Midnight Presence: Things That Untap in the Night

If you were looking at the Dark Ascension spoiler like me, you ignored most of the set, set your filtered search to “Commons,” and came across this:

And then you thought of

which made you think of Splinter Twin and Pestermite/Deceiver Exarch and all of the other shenanigans involved with that.

If you are unfamiliar, the combo (which I’m going to refer to as Midnight Presence, as spooky-sounding as what I’d expect from a set named Dark Ascension) works like this:

1. Attach Presence of Gond to Midnight Guard.
2. Tap Midnight Guard to make a token. That token triggers Midnight Guard to untap.
3. Repeat Step 2 until you have an infinitely large army of Elf tokens.

This article will begin with an analysis of the combo itself and important aspects of how it functions in order to provide a theoretical groundwork for the second portion of the article, which looks into some different directions decks incorporating the combo could take.

Why Midnight Presence is not Splinter Twin

As with all things, we must start at the very beginning. While the fact that Midnight Presence combo is not identical to the Splinter Twin combo seems fairly obvious, the differences between them are worth looking into if only to understand why simply porting a Modern Splinter Twin deck into Pauper by only replacing the combo pieces would be a cataclysmic failure.

Though extremely obvious, the first difference between the two is the colors in which both fall. Splinter Twin would naturally fall into a deck running blue and red, a color pair which has quite a bit going for everything a combo deck wants to do. It has incredibly cheap card draw and hand sculpting in cards like Preordain and Ponder (though both are now banned in Modern). It has red to access the many options the color has available to hold off aggressive decks. It has speed and consistency through more cheap card draw in Sleight of Hand and Serum Vision, which are still quite legal in Modern. And it has options for countermagic to protect the combo when you go off and flood the field with tokens.

Midnight Presence, on the other hand, demands the pilot play green and white, which in general lack benefits analogous to those which the Splinter Twin combo lists naturally have access to. Especially in Pauper, all of the things which make Splinter Twin so successful (primarily efficient card draw and countermagic) are incredibly scarce in both green and white. This isn’t to say that they don’t exist at all in these colors, just that the options that do exist are generally lackluster.

Secondly, Splinter Twin works as a deck because of the redundancy of the combo pieces. That is, a typical deck will run four copies each of Deceiver Exarch and Pestermite (which function exactly the same in the deck) as well as several copies of Splinter Twin and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (which also serve the same function). This redundancy offers resiliency and consistency, allowing you to get to the combo pieces quickly.

But with Midnight Presence, this is not the case. At most, you can run four copies of Midnight Guard and four copies of Presence of Gond. This drop in the number of combo pieces the deck can run takes a very serious toll on its consistency and ability to gather its combo pieces as quickly as possible.

And the final most important difference is that Splinter Twin can win the game seemingly from nowhere since it can flash in a Deceiver Exarch at the end of an opponent’s turn, play Splinter Twin the following turn, and attack with 65 trillion hasty Horned Turtles.

On the other hand, Midnight Guard does not have flash or haste, which means that he must be played on your turn. Then, on the following turn, you can attach Presence of Gond to him. Then, on the third turn, you can attack with your army of elf tokens. This difference cannot be understated, since it really affects the speed with which Midnight Presence can win, and also in general, the way in which the combo can be integrated into Pauper.

So why did I just explain this? I believe that the initial temptation to integrate Midnight Presence into Pauper is going to be taking a Modern Splinter Twin deck as a template, removing the rares, and adding commons, but this is not going to be successful for the reasons mentioned above. Unlike Splinter Twin, the Midnight Presence combo takes a much longer time to actually win the game and also gives the opponent several opportunities to interact with it. So, in order to not be doomed before we begin, we should keep in mind how the two combos (and the two formats) are fundamentally different.

But I’ve said enough about what the combo is not. Let’s turn our attention toward how each step of the combo works in more detail. Also, I will be looking only at versions of the deck which are strictly green-white since manabases in Pauper decks become very difficult upon adding a third color. This is not to say that a three-color version of the deck is not possible or that you shouldn’t try to brew one yourself, but only that this article will be focusing on building the deck in its native colors. More importantly, by looking at how the combo unfolds, we can then apply this analysis, that is, knowing (i) what card interactions need to be supported and (ii) what can potentially go wrong at each step of setting up the win, to the actual deck construction.

1. Assembling the pieces

First, the reason why this combo is so exciting in Pauper is because it is a two-card combo than can win many games relatively quickly once it is assembled. This makes the whole task of assembling the combo pieces much easier since it allows you to not use up extra deck space in finding a third combo piece, which dilutes your deck into what is essentially a bag of tricks which sometimes does what it’s supposed to but normally loses before it gets there.

