Pioneer: Acererak Combo - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

The latest Pioneer RC win rate update took everyone by surprise with the archetypes that performed best: Acererak Combo, Azorius Humans, and Boros Burn seem to be the decks on the rise.

I've already covered Azorius Humans (I might need to cover it again, since there have been changes) and Boros Burn on Cards Realm, but I hadn't stopped to explore Acererak Combo yet, and for a clear reason: it's unplayable on Magic Arena because the game's timer doesn't allow for looping, and it's extremely click-intensive on Magic Online.

But it's now a strategy on the radar. Consequently, it's time for me to address my issues with click-intensive archetypes and delve into Acererak Combo on Magic Online, and in this article, I present the latest version of it with a Sideboard guide!

As the name suggests, Acererak Combo is a creature-based combo deck. It relies on the interaction between Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea and Acererak, the Archlich, as well as one of two options: Honest Rutstein or Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.

With Gwenna in play, we can tap her to generate two mana of any color, and we want to use them to cast Acererak, the Archlich, but Acererak costs three mana, so we need to increase the mana produced and/or reduce costs. With Kinnan, Gwenna will generate three mana. With Rutstein, Acerarak now costs , but there is also a third option:

With Acererak's ETB trigger on the stack, we can respond by tapping it to generate mana with Relic of Legends, which added to the two generated by Gwenna, untapped by her own trigger, will add up to .

But the combo also involves a loop: the trigger of Acererak, the Archlich returns it to its owner's hand whenever its controller has not completed the Tomb of Annihilation dungeon. So, until we select and complete this dungeon, we can return it to the hand and play it repeatedly.

Our chosen dungeon will always be Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Our goal is to loop through the Dark Pool room over and over again to deal lethal damage to our opponent. On paper, this is an easy loop to repeat because we can just announce what we're doing and repeat the process as many times as our opponent wants until they concede and/or we hit lethal damage.

In Magic Online, however, each process requires a few clicks between tapping Gwenna, triggering Acererak, tapping it to Relic of Legends with the trigger on the stack and returning it to the hand, which makes the looping time-consuming, and since the clock is individual, we are forced to do the process several times before the time runs out - time, in fact, is something we don't have in Magic Arena: one solution the platform has for dealing with nondeterministic combos and infinite loops is to make the active player's timer start counting after a few repetitions, and since this combo requires many repetitions, it is very difficult to end the game.

What makes this archetype so viable is a combination of factors: it is very consistent because it has several ways to guarantee the loop once you have the two core pieces, it has recursion elements with Honest Rutstein, and it can still perform other loops with Rona, Herald of Invasion and Relic of Legends.

As we can see, the archetype is a gigantic pile of micro-interactions, but let's explore it piece by piece.

This is the standard Acererak Combo list today. Flexible slots are in the single copy of Mox Amber, which can be any other card, and in some Sideboard slots that can include Unlicensed Hearse instead of Ghost Vacuum, or include Yasharn, Implacable Earth to hold Sacrifice archetypes, among other options.

The above version is the “safe starting point”, that is, it gives you everything you need to understand how the deck works, and from there, we can make changes according to the demands of each Metagame. It is worth mentioning, however, that this archetype is very closed in many of its pieces, having a minimum amount of flexible slots limited to between one and four cards in the maindeck (if, for some reason, it is necessary to give up a certain amount of mana dorks), while the Sideboard is extremely adaptable.

Maindeck

Our combo. It was properly explained above and Acererak, the Archlich has no other function besides enabling the loop. Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea can also be used to speed up an Atraxa, Grand Unifier, which can win games on its own and/or find Acererak later to finish the game.

Our third piece of the combo. We need at least one of these in play to perform our loop.

Honest Rutstein is also a way to protect our combo and return an important piece to the game. Two copies of it allow for some infinite looping with Rona, Herald of Invasion: we tap Rona to generate or and Honest Rutstein to generate or with Relic of Legends and play another Rutstein from hand, sacrifice the tapped copy to the Legendary Rule and return it to hand with the ETB of the new one.

