In this experiment, we reveal that our Faeries are actually Faeries impostoring as each other, and our Deputies acquit each other, bringing Beasts, Birds, Angels, Forests, and Plains in their iterative wake.

My idea for this week started with Beck // Call and my realization that, despite it possibly having the most combo potential of any card in Standard, I haven’t actually built with it yet (unless you count its unmentioned inclusion in this list, which could actually use a Born of the Gods update, including, but not limited to, Ephara, God of the Polis). My favorite card in Born of the Gods is Karametra, God of Harvests, and I could envision a universe in which those two cards could work together.

Add in the fact that I’ve been trying to come up with something Standard-legal for the past couple weeks, and I figured I had enough parameters to scroll through a Gatherer search for all cards legal in Standard and come out the other side with something spicy.

"Angel Impostor"

• Creatures (17)
• 2 Sylvan Caryatid
• 4 Deputy of Acquittals
• 4 Elvish Mystic
• 4 Faerie Impostor
• 3 Karametra, God of Harvests

• Spells (19)
• 2 Rootborn Defenses
• 3 Plasm Capture
• 2 Devout Invocation
• 2 Whelming Wave
• 4 Beck // Call
• 1 Primeval Bounty
• 4 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Hammer of Purphoros

• Lands (24)
• 2 Island
• 5 Forest
• 5 Plains
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Hallowed Fountain
• 4 Temple Garden

Buy This Deck

Combo Stuff

My last Karametra deck revolved around repeatedly casting Whitemane Lion to fetch a ton of lands. Cloudstone Curio—one of the most famous combo cards, in the ranks of Aluren, Intruder Alarm, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker—could work well with Karametra as well, but sticking with Standard, we have fewer options. Deputy of Acquittals, Keymaster Rogue, Voidwielder, and Faerie Impostor all have Whitemane Lion–like supwerpowers, though the cheaper two of them can’t bounce themselves.

Deputy of Acquittals is 2 mana, but with two of them, we can simulate the Whitemane Lion effect from the aforementioned article, repeatedly searching up lands with an onboard Karametra. Faerie Impostor does the same thing, but for only 1 mana, though both of these cards have steep colored-mana requirements when we want to repeat castings over and over.

Fortunately, we have a card that can let us cast Faerie Impostors back and forth as much as we want.

Just kidding. We’re not playing Realmwright.

Like before, we next want to have more ways to benefit from repeatedly casting the same small creatures. Beck // Call is actually our primary plan for the deck. Karametra is sweet for pulling out all the lands from our library and putting them onto the battlefield, but Beck will allow us to draw a ton of cards from our Faerie and Deputy loops. The more we’ve used Karametra, the more cards we’ll be able to draw, potentially drawing about a third of our deck in one turn. And if we just have 8 mana, we can just make four Birds and draw four cards.

Finally, the unignorable one-of Primeval Bounty provides a huge boon for repeated creature castings. Every time one of our Faerie Impostors pulls off its blue, hooded cloak and reveals that it’s actually a different Faerie Impostor (the same flavor concept ascribed to Ninja of the Deep Hours and his Ninja ilk), Primeval Bounty will conjure us up a Beast. The +1/+1 counter option won’t apply quite as frequently as the other two triggers, but with Karametra and our combo, not only will we be gaining Beasts, but we’ll be gaining a bunch of life in multiples of 3.

Non-Combo Stuff

In addition to the primary combo pieces, the deck is meant to at least be playable in casual Standard games, and it has some solid pieces to keep the deck coherent.

Plasm Capture, now that you mention it, is one of the deck’s few ways to interact with the opponent, but it also has the advantage of ramping our deck into huge plays relatively early. Whether it’s just resolving a Karametra and casting a few Faeries, sneaking in an early Devout Invocation for two or three Angels, or resolving a fused Beck // Call for a ton of value, it’s all uphill from there—and don’t forget the core benefit of being able to stop the opponent’s early play.

Rootborn Defenses can help keep our team alive, especially if we’ve made an army of Beasts and/or Angels, popping in an additional combatant along the way. Contrariwise, Whelming Wave is our temporary reset button, buying us time while providing the upside of giving us all our creatures back so we can replay them for more lands, cards, and Beasts. If only there were a Kraken or Octopus we wanted to run in here. Also, the deck won’t often have a ton of devotion for Karametra, so chances are she’ll stay in play through the Wave (as she won’t be a creature), so when we do replay our guys, we’ll gain the land value without having to respend 5 on our God.

Oh Yeah, More Combo

And, last, we have Hammer of Purphoros. This is the card I’m least sure of, but I always like having ways to just make the combo turn into the winning turn. Chromatic Lantern will let us cast it without problems, and we can potentially just kill with all our Angels on the same turn as we make them. And we can hope to have drawn it from a resolved Beck. Even making an enchantment Golem token can be useful sometimes, whether it’s to draw a card with Beck, to make an Angel with Devout Invocation, to double up with Rootborn Defenses, or just to make use of excess lands from Karametra (though I do love having a ton of lands).

If I weren’t going to run Hammer of Purphoros, I’d probably include Prophet of Kruphix for more potential during the midgame. Casting alternating Faeries during our opponent’s turn (or opponents’ turns!) for a ton more lands seems quite good.

An Example Turn

While it’s not good to always focus on an ideal turn for a combo deck, it’s fun to look at the potential. Let’s give it a shot here—on the draw.

Starting hand: Forest, Island, Island, Elvish Mystic, Chromatic Lantern, Karametra, God of Harvests, Faerie Impostor

Turn one (draw Faerie Impostor): Forest; Elvish Mystic

Turn two (draw Primeval Bounty): Island; Chromatic Lantern

Turn three (draw Plains): Island; Karametra, God of Harvests

Turn four (draw Beck // Call): Plains; float with Elvish Mystic; Faerie Impostor, bouncing Elvish Mystic (five iterations); Elvish Mystic; fetch six shock lands with Karametra triggers

Turn five (draw Forest): Forest; Primeval Bounty; Beck (of Beck // Call); Faerie Impostor, bouncing Faerie Impostor (five iterations); draw five cards with Beck triggers (Plains, Devout Invocation, Hammer of Purphoros, Rootborn Defenses, Elvish Mystic); fetch five shock lands with Karametra triggers; make five Beasts and gain 15 life with Primeval Bounty triggers

Turn six (draw Elvish Mystic): Plains; Elvish Mystic; Hammer of Purphoros; Faerie Impostor, bouncing Faerie Impostor (seven iterations); fetch seven lands with Karametra triggers (we’re all out of lands after that!); make eight Beasts, gain 21 life, and put 3 +1/+1 counters on an Elvish Mystic with Primeval Bounty triggers; cast Devout Invocation, tapping two Elvish Mystics, one Faerie Impostor, and thirteen Beasts to make sixteen Angels; put 3 +1/+1 counters on the other Elvish Mystic with Primeval Bounty triggers; attack for 64 with sixteen Angels with haste

If we wanted to play it safe, we could cast Faerie Impostor three fewer times to keep up 3 mana for Rootborn Defenses.

Wrap-Up

A turn-six kill isn’t particularly impressive, not even for a Standard deck, but it is reasonable to be able to kill multiple opponents in a multiplayer game with a host of Angels. Also, the deck doesn’t have to be super-fast or play out the same way as described above, as it does have various lines of play and a few defensive options.

If you’ve tried to figure out what to do with Devout Invocation or wanted to play Beck // Call in Standard—or just if you’re looking for some combo-like option for Standard play—this, or something like it, could be the deck for you.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com