For starters, Presence of Gond is an aura, which means that it can be tutored by Totem-Guide Hartebeest fairly easily. Hartebeest also opens up several ways of attacking from alternate directions without significantly diluting the deck’s focus. This will be important in a later section. Auramancer is another excellent card which allows us to retrieve Presence when something goes wrong. More importantly, Auramancer permits us not to have to sit on Presence while we wait for Midnight Guard, since it allows us to play Presence on a random creature to build up the board or even to chump block to slow down their clock while we still have a cheap and efficient way to get Presence back.

Midnight Guard, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult, since neither color has a way to actually search it from the deck. However, green does have access to Commune with Nature and similar effects in Gift of the Gargantuan and Llanowar Empath. While these types of effects do not provide the consistency and reliability that Hartebeast offers for Presence, they still allow us to go through the deck at an above-average rate to find what we need. Also, because Hartebeest can be grabbed by one of these effects, they are all still relevant when you’ve already drawn Guard but are looking for Presence.

It is also important to remember that a strong combo deck often has a variety of ways to do the same thing (redundancy) in order to increase consistency. One way to do so is to increase the number of combo pieces in the deck. Remember in the discussion of Splinter Twin when I said that part of the reason Twin was successful is because it had a redundancy of effects that let it combo out? I said that Midnight Presence did not have this luxury, but that was not completely true. As a matter of fact, Pauper has always had a similar Presence of Gond combo with Devoted Druid and enchantments which boost toughness for each creature you control, such as Sigil of the Nayan Gods or Conclaves Blessing. The combo essentially works the same way as Midnight Presence. You put both enchantments on a Devoted Druid and tap to make a token. Druid gets +1/+1 from a new creature on the field, which allows you to put another -1/-1 on him to untap it. Rinse and repeat.

Because the combo functions in a way nearly identical to Midnight Presence and also relies on one of its namesake cards, Devoted Druid and Sigil of the Nayan Gods can be added to the deck in order to add redundancy and multiple ways to combo out. This has an added benefit in that it can hinder your opponent from recognizing with which combo method you are attempting to win. It is also important to note that each card also isn’t really a dead card in the deck outside of the combo interaction, so adding these additional pieces does not significantly dilute the focus of the deck. Devoted Druid serves as an efficient mana ramp spell, which is incredibly useful in casting Hartebeest early, and cycling Sigil allows Sigil to act as a filter spell when it is not serving any other function. Also, against an open board, Sigil supports the regular Midnight Presence combo by allowing you to make an infinitely big creature and attack with it in the same turn you equip Presence. And this is all in addition to it being an aura, meaning that it can be fetched from the library by Hartebeest or from the graveyard by Auramancer, which we are already running anyway.

2. Play Midnight Guard

One important point to mention is that unlike other combo decks where you want to hold your combo pieces until you go off, this combo works in the opposite way. Because the combo is relatively slow and because you also need to have Guard out for one turn before he can make your giant 1/1 Elf army, there is a very strong incentive to play the Guard as soon as possible. More importantly, this makes Guard by himself a rather strong tempo card, since it puts your opponent in a situation where he or she must answer the Guard or leave up answers for the a Presence of Gond. And even without answers, most opponents would rather bluff something and not want to tap out against Midnight Guard because doing so gives you the opportunity to safely give Midnight Guard a Presence of Gond and swarm the board. By playing Guard early, you are at the least bluffing to blow them out next turn and forcing them to react in some way.

This is all a long way of saying that even without Gond, Midnight Guard still has presence on the board and can buy you time to win.

3. Giving Midnight Guard the Presence of Gond

This is the step where things can go terribly wrong because, by casting an Aura in the first place, you’re setting yourself up to be two-for-one’d. This is only made much worse by the fact that the two cards you’re risking losing are the most crucial cards in your deck.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to tell when is a good time to attempt to combo off, and whether it is right to go for it depends on many factors, such as how much longer you have until you lose, how quickly you can win through other means, how quickly you can reassemble the combo if it fails, how likely it is that your opponent has some kind of removal, and how likely it will be that your opponent taps out in subsequent turns. Remember when assessing how much longer you can survive that you must survive the turn after you cast Presence of Gond and that while it will provide you with infinite chump blockers during that turn (assuming you didn’t also just play Midnight Guard), your opponent can still win through creatures with evasion abilities (such as flying) or burn spells.

This step is also made much easier if the deck can push from multiple directions since you can apply pressure in other forms and force them to respond to draw out certain removal or countermagic and, ideally, force them to tap out on their turn so that you can successfully cast Presence of Gond. For example, if you are running Sprout Swarm in the deck and your opponent is running blue, you can Sprout Swarm on your opponent’s turn to force them to use countermagic on it, forcing your opponent to use an out against the Midnight Presence combo and also hopefully tap out.

