Hello everyone. With the holiday season here, you might find yourself getting together with friends and family. If you're lucky, those folks might enjoy playing some Magic during your festivities. This week, I'm taking a look at a few decks you can play for fun, or take them to your FLGS (friendly local game store) and use them at FNM (Friday Night Magic). Let's get started.
Selesnya Enchantments
We start this week with a pretty unique deck, as it has no creature spells. Let's start by taking a look at the deck to try to figure out how it will win matches.
Selesnya Enchantments | VOW Standard | HelloGoodGame, aetherhub.com user
- Sorceries (6)
- 2 By Invitation Only
- 4 Doomskar
- Enchantments (30)
- 2 Sigarda's Splendor
- 4 Battle for Bretagard
- 4 Borrowed Time
- 4 Felidar Retreat
- 4 Glorious Sunrise
- 4 Hallowed Haunting
- 4 In Search of Greatness
- 4 Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity
- Lands (24)
- 8 Forest
- 8 Plains
- 4 Branchloft Pathway // Boulderloft Pathway
- 4 Overgrown Farmland
As I mentioned before the decklist, this deck has no creature spells. In order to finish off your opponent, you'll be making creature tokens to attack with. These creature tokens can be created in a few different ways. Battle for Bretagard will create a pair of creature tokens during its chapter one and two stages. Its third chapter allows you to create another copy of each differently named token, often allowing you to double your forces post haste. Felidar Retreat easily allows you to create a 2/2 Cat Beast creature token whenever you achieve landfall. Alternatively, instead of creating a Cat Beast, you can opt to put a +1/+1 counter on each of your creatures instead. Most often, though, you'll need the extra tokens in order to overwhelm your opponent.
Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity gives you the potential to create a trio of 1/1 Human creature tokens. Once Wedding Announcement transforms, it provides a boon of +1/+1 to all of your creatures. Finally, Hallowed Haunting allows you to create a Spirit Cleric creature token whenever you cast an enchantment spell. The power and toughness of these Spirit Cleric tokens is equal to the number of Spirits you control, and can allow you to amass quite a number of creatures. Due to their scaling power and toughness, these tokens can grow large enough to block any threat your opponent might have. Once you have seven or more enchantments in play, all of your creatures will get flying and vigilance. This allows you to attack evasively, while remaining able to block your opponent's attacks.
In order for you to have the time needed to build up your token forces, you'll need ways to control your opponent's forces. With Doomskaar, as early as turn three, you'll be able to clear the battlefield of all creatures, giving you some breathing room. Later on, you'll have access to By Invitation Only. Since your goal should be to outnumber your opponent, you'll often be able to force your opponent to sacrifice all of their creatures, sacrificing an equal number yourself, and still have creatures remaining on the battlefield. Finally, Sigarda's Splendor will provide you with a point of life every time you cast a White spell. It can also often act as a means of drawing additional cards, especially when your opponent isn't able to keep their creatures on the battlefield.
Demonic Scute Swarm
The next deck I have for you features Dreadfeast Demon, a seven mana value creature, as its finisher. Let's check it out.
Demonic Scute Swarm | VOW Standard | MtgMalone, aetherhub.com user
- Creatures (17)
- 3 Cemetery Prowler
- 3 Dreadfeast Demon
- 3 Eyetwitch
- 4 Scute Swarm
- 4 Shambling Ghast
- Instants (7)
- 3 Infernal Grasp
- 4 Deadly Dispute
- Sorceries (6)
- 1 Path of Peril
- 2 Culling Ritual
- 3 Dig Up
- Enchantments (6)
- 3 Binding the Old Gods
- 3 The Meathook Massacre
[Sideboard]
1 Containment Breach
1 Introduction to Annihilation
1 Necrotic Fumes
2 Environmental Sciences
2 Mascot Exhibition
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
Dreadfeast Demon costs seven mana and provides you with a 6/6 flying creature that can create copies of itself. To do this, though, you'll need a supply of non-Demon creatures to sacrifice to Dreadfeast Demon at the beginning of your end step. That's where Scute Swarm comes in. A copy of Scute Swarm on the battlefield will create either a 1/1 Insect creature token or a token that's a copy of Scute Swarm whenever you achieve landfall (depending on the number of lands you have in play). Those tokens can be the fodder you'll sacrifice to Dreadfeast Demon in order to create additional Demon tokens. Make sure to sacrifice the Insect tokens first, as the Scute swarm tokens will double up with every land played after you have six.
