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Well you know it's that time, right? New cards every day baby! Hitting refresh on spoiler pages around the web! Reading every preview article you can find! It's that time!
And that means it's time to make decks. After all, this isn't some pretty game you just buy and look at. You make decks, and then you play them. So forget talking about cards and start playing cards!
Today I want to delve into another slate of decks inspired by last week's spoilers from Guilds of Ravnica. Are you ready to get your Kitchen Table Brews On?
Let's do it!
Beast Whisperer
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I both love this card and loathe this card. I like that it's basically a cheaper, but less-broken iteration of Soul of the Harvest. The Elemental trampler is bigger and triggers when they come into play rather than merely being cast, which opens up things like reanimation or blinking. I like what Beast Whisperer is doing in this context, as a cheaper but fairer Soul of the Harvest.
Great!
The reason I dislike this card? The name and concept. Here let me show you:
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These are both great Beast enablers for Green that aren't Beasts themselves. That's good. Why waste the cool name Beast Whisperer on the non-Beast card? That's a huge miss for me. Shoot, reprint Wirewood Savage in a later Beast-set with this more generic and strong name! Change the name on Beast Whisperer to something else!
As someone who has just one tribal deck among my 20+ Commander decks, and its Beasts, I can't tell you how annoying I find this name on a non-Beast enabler. It's like naming a card Squirrel Wrangler and then not having it have any connection with Squirrels!
I still like the card's mechanics so here we go!
Combo Whisperer | Kitchen Table | Abe Sargent
- Creatures (20)
- 4 Beast Whisperer
- 4 Crimson Kobolds
- 4 Crookshank Kobolds
- 4 Kobolds of Kher Keep
- 4 Skyshroud Elves
- Instants (4)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- Sorceries (4)
- 1 Empty the Warrens
- 1 Grapeshot
- 2 Hull Breach
- Artifacts (8)
- 4 Cloudstone Curio
- 4 Genesis Chamber
- Lands (24)
- 8 Forest
- 8 Mountain
- 4 Gruul Turf
- 4 Karplusan Forest
The goal of this deck is to win in one turn by casting and re-casting Kobolds. You use the power of Cloudstone Curio to bounce and re-bounce them as each one will return another to your hand. You can trigger the Beast Whisperer to draw a ton of cards, as well as...
...a giant horde of Myr with Genesis Chamber. You are also building up an impressive storm count! Take advantage of that with some game winning Grapeshots or Empty the Warrens. Game on, Guilds of Ravnica! Game on! Note that you can easily draw the single copy of those storm cards by drawing much of your deck with the misnamed Beast Whisperer.
Now that we've been a bit of a Johnny-Spike with the first Beast Whisperer build, how about a Johnny-Timmy one next?
This is another spoiled card from this week - Nullhide Ferox. I love the Ferox even more than the Beast Whisperer, although I'm less likely to run it in as many builds. It's a cheap 6/6 with the Beast beats.
You don't have to worry about the non-creature clause if you don't have anything but creatures!
Whisperer of Beats | Kitchen Table | Abe Sargent
This is my fun creature-smash deck that runs dorks and lands and then nothing else! The great thing about a deck like this is that enablers like Yeva, Nature's Herald that grants your Green dorks flash, has a greater power and reach. Similarly, Beast Whisperer is stronger here too.
Did you see Heartwood Storyteller?
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This little Treefolk has never been reprinted since its initial printing way back in Future Sight. It's a card that both helps and hurts everyone, and whenever anyone casts a non-creature spell, all of their foes draw a card. But like many symmetrical effects, you know and can plan around it when building your deck. In this deck, none of your foes will draw cards as you don't have anything that would trigger it. But you certainly will be drawing cards from your opponents!
Check out the value of Nessian Game Warden here as well. Also, Regal Force! We keep the cards flowing like milk and honey.
Green for the card-sensitive smashing victory!
All right folks, what's next?
Great question!
This is Lazav, the Multifarious, a new version of Lazav, Dimir Mastermind. This is a cheaper version for decks and building. I enjoy Lazav a lot and I am definitely drawn to this newly cheap body. The ability to trigger multiple times on arrival to surveil this thing up really appeals to me, and I like it as a Commander option.
Know what? Let's do it.
How about a quick Brawl with Lazav?
