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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 20, 2015
 Reddit

Dragons are upon us, and you know what that means: new cards, new interactions, and new decks in all of your favorite formats. Between exciting aggressive creatures like Dragon Whisperer and powerful dragons like Dragonlord Atarka, there's plenty of exciting new things to explore. This week we start in Standard with two new takes on Nykthos-fueled craziness. Then we delve into Modern where we've got two exciting decks featuring a new take on Living End and Ghostway. Last but now least, we have a Legacy deck that ignores counterspells, has infinite redundancy, and durdles harder than you've ever durdled before. Let's get started:

Dragons of Tarkir has brought with it a number of really exciting cards. One of the most exciting things about this set is that we're suddenly seeing an end to the drought of double-colored two- and three-drops to combine with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to overwhelm the midrange decks with a strong curve backed by a high top end. The first of these is Shorecrasher Elemental, which may herald the return of Thassa and Master of Waves in a new Mono-Blue Devotion shell. Here's Todd Anderson's take:

Mono-Blue Devotion ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Todd Andreson

We saw the success of this shell in Return to Ravnica Standard. Cheap Blue creatures to power up Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea is nothing to scoff at, particularly when backed by Bident of Thassa to refuel. Unfortunately, this deck lost crucial roleplayers like Nightveil Specter, Tidebinder Mage, and Frostburn Weird in the rotation.

Dragons of Tarkir has brought with it a number of exciting tools for this deck, including Gudul Lurker as a powerful one drop, Stratus Dancer as an aggressive two-drop and mana sink, and the very powerful Shorecrasher Elemental. These creatures give you a strong curve into both Thassa and Master of Waves, but also give you an interesting morph subgame that few other decks have in the current Standard.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that there is no Supreme Verdict in this format. Very few decks are playing Anger of the Gods, and End Hostilities and Crux of Fate can easily be a turn too slow against Bident or Master of Waves.

Another take on Nykthos-fueled shenanigans features the powerful new Red removal spells and aggressive creatures backed by Fanatic of Mogis. This deck similarly suffered from the rotation of Burning-Tree Emissary and Boros Reckoner, but Dragons of Tarkir has delivered the good. Check out Brad Neldon's take on this explosive archetype:

Mono-Red Devotion ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Brad Nelson

This deck has really suffered from a lack of a critical mass of double-red two drops. Eidolon of the Great Revel power Nykthos on its own, and Prophetic Flamespeaker just hasn't been getting it done. Fortunately, the last two sets have been kind, bringing the likes of Mardu Scout and Dragon Whisperer. Dragon Whisperer in particular is exciting because it's both an aggressive two-drop and a mana sink once you get the Nykthos engine going.

The real advantage to this style of deck isn't the powerful curve though. There are plenty of other red decks that are using Hammerhand and Stoke the Flames to clear the way for Goblin Rabblemaster that can use their mana a little more efficiently. The advantage is that this deck can go way over the top of other aggressive and midrange decks, particularly in the case of board stalls. There aren't many other Red decks that can afford to play Fanatic of Mogis, Thunderbreak Regent, and Stormbreath Dragon and reasonably expect to utilize them effectively.

The best part? Having access to Nykthos makes it even easier to use Outpost Siege to break open board stalls, since you not only get an extra card every turn, but also have the mana to cast it and activate the abilities of your creatures to force through damage. That ability to go big combined with the awesome new Rhino-killing removal spell, Roast, may mean that this is going to be the new face of Red in Dragons of Tarkir Standard.

Living End is one of the cooler fringe decks in Modern. It boasts an incredible matchup against fair creature decks and a surprisingly fast and resilient clock against combo and control. The problem? You can't play the same kinds of efficient spells that other Modern decks can, because your curve has to start at three. This means that this deck is pretty easy to beat if you can get out ahead of it, since you can leverage enormous advantages in mana efficiency and Living End generally has access to very few interactive elements. until now. Sprayquaza has added a new combo element to make this deck more interactive and resilient to countermagic and other combo hate.

[Cardlist Title= Living End ? Modern | Sprayquaza, 4-0 Modern Daily Event]

Living End plus Splinter Twin is a dangerous combination. Sure, these two combos don't really overlap. That means that you're going to draw hands where you have a giant pile of cycling creatures and Splinter Twins or cascade spells and Deceiver Exarch, and those hands may never come together into something cohesive.

