We went into the weekend still feeling a bit ambivalent regarding what Foundations would bring to the standard format, and I think now it is safe to say that even if you might not be excited about what you see, you at least are leaning one way regarding good or bad for the new cards coming in the set. From the excitement I conveyed in the title, it is pretty easy to conclude that I am officially excited for this new set. We are going to get back an infinite combo that will be Standard Legal that reminds me of my initial learning days in MTG, and the mechanic that made me fall in love with the game. We are going to be getting a life drain combo, and it is more efficient, and more valuable than before. We used to have to rely on two five mana enchantments to do this, but now we can curve into it, and the abilities for both pieces of the combo are also on creatures, thus giving us additional value for our mana spent to assemble the puzzle. The combo has not been legal in standard for some time, and one of the cards was historically pretty expensive. It was something that people were pretty excited to cast in other formats, and always creates a fun time. OK, let me stop gushing over it - The combo that we used to do about ten years ago was Exquisite Blood, and Sanguine Bond. It creates an infinite loop where if an opponent either loses life, or if we gain life, we win the game. There obviously are tons of ways to do this, and it even can be done in combat. Even playing a land can set this off. It used to be somewhat of a clunky combo, and now it is much more efficient, and is assembled on curve. Let's take a look at the combo itself, and some other cards from Foundations that I think can help support it, and overall that I'm excited for whether they fit into the deck or not.
New Cards that Assemble the Infinite Combo
We have played with this card at least a little bit, and we know that it is one of the new fun enchantment creatures from Duskmourn. It gives us the effect that cards like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, and Sanguine Bond used to give us. Although it does cost one more mana than Vito, it is much more difficult to remove, and I believe the stickiness of the card makes it that much more playable. There are ways to win with just this card alone, as there are still a decent number of life gain options in Standard, and other formats. Now we are going to do the infinite loop for it, and it will be legal in Standard until at least 2027!
The Conqueror is the new five mana bomb for black creatures. We had Alazaotz, but now I believe we have found something better, albeit a little more niche. The fact that we have good stats on this card is an added bonus. We have to wonder what the price of this card will be, as Exquisite Blood is already on the expensive side. Either way, it is also worth noting that neither piece of the combo is legendary, so we can double the effects individually if both combo pieces are not together.
Other Support Cards Coming in Foundations
This one brings back another effect that I love. There was a card that could also be slotted into the combo decks that kind of doubled the effect of Sanguine Bond. This card was called Vizkopa Guildmage. It used to let us pay mana to double a Sanguine Bond effect for the turn. This one is a little bit easier to pull off, as it is an enchantment that is harder to remove, and it allows us to activate the ability for less mana. The fact that it also generates food tokens is pretty valuable. It can set up for a good mana sink late game that simply kills the opponent. I believe there is a deck to be made from this returning archetype, but it would be a tad irresponsible of me to craft a deck to present to you this early on in the spoilers. I would like to try and perfect a list like this, because it really is my favorite thing to do in MTG.
I'm not fully sold that this card will be a staple two drop in the deck, but it is worth noting that it's not too hard to make this creature unblockable. This allows us to sacrifice a creature and would guarantee damage getting through to the opponent by making the creature unblockable, which causes loss of life. Although I still think the Deep-Cavern Bat is better as an evasive two mana flyer, it is noteworthy that a vampire is also in Foundations to get through for guaranteed damage. It even draws us an extra card when we activate its ability upon attacking!
What Else do we Want to See?
It still feels like we are missing a bit of redundancy in order to guarantee that we have enough things to trigger our combo. Although there are a lot of lifelink creatures or creatures that gain life in Standard, it feels like we are missing spells that simply gain us life. I believe that some of those may be coming in Foundations. There will likely be black and white spells that do this. I believe that having a few of those are relevant to light up the combo going off in our deck. Since we also have power creep going crazy, I believe it could also be some modal spells, or even some spells that give us another ability. We could possibly have removal spells that gain life and cost a bit more than normal, or maybe the removal is conditional, and that's how we get the chance to gain life. There has to be something to add to make this deck viable. It would defeat the purpose of printing the Conqueror otherwise.
I think that decks could play this in Black White or Black Green. Green has a decent amount of life gain these days, and allows for protection spells - some of which also gain life. We will have to keep an eye out for what is to come with Foundations, and as always, keep an eye out on the MTG Circle website for more updates on theory crafting, and further spoilers!