I gotta admit, I am a sucker for combo decks, and the combo deck that Toshiyuki Kadooka ran at GP Yokohama was awesome. You can find his decklist here.

However, I don’t think that’s an optimal decklist. If I were to run a Modern Pod list, it would look a little like this.

Pod People

Creatures (29) 4 Birds of Paradise 1 Noble Hierarch 2 Viscera Seer 4 Fauna Shaman 3 Melira, Sylvok Outcast 1 Spellskite 4 Kitchen Finks 1 Eternal Witness 1 Village Bell-Ringer 1 Murderous Redcap 2 Restoration Angel 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 2 Reveillark 1 Sun Titan Instants (4) 2 Path to Exile 2 Chord of Calling Artifacts (3) 3 Birthing Pod Lands (24) 4 Verdant Catacombs 4 Arid Mesa 4 Stomping Ground 4 Temple Garden 1 Reflecting Pool 1 Plains 1 Fire-Lit Thicket 1 Murmuring Bosk 1 Wooded Bastion 1 Overgrown Tomb 2 Forest

This thing is a monster. It includes two main combos: the old Melira Pod combo (Melira, Murderous Redcap & Viscera Seer), while adding in the Kiki-Jiki / Restoration Angel or Village Bell-Ringer combo.

However, it has a super-high level of reseliance due to Reveillark and Sun Titan. Both of these guys can bring your combo pieces back, making the only out for your client Exiling the various parts. Reveillark can pull Kiki-Jiki/Bellringer from the yard for the instant win; Sun Titan can slowly pull back together the pieces for Melira Pod (and gives us something to pod into out of Reveillark). Both of these positions can be fed by the Fauna Shamans – you put one combo together in the graveyard, while putting another together on the board. That is pretty insane. There is a temptation to call this ‘win more’, but it isn’t, it’s more ‘win for certain’.

The only thing I’m not that happy about are the lands, which are pretty suicidal. It also has a lot of trouble casting a natural Kiki-Jiki at the moment.

This is basically a deck that can easily combo out Turn 4, but can never be considered out of the running even when being dismantled. It is a beast, and I don’t say that lightly. Try it. Tell me what you think.