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Main » Articles » Five Decks You Can’t Miss This Week

Five Decks You Can’t Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on February 9, 2013
 Reddit

Gatecrash is here, and there's only one way to tell how it's going to shake things up. Let's take a look at some decks!

I'd like to start this off with a pair of Standard decks that are a little off the beaten path. The first of these is something that's gotten a little bit of press over the course of this Standard season, but never really picked up any steam: Burn at the Stake combo. I first saw this idea proposed by Ali Aintrazi, but Eric Shepherd posted another article about the deck earlier this week. Here's his list:

[Cardlist Title=Burn at the Stake - Standard | Eric Shepherd]

This deck plays out a lot like Storm decks in other formats. You play some cantrips like Desperate Ravings and Faithless Looting, then cast some Battle Hymns. You use the mana to power through some Reforge the Souls and Past in Flames, dig into more rituals and draw spells, and eventually find a Burn at the Stake to kill your opponent.

The key difference here is that you have to have a reasonable number of creatures in play before your rituals generate enough mana to power out your key spells. To that end, you've got Krenko's Command and Lingering Souls. It's important to remember that Krenko's Command also gains flashback when you cast a Past in Flames - this helps to ensure you have enough manpower to cast all of your spells.

The sideboard is sort of a hedge against the kinds of cards you can't beat: counterspells and graveyard hate. Cyclonic Rift helps you deal with pesky Rest in Peaces, while Curse of Chains and Increasing Vengeance help you against counterspell decks. You've also got a couple of sweet midrangey cards like Talrand and Talrand's Invocation to help you grind out games against decks packed with sweepers.

Our second list is a different take on the "over the top" midrangey decks that have been popular so far in this format. Whether you're aggressive or controlling, the defining cards of the format are the 4 and 5 drops like Huntmaster of the Fells, Thragtusk, and Hellrider, and the best way to get an edge is to make sure your top end matches up well against other decks. Zan Syed found a way to go bigger than the other midrange decks without giving up too much of his aggro matchup and was rewarded with 6th at SCG Atlanta. Here's his take on Tokens with Gatecrash:

[Cardlist Title=4-Color Tokens - Standard | Zan Syed, 6th Place StarCityGames Open Atlanta 2/2]

On its surface, this looks like a pretty typical Junk Tokens deck that's just getting a little greedy now that Stomping Ground and Sacred Foundry are in the format. However, the red cards do quite a bit more than that. Huntmaster of the Fells shores up your aggressive matchups while also being a threat that must be dealt with against the other midrange decks. Similarly, Bonfire of the Damned and Aurelia's Fury are trumps in the midrange mirrors that can also function as sweepers in the aggressive matchups.

Even better, your Planeswalkers are very well positioned in a midrange metagame, letting you grind out large advantages over longer games, and eventually grinding out your opponent's when you find Intangible Virtues or multiple Planeswalkers. This deck gets to play all of the best 4 drops and 5 drops except for Restoration Angel, and your plan against that is just being bigger than a 3/4 flash.

This deck may have to adapt if the format shifts towards R/x aggro rather than G/x midrange decks, but for now it seems very well positioned.

Speaking of four-color monstrosities, let's take a look at Jeff Sirkis' 11th place deck from SCG Atlanta. Jund and BUG have been doing very well in the format right now. It only makes sense to jam them together and see what happens, right?

[Cardlist Title=4-Color Midrange - Legacy | Jeff Sirkis, 11th Place StarCityGames Open Atlanta 2/3]

This deck has a lot of things going for it in the current metagame. You've basically taken Jund traded your Red removal and Black discard for Blue cantrips and Ancestral Visions. Alternatively, it's BUG minus discard and plus Bloodbraid Elf and Punishing Fire. This gives you a huge edge in the "fair" midrange mirrors, like BUG and Jund, since you have all the best cards for the matchup from each build.

