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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 15, 2014
 Reddit

Another week, five more awesome decks from across the full spectrum of Magic. This week we're going to look at all kinds of combo in all kinds of formats, starting with a Naya, creature-based combo in Standard. Then we'll head into Modern for a pair of decks that try to sneak in under the Splinter Twin decks. Last, we'll head to Legacy and Commander to find out what Food Chain and Oath of Druids can do. Let's go.

What does combo look like in Standard? Last season we had Battle Hymn decks with Young Pyromancer. This season we've got Aurelia, the Warleader. This brew comes from Brad Nelson, and blends some of the best cards in Naya with some really awesome combo elements. Let's take a look:

[Cardlist Title= Naya Combo - Standard | Brad Nelson]

What's the comb? Aurelia, the Warleader, Felhide Spiritbinder, and any two mana creatures. The combo works by attacking with both Aurelia and Felhide Spiritbinder, and using the mana creatures to activate the Spiritbinder when Aurelia's ability resolves. As long as Felhide Spiritbinder goes unblocked, you can copy Aurelia, choose to keep the new copy, and take infinite combat steps. Seems okay.

What I really like about this deck is that you have a really strong plan A of just jamming powerful creatures and crushing your oppponent with them. Aurelia, the Warleader is a perfectly reasonable Magic card just to top your curve with. Sometimes she'll let you cheat on mana by untapping mana creatures, sometimes she'll just kill your opponent, and sometimes you'll combo out.

I also like that you have plenty of ways to make sure that Felhide Spiritbinder gets through. Boros Charm, fighting with Domri Rade, and using Elpseth, Sun's Champion are all great at clearing the way, and you only really need to steal one game with the combo. Then you could board it out and get your opponent with real creatures while they're living in fear.

Can Skill Borrower break Modern? Jon Johnson thinks so, and with a list like this, I'm not inclined to argue. Jon didn't play this deck at Grand Prix Richmond, but that doesn't mean that it isn't ready for the spotlight. Let's take a look:

Dead by Dawn - Modern | Jon Johnson

Five colors with Skill Borrower and Necrotic Ooze is a great place to start if you're looking to do something crazy. Jon's Deck is built around setting up an infinite combo with Skill Borrower, the easiest of which involves Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Mogg Fanatic.

If you lead off with a mana creature and play a turn two Skill Borrower, you can kill your opponent on your third turn. Cast a Congregation at Dawn on your upkeep, putting Kiki-Jiki on top and Mogg Fanatic underneath it. Kiki-Jiki conveniently says "non-Legendary creature" instead of "another target creature," so, during your upkeep, you can make infinite copies of Skill Borrower by targeting itself with Kiki-Jiki's ability. Then when you draw the Kiki-Jiki during your draw step, you can sacrifice all of the Skill Borrowers to kill your opponent.

This deck is awesome because it attacks from a billion angles. If you kill your opponent with Skill Borrower in game one, they may leave themselves open to Goryo's Vengenace or Necrotic Ooze shenanigans in game two. This is doubly true if you lead off with the graveyard combo and then kill them with Congregation at Dawn instead. It's also really awesome that Congregation at Dawn tutors up your entire combo, which means that you can consistently kill right around the critical turns of the format.

Alternatively, you can just go all-in on having the best nut draws in the format. Tom Ross has been known to play a couple of aggressive brews in his day, but this may be one of the most exciting decks I've seen in awhile. Remember Quest for the Holy Relic? Is that a card that you ever thought would see serious Modern play? I certainly didn't - at least until Tom revealed this awesome take on Quest Combo:

[Cardlist Title=Quest Combo - Modern | Tom Ross]

This deck has one of the most absurd nut draws in the format. You can realistically suit one of your creatures up with an Argentum Armor as early as turn one. Alternatively, you can flip an Erayo, Soratami Ascendant. The redundancy of these pieces and their effectiveness against the bulk of the format is really astonishing, and this is one of the few decks that can sneak under the rest of the metagame and really win a game before it starts.

