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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 April 13, 2013
 Reddit

Welcome back! With Dragon's Maze on the horizon, things are about to be shaken up in a big way. Even so, there are still a few things that we can learn from the last few weeks of current formats, as well as plenty of sweet decks to keep in mind heading into Dragon's Maze

Let's start off in Standard with a deck that hasn't gotten a ton of attention. This first deck is one that goes over the top of the format in a very unique way, and is being championed by Michael Flores himself. He talked about this deck in an article and a blog post, as well as the Top8Magic Podcast. If you thought we were done with Kessig Wolf Run ramp just because Primeval Titan rotated, you'd be wrong. Let's take a look at Mike's Green-Red Ramp deck.

[Cardlist Title=Gruul Ramp - Standard | Michael Flores]

That is, in fact, four Molten Primordials that you see, and no he's not kidding. This deck has a full eight Threaten effects to help you swing races in your favor. Your gameplan is very similar to that of Junk Reanimator, in that you're racing to cheat in game-ending spells before your opponents can kill you. The real difference is that we've swapped Mulch and Angel of Serenity for Gruul Keyrune and Molten Primordial.

One of the real strengths of this deck is the amount of flexibility you can gain from additional colors and sideboard cards. Tom Stiteler missed Day Two at Grand Prix Pittsburgh, so he decided to crush side events with a build of this deck splashing black for Rakdos's Return, and he's considering Falkenrath Aristocrat to combo with your Threatens. The thing is you could just as easily splash blue for Prime Speaker Zegana or Snapcaster Mage.

Even without a splash, your sideboard gives you infinite flexibility to become more midrangey with Huntmaster of the Fells and Staff of Nin, or to go bigger with Boros Reckoner and [card}Blasphemous Act[/card]. There's an enormous potential to swing games in a deck like this, and the awesome mana in this format gives you plenty of ways to leverage your Molten Primordials into game wins.

The Aristocrats isn't the only powerful deck in the Oros wedge. Over the last few weeks we've seen the rise of a Red-White-Black deck akin to Jund putting up results on Magic Online, using the power of Lingering Souls, Unburial Rites, and Faithless Looting to make sure your mid- and end-game are more consistently powerful than every other deck in the format. Here's the list that Chwarga piloted in a Standard Daily Event.

[Cardlist Title=RWB Rites - Standard | Chwarga, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event]

There are a lot of very powerful White-Black cards available in this format. Obzedat is a card that has slowly found its place in the metagame as a way to grind out Control decks and race Thragtusk, while Sorin has found a place as a way to power up Lingering Souls and pull ahead in the midgame.

In addition to that, you get to play Unburial Rites not as a way to cheat creatures into play, but for pure value. Many decks have a tough time dealing with Olivia Voldaren; how many of them can deal with two or even three? In addition, you've got many of the best cards in the format for buying time against aggro decks, and are more than capable of grinding out midrange and control decks with Sorin and Unburial Rites. You also have access to some of the best and most versatile removal in the format.

Perhaps the best thing about this shell is the flexibility it provides. You can play basically any Red, White, or Black cards in the format, and as such you can build the deck to do just about anything you'd like. As long as you have strong removal, powerful creatures, and Lingering Souls, everything should work out just fine. I am a little bit surprised that there is no Aurelia, the Warleader to just steal games in conjunction with Olivia, but there are only so many slots in a deck, and plenty of powerful cards in these colors.

Let's take a look at our first Modern deck of the week. This is a new take on the Amulet of Vigor combo deck that Gerry Thompson was promoting a few weeks ago. This deck using bouncelands like Selesnya Sanctuary in conjunction with Summer Bloom and Primeval Titan to put tons of lands into play and end the game with Slayers' Stronghold and Sunhome, Fortress of Legion. migacz took the deck in a slightly different direction for this Modern Daily Event:

[Cardlist Title=Hive Mind Combo - Modern | migacz, 3-1 Modern Daily Event]

The biggest selling point for the Amulet of Vigor variants is that they have the most powerful nut draws in the format. You have the potential to kill on turn two, and can reasonably expect to resolve turn two and three Primeval Titans and end games shortly thereafter.

The issue is that sometimes you have hands full of Summer Blooms and bouncelands and nothing to ramp into. migacz tried to solve this problem by adding the Hive Mind plus Pact of Negation combo to the deck, so that you have more game-ending cards to ramp into, as well as a way to just end games.

It's also worth noting the interaction between Tolaria West and bouncelands with Primeval Titan. You can Titan up a Tolaria West and Simic Growth Chamber, float three mana, return Tolaria West to your hand and transmute it for a Pact. Whether you tutor up a Primeval Titan or end the game with Hive Mind, there's a pretty good chance that play ends the game.

Since preview season has started, it wouldn't be right to pass up on a chance to look at what Dragon's Maze might do to competitive formats. In his article this week, Blake Rasmussen took a look at how two the cards he is most excited about may affect the new Standard format. Here's his take on a deck with Deputy of Acquittals as the centerpiece.

[Cardlist Title=White-Blue Humans- Standard | Blake Rasmussen]

Champion of the Parish is probably the best one-drop in this Standard format if your deck is built around maximizing its potential, and that's exactly what this deck tries to do. Your Deputy of Acquittals powers up Champion, and lets you rebuy your detain effects with Lyev Skynight to force through damage with Precinct Captain.

The most exciting interaction in this deck is between Deputy of Acquittals plus Goldnight Commander to assemble a pseudo-Overrun and end games.

There's a chance that a deck like this might want to try a Snapcaster Mage engine along with bounce spells and countermagic. There's no Mana Leak in this format, but Spell Rupture does a pretty good impression in a Champion of the Parish deck.

There's definitely a lot of potential in a shell like this. The cards are synergistic, you have powerful aggressive draws, and you can certainly just kill people before they get a chance to start resolving Thragtusks and stabilizing the board. You're not as aggressive as a deck like Naya Blitz, but I think you have a little bit more reach if the game goes longer.

Over the last few weeks, we've featured mono-colored Commander decks that really focus on pushing the synergies with their Commander to the fullest. Thus far we've taken a look at Diaochan, Artful Beauty, Thrun, the Last Troll, Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker, and Barrin, Master Wizard. The last deck we'll be taking a look at as part of this series is CanEx's take on Horobi, Death's Wail.

[Cardlist Title=Horobi Control - Commander | CanEx]

Mono-Black control is nothing new in Commander. At this point, Black decks have been using Cabal Coffers to power out removal spells, sweepers, and Drain Life for years. However, CanEx has built a deck that doesn't need to spend slots on spot removal. Instead, you get to do cool things with Horobi, Death's Wail.

Cauldron of Souls, Touch of Darkness, Jade Monolith. These kinds of cards let you keep the rest of the table locked under a pseudo-Plague Wind as long as Horobi remains in play. You get to do all of that while beating down with a 4/4 flier for four. That's certainly nothing to scoff at. I mean, what most decks realistically do if you set up Horobi plus Grave Betrayal?

This deck is probably a little heavy on artifacts and enchantments that are only there to target creatures, but it's such an awesome interaction that it's tough to really take issue with that. The place where the deck probably needs a little more work is its end game. Right now the deck just wants to cast indestructible creatures like Darksteel Colossus and X-spells like Exsanguinate. Massacre Wurm does a pretty good job of closing out games, but I really think that the deck could use some Grave Titan-style effects that let you really apply a clock. You play enough recursion engines that you can keep your finishers on board even while keeping Horobi in play.

Order Dragon's Maze singles and boxes today!

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, current events, deck lists, commander, modern, carlos gutierrez, decks of the week

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