Deckbuilding in Standard with an Old School Magic Pro

Posted on November 9, 2023

I started playing Magic: The Gathering in 1993 or 1994 when Unlimited (later known as 2nd Edition) came out, and after about 18 years of not playing, I am back. I played in 3 or 4 Pro Tours, US Nationals, and I was a regular Top 8 player in the southwest for our Pro Tour Qualifiers. I love the game and I like to compete.

My 16 year-old son started playing, and so I am back. Coming back has been weird so far... Thoughts have crossed my mind:

What the heck is Commander and why are so many people playing it?

Why are there no Standard format tournaments?

Do I want to play online with MTG Arena or not?

Why aren't people showing up to events with cards to trade?

How am I going to build a deck while missing 18 years of card information?

I will walk you through a bit of how I answered that last question in addition to sharing the first draft (and some likely revisions) of the deck. To start off, I am disinclined to spending $50-70 per card for something like Sheoldred, The Apocalypse. It is just a fancy, much improved Juzam Djinn. I have been beating decks running Juzams for years. Still, it was in something like 60% of the top decks from worlds.

Where did Wizards put that ban stick?

Given the nature of fast traveling information these days and companies dealing in Magic: The Gathering singles, I needed to build something off meta. "Trash" rares (I guess the nice term is "bulk") are $0.50-$1.50 per card. Some obviously powerful mythics (don't get me started on having this rarity level) that are recognized but not chase rares are $5-6. There is definitely a large pool of cards to search through as an experienced player coming back to Magic. As a point of reference, to purchase everything for this deck (and extra copies to trade once I prove their value) cost $112.

Cheap me still feels like this is a lot, since it is about 25-35% of a week's food budget for my family of 6. Yes, we almost exclusively cook at home. Anyways, this was the process that I went through:

Search through the top decks for ideas of powerful cards to think about.
- See Rona, Herald of Invasion // Rona, Tolarian Obliterator and others.
- The websites that showed expected cost to purchase cards were very helpful to identify Rona as what I felt was a particularly undercosted card.

Look for individually powerful or potentially broken cards. (Thanks Magic Companion App!)

Follow the chain of ideas looking for potential combos and ways to abuse those cards.

Build around that planned abuse of those cards.

This led me to Deeproot Wayfinder.

The number of 2-drop creatures that I have seen on this power level would be measured in the dozens. Meddling Mage anybody? Now, to capitalize on this merfolk shaman in a deck would require some fetch lands so that I have lands to regularly bring back if I can do that combat damage. So, I used the companion app searching for lands, legal in standard, with the rules text "search." Hello search lands from the Streets of New Capenna... Brokers Hideout, Cabaretti Courtyard, Maestros Theater, Obscura Storefront, and Riveteers Overlook.

These would make running a janky 5-color deck so easy to manage. It would allow the running of 27-28 lands without getting hyper punished with land flooding thanks to the search function. The first draft of the deck definitely won't be the best implementation, but when is it ever? Just a few days earlier, I was crushed by Jodah, The Unifier in a Commander game... a format not particularly aligned with how I like to play Magic.

The obsession with Commander has a great benefit for this deck, though, as it means Wizards has printed numerous three-color legendary creatures with amazing effects. Unfortunately, I was going to have a problem; the Deeproot Wayfinders need to deal combat damage to do their thing. A quick search looking for ways to play lands from the graveyard revealed Serra Paragon, and this was coming together... Hitting all five colors would be consistent enough, especially with land destruction being mostly phased out of the game.

Deeproot Wayfinder, Capenna fetch lands, Serra Paragon, and Jodah. Since multicolored cards have always been more powerful, it was just a matter of looking through those legends available in standard. The first draft of the deck is below:

Five-Color Legendary Jank | WOE Standard | Moshe Mann

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So, that is the first draft. I considered things like Fauna Shaman and Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer, but they didn't make it in.

Of course, a better application of abusing this land action with Deeproot Wayfinder might be to utilize it in an aggressive deck to improve the chances of dealing some combat damage with it. Some creature removal and/or bounce could do a lot. For now, five-color Legendary jank is for me.

The first few practice games revealed that Soul of Windgrace might be even better than Serra Paragon for bringing the fetch lands back into play, and in many ways getting mana is better in this deck than getting. Additionally, maybe an extra Lagrella, the Magpie could be used to get more damage through.