facebook

CoolStuffInc.com

Turn your cards and minis into cash! Maximize your value with our 25% store credit bonus!
  
Account Meeple
Location IconLocations
Account MeepleLogin
0 Item
Advanced Search
   Sign In
Create Account
Main » Articles » 5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on June 15, 2013
 Reddit

Dragon's Maze has brought with it the end of the Sphinx's Revelation era of Standard and the beginning of Voice of Resurgence's reign as the defining card of the format. How have your favorite formats evolved this week? Let's find out what sweet things people have brewed up!

Ever since Rapid Hybridization was printed, people have been trying to break it using a combination of undying and evolve cards. So far we've seen moderate success from Bant and RUG builds, but the original deck was BUG featuring Duskmantle Seer and Zameck Guildmage. Those cards may not make the cut anymore, but Vash801 is bringing BUG back. Here's the build he took to 3-1 in a Standard Daily Event.

BUG Morbid - Standard | Vash801, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

Skirsdag High Priest is kind of a big deal. The more creature-focused Standard becomes, the better this card gets against all of the creature mirrors. The ability to make 5/5 demons as early as turn three is nothing to be scoffed at, and Rapid Hybridization does a great job of upgrading your evolve creatures and providing a body to tap for High Priest. You also get access to Lotleth Troll, which seems pretty insane in the creature mirrors. He may not stand up to Boros Reckoner particularly well, but he still buys you all the time you could possibly need to get your other engines going.

Unlike Lotleth Troll, Gravecrawler may be just a little bit too cute. You'd rather play just about any of your other three one drops, and Gravecrawler gets outclassed absurdly quickly. It's one thing if you're going to combo with Varolz, the Scar-Striped and Blood Artist, and it is worth mentioning that this does let you evolve your Cloudfin Raptors and Experiment Ones later on in the game, but I just don't think Gravecrawler is good enough.

One of the awesome things about this deck is that you et to play most of the best removal in the format. Sure, you don't have the reach of Searing Spear, but Vash801 is playing Putrefy and Abrupt Decay, and you could pretty easily fit in some copies of Tragic Slip to power through mana elves and bigger creatures. The biggest issue that this deck faces is Angel of Serenity, so select your removal suite with that in mind.

The first few times that Planeswalkers were printed, many of them were powerful enough that you'd go pretty far out of your way to be able to play some of them. Some decks played up to fourteen of them. Recently, creatures have gotten better at fighting Planeswalkers, so that plan is much less reliable than it once was. That doesn't matter to Matt Higgs; he still wants to bring back the Planeswalker block party. Let's take a look at the list from his article this week.

5cc Block Party - Standard | Matt Higgs

Ramp, wraths, Thragtusks, and Planeswalkers. Seems sweet to me. The important thing is the mix of Planeswalkers. This is a deck that wins by generating incremental advantage by having multiple Planeswalkers in play for multiple turns in a row. To that end, you need a lot of cheap Planeswalkers. They're the ones who come down early, interact, and probably die. You need a critical mass of these so that you can resolve enough that they start living through your opponent's turns. Your first Liliana of the Veil probably won't live. Neither will your Ral Zarek. But when you play Tamiyo, the Moon Sage into Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, you're probably going to start gaining some ground.

Speaking of Ral Zarek, how absurd is his ultimate in this deck? If there's a deck that's going to pull it off, it's this one, and getting a free Time Stretch seems unbelievably unfair in this deck. All told, this deck seems like a lot of fun. Four sweepers is certainly not enough to stand up to the Voice of Resurgence decks that we've seen taking over Standard, but the Terminus in the sideboard will help with that after sideboarding. You shouldn't have too much trouble against control since you have more Planeswalkers than they have counterspells. All told, this seems like a great FNM deck that'd be an absolute blast to play. Maybe you could go a little deeper and try the Verdant Haven/Sphere of Safety plan to help ensure that your Planeswalkers live.

