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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 June 1, 2013
 Reddit

What do your favorite formats look like in the aftermath of Pro Tour Dragon's Maze? Let's take a look at where the cards from Magic's newest set are finding homes. This week we've got two Standard decks, one each from Modern and Legacy, and our fifth Commander deck featuring a Legend from Dragon's Maze. Let's get started!

Geist of Saint Traft has fallen out of favor in Standard, largely because it matches up poorly against cards like Voice of Resurgence and Boros Reckoner. Naniha thinks it's time for Geist to make a comeback, and he took his list to a 3-1 finish in a Standard Daily Event. Let's take a look at his take on UWR Tempo:

UWR Tempo - Standard | naniha, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

Yes, that is Nivix Cyclops plus flashback spells. Feeling of Dread and Artful Dodge let you force through your Geist and Cyclops while pumping your Cyclops for tons of damage. You have Boros Charm and other burn for reach and to clear the way, and you have creatures that are capable of incredible damage output. If you manage to set your opponent on their back foot, it seems pretty unlikely that they'll be able to parity.

The one card that seems a little out of place is Faith's Shield. You're mostly afraid of Pillar of Flame and Searing Spear, which both Geist of Saint Traft and Nivix Cyclops don't care about. Using it to force through damage or swing a race is fine, but I think the card is really only useful against Jund, and even then I don't know that I'd want four. One card that seems like it'd be awesome here is Runechanter's Pike. This card turns your Augur of Bolases and Nivix Cyclopses into real threats even when you're out of gas, and is another way of giving you reach and forcing through damage. I don't know if this is a real deck in the Standard metagame, but I'm certainly excited to see the return of Wee Dragonauts-style decks.

Our second deck is new twist on an old favorite: Reanimator. Reanimator has been a thing in Standard since Unburial Rites was printed. Recently, we've been seeing a lot of Junk Reanimator, focusing on Thragtusk, Angel of Serenity, and Acidic Slime. What happens when those decks are just a turn too slow against aggro or need a way to go over the top of opposing Angel of Serenity? Here's Adam Prosak's take:

4c Reanimator - Standard | ihatepants, 4-0 Standard Daily Event

For game ones, you're the best Unburial Rites deck in the format. Faithless Looting gives you the most consistent turn four Angel of Serenity deck, but when you miss you have access to Boros Reckoner instead of mana creatures and Sin Collector. This makes you stronger against aggressive decks and lets you apply pressure to control decks while you find your Thragtusks and Angels.

So, against aggro you're a Boros Reckoner/Thragtusk/Angel of Serenity deck. Against midrange and controlyou're a Thragtusk/Sire of Insanity deck. But even if you get behind in the midrangey reanimator and control matchups, you can still just steal games with Boros Reckoner and either Blasphemous Act or Harvest Pyre. That's why this deck is awesome; you have so many ways to just take games out from under people, either with early Unburial Rites, grindy Angel of Serenity games, or Boros Reckoner.

The manabase for this deck is a thing of beauty. You can tell that it is built to be able to curve Grisly Salvage into Boros Reckoner, which is no simple feat. You need access to red and green early, and but also white for Unburial Rites, Lingering Souls, and Boros Reckoner. This deck manages to pull together all these disparate color requirements and satisfy them all pretty reasonably.

We've seen all kinds of variations on Tron decks in Modern. Green-Red, Blue-White, and Mono-Blue variants have all been successful in various events, both paper and digital. So what happens if we cut all of the colored utility cards like Ancient Stirrings, Pyroclasm, and Thirst for Knowledge and go all in on artifacts? It'd probably end up looking something like Duunko's list:

Colorless Tron - Modern | Duunko, 3-1 Modern Daily Event

Blightsteel Colossus may be a little ambitious in a format with Path to Exile, but the idea behind this deck is pretty sweet! While other Tron decks are trying to cast their cantrips and digging for Tron, you're just ramping up into Sundering Titan with Palladium Myr, or locking your opponents out of the game with Lodestone Golem and Trinisphere.

