As part of combo week, I’ve chosen to explain my personal favorite combo in standard: the Curse of Exhaustion + Knowledge Pool lock. First, let’s take a look at what these two cards do before we explain how the combo works.

Curse of Exhaustion is pretty simple; it restricts the number of spells your opponent can cast to just one per turn. So no Snapcaster Mage + Mana Leak shenanigans, plus it slows down aggro decks that like to quickly play everything in their hand, like Tempered Steel.

Knowledge Pool is a bit more tricky, and has a pair of triggered abilities. The first ability triggers when it enters the battlefield. Each player exiles the top three cards of his or her library, and those cards are placed under the knowledge pool to keep track of what it has exiled, since that is important for its second triggered ability.

The second ability triggers whenever a player casts a spell from his or her hand. It exiles that spell, and then then that player gets to cast another spell that has been previously exiled by the Knowledge Pool without paying its mana cost.

Together, these two cards lead to a pretty sticky situation for our opponent. With Curse of Exhaustion and Knowledge Pool on the field, any spell the opponent casts from the hand is exiled, and they may cast another spell exiled by the Knowledge Pool. Except they can’t, because of the “only cast one spell per turn” limit imposed by Curse of Exhaustion.

Just watch out for Ancient Grudge or Ray of Revelation. If the opponent manages to get one of those into his or her graveyard, that player will be able to flash it back to destroy a piece of your combo, because Knowledge Pool only triggers for spells cast from hands, not from graveyards.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Peter Golightly, Level 2 judge from Austin, TX