This week on Adam Plays Magic, we're jamming some unadulterated nonsense of the highest caliber: Jaxis Twin. The objective of the deck is to make hasty token copies of Combat Celebrant with Jaxis, the Troublemaker or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki for multiple (if not infinite) extra combat steps.

The combo requires Combat Celebrant and one of the above creatures as well as one mana dork such as Llanowar Elves. With Reflections of Kiki-Jiki, the combo is a straightforward loop. The sequence with Jaxis on the other hand is limited by both the number of cards in your hand as well as your access to red mana.

Werewolf Pack Leader's Pack Tactics attack trigger takes care of the cards in hand limitation. However, Gilded Goose is the only one-mana mana dork that can produce red, but that is gated by your access to food tokens.

Even if the combo only nets a few free combats, it's likely enough to close the game.

What I Like

As I mentioned last week, I'm a big fan of combo decks that don't require the combo to win. If the individual components are strong enough to stand on their own, the deck is less clunky with fewer dead draws. Fortunately, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is exactly that type of card. It creates multiple bodies, fixes draws and threatens to snowball card advantage or outright win for a mere three mana. There is no clean answer to a resolved Fable, and that's exactly what to look for in your combo pieces.

The rest of the deck is comprised of efficient and aggressive creatures. Werewolf Pack Leader, Reckless Stormseeker // Storm-Charged Slasher, and Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp are extremely potent threats that put opponents on the back foot immediately. Topping off the curve with Esika's Chariot just adds to the "no clean answers club."

One of my favorite things to do with the deck is to exploit the synergy of Jaxis/Fable and Chariot by making a hasty self-sacrificing token of a creature like Bonecrusher Giant, then copying the token with Chariot. The end result is an additional token copy that won't sacrifice itself at the next end step. That token is free to be copied by Chariot for as long as it's in play.

This value engine can lead to some very wild board states, going even wider than RB Anvil, the primary go-wide deck of the format.

What I Don't Like

Outside of Bonecrusher Giant // Stomp, there isn't any way to interact with the opponent in the main deck. This poses an issue, as Greasefang Combo represents the largest share of the metagame.

Another deck that's risen in popularity is Bant Collected Company Angels, which hosts a slew of x/4 creatures like Bishop of Wings and Righteous Valkyrie. These are not only hard to profitably attack into, but they gain an exorbitant amount of life. Outside of an infinite combat sequence, which requires 3 non-summoning sick creatures and significant set-up time, it's nearly impossible to break through their defenses.

The sideboard hosts a few answers to these decks like Belfry Spirit, Unlicensed Hearse, and Roiling Vortex, but your RG beatdown deck is still going to struggle without the perfect series of draws.

Perhaps future iterations of the deck use the Pathway lands to splash for either black removal or blue counterspells to supplement the primary beatdown game plan?

The Deck

End Step

Another one down! We didn't quite assemble the full-fledged combo on stream, but RG Jaxis still performed very well, taking down quite a few top-tier decks. I'm impressed with the resilience it showed against heavy removal and its ability to grind, although the combo matchups leave a bit to be desired. I definitely think there's something here and I'm interested to see how the archetype continues to develop.

As always, you can find me on Twitter at @AdamECohen. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions for next week's deck tech! Don't forget to leave a comment and like the video so we can keep making content like this. See you all next time.