Introduction
This deck is part of the Pauper Decks, which are made from only common cards. The great thing about Pauper is the majority of the cards are cheap to buy, and are still strong as there are quite a lot of good common cards over Magic's history.
Key Strategy
The Altar Combo deck is built around generating infinite mana and using it to create an unstoppable loop that overwhelms your opponent. By leveraging the power of artifact synergies, recursion, and mana generation, this deck can assemble game-winning combinations quickly and efficiently.
Early Game: Assembling Your Engine In the early game, your primary focus is on setting up the pieces of your combo. Expedition Map is crucial for finding the Urza lands (Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant, and Urza’s Tower), which will provide the massive amounts of mana needed to fuel your combo. Ancient Stirrings helps dig for key artifacts or lands, ensuring you can assemble your mana base or find essential combo pieces. Meanwhile, Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star allow you to filter your mana and draw additional cards, helping you find what you need faster.
Mid Game: Setting Up the Combo As you enter the mid game, you should focus on getting Ashnod's Altar and Myr Retriever onto the battlefield. The key combo involves using Myr Retriever with Ashnod's Altar to generate infinite colorless mana. When you have two Myr Retrievers and Ashnod's Altar on the field, you can sacrifice one Myr Retriever to generate two colorless mana and return the other Myr Retriever to your hand, creating a loop of infinite sacrifices and mana generation.
Golem Foundry becomes a key piece at this stage, allowing you to turn the infinite mana into infinite 3/3 Golem tokens by casting and recasting your artifacts like Chromatic Sphere or Ichor Wellspring. Makeshift Munitions can serve as a finisher by sacrificing those tokens or other artifacts to deal direct damage to your opponent, making it difficult for them to recover.
Late Game: Executing the Win Condition In the late game, if your opponent hasn’t already conceded to the infinite combo, you should be able to easily close out the game with your endless stream of Golems or direct damage from Makeshift Munitions. Weather the Storm provides you with a way to stabilize against aggressive decks, gaining you large amounts of life in a single turn, especially if you've been casting multiple artifacts to draw cards and set up your combo.
Key Synergies and Interactions
Myr Retriever and Ashnod's Altar are the core of your infinite combo, generating infinite mana and enabling other infinite loops.
Golem Foundry turns your artifact plays into an army of Golems, which can quickly overrun your opponent.
Makeshift Munitions allows you to convert your artifacts or Golems into direct damage, providing an alternate win condition if needed.
Ichor Wellspring and Deadly Dispute provide excellent card draw while contributing to your artifact synergies, helping you dig deeper into your deck to find the pieces you need.
Tips for Playing the Deck
Prioritize Your Lands: Focus on assembling the Urza lands as quickly as possible to ramp into your combo. Expedition Map and Ancient Stirrings are your best tools for this.
Plan Your Combo Carefully: Before going off with the combo, ensure you have the right pieces on the board and enough mana to execute it fully. Timing is crucial to avoid disruption.
Manage Your Resources: Use Deadly Dispute and Ichor Wellspring strategically to keep your hand full and your options open. These cards help ensure you don’t run out of steam while setting up your combo.
This Altar Combo deck is all about precision and timing, setting up a powerful engine that can generate infinite value and overwhelming your opponent with an unstoppable combo.
Key Cards
Cards to look for in the opening hand