This deck doesn't get access to the Chromatic Sphere/Ancient Stirrings engine or the Gifts Ungiven backup plan, but in exchange you get a very proactive gameplan. I'm surprised that this deck isn't packing Chalice of the Void, which seems like a very good card for this kind of shell. I'm also a little surprised that there are zero Everflowing Chalices, which fit very nicely into your curve with Azorius Signet and Palladium Myr, which let you chalice for two on turn three and for three on turn four respectively.

Legacy is a pretty diverse format at the moment. There are the usual bevy of aggressive creature decks and unfair combo decks, but the control decks in particular have been incredibly varied. We've seen "traditional" Blue-White Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks, Shardless Agent/Ancestral Vision decks, and more recently Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek decks featuring Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. So what's a Legacy mage to do when they can't decide what control deck to play? TKC55 just played all of them. Let's take a look at his list:

Bant Cascade - Legacy | TKC55, 4-0 Legacy Daily Event

I don't know if this deck is better than any of it's disparate pieces, but it certainly is sweet. You have the Stoneforge Mystic and Counterbalance elements from Blue-White Miracles; the Shardless Agents and Ancestral Vision from the Shardless BUG decks, and the Thopter Foundry interactions from the Tezzeret decks.

This is definitely a very interesting take on control in this format. You have a lot of very flexible tools in this deck, and Shardless Agent gives you incredible redundancy for all of your key pieces. It lets you set up Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top as well as Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek or just dig for Stoneforge Mystic and Ancestral Vision. This deck seems very resilient and robust, but what do its matchups look like?

This deck ought to be favored in midrangey control mirrors, because you have the same early game, and a better midgame with Shardless Agent. You may lose games to Jace going long, but there's a more than reasonable chance that you can just crush them with Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek going long. Similarly, against creature decks you can either Stoneforge Mystic up a Batterskull or a Sword of the Meek and just start grinding away while your Ancestral Visions keep you up on cards.

The matchup that seems weakest for this deck is any kind of combo. Sure, against Ad Nauseam combo decks you can just jam a Counterbalance and get them, but Show and Tell and Reanimator seem incredibly difficult for you to struggle through. Their key spells are at multiple mana costs so your Counterbalances are less of a hard lock, and they have counterspells of their own to force through the few spells that matter.

Last week we looked at a deck with an aggressive mill-you-out plan featuring Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker. This week we're going a little more traditional, with the spell-hating Ruric Thar of the Gruul Clan. This guy represents an awful lot of damage very quickly, especially against the omnipresent Blue-based control decks. Let's take a look at erantyint's take on Ruric Thar and see what this guy is capable of:

Timmy, the Unbowed - Commander | erantyint

44 Creatures, 36 Lands, and a handful of utility spells to hold everything together. Ruric Thar is about bringing the beats and bringing them quickly. Fundamentally, this deck wants to cheat giant fatties into play and then punish people for interacting with them with Ruric Thar, the Unbowed. While many other players are agonizing over whether they can afford to cast Fact or Fiction or Disenchant, you're going off with Soul of the Harvest and Acidic Slime. Creatures with spell-like effects that answer permanents and generate cards are absolutely critical for this style of deck.

Along the same lines, if means that your spells want to be very high impact. I'm a big fan of cards like Birthing Pod and Greater Good in decks like this, because you get a repeatable spell-like effect from casting one non-Creature spell. This means that you're taking less damage from Ruric Thar but still maintaining your ability to answer threats and develop your board presence.

This deck is an awesome starting point, but there are a few cards that seem like they'd be great inclusions. Cavern of Souls makes Ruric Thar an even bigger beating against Counterspell decks. Regal Force is another way to generate cards without casting non-Creature spells. As mentioned before, Birthing Pod is a tutor-mechanism that only needs to be cast once. Zealous Conscripts is a great way to steal games or to cheat up the Birthing Pod chain for your six drops.

Here's to bringing the beat downs and punishing those pesky Blue mages!

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TAGS articles, standard, current events, deck lists, legacy, decks, commander, modern, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks

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