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One of the big questions heading into this new Standard format is whether or not Gisela, the Broken Blade is a card that people can afford to play. Sure, you’re getting a great rate. Her stats and abilities are incredible at four mana. The problem is that Gisela, the Broken Blade lines up poorly against the removal in the format. For your four mana, you’re frequently going to be shut down by the likes of Dromoka's Command, Ruinous Path, Grasp of Darkness, and, most importantly, Reflector Mage. Sure, Gisela, the Broken Blade has the stats to take over the game, but she has to actually stay in play in order for that to happen.

Though some had their doubts, Ronnie Ritner decided Gisela, the Broken Blade was worth it, and took his Black-White Angels brew to a Top 8 finish last weekend. Let’s take a look:


This should look familiar to anyone who played a lot of Shadows over Innistrad Standard. Black-White Control was a popular deck which combines all of Black’s card advantage and efficient removal with the powerful, resilient threats provided by White – namely Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Secure the Wastes. Ronnie’s deck follows the same form, utilizing removal, card advantage, and Planeswalkers to keep Creatures under control. The difference is how Ronnie ends the game.

Rather than leaning quite as hard on Shambling Vent and Secure the Wastes, Ronnie has opted to play a number of more proactive Creatures that can come down and take control of the board. Starting at four Gisela, the Broken Blade is an absurdly powerful card as long as you can get it to stick on the battlefield. At five mana, Thalia's Lancers gives you some selection as to which powerful Legend you’re going to crush your opponent with. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Gisela, the Broken Blade help you stabilize the board when you’re behind. Archangel Avacyn can help break open a stalemate and allow you to make aggressive attacks since you can threat to make your creatures indestructible or have an enormous blocker. You can go even bigger with Linvala, the preserver if you’ve got the mana available.

All of that aside, the real winner here is the ability to tutor up a single copy of Bruna, the Fading Light. This lets you rebuy almost any of your powerful creatures. You can get back Thalia's Lancers to find a particularly powerful Angel, or you can just buy back Gisela, the Broken Blade and get your meld on. Brisela, Voice of Nightmares is an interesting threat in this format because there aren’t a lot of cards people are playing that can directly kill it. Brisela, Voice of Nightmares ability, as well as most of the Collected Company deck shut everything from Ruinous Path to Anguished Unmaking off. The problem is the card Collected Company, which lets you find Reflector Mage or Eldrazi Displacer to shut down Brisela, Voice of Nightmares and attack for lethal.

The exciting thing about this deck is that it shows that the Angel dream is possible. It’s reasonable to play a deck featuring powerful Angels and Thalia's Lancers to pull it together. As long as you have the early discard spells and removal to prevent yourself from getting run over, this kind of Angel-based attrition strategy is a reasonable thing to be doing. The important question for this style of deck is always going to be this: what’s the metagame going to look like? If you’re expecting lots of Humans and Collected Company decks, then casting Bruna, the Fading Light and Gisela, the Broken Blade seems like an okay place to be. If you’re expecting to see more Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Emrakul, the Promised End, then you might want to be doing something else.


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