In the previous article, I investigated abusing The Great Aurora in standard in a pseudo-combo deck. But what if we pushed the boundry and went full on combo? In a world filled with midrange decks like today’s Standard environment, having a strategy that goes over the top of creatures and removal spells is very enticing. For inspiration, I turn to this cube favorite:

Being able to float a million mana, then casting Upheaval and playing a threat or more mana into an opposing board of no permanents has certainly won a lot of games. In standard, that combo looks like this:

These cards clearly aren’t as powerful as their corollaries, however they still have the ability to be abused, aided by these facilitators:

A possible situation might look like this: while our opponent is fooling around with 5 mana 4/4s, we’re ramping with Nissa’s Pilgrimage and Explosive Vegetation, or perhaps with Dictate of Karametra alongside Animist’s Awakening. Eventually we can generate enough mana to cast The Great Aurora with enough permanents in play and mana floating to ensure we draw an incredible amount of cards and generate more mana. With these cards and mana we can repeat the process with more great auroras, or otherwise utilize the cards drawn to assemble a combo kill of Crater’s Claws with X equal to our opponent’s life total. If you like your opponent staring into the abyss waiting to die while you endlessly go off, this could be for you. Here’s the initial sketch, which has been enjoyable to goldfish with:

Creatures

4 x Elvish Mystic

2x Sylvan Caryatid

Spells

4 x Dark Petition

4 x The Great Aurora

4 x Animist’s Awakening

4 x Explosive Vegetation

4 x Nissa’s Pilgrimage

2 x Crater’s Claws

Enchantments

4 x Dictate of Karametra

Lands

4 Llanowar Wastes

4 Temple of Malady

1 x Mountain

1 x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

7x Swamp

11 x Forest

What do you think? Would you sleeve this up for an FNM or even a GP? Share your thoughts in the comments!