Combo decks for beginners

Hi, this is my first in depth thread, so bear with me, hopefully it'll turn out to be good.
Right, in this thread I hope to explain how to build and play combo decks, this is just how I personally do it, but hopefully it will provide an insight into the world of combo decks. This thread is for beginners, hence the title, so if you are adept at playing combo this will probably not be massively helpful.

So, what is a combo deck? There are many forms of combo, but they all revolve around getting a combo/combos of 2 or more cards in play, that either end the game or allow you to end the game within the next turn or 2. I personally would split combo into 3 groups: The Lock, The Engine, and the Generic Combo. These are just very basic groups, obviously each one can be varied, so for example you could have a Generic Combo deck, but with heavy control, this is what I personally would call a Combo Control deck.

So, lets take a look at each of these, an example of a "Lock" deck would be Turbo-Stasis, perhaps my favourite deck of all time, this is the classic in locks. There are 2 main types of lock - the "hard" lock, and the "soft" lock. The hard lock is one where your opponent is completely shut off and has nearly no way of winning, the above mentioned "Turbo-Stasis" is a perfect example of this. The soft lock, however, although still extremely powerful and often hard to escape, is escapable. An example of the soft lock would be Winter Orb (or Static Orb) and Opposition, this is a very powerful lock, but escapable, unlike the much harder Stasis lock.
Here's an example of a basic Turbo-Stasis deck:

Mana Base:
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
7 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Serra's Sanctum
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring

Counter Magic:
4 Force of Will
3 Mana Leak

Board Control:
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Balance
2 Echoing Truth (also serves as a lock enabler)

Card Draw/Tutor:
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
2 Fabricate
1 Enlightened Tutor

The Lock:
3 Stasis
4 Howling Mine
4 Mind Over Matter

The Kill:
1 Black Vise

Others:
1 Trinisphere
1 Time Walk

The main difference between that deck and traditional Turbo-Stasis decks is that I haven't included Kismet but I do use Mind Over Matter to generate mana and lock theirs out.

Now the Engine decks, I personally don't really use these much, the only ones I'm particularly familiar with are my own Zuran Orb deck and my Recycle decks. Engine decks allow you to generate something such as life, mana, card advantage etc, infinitely or almost infinitely.
Here's a Recycle deck I built a while ago (my metagame is high aggro, hence the amounts of anti-creature):

Mana Base:
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Forbidden Orchard
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald

Creatures:
4 Birds of Paradise

Disruption:
4 Duress

Card Draw/Tutor:
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Grim Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Frantic Search

Additional Mana Sources:
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cadaverous Bloom

Anti-Creature:
4 Moat
3 Gravity Sphere

Combo:
4 Recycle
1 Words of War

Others:
2 Reminisce
1 Time Walk

Whilst that doesn't actually produce infinite of anything, the use of Recycle and Words of War produces almost limitless damage, especially with more than one Recycle.

Generic combo decks aren't really that common, as most decks will fit into one of the first 2 groups. An example of a generic combo deck would be Darkest Hour and Light of Day, or Braid of Fire and Upwelling. I'll admit though that neither of those would be particularly powerful in Vintage, maybe Legacy or Extended though. Generic combo decks don't usually have the raw power in their combos that locks and engines have, but they can still be devastating.

A combo deck, while as uber powerful as it may be, can also be very fragile and prove hard to set up, so to get around this you need something to protect your combo, and a way to fetch the parts as quickly as possible.

Here's my top 5 combo protection cards:
1) Force of Will
2) Duress
3) Mana Leak/Remand
4) Counterspell/Mana Drain
5) Chalice of the Void

And now my top 5 combo finders (ie tutors):
1) Demonic Tutor
2) Vampiric Tutor
3) Grim Tutor/Intuition
4) Imperial Seal
5) Enlightened/Mystical/Worldly Tutor/Demonic Consultation

A combo deck as I said can be very fragile, and so cards like these can prove to be essential.
Combo decks may often rely on activated abilities, either from key cards or from moxen etc, so cards such as Pithing Needle and Null Rod (basically any ability killers) will cause mayhem for you, you need ways of removal, Duress etc will often be fine, but bounce can prove very effective.

If you play a slower combo deck (ie Turbo-Stasis) you will usually need some form of board control, my top 5 picks for this would be:
1) Swords to Plowshares
2) Diabolic Edict
3) Balance
4) Propaganda/Ghostly Prison
5) Innocent Blood

Finally, as with most decks you will need some way to gain card advantage, the same principles apply for this with combo decks as with any other decks - Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm, Thirst for Knowledge, Neocropotence, Yawgmoth's Bargain (perhaps one of the best combo enablers ever) etc will all suffice, and Frantic Search seems to work well in combo.

Now, playing combo, this depends on the aim of your deck. If you are playing a lock deck you will probably want to sit and accumulate a bit of card advantage and maybe board control early game, turn 2 (at the earliest), but most likely turn 3 or 4, I would expect you to start finding your combo pieces. Always start with the one you think will be most helpful in the current game situation, or if you feel that leaving it any later would lead to it getting countered simply go for the most essential piece. If you're playing a faster deck, which an engine deck is more likely to be, you could probably start tutoring turn 1, and from their focus on getting everything online before they can shut it down or kill you. After that, with any combo deck your aim is to protect your pieces, do this for long enough and your opponent should begin to run out of steam. If they are playing against a particularly fast deck though, it is often a good idea just to blitz it in the hope that you can out race them.

Well that's it, I hope this has proven to be useful, if there's anything you feel I've missed or not covered in enough detail, or any questions, just post as a reply. Any comments appreciated! By the way, I hope I posted this in the correct place, if not I'm really sorry.