Hello, folks! A couple of weeks ago, I created some decks all parsed together with Battle for Zendikar cards. I’ve still been thinking about the set and wanting to build a few more brews.

The deck-building bug can strike us at odd times. There are a variety of mechanics in Battle for Zendikar that are pretty insular, so I want to strength out by building a few more decks and going a handful of directions. Today, I’m bringing to you another quartet of decks that were inspired by various cards and concepts from Battle from Zendikar.

Are you ready to get your Battle on?

Allies from Beyond ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (26)
• 2 Coralhelm Guide
• 2 Hero of Goma Fada
• 2 Jwari Shapeshifter
• 2 Kor Entanglers
• 2 Sea Gate Loremaster
• 4 Cliffside Lookout
• 4 Kabira Evangel
• 4 Ondu Cleric
• 4 Talus Paladin

• Spells (10)
• 2 Dismantling Blow
• 2 Momentary Blink
• 4 Ghostly Flicker
• 2 Retreat to Emeria

• Lands (24)
• 8 Island
• 8 Plains
• 4 Adarkar Wastes
• 4 Ally Encampment

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The goal of this deck is to combine it with instant-speed Flicker tricks. When you can flicker an Ally out any time, you can harness the trigger reactively to mess with your opponents—rather than merely proactively.

One of the ways that Allies have felt different from Slivers is that Slivers tend to give themselves static abilities (all Slivers gain first strike or +1/+1 or the like). Allies, on the other hand, either have enters-the-battlefield (ETB) abilities or one that counts Allies on the pitch.

Since many of these abilities are triggered on entry, they play into the same space as cards like Mulldrifter, Solemn Simulacrum, and Uktabi Orangutan. Even the rally ability from Battle for Zendikar is in the ETB-trigger family. So with that a given, I want to push into that with the flicker effects in this deck.

We have a handful of effects that will send a creature out of the battlefield and then have them pop right back in. You can do that to give the team any of a variety of abilities, from indestructible (Hero of Goma Fada) to protection (Kabira Evangel) from a color of your choice. Both of those provide strong reactions to someone attacking or looking your way with removal. When you toss in all of the other abilities in here, too, you have a deck that works.

The Swamps of Hagra ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (10)
• 2 Crypt Ghast
• 2 Nightmare
• 4 Nantuko Shade
• 2 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Liliana of the Dark Realms

• Spells (22)
• 2 Disturbed Burial
• 2 Mind Sludge
• 2 Profane Command
• 4 Corrupt
• 4 Silence the Believers
• 2 Genju of the Fens
• 4 Retreat to Hagra
• 2 Sword of the Animist

• Lands (26)
• 24 Swamp
• 2 Cabal Coffers

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I like Retreat to Hagra the most from among the Retreat cycle because it has a winning condition to drain your foes of a life, giving you 1 as well. I thought putting it into a Swamp-centric shell would be an interesting take on a common black deck.

This is a typical black control deck, although I don’t go too wild with the Cabal Coffers and friends. It’s more casual and laid back. For winning the game, we can swing with Nightmare in the sky or with Korlash, Heir to Blackblade on the ground. Don’t forget to pump Nantuko Shade or Genju of the Fens as well.

But the winning doesn’t stop there. Not only are we rocking the extort triggers from the Crypt Ghast, we also have the landfall from our Retreat, which help to simultaneously keep us alive and kill our foes. After that, it’s a simple matter of adding a few cards that either want to get mana (Liliana of the Dark Realms and Sword of the Animist) or use it for various effects (Profane Command, Disturbed Burial, Silence the Believers). And that’s pretty much a deck, folks!

If you are running this at a multiplayer table, perhaps something like Liliana's Shade would replace the Nantuko Shade. The extra 2 mana is worth finding another Swamp from your deck.