Also keep in mind that the different types of protection are very important in protecting Midnight Guard while equipped to survive for a turn. Cards such as Benevolent Bodyguard or Standard Bearer can really go long ways in this regard and will ultimately be very important in protecting the combo to carry you to a win. Also, Prismatic Strands, aside from being an awesome card in countless other ways, serves as a way to protect against the removal that red will bring and, to some degree, the removal which black will have that deals damage (such as Tendrils of Corruption or Crypt Rats).

4. Winning the Game

Congratulations! You have successfully enchanted Midnight Guard with Presence of Gond and are most likely one turn away from winning the game. The main thing to be aware of from this point forward is that your opponent can remove Guard by responding to him tapping with removal and stop you from actually amassing a giant little army. For example, if during your opponent’s end step, you tap Midnight Guard, Presence of Gond will go on the stack. If your opponent responds with a Lightning Bolt, it will go on the stack and resolve before either Gond or the Midnight Guard triggers, killing Guard before he can untap, which means that you only get to make one 1/1 elf token. Aside from running various protection spells (which will be discussed shortly), this problem can be avoided in two ways. The first is to remember the importance of forcing your opponent to tap out on his or her turn, since this not only lets you equip Gond safely, but also lets you freely tap Guard on your turn to make your tokens. Also, if you did not notice how much I expressed my love for Sprout Swarm as support to this combo earlier, you will now: In the situation where you tap Guard to make an elf and your opponent puts removal onto the stack, you can respond with Sprout Swarm to maintain the combo. Sprout Swarm will resolve first and put a creature into play, which will trigger Midnight Guard so that he will untap himself. From here, you have an untapped Midnight Guard with a Presence of Gond and should have a pretty good idea of what to do.

Midnight Brewings

Before concluding, I would like to apply this analysis of the Midnight Presence combo to come up with two slightly different decks in which the combo can be incorporated. The first is going to be a dedicated combo deck where the main line of attack is going to be assembling the combo. My concept of the deck looks like this:

Midnight Presence v.1 by Michael Radzwilla

Creatures (17) 4 Midnight Guard 4 Devoted Druid 4 Totem-Guide Hartebeest 3 Standard Bearer 2 Auramancer Other Spells (21) 4 Presence of Gond 4 Sigil of the Nayan Gods 4 Prismatic Strands 4 Commune with Nature 2 Sprout Swarm 2 Journey to Nowhere 1 Moment’s Peace Lands (22) 10 Forest 12 Plains Sideboard (15) 4 Spidersilk Armor 4 Holy Light 3 Seal of Cleansing 2 Sprout Swarm 1 Moment’s Peace 1 Armadillo Cloak

Buy this Deck

Before going further, please remember that this is mainly a sketch of a deck which derives from the previous analysis of how the combo operates. It is not advisable to copy this list card for card and expect to 4-0 a Daily; instead, this is meant to serve as a framework upon which the deck can further develop. With that in mind, let’s discuss the deck is some more detail.

Obviously we’re going to want to run four copies of both Midnight Guard and Presence of Gond, since that’s how we plan on winning almost all of the time. And in order to add redundancy to Presence of Gond, we should also maximize our number of copies of Sigil of the Nayan Gods (especially because of its versatility as a cheap cycling spell) as well as Devoted Druid.

Also, remember that Sigil can allow Devoted Druid to hold more -1/-1 counters, so with three lands and three creatures, you can attach both Sigil and Presence to the Druid in the same turn. This is a move that will allow you seemingly win out of nowhere, especially because of the unpredictable nature of the combo and the illusion that you will not have enough mana to cast several auras.

Standard Bearer serves the obvious role of protecting your enchanted creatures (or soon to be enchanted creatures) from targeted removal, acts as an enabler for the flashing back Prismatic Strands, and acts as something to help convoke Sprout Swarm. In addition to this, it also helps immensely in the Storm matchup since it greatly hinders the Grapshot plan and stops Mono-Green Aggro decks, particularly Infect and Stompy, from enchanting or pumping their creatures, which can really slow down their ability to apply pressure.

As for the other spells in the deck, Sigil of Blessing and Presence of Gond are essential combo pieces and thus we should run four copies of both. While Sigil is technically serving as a combo piece in the deck, its primary function is as a cantrip to help speed along the goals of the deck. When considering whether or not you should cycle Sigil or hold onto it, the main concern is how essential it is to you putting together the combo, if you have multiple copies, or if you have Auramancer. For example, if you have a Druid in play and Sigil in hand, but no Midnight Guard, it is most likely better to hold the Sigil than to cycle it since cycling leaves you looking for two pieces instead of just the one. On the other hand, if you have Midnight Guard, it is generally a good idea to cycle Sigil since you will still only be looking for one card and Sigil will help you find it quicker.

