{"ops":[{"insert":"This is a budget deck, some of the card choices come down to them being cheap but still useable.\n\nThis deck is all about the card it's named after, Mortal Combat.\n\nEarly Game: Ramp into Anje as fast as possible. Starting hand you want at least 2 lands, a ramp spell, and a few madness cards. Once you have Anje out you can effectively draw out most your library whenever you want, never discard protection and Mortal Combat.\n\nMid Game: This is the part where you want to start discarding as many creatures via Anje as possible, at this point mana is only important for Mortal Combat, protection spells, and using Umbral Mantle to untap Anje (You almost never pay for Madness). If you can't find Mortal Combat, tutor for it. You almost never want to play your madness cards, except for Necrogoyf and Hell Mongrel sometimes. Hell Mongrel is more consistent discard than Anje, but doesn't draw cards, and Necrogoyf is good if you don't think you could resolve Mortal Combat to win via beatdown. Speaking of beatdown, if your opponents are running lots of counters/enchantment removal, you can also go for a beatdown strategy with the little additions of some Vampire tribal. You can use Glass-Cast Heart for beatdown as well as for searching for Mortal Combat. You can use the theft spells with the mostly unused mana base if going for Mortal Combat, you can also use them to untap Anje if you are really desperate. These cards are partially your removal.\n\nEnd Game: If you gave up on Mortal Combat to win, just beatdown. If you didn't, you want to have a hand curated to try and resolve Mortal Combat and get to your next upkeep (aka your protection), as well as your recursion creatures, you can use Rain of Filth and the ramp you have been doing throughout the game to play it again if it gets countered.\n\nWhy certain cards?\nSome of the weird cards in this deck are because I wanted to make this deck relatively cheap, so no demonic/vampiric tutor for example. If you have them/want to run them, you easily could though. Literally the entire land base is basic for the same reason, and ramp is there to help mitigate this a bit as well. The vampire tribal is here to be a backup plan, you could easily drop it for more cards with Madness, but I've found it loses some consistency. Pyroblast, Red Elemental Blast, and Deflecting Swat would be amazing in this deck, but with them I couldn't keep the deck under $50, again, if you have them, sub-out some of the other protection for them. Why Anje? Anje is cheap, and allows you to discard AND draw for free multiple times. If you are subbing things out, I would start with removing the tutors because Anje draws so much that you don't really ever have to tutor that much unless Mortal Combat is literally at the bottom of your library. I only ever tutor if I have free mana to do so, or are already at 20 creatures in yard. As long as the cards have madness, it doesn't really matter which ones you run as you discard most of them anyways.\n\nWhy Mortal Combat?\nNot much of a reason outside of the fact it's fun, a lot of people don't know what it is, and it's unexpected. As it is also an enchantment, you can play it before you have 20 creatures in yard, and use Anje on the end-step before your turn if you think you can get 20 creatures in yard before your turn (this also gives a bit of protection to Mortal Combat, as opponents might not read it as a threat yet.)\n\nWhy Vampire Tribal?\nLots of the madness cards (especially in black/red) are vampires or work well with madness.\n"}]}