Saturday, July 12, 2008

Deck Tech- Reveillark Combo [U/W]


I have had many people come up and ask me how the Reveillark combo works, and I have had to explain to them how, and why the deck works. First of all, let's see the heart of the deck.

Deck: Reveillark
4x Reveillark
4x Body Double
4x Mirror Entity
3x Riftwing Cloudskate (Or Venser, Shaper Savent)
3x Aven Riftwatcher (Or Kitchen Finks)
4x Mulldrifter

This deck wins by creating come-into play abilities in arbitrarily large (There are very few infinate loops in Magic) quantities. It accomplishes this by starting with a Mirror Entity in play, as well as either a Reveillark or a Body Double copying a Reveillark. It must also have either a Body Double or a Reveillark in the graveyard, respectivly, and a creature with an ability to use as many times as needed.

This version has two ways to make your opponent concede. Gaining arbitrarily large ammounts of life, or bouncing all the opponent's permenants. It does this by taking the number of times that it would like to reoccur this ability (say, we wanted to gain 2 million life, so 500,000) and puts that many plus one activations of Mirror Entity on the stack, naming 0.

Stack:
Mirror Entity (0) x 500,001

The Reveillark player will then let the first trigger resolve, making all creatures that he or she controls 0/0 and killing them. Here is where it gets fun. Reveillark's leaves-play ability triggers. Now the stack looks like this

Stack:
Reveillark trigger
Mirror Entity (0) x 500,000

With the Reveillark trigger, the player will then return a Body Double naming Reveillark and the creature with the desired ability (Aven Riftwatcher). Now the stack and board look like this.

Stack:
Aven Riftwatcher trigger
Mirror Entity (0) x 500,000

Board:
Body Double (Reveillark), Aven Riftwatcher

The CIP trigger resolves, gaining you 2 life, then the Mirror Entity trigger resolves, making both creatures 0/0 and killing them. Aven Riftwatcher and Reveillark's leaves-play abilities trigger, setting up to do it again.

Skip ahead 499,999 Mirror Entity triggers, and now the stack, graveyard, and board look something like this:

Stack:
Mirror Entity (0) x 1

Board:
Body Double (Reveillark), Aven Riftwatcher

Graveyard:
Reveillark
Mirror Entity

The Reveillark player allows the last Mirror Entity trigger to resolve, killing the Body Double and the Riftwatcher, gaining the last 2 life, and triggering Reveillark. The Reveillark trigger resolves, and the player returns a Mirror Entity and a Body Double (Reveillark) to play, setting up the combo again if needed.

Now, this deck tends to be a little vulnerable in the early-game. A turn 1 land drop; turn 2 land, Mind Stone (Or Prismatic Lens) leaves its opponent a whole 2 turns to set up uninterrupted before Reveillark even drops a blocker. True, Faeries also has this kind of setup, but it also comes right out of the gates the next turn with Bitterblossom tokens, and possibly a Scion of Oona. So, Reveillark needs a little protection.

Meet one of the only staples ever printed in every core set, Wrath of God. As soon as Reveillark untaps on its third turn, it is ready to drop it's fourth mana source and Wrath the living hell out of any goblins, treefolk, or merfolk that thought they could get away with a fast win. Alternatively, the 'Lark player can drop an Aven Riftwatcher or Kitchen Finks to chump block and gain life, or leave his or her mana open for some Venser or Rune Snag tricks.

To make a long story short, U/W Reveillark is not a fast combo deck, and often looses to aggro control such as Merfolk or Faeries. Next time, U/W Reveillark's faster, more expensive cousin, U/W/r Reveillark.

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