Playing with our Food in Standard

Posted on September 11, 2024

We are officially one month into our new post-rotation Standard, and the meta is finally settling. A few decks from the previous Standard format survived, like Golgari Midrange, Domain, and of course Mono-Red, but one card that has floated to the top of the meta is Caretaker's Talent. As it turns out, drawing cards when you make tokens is great in a grindy meta, and with so many ways to make tokens there are lots of decks taking advantage of this enchantment. Many have paired it with cards like Urabask's Forge, Archangel Elspeth, and Ral, Crackling Wit, all of which make creature tokens each turn, but I wanted to take my talent deck in a different direction. I hope you're hungry, because the deck I'm serving today is an Abzan food deck built around a few new cards from Bloomburrow and a few older cards from Wilds of Eldraine, and, surprisingly enough, the Big Score!

Let's skip the appetizers for this meal and start with the main course, or the key cards of the deck and how they interact with each other. Caretaker's Talent is a class enchantment with three stages: the first stage draws cards whenever a token enters under your control (once each turn), the second stage makes a copy of a token you control, and the third stage provides a +2/+2 boost to all of your creature tokens. The amount of card advantage you get from the talent over the course of a game is absurd, drawing a card whenever you make food tokens for the first time during your turn and whenever you make food tokens during your opponent's turn. The second stage is usually a solid to draw extra cards if we somehow run out of cards in hand or flood out with lands, and the third stage can provide a solid win condition when paired with our next card.

Another great new card from Bloomburrow is Camellia, the Seedmiser, a 3/3 squirrel for three mana with many abilities. The first is that Camellia has menace and gives your other squirrels menace, making them much harder to block. She also makes a squirrel token whenever you sacrifice a food for any reason, and if you pay generic mana and forage (either sacrifice a food token or exile three cards from your graveyard), she puts a +1/+1 counter on each squirrel you control. On her own, Camellia is very strong, creating bodies as you churn through your pile of food tokens and growing those bodies into huge menacing threats.

Finally, we have the farmer, my favorite card in the deck and probably the strongest singular card here. Bristlebud Farmer is a four-mana 5/5 hailing from the Big Score, which would already be an excellent creature based on stats alone if it weren't for its other abilities. The farmer also has trample, it makes two food tokens when it enters, and whenever it attacks you can sacrifice a food to mill 3 cards a return permanent from among them to your hand. This card is an absolute house and synergizes perfectly with our other key cards. It both creates and sacrifices food tokens, which will allow us to draw cards and make squirrels in conjunction with Caretaker's Talent and Camellia, fuels the graveyard for Camellia's scavenge ability, provides card selection, and pushes through for a lot of damage. The farmer can even trade with Sheoldred, a rare trait among 4-drop creatures in Standard.

With the main courses finished, let's move on to the side dishes, or some support cards. Vinereap Mentor, Gumdrop Poisoner, and Pawpatch Formation are all ways we can make food in the early game, with the Formation doubling as enchantment or flying creature removal and the Poisoner killing small creatures and providing a decent lifelink body. Poisoner and Formation are also ways we can make food tokens at instant speed, triggering Caretaker's Talent twice per turn cycle. Welcome to Sweettooth and The Witch's Vanity also create food tokens while providing additional utility; Sweettooth's token on the first chapter can provide Lilliana fodder to protect your real creatures, its last chapter can grow a creature by a lot, and the Vanity's first chapter can pick off small, aggressive creatures.

Back for Seconds is another great support card that might seem strange at first glance (why is this draft card in our Constructed deck?), but the card is very strong in a meta dominated by midrange decks. It synergizes well with Bristlebud Farmer of course, bringing back any creatures you mill but don't return to your hand, but it's also very good against decks that rely on trading one-for-one with targeted removal. By sacrificing a food token to bargain it, Back for Seconds can return every creature in our deck from the graveyard to play, while also bringing another creature back to your hand. Trust me, you haven't truly lived until you've reanimated a Bristlebud Farmer to the battlefield while returning a second farmer to your hand.

Finally, it's important to eat your veggies, so let's talk about the interaction suite. We play a good amount of targeted removal in the main deck, and while we could run Cut Down or Go for the Throat, I opted for cards that better utilized our food tokens. Candy Grapple and Dusk Rose Reliquary fit the bill, and even have some upsides over the format's typical removal spells. The biggest upside is against the myriad of prowess-type aggro decks, many of which aim to win with their 1-drops that deal damage equal to their power when they die, like Cacophony Scamp and Heartfire Hero. Candy Grapple shrinks their power to zero, negating the damage, and the Reliquary gets around death triggers by simply exiling the creature. In addition, the Reliquary can exile artifacts, making it a huge help against decks running Urabrask's Forge or Ancient Cornucopia.

If you want to take this deck to the Bo3 ladder or a local event, it'll be important to have a sideboard. One of the benefits of playing three colors is that the deck has access to a lot more hate pieces and answers than mono- and two-color decks, and playing Black and White lets us run some of the best answers in the format. One of the biggest annoyances to our deck is any card that wipes the board, with Temporary Lockdown and Sunfall being notable for also shutting down our death triggers and the Back for Seconds backup plan. Discard effects like Duress, Pilfer, and Cruelclaw's Heist can strip opponents of these cards, along with any removal spells, before they can destroy our threats, so I would definitely recommend bringing in a few of these.

Ramp decks that win with massive creatures can also be a problem, as they dodge a lot of our main deck removal spells, so I would also recommend bringing in some non-discriminant removal. I opted for Get Lost as it can also deal with enchantments and Planeswalkers, but Bitter Triumph and Go for the Throat are also solid options. For go-wide decks like tokens and convoke, we want a sweeper that won't hurt us too bad. Temporary Lockdown is usually the go-to for white sideboards, but as I mentioned before it's off the table for being too disruptive to our own game plan. Instead, we can bring in cards like Malicious Eclipse or Glistening Deluge. Finally, let's add some artifact/enchantment removal with Requisition Raid, which can be a thorn in the side of other Caretaker's Talent Decks, and Tranquil Frillback, which can also gain life against aggro decks or exile graveyards.

That's all for this deck tech, now get out there and get cooking!