There I was, watching a YouTube video of some MTG Arena play. I don't recall who the creator was or what they were playing as a deck, but one of their opponents inspired me. They were making use of Rigo, Streetwise Mentor, 0-power creatures, and Expel the Interlopers... It was intriguing and performing pretty well.

As you might realize from my other articles about my Belligerent Blood and Treasure and 5-color Legendary Jank decks, I like to build off-meta decks, try many things, and figure out what works through a process of elimination. In the end, when it comes to playing in serious tournaments and preparing for those, I might just go with one of the strongest decks in the meta, but I think the variety of experience is critical to a greater understanding of game play.

So, I jumped into the rabbit hole. My son played the first version in a local competitive Standard tournament going 0-3. We just threw the deck together, and there were numerous 0/X creatures in the deck and it was incredibly reliant on Bedrock Tortoise for the wins, and basically couldn't win without it. Not great. The 2 Serra Paragons helped a lot, but were insufficient.

The first updates revolved around giving Fallaji Archaeologist more targets to return to the hand after milling 3. Confounding Riddles went in. Our play-tests at home revealed that as the deck moved more toward being a control deck, it performed better. Unfortunately, this means that Rigo, Streetwise Mentor, who did a lot to inspire the deck's existence in the first place, would have fewer and fewer creatures that could attack to provide that card drawing capability.

The deck is solid as it stands, but in the face of a very aggressive meta, it seems to be just a tiny bit too slow. There is definitely something promising here, but as it potentially moves more and more toward a control build, it might just end up being best as a Blue/Green/White ("Bant" I guess) control deck with the very meta Up the Beanstalk. Good meta decks are good meta decks for a reason. For example, when I added The Wandering Emperor, it got much better... So much for being original!

Getting destroyed by the Wandering Emperor convinced me.

The current decklist:

Toughness Control | LCI Standard | Moshe Mann

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Market Gnome
• 2 The Reality Chip
• 3 Rigo, Streetwise Mentor
• 3 Serra Paragon
• 4 Bedrock Tortoise
• 4 Fallaji Archeologist

• Planeswalkers (5)
• 1 Nissa, Ascended Animist
• 4 The Wandering Emperor

• Instants (8)
• 2 Consider
• 2 Cosmic Rebirth
• 4 Confounding Riddle

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Expel The Interlopers

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 The Celestus

• Lands (23)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Island
• 4 Plains
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Mirrex
• 2 Deserted Beach
• 2 Overgrown Farmland
• 3 Dreamroot Cascade
• 4 Razorverge Thicket
• 4 Seachrome Coast

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The Sideboard hasn't been determined yet, but Broker's Initiate is very good here against the aggro decks that are all over.

Playing this deck at home and in some very casual Standard tournaments has taught me a few things, and I will list them in order of prominence:

1. Fallaji Archaeologist almost always features prominently in the games that go well. This may be the #1 MVP of the deck. This is especially true if Serra Paragon can come along to assist. With the archaeologist milling 3 there are usually numerous targets to bring back with the Paragon and it leads to numerous extra land drops.
2. Expel the Interlopers is often required to win a game. Maybe this is a function of having too few targeted removal spells in the deck, but having the 2 copies of The Celestus has saved more than one game by allowing a turn four Expel.
3. The 0/3 and 0/4 creatures give aggro players reasons to play more creatures which makes the field wipes that much more powerful.
4. There is rarely time for The Reality Chip to become impactful in the game, but if we can stall the opponent out and reconfigure it, then it can win all on its own.
5. Nissa, Ascended Animist will win games all on her own if you can survive to play her.
6. Mirrex is not good in this deck. The mites can't block. Bah.

I suspect that one of the best directions to take the deck is to convert even further into a control deck with some opportunities to win through things like Bedrock Tortoise, The Reality Chip, Nissa, and The Wandering Emperor. That probably means dropping one Tortoise, dropping all the Rigos, and leaning into that style of play while maintaining other aspects of the deck. As I mentioned above, it might just be better to build a more traditional control deck that includes Up the Beanstalk for significant card advantage over the course of the game. Doing this while being able to keep Fallaji Archaeologist in the deck to find Beans might be one of the best things to happen...

Have fun out there! I will follow up with an update in a few weeks after I have had more time to work on the deck.