The Four Things You Are Getting Wrong About the Best Deck in Standard

Posted on May 10, 2022

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If this article's title wasn't explicit enough, let me clarify: Rakdos Ob Anvil is the Best Deck in Standard. That statement is neither close nor particularly arguable.

Which isn't to say that you can't play other decks. I've personally acquired Play-In Points with Maestros Mill, White Weenie (splashing Yasharn, Implacable Earth), and Green Ramp (also splashing Yasharn, Implacable Earth). I think if you're a solid - and maybe more importantly, patient - player with one of the other plausible decks, you can expect to win a Play-In Point one out of every three or four Events. And in the two or three losers, you'll often have five or six wins, so stay above water, walk away with some packs, and build your collection without forking over any hard currency to the nice people in Renton, WA.

But all these other decks pale next to Ob Anvil. Ob Anvil, competently played, feels like it should be taking home Play-In Points well - and I mean well - over 50% of the time on average. If this statement gives you pause... I'm glad. It means you're full of a healthy skepticism, and probably have the kind of quantitative fluency our increasingly complex and confusing world needs more of.

1. Houdini Breaks Serve

Don't you pay me to not give this away for free?
— Michael Flores (@fivewithflores) May 6, 2022

I shared the version of Ob Anvil I talked about in last week's article with my good friend Voldemort* after the above lively Twitter exchange.

He dubbed the deck "Houdini" ... Because it can seemingly get out of anything and everything.

This is the first and perhaps most important thing people get wrong about Ob Anvil. They see Oni-Cult Anvil and all its playmates. They see Sokenzan Smelter or Sanguine Statuette and assume they're looking at the beatdown deck.

Yes, one of the benefits of Ob Anvil is that it can close out games quickly and punish a stumbling or manascrewed opponent. But what they are missing is just how invincible Houdini is upon switching to defense. Every Drain point from Oni-Cult Anvil, every The Meathook Massacre trigger, and even the ability to render itself immune from non-Trample Lifelink attackers carries over from the last format.

What is new are two things: First, there is of course a double-down on synergy. Rakdos Anvil was already an interlocking poem writ across sixty pieces of beautifully arranged Italian cardboard. Ob Anvil gains four more sources of life gain / Drain that play like eight.

Ob Anvil isn't done until the last life point is gone. It almost doesn't matter how much of a lead the opponent thinks they have. Huge creature? Huge creatures - multiple huge creatures - can be killed; or humiliatingly, blocked forever. I felt kind of bad for my Naya White Weenie opponent yesterday. Their Adelaine kept getting buffed by Halana and Alena, Partners turn after turn after turn; yet for all her attacks, Adelaine could do nothing but buy a cheap string of one-point pings from a brave 1/1 Construct. Later, with a The Meathook Massacre for 0 down, Adelaine's newly-minted attacker each cycle was just combining for more defense when blocked by a faithful Bloodtithe Harvester who could boast no Blood tokens of his own. "But hey," I could imagine him Legosi-ing from behind pointed teeth, "that second point of toughness sure is coming in handy."

If you don't have trample or flying... It's awfully hard to deal damage to this deck at all. It is lousy with bad blockers; and a combination of Deadly Dispute and Oni-Cult Anvil can keep opposing Lifelink from ever triggering. That's not new. What has gotten better is how good Ob Anvil is at killing the opponent while never leaving the back foot. Single-point Drains add up. An additional copy of The Meathook Massacre helps to build distance from that final, lethal, point. And of course, we can't control how much the opponent will be taking from The Adversary's [+1] ability (or if they take damage at all), but a defensive Devil in play ensures we'll be gaining life all along the way, either way.

2. Your Ob Anvil is Mis-Built

Not to jump on the banned-wagon or anything but I just beat 3 Velomachus Lorehold attacks (including 2 at 9/9), Angelfire Ignition, Emeria's Call, and double Burn Down the House 12-0.

Might want to look at that Ob Nixilis card, especially given all the recent Competitive changes pic.twitter.com/Muix2DxLIw
— Michael Flores (@fivewithflores) May 6, 2022

I would credit my favorite streamer CovertGoBlue with the single most important innovation in Ob Nixilis technology: The inclusion of Eaten Alive. He talked about it in this video:

Eaten Alive is transformative for this archetype. First of all, everything in the deck is already designed to be sacrificed. So, it's not like we're an Esper deck suddenly being asked to bin our own Raffine. We're triggering our Oni-Cult Anvil with an artifact non-card or catalyzing our Unlucky Witness when the conservative opponent refuses to attack into it.

