Standard with Kaladesh has gotten pretty homogeneous pretty quickly, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t cards that are still worth exploring. One of the most exciting cards that’s seen the least amount of development in Standard is Rashmi, Eternities Crafter. Bloodbraid Elf was a defining card in its Standard era, and this is a card that, while much slower and less aggressive, turns your first spell each turn into a cascade of value:

Sultai Rashmi - Kaladesh Standard | Matt Higgs

• Creatures (23)
• 3 Foul Emissary
• 3 Grim Flayer
• 3 Pilgrim's Eye
• 3 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
• 2 Elder Deep-Fiend
• 2 Verdurous Gearhulk
• 2 Wretched Gryff
• 1 Catacomb Sifter
• 1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
• 1 Noxious Gearhulk
• 1 The Gitrog Monster
• 1 Torrential Gearhulk

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

• spells (10)
• 3 Smuggler's Copter
• 3 Grapple with the Past
• 2 Murder
• 1 Grasp of Darkness
• 1 Pulse of Murasa

• Lands (25)
• 4 Forest
• 1 Island
• 5 Swamp
• 4 Blooming Marsh
• 1 Botanical Sanctum
• 3 Hissing Quagmire
• 3 Sunken Hollow
• 2 Sequestered Stash
• 1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1 Lumbering Falls

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Filigree Familiar
• 2 Distended Mindbender
• 3 Fathom Feeder
• 1 Sire of Stagnation
• 1 Void Grafter
• 3 Natural State
• 2 Summary Dismissal
• 1 Kiora, Master of the Depths
• 1 Liliana, the Last Hope

Buy This Deck

There are two things that you’re really interested in as a Rashmi, Eternities Crafter deck. The first is expensive spells, particularly ones that let you cheat on casting costs. Emerge creatures in particular allow you to cascade into a pair of gigantic things rather than just casting the one - Elder Deep-Fiend cascading into Noxious Gearhulk or Ishkanah, Grafwidow is absolutely backbreaking in most matchups. You’re also interested in playing a versatile suite of instants, since you can trigger Rashmi, Eternities Crafter once on each player’s turn.

In addition to Rashmi, Eternities Crafter generating free cards and mana, she also generates pseudo-card selection. Cascade gives you a chance to see additional cards from your deck rather than your hand, which means you get extra chances to find powerful one- and two-ofs to swing matchups. This, combined with the previous point about instants, makes me surprised that there are zero copies of Traverse the Ulvenwald for Smuggler's Copter and Grasp of Darkness to cascade into.

Beyond that, this is a pretty reasonable hybrid of emerge and delirium strategies. You still have the ability to bury people in Elder Deep-Fiends and Wretched Gryffs, but you can also just cast giant, cascading threats to take over the game.

If spot removal begins to decline in favor of more creature-oriented games, then Rashmi, Eternities Crafter seems like a great way to proactively generated value and overwhelm other fair decks. Whenever control decks begin to work their way back into the format, it seems likely that this deck would get crushed by opposing Torrential Gearhulk decks.