Dreadfeast Demon is pretty costly, though, requiring seven mana to play. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to lower this cost. Cemetery Prowler can help. When it enters the battlefield or attacks, you can exile a card from either player's graveyard. You'll then receive a one mana discount when casting spells that share a type with the cards exiled with Cemetery Prowler. So, by exiling a creature, you'll get a discount when casting creature spells. While it's often better to exile a card from your opponent's graveyard, there will be times this isn't possible. For those times, you can count on Deadly Dispute to come to the rescue. With this instant, you can sacrifice one of your own creatures to draw two cards and create a Treasure token. If you happen to sacrifice Shambling Ghast, you can also create another Treasure token. With all of this Treasure and mana reduction happening, you can cast Dreadfeast Demon much earlier than turn seven.
If your opponent happens to be playing an aggro deck and they manage to get a fair number of creatures in play right away, this deck has a plan to help catch you up. Culling Ritual can be cast to destroy each nonland permanent with a mana value of two or less. This will also provide you with some additional mana that you can use. This can often allow you to wipe your opponent's battlefield clean, while setting yourself up for a comeback on the next turn.
Chandra One-Drop Red
The final deck I have for you features a lot of aggression alongside our newest version of Chandra. Let's take a look at the deck.
Chandra One-Drop Red | VOW Standard | LegenVD, aetherhub.com user
- Creatures (20)
- 4 Akoum Hellhound
- 4 Falkenrath Pit Fighter
- 4 Hall Monitor
- 4 Kessig Wolfrider
- 4 Wayward Guide-Beast
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 4 Chandra, Dressed to Kill
- Instants (8)
- 4 Frost Bite
- 4 Play with Fire
- Sorceries (8)
- 4 Ancestral Anger
- 4 Reckless Impulse
- Lands (20)
- 20 Snow-Covered Mountain
Featuring a whopping 32 1-drop spells, this deck screams aggression. Start off with Akoum Hellhound. This Elemental Dog is relatively tame until landfall happens and it becomes a 2/3 for the rest of the turn. Wayward Guide-Beast is next, helping to trigger landfall for Akoum Hellhound. Be careful not to attack with this Beast if you're in need of the mana, though, as returning lands to your hand will set you back if you're not careful. Hall Monitor is the next 1-mana creature, and it offers you the means of getting damage through by making an opponent's creature unable to block. The fact that this Lizard Shaman has haste allows you to use this activated ability on the turn Hall Monitor enters the battlefield.
Falkenrath Pit Fighter offers you a means of drawing additional cards. Doing this does require you to sacrifice a Vampire, and since Falkenrath Pit Fighter is the only Vampire in the deck, you'll end up losing out on two points of power if you decide to draw two cards. The last 1-mana creature is Kessig Wolfrider. This Human Knight has an activated ability that can allow you to create a 3/2 Wolf creature token, which is a bit bigger than most of your other creatures. The final cards that cost one mana are Frost Bite, Play with Fire, and Ancestral Anger. Both Frost Bite and Play with Fire are direct damage spells that you can use to destroy your opponent's blockers. Ancestral Anger allows you to draw a card as well as providing a power boost and trample to one of your creatures. That trample can often allow you to deal the last points of damage needed to finish your opponent off when the battlefield becomes congested.
Chandra, Dressed to Kill is the star of this deck. Her first +1 loyalty ability provides you with two very important things, direct damage to your opponent and additional mana. This is the loyalty ability you'll use most often, and it will help you to whittle your opponent's life total away while simultaneously providing the mana needed for you to flood the battlefield with creatures. There might be times that you'll be able to use her second +1 loyalty ability as a means of having additional cards to cast. Since this deck is Mono-Red, you won't have to worry about exiling a card that you'll be unable to cast.
Wrapping Up
I love playing decks that are a little off the beaten track. Each of these decks are very unique, not like the usual Standard decks that most people are playing. However, even though they are different from the typical decks, they all are very capable of winning games. I'm looking forward to trying out each of these on Magic Arena this week.
What do you think of these decks? Do you have any suggestions for improvements? Let me know by leaving a comment below. Also, feel free to share this article with your friends anywhere on social media. And be sure to join me here again next week as I continue my search for innovative decks in Standard. I'll see you then!
-Mike Likes