Welcome back, folks, to another in this impromptu series on SOM block. Infect has been making waves in the dailies with more aggressive lists putting up a number of 4–0 appearances, and I really want to try out the Red splash for my deck suggested last week in the comments. This week, though, we'll be looking at how my latest digital acquisitions work in Block constructed.

Two of the three strongest decks pre-Besieged were based around Planeswalkers—U/W control centered on Venser with support from Elspeth Tirel was the first, and mono-Red with Koth of the Hammer the second. We now have a fourth Planeswalker to play with—Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas—and he's a doozy. Much better players than I have examined him every which way for Standard, so I'll try to focus in on Block instead, but first—an aside on Planeswalkers.

The rule of thumb in Standard is that 4-mana Planeswalkers are very playable, while 5 mana or more is just too high-costed to pay. I think this rule is very quickly growing outdated. Gideon Jura has become one of the centerpieces of the Standard-dominating Caw/Spark/Go/Blade/Duck U/W/x deck at 5 CMC, and Elspeth Tirel has also poked her head into that deck on occasion. Venser is a dominating presence in Block—and Block will be Standard after October. Most significantly, there was a blatant hint in the Daily MTG Wallpaper of the Week that Ajani Goldmane and Liliana Vess won't be returning in the M12 core set, with Gideon Jura (5) and Sorin Markov (6!) set to take their places as Magic's foremost mascots. In SOM/MBS/Action/M12 Standard, assuming we are getting Baby Jace and Baby Chandra again, we'll have one 3 (Jace), three 4s (Garruk, Koth, Tezzeret), four 5s (Chandra, Gideon, Venser, Elspeth) and a 6 (Sorin), plus whatever we get from Action. I think we are going to have to get over the community preconceptions about 5-mana Planeswalkers, due to a shortage of 4-mana ones, if nothing else.

Aside over! This article is about a 4-mana Planeswalker, and an extremely playable one at that. Scars block is also the perfect format for him—all of Tezzeret's abilities work well with artifacts and want you to play a bunch of them. Scars is an artifact block with lots of playable artifacts. It's almost as if they designed it that way! The first ability in an artifact deck is comparable to Big Jace's Brainstorm ability as you get to dig further, but you can only take artifacts, and you can't pull off shenanigans like shuffling away bad cards. On the plus side, it actually gains him loyalty. Second, we have—to my mind—Tezzeret's most exciting ability, which lets you permanently turn any artifact into a 5/5 creature. This ability is so exciting because it lets you take an aggressive stance without playing cheap creatures—you can just play out your mana artifacts or Tumble Magnets, and if your opponent is playing a slow game, you can start the beat-down. It also gives you a path to victory late, lets you put up some impressive defense, and in general is all-around useful. The final ability is surprisingly relevant—you won't often think about it until you draw your Tezzeret late on a stalled board; suddenly, he is a Suspend 1 – Kill target opponent. Needing only 1 extra counter is wonderful, and with incidental Proliferate cards, you can occasionally get there on the turn you play him. So, how to figure out precisely how useful Tezzeret is? Let's whack him in some decks.

Esper Planeswalkers

Lewis Laskin's Superfriends deck handed me more than a few losses during last year's Standard, and its descendant has been doing the same in Scars block as the Venser/Elspeth tag team. The first place I thought to try Tezzeret was jamming him in alongside these two—I figured, the more the merrier, right? The first attempt at this deck was heavy Black with Zeniths and Grasp of Darknesses in the main deck, but the mana was really horrible, even with duals and Spheres. I left the deck and went off to fiddle with some other ideas—detailed below—but then I came back to this one. I also felt I wanted more artifact answers, so I decided to swing the mana pendulum the other way, leaning toward White with only Tezzerets as the Black:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Sunblast Angel

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

3 Mox Opal

1 Elspeth Tirel

3 Venser, the Sojourner

4 Sphere of the Suns

2 Ratchet Bomb

1 Spine of Ish Sah

4 Tumble Magnet

4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

2 Throne of Geth

2 Flayer Husk

3 Stoic Rebuttal

4 Ichor Wellspring

[/Spells]

[Lands]

3 Swamp

5 Island

6 Plains

4 Inkmoth Nexus

4 Seachrome Coast

4 Darkslick Shores

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

2 Fuel for the Cause

2 Sunblast Angel

1 Elspeth Tirel

4 Steel Sabotage

1 Ratchet Bomb

4 Divine Offering

1 Stoic Rebuttal

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

The mana is still a bit wonky, but the deck feels a lot more proactive than it did previously when I would stuff about for a few turns trying to get colored sources. The Nexuses were not good in this deck, and I would definitely cut them for more basics—the chance of stealing a random win is not worth the mana-consistency issues. The Planeswalkers are still as absurd as they always were, and Tezzeret is no exception, but I learned a valuable lesson about Tezzeret playing this deck: Activating his +1 ability does let you dig for an artifact, but he'll put all the lands, Planeswalkers, counterspells, and other cards on the bottom of your deck—so if you're looking for a nonartifact, he really doesn't help. It can also whiff quite a bit, because nearly half your cards are lands, so adding a bunch of nonartifacts makes this ability a lot worse.