When Modern first became a format, a lot of people were very excited about Dragonstorm. Then it turned out that Storm was just a better deck. Since Jon Finkel Top 16ed the most recent Modern Grand Prix with Storm, that may still be the case, but with Eggs and Storm significantly slower, Secher_Bach saw fit to go bigger with Dragons. Let's take a look at his list from this Modern Daily Event:

Dragonstorm - Modern | Secher_Bach, 3-1 Modern Daily Event

This deck is very similar to the deck that took Patrick Chapin took to the finals of Worlds 2007, and the deck that gave us one of the most intense semi final matches to happen on the Pro Tour. For anyone who isn't familiar with the gameplan, there are three of them. You have two storm plans: Dragonstorm or Grapeshot/Pyromancer's Swath. And if those don't work, you can just hardcast a Dragon and bring the beats.

The card that ties everything together is Spinerock Knoll. Just imagine starting your turn, casting Lotus Bloom and Rift Bolt off of suspend, then Lightning Bolting your opponent twice and casting a Dragonstorm from under a Spinerock Knoll. That's not terribly unreasonable, and it gets your opponent very, very dead.

The most interesting pieces of technology in this deck are the choice of Dragons. Bogardan Hellkite has always been the standard, but Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund gives you incredible protection against drawing too many Dragons, which has always been a problem for this deck. It's awful to Dragonstorm for five, only get three Bogardan Hellkites only to have your opponent Wrath of God and stabilize. Similarly, Thundermaw Hellkite makes sure that your Karrthus-hasted Dragons can get through blockers like Lingering Souls and Birds of Paradise.

Thanks to the recent success of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas decks, quite a few people have been brewing around Transmute Artifact as a pseudo-Tinker effect in Legacy. Jeff Blyden played a very exciting Affinity deck with Transmute Artifact, and Caleb Durward picked up the idea and ran with it. Let's take a look at what he ended up with from his article this week:

Transmutefinity - Legacy | Caleb Durward

Transmute Artifact plus the affinity mechanic let you do some pretty absurd things. In this build, you can Transmute Artifact your Frogmites into Batterskull or various Swords with relative ease. You can even transmute your Artifact Lands into Umezawa's Jitte without too much trouble. In his original list, Jeff Blyden even had the ability to turn Myr Enforcer into Sundering Titan.

My biggest concern about a deck heading in this direction is that it doesn't have the aggressive tools to race combo or control, but also can't really go over the top of those decks either. Caleb's list has traded the explosive power of Sundering Titan for attrition-based cards that might just lose to decks with Sweepers and Jace. That said, once you resolve a Batterskull, you have the ability to make quite a few of them and create a truly monstrous threat. I don't know if this is the best shell for Transmute Artifact, but I certainly hope it's not the last.

Six down and four to go. We've only got a handful of Legends left in our feature of Dragon's Maze Legends. Last week we covered Varolz, the Scar-Striped, this week we're headed into the cult of Rakdos to see what Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch can do. Jedtothemax built the deck we're going to look at this week, and the thing that makes his deck awesome is that it's built around a number of mechanics, rather than focusing exclusively on unleash. Let's take a look:

Exava Unleashed - Commander | jedtothemax

For the longest time, aggro was an archetype that just didn't exist in Commander. Sure, you could try to Voltron people out, but realistically it just wasn't possible to deal enough damage before other players' got their late game into gear. That's just not true any more. Cards like Hellrider have given aggressive decks enough reach in the midgame to make it possible to win by just playing efficiently sized creatures.

The key to this deck is that Exava's ability refers to +1/+1 counters. Jed picked out a number of mechanics that generate counters, all of which are going to end up bringing the hasty beats. Undying, devour, and bloodthirst join unleash as the highlights of this deck, and each of those enable you to stay aggressive while turning Contagion Engine and possibly Contagion Clasp into on-color Gavony Townships. That's not even mentioning things like Ob Nixilis, the Fallen and Olivia Voldaren that generate their own counters!

The key to playing a deck like this is maximizing the effectiveness of your damage. Sometimes it's best to send the team at someone and just kill them dead. Other times it will be better to send Exava one way for the Commander damage kill and the rest of your team at other players to aggro them out. With that in mind, it's important to maximize the number of cards that absolutely must be answered. Things like Hero of Oxid Ridge and Instigator Gang do a great impression of Hellrider, even if they aren't quite as good.

Hopefully this inspires you to get your aggro on, even in a format as slow and powerful as Commander. I know I'm definitely looking to unleash some beats!

Preregister for Grand Prix Vegas featuring Modern Masters Sealed today!

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

Recent Articles

View Archive
Sell your cards and minis 25% credit bonus