Amonkhet is just around the corner, and it brings with it a much-needed shakeup to Standard. There’s all kinds of exciting Planeswalkers and flashy gods in Amonkhet, but it’s possible that the single most exciting card for Standard is a three-mana Enchantment. Astral Slide was one of the cards that defined constructed for as long as Onslaught was legal, and some people are comparing Drake Haven to Astral Slide . The thing about Drake Haven is that it’s much more versatile, given that it only cares about discarding, not necessarily cycling. That important distinction has given Raphael Levy a number of devious ideas:

Snakes and Drakes - Amonkhet Standard | Raphael Levy

• Creatures (20)
• 4 Advanced Stitchwing
• 4 Honored Hydra
• 4 Noose Constrictor
• 4 Prized Amalgam
• 4 Stitchwing Skaab

• Instants (6)
• 2 Censor
• 4 Just the Wind

• Enchantments (8)
• 4 Drake Haven
• 4 Vessel of Nascency

• Artificats (3)
• 3 Key to the City

• Lands (23)
• 7 Island
• 8 Forest
• 4 Botanical Sanctum
• 4 Lumbering Falls

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Fundamentally, this deck is built around the interaction between Noose Constrictor and Drake Haven. This lets you discard a card and spend one mana to make a 2/2 Drake, all at instant speed. That gives you an incredible amount of control over how combats play out and the ability to punish control decks for playing clunky removal spells.

On top of that, Raphael is built in even more interesting interactions by using the Advanced Stitchwings as additional discard outlets and Prized Amalgam as a payoff for doing so. It all even comes back to the Vessel of Nascency, which can set up these interactions while letting you dig for Drake Haven.

All told, this is an exciting deck which begins to showcase some of the exciting implications of having Drake Haven in Standard. This is a card that I’m certain will see some amount of play in control and midrange decks of all varieties, and Raphael has shown us that it even has potential in more aggressive shells.