Pioneer Lotus Field Combo: From Beginner to Quitting

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

As a player who has played Lotus Field combo seriously and practiced it hard for roughly more than half a year, I should be qualified to write an introduction to this deck (?)
There were a few reasons I wanted to play Lotus Field at the start:

1. It’s cheap

The cost at the time was around 200 USD, and Pioneer Challenger Decks 2022 had already printed most of the hard-to-find pieces, so you could finish the deck by buying that box plus roughly 2000 NTD of extra pieces, which stands out among all the aggro decks.

2. I wanted to try playing a combo deck

Before I built this deck, I had almost always played midrange and control, and had little contact with combo decks (at the time Modern Storm was on the brink of death). Since I was about to start preparing for MIT, I figured I’d use the opportunity to try a type of deck I wasn’t familiar with.

3. It’s trendy

Playing combo is trendy, which should be easy to understand: when your opponent thinks victory is in the bag and you kill them on the backswing, that’s pretty trendy, right (sweat.

But I later took it apart for various reasons, and I’ll mention why below.

This deck is also suited to:

Players who like hoarding cards in hand
Combo players
Storm players

And this deck is not suited to:

Midrange players
Players who like back-and-forth games with their opponent
Players with a terrible “right hand” (draw luck), such as me
Players who don’t like getting beaten up by aggro

Decklist

Basically the build looks like this, and not a single one of these cards can be cut:
4x Arboreal Grazer
4x Vizier of Tumbling
1x Lier, Disciple of the Drowned
4x Hidden Strings
3x+ Impulse
4x Sylvan Scrying
2x+ Bala Ged Recovery
2x Dark Petition
4x Pore Over the Pages
3x Emergent Ultimatum
1x Omniscience
22x Lands (more on which ones to play later)

The rest depends on which axis you want to play, and then you decide what to put in.

What Does This Deck Do?

Now let me talk about the game flow this deck hopes to achieve.
This deck doesn’t play Strict Proctor, so there is no shortcut to cheat with: you have to play Lotus Field normally, sacrificing two lands, and then use Thespian’s Stage to copy a second Lotus Field.
Then use Hidden Strings, Pore Over the Pages, and Vizier of Tumbling to keep untapping Lotus Field to gain mana, and finally use Emergent Ultimatum to find the combo and wrap it up.
You can also use Arboreal Grazer to play an extra land and execute the combo a turn earlier.

Combo Line

There are two main combos:

Chandra Line

The Chandra line is new tech that only appeared within the past half year (well, duh, she was only released half a year ago), and broadly speaking it relies on her own triggered ability to earn more resources.
Once you have enough mana, use the following line to finish off the opponent. You need two Bala Ged Recoveries across hand and graveyard + enough mana (or Omniscience on the battlefield) + Chandra on the battlefield:

Chandra [-5] hits the opponent’s face for five
Use the first Bala Ged Recovery to return Chandra to hand
Slam Chandra back onto the battlefield and cast the second Bala Ged Recovery, which gets copied by Chandra: one copy returns the Bala Ged Recovery in the graveyard, and the other returns anything
Chandra uses [-5] again to hit the opponent’s face for five
Use the two Bala Ged Recoveries in hand to return Chandra and the Bala Ged Recovery in the graveyard respectively
Repeat steps three through five

With this line, the deck doesn’t need to play any specific supporting cards besides Chandra, Hope’s Beacon, and can play more acceleration (for example Voyaging Satyr), but the drawback is that it is hard to close the game if Chandra gets removed.

Approach of the Second Sun Line

The Approach of the Second Sun version is the combo I used when I first built this deck. Broadly speaking, it relies on Mastermind’s Acquisition in the deck to find Approach of the Second Sun from the sideboard, then casting Approach of the Second Sun repeatedly to win the game.

The Approach of the Second Sun version also needs extra Mastermind’s Acquisition and more card draw (I ran up to seven look-at-four-take-one effects at most).

Emergent Ultimatum

The Emergent Ultimatum in the deck is used to fill in resources or missing cards.

Usually I use Emergent Ultimatum to find Omniscience, Lier, and one card I’m missing: if I’m short on mana I find Hidden Strings, if short on cards in hand I find Pore Over the Pages, and if I’m short on nothing I find Dark Petition.
Since Omniscience is usually shuffled back into the library, the other two cards found are basically cast directly.
And Lier is very important, especially in the current Chandra line, since the mana requirement is higher, and without reusing graveyard resources it is hard to have enough mana to execute the combo.

Ramp Card Choices

Voyaging Satyr
The most common acceleration; with Hidden Strings it can act as a second Lotus Field.
Hope Tender
Another form of acceleration. Besides acting as a fifth Hidden Strings itself, with Hidden Strings and two Lotus Fields it can burst out even more mana, but it needs one extra mana to pay, and I’ve barely seen Hope Tender in the environment lately.
Growth Spiral
Growth Spiral is a card I really like: it accelerates while also drawing an extra card, but it is heavy on color requirements and doesn’t dig deep enough, so drawing it in the mid to late game is weak.
Baral, Chief of Compliance
Although it doesn’t add mana and isn’t really acceleration in substance, it reduces the cost of instants and sorceries (or offsets the extra mana from the dreaded Thalia, Guardian of Thraben), so I suppose it counts as a kind of acceleration (?

