The tournaments are flying thick and fast these days – it seems not a weekend goes by without somebody collecting an oversized cheque for playing this game. This weekend we had another SCG $5k weekend in Orlando as well as Grand Prix Brussels, the largest Standard tournament ever (1,667 players.) Across the Top 8 of both standard events we saw a whopping 10 Jund decks, and while there were subtle variations for the Cascade connoisseur I for one am looking for new flavours in my magical smorgasbord. Fortunately, I've found them. The catch of the day is Allies!

Allies were never quite there as a tribe before Worldwake. They just didn't have enough good guys to back up the powerful white pairing of Kabira Evangel and Kazandu Blademaster. Worldwake brought some excellent backup like Hada Freeblade and Talus Paladin, not to mention Join the Ranks, but a monowhite ally deck just didn't have either the explosive starts or the board-controlling inevitability necessary to be competitive. Another colour or two would need to be brought in. Two different decks showed their faces on the weekend, and they're both presented here for your viewing pleasure.

Naya Allies at GP Brussels

I spotted this new archetype online last week after it won a standard premier event, and it seems I was far from the only one. Jeroen Aga took the deck to an incredible 11-0 record at GP Brussels before fading towards the end of day 2 to be out of top 8 contention. He says in the coverage he got the deck from the online lists, and here's what he shuffled up:

[cardlist]4 Ancient Ziggurat

4 Arid Mesa

2 Forest

4 Jungle Shrine

1 Mountain

5 Plains

4 Sunpetal Grove

4 Akoum Battlesinger

4 Bloodbraid Elf

1 Goblin Bushwhacker

4 Hada Freeblade

3 Harabaz Druid

4 Kabira Evangel

4 Kazandu Blademaster

4 Oran-Rief Survivalist

2 Ranger of Eos

4 Talus Paladin

2 Path to Exile

Sideboard

3 Cunning Sparkmage

4 Kor Firewalker

3 Lightning Bolt

2 Path to Exile

3 Tuktuk Scrapper[/cardlist]

There is a lot going on here that will be new to standard watchers. This is an aggressive deck with a low curve, and it is capable of explosive starts that only Red aggro can compare with. With an Akoum Battlesinger or two on the field, every spell you cast – besides Path to Exile – will give your team a power boost, as well as variously spreading around +1/+1 counters, granting lifelink, and granting protection from potentially multiple colours and allowing you to alpha-strike. As an example of the potential of the deck, picture the following idealized series of plays:

Turn 1: Hada Freeblade

Turn 2: Akoum Battlesinger, attack for 5

Turn 3: Akoum Battlesinger, attack for 11

Turn 4: Swing for the game

While I am just spitballing, this line of play is far from unbelievable and only requires three aggro dudes. Harabaz Druid is another explosive tool for the deck. It is easily possible to generate 6 mana on turn 3, and vomit the rest of your hand onto the table to win on turn 4. Going late, all the deck's four drops are extremely strong and able to completely alter the course of the game. Bloodbraid Elf will (nearly) always hit an ally as well as giving you a 3/2 hasty elf. Talus Paladin will Glorious Anthem your team and gain you a ton of life. Ranger of Eos finds you a couple of Freeblades or the Goblin Bushwhacker for that final big attack.

Any Allies player is going to have to be able to generate these explosive starts because the deck is very vulnerable to wrath effects – a deck that relies on playing a bunch of small, individually weak creatures without counter backup is never going to fare well against Day of Judgment and the like. Cunning Sparkmage is also a nightmare for this deck, especially since the +1/+1 counter creatures start as 1/1s or 0/1s when they come into play. Another tack some allies players have tried is to play for the long game.

Bant Allies at SCG Orlando

Bill Stark covered this in a deck tech with Doug Potts in Orlando on the weekend. While he didn't make the top 16 in the 400+ player tournament, he was happy with the way it performed. Without further ado, here's his list (minus sideboard):

[cardlist]6 Plains

2 Island

2 Forest

4 Glacial Fortress

2 Sunpetal Grove

3 Misty Rainforest

4 Ancient Ziggurat

2 Celestial Colonnade

4 Hada Freeblade

4 Ondu Cleric

4 Kazandu Blademaster

4 Halimar Excavator

4 Harabaz Druid

4 Kabira Evangel

3 Talus Paladin

3 Sea Gate Loremaster

3 Rite of Replication

2 Negate[/cardlist]

This is obviously a significantly different deck to the previous one. Besides the palette swap from RGW to UWG, the creatures are generally a lot slower – 1/3 guys, lifegain and milling compared to hasty 3/2s and 2/1s. The game plan seems somewhat confused, with nominally aggressive creatures like Freeblade and Blademaster alongside Halimar Excavator and Ondu Cleric. The idea is to build a substantial board of allies and then land one of the powerful late-game spells that work with this mass of creatures. If you manage to tap your Sea Gate Loremaster with a few buddies on the field, it must be hard to lose.