However, there will also be games where an early Living End forces your opponent to use their removal more aggressively and opens up an opportunity to resolve your Twin combo. Similarly, an end of turn Deceiver Exarch may create an opening to resolve a Demonic Dread and put a pile of creatures into play. It's also worth considering that the high density of cycling creatures gives you great velocity through your deck to find missing combo pieces.

Above everything else, this particular combination of combos pulls your opponents in interesting directions when they try to make sideboarding decisions. If you kill them with Living End, they have to board up on sweepers and graveyard hate that are bad against the Twin combo. If you kill them with Twin, they have to play a bunch of spot removal that's largely dead against Living End. When they see both sets of combo pieces, they have to make difficult decisions about whether to dilute their deck and hope their hate lines up or how to split their maindeck slots between your combo elements. Odds are that's a guessing game that will end in your favor instead of theirs.

Birthing Pod is banned. Long live Birthing Pod. Pod itself may have been banned, but the shell of mana creatures backed by powerful midrange hatebears and value creatures is still perfectly reasonable, especially considering that Chord of Calling is still legal to provide a toolbox effect. We haven't seen any real attempts to develop a creature-based combo deck fueled by Chord of Calling. Here's MIRO83's take:

[Cardlist title=Bant Chord ? Modern | MIRO83, 3-1 Modern Daily Event]

The problem with Chord of Calling is that it's a one-shot effect that is much more expensive than Birthing Pod. Given enough time, Birthing Pod could find any number of game ending combinations at any number of points along your curve. Chord of Calling doesn't have that luxury, given that most of the combo pieces (Restoration Angel, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Archangel of Thune) costs three or more mana.

What you can do is use Chord of Calling as a powerful card advantage engine, using them to tutor up value creatures like Glen Elendra Archmage and Mystic Snake, or even just Eternal Witness to power up future Chords. Packing your deck full of Coiling Oracles and Eternal Witnesses gives you a great way to ramp up your mana base for Chord, and gives you powerful utility effects to rebuy with Restoration Angel. This means that you can quickly build up a board where Ghostway becomes a backbreaking end-of-turn play.

Just imagine Ghostway flickering a combination of Wall of Omens, Eternal Witness, and Coiling Oracle. You get a few extra cards and lands, rebuy your Ghostway and repeat later on, with even more creatures in play. That's not even considering that you could use this to fizzle a removal spell or reset a Glen Elendra Archamge. You can even set up the devastating combination of Magus of the Disk plus Ghostway to sweep away the opposing board while leaving yours in tact.

Bomberman is an old Vintage combo deck that features the combination of Auriok Salvagers and Black Lotus to generate infinite mana. The combo has seen limited success in that format, and occasionally make the jump to Legacy with Lion's Eye Diamond playing the part of Black Lotus. This makes the combo a little more difficult to stitch together, since you can't use cards in your hand, but the slower nature of the format means that the combo is of a more reasonable power level. The deck has never seen a breakout success, but this new take on the archetype may give it the necessary tools:

[Cardlist title= Imperial Bomberman - Legacy | Wanderlust]

The big innovation here is the use of Imperial Recruiter to tutor for both Trinket Mage and Auriok Salvagers. This means that you can effectively Recruiter for all of your combo pieces, since Trinket Mage finds you Lion's Eye Diamond to generate infinite mana and Pyrite Spellbomb to actually kill your opponent. That interaction on its own isn't enough to make this deck reasonable. The real advantage to this engine is that you get to play Cavern of Souls. Now all of your combo pieces are either uncounterable or recyclable via Auriok Salvagers. Between Salvagers costing four and having four toughness, now your deck doesn't have to care about Abrupt Decay, Lightning Bolt, countermagic, or Deathrite Shaman, which is a good place to be in this Legacy format.

Unfortunately, the deck as it stands currently gives up a lot in its combo matchups to gain these advantages against other fair decks. There isn't a ton of space for cards like Brainstorm, Dig Through Time, or Force of Will and other traditional interactive cards. Human hatebears like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Meddling Mage are interesting options. Similarly, Expedition Map gives you access to Karakas off of Trinket Mage or Imperial Recruiter. If you can find a way to shore up the poor combo matchups with Chalice of the Void and other tutorable hate cards, this may just turn out to be a reasonable slow combo deck.

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

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