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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 September 5, 2015
 Reddit

PAX is in the rearview, and most of us are already looking ahead to Battle for Zendikar. Despite that, we've still got a couple months of Magic Origins Standard to figure out, and there's still plenty of room to brew up something awesome. Case in point, this week we have three Standard decks that are interesting twists on current archetypes or something new altogether, followed by off the wall brews for Modern and Legacy. In Standard, we've got Hangarback Walker Jeskai, followed by Five-Color Legends and a The Great Aurora brew. In Modern, we'll be looking at what Allies can do, even before Battle for Zendikar bolsters the archetype. Last, but not least, we'll find out what Sphinx's Tutelage can do in Legacy. Let's get started.

Hangarback Walker has taken over Standard. It started innocently enough, in Thopter Spy Network and Ensoul Artifact brews; but very quickly was adopted by midrange, control, and aggro alike. This week, Chris Lansdell tries adding Hangarback Walker to a list that I've never seen it in before, and - yet again - it seems like a perfect fit:

Hangarback Jeskai - Magic Origins Standard | Chris Lansdell

There are a couple of awesome things going on here, the most important of which is Jeskai Ascendancy plus Hangarback Walker. This interaction is absurd on a number of levels. Firstly, this is a way to fill out your curve among a plethora of Temples and Mystic Monasterys. Second, you can use Jeskai Ascendancy to untap Hangarback Walker to get extra activations, which is an incredible combat trick, clock, and provides very good resiliency to sweepers. Finally, when Hangarback Walker dies, potentially helped along by Fiery Conclusion, the resultant swarm of tokens can easily present lethal with the help of a few Ascendancy triggers.

Another cool interaction is the inclusion of Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh, a decidedly Lansdell touch. Chandra is not necessarily as powerful as Goblin Rabblemaster in games that your opponent stumbles, but if provides you a reasonable way to keep up the pressure in games when the board stalls out. This is especially true because of how easy Chandra is to flip in conjunction with Jeskai Ascendancy. One red spell is all it takes to get the requisite three activations, which is a fantastic place to be.

If you're looking to bring back Tokens in the current metagame, this seems like a great place to start. Where Monastery Mentor made you more vulnerable to cards like Languish and End Hostilities, the combination of Chandra and Hangarback Walker give the deck more resiliency to sweepers and a way to go over the top of Elspeth, Sun's Champion, which is particularly important in a format defined by Abzan Control in the wake of Worlds.

Ten Dragonlords. Two Anafenzas. Brimaz. Surrak. Magic Origins Planeswalkers. There are a lot of powerful Legends in Standard right now, and this week Frank Lepore decided to find out what happens if you try to mash them all together into something decidedly sweet. He even ties it all together with two cards you might have forgotten about. Check out his take on Five-Color Legends in Magic Origins Standard.

Five-Color Hero's Blade - Magic Origins Standard | Frank Lepore

This is a decidedly fun deck, featuring a ton of singletons of all kinds of sweet Legends. The cards that bring everything together? Hero's Blade and Heroes' Podium. Just imagine, for a moment, Hero's Blade into Brimaz, King of Oreskos or Anafenza, the Foremost. Suddenly you have a giant monster that provides an enormously fast clock, and even if they have removal, you get to play Surrak, the Hunt Caller, which gets formidable all on its own with a Hero's Blade.

When Hero's Blade isn't good enough, you can go way bigger with Hero's Podium, which is a card that can help overrun your opponents or grind out longer games. If you're playing against something removal heavy, you can just activate it on your opponents end step a few times and dig for the perfect Legend to turn the game around.

This is a deck that relies heavily on the raw power of awesome Legends plus free equipment. The Legends are more than capable of stealing games on their own power, and when you combine them with free equips, that's going to put enormous pressure on opponent's removal. Additionally, the huge suite of singletons means that you can always ride the variance. You're always going to have powerful topdecks that can turn a game around, particularly with Heroe's Podium to try to filter through your deck. If you're looking to play swingy games with awesome topdecks and crazy nut draws, this just might be a great deck for you to take for a spin.

Animist's Awakening is one of my favorite cards in a long time. There's nothing I love more than making a bunch of land drops for free, especially when you can not only hit non-basics, but have them come into play untapped. I always fully believed that this is a card that had potential in formats like Modern, Legacy, and Commander. I even believed that it might make waves in post Battle for Zendikar Standard. This week Matt Higgs has proven me wrong with a crazy brew featuring all manner of absurd cards.

The Dreaded Aurora ? Magic Origins Standard | Matt Higgs

This. Deck. Is. Sweet. You had me at The Great Aurora. This is a deck that is fundamentally built around using the combination of Frontier Siege and Animist's Awakening to ramp into something absurd. Case in point: The Great Aurora. The cool thing that this deck does is use Animist's Awakening and The Great Aurora to dig for Radiant Fountain and Thornwood Falls to buy additional time to resolve powerful spells. You even get Courser of Kruphix and Jace, Vryn's Prodgy to fix your draws and find the bomby cards that you can use to end the game.

