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Main » Articles » 5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on June 22, 2013
 Reddit

Dragon's Maze has brought with it the end of the Sphinx's Revelation era of Standard and the beginning of Voice of Resurgence's reign as the defining card of the format. How have your favorite formats evolved this week? Let's find out what sweet things people have brewed up!

Junk tokens has put up good results at a few different points in this Standard format, and with the printing of Voice of Resurgence, there are a couple of players trying to bring it back. One of those players is none other than Michael Jacob (@Michael_A_Jacob). Here's the build he took to 3-1 in a Standard Daily Event.

Junk Tokens - Standard | DarkestMage, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

This deck seems sweet right now, when everyone's trying to play midrangey Voice of Resurgence decks. You're better at flooding the board with creatures that can block and stall, and then eventually you start making them gigantic, and turn an even board state into an overwhelming advantage. If they're playing a control deck? How good is Pillar of Flame against Lingering Souls and Increasing Devotion?

One of the real strengths of this deck is that it can be customized to beat several different decks. Vault of the Archangel is very difficult for many aggressive decks, while control decks have a very difficult time with Lingering Souls and Gavony Township.

All in all, this seems like a sweet deck that's very well positioned in the Magic Online metagame. Angel of Serenity seems tough to beat, but you've got game against everything else.

In the first few Modern Grand Prixs, Mono-Blue Faeries was a force to be reckoned with. The combination of Spellstutter Sprite, Mutavault, Mistbind Clique, and Cryptic Command is proved to be just as powerful now as it was in Lorwyn Block. The deck dropped off because of cards like Bloodbraid Elf and Dark Confidant making it difficult to tempo out the midrange decks, but Fizzeler has been putting up results with Ur Faeries. Let's take a look:

Izzet Faeries - Modern | Fizzeler

The issue with Faeries in Modern is that it's very easy to get behind, and once you're behind it's difficult to get back to parity. Cards like Deathrite Shaman and Dark Confidant are especially problematic because they are cheap and demand answers immediately before they start to bury you in cards and tempo.

Fizzeler has dealt with this by splashing for cheap removal. Why play Dismember and Vapor Snag when you can play Lightning Bolt Instead? This splash also gives you access to Blood Moon against the various greedy three- and four-color decks in the format, but you still maintain many of the advantages that Faeries has.

The big advantage to a deck like this is that all of your cards, threats and answers alike, are instants. That means that, once you start passing with four mana, you could have literal anything, and that gives your opponent a lot of opportunities to play around and into the wrong cards while you reap the benefits.

Pauper is an interesting format because, though top tier of decks is very well defined, there's very little difference between the top tier and the rest of the decks. As long as you're playing good cards, your deck is going to be fine, and will have some game against most of the format. For example, this UW Tempo deck by FlxEx just plays good, flexible cards with sweet, powerful interactions. Let's take a look at his list from this Daily Event:

UW Tempo - Pauper | FlxEx, 3-1 Modern Daily Event

This deck occupies a weird space between aggro and control in Pauper. Icatian Javelineer and Kor Skyfisher are very difficult for decks like Stompy and Delver to beat, especially in conjunction with one another, and your ability to Trinket Mage up a 2/2 Court Homunculus to gum up the ground, or a Bonesplitter for your Squadron Hawks to start trading up is very powerful.

Against the control decks, you've got Brainstorm plus Squadron Hawks as an absurd card advantage engine, plus a suite of actual Counterspells to protect your creatures. You can only go so wrong with efficient threats that interact positively with aggressive decks while applying pressure to control decks.

This looks like another flexible, powerful deck that could become a player in the format if more people picked up the deck. The cards are good, the interactions are awesome, and the deck has a plan against the aggro decks, the Cloud of Faeries decks, and the

Our last deck is a Legacy deck, championed by Florian Koch in his article this week. RUG Delver has been a powerful deck in Legacy for quite awhile, and more recently BUG Delver has seen some play with the printing of Cloudpost[/car] decks. Seems pretty good to me!

Our last deck is a Legacy deck, championed by Florian Koch in his article this week. RUG Delver has been a powerful deck in Legacy for quite awhile, and more recently BUG Delver has seen some play with the printing of [card]Abrupt Decay and Deathrite Shaman. But with Deathrite Shaman allowing us to stretch Legacy mana more than ever before, why wouldn't we want to try to play all of those cards?

4c Delver - Legacy | Florian Koch

The big change here is that Florian has cut Tarmogoyf for Deathrite Shaman. With the direction that Legacy is heading in, this seems like a good direction to go in. Tarmogoyf is the most awkward threat in the deck, because it costs two mana and is just a vanilla creature. Now, you can play Deathrite Shaman insetead, and start casting multiple spells in a turn and grinding away at their life total by exiling your Spell Pierces and cantrips.

Additionally, this splash gives you access to Abrupt Decay to fight through opposing Tarmooyfs and Stoneforge Mystics and potentially Dark Confidant in the 75 for attrition-based matchups.

All told, I'm not sure if Deathrite Shaman is convincingly better than [car]Grim Lavamancer" href="/p/Magic+The+Gathering/Abrupt Decay" href="/p/Magic%3A+The+Gathering/Cloudpost%5B%2Fcar%5D+decks.+Seems+pretty+good+to+me%21%0D%0A%0D%0A%3Chr+%2F%3E%0D%0A%0D%0AOur+last+deck+is+a+Legacy+deck%2C+championed+by+Florian+Koch+in+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.channelfireball.com%2Farticles%2Fburg-delver%2F%22+target%3D%22_blank%22%3Ehis+article+this+week%3C%2Fa%3E.+RUG+Delver+has+been+a+powerful+deck+in+Legacy+for+quite+awhile%2C+and+more+recently+BUG+Delver+has+seen+some+play+with+the+printing+of+%5Bcard%5DAbrupt+Decay">Cloudpost[/car] decks. Seems pretty good to me!