The idea is to mulligan into one of your Erayos or Quests, and then chain together zero casting-cost creatures, Glint Hawks, and Repeals until you trigger Quest or Erayo and ride that to victory. Think of it a little like all-in affinity. You're either going to have the very anemic draws that don't do anything, or you're opponent is going to be drawing dead by turn three.

One of the things that I think is most interesting about this deck is the color combination. Because you get to be base-white rather than anything else, you gain access to some of the best hate cards in the format. Things like Rule of Law, Rest in Peace, and Suppression Field are all completely reasonable cards that this deck can play out of the sideboard to just get people after stealing game one on the back of a turn two Argentum Armor.

What about Legacy? Sure, the primary combo deck right now is the Sneak Attack/Show and Tell variant that sneaks Griselbrand and Emrakul into play, but we can do better than that, right? What about a deck that looks to hardcast Emrakul and take some extra turns? Food Chain combo saw a brief resurgence around Lorwyn because of the evoke mechanic and came back again with Misthollow Griffin during Avacyn Restored, but never really caught on. Maybe that's all about to change, thanks to this sweet list put together by Obould.

[Cardlist title=Food Chain - Legacy | Obould]

This deck has one thing that very few Food Chain decks have ever had, at least since the original Food Chain Goblins deck: a back-up plan. Most of these decks were always incredibly dependent on drawing the deck's namesake, but lacked the density of cantrips to make sure that it happened. After all, your deck had to be jammed full of Mulldrifters and Imperial Recruiters to make sure that you didn't whiff once you started comboing.

That's all different once you add Natural Order. Now you have two plans. First, you can curve mana creatures into Food Chain and chain up to Emrakul using Misthollow Griffin and Fierce Empath to tutor up the 15 drop. Alternatively, you can just jam a Natural Order on turn three and figure that Progenitus will get the job done.

Again, what I like about this deck is that it has a really awesome sideboard plan. For games where you crush your opponent with Food Chain, you can board into the Show and Tell plan. Because Misthollow Griffin gives you all the mana you could ever need, you don't need a huge density of Mulldrifters and Myojin of Seeing Winds anymore. This opens up space in the deck for cantrips, which make the Natural Order and Show and Tell plans viable.

Finally, let's head into Commander for a take on my favorite creature: Child of Alara. This week we're taking a look at one of my favorite variants: Child Oath. Shiryuu's deck was originally built to take advantage of cards like Polymorph and Natural Order. When you sacrifice Child of Alara to effects like these, you get to sweep the board and the drop an enormous fatty into play for the table to deal with. As his playgroup got more competitive, Shiryuu had to trim away the cute interactions in his deck, and really focused in on one of the most powerful engines that sees almost no play: Oath of Druids:

[Cardlist title=Five Color Oath - Commander | Shiryuu]

Shiryuu's gameplan here is board control, card selection, and Oath of Druids. No frills, nothing cute, just an efficient machine that churns out huge monsters that are very difficult to deal with. In Vintage, people have to pair Oath of Druids up with Forbidden Orchard, since there are entire archetypes that are completely creatureless. You don't really have to worry about that in Commander. What you're really concerned about is making sure that you're the one who's getting maximum value out of your Oath of Druids, and Shiryuu certainly does that.

The only creature here I'm not completely on board with is Kokusho, the Evening Star. The card is good, certainly, but it's definitely not on the same power level as something like Ulamog. I think I'd even prefer things like Eternal Witness, Sun Titan, or some combination of Primordials, Yosei, the Morning Star, and Angel of Serenity or Tidespout Tyrant as ways to win grindy games by generating immediate card advantage, board advantage, and tempo with Oath of Druids

Shiryuu's primary plan is cheating an indestructible creature like Avacyn or Ulamog into play and then sweeping the board turn after turn while beating down with his beefy creatures. And if his opponents deal with his giant threat? He's just going to Oath up another one.

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

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