What are Combo Decks?

[TDosa]

This question may sound very basic, but I pretty much stopped playing Magic
after Mirage/Visions. When I played I tried to stay up on all of the new deck
ideas and even played in a pro tourney in LA.

I just recently started playing with the old group again and became amazed with
all of the new expansions. My question is regarding these Combo decks i've been
hearing about. Are they decks that rely on a certain Combo to win, and if it
gets that combo it always wins.

Is a Combo deck a certain basic design, or is it a deck of any color or type
that has this certain combo. From what I can guess so far, is that a combo deck
has dominated the tourney scene, and has the ability to win games on turn 1 or
2.

Is it only type 1, or is it also type 2, or 1.5. or extenden (which leads to
another question, "What the Hell is Extended?)

TC back from a 2 year lay-off.

[michele oasheim]

Combo is a kind of blanket term for many decks. Combo based decks are
either based on silly combinations of cards that win the game (Second
Chance, Monk Idealist, Erratic Portal or Donate, Illusions of Granduer).
Then there are much better decks that use "Engine" cards (Earth Craft,
Dream Halls, Cadeverous Bloom, Yawgmoth's Bargain, any of the creatures
that required "play from hand" errata) combned with fast mana and lots
of card drawing/manipulation which normally creatues obscene amounts of
mana which is used to easily dispose of the opponent. These kind of
decks can exist in any format except all-commons. Urza Block was a huge
disaster because it had so many powerful cards. Tolarian Acadamy,
Windfall, Stroke, Time Spiral, Memory Jar, Yawgmoth's Bargain,
Yawgmoth's Will, Grim Monolith, Voltaic Key and several other cards of
these calibur all togerther is just crazy. Bannings help, but many
things slip by.

Part of the fun of Magic is finding abusive combos before anyone else.
Some people just take it too far.

Dillon L. Oasheim

"Booyah!"