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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 December 25, 2015
 Reddit

Make your holiday Magical with the gift of cutting edge technology in Modern and Standard. This week we have a Standard deck that pushes the good mana to its limits to curve Mantis Rider into Siege Rhino. Next we have a Standard deck that tries to avoid the combat step altogether and win games with Felidar Sovereign. Then we’ll head to Modern, where we have a pair of Red-Black decks, one focused on mana denial and the other focused on early discard. Finally, we have a new take on Infect with a key twist: a powerful threat that’s immune to the best removal in the format. Let’s get started!

More Colors? No Problem.

To say that Standard has pretty good mana would be an incredible understatement. The mana is so good right now that decks that are fully three- and four-colors are the norm. At that point, you have to ask whether the fifth color is really that much of a stretch. It turns out that Daibloxsc doesn’t think so:

5 Color Aggro ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Daibloxsc, 2nd Magic Online PTQ

The idea here is pretty straightforward. If four colors are good, then five has to be better. The aggressive three-color cards from Khans of Tarkir block are so powerful that jamming a deck full of as many Siege Rhinos, Mantis Riders, and Crackling Doom[card]s are possible may just be the best thing you can be doing in this format, so long as you can get the mana to work. That sounds like a pretty big qualifier, but in reality, this manabase is still pretty robust.

If you look at the spells in this deck, you're really just a Mardu deck that's touching Blue for Jace, [card]Mantis Rider, and Treasure Cruise and touching Green for Siege Rhino and Den Protector. Sure, you have limited ways to curve two-drop into Mantis Rider into Siege Rhino, but your cards are so powerful that any semblance of curving out has the potential to crush your opponent.

Sequencing of lands is critically important in all Standard decks in this format, but especially this one. The ideal curve appear to involve Plains, Mountain, and Sunken Hollow on the first three turns, as then you can cast a turn three Mantis Rider and still fetch a Green land on turn four to cast Siege Rhino. Sunken Hollow on one doesn’t allow you to cast Fiery Impulse, but does let you cast Jace on turn two, while a Plains would allow for Soulfire Grand Master. As long as you’re careful with the mana, it seems like most decks in the format are going to have a hard time keeping up with the raw card quality of something like this take on five-color aggro.

Get a Life

But what about those of us who aren’t really into beating down? Fortunately, Matt Higgs has put together something that is sure to appeal to the players who love doing nothing and lots of it. Matt’s crazy Standard list gains lots of life, makes lots of tokens, and wins out of nowhere. Let’s take a look:

[Cardlist title=White-Green Lifegain ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Matt Higgs]

The idea behind this deck is to make the game go long. The tools you have available to do that are a ton of Enchantment-based removal spells backed by lots of token generation to gum up the ground. That combination will give you enough time to hit land drops all the way up to Felidar Sovereign so you can win the game without having to go into the red zone.

The idea is that Herald of the Pantheon lets you string together combinations of removal, Retreats, and From Beyond. Retreat to Emeria and From Beyond help you stall the ground against aggressive and midrange decks, and can even serve as a means of getting aggressive. Alternatively, you can just build up a huge board presence and start activating Blighted Steppes to get into Felidar Soverign range.

The power of this deck is that the life buffer provided by Herald, Blighted Steppe, and token chump blockers is enough for you to start pulling ahead with Retreat to Kazandu. This retreat will let you build up an overwhelming board presence over the course of a few turns, or just keep your life total out of the red while you generate more and more tokens. All told, this is a deck that is very vulnerable to efficient removal, but has the tools to overwhelm most midrange decks unless they have the ability to loop Dromoka's Command or Utter End to kill all of your Enchantments.

What Lands?

One of the defining aspects of Modern is the raw power of the big mana decks – Tron and Amulet Bloom. These decks are single-handedly responsible for decks shifting towards Ghost Quarter over Tectonic Edge and are a huge part of why Blood Moon strategies are so powerful in the format. This week, _Pediatra_ has an interesting take on Red-Black that attacks greedy manabases in a huge way:

[Cardlist title=Red-Black Mana Denial ? Modern | _Pediatra_, 3-1 Modern Daily Event]

Four Fulminator Mage. Four Molten Rain. Three Stone Rain. Three Blood Moon. This deck is not interested in letting you play a real game of Magic. It even has Simian Spirit Guide to sneak ahead a turn and prevent opponents from hitting their third land, even on the draw. The sheer density of mana denial means that you are going to have an edge on any decks that are trying to play too many colors or do cute things with non-basics.

