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Main » Articles » 5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on January 9, 2016
 Reddit

Oath of the Gatewatch preview season may be in full swing, but we still have a few weeks of Battle for Zendikar to play out. This week we have five decks from across your favorite Constructed formats, highlighting some of the most exciting new technology Constructed has to offer. We’ll start in Standard where we have a new take on Atarka Red and a White midrange deck set up to take advantage of Archangel of Tithes. Then, we’ll head into Modern where we have a W/B take on the new Eldrazi menace as well as a Jund brew which splits the difference between combo and midrange. Finally, we’ll head to Vintage to find out how unrestricted Thirst for Knowledge changes deck-building. Let’s get started!

How I Learned to Stop Playing Become Immense and Love Going Wide

At the beginning of the format, Standard was defined by fast Red decks built around the combination of Become Immense and Temur Battle Rage. While decks featuring the combo kill are still quite popular, the rest of the format has adapted to play enough instant-speed spot removal to make it dangerous to go all in on a Become Immense. Consequently, it may be time to play a Red deck which goes wide instead of big, and SOKOS13 may have found the next big thing in time for the MOCS:

Atarka Thopters ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | SOKOS13, 6th Place Standard MOCS

This deck takes advantage of the shortage of sweepers in Standard. While Crux of Fate, Planar Outburst, and Languish are cards in the format, people tend to play very few copies in their 75. This means you can use cards like Dragon Fodder, Hordeling Outburst, and Pia and Kiran Nalaar to assemble an enormous board presence with relatively little fear of getting blown out.

The plan is to chain together token generators while chipping in for a few points of damage until an attack with six or seven creatures backed up with Atarka's Command or Trumpet Blast is lethal. This kind of swarming strategy is enormously powerful in a format where people are trying to tap out for Siege Rhino and Dragonlord Ojutai. No one is going to want to leave up Murderous Cut to deal with your tokens when they can cast a threat to block every turn, and as soon as they do you get to kill them on the spot.

The best part? This deck is completely capable of winning quickly with Monastery Swiftspear and Zurgo Bellstriker or going long and playing an attrition game with Thopters. When your opponents don’t overextend into your pump effects, you can still chip away in the air with your Thopters and then start flinging them at your opponent with Pia and Kiran Nalaar. The strategy is familiar but distinct, so some opponents will overvalue their efficient spot removal spells, allowing you to get them with Trumpet Blast when they try to play around Become Immense.

You Have to Pay the Toll

The Thopter Red deck wasn’t the only exciting piece of technology at the MOCS, however. We also saw a new take on White midrange. Several months back, Craig Wescoe debuted a midrange deck featuring all the most powerful White cards in the format backed by a handful of interesting Processor interactions. For the MOCS, Craig has an updated take on the same strategy. Let’s take a look:

W/B Midrange ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Nacatls4Life, 10th Standard MOCS

This deck does a number of interesting things which give it a fantastic position in the current Standard metagame. The most interesting interaction against other midrange and aggressive decks is the combination of Silkwrap or Stasis Snare plus Wasteland Strangler. This interaction gives you the ability to have early removal spells which aren’t vulnerable to either Dromoka's Command or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and also enable an early two-for-one against cards like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Soulfire Grand Master, or Warden of the First Tree.

Additionally, this deck can play Archangel of Tithes. This card is important against aggressive decks as a way to stall out the combat step. It’s also a big deal against Jeskai variants, as removal spells like Fiery Impulse and Roast are going to miss Archangel, and the plethora of three-power creatures in the deck makes it easy for Archangel to dodge Crackling Doom. Even against control and midrange opponents, Archangel is an ultimatum. Either spend your turn answering her immediately, or get locked out of combat. Whether your opponent leaves her in play or taps out to answer her, this generally gives you an opening to resolve a Wingmate Roc to lock your opponent out of the game.

Remand Got You Down?

I hate the card Remand. One of my least favorite things about Modern is playing the same turn over and over into Remands and Snapcaster Mages while my opponent ekes out a little more value every turn until I die to Splinter Twin, Scapeshift, or a flurry of burn spells. Consequently, I’m a huge fan of any strategy capable of punishing Remand decks, and this interesting brew by Heiring does just that.

Jund Summoning Trap ? Modern | Hering, 3-1 Modern Daily Event

We’ve seen a number of strategies like this over the course of Modern’s existence, but nothing quite like this. Previously, these decks were largely based in Naya colors, and focused on using Knight of the Reliquary, Primeval Titan, and hideaway lands to cheat an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Iona, Shield of Emeria into play and end the game. The problem with this strategy is two-fold. First, playing a bunch of G/W creatures isn’t fast enough to pressure the U/R-based combo decks when they can Remand your big threat and kill you on their turn. Second, there are a lot of decks which don’t care about monsters like Iona or Elesh Norn.