I would not have beaten that Velomachus Lorehold Reanimator opponent without Eaten Alive; but having drawn both, won what ended up a completely lopsided contest despite starting out behind some forty mana in value.

In most universes, a single attack from Velomachus Lorehold is often lethal. Have you read all the text on that card? It's no wonder he's the center of multiple Historic strategies, or the payoff to the Standard Invoke Justice deck. Speaking of which, two of the three attacks I withstood were from 9/9 copies of the Elder Dragon Legend!

In previous visits to the Oni-Cult, I've tried Power Word Kill, Infernal Grasp, or Hagra Mauling. In this case, it was helpful specifically because the opponent played Invoke Justice, but Eaten Alive really gets the nod because of its ability to break the mirror. Eaten Alive tag teams with your own Devil token: Together, they can take out multiple copies of Ob Nixilis, the Adversary for one mana; one can be however big, but the second one is, more often than not, at one loyalty. Don't forget you can Eaten Alive an opposing Devil without triggering its death trigger ping! This play can open you up for an attack while subtly defending your own Adversaries.

3. Violating the Prime Directive

We recently talked about how Esper Violates the Prime Directive. One of the most seductive mistakes for creative people is to be a bad something else. They are drawn to Balduvian Bears in a world of Savage Bastards.

Yes, the pull of any Quinton Hoover art is a thing that can legitimately get one's gears turning, but the output of that card is just not where we need to be for .

I feel like this is where people are who want to play Ob Nixilis, the Adversary with Kaito Shizuki; Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter; or Goldspan Dragon are coming from. Those are all great cards! Well, maybe not Kaito... But nevertheless, it is kind of natural and certainly understandable to identify Red or Black cards and just want to play the best Red-and-Black card alongside them.

What these decks are missing out on is the degree to which the sum of Ob Anvil's parts exceeds the value of its individual components. One of the first decks I tried Ob Nixilis in was a Planeswalkers deck. I had a lot of experience sacrificing early Shambling Ghasts and Eyetwitches in Blood Money! Presumably I could line up all kinds of overlapping incentives with Dockside Chef or Fell Stinger; later, I could get Ob Nixilis back with Blood on the Snow, as I might with Lolth or Liliana.

The problem is that like literally any Ob Nixilis, the Adversary is like a 6. In a Planeswalker deck, it could be... A 6. Maybe a 7 due to a context already so rich with sacrifice fodder. But in Ob Anvil, it is close to a 10. And not only that, in concert with everything else going on, it helps to elevate the other cards due to overlapping synergies.

For example, imagine just triggering Casualty with a 1/1 Construct with Oni-Cult Anvil in play. You will trigger the Anvil to get a fresh 1/1 but also leave the Anvil itself untapped to help protect you from Lifelink on the opponent's turn. If you have The Meathook Massacre, your sacrifice will deal double duty, and the Devil you are about to make will, too, on defense. The Ob Anvil deck is built with overlapping synergies in mind, giving your curve hands more payoffs. For instance, a turn two Bloodtithe Harvester can set up either an Anvil with the Blood token or Ob with Casualty 3.

On the other hand, if you're asking yourself if you should be getting back The Adversary or the Spider Queen with Blood on the Snow, you've already lost... The game of life. Ob Nixilis is the best when it's at the top of the curve, making all those ones and twos into aspiring tens. But one Planeswalker to one Planeswalker? Especially when you can't actually Casualty off the Blood? It's no Lolth, and playing them together doesn't only fail to get the best out of Ob, it insults everything that's so great about the Demon Queen of Spiders in a big spell Control deck.

No individual action in Ob Anvil is necessarily backbreaking. Even an artifact trigger with two copies of Oni-Cult Anvil in play is only probably worth 2-3 mana. Are you getting it for zero mana and probably not an actual card? Yes. Should that horrify the opponent? Not for very long, gladly. But still, it's not that impressive of an effect in the abstract. It's not a triple Time Walk or Tibalt Ultimate.

The problem comes in when you're doing that, and also activating multiple copies of Ob Nixilis, and defending while gaining life and doing damage, and... AND... We get to draw a card every turn also? And our card is one of these kinds of things that does more than one thing?

