#11 Combo

Magic players love combo.

They love combo because combo transforms something as mundane as "the rules of the game" into something awesome like "this game rules."

All games have rules that players can either agree upon and/or some third party will enforce. This is because rules are important and bring legitimacy to who won or lost the game. Without rules, the majority of time spent playing a game would be spent on arguing instead.

For Magic players, combo is a very natural appeal for 2 very strong reasons.

The first, because Magic cards by themselves are mostly unimpressive pieces of cardboard, the next logical progression is combining unimpressive pieces of cardboard with others. This act alone, combining, is dictated by the game itself.

The second, is that every player at some point had to learn the rules. They had to deal with "no, you can't do that" and "it really works like this" and so on. Learning the rules doesn't make a Magic player all of a sudden a success overnight, but it's definitely one of the foundation stones. Even seasoned players still spend time on rules, as seen in many Judge articles and columns that explore all possibilities of card interaction.

Both of these reasons combine together and make combo what it is. In essence, combo players don't want to simply play according to the rules of the game, they want to rule the gameplay itself.

The rules say a player may only play 1 land a turn, so a combo player seeks a combination of cards that say otherwise. The rules say a player may only untap cards once, so a combo player seeks cards that interact in a way that gives the finger to that rule.



Just because a player may not love combo strategies, doesn't mean that they may not love throwing a monkey wrench into another combo player's pipe dream.

Combo is notorious for ignoring aggro decks and racing to find certain, so an aggro player might love attacking the ability to even find the combo. Combo has always been wary of control decks, so a control player might love disrupting that key play that leaves the combo deck nothing but a pile of unimpressive pieces of cardboard.

Because combo exists, it can be said that there is both a game of Magic and a Game of magic. One will make a player adhere to rules and terms to win, while the other will make a player win over the rules on his terms. The best part is that both games aren't mutually exclusive, it's often a one-two punch, which is why Magic players love combo.