You may have noticed my absence last week—I was attending the StarCityGames Invitational in Los Angeles and didn’t have time to write anything. And the only thing worse than how bad I bombed out of that tournament was how distressed I was to be unable to share a combo-licious deck with you all. Okay, maybe not. And the trip wasn’t all bad—it was nice having a little vacation with my girlfriend.

For this week, I was planning to write about a Standard deck I played long ago that involved Radiate, Fire // Ice, and Psychatog, but that will have to wait for another time, as it seems Gatecrash is now upon us. It’s not in full force yet, but a few details are already upwelling from the zonots.

For example, take a look at this holiday present revealed on DailyMTG.com yesterday:

That’s some pretty spicy stuff. It’s starting to feel like Simic week already . . . Is that even a thing yet?

"The Helical Stair"

• Creatures (23)
• 1 Riptide Mangler
• 2 Cytoplast Root-Kin
• 2 Deadeye Navigator
• 2 Fertilid
• 2 Phantom Centaur
• 2 Sage of Fables
• 2 Simic Fluxmage
• 3 Force of Savagery
• 3 Plaxcaster Frogling
• 4 Fathom Mage

• Spells (13)
• 1 Increasing Savagery
• 2 Distortion Strike
• 2 Death's Presence
• 3 Gaea's Anthem
• 2 Ring of Kalonia
• 3 Ring of Evos Isle

• Lands (24)
• 5 Forest
• 7 Island
• 2 Reliquary Tower
• 2 Simic Growth Chamber
• 4 Llanowar Reborn
• 4 Simic Guildgate

Buy This Deck

I was hoping to find some more old-framed cards to starkly contrast with the brand-spanking-new preview cards, but the +1/+1 counter synergies with the Dissension Simic are just too good to pass up. I found room for one old-framed card, and it happens to be the Riptide Project of Dominaria’s Otaria. I think the Riptide Project would have a lot in common with the old Simic, so I’m quite pleased to see their cards working together as well.

Let’s delve into the specific cards and talk about some of the combos and synergies that evolved within the decklist.

Fathom Mage – She’s the centerpiece and impetus for the deck. This deck might not provide the prime circumstances for evolving her frequently, but grafting onto her works just as well, and it can even be better. Drawing one to three cards as soon as she enters the battlefield just might be better than waiting around with a vulnerable 1/1 as she waits to evolve. But don’t worry—we’ve found some room for a little more +1/+1-counter action.

Simic Fluxmage – Intentionally or not, this card ended up in a Return to Ravnica booster pack, thus being the original showcase for the evolve keyword (outside of Ethan Fleischer’s Great Designer Search 2 submissions). Even if our Fathom Mage becomes too large to evolve anymore, this little Merfolk can keep evolving and then giving up her counters to both grow her Human compatriot and draw us more cards.

Fertilid – This card brings 2 +1/+1 counters of its own to the party, and it can turn them in for lands. With all these extra counters the deck can provide, we can find as many lands as we need.

Plaxcaster Frogling and Cytoplast Root-Kin – These are the grafters of the deck, and they both perform important additional roles. The Frog can protect the creatures you’ve grown and evolved to massive proportions, and the Root-Kin can serve as the primary growee of all the counter action. The Fathom Mage will want to collect the most counters, as that allows us to draw cards, but the bigger she becomes, the harder it is to add more counters to her. The Root-Kin will drain some of her counters, giving her more room to evolve.

Sage of Fables – She is also useful for shrinking our Fathom Mage to let her grow again. In this case, though, we actually get to draw a card while making room to draw more cards. (We heard you like cards.) She’ll also give our Gatecrash creatures up-front counters. In the Fluxmage’s case, she can share it if need be. In the Fathom Mage’s case . . . I don’t know. I’m not sure whether entering the battlefield with a counter will trigger her draw-a-card superpower. I’ll have to wait on the Gatecrash FAQ on that one. However, I do know that if you control a Sage of Fables and a Simic Fluxmage and you cast Fathom Mage, she’ll enter with the +1/+1 counter, which will let her 2 power trigger the Fluxmage’s evolution.

Phantom Centaur – The Phantom creatures from Judgment (and then Phantom Wurm in Time Spiral) love collecting additional +1/+1 counters almost as much as they love toughness-boosting Auras. The Centaur is a great attacker, a wonderful blocker, and almost unbeatable against mono-black. Its high power, though, is what helped it keep its spot in the deck after I made some tough cuts—we want to keep evolving our Fathom Mage even when she grows big.

Gaea's Anthem – Last seen in Planar Chaos, this color-shifted Glorious Anthem provides a lot of benefit here. There are a lot of 0-toughness creatures in the deck, and the Anthem will let grafters give up their last counters and still stick around to chump-block, activate abilities, and/or wait for more counters. Note that this card makes for an almost-unkillable Phantom Centaur: With no counters, it’s a 3/1 that prevents all damage to itself.

Death's Presence – Here’s why we might hold onto Force of Savagery for a bit. Playing an 8/0 with Death's Presence on the battlefield means we get to put 8 +1/+1 counters on a creature. And if that creature happens to be a Fathom Mage, we’ll get to draw eight cards. Oh, wait. We probably evolved it, too. Make that nine cards and 9 +1/+1 counters.

Deadeye Navigator – This guy might seem incongruous in a deck built around amassing counters on creatures, but even here, he has work to do. He can reset Phantom Centaurs and whatnot to starting capacity, and if we have a large Fathom Mage but we really need to draw cards, ol’ Deadeye will take away her counters so we can start reevolving. Finally, we can have the Navigator Flicker itself a few times just to generate some evolve triggers on our Gatecrash Wizards.

Increasing Savagery – Come on. It draws five cards with Fathom Mage, and that’s before flashback. Perhaps there should just be more of these, but I want to get cute with Death's Presence and Force of Savagery. Another cool throwback card for this slot is Quest for the Gemblades.

Distortion Strike – This card has performed well—especially in Pauper with Kiln Fiends—but it’s key here as well for pushing through the damage with our oversized creatures when we don’t have a Ring of Kalonia around.

Looking Forward

I hoped you enjoyed this synergistic foray into the zonots of Ravnica. I’m excited to see whether the Gatecrash preview present was Monday-only, but by the time this goes up, we’ll all have found out at least whether there’s a Tuesday card. But I have to say: Five days and five guilds? My prediction is Gruul Tuesday (red and green even!), Boros Wednesday, Orzhov Thursday, and Dimir Friday (save the sneakiest for last).

Until next time, I’m Andrew saying, “Evolve’s reminder text is really going to cut into the flavor-text space for cards of my favorite guild.”

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com