No individual action, no card, no one effect looks backbreaking on paper. All of them are kind of like the anti-Topiary Stomper. Topiary Stomper is this card that is unambiguously notable on rate. You're grafting a full 4/4 vigilance for one mana and no additional cards onto an effect that is often too good for Standard! But in practice, Topiary Stomper is too slow in all but the longest and grindiest games. The Ob Anvil cards are anti-Stompers. They're scrappy 1/1s. Card draw you can't control. A medium guy and a free Blood token. An attacker so crappy no one will block it for fear of losing their real card to one of your few real cards. But put together they're the closest thing to that hypothetical about how many 11-year-olds an adult man trapped in an empty swimming pool could plausibly take before being overwhelmed.

There is some number of unarmed 11-year-olds that will certifiably eff up your crazy uncle in the swimming pool. I don't know that number. Hopefully if he learns it will only be as part of a meticulously choreographed Netflix drama, and not a post-apocalyptic lesson in survival. But there is a number. And Ob Anvil is that number.

4. You Are Either Too Greedy or Not Greedy Enough

The closest deck I can compare Standard Ob Anvil to is full-on Ravager Affinity. Not because they're both artifact decks with creatures, but because they're both this particular stripe of decision-intensive deck. Both Ravager and Ob Anvil present many, many options per turn. In both cases, most of the choices you can make are wrong.

... And in both cases, even the value-hemorrhaging paths still win the game.

This is not to say that you can't lose a game, or in fact lose lots of games if you make the wrong decisions. I've found that outside of tactical or very precise bookkeeping mind farts, the types of errors players make with this deck fall into two categories:

Being too greedy

Not being greedy enough

Both of them are rooted in hype or ignorance, and thus, should be easily remedied.

Let's talk about folks who are being too greedy. An example of those are the players who played Rakdos Anvil last season, or at least have a broad idea of how an Oni-Cult Anvil deck is supposed to work.

Those players want to start on a Voldaren Epicure or Bloodtithe Harvester, follow up with an Oni-Cult Anvil, and win by freerolling value into more value.

A player in that camp might never consider this line:

Turn one - do nothing, or maybe play a Haunted Ridge, tapped

Turn two - play Oni-Cult Anvil and pass

Turn three - sacrifice Oni-Cult Anvil to itself to get one ping and one 1/1 Construct; then sacrifice the Construct to Casualty 1 Ob Nixilis, the Adversary

Now I'm not saying you should always make this sequence of plays. And for certain that is not an exciting way to go about playing your Anvil deck. Your curve is smelly and you'd not netting very much free value for a deck that is generally about getting something and something else for next to nothing.

But depending on what the opponent has, it's not that bad. You should end the turn with both Adversaries in play, along with a 1/1 Devil to defend. If you played your cards in the proper order, you got a Drain as well. If the opponent has only one threat (or even better, is Azorius Control) you have a very good chance of untapping with both copies of Ob Nixilis still in play! Sometimes you can't be too greedy.

Those who are not greedy enough commit - or overcommit - the cardinal sin. They bought into the hype around this card; they played the card. But they don't respect it. They play Ob Nixilis without Casualty. I've watched a good number of YouTube videos and streams. I've played dozens or maybe hundreds of games with Ob Nixilis myself. I don't think I can recall anyone who cast an, let's-call-it,-un-kicked Ob Nixilis even winning.

Why?

One copy of the card isn't that good in isolation. This is part of why I think Ob Nixilis in Kaito Shizuki decks is kind of bad. Neither of its two main abilities really warrants three mana. We don't beat opponents because they slightly stubbed a toe. We want to back up a whole dump truck of cow pie on their lawn. Good luck finding your keys now. We want to drown them in so many paper cuts that they're up to their necks in their own life-giving blood, desperate to keep their heads above water... er... blood.

Super fancy Ob Nixilis decks are similarly not greedy enough. I know you think you are extra greedy if you are currently fantasizing about copying your Ob Nixilis token with Esika's Chariot. But did you ever think about how many g-d things have to go right for that to happen even one time? Or how many double loyalty activations you didn't get by all the stupid setup you went through (including so many extra lands that enter the battlefield tapped)? Or the fact that the best deck in the format plays four copies of Voltage Surge? Who's the real greedy one? If you had just played properly you would have had four activations by now instead of, I don't know, zero.

Not.

Greedy.

Enough.

In conclusion, this is the build I've mostly been playing. It has my unfettered recommendation. Design credit, in particular the addition of Eaten Alive, to CovertGoBlue: