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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 May 24, 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!

Craig Wescoe took down the Pro Tour with Green-White tokens, and since then we've seen a number of players trying to adapt the deck for Standard and Modern. One such player is naniha who took a build of GW Tokens to the Top 8 of a Standard Premier event on Magic Online. Let's take a look at his build:

GW Tokens - Standard | naniha, 5th Standard Premier Event

This deck does a couple of really cool things, but the most exciting thing about the list is how clean it is. By that I mean that there aren't a lot of cards that are incredibly dependent on one another. Rather than having a bunch of Intangible Virtues that don't do anything unless you generate a lot of tokens, your deck is mostly creatures that are just fine on their own. The only card that's really bad outside of the token plan is Rootborn Defenses. Besides that, all of your cards are perfectly reasonable creatures or utility spells in the format.

The other card that seems very exciting to me is Triumph of Ferocity. We saw some of this cards in previous iterations of Innistrad/Return to Ravnica Standard, but the card has sort of fallen out of favor. When you have 5/5 Wurms and */* Elementals, Triumph of Ferocity is going to be turned on more often than not, and it forces the reactive decks to be more proactive and play into your Advent of the Wurm and Rootborn Defenses much more than they would otherwise.

Our second deck is very similar to one that we've seen before. The Aristocrats has been a part of Standard since Sam Black built the deck for Pro Tour Gatecrash. Varolz, the Scar-Striped is a powerful card very similar to Falkenrath Aristocrat, but it allows you to play powerful Green cards rather than Red cards. A lot of players have been experimenting with this shell, and it's been putting up reasonable results. Here's MasoX's list from a Daily Event:

Junk Aristocrats - Standard | MasoX, 4-0 Standard Daily Event

The shell of this deck is basically the same. The big difference is that you're trading Falkenrath Aristocrat and Boros Reckoner for additional copies of Doomed Traveler like Young Wolf and Voice of Resurgence. In addition, you get to play Varolz, the Scar-Striped, which is a big deal in this format.

Varolz is resilient to just about every removal spell in the format and is a giant, regenerating monster in the creature mirrors. In addition to that, he lets you power up giant fliers to steal games. This deck is very good at just having the biggest creatures on the board, and there are a lot of matchups where that's all that matters. I can see this deck having some trouble with Junk Reanimator, but your sideboarded Sin Collector and Deathrite Shamans should work them over in the sideboarded games.

Modern Eggs died with the banning of Second Sunrise right? There are a lot of players who would say otherwise. The deck existed with just Second Sunrise, so it should be able to exist with just Faith's Reward. The deck has to change, and will certainly be slower, but it can still be a player. Conley Woods played Eggs in Grand Prix San Diego, and he's not ready to give up on the deck. Here's Conley's take on Eggs post-banning.

Eggs - Modern | Conley Woods

Let's not mess around. This deck is much worse than it was before the bannings. You're slower and more reliant on the Lotus Bloom/Reshape interaction. You have fewer ways to rebuy Ghost Quarter and fetchlands to shuffle and thin your deck. It's easier to just lose to graveyard hate since you only have four instant-speed Second Sunrise effects instead of eight.

All of that said, this is still a reasonably consistent turn four combo deck. Various builds of Eggs on Magic Online have been built around Krark-Clan Ironworks even before the bannings, just because it combos faster and conserves your clock online. The big card that you gain from building your deck with Ironworks in mind is Ichor Wellspring. With Ironworks this is basically a free Divination that you can rebuy with every Open the Vaults.

Only time will tell if this deck still has the resiliency that it takes to stand up to a format as diverse as Modern. It may be that this deck can still take down tournaments when people skimp on their graveyard hate. It could be that there's another powerful interaction just waiting to be found. Personally, I can't wait to find out.

Our last deck is a Legacy brew, and it's one that I'm very excited about. Throughout Standard with Mirrodin Besieged Shouta Yasooka put up Top 16 performances at multiple Pro Tours and Grand Prix with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, regardless of how good or bad anyone else thought the card was. Ever since then, I've always had a special place for Tezzeret decks and have gone very far out of my way to play them.

This weekend, Chris Van Meter and Chris Andersen played an innovative take on Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas in Legacy, and it features quite a few sweet ones. Let's take a look:

Tezzeret - Legacy | Christoffer Anderson, 8th Star City Games Legacy Open

Fundamentally, this deck is a ramp/control deck. You can play a turn two Planeswalker off of Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors into Dimir Signet and just bury your opponent in card advantage, or you can grind them out with your utility artifacts like Thopter Foundry and Ensnaring Bridge. Or you can just play a Chalice of the Void on one on your first turn and lock your opponent out of all their Brainstorms and Dark Rituals.

The exciting thing about this deck is that Tezzeret is completely absurd. You can use 5/5's to take over the game. You can Impulse into your singletons and combo pieces. You can just drain your opponents out with Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek. The card is completely unfair and does everything this deck wants, but gets very little respect from most opponents.

Transmute Artifact is the card that sold me on this deck. When all of the relevant artifacts cost two or three, this card is actually just Tinker in this deck. It turns your Signets into Thopter Foundry, and random artifact lands into Ratchet Bomb or Ensnaring Bridge. Transmute Artifact is an incredible card that hasn't seen especially much play in Legacy. Hopefully that will start to change.

We're halfway there! This is our fifth deck featuring a Legend from Dragon's Maze and this tie we're rounding out the Blue champions by taking a look and Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker. This Vampire likes to get aggressive, taking chunks out of your opponents deck and their life total. Let's take a look at Nihilio's build of Mirko focusing on milling his opponent's out:

Mirko Vosk, Polite Mind Sampler - Commander | Nihilio

If you want to mill people out, this is a pretty fast way to go about it. Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker plus Fireshrieker[/ard] will get things done very quickly. Add in a [card]Trepanation Blade or Sword of Body and Mind and it won't take too long for you to run them out of cards. That said, mill is a dangerous strategy in this format, so there are some things that we have to be careful of.

First and foremost, the Graveyard is a powerful resource in Commander. If you're going to be giving people creatures to Reanimate and spells to flashback for free, you need some way to prevent them from just smashing you with free resources. I think this deck could stand to use a few more graveyard hate spells beyond Leyline of the Void and Bojuka Bog. Similarly, you're going to need Graveyard hate to fight against Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and the Ulamog, Infinite Gyre, otherwise those guys will give you fits.

The thing that I like most about this deck is the dearth of Windfall effects like Whispering Madness and Jace's Archivist. These let you start milling out the entire table at once, and make it more reasonable to run spells like Glimpse the Unthinkable that just leave you down cards. Without methods like this to restock, you can't afford to be quite as aggressive with the mill plan, and then people can just race you.

Mirko Vosk is a cool Legend, and this is an interesting take on him. Plenty of people have tried mill in Commander, but this is a new take that seems more consistent and powerful. What kind of interactions are you excited to try with Mirko Vosk?

Order Dragon's Maze singles and boxes today!

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

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