Our last deck is a Legacy deck, championed by Florian Koch in his article this week. RUG Delver has been a powerful deck in Legacy for quite awhile, and more recently BUG Delver has seen some play with the printing of [card]Abrupt Decay and Deathrite Shaman. But with Deathrite Shaman allowing us to stretch Legacy mana more than ever before, why wouldn't we want to try to play all of those cards?

4c Delver - Legacy | Florian Koch

The big change here is that Florian has cut Tarmogoyf for Deathrite Shaman. With the direction that Legacy is heading in, this seems like a good direction to go in. Tarmogoyf is the most awkward threat in the deck, because it costs two mana and is just a vanilla creature. Now, you can play Deathrite Shaman insetead, and start casting multiple spells in a turn and grinding away at their life total by exiling your Spell Pierces and cantrips.

Additionally, this splash gives you access to Abrupt Decay to fight through opposing Tarmooyfs and Stoneforge Mystics and potentially Dark Confidant in the 75 for attrition-based matchups.

All told, I'm not sure if Deathrite Shaman is convincingly better than [car]Grim Lavamancer">Abrupt Decay" href="/p/Magic%3A+The+Gathering/Cloudpost%5B%2Fcar%5D+decks.+Seems+pretty+good+to+me%21%0D%0A%0D%0A%3Chr+%2F%3E%0D%0A%0D%0AOur+last+deck+is+a+Legacy+deck%2C+championed+by+Florian+Koch+in+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.channelfireball.com%2Farticles%2Fburg-delver%2F%22+target%3D%22_blank%22%3Ehis+article+this+week%3C%2Fa%3E.+RUG+Delver+has+been+a+powerful+deck+in+Legacy+for+quite+awhile%2C+and+more+recently+BUG+Delver+has+seen+some+play+with+the+printing+of+%5Bcard%5DAbrupt+Decay">Cloudpost[/car] decks. Seems pretty good to me!

Our last deck is a Legacy deck, championed by Florian Koch in his article this week. RUG Delver has been a powerful deck in Legacy for quite awhile, and more recently BUG Delver has seen some play with the printing of [card]Abrupt Decay and Deathrite Shaman. But with Deathrite Shaman allowing us to stretch Legacy mana more than ever before, why wouldn't we want to try to play all of those cards?

4c Delver - Legacy | Florian Koch

The big change here is that Florian has cut Tarmogoyf for Deathrite Shaman. With the direction that Legacy is heading in, this seems like a good direction to go in. Tarmogoyf is the most awkward threat in the deck, because it costs two mana and is just a vanilla creature. Now, you can play Deathrite Shaman insetead, and start casting multiple spells in a turn and grinding away at their life total by exiling your Spell Pierces and cantrips.

Additionally, this splash gives you access to Abrupt Decay to fight through opposing Tarmooyfs and Stoneforge Mystics and potentially Dark Confidant in the 75 for attrition-based matchups.

All told, I'm not sure if Deathrite Shaman is convincingly better than [car]Grim Lavamancer in the RUG shell, but I'm certainly interested to find out. RUG Delver is a deck that always wants to cast one-drops and back them with the most efficient interactive spells in the format. Cutting awkward two-drops for more aggressive creatures and interactive elements is an innovative direction, and I can't wait to see if it catches on.

We've only got a few Legends left in our rundown of Dragon's Maze Commanders. This week we're going to take a look at vmnsu's take on Tajic, Blade of Legion beatdown. Like last week, this deck is sweet because it has a resilient, focused, and adaptable game plan that's capable of piling on the aggression without just losing to sweepers and removal. Let's take a look at vmnsu's battalion:

Tajic's Battalion - Commander | vwnsu

Last week's Exava, Rakos Blood Witch deck focused on sheer damage output. Vmnsu's gameplan is more about extending as little as possible while still applying a clock; not committing until you can start taking people out. There are a a few key components to his deck: tokens, haste, and card advantage.

The tokens are pretty straightforward. You want to use cards like Goblin Trenches and Assemble the Legion to ensure that you have battalion during each attack step. Every attack step that you miss on battalion is six free damage that you're missing out on, and that's just not what you're looking for. It's worth noting that Hero of Bladehold, while awesome, will not enable you to trigger battalion.

Haste is actually a critical part of this deck. While enchantments like In the Web of War give away some of the value you can get from surprise, they make it easier to trigger battalion on critical turns, and to surprise people with battalion triggers. Akroma's Memorial might be a little ambitious, but the rest of these cards are pretty sweet awesome. You might even consider something like Lightning Mauler, which is another source of both battalion and haste.

Last, all of these tokens and haste are backed by equipment which do several things. They protect your key threats, generate tempo and card advantage, and enable you to attack on two different axes. You can send Tajic and Commander damage at one player, while sending tokens and equipment at another to speed up your clock.

There are a handful of cards that seem like they'd be awesome in this kind of deck that you might want to consider if you build your own Tajic deck. Hellrider plays nicely with your token and battalion themes. Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran is another card that's awesome with your tokens, and likes taking multiple attack steps with Aurelia, the Warleader and Godo, Bandit Warlord

TAGS articles, standard, current events, deck lists, legacy, commander, modern, pauper, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks

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