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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 March 13, 2015
 Reddit

It's an exciting time to be playing Magic. With Dragons of Tarkir on the horizon, a breakout performance by Green-White Devotion in Miami last week, and plenty of new previews to begin exploring, there's new and exciting technology to satisfy players of all demeanors. This week we have five decks from Standard, Modern, and Legacy featuring all manner of exciting interactions across the full spectrum of archetypes from Worldgorger Dragon combo to Green-Red beatdown. Let's get started.

One of the biggest questions outstanding in this Standard format is how the metagame is going to adapt to the new Green-White Devotion monstrosity. Traditional strategies against Green-based devotion strategies rely heavily on discard, removal, and sweepers, but between Mastery of the Unseen and Whisperwood Elemental, this new build of devotion has a ton of built-in resilience to this kind of disruption. Perhaps the answer is to shift back to an old Standard mainstay? Let's take a look at Ryuumei's take on Mardu midrange:

Mardu Midrange ? Fate Reforged Standard | Ryuumei, 2-3 MTGO Standard Champs

The vast majority of the time, Abzan is the superior midrange deck. However, Mardu may be better equipped to provide the combination of disruption plus evasive clock that's necessary to keep the Green devotion decks in check. Crackling Doom is a powerful removal spell that keeps the pressure up while getting one of the big payoff spells off the table. You also get access to Chained to the Rocks as an efficient removal spell that lets you double up on spells. Not only that, but you have access to both Mardu Charm and Thoughtseize as ways to interact with their hand and both Sarkhan, Dragonspeaker and Stormbreath Dragon to apply pressure in the air.

One of the most exciting things to me about this deck is the interaction between Soulfire Grand Master and Mardu Charm. Sure, Thoughtseize is a little more efficient if you just want to continuously rip your opponent's hand apart as the game goes long, but Mardu Charm can be cast in their draw step to snipe key cards like Planeswalkers and other non-creature, sorcery speed interaction.

Alternatively, you could try sneaking in underneath the Green-based devotion strategies by piling into the red zone with efficient creatures. That's the take that the Brian Kibler has taken in his most recent article. Green-White devotion is a deck built around stalling the ground with powerful blockers. Consequently, efficient threats backed by removal that keeps your opponent off his mana and clears blockers out of the equation is a great way to approach the matchup.

Green-Red Aggro ? Fate Reforged Standard | Brian Kibler

Once again, the key components to this deck are efficient, evasive threats backed by removal and mechanisms of going over the top. Mana creatures let you hit early Goblin Rabblemasters against decks that are short on removal. Otherwise, you can take to the skies with both Ashcloud and Flamewake Phoenix, as well as Sarkhan and Stormbreath Dragon. If that's not enough, Boon Satyr can lead to blowouts in combat, or increase you flying clock, and Crater's Claws can very easily steal games out from under your opponent before they stabilize.

For the grindier matchups, you gain the ability to board in card advantage engines like Chandra and Xenagos. This deck also gains access to the very powerful Destructive Revelry. Between Outpost Siege, Whip of Erebos, Jeskai Ascendancy, and Courser of Kruphix, most top tier decks are going to have at least one powerful enchantment. This allows you to clear those out of the way while keeping up the pressure. This deck seems awesome in a format defined by midrange; being able to use mana creatures to stay a step ahead and proactively deploy hasty threats to the board is good place to be against Abzan and other more controlling variants. It remains to be seen whether this can cast threats quickly enough to stop the Green-White menace before its lifegain engines come online.

Between Splinter Twin, Infect, and Amulet of Vigor, Modern is a format where you can very easily die on turn four. That's why it's exciting to see Caleb Durward continuing to explore strategies built around some of the powerful four-drops that don't seen nearly enough play for my tastes: Gifts Ungiven and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. This week, Caleb shares the list he's been PPTQing with and discusses some of the card choices and play patterns.

[Cardlist Title= Tezzeret Gifts ? Modern | Caleb Durward]

The gameplan for this style of deck is to cast a mana accelerent on turn two followed by a gamebreaking four-drop on turn three. Between Gifts and Tezzeret, you've got seven cards you can draw that break games open starting on the third turn. Gifts can tutor up Unburial Rites plus a monster that ends the game on the spot against unfair decks where you can resolve the Unburial Rites. Alternatively, you can resolve a Tezzeret and either start digging for hateful artifacts like Spellskite or generating indestructible blockers with Darksteel Citadel. If your opponent isn't prepared, you can also present a two-turn clock by bringing the 5/5 Inkmoth Nexus beatdowns.