Counter-Phoenix, Part II ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (10)
• 3 Akoum Firebird
• 3 Shard Phoenix
• 4 Young Pyromancer

• Spells (24)
• 2 Brutal Expulsion
• 2 Capsize
• 2 Cryptic Command
• 2 Dismiss
• 2 Mindswipe
• 2 Urza's Rage
• 4 Dissolve
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 2 Deep Analysis
• 2 Tidings

• Lands (26)
• 7 Island
• 7 Mountain
• 4 Izzet Boilerworks
• 4 Shivan Reef
• 4 Steam Vents

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Counter-Phoenix is an old deck from way back that ran Shard Phoenix and a bunch of counters and burn and used the Phoenix as a winning condition. Akoum Firebird is a really strong entrant, and it seems to be an interesting take on the Phoenix—it doesn’t have to be recast, you just have to lay out the mana when you play a land. That means it’s no longer subject to countermagic.

I decided to build a deck around our good Phoenix and to grab Shard Phoenix as a tip of the hat to the old deck. From there, I began to hit the deck up with a variety of support. We have some counters, and you can see Dissolve, Cryptic Command, and Dismiss all in here and countering things that irritate you. We don’t have a huge number of counterspells—this is not that deck—but we certainly have enough to force people to watch out and be careful.

We also have a smattering of removal: Lightning Bolt, Urza's Rage, and the new Brutal Expulsion. This is a pretty interesting deck to experiment with the Expulsion, and it seems to fit quite nicely. All of these cards offer different levels of removal, but all give the deck some useful options.

Finally, I tossed in some Young Pyromancers and a handful of card-draw spells and Capsizes. You can bounce something back to a hand with a Capsize or Expulsion for later countering love. From the way-back machine to now, we have cards from all along Magic’s history, so I hope you enjoy this modern take on Counter-Phoenix!

From Beyond Zendikar ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Spawnsire of Ulamog
• 2 Artisan of Kozilek
• 2 Endless One
• 2 Void Attendant
• 4 Blisterpod
• 4 Nest Invader
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

• Spells (16)
• 4 Scour from Existence
• 4 Cultivate
• 4 All is Dust
• 2 Awakening Zone
• 2 From Beyond

• Lands (26)
• 24 Forest
• 2 Blighted Woodland

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This is our final deck, and it’s probably the most complex. It’s a (mostly) colorless deck that uses Eldrazi creatures to ramp into Eldrazi creatures.

But the deck doesn’t just have those eight cards. It has some more tricks as well. Both Awakening Zone and From Beyond are here to make Spawn and Scions for the board, and they can be used for mana-ramp. If you need them, don’t forget that you can sacrifice that From Beyond in order to grab the ramp-Eldrazi target of your choice once your deck is ready to go.

Void Attendant is here to pop cards back from exile into graveyards in order to churn out Eldrazi Scions. Now, the deck doesn’t have many ways of exiling stuff—that’s not really green’s strength in Battle for Zendikar—but there are certainly a lot of exiling effects in multiplayer and at kitchen tables right now, so we should be able to generate value from it here and there, and if not, you can always use it to block and add to the deck’s creature threat. And since we’re running green anyway, we may as well Cultivate some lands out to assist our good Eldrazi overlords . . . 

I have a handful of ramp targets; we have one copy each of the two Ulamogs, a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and Spawnsire of Ulamog, which can make more tokens or be used to bring out a metric ton of Eldrazi smashery with its activated ability. All of those can be used for the right board state. You can even grab Artisan of Kozilek for pushing the board around while animating a second beater like the Spawnsire.

Now to flesh out the deck, isn’t this an awesome place for All Is Dust? It’ll clean out the board and leave behind almost everything you have—only six permanents of yours will be Dusted (Awakening Zone and Nest Invader). I even tossed in some Scour from Existence as some emergency removal in case you need it.

Ramp to Eldrazi, and bring the colorless beats to a table near you.

And that’s our second quartet of decks, all dolled up and ready for play. Of course, feel free to modify these decks based on the cards you own and where you want to go with it. Maybe you want to add in Scatter to the Winds for your Counter-Phoenix deck or Venser, the Sojourner to the Allies from Beyond deck. Whatever your desire, the decks are yours, so enjoy them!