Matt's primary gameplan is to use Animist's Awakening and The Great Aurora to set up enormous Dread Waters, especially in conjunction with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy to mill opponents out. If that's not going to work, you've still got the option of going big with Hornet Queen, which many fair decks just can't beat. Matt even has Hangarback Walker to hold his curve together when things don't go according to play.

This is a crazy deck that does something off the wall, and I couldn't be more excited to mess around with it. It's possible that cards like Mage Ring Network and Nissa, Vastwood Seer deserve a few slots in the maindeck. Perhaps even effects like Aetherspouts, Whelming Wave, or Perilous Vault to help buy more time. That's not even touching on Ugin, the Spirit Dragon as a top end. Matt has created something completely different than anything else going on in Standard right now, and there's a lot of interesting things to be tried here.

One of the most exciting things about Battle for Zendikar is the return of Allies. Allies is a theme that saw fringe Standard play, using the power of Bloodbraid Elf to keep the pressure high. Unfortunately, there has never been enough depth of playable Allies to bring the archetype into the Modern spotlight. Battle for Zendikar may change that, but Niran just couldn't wait. Here's his take on Modern Allies that has been putting up great results in Modern Daily Events:

Naya Allies - Modern | Niran, 4-0 Modern Daily Event

This deck features all of the most mana efficient Allies Zendikar block had to offer with a few important additions that help you keep up with a format as fast as Modern. First and foremost, Aether Vial is critically important in helping decks packed with two-drops keep up with the combination of Snapcaster Mage plus Lightning Bolt. This helps you keep ahead of decks that are trying to trade resources, and provides opportunities to sneak in critical Allies at the end of your opponent's turns.

Secondly, Champion of the Parish provides a much-needed secondary one-drop to supplement Hada Freeblade. Champion is almost as good when all of the allies you're playing are Humans, which also allows you to take advantage of Cavern of Souls to fight against Remand and other counterspells.

However the biggest upgrade to this deck is the inclusion of Collected Company. This is the card that lets you steal games out of nowhere, particularly in conjunction with Akoum Battlesinger. Any game where you curve something like Hada Freeblade into Kazandu Blademaster into Kabira Evangel and cap that off with a mainphase Collected Company into Akoum Battlesinger and any other Ally, your opponent is going to be hard-pressed to survive that combat step. Additionally, Collected Company lets you get tricky by finding or triggering Kabira Evangel during your opponent's turns, or helping find powerful sideboard cards or singletons like Ondu Cleric and Abzan Falconer.

This deck only gets better with the addition of Battle for Zendikar block to the cardpool. Particularly of interest is the ability to string together copies of Akoum Battlesinger and other powerful clerics, perhaps by using Jwari Shapeshifter and Phantasmal Image. Depending on what Battle for Zendikar has to offer, this may be a deck you'll be seeing a lot more of in the next couple of months.

Just a few weeks after his victory at Grand Prix San Diego with a Blue-Red Sphinx's Tutelage deck, Michael Majors is at it again. This time though, there's a twist. Michael isn't playing Sphinx's Tutelage in Standard, or even in Modern. Michael wants to find out if Tutelage has what it takes to put up wins in Legacy:

Esper Tutelage - Legacy | Michael Majors

This deck walks a weird line between the midrangey Stoneforge Mystic decks and the Show and Tell decks. On the one hand, you've traded all of the Emrakuls and Griselbrands for the more cantrips, discard, and interactive elements of the midrange decks. On the other, you've traded some of the top end of Batterskull and Liliana of the Veil for Sphinx's Tutelage.

The idea here is that Sphinx's Tutelage is sort of like Show and Tell in that it is a three-mana card that will win the game - given enough time. The difference is that you're losing the power and immediacy of Show and Tell wins, but gaining a more incidental victory. Your combo pieces with Sphinx's Tutelage are all completely reasonable cards that help you drag out the game or filter your draws. If you resolve Sphinx's Tutelage, it doesn't take many Brainstorms and Snapcaster Mages to mill your opponent out.

The problem with this deck is two-fold. Firstly, Sphinx's Tutelage does not affect the board in the same way that the Planeswalker top end of other midrange decks does. Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, and Liliana of the Veil all have profound impacts on the board and demand that your opponent interact with them. Sphinx's Tutelage may be harder to interact with, but it also doesn't actually do much unless you've milled your opponent's whole library.

All told, this seems like an exciting deck to try in a format defined by more midrange decks. It's also possible that you could hold up enough disruption to protect yourself from combo kills until you can set up Sphinx's Tutelage plus enough cantrips to close out the game. Realistically though, you're hoping to be playing against a stream of blue Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks that can't interact with or reasonably race a Sphinx's Tutelage, rather than Abrupt Decay decks that don't care about Tutelage or Young Pyromancer decks which can go wider than this deck can realistically defend.

The Battle for Zendikar is coming. Order singles, booster packs and more at CoolStuffInc.com today!

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, deck lists, legacy, decks, modern, carlos gutierrez

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