This more proactive gameplan is backed up by a powerful suite of control cards including Wrath of God, Path to Exile, and Timely Reinforcements. It's been a long time since we've seen a deck playing straight-up four Wrath of God in Modern, but I'm excited to see it making a comeback. There are plenty of decks like Affinity, Infect, and Bogles which are prepared for spot removal of many flavors, but can't deal as well with an actual sweeper, particularly with the "can't be regenerated" clause tacked on.

What's most interesting about this deck is the dedication to the Gifts plus Unburial Rites plan. There are no cute splits on sweepers and removal spells. There are no Snapcaster Mages or Academy Ruins. There is no wasted deck space, nothing that's too cute. Every card is there for a reason, and nothing that can't hold its weight on its own makes the cut. While I may be sad that no one is casting Gifts Ungiven for value anymore, I'm excited to see the return of four-drops to Modern.

Why stop at four-drops? Why can't we go all the way up to fifteen? That's the question that Alexander West is asking. Last week, we took a look at his exciting take on Dredge in Modern, and this week he's back again with an exciting new build of Mono-Green Devotion for Modern.

[Cardlist title=Tooth and Nail ? Modern | Alexander West]

A problem that this deck has consistently had is finding a way to end the game. Previous builds focused on using Primeval Titan plus Kessig Wolf Run or chaining Eternal Witness plus Primal Command. It turns out that those plans aren't particularly consistent or effective unless your opponent is unusually cooperative.

Instead, Alexander has opted for a spell that can just end the game. Tooth and Nail. This deck is capable of generating that mana as early as turn three with explosive combinations of Arbor Elf, Garruk Wildspeaker, and Utopia Sprawl. Once you resolve Tooth and Nail, you get Emrakul and Xenagos, God of Revels and smash for 30 points of annihilating goodness.

The best part? Now you get to build your deck around this plan by using both Primeval Titan and Knight of the Reliquary to get Boseiju, Who Shelters All to make sure your haymaker resolves. The even better part? Your combo pieces are completely reasonable on their own. Using Xenagos to set up hasty Primeval Titans isn't as good as it is with Emrakul, but its still very difficult to beat. Similarly, it's not enormously difficult for this deck to naturally ramp up to fifteen mana to hardcast Emrakul. If you're looking to go bigger in Modern, this may be one of the best ways to do it since Cloudpost was banned.

Worldgorger Dragon was recently unbanned in Legacy. Immediately, there were a lot of questions about whether this would produce a new combo deck that would run rampant that culminated in... nothing. There were very few Worldgorger Dragon decks going infinite and creating unnecessary draws, largely because the combo itself and win conditions were fragile and cumbersome. That may be about to change, thanks to Carsten Kotter.

[Cardlist title= Worldgorger Dragon Combo - Legacy | Carsten Kotter]

This is one of my favorite combos in all of Magic because it's the first one that I discovered way back when I first opened a Worldgorger Dragon in my first Judgment pack. If you Animate Dead a Worldgorger Dragon, the dragon enters the battlefield and exiles all your permanents. Including the Animate Dead. That means that your dragon dies and all your permanents come back. That means your lands are untapped and your Animate Dead is back, so you can float some mana and do it all again.

The problem in Legacy is that you don't have Bazaar of Baghdad to flip your deck into your graveyard. Without some mechanism of putting another creature into your graveyard, you actually end the game in an unbreakable infinite loop of dragons and Animate Deads, which results in a draw. Or do you? The new technology in this list is the combination of Desolate Lighthouse and Tasigur, the Golden Fang. This combination lets you loot through your deck until you have infinite mana and a Tasigur to put back into play. Then you can Cunning Wish for a burn spell of your choice and recur it and every other card in your graveyard infinitely with Tasigur.

The big question is whether this is more effective than a more traditional reanimator deck that focuses on Iona, Elesh Norn, and Griselbrand. The upside? This deck is not vulnerable to Karakas, as you can generate infinite mana before you put Tasigur into play and respond to any Karakas activations. The downside? You can't use Show and Tell to play around graveyard hate without significant sideboard slots dedicated to "normal" fatties. There's also the small chance that your opponent can respond to your Worldgorger Dragon's enters the battlefield trigger with something like a Swords to Plowshares to exile your board forever. So there are certainly more risks involved in playing this type of all-in strategy. But it's also a powerful and potentially brutally quick combo that may be on more people's radar now.

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, deck lists, decks, commander, modern, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks

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