the cost, which made it see functionally zero play. However, when we add Bramble Familiar into the mix, everything changes. Unlike split cards, Adventure cards cmc is always counted by the creature half, even if the Adventure half is more expensive (it generally isn't, but this tends not to matter). So what ends up happening is that you cast Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom, you'll search your deck until you find two Bramble Familiar // Fetch Quest or a Familiar and Go for the Throat at which point you can cast Familiar's Adventure half, Fetch Quest, for free! This alone would make the deck very powerful as you're functionally cheating this ability by two mana, likely getting a huge threat, and getting a Bramble Familiar in the adventure zone for later use. If this is all the deck had to offer, there would be a big contention on whether this or regular Domain was better, however, there is one more layer to this combo - Cemetery Desecrator.

From the long forgotten Desecrator cycle, Cemetery Desecrator plays a crucial role for this deck. Similarly to Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom, Cemetery Desecrator was very much overlooked when released due to it's low power level, but works extremely well here.

So you have Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom, find your Bramble Familiar, and mill your seven cards. With reasonable odds, you're going to see a Cemetery Desecrator amongst those seven cards, and if you have that and a 7 drop that you milled, the sparks fly. With its main ability, you can exile the 7 drop you just milled and remove X counters from any permanent, the permanent you'd be looking to target, of course, is the Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom you just played! This instantly flips it into the Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom side where you get to draw two cards, put an artifact from your hand into play (hello Phyrexian Fleshgorger), create a token of a permanent you control (generally another Desecrator, but could be anything you have), three +1/+1 counters, and you get to destroy your opponent's best permanent. That is an INSANE amount of value, which again, all came from just the initial cast of Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom. While some may not consider this a combo in the traditional sense as there's no loop, if you play a five drop, and in turn, get a 4/4 with Menace and an attack trigger, draw two cards (functionally three as Bramble Familiar is on an Adventure), potentially cheat in a Phyrexian Fleshgorger or Mirrorshell Crab post board, get a copy of your best permanent, three +1/+1 counters to distribute as you see fit, and a Vindicate, that's going to win 99.9% of games.

I don't think it needs to be said, but this is absolutely insane and blows the idea of playing a normal fair deck out of the water completely. While this may be concerning as that is an egregiously powerful play from a five mana spell, there are ways to fight back!

How To Beat Alara Combo

Go Under Them

This may seem obvious, and while the deck does its best to not be clunky, it still is pretty clunky. Some of their hands aren't going to be clunky if they have a few pieces of removal, but you aren't always going to be so fortunate from the combo side. To that end, something like Mono Red Aggro can do a great job at capitalizing on that, and I say Mono Red Aggro specifically as that's what beat this deck for the win in the Sunday Standard Challenge.

Counterspells and Disruption

While this deck aims to do something relevant faster than Domain could, it still shares its same weakness to counterspells. Getting your one Invasion of Alara // Awaken the Maelstrom countered can be devastating, especially if your next relevant play isn't for a few turns (assuming you even hit the lands!) Dimir Tempo, Esper Control, and Mono Blue Tempo can be excellent in this regard due to how many counterspells the decks naturally play.

Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines

My very first match with this deck, I faced a Naya Ramp deck that I assumed I would easily trounce as I assumed to be the better ramp deck. Imagine my surprise when they ramped into this two games in a row and absolutely obliterated me! As the deck is currently constructed, Elesh Norn is a colossal problem and can even lead decks that generally fold to Ramp strategies like Mono White Midrange to have a reasonable chance to beating this deck. I'm not even sure if more can be done for Elesh Norn beyond hitting it with the one of Go for the Throat, countering it with Mirrorshell Crab, or playing five+ mana removal whether it's something like Sunfall or Gix's Command.

End Step

While very powerful and likely the best deck coming out of week one WOE Standard, this deck still has natural stopgaps in place and likely only performed so well due to players not being prepared for it. While I envision that it's going to perform well next week too, we are quickly going to see counters for the deck rise in popularity, even if they're in small part like more Disdainful Stroke from Blue decks.