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is also an excellent payoff for any spare mana we have with Relic of Legends and/or wins the game on its own if we manage to get infinite mana. Using it to chase an Atraxa, Grand Unifier is a common thing.

Relic of Legends is the enabler of everything. The entire all-fronts combo exists mainly because this card allows us to get to it quickly, and since generating mana doesn't go to the stack, our opponent has little chance of breaking the loop before we extract some value.

Rona, Herald of Invasion, in addition to the aforementioned interactions with Honest Rutstein, also allows us to draw several cards and/or generate extra mana with each legendary you play, and its other side is a great way to play games where we need to bet more on attrition and/or punish the damage caused by the opponent.

Collected Company helps us to pull the combo on the opponent's turn to start it on our turn and/or pull two pieces at once, helping us with consistency while, conveniently, all of our creatures that matter for interactions cost three or less.

Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves and Mox Amber serve to accelerate our mana from 1 to 3 and guarantee a Relic of Legends on the second turn, and they also have interactions with Kellan, Bonder Prodigy to ramp enough to play Atraxa, Grand Unifier.

Atraxa, Grand Unifier is a divisive card between games. There are matchups where trying to cast it is the best route to victory because of the absurd amount of value it provides us. If it is destroyed for some reason, Honest Rutstein will bring it back and start another storm of card advantage that will eventually culminate in closing some combo and/or finding another Atraxa. In others, where our opponent seems to be faster than us, it is a side out because we need answers while we try to execute the combo, since this will be our main route to victory.

Plaza of Heroes is another essential card for this list: it generates the mana we need for our legends and can be used on the combo turn to protect our piece from any interaction.

The Channel Lands are all very useful in this list and benefit from using many legendary creatures. Takenuma, Abandoned Mire allows us to resort to an important creature while Boseiju, Who Endures and Otawara, Soaring City deal with permanents that are harmful to our game plan.

Our other lands focus on generating for our mana dorks on turn one and for Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea. The selection between them involves the highest number of lands that enter untapped and with the lowest possibility of losing life and/or resources possible.

Sideboard

We need to protect the combo against interaction, and Thoughtseize is one of the best choices for both these games against disruptive archetypes and for games where we need to slow down the opponent’s game plan, being useful even in the mirror.

Tamiyo’s Safekeeping is a cheap answer against spot removals and the best option we have in this category.

Ghost Vacuum is our answer against graveyards. We can swap it for Unlicensed Hearse, but maximizing mana usage seems more relevant in the current Metagame. It works against Izzet Phoenix, Jund Sacrifice and can also work against Lotus Combo occasionally.

Back to Nature is an option against Four-Color Zur and also answers other Leyline Binding and Up the Beanstalk archetypes like Niv-to-Light.

Fatal Push is our answer against Aggro and /or disruptive archetypes with creatures like Selesnya Company or Spirits. I don't particularly like it against Rakdos Midrange or Sacrifice, so it's not a common side-in in my games.

Assassin's Trophy is the "catch all" of the list, but it's also a flexible slot, so you can swap it for any other card your Metagame demands.

Izzet Phoenix

IN

OUT

Rakdos Demons / Rakdos Midrange

IN

OUT

Note: The plan casting Atraxa and using Honest Rutstein as a recursion to bring her back seems like a more efficient plan than trying to go all-in on the combo, as we want to push the match to the point of inevitability where we have all the pieces necessary to close the game with protection for interactions.

Rakdos Prowess

IN

OUT

Four-Color Zur

IN

OUT

Acererak Combo

IN

OUT

The Acererak Combo is potentially one of the most efficient decks in Pioneer whose results will never be properly reflected due to the difficulty in piloting it on digital platforms. Its growth in RCs proves that it has much more gas in the competitive scene than the numbers show, and it is a viable, fun and very consistent option for tabletop tournaments.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, I'm available in the comments!

Thanks for reading!