Hello folks!

The latest set of Ravnica Allegiance has hit stores, and you can purchase it, play with it, draft it, and a lot more. What do you think of the set?

As we leave behind spoiler season, there is a card that I still haven't had a chance to sink my teeth into. Today I want to show you the card, talk about it, and then I have three very indifferent builds that feature it.

What card has me intrigued?

Guardian Project is certainly an interesting card. Take a look-see and tell me you don't agree! In Commander, this is basically just, "when a nontoken dork comes into play under your control, draw yourself a sweet lil' card!" That's fine!

But outside of Commander, folks are often pushing themselves deeply into running 3 or 4 copies of any given dork. By now, however, the game has advanced to the point where that's not needed, and you can retain the consistency of a four-of without repeating cards.

Here is a good example of what I'm thinking:

There are four commonly played 1-drop Green accelerants at the kitchen table. In a normal Magic deck, you'd likely run the same 1-drop accelerant, such as four Llanowar Elves or four Arbor Elf. Whatever you had or best fit your deck. But instead of running four copies of one of these creatures, you could easily toss in a single copy each, and then have no issues triggering your Guardian Project (as well as giving you defenses against cards like Maelstrom Pulse, Lobotomy, or Cranial Extraction).

There are a number of these cards out there in the history of the game, many of which are either full or close reprints. You could run any number of these successfully in your decks. And there are a number of these creatures out there that duplicate each other.

The first deck concept that came to mind was a Survival of the Fittest deck.

The Survival Project | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Avalanche Riders
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Borderland Ranger
• 1 Civic Wayfinder
• 1 Doomed Necromancer
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Fauna Shaman
• 1 Gemhide Sliver
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Krosan Tusker
• 1 Manaweft Sliver
• 1 Man-o'-War
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Murderous Redcap
• 1 Nekrataal
• 1 Ondu Giant
• 1 Ravenous Chupacabra
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Spike Feeder
• 1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
• 1 Sylvan Caryatid
• 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Wild Wanderer
• 1 Yavimaya Elder

• Enchantments (7)
• 3 Survival of the Fittest
• 4 Guardian Project

• Lands (24)
• 2 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 2 Swamp
• 9 Forest
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 2 Reflecting Pool
• 4 City of Brass

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Here you are! This deck uses Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman to discard a creature card and then find a good option to cast. You can tutor any number of cards that will destroy something, burn something, gain life, draw cards, make mana, and more. Whatever you need - recursion, fetching lands, bounce, destruction of anything from land to creatures to artifacts, is in here. Grab the perfect creature!

I also have a few little combos. Everyone knows the Squee combo. You discard and fetch up Squee, and then discard Squee for what you really want. Then you can recur Squee for more discarding fun times. You can also discard Ulamog to fetch a dork, and when he hits the graveyard from anywhere, you shuffle your entire graveyard into your library, as well as Ulamog itself into your library. That way you can restock all of those goodies to use and abuse them anew.

There are any number of directions you could move this deck and concept into!

What's next....?

Great question....

How about a combo kill with Guardian Project?

The goal of this next build is to draw your deck, and then use that deck-in-hand to fuel a win.

What cards would draw your deck? Great question.

Any free creature that returns to your hand will draw you cards.

Imagine that you control a Cloudstone Curio:

It'll let you self-bounce someone of the same type as long as it's not an artifact.

How about these?

You can run one-each of the Kobolds as they are free to cast.

You could also look at cards that make mana on arrival, like Priest of Urabrask, or that untap lands, such as Peregrine Drake. I am already running Green, and committing to Kobolds doesn't need Red, so I could do untap dorks, Kobolds and call it. Let's do that, we'll be doing that, a build.

The goal of this deck is to drop these free dorks, bounce another free-dork, then cast and recast, until you have drawn your deck.

Once you have drawn your deck, we have a few options:

Mind Over Matter is great. You can discard to untap (or tap) something. So, if you tapped a land for mana, you could discard a card, untap, and then use and reuse a lot of mana. We have a pair of Staffs to use as well. You can tap Staff of Nin to punch someone's face for a damage, and then discard to MOM and repeat. You can easily grab enough cards to kill someone. Meanwhile Staff of Domination is a useful mana-sink for cards or life gain.

Need more damage, mana or cards?

I get it!

Say hello to Gaea's Blessing:

Discard a bunch of cards to your Mind Over Matter, and then at the end, discard this, and then you can shuffle your graveyard into your library. Then, you can repeat your dropping of many dorks and keep going! You can blow up a lot people's life totals if you are playing multiplayer.

You could use the same mana-free discard of Zombie Infestation to make a passel of 2/2 Zombies or Seismic Assault to discard lands for Shocks to folks' stuff, and then keep on going with the Blessing.