Land Choices

The deck basically runs around 22 lands, and most of the time it looks like this:
4x Lotus Field
4x Thespian’s Stage
4x Botanical Sanctum
1x Breeding Pool (fetched after the opponent blows up a land with Boseiju)
1x Island (thank you, Field of Ruin)
2x Temple of Mystery (can be played with Arboreal Grazer on turn one to scry)
2x+ Boseiju, Who Endures (Alpine Moon, go die, go away)
2x+ Otawara, Soaring City (deal with board-defining permanents)
1x Lair of the Hydra (a backup plan for when the Chandra line doesn’t have enough mana to win)

The remaining slot is free choice: more Boseiju, Otawara, a second basic land, or a shockland all work.

Sideboard

For the sideboard, Lotus Field can be said to be very flexible, especially after adopting the Chandra line, because some toolbox components are missing.
It is basically made up of sweepers and disruption, and some people bring a bit of filtering or other win-cons, which feels more comfortable in mirror matches or against control.
And if you still go the Approach of the Second Sun route, or want to keep the ability to find cards from the sideboard, I personally recommend an additional Dragonlord Dromoka, which is comfortable against control or decks with counterspells, and has lifelink so it can also hold off aggro.

Mental Preparation

I won’t attach a Sideboard Guide or anything like that: content from half a year ago is completely outdated by now, and since the game one route and the sideboard contents vary entirely from person to person, there is no absolutely rigid way to swap sideboard cards.
So here I’ll bring up something very important: mental preparation.

I think the most important thing in playing Lotus Field combo (or any combo) is mental preparation.
First, we need some awareness:

This is a deck that loses game one to almost all aggro decks
It gets punished by Sheoldred & Thalia
The practice volume is high, and your thinking has to be very flexible
Even if you do all of the above right, you will still get messed up by your “right hand”

The first few are easy to understand: since you have no board and no removal or sweepers, you easily lose game one to aggro; the whole deck is almost entirely noncreature spells, so naturally it gets countered by Thalia, and by the same reasoning, the whole deck is drawing cards, so being wrecked by Sheoldred is only to be expected.
High practice volume and flexible thinking are needed so you know which things on the current board threaten us and make countermeasures as early as possible (when you have a Field and Stage in hand, use the Forest’s scry to first find Boseiju or Otawara in preparation), or know how to survive in the cracks when you are about to die.

Finally, you have to be able to accept that you will be punished by the top of your library. Let me give an example, the last straw that broke me and made me determined to take the Lotus Field combo apart no matter what.
It was a certain MITQ. In round one I played an ugly big match against Creativity, where neither side drew anything, the opponent had a hand full of counters and I had a hand full of lands, and in the end the opponent drew Kiki-Jiki first. In round two I played control, and when I cast Thought Distortion I ran into Narset’s Reversal, twice, so my standing no longer mattered, and I hadn’t dropped yet, just treating it as practice.
The match then was against Gruul Midrange. I had no lands in my opening hand so I mulliganed (or maybe my hand was all lands, I forget, anyway I had to mulligan either way). My hand was:
2x Lotus Field
1x Temple of Mystery
1x Hidden Strings
1x Pore Over the Pages
1x Impulse
There was one more card but I forgot what it was, and it isn’t important and doesn’t affect the rest of the story.
Anyway, this was a hand I would keep, figuring I’d put a Lotus Field down, and I’d still have room to scry two cards off the top, so any second land that isn’t a Lotus Field would do.
Turn one, I play the scry land, see a nonland card, okay, bottom. The opponent plays a land and slams an Elvish Mystic, then passes to me.
Turn two, I draw a Lotus Field, nothing to do, pass; the opponent plays a land and slams a three-power creature, hitting me for three.
Turn three, I draw another Lotus Field, still nothing to do, pass; the opponent plays a land and slams Esika’s Chariot, hitting me for seven.
Turn four, I draw a sweeper but still have no land. The opponent plays a land, Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, and kills me. Fun game, play it every day.

I couldn’t bear the situation of “I’ve been practicing seriously, but at the critical moment I still get messed up by my right hand,” and I realized I seem better suited to midrange after all, and running into this finally broke me.
So afterward I took the Lotus Field apart and went off in search of other decks better suited to me.

Update: Oct 3rd, 2023

The article itself has been finished for several days, and while organizing materials I found that the European RC has finished.
First, congratulations to Adrián Iñigo Tastet for winning the championship with Lotus Field combo (decklist link).

Looking at the decklist, you will notice an extra card: Discontinuity.

Just like White-Blue Lotus Field control, when you have two mana available, you can end the turn in response to Lotus Field’s ETB, and then Lotus Field’s ability to sacrifice two lands is exiled straight off the stack, so you don’t need to sacrifice the two lands.
Also, once you already have six mana, you can end the opponent’s turn during their upkeep, or end the turn in response to their spell, dodging some threats.

The usage of this build has been rising gradually over the past month, and with the European champion also using it, many similar builds are expected in the upcoming environment.