Eldrazi Explosion

Posted on July 1, 2016

I was a little worried going into the weekend because not many new cards had been revealed from Eldritch Moon. Luckily, previews are finally blooming left and right and, as with any time spoiler season approaches, it is hard not to focus solely on the new toys we are about to receive. Before I dive right in, I did want to talk about the one new interesting deck we saw this past weekend at GP Pittsburgh, Sultai. While the deck is nothing too far out there, it did manage to break into the Top 8 and presents yet another option in the face of all of the G/W Tokens still lurking.

Sultai Midrange ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Aleksa Telarov GP Pittsburgh Top 8

As with most of these midrange variants, this deck looks to produce slow card advantage to overwhelm the opponent. Nothing new really, but we do see an appearance from The Gitrog Monster and it appears this may be the best shell so far. Languish has already proven to be a powerful sweeper in the current meta, but finding a deck that can both play Languish and present early threats has been a struggling issue. This is one of the better lists I have seen at doing both well.

I have to believe after rotation Gitrog Monster may pick up as a great deal of these Green card advantage engines, such as Den Protector and Collected Company, rotate, but even with them in the format still it is good to see the Frog Legend making an appearance. Outside of Gitrog I really like how well positioned Oath of Nissa is as we approach rotation. The card is still relatively cheap, and, even beyond this deck, has begun showing up more and more over the past month. With potential Eternal playability and a growing Standard base, Oath seems like a slam dunk for stashing away some value through rotation.

Bant Company, Bant Humans and G/W tokens have been ruling the roost, and the other colors are looking to get some support. I am not sure what is in store for Collected Company given how close we are to rotation, but, with enough of a tribal boost from Eldritch Moon, we could still see yet another spike on this card. At the very least the digital copy of the card could see a price increase.

So far the previews have been sporadic, but, as of the start of this week, we are finally getting enough to start theorycrafting more than just a few tweaks to existing decks. While we don’t have nearly as many of the rares and mythics spoiled right away like we did for Shadows over Innistrad, we do have a good idea of what mechanics we are going to see. This week, I want to focus on where those mechanics slot into current Standard and what cards have a chance to see more play due to them. A lot of this can depend on what cards get printed with those mechanics and exactly how pushed the rares and mythics are but for now I am going to assume at least a few cards will be playable.

Flip cards have been around for a while now. The Meld mechanic is exciting and the Angel duo may be playable, or at least the Baneslayer Angel half Gisela,the Broken Blade, but I don't believe the payoff is going to warrant a brand new deck type. The single sided flip cards, which have kind of been over shadowed, really feel playable even at common and uncommon just from what we have.

Grizzled Angler/Grisly Anglerfish is so far captured my brewing attention as I am looking at a way to both fuel the graveyard for cards like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and, at the same time, present a threat that can play offense and defense well. The ability may seem over-costed on the back side, but in any sort of long game against decks like G/W Tokens there will generally be a board stall and typically the person to swing first loses. The card bounces off of Sylvan Advocate and shuts down anything small in most of the wide decks. Against Control it can both provide additional card advantage through the graveyard and provide a reasonable clock and survive a Languish once flipped.

Speaking of control, I was especially excited when I saw the Escalate mechanic; and, though I have since been corrected on how the card works, Blessed Alliance is still a fine tool for W/x control decks. The card, even when you are only able to choose each mode once, can be a very strong combat trick, even in decks where the untap is rarely used. I will be curious to see what the other colors get, but if Green gets anything that can assist ramp you can bet that decks will attempt to slot it in as they already have an extremely strong mana production engine.

Madness and Delirium are both making a return as well in Eldritch Moon but I have not seen a ton outside of Gnarlwood Dryad that impresses me enough to push either of these into constructed play. I can certainly see the formation of a Delirium deck for this coming season but so far we don't have enough information to go off right now. So, I will shelve these for a week or two and approach them when we have more to work with.

While the next card is more of a cycle than a mechanic, it does seem at least a few of the cards have Prowess like abilities. These cards may be playable, leading to a midrange or counter-creature style deck. So far, the frontrunner is Niblis of Frost, which not only plays very well into the current Blue strengths but can easily kill a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or Nissa, Voice of Zendikar while also protecting you. This is not something we have seen at 4 mana and sometimes Archangel Avacyn is just too slow. This also gives you a way to tap down their Avacyn to clear the walker and prevent them from cracking back for a ton. We already have a few playable spirits, and Rattlechains is not a bad instant speed lord, so as long as the spell base is there to support it I feel we may be seeing this new Dungeon Geist in action.

The last mechanic, and my personal favorite from the set, is Emerge. I am personally a huge combo player and this mechanic, out of almost all of the mechanics for the past few years, feels like it may have a chance in eternal formats given a proper push. While I don’t believe Wretched Gryff will be the card to break any formats, I do believe we there potential to see some crazy deck designs come out chaining a few of these cards together. With so little information to go on, it is all just theory for now, but I am excited to watch the reveal of these cards this week and next, and you can bet the moment the right one is previewed I will be working on a seventy five.

As with any set, every day is a new adventure; and, while this week was mostly just shaping possibilities and weighing playability against what we currently have, next week we will likely be able to construct at least a few shells to start with week one. I am already excited for this set, and we have not even seen a walker yet. That alone keeps me constantly refreshing the preview page through the day. Until next week, enjoy the best part of the Magic summer and keep brewing!

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand