Bloomburrow came alive on Magic: The Gathering Arena last week, and I was super excited to take the new Standard out for a spin...

But not for the same reasons that you might guess! You see, rather than try out the new cards, I actually wanted to see how the theories I had put forth the last couple of weeks might play out. You might remember two weeks ago I was talking about an Azorius port; and last week I speculated that Deadly Cover-Up might be one of the best cards in the new format.

In any case, I figured that people trying out the new cards would all be gumming up the ground, and I thought fighting on a completely different axis would be a good avenue: CONTROL!

Rather than start out with Azorius, I went with a creature-hating Dimir Control deck for my first foray. If it looks familiar, it's updated from a CovertGoBlue design that I wrote about a few months back.

The biggest losses, honestly, were the Shipwreck Marshes from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Most of the rest of the shell is intact (with a few modifications). Despite losing the best dual land, I haven't been too upset with the mana. There are a lot of Black - including double Black - spells, and having a lot of basic Swamps makes Demolition Field better.

Dimir Crime Spree | BLB Standad | Michael Flores

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Harvester of Misery
• 4 Hostile Investigator

• Instants (16)
• 4 Cut Down
• 4 Go for the Throat
• 4 Phantom Interference
• 4 Three Steps Ahead

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Deadly Cover-Up

• Enchantments (5)
• 2 Virtue of Persistence
• 3 Intimidation Campaign

• Lands (27)
• 5 Island
• 5 Swamp
• 2 Mirrex
• 3 Demolition Field
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Restless Reef
• 4 Underground River

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Duress
• 2 Long Goodbye
• 2 Glistening Deluge
• 3 Malicious Eclipse
• 3 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1 Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal // Temple of the Dead

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This deck is by design a "beatdown destroyer" rather than a pure Control deck. It's best at killing creatures that are trying to kill you. The many sweepers make it pretty good at fighting any kinds of creatures, for the most part... Including those that are building toward value and synergies.

Many of the best games are the ones where you can fire off removal on consecutive turns, and then tap out for Hostile Investigator on turn four. I had Hostile Investigator in my Outlaws of Thunder Junction Prerelease and didn't, at the time, appreciate how good the card is. Its 3 toughness means the creature is not particularly durable. On the other hand, its 4 power makes it great at killing offensive creatures, even small ones who get big ideas from Monstrous Rage or Mouse-based buffs on the battlefield. This deck is all about Deadly Cover-Up and other sweepers, so you don't necessarily need your Hostile Investigator to stick around. Gaining value and buying time can be enough to win the game.

Where this deck struggles (so far) is with permanents that aren't just creatures. I speculated that Mabel, Heir to Cragflame would be a problematic card... Because of the non-card Cragflame. That artifact - and it's just a measly token! - makes almost every topdeck annoying. Every creature having haste is bad enough, but the extra power can add up quickly, especially against your sorcery speed removal. So, you need a value engine that's more powerful than the opponent giving every teenie tiny creature haste just to stay in some games. Otherwise, you can get nickel-and-dimed two points at a time until you're quits.

Virtue of Persistence is a powerful value engine... and one that other decks have already picked up on. So far, I have liked this deck when embroiled in Virtue-on-Virtue violence. Most of the opposing Virtue decks I've faced have been some kind of Mono-Black, and I think the Blue is helpful here. For instance, Virtue of Persistence itself is about a trillion mana, so a humble Phantom Interference can keep it off the battlefield.

Once both players have Virtue, it becomes this weird dance about emptying both graveyards. Removal gets bad (at least sort of), so the ability to filter with Three Steps Ahead can get rid of removal you don't want. Then again, when there are no creatures in either graveyard, removal can be kind of good... You take out the best creature on the other side and then reanimate it! You can also straight dump a creature into your graveyard on the opponent's turn, or engage in a cool Clone trick. Three Steps Ahead is like three Michelin stars in this deck.