The Death Project | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Burning-Tree Emissary
• 1 Cloud of Faeries
• 1 Crimson Kobolds
• 1 Crookshank Kobolds
• 1 Fog Bank
• 1 Kobolds of Kher Keep
• 1 Peregrine Drake
• 1 Spike Feeder
• 1 Spike Weaver
• 1 Sylvan Caryatid
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Wall of Ice
• 1 Wall of Mulch
• 1 Wild Mongrel
• 1 Yavimaya Elder

• Instants (2)
• 2 Fact or Fiction

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Concentrate
• 2 Gaea's Blessing

• Enchantments (8)
• 4 Guardian Project
• 4 Mind over Matter

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Staff of Domination
• 1 Staff of Nin
• 4 Cloudstone Curio

• Lands (25)
• 7 Island
• 9 Forest
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 4 Simic Growth Chamber
• 4 Yavimaya Coast

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What else?

Now my first deck gave me an inspiration for a new direction with Guardian Project...

After that mean ol' combo deck, I want to do something a little nicer. Something fun and friendly to leave you with!

SLIVERS!

Slivers have enough of a built-in redundancy that it won't matter if you are running Sinew Sliver, Muscle Sliver, or Predatory Sliver.

Here they are. While there are sight permutations here for color and effect, they are basically all two-mana 1/1 Slivers that pump your team, and themselves, by +1/+1.

They have enough variability that you can run each of these and be able to trigger your mad card drawing. And Slivers are a creature type that you are going to want the card drawing engine of Guardian Project!

Here's the decklist!

Guarding Slivers | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Acidic Sliver
• 1 Battle Sliver
• 1 Blade Sliver
• 1 Blur Sliver
• 1 Bonescythe Sliver
• 1 Bonesplitter Sliver
• 1 Brood Sliver
• 1 Crystalline Sliver
• 1 Diffusion Sliver
• 1 Galerider Sliver
• 1 Gemhide Sliver
• 1 Homing Sliver
• 1 Leeching Sliver
• 1 Manaweft Sliver
• 1 Megantic Sliver
• 1 Might Sliver
• 1 Muscle Sliver
• 1 Necrotic Sliver
• 1 Predatory Sliver
• 1 Shifting Sliver
• 1 Sinew Sliver
• 1 Sliver Hivelord
• 1 Sliver Queen
• 1 Striking Sliver
• 1 Synapse Sliver
• 1 Thorncaster Sliver
• 1 Winged Sliver

• Sorceries (2)
• 2 Patriarch's Bidding

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Guardian Project

• Artifacts (4)
• 2 Heirloom Blade
• 2 Pillar of Origins

• Lands (25)
• 1 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 2 Swamp
• 4 Forest
• 2 Cavern of Souls
• 4 City of Brass
• 4 Sliver Hive
• 4 Unclaimed Territory

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This is a fun Five Color Sliver deck that runs all of the best Slivers. You only need a single source of flying or first strike, so we don't have a lot of duplication of abilities, other than those that pump your team.

We have a lot of ways in here to make a lot of mana for your Sliver-ing, such as Cavern of Souls, Sliver Hive, Unclaimed Territory, and Pillar of Origins, in addition to normal lands and such like City of Brass and basics. Once you drop your Guardian Project, every non-token Sliver you bring to the battlefield is going to draw you a sweet card, which combos well with your deck. Homing Sliver can let your Silvers all Slivercycle in order to grab the perfect Sliver. You can also sacrifice some Slivers to things like Acidic Sliver and Necrotic Sliver.

As you build up a fat graveyard of Slivers, (as people kill them, or you send them there yourself with sacrifice effects or cycling,) you can really set yourself up for a devastating Patriarch's Bidding. It's a sick card in this deck. In a duel, your opponent can return any Slivers they have too, which is unlikely, and then they'll choose a creature type they are running. Unless you are playing against another Tribal deck, this will let them each return a card or two where you get your entire thick graveyard.

In multiplayer, they might be able to tag-team creature types so that they can each get another dork or two, but you are always going to be the clear winner, as a full Tribal deck that only runs one creature type is the only one to get full value from a Bidding.

Heirloom Blade is also very useful in this shell. Did you equip it to a Sliver? Great! You can sacrifice it or attack with it mercilessly, and when it dies, you will get the top Sliver of your library into your hand. These are powerful card-advantage engines in this deck! Plus, they also keep the fuel going to have enough gas to win, as well as have more bodies of a Sliver nature for the Bidding.

And there's your deck!

And there you go! What did you think of my three builds? Did any of them inspire your own deck-building? What are your thoughts on Guardian Project? Anything you expect to be running it in? Just let me know!

P.S. - Do you like Fantasy, Science Fiction, and/or Horror literature? Great! I have created a Youtube channel of videos that is dedicated to those three genres, and specially to older, forgotten treasures of the genres. I'll be doing reviews of older works that established the foundation of the modern genres, and classics that you probably never even heard of. From reviews of military science fiction to analysis of current fantasy and the Cthulhu mythos, we'll be looking at a lot. I've already planned more than 50 videos and filmed and posted many of these for you! Check it out, and if you like it, I'd love it if you subscribed and then commented on them! I just posted my first analysis article, rather than strait reviews, on the Four Pillars that Define all Modern Fantasy. Check it out! https://youtu.be/u5S4W8YjHy8