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For a while I’ve had a certain budget EDH deck on my Archidekt, centered around Magda, Brazen Outlaw and Krenko, Baron of Tin Street, the latter of whom is one of my favorite cards of 2024. It had the funniest combo win I have ever designed, and the only one I’m always proud to talk about. Recently, I gave it a second look and improved on my original design, goldfishing for several hours to perfect my creation. It has a strong backup plan. It’s resilient through most interaction. Best of all, when I combo off with this deck, I don’t immediately shoot countless damage triggers into my opponents’ faces. Instead, I make Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblins.
Budget Disclaimer: Excluding basic lands, this deck is well under $50 on Card Kingdom using the lowest prices available. If you don’t have 35 Mountains to spare, check your LGS first to see if they sell basic lands in bulk. Wherever you buy cards, check to see if your favorite MTG content creators have affiliate links you can use to support them and potentially get a discount.
The Combo
Magda, Brazen Outlaw is one of the most efficient combo assemblers in all of Magic. With a vehicle and a handful of cheap Dwarf type creatures, you can start slinging Dragons and Artifacts from your deck by turn 3-4. The most common win condition involves finding a way to make Magda an artifact creature and then tutoring Clock of Omens. By using the clock to tap and untap Magda and the Treasure tokens she makes, you make infinite tapped Treasure tokens and can then sacrifice them to find whatever you want from your deck, winning the game. My deck does not use this combo.
Krenko, Baron of Tin Street has two abilities, but we only really care about the second one. Whenever you sacrifice an artifact, you can pay one red mana to make a 1/1 Goblin. With a Maskwood Nexus out, those tokens are also Dwarves, which means you can tap those goblins with a Vehicle or Mount to make more Treasures. The result? Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblin Tokens. On your next turn, you can untap and attack for game. Is it as powerful as a Clock of Omens loop? Never, but it’s infinitely funnier.
Importantly, you can tutor for both pieces. Maskwood Nexus makes all creatures all types in all zones, including your library, meaning Krenko becomes a Dragon. For a total of 10 Treasures, you can find Nexus, find Krenko, and immediately begin the combo. How do we get to 10 Treasures? Magda, of course. With 27 Dwarves, 13 infinite tappers, and a Maskwood Nexus that turns every other creature we happen to make into a Dwarf, you’ll have no problem assembling 10 Treasure tokens.
The Gameplan
At this point, you might be asking, “So this deck just does the combo and wins?” Almost always the answer is no. If you gave your opponents a quick rule zero conversation, they will know to remove Magda, remove your Nexus, or have a boardwipe ready. If not, you really should. Rule zero conversations let everyone know what to expect from the game, and help prevent nongames. If one player does the thing and three other players don’t, only one out of four people actually had any fun. Communication is key to building a healthy MTG playgroup.
Then again, you’ll probably get hit with the first piece of removal regardless of your pregame chat. Magda is an iconic CEDH commander. It follows, then, that Magda should not be the first spell you cast in the gam. Ideally, you’ll start with a two mana vehicle, or have some other way to tap Magda right after she enters on your third turn. That will guarantee you at least one Treasure. Barring that, a two mana dwarf is a fine enough start, so you can attack with it on turn three. If you get the Treasure from Magda, you can play two two drops on turn three.
In a vacuum, this deck can consistently combo on turn five and then untap and win on turn six. In practice, you should expect this to happen approximately never. This deck is either a high Bracket 3 or a low Bracket 4, so unless you’re lying about your power level to a pod of precons, someone will always have the out. Magda will die repeatedly. So how, if not with Magda, can we get to 10 Treasures?
The Backup Plan
Despite the $50 budget, the deck is flexible enough to make Treasures without spending your monthly rent on commander tax. 18 cards in the deck can create Treasure tokens, and most of those have other beneficial effects. Big Score and Pirate's Pillage both cost four mana, but they let you filter for two cards and make two Treasures. Captain Lannery Storm and Sticky Fingers can each make a Treasure every turn while helping you attack other players.
Two of my favorite cards in the deck are Bottle-Cap Blast and Vault 21: House Gambit. The former is one of this deck’s few targeted removal spells, as Magda can tutor up removal if we need it in the late game. Bottle-Cap Blast is here because it doubles as acceleration. It deals 5 damage to a creature and gives you a tapped Treasure for each excess point of damage. Killing a creature with one toughness will give you four Treasures, which can turn a slow start into a turn 5 combo.
Vault 21 is worse than the Blast if you’re already ahead, but it can be far better if you need to get lucky. The saga’s first two chapters let you discard a card and draw a card, helping you ‘sculpt your hand.’ At the final chapter, you reveal up to 5 cards from your hand that cost the same amount of mana as another card you revealed this way. For each card you revealed, you get a Treasure token. If you’ve played Balatro, this card makes more sense. With 15 three drops and 33 two drops, you’ll find a good hand.
Finally, you’ve gotten 10 Treasures and your Magda has gracefully landed on the field. You combo off, laughing like a supervillain the whole time. Your Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblins are ready to infinitely kill your opponents. Unfortunately, because your Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblins are tapped, your opponents have time to play Wrath of God. What next? Have you flown too close to the sun? Have you fallen victim to your own hubris? Alas, poor combo player! I knew him.
The Long Game
I have good news: we prepared for this. We’ve got a Batman-level contingency plan for this situation, sitting right in your command zone: Magda. Sure, that Wrath just brought her casting cost up to ten mana. You can still handle it. You’ve got some killer artifacts and Dragons in your back pocket, ready to take back the game.
This deck runs one piece of recursion: Barkform Harvester. You could try to return your combo pieces to your library and tutor them back out. You shouldn’t, though. It will take you a long time to replay Magda and get everything you need find to your combo a second time. If you have 3-4 Treasures, a vehicle or two, and your Nexus left, this plan becomes more desirable, as you’ll only have to recur Krenko and you’ll already be well on your way to rebuilding. If that’s the case, go ahead and relive your dream of Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblins.
More realistically, you’ll work to build a stack of Treasures. This deck has a variety of tutor targets outside of the combo. Skyline Despot makes you the Monarch and makes 5/5 Dragon tokens, while Drakuseth, Maw of Flames can kill 3 things with each attack. God-Pharaoh's Statue puts a nasty tax on your opponents’ spells, and Duplicant can exile an opponent’s creature. These are all great for utility and value, but if you’ve said Farewell to your main combo, you’re gonna need an even bigger backup plan.
I’m shocked that Depthshaker Titan isn’t a ten dollar card. When it enters, it turns your noncreature artifacts into 3/3 artifact creatures. You’ll have to sacrifice them at your end step, but if you’re winning the game, who cares? It also gives your artifact creatures trample, haste and melee, which gives them +1/+1 for each player you’re attacking when they attack. Depthshaker can turn each of your Treasure tokens and uncrewed vehicles into six power and toughness. You can often win the game off of a few extra Treasures, and if your opponents survive, you can use Magda to sacrifice your Treasures before the Depthshaker trigger sacrifices them.
The Upgrades?
I’m gonna be honest, this deck is perfect. I can’t improve it. That said, my tastes are not everyone else’s tastes. Some people might want to play a lower bracket 4 deck with a flashy, telegraphed win condition. Some people might want to make the deck even slower to play at a more standard Bracket 3 level. Here’s how you can adapt this combo to different playstyles.
This combo is hilarious and can work well in low-mid bracket 4 if you’re willing to splurge. The first thing you’ll want to do is add mana acceleration and the second thing you’ll want to do is add protection. Redirect Lightning and Deflecting Swat are great at defending Magda without a high cost, and red rituals like Rite of Flame and Simian Spirit Guide can help you bring out lots of Dwarves before your opponents can get out their interaction. Stronger general tutor targets like Portal to Phyrexia and Ancient Copper Dragon can bump up the deck’s late game potential.
To get a mid-power Bracket 3 list, I would instead cut all 2 mana Dwarves from the deck for more general treasure-making cards. Plenty of vehicles and other tappers make treasures, so you can replace the mediocre 2 mana vehicles for more expensive vehicles that actually make treasures. You’ll have a harder time getting to 10 treasures and you might not even end up playing enough tappers to consistently see one, but Magda is still Magda, and you can always bring out the combo for 15 Treasures if need be. Once again, be careful: adding the wrong cards just might push the power level far beyond bracket 3.
The Endgame
This deck is awesome. It’s the only combo deck I currently own and I love bringing it out. Combo decks get a lot of hate for ‘winning the game out of nowhere’ and I think this one goes against that stereotype. Even if I lose, even when I’m taken out first, I always feel like I won the game when I get to create Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblins.
I came up with this combo all by myself. Only 18 decks run Magda, Krenko, and Nexus according to EDHRec and I solidified my first version of the list four months ago, so there’s a nonzero chance that I was literally the first to build a commander deck around this combo. This three card combo isn’t even on Commander Spellbook despite being searchable from the command zone and involving one of Magda’s best value pieces. I’ve already submitted it, by the way, so if it’s there by the time this article comes out, that was me.
I’ll leave you all today with the decklist.
Creatures (37)
Instants (6)
Artifacts (13)
Lands (39)
101 Cards
$60.06
I’ve done enough enough patting myself on the back for today. Do you find the prospect of creating Infinite Tapped 1/1 Goblins exhilarating? Do you find it incredibly stupid? Come talk about it on our Discord.