However, it also means that you are going to be disadvantaged against the aggressive decks in the format, since they can generally operate on two or three lands rather than trying to work their way up to four or more. To that end, there’s plenty of maindeck hate for aggressive decks in Anger of the Gods, spot removal, and Batterskull.

Traditionally, the problem with this type of strategy is that it has trouble closing out games. After all, at some point you’ll start whiffing on Stone Rains, and it’s hard to really develop your board when you’re spending all your mana on destroying opposing lands. This deck overcomes that with the combination of Outpost Siege and Gurmag Angler. These cards allow you to keep the cards flowing or cheat in a cheap threat that can win the game quickly. With some thought given to shoring up this weakness, this seems like a very reasonable deck if you’re expecting a large amount of decks with greedy or otherwise fragile manabases.

Spread the Sickness

In recent years, Infect has risen from obscurity to become one of the most powerful and punishing linear strategies in Modern. However, this has its disadvantages, namely the prevalence of Spellskite as a sideboard card and the increased presence of efficient spot removal spells like Terminate and Abrupt Decay. Infect decks had to start adapting at some point, and last week Gatormage manage to take down the MOCS with an awesome new take on Infect:

[Cardlist title=Black-Green Infect ? Modern | Gatormage, 1st MOCS Qualifier]

At its core, this is still a straightforward Infect deck. Glistener Elf, Inkmoth Nexus, Noble Hierarch, and pump spells let you present lethal as early as turn three. Vines of the Vastwood and Inquisition of Kozilek provide some amount of protection from disruption, and Become Immense gives you a way to win out of nowhere after you’ve depleted your opponent’s resources.

The big difference between this deck and other infect decks is the inclusion of Phyrexian Crusader. Crusader is a dominating presence in combat, particularly backed by pump spells. Additionally, Crusader is immune to the two most common removal spells in the format: Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile. Unlike the majority of the threats in the Infect decks, Phyrexian Crusader is a resilient threat that can win the game on its own.

Switching the splash color from Blue to Black also gives you the ability to play great sideboard cards like Vampiric Link and Leyline of the Void. Vampiric Link is particularly strong with Phyrexian Crusader as a way to gain huge amounts of life against Burn decks, particularly in conjunction with pump spells.

Tempo Returns

Modern is a format that is all about either doing one powerful thing as efficiently as possible or exchanging resources as quickly as possible so that your opponent can no longer do their powerful thing. Typically, the Grixis and Green-Black decks are the best at trading resources, utilizing efficient hand disruption and removal spells. Volington may have found a new shell that is capable of playing the same kind of game a little more efficiently.

[Cardlist title=Black-Red Midrange ? Modern | Volington, 5-0 Modern League]

There are a handful of interactions that stand out as ways that this deck can pull ahead on resources exchanges. Firstly, the interaction between Young Pyromancer and discard spells, particularly with Kolaghan's Command to help keep Pyromancer in play. Secondly, Faithless Looting is a great way to stock your graveyard with Bloodghasts, delve fodder for Gurmag Angler, and to dig for key interactive spells. Finally, Wrench Mind is an awesome two-for-one against non-artifact decks like Amulet Bloom, Splinter Twin, or Black-Green midrange decks.

The high density of removal means that you have a reasonable gameplan against decks like Zoo, Affinity, and Infect, and access to sideboard copies of Fulminator Mage and Blood Moon let you interact with Tron and Amulet. This deck plays seven one-mana discard effects plus Wrench Mind to prevent decks like Scapeshift from hitting the critical mass of resources necessary to actually combo off, all while Bloodghast brings the recursive beats.

The deck definitely runs the risk of drawing too many discard spells in the mid to late game, but flashbacked Faithless Lootings ought to give additional chances to turn those dead cards into real spells. This seems like an exciting new take on a tempo-esque strategy that may just have the right combination of selection, interaction, and pressure to keep up with the Modern format.

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, legacy, decklist, community, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you can't miss this week, battle for zendikar standard

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