The big stories this weekend were about what you’d expect. Zombies and Mardu Vehicles were the aggro decks of choice, and Temur Aetherworks did a great job of going over the top of them. If you’re looking to play something different in Standard, the key question is this: what can keep up with Zombies and go bigger than Aetherworks Marvel? That sounds like an awfully tall order, but Sam Black may have figured it out:
Abzan Tokens ? Amonkhet Standard | Sam Black, Pro Tour Amonkhet
- Creatures (16)
- 4 Anointer Priest
- 4 Catacomb Sifter
- 4 Sacred Cat
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- Planeswalkers (3)
- 3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- Instants (5)
- 1 Anguished Unmaking
- 4 Fatal Push
- Enchantments (11)
- 3 Cryptolith Rite
- 4 Anointed Procession
- 4 Hidden Stockpile
- Lands (25)
- 1 Forest
- 1 Swamp
- 4 Plains
- 1 Fortified Village
- 2 Scattered Groves
- 2 Shambling Vent
- 2 Westvale Abbey
- 4 Blooming Marsh
- 4 Concealed Courtyard
- 4 Evolving Wilds
- Sideboard (15)
- 1 Swamp
- 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
- 1 Ajani Unyielding
- 2 Anguished Unmaking
- 4 Grasp of Darkness
- 3 Dusk // Dawn
- 3 Lost Legacy
This deck is absolutely crazy. At first glance, it looks like it does a whole lot of nothing — and that’s not entirely inaccurate. The first few turns are going to be full of Thraben Inspectors, Evolving Wilds, and Sacred Cats, which are not super impressive as far as Standard is concerned. The idea is that these creatures generate a little bit of value early on in the game while helping to kickstart the deck’s engine.
What exactly is that engine? The key card is Hidden Stockpile. This card lets you start generating value every time one of your permanents dies. Your goal? To make sure one of them dies every turn. That’s not too hard when you consider you have a full set of Evolving Wilds backed by Fatal Push, Catacomb Sifter, and Clue tokens. That ignores the fact that you can just activate Hidden Stockpile to trigger revolt.
The idea is that you can scry through your deck until you find additional copies of Hidden Stockpile and Anointed Procession. Then you start netting a profit on your Hidden Stockpile tricks. With Cryptolith Rites in the mix, that lets you start using the Embalm abilities, clue tokens, or just dump your mana into scrying a bunch off of Hidden Stockpile. Throughout all of this, any miscellaneous copies of Anointer Priest means you’re going to be netting an enormous amount of life, as well as tokens and scry triggers.
All in alll, this seems like a deck that’s a little bit slow and clunky, but does something that’s enormously powerful and consistent. If you’re looking for something that is capable of gaining huge amounts of life against aggressive decks while grinding out midrange and control decks with the likes of Hidden Stockpile, I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a deck that does it better than this one.