Heiring’s solution is to build more of a traditional ramp deck. Rather than trying to stitch together Windbrisk Heights activations using Nest Invader and Noble Hierarch, Heiring is playing high-impact threats backed by ramp spells and efficient removal. This kind of ramp strategy has traditionally struggled against more aggressive strategies like burn and against Liliana of the Veil, who prevents you from assembling the critical mass of resources to execute your gameplan. Heiring has solved this problem by lowering the curve and including powerful value creatures like Huntmaster of the Fells and Obstinate Baloth.

Oh, and if your opponent happens to try to counter one of your value creatures? They might die to a Primeval Titan or Emrakul off of Summoning Trap. Alternatively, you can apply pressure with midrange monsters, and if anyone taps out to deal with them you can end the game with a Primeval Titan, Summoning Trap, or Through the Breach.

Part of the Process

Our second Modern deck of the week is another look at the deck taking Magic Online by storm. The Black-based Eldrazi deck featuring all manner of goodies from Battle for Zendikar has been putting up absurd results in Modern Leagues, but had its first real performance in a paper event this past weekend. Let’s look at Matthew Dilks’s take on the archetype:

W/B Eldrazi ? Modern | Matthew Dilks, 10th StarCityGames Modern Open

This deck doesn’t look like much at first glance. After all, it’s a pile of weird, unplayable Standard cards backed by Relic of Progenitus and weird lands, right? The thing is, this deck is deceptively fast, enormously resilient, and has lots of value built in. Against aggressive decks, you have the ability to lead on Relic of Progenitus, exile their fetchland, and use Eldrazi Temple to cast a turn two Wasteland Strangler to eat their 1-drop. From there, it’s not hard to imagine exiling their creature and another land with Relic and playing Eye of Ugin plus Blight Herder for full value on turn three.

And then there’s Oblivion Sower! It’s very easy to cast a turn four Oblivion Sower which hits three or more lands when Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth lets Eye of Ugin effectively tap for three while Relic of Progenitus and Bojuka Bog exile fetches. That may not seem like a lot, since you’ll very frequently not have lands to fetch for, but Urborg means they all tap for mana anyway. This interaction makes it relatively straightforward to curve turn three Blight Herder into turn four Oblivion Sower into Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger to close the game out.

Oh, by the way. If your opponents are trying to do graveyard stuff or play Tarmogoyfs, Relic gives you incidental hate. Additionally, any opponents who try too hard to disrupt the non-basic lands will just get smashed by Lingering Souls. It may be a little too soon to call it, but this deck seems like the real deal. People are still trying various versions with Green for Ancient Stirrings, Blue for Drowner of Hope, or straight Black, but this is definitely a strategy you’re going to want to be familiar with before you show up to your next Modern event.

Stay Thirsty My Friends

It takes something really special to shake up the Vintage metagame. Whether it’s a powerful new engine like Monastery Mentor or Dark Petition, or a synergistic role player like Hangarback Walker, there are always new cards capable of breaking into the format. However, it is also possible for a change in the banned list to give an old card new life and create new synergies. That’s exactly the case with Thirst for Knowledge, which was recently unrestricted. This card used to be the corner stone of Goblin Welder/Mindslaver decks, but there have been a lot of new cards printed since those days, and oRS has some different ideas:

U/B Tinker ? Vintage | oRS, 3-1 Vintage Daily Event

In many ways, this looks like a generic Vintage Blue deck, but there are a number of subtle differences powered by Thirst for Knowledge. The most important of these is the inclusion of Mana Drain as a three-of. This card used to be a pillar of Vintage, slotting into all manner of archetypes from Control to Storm and allowing you to do degenerate things like combo off with Gifts Ungiven or hard-cast a Darksteel Colossus. In this new era of Vintage, Mana Drain allows you to cast Thirst for Knowledge and Delve spells to help set up for Tinker, which can get either Voltaic Key and Time Vault or Blightsteel Colossus.

Speaking of Blightsteel Colossus, we’ve been seeing the format shift away from it in favor of Sphinx of the Steel Wind or Myr Battlesphere. Part of the reason behind this is Blightsteel is far more likely to get stranded in your hand, leaving just Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Brainstorm as ways to shuffle it back in. With Thirst for Knowledge, you now have a way to shuffle your Blightsteel back while generating value.

At its most straightforward, Thirst for Knowledge is perfect for a deck looking for a mana sink for Mana Drain, a card advantage and selection engine in the midgame, and a way to make sure Blightsteel Colossus is always a valid Tinker target. A card like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy seems like it could be a natural fit for this style of deck as well, giving you additional ways to spend Mana Drain mana and to take advantage of Thirst for Knowledge stocking your graveyard.

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, legacy, decklist, community, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you can't miss this week, battle for zendikar standard

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