Punishing Fire and Umezawa's Jitte are very difficult to beat in creature mirrors. Not only do you get to play both, but you have eight ways to cascade, plus cantrips and Ancestral Vision, to help find your trumps. This deck should be pretty heavily favored against any deck that wants the game to go on for more than two or three turns.

The downside of all of this, of course, is that you basically scoop to combo of any variety game one. You have no way to interact with them beyond racing, and that's something that this deck can't do very effectively. However, out of the sideboard you have eight one-mana discard spells, four of which have flashback; that should be plenty to give you a shot at winning your sideboarded games.

Next let's take a look at a Modern deck. There hasn't been much speculation about how Gatecrash will affect the format, and the bannings only just took effect on Magic Online, so there's not a ton of data to work with to see where the format is headed. There is one thing that's still clear: this is definitely a format for brewers:

[Cardlist Title=Mono Blue Tron- Modern | _j3n10, 3-1 Modern Daily #4965336]

Blue Urzatron decks are among my favorite to play, regardless of the format. You have all of the same powerful tools as other blue decks in the early game, but your top end is so much more powerful. Sure, there's a chance you can get tempo'd out by Geist of Saint Traft, but you can also just Wurmcoil Engine them on turn 3.

Thirst for Knowledge is an absurdly powerful spell, and I'm honestly shocked that it hasn't found a home in Modern yet. This is a pretty awesome place for it, since you can leave up Repeal and Remand to buy yourself some time, or just Thirst for Knowledge when you find some breathing room.

Treasure Mage is another card that is subtly powerful in this deck. Against aggressive decks it's a roadblock that finds Wurmcoil Engine. Against control it's a clock that finds Mindslaver. If they're stuck on lands you can threaten Sundering Titan. It's a very versatile value card that does a little of everything, which seems like exactly what this deck needs.

One thing I really would have liked to see out of this deck was some number of Cyclonic Rift. One of the best things about Blue-White Tron was that you had sweepers to reset the board if you had to. Cyclonic Rift gives you another cheap way to interact with the board that's still very powerful in the late game.

Last, let's take a look at our second Commander deck featuring one of the new Gatecrash legends. This week we've got a Lazav, Dimir Mastermand deck built by @Filtheater on Twitter. Lazav is a very interesting card because it is not immediately obvious what the card does for your deck. Whether it's a fatty or a utility creature depends very much on the contents of your opponent's decks and how quickly you can mill them into something you want to copy. Filtheater decided to embrace the milling theme and find out exactly what he could do with it:

[Cardlist Title=Lazav Zombies- Commander| Filtheater]

This deck is built around a couple of concepts, but first and foremost we have to discuss Tombstone Stairwell. More than anything else, this deck wants to mill a ton of creatures so that Tombstone Stairwell does as much work as possible. What exactly does it do for the deck? Well, Blood Artist, Vengeful Dead, and friends are a good place to start. Tombstone Stairwell generates new creatures every upkeep and kills them every end step; that damage adds up very quickly.

You can also enable Tombstone Stairwell with Duskmantle Guildmage, Mindcrank, and your other one-shot mill effects. These power up your Stairwell as well as finding awesome creatures for Lazav to copy. You also get the incidental combo of Duskmantle Guildmage and Mindcrank to combo out one or more players if it comes to that.

To me the most awesome part of this deck is the interaction between your mill effects, Clones, and Undead Alchemist. Not only does this shut off the ever-popular graveyard recursion decks; it's also an awesome back-up plan to Tombstone Stairwell that interacts well with your gameplan, if not your Commander[/card].

That’s all we have for this week. Once again, be sure to let us know what you think. Do you like what we’re doing? Wish we were covered a particular format more? Let us know what kind of decks you’d like to see more of by leaving a comment or tweeting @GatheringMagic on Twitter.

TAGS articles, standard, elder dragon highlander, current events, deck lists, legacy, edh, commander, modern, gatecrash, carlos gutierrez, decks of the week

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