Brawling with Lazav | Guilds of Ravnica Brawl| Abe Sargent
- Commander (1)
- 1 Lazav, the Multifarious
- Creatures (15)
- 1 Blood Operative
- 1 Champion of Wits
- 1 Dimir Informant
- 1 Doom Whisperer
- 1 Dream Eater
- 1 Hostage Taker
- 1 House Guildmage
- 1 Isareth the Awakener
- 1 Rona, Disciple of Gix
- 1 Salvager of Secrets
- 1 Stitcher's Supplier
- 1 Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
- 1 The Scarab God
- 1 Whisper, Blood Liturgist
- 1 Whisper Agent
- Planeswalkers (3)
- 1 Liliana, Death's Majesty
- 1 Liliana, the Necromancer
- 1 Liliana, Untouched by Death
- Instants (7)
- 1 Commit // Memory
- 1 Countervailing Winds
- 1 Dark Bargain
- 1 Mission Briefing
- 1 Price of Fame
- 1 Sinister Sabotage
- 1 Vraska's Contempt
- Sorceries (5)
- 1 Boneyard Parley
- 1 Connive // Concoct
- 1 Final Parting
- 1 Mastermind's Acquisition
- 1 Quasiduplicate
- Enchantments (2)
- 1 Liliana's Contract
- 1 Search for Azcanta
- Artifacts (2)
- 1 Dimir Locket
- 1 Thaumatic Compass
- Lands (25)
- 9 Island
- 9 Swamp
- 1 Arch of Orazca
- 1 Dimir Guildgate
- 1 Drowned Catacomb
- 1 Evolving Wilds
- 1 Fetid Pools
- 1 Gateway Plaza
- 1 Submerged Boneyard
And there you are! The goal of this deck is to include a number of cards that care about the graveyard. As Lazav surveils on arrival, and wants a stocked graveyard of dead creatures to copy, I played into that and included a number of cards.
Now, first, let's check out some of the cool Guilds of Ravnica cards that I included on theme:
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All of these cards suit my graveyard-fueled fun times. Take surveil as a good first step. Cards like Dream Eater and Whisper Agent are strong because they add to your density of creatures and do things that creatures do like attack, block and such. Meanwhile, they also add cards to my graveyard.
Doom Whisperer is downright nasty as a fat 6/6 flyer for cheap, and might be my favorite card for this deck as it marries size, value, abilities and power in a single package.
The split spell Connive // Concoct is interesting because of the second half, which reminds me a lot of Extract from Darkness. Do you see it? The only change is going from milling everyone to just surveil. It also only returns a dork from your own graveyard rather than everyone's so that may not be a perfect fit in many builds, but it suits Lazav Take Two perfectly fine. Especially when twinned with the other cards in here.
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Check out these two Lilianas! Note that we have Liliana, Death's Majesty in here as well, but most people out there are familiar with her, but may not be with the two iterations of Liliana with Core Set 2019. My favorite of the two here is Untouched by Death. The first +1 is useful at filling up your graveyard. This deck has a few Zombies here and there that made it into the creature count, although barely any. She's not here to break open a graveyard of Zombies, but you only need one to get that drain of life. I don't suspect we'll -2 her often, but the -3 is pretty good at recasting the Zombies you might have there. The other Liliana is good at -1 Raise Dead'ing the right dorks that were milled by various effects or surveilled there by Lazav.
I also included some other graveyard conscious effects:
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Here are a couple for you! Isareth is good at providing a strong long game, and her 3/3 body for 3 mana is not something you'll want to shy away from either. Feel free to swing and then bring back a dead dork for another round of glory after spending some mana. Please note that Isareth's ability is not one that creates an attacking creature, and the animated partner remains on the battlefield and is not heading away at the end of the turn, unlike many similar effects out there.
Meanwhile Rona can exile a historic dork or artifact quite nicely and then you can recast it. You can also
"exile" stuff from your library and then cast it. I really enjoy Rona here as a 3 mana play the turn after you cast Lazav. You have a chance to have surveilled a legendary critter or artifact to your 'yard for Rona to exile on arrival and you can cast the next turn if it was four or fewer mana, such as Thaumatic Compass. I also like Rona's synergy with surveil which can let you know when it's right to exile the top card from your library.
I'm sure you can see the power of cards like Whisper, Blood Liturgist, The Scarab God, Final Parting, or Dark Bargain in here.
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Here's the value of these two cards right here! Both keep the card flow going while adding value to the graveyard. Both of these hit the 'yard in different, but still compelling ways, and have strong value when tethered to cards like Mission Briefing.
Now I have one more trick....
This deck might accidentally over-commit (pun intended) to the graveyard and thus be subject to decking itself. Enter Commit // Memory. This is a classic Timetwister effect that shuffles the hand, graveyard, library together and draws a new slate of cards. What makes this card really valuable is that it works in your graveyard. So if you accidentally milled it with a self-mill effect like Stitcher's Supplier then you can still use it, which would not normally be true of a one-of answer like this one.
And there we go! That's a solid looking Brawl deck from where I'm sitting. From Boneyard Parley to House Guildmage, this is a lot of fun!
I hope that you enjoyed our look at three decks today with more than 12 cards from Guilds of Ravnica ¬getting added to them! What are you looking forward to crack? Anything in here inspire you? Thanks for reading!