Commune with Nature is functioning as a green Preordain so that you can begin sculpting your hand and finding your combo pieces relatively early. Hartebeest also really completes this card, since it allows Commune to give you indirect access to Presence of Gond.

Prismatic Strands is, in my opinion, one of the strongest cards available to white in Pauper, and it supports virtually everything this deck wants to do. Primarily, it slows down your opponent’s clock by two turns, which is significant when trying to assemble your combo pieces, and it succeeds admirably at doing so. However, another important aspect of Prismatic Strands in this deck is its ability to counteract a great deal of removal without requiring any mana investment.

As for the rest of the deck, I have already raved about how much I love Sprout Swarm in general as a one-card win condition, and the other inclusions are meant to serve general purposes in the deck.

To a large degree, the sideboard is also fairly traditional as of right now, with the most distinct thing being the Sprout Swarm and Spidersilk package to bring in against blue decks. Seal of Cleansing is removal against Affinty and Tortured Existence that can be recycled through Auramancer. The single Armadillo Cloak exists as a target for Hartebeest in matchups where life gain is relevant.

While this provides the structure for a dedicated Midnight Presence combo deck, I believe that there is also significant room to build the combo into a deck that is already somewhat preexisting. When doing this, the most important consideration is how the inclusion of the combo pieces functions on its own in the deck. If the combo pieces function well, then their inclusion is a significant upgrade; while if they do not, they jeopardize the consistency of the deck according to its other win routes. In addition, it is important to consider to degree to which the aim of the existing deck supports the combo.

Consider this GW Soul Sisters list that recently went 4-0 in a Daily:

GW Soul Sisters by RevoemaG, played on 22 Feb., 2012,

Creatures (23) 4 Selesnya Evangel 4 Essence Warden 4 Pallid Mycoderm 4 Soul Warden 3 Souls Attendant 4 Veteran Armorer Other Spells (15) 4 Sprout Swarm 4 Spidersilk Armor 4 Scatter the Seeds 3 Prismatic Strands Lands (22) 6 Forest 4 Khalni Garden 8 Plains 4 Selesnya Sanctuary Sideboard (15) 4 Benevolent Unicorn 3 Gleeful Sabotage 4 Moment’s Peace 4 Thermokarst

Buy this Deck

This deck aims to win races by using the “Soul Sisters” to gain a significant amount of life. Using the creatures to hinder drastically your opponent’s ability to apply pressure directly supports the Midnight Presence combo by giving you the amount of time needed to do what you’re trying to do. Furthermore, Midnight Guard has impressive synergy with Sprout Swarm by being able to be convoked as many times as needed, essentially lowering the cost of the card by one for every copy on the field. Now here’s a version updated with the Midnight Presence combo:

GW Midnight Sisters, by Michael Radzwilla,

Creatures (23) 4 Essence Warden 4 Soul Warden 4 Veteran Armorer 4 Selesnya Evangel 4 Midnight Guard 3 Pallid Mycoderm Other Spells (16) 4 Sprout Swarm 4 Spidersilk Armor 4 Scatter the Seeds 4 Presence of Gond Lands (21) 9 Forest 9 Plains 3 Selesnya Sanctuary Sideboard (15) 4 Hornet Sting 2 Gleeful Sabotage 3 Prismatic Strands 2 Obsidion Acolyte 4 Thermokarst

Buy this Deck

While not necessarily as synergistic as Midnight Guard in the deck, Presence of Gond essentially works as a second Evangel. The biggest concern with this is that Presence of Gond lacks synergy with Pallid Mycoderm, which acts as the finisher of the deck. But aside from not being a fungus, Presence still offers a redundancy of token generating effects from which this deck can certainly benefit with regard to the “Soul Sisters” life gain strategy, as well as providing a little resilence against Echoing Decay and Echoing Truth, which can often be a blowout in certain matchups.

Earlier we discussed the importance of being able to pressure an opponent into tapping in order to clear the way for the combo, and integrating Midnight Presence into a Soul Sisters build really capitalizes on this. By pressuring the opponent early with threats, you force them to use their answers early, even though this may sometimes come at the cost of less consistently assembling the combo.

Conclusion

All in all, I really like both approaches to the deck for different reasons and I urge you to try out both strategies if you have the chance. While my testing with both types of deck leaves me slightly skeptical of the combo’s viability in the current Pauper metagame, it is nonetheless an exciting time to experiment with possible builds for this new-to-Pauper combo and to see if a Tier 1 deck will emerge from the Guard-Presence interaction after all. And I urge everyone reading this to leave any suggestions on the decks or ideas for your own directions of the deck in the comments below!