The Magic: the Gathering Cadaverous Bloom Combo Deck in a Nutshell

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If you have played in the early years of Competitive Magic: the Gathering TCG, I am pretty sure you are familiar with this particular combo deck that existed during the Mirage-Tempest block Type 2 constructed format. The deck was called the Cadaverous Bloom combo and revolves around the strategy of assembling the combo card pieces and winning from there.

The Cadaverous Bloom combo deck revolves around a specific combo involving the cards Squandered Resources, and Recycle. Here’s a brief overview of how the combo works:

Cadaverous Bloom: This enchantment still allows you to exile a card from your hand and add black mana to your mana pool equal to the exiled card’s casting cost.

Squandered Resources: This card allows you to sacrifice a land to add one mana of any color to your mana pool. It synergizes with Cadaverous Bloom by providing additional mana resources.

Recycle: This enchantment remains in the combo, allowing you to skip your draw step and draw an additional card whenever you play a card.

The combo sequence is as follows:

  • Have Cadaverous Bloom, Squandered Resources, and Recycle on the battlefield.
  • Exile cards from your hand with Cadaverous Bloom to generate black mana.
  • Use Squandered Resources to sacrifice lands, adding mana to your pool.
  • With the generated mana, cast a creature with a converted mana cost of three or less, triggering Recycle to draw a card.
  • Repeat the process, using Cadaverous Bloom, Squandered Resources, and Recycle to generate mana, cast creatures, and draw cards.

As before, the deck aims to cycle through its library, accumulate mana, and ultimately win the game with a potent spell or combo. The specific card win condition, Prosperity, involves forcing your opponent to draw their entire library, leading to their game loss due to being unable to draw a card. Another way of winning is via a huge mana spent on X in Drain Life sorcery spell aimed at the opponent’s dome.

The powerful consistency of the deck led to the banning of Squandered Resources in June 1997 in the constructed format.