At the beginning of Shadows over Innistrad Standard, we saw an awesome Green-Black Cryptolith Rites deck that utilized Collected Company along with Nantuko Husk and Liliana, Heretical Healer and Zulaport Cutthroat to combo opponents out of the game. You had the ability to sneak in huge hits with Nantuko Husk or just flip a Westvale Abbey. That deck evolved into the four-color Cryptolith Rite combo deck with Eldrazi Displacer and Brood Monitor. The Cryptolith Rite shell isn’t popular anymore, but perhaps it’s gained some new tools to fight against the rest of the format:

Green-Black Rites ? Eldritch Moon Standard | MouthBreather, 5-0 Standard League

• Creatures (32)
• 4 Catacomb Sifter
• 4 Cryptbreaker
• 4 Duskwatch Recruiter
• 4 Haunted Dead
• 4 Noose Constrictor
• 4 Prized Amalgam
• 4 Relentless Dead
• 4 Voldaren Pariah

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Liliana, the Last Hope

• Spells (4)
• 4 Cryptolith Rite

• Lands (22)
• 4 Forest
• 9 Swamp
• 4 Hissing Quagmire
• 4 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Foul Orchard

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
• 2 Collective Brutality
• 2 Distended Mindbender
• 4 Grasp of Darkness
• 2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 3 Transgress the Mind

Buy This Deck

This deck is an exciting combination of Cryptolith Rite Collected Company tricks and some of the Zombie variants we’ve seen in recent weeks. You still have the ability of the Zombies decks to explode onto the board with Cryptbreaker plus Haunted Dead and Prized Amalgam, but now you have Noose Constrictor to help kick start the graveyard tricks. Additionally, you’ll still have access to all of the madness tricks with Voldaren Pariah and the ability to flip it mid-combat or after your opponent casts and Emrakul, the Promised End without giving up too much of your board.

The difference is that this build has more of a means of going over the top of opposing strategies thanks to Cryptolith Rite. Cryptolith Rite lets you shift gears from trying to aggro opponents out with Zombies and Noose Constrictor, and instead start grinding away with Duskwatch Recruiter or burying your opponent in Voldaren Pariahs. This means that you’re less reliant on coming out ahead of your opponent or drawing the right mix of Zombies and emerge creatures.

Instead, you can play a more value-oriented game with Collected Company and chip away at your opponent with Spirits and Prized Amalgams while you set up Duskwatch Recruiter plus Cryptolith Rite. Even ignoring that wombo combo, the ability for Collected Company to set you up to begin generating cards with Cryptbreaker is a huge upside compared to the Black-Blue Zombie decks.

All told, this engine has a lot going for it in midrange mirrors. You have more consistent mana, a lot of reasonable threats, and a real plan for going much bigger than your opponent in addition to the ability to come out of the gates faster. It’s certainly possible that the deck wants to include some number of singletons to find once your Cryptolith Rite engine is online, like Cryptolith Rite or some such, but the shell is certainly solid and I hope we get to see some of it in the weeks leading up to rotation.