Flayer Husk was a bit of an experiment as an early chump blocker—à la Origin Spellbomb—that also turns on Mox Opal and can become a 5/5 later. Spine of Ish Sah is just as crazy as it seems with Venser—it's virtually impossible to lose in this situation. The Proliferate cards are really handy, especially Throne of Geth—no-mana Proliferate is pretty absurd and highlights why R&D were so cautious with the mechanic. I can't say this deck is any better than the vanilla U/W 'walkers deck, so let's move right on to try to find Tezzeret a more suitable home!

Forgemaster Combo

Martin Juza's 5-0 Forgemaster deck seemingly dropped off the face of the earth before the tide of Caw/Blade sweeping across Standard, but most of the tools of the deck are available in Block, so I decided to see if it could work in the smaller format. I had some reservations about relying on artifact win conditions, with every deck packing a ton of sideboard and main-deck artifact hate, but I figured it was worth a shot.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Blightsteel Colossus

4 Kuldotha Forgemaster

1 Myr Battlesphere

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Ratchet Bomb

2 Grasp of Darkness

4 Tumble Magnet

4 Stoic Rebuttal

2 Mox Opal

1 Spine of Ish Sah

2 Black Sun's Zenith

4 Sphere of the Suns

2 Throne of Geth

4 Ichor Wellspring

4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

[/Spells]

[Lands]

4 Darkslick Shores

4 Inkmoth Nexus

6 Island

10 Swamp

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Steel Sabotage

3 Ratchet Bomb

2 Throne of Geth

3 Skinrender

2 Fuel for the Cause

2 Go for the Throat

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

It certainly isn't a walk in the park trying to stick a Kuldotha Forgemaster in this format, as expected. He certainly does the job if you can protect him, but getting there, this list has so many do-nothing cards—the Thrones were an indulgence, and they don't do very much here; they were mostly a holdover from my Planeswalker list, where they can be pretty cute. It could use another accelerant as well, either Silver Myr or Leaden Myr most likely, as Infect is nowhere near our main game plan. That said, there's a successful list here with no Myrs, just more and different removal, and a Mindslaver that I somehow completely forgot to include in my list.

I see Ichor Wellsprings all over the place in the new Block format, but I can't help but wonder if they're correct. It gets you an artifact in play without costing you a card, but it just does nothing on its own. The card on the back end is pretty worthless after you Forgemaster, as whatever you get should just crush them, so you are spending 2 mana to have an artifact in play. I'd really rather be doing something proactive on my second turn, as the other decks are either pounding your face in at this point—Kuldotha Red or Tempered Steel—or leaving you a huge window to get started on your game plan, such as Planeswalkers or the U/B control list. Given that our plan involves getting out a huge fatty and pounding face early, creature beats doesn't seem like a worthwhile approach, but perhaps we can find a way to start attacking the control deck's resources or hold up the aggro deck for a bit. My kingdom for a Stoneforge Mystic! Please share your thoughts in the comments; we've had some really good ideas over the last couple of weeks.

Tezzinfect

While I was working on the previous two decks, I caught a conversation on Twitter between Jon Medina (@mtgmetagame) and Brian Kibler (@bmkibler). Brian said he was having some success with a U/B Infect deck in Standard, and Jon asked if he had any Tezzerets in it. This clicked with something else I'd thought of while accelerating Tezzeret out with a Sphere of the Suns—Plague Myr is a pretty sweet target for Tezzeret's second ability! I also noticed in testing just how many Red decks there are out there that Phyrexian Crusader can just rip to shreds. Kuldotha Red is taking off, Koth/Phoenix decks are still floating around, and I've even run into a few people trying the infinite Shatter/Viridian Revel deck again.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Plague Myr

4 Phyrexian Crusader

3 Corpse Cur

4 Necropede

4 Vector Asp

4 Hand of the Praetors

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

3 Tumble Magnet

4 Sphere of the Suns

4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

2 Contagion Clasp

1 Mimic Vat

[/Spells]

[Lands]

4 Inkmoth Nexus

4 Darkslick Shores

12 Swamp

3 Island

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Steel Sabotage

1 Ratchet Bomb

1 Tumble Magnet

2 Contagion Clasp

3 Mimic Vat

4 Go for the Throat

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

There are a few issues with this very raw list, but there is definitely something there. Five-power Infect guys are frankly absurd—there's a reason you normally have to pay 6 mana for this sort of creature. I definitely want to go up to four Corpse Curs, as he is just insane when all your guys are potentially 5/5s. I also think I want to drop Vector Asp—we don't have mana spare on the early turns to turn his Infect on, so he might as well be another two-drop, like Ichorclaw Myr. This deck has proved very difficult for other aggressive decks to handle, and though I haven't had a lot of test matches with it yet, I feel it should be okay with a few tweaks against the slower decks as well.

I think I'll be going forward with the Infect variants, both this one and the Black one from last week with a Red splash. These decks get to play some of what I think is one of the strongest cards in the format—Phyrexian Crusader. Let me know what you think the best Tezzeret strategy is in the comments, and what else you've been having success with!