Rite of Replication is particularly exciting as a finisher because Harabaz Druid makes kicking it a distinct possibility. Targeting an Ondu Cleric will gain you hundreds of life, a Kazandu Blademaster will give you a seriously hefty army, and a Halimar Excavator will mill your opponent out. That said the deck has the same vulnerability to Wraths as the above Naya deck, with only two Negates to save the day. I think this list is rough but it has some good ideas and really shows the potential of blue in ally decks.

Where to next?

So now that Ally decks are a known threat, will people start to test against them? I don't think they are a big enough part of the metagame that people will specifically prepare for them, but most good players should be aware of what they can do and how to attack them from now on. For the allies themselves, white is a necessity for any build. Playing without Hada Freeblade, Kazandu Blademaster, Kabira Evangel and Talus Paladin is almost unthinkable. Personally I would like to see a move to perhaps 5 colour for the more controlling deck, or at least the inclusion of black. Bala Ged Thief can decimate the opponent's hand and Hagra Diabolist is another possible win condition. Ancient Ziggurat and Harabaz Druid give the deck the format's best available manafixing and this should be taken advantage of in any slower build of allies.

And Finally...

Just before I go, I want to talk briefly about a couple of the Rise of the Eldrazi spoilers we've seen recently. Sarkhan the Mad was previewed by Doug Beyer on Monday, and you can check him out on ManaNation's Rise of the Eldrazi Spoiler page here. This new version of Sarkhan Vol is different to any preceding planeswalker in that he has no way to increase his loyalty, and most of the time even his "0" ability will cause his loyalty total to go down. This means after you pay your {3}{R}{B} you are only going to have Sarkhan's services for a limited time. How many activations will you get out of his first ability, on average? Let's look at a couple of decks with R and B mana in the current metagame, Jund and Red Deck Wins splashing black.

I pulled a Jund deck from a Standard Daily event to look at, and swapping the 3 Siege-Gang Commanders for 3 Sarkhans I worked out the average manacost of all cards (including lands) to ≈1.75. This means, on average, you will get 4 activations out of his first ability assuming your opponent isn't helping him on his way to the grave, which is some reasonable card advantage. The cheaper red aggro deck, on the other hand, averages at ≈1.05 due to its much lower curve, which means a touch under 7 unmolested activations. I am not saying that Sarkhan will even be tried in these decks as they may not even want his effects, this is just a mathematical exercise. While his card drawing ability might be of some use to a control deck like Grixis, they are also the most likely to get fewer activations out of him due to their generally more expensive spells – flipping Cruel Ultimatum will knock a fresh Sarkhan out immediately!

His third ability is only worth considering in tandem with his second ability - unless your Dragon tribal deck is having trouble pushing through damage for some reason – so let's just discuss the second one. Turning irrelevant creatures into dragons is potentially very strong, and late game Goblin Guide, Goblin Ruinblaster, Thrinax tokens and Bloodghast are all likely candidates for a dragon-ing. This ability is very splashy but I think there could be some value to it – even if they answer your first dragon they still have to find a way to take care of Sarkhan, or he could just make another one. Another card that is definitely worth looking at to combine with this ability is Goblin Assault. Sarkhan can make at most 3 dragons if your opponent doesn't burn him out, but 3 5/5 fliers should really be enough to swing the game your way so I don't think we can ask much more of him. Sarkhan has potential for sure, but we will have to wait and see if anything comes of it.

Bear Umbra is an exciting Johnny card you can see on the wizards' visual spoiler, here. It is an interesting sort of ability as you can't use the mana all at once on a sorcery speed effect – if you have four forests for instance, and you tap all of them in your first main phase, the mana will evaporate out of your pool by the time your Bear Umbra untaps your forests. There are a couple of creatures this card will work extremely well with, though probably neither is good enough for the tournament scene – Omnath, Locus of Mana loves to have lots of green mana in your mana pool and Bear Umbra facilitates that nicely. Hellkite Charger is a particularly awesome Timmy combo as each time you attack, not only do you get a trigger to spend 7 mana and get another combat phase but you get a trigger to untap all your lands. With such a monstrous creation you can attack endlessly with your 7/7 flier, killing your opponent from any amount of life. While I don't think either of these will be tearing up the standard PTQ season it is certain that Bear Umbra is a card worth watching for signs of brokenness.

That's all I've got time for this week, keep your eyes glued to ManaNation's visual spoiler as it's sure to fill up quickly. If you're particularly keen then let me know what you'd like to see next week – more spoiler discussion, more on standard, more on allies or something completely different!