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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 April 24, 2015
 Reddit

With every passing week since the release of Dragons of Tarkir, we see more and more Dragons making their way into Standard, Modern, and more. This week, we've got five decks from across Standard and Modern featuring all manner of exciting new technology from Khans of Tarkir block. From morph madness and Collected Company to combotastic goodness, we've got a deck for everyone. Let's get started.

Esper Dragons was the big story of the Pro Tour, but it wasn't the only exciting new deck to come out of the event. When the set was released, Colelcted Company was one of the cards with the highest potential to be a player in Standard and Modern alike. We didn't see a whole lot of Collected Company on camera, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a presence. Hall of Famer Bram Snepvangers put together an awesome Collected Company deck featuring a really exciting aggressive engine. Let's take a look:

Green-White Aggro ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Bram Snepvangers, Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir

Going straight Green-White means that your mana is more consistent and that you get to play a really interested Green devotion package with Reverent Hunter and Avatar of the Resolute. You lose access to removal spells like Hero's Downfall and Murderous Cut, but get to utilize both Dromoka's Command and Aspect of Hydra as payoffs for being more heavily Green-based.

The exciting thing about this deck is that Collected Company gives you a great way to fight through removal spells and sweepers, with an end step Collected Company into something like Boon Satyr plus Reverent Hunter. If they have another sweeper? You can just Den Protector back your Collected Company and continue grinding them out.

The upside to this deck is that you have the ability to flood the board with moderately-sized creatures, but can also just build an enormous board of Avatar of the Resolute and Reverent Hunter, potentially hasted up with Surrak, the Hunt Caller, to fight through even the most monstrous of Dragons.

For the last eight months, Jeskai Ascendancy has been the only combo deck in Standard. Sure, we saw a few takes on Temur Ascendancy, but by and large, it's been mostly four-color takes on Retraction Helix plus Sylvan Caryatid. Not any more. This week, Patrick Chapin wrote about an awesome combo powered by Battlefield Thaumaturge.

Temur Dragon Descent ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Patrick Chapin

The goal of this deck is to set up the combo of Battlefield Thaumaturge, Descent of the Dragons, and Dragon Tempest. If you can get a critical mass of Satyr Wayfinders and Sylvan Caryatids into play, you can pretty easily play out like a typical midrangey Temur deck and cast the key combo spells all in one turn.

This deck also gets a pile of useful tools for digging into the combo in Commune with the Gods and Dig Through Time. These cards and Satyr Wayfinder also help set up the Deathmist Raptor engine to help you grind through removal spells the hard way. The best part? You don't have to go super deep on the combo. It's entirely possible that just Battle Thaumaturge plus Descent of the Dragons is enough to break open any midrange mirrors and go over the top of the likes of Elspeth, Sun's Champion.

Morph has been a mechanic that has defined Onslaught and Khans of Tarkir limited, but very few morphs have actually made the jump to constructed, with Exalted Angel and Ashcloud Phoenix being the morphs with the most substantial tournament pedigree. At least until Dragons of Tarkir.

[Cardlist Title= Blue-Green Morph ? Modern | tarkanmag, 4-0 Standard Daily Event]

This deck is fundamentally a Deathmist Raptor and Secret Plans deck. You combine these two cards with pile of powerful morphs, like Den Protector and Stratus Dancer, but also the "reveal a card" morphs like Dragon's Eye Savants and Temur Charger to let you begin grinding out your value as efficiently as possible.

Your goal is to gum up the ground with Deathmist Raptor and Monastery Flock while you generate cards and hit your land drops with Secret Plans and Trail of Mystery. Eventually, you can use Assault Formation to lock up the ground and begin getting aggressive. Your end game is to use Profaner of the Dead to bounce your opponent's board and get in for lethal.

The problem with other Morph decks has tended to be that they require an enormous investment of mana before you start getting your cards off of Secret Plans. This deck evades that problem altogether, allowing you to utilize Dragon's Eye Savants to get the engine going as quickly as possible. I don't know what it'll take for Morph to make a real impact on a Constructed format, but this seems like an awesome place to start and I'm excited to see what comes of it.

Puresteel Paladin is one of my favorite Magic cards. There's nothing better than cantripping equipment that equips for free. Except when that equipment is a combo engine unto itself. That's exactly what Stephen Datka has managed to do by combining Puresteel Paladin with Monastery Mentor. Let's take a look:

[Cardlist title=Puresteel Combo ? Modern | Stephen Datka]

This is a deck that has been floating around Modern for awhile now. The idea is that you cast an early Puresteel Paladin and chain free equipment together until you find a Mox Opal and a Retract to bounce all of your equipment and do it all over again. Eventually you find enough Moxes and Simian Spirit Guides to cast a lethal Grapeshot. The problem with this deck is that it's exceedingly fragile. One Lightning Bolt. One Thoughtseize. That's all it took to shut down your Puresteel Paladin and ruin your day.

Until now. Stephen has introduced two exciting pieces of technology. First, Monastery Mentor as a backup Puresteel Paladin. When your opponent kills your Paladin, now you can follow up with a Monastery Mentor and generate an enormous board presence with your free artifacts, threatening to present lethal by Retracting them back for prowess triggers.

The second innovation is the inclusion of Muddle the Mixture as a way to give the deck a more resilient mid-game. Thoughtseize? No problem. Just transmute for another Puresteel Paladin and you're off to the races.

This is still a super fragile deck, but it's a blast to play and is an idea that I'm a huge fan of.

Lastly, we'll take a look at Caleb Durward's continued experiments with Silumgar's Scorn in Modern. Last time he was brewing up a Merfolk list. This time he's playing with actual dragons in a Jeskai Geist of Saint Traft shell popularized by Larry Swasey. Can Thunderbreak Regent replace Restoration Angel? Is Mutavault better than Tectonic Edge? There's only one way to find out:

[Cardlist title= Jeskai Dragons - Modern | Caleb Durward]

I love the idea of Mutavault plus Silumgar's Scorn as a way to turn a Force Spike into a Cancel as games go long. This deck is particularly well suited to playing Silumgar's Scorn because it's playing two copies of Thundermaw Hellkite to start with. The inclusion of Thunderbreak Regent, while mostly to benefit Silumgar's Scorn, isn't altogether unreasonable. This is a deck that thrives on trying to race. When your opponent Terminates or Path to Exiless an end of turn Restoration Angel, that's a big blow to your ability to tempo them out. When they have to take three to kill a Thunderbreak Regent, that means you might be able to just burn them right out.

The big question for this style of deck isn't whether Silumgar's Scorn is good enough. Hard counters are good, especially ones with early-game utility. The question is whether Silumgar's Scorn is better than Remand. The ability to dig through your deck for efficient answers, hasty threats, and the lands to play them all while forcing your opponent to play the same turn over and over is absurdly powerful. Being able to do that while Geist of Saint Traft is in play? Your opponent is super dead. This isn't necessarily the kind of deck that's looking for a permanent answer in the form of Silumgar's Scorn as much as it is a tempo counterspell like Remand. Maybe you didn't answer the card forever, but it doesn't matter what cards your opponents have when they're dead.

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, deck lists, decks, modern, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks, dragons of tarkir

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