Results

So far I've played the Crime Spree in one Standard Event, which earned me a Play-In Point! It was - to no one's surprise - mostly creature decks on the other side of the table; and Burn updates most of all.

I think if you needed one reason to try playing no new cards / no problem it's that this is about the best deck against the inheritors of Mono-Red. I'm broadly including or decks that have Mouse synergies or Snakeskin Veil... All of them are good matchups, though actual Mono-Red is the best because of its lack of ways to get around targeted removal. Monstrous Rage is the biggest problem, and even it doesn't beat Go for the Throat or Deadly Cover-Up.

My favorite interaction in these matchups is between specifically Virtue of Persistence and Heartfire Hero; you can sub in Harvester of Misery and/or Cacophony Scamp, but Harvester of Misery doesn't gain life and Cacophony Scamp isn't a new card, so they're not as interesting. Part of the selling point of Heartfire Hero and Cacophony Scamp is that when the opponent kills them, they get extra value. But if you kill them by giving them -2/-2 or -3/-3... They won't have power greater than zero so will have less effective a death wail.

Other key interactions:

• Hostile Investigator and Three Steps Ahead: Three Steps Ahead on five mana (Cancel + Catalog) is what makes the card so deadly in decks. In this deck it has even greater force, because the act of discarding a card triggers Hostile Investigator. Make a Clue!
• Three Steps Ahead and Hostile Investigator: If you're used to Azorius (as I mostly was) you might miss the six mana version of Three Steps Ahead (Cancel + Clone); making a second Hostile Investigator - or all three abilities for eight mana - make you really happy you're playing with creatures. A second 4/3 body + a forced discard makes for at least two more Clues. Truly this is a symphony of card advantage.
• Hostile Investigator + Harvester of Misery: Playing your Investigator with six mana open is one of the more common plays with this deck. You are leaving up Go for the Throat or Phantom Interference... Worse comes to worst you can just sacrifice the Clue you just made at the end of the opponent's turn. But with Hostile Investigator in play, discarding Harvester of Misery makes for essentially an Annihilate. Kill the opponent's creature + make a Clue.
• Harvester of Misery ignoring Hostile Investigator: 3 toughness doesn't seem like much, but it's just high enough a threshold for Harvester of Misery. Often your 4/3 will be holding off an army of smaller creatures. Now go ahead and make your 5/4. Harvester of Misery will live while your opponent's weenie army won't.
• Hostile Investigator + the opponent's card draw? This has come up a ton, actually. Opponents over-drawing with cards like Silver Scrutiny so that they pass the turn with eight or more cards in hand... Discarding to hand size, too, will trigger Hostile Investigator.

As good as the Crime Spree can be against creature decks, it can sometimes lose to go-wide strategies; which is why the sideboard is so full of sweepers. It's less that you need to be great at killing great creatures, and more that you need to not get completely run over before you have the mana for Deadly Cover-Up. Glistening Deluge and Malicious Eclipse are there to buy time.

I have had spotty results with artifact-based decks, and decks in general. Meaning I've mostly won by assigning myself to the beatdown role, but haven't really felt like I deserved it. Duress is an obvious sort of card to play against either slower decks or machinery decks... And Sheoldred and Aclazotz seem like good cards to pivot into when you don't have good answers to artifacts and enchantments. Maybe you try and handle my powerful permanents, huh?

I haven't played against the new Domain decks yet; though I assume that Restless Reef will give them problems. I'm sure some enterprising opponent will challenge this assumption in the coming weeks, if not days.

I've had a lot of fun - and a little success - winning with NO NEW CARDS as of yet. Props to CGB for the original deck idea, and even more props to my opponents for predictably playing lots and lots of small creatures early into the Bloomburrow Standard format.

LOVE

MIKE

P.S.

I'm trying something a little different. If you want to see this deck in a few minutes of action (paired with a high point in my writing career) please check out this YouTube video: