facebook

CoolStuffInc.com

Preorder MTG Innistrad Remastered today!
  
Account Meeple
Location IconLocations
Account MeepleLogin
0 Item
Advanced Search
   Sign In
Create Account
Main » Articles » Theros: Beyond Death: The Standard All-Stars Brewing Company Pt. 1

Theros: Beyond Death: The Standard All-Stars Brewing Company Pt. 1

Zvi Moshowitz
Posted on January 16, 2020
 Reddit

My past set reviews have talked about every card. With so many pre-existing Messed Up Magic Cards in Standard, plus space constraints, that no longer makes sense.

This review will bypass entirely and without comment any cards I feel are not worthy of Standard consideration due to not being good enough. Most cards in the set are not and were not intended to be good enough. Simple as that.

This first article will cover White, Blue, Black, and Red, and a follow-up piece tomorrow will cover Green and the Rest.

White

White has a very clear identity in Theros.

White is the color of life gain. The majority of White's interesting cards want you to build a White lifegain devotion deck that uses Daxos, Blessed by the Sun and Heliod, Sun-Crowned. They are quite poor at doing anything else.

White also gets a handful of its staple utility cards as one-offs: Idyllic Tutor, Banishing Light, Revoke Existence, Shatter the Sky.

And of course, White has Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis. She's fine, I guess. Don't believe the hype.

These cards are ignored because it's not even close and if they're good I'll metaphorically eat my hat (NO STARS):

Cards I don't think are good enough but which would not make me metaphorically eat my hat if they had some roll to play somewhere (1 Star):

Cards in Brief:

Banishing Light (3 Stars) seems better as a default option than Prison Realm. I value hitting other permanent types more than I care about the scry. I still am reluctant to walk this into Casualties of War, Planar Cleansing, or other removal spells when I least want that to happen, so I'm by default not interested unless I am either tutoring for it with Idyllic Tutor or in on a full enchantments theme.

Karametra's Blessing (2 Stars) gives a rather strong boost if you can reliably target enchantment creatures. White has Alseid of Life's Bounty, Daxos, Blessed by the Sun and Heliod, Sun-Crowned (who is already indestructible). If you branch out into other colors, you're not going to get full value from any of them, so that is pretty much all you get. I doubt that makes this good enough to justify a pump spell, but the upside does look nice.

Revoke Existence (3 Stars) exists again, and you were already almost playing Disenchant and Gods are around now, so you'll play this and like it.

Shatter the Sky (4 Stars) is a four-mana Wrath of God. It is unfortunate that most good 3-drops have 4 power at this point, so your opponent likely draws the card. It's possible for you to draw it as well via an indestructible God, but that seems like a corner case. Mostly we're paying four mana and giving them a card. For five mana we can get Realm-Cloaked Giant or Time Wipe, or the right 4 mana gets us Kaya's Wrath, or we can risk Solar Blaze. Those options all sound better by default, as giving them a card is a steep price to save one mana. As a sideboard option, however, Shatter the Sky seems excellent. The places where you are desperate for your sweeper to be one mana cheaper are exactly the places where giving them a card does not much matter, or they won't even get the card at all. Thus, my instinctive plan is to use this when boarding in additional sweepers, but start other solutions in Game 1.

Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis (3 Stars), again, is fine. Azorious/Esper Control decks need a way to reliably finish the opponent off that can do something early in the game, and do not currently get use out of their graveyard. I do not expect these strategies to be especially good, but they do get Shatter the Sky and this, so their weaknesses against aggression might be less severe. What this is not is the next dominant Planeswalker, or a by-default staple in White decks. You need a reason to play her. Compare to Polukranos, Unchained or Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, among others, to see how much better an escape card is allowed to be. On the first cycle, you are paying four mana for four 1/1s, or you are gaining 5 life and getting two 1/1s, or maybe you're trying to pump up attackers if you put her in an aggressive deck for some reason. None of that seems impressive, and then she kills herself. She only comes back for six mana, and gives you much less than six mana's worth of value. In a super-long game, would I play one or two in order to ensure I could eventually win out of a control deck? Sure, I might do that. But that's it.

Heliod's Intervention (2 Stars) So you are saying that all of those Trail of Crumbs and Witch's Ovens and food tokens have to die. We can make that happen, with a backup plan when we didn't need to make that happen. We need to be serious about all that, but I think that will happen sometimes.

The Card That Finds Fires - Idyllic Tutor (3 Stars):

The question with any expensive tutor is what is worth this much investment.

There is a pretty obvious first answer. Fires of Invention. By the end of turn five, you have already reclaimed more than your full investment. Later in the game, you have the Fae of Wishes problem where Idyllic Tutor costs your full turn to get and deploy an enchantment, but that's much better than the Shimmer of Possibility it is presumably replacing.

Presumably we are playing Jeskai Cavalier Fires, or something with a similar foundation. What other tutor targets make sense?

I have little desire to play terrible cards in Game 1, and would prefer to avoid them period without a lot more payoff than we are being offered here.

If we are sticking to the Jeskai plan, that means we are not going to have many good choices beyond Banishing Light, Prison Realm and our primary target. We can certainly get Witching Well in there as an option without giving too much away, so we're doing that. Beyond that, the only cards I can stomach are Outlaws' Merriment and Kiora Bests the Sea God, and I am not happy about playing either of them. Neither seems relevant to places the deck is currently running into trouble.

This makes me extremely reluctant to hitch my wagon to the full Idyllic Tutor plan. Even when you have time to cast it, you do not have a good generic 'good stuff' card that costs four to six mana that you can get.

I would presume that running one, or perhaps two, copies is an improvement to the deck, and that this justifies putting in at least one Banishing Light and probably one Witching Well. I would not go beyond that.

Jeskai Cavailer Fires does not get any other great upgrades from this set. That makes sense. It is a powerful deck that is tightly put together, so it would take a lot for a new card to make the cut. Shatter the Sky does seem like something the deck wants in its sideboard, and if anyone wants to run it main, it would be Jeskai, since it will draw the card reasonably often, but it doesn't need to play it in the places it would help.

Do things look better if we shift into Mardu? Oath of Kaya and Bolas's Citadel become reasonable, and Ethereal Absolution can be cast, but without Kiora Bests the Sea God our high end card is depending on having a high life total. Again I don't see it.

The other existing enchantment deck that might want to do this is Doom Foretold, but I do not think that it does want to do this. Original versions of the deck often did not even run the fourth Doom Foretold. The deck is already spending a lot of mana in investment and relying on getting permanents it can sacrifice. If you search for Doom Foretold on turn three, that makes it tough to protect it when it comes down turn four. You will continue to be mana constrained the entire game most of the time. I do like that we can use Bolas's Citadel as a high end target, but again I don't see this winning us that many games.

The White Soul Sisters Complex:

Grouping all of these together isn't quite fair, but it is close to fair, except to Archon of Sun's Grace, but I'm putting it here because both Gods are enchantments already.

The two best White cards in the set, by far, are Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun. They are both White devotion. One generates lots of lifegain triggers. The other makes those triggers pump your team.

Presumably we all remember Ajani's Pridemate. That gives us another strong reason to get a bunch of lifegain triggers. If we are going to get White aggression into a good place, those three cards are where we start. If they don't work, I don't see how it works at all.

What are our options from there?

For one mana we want to either generate 2 power or have lifelink; do something awesome, or there is nothing to talk about. For lifegain we have Alseid of Life's Bounty, Healer's Hawk, Beloved Princess, and Charmed Stray. Giant Killer potentially does something awesome but that sounds like a sideboard option only. I don't think we can consider Faerie Guidemother. For 2 power we can use Loyal Pegasus or Venerable Knight. I do like the idea of another flyer, but the cost seems very high. Venerable Knight will mostly be Savannah Lions if we go that way. Alseid of Life's Bounty's ability seems interesting, much more so than the other secondary lifelink options, so it has the second lifelink slot behind the automatic include of Healer's Hawk.

Two mana in addition to Daxos offers Bishop of Wings, which offers devotion if we actually can play Angels, but we can't. There's Charming Prince for various lousy triggers, Grateful Apparition if we go to an unknown funkytown, Fencing Ace as a possible place to put Heliod's counters, Eidolon of Obstruction if it does work and we really want an enchantment creature. Shepherd of the Flock has some utility. Starfield Mystic ends up not discounting a lot of our enchantments, but could grow large quickly. Tomik, Distinguished Advokist is good devotion on a reasonable body.

Three mana is Heliod, Sun-Crowned, after which we have the triggers and devotion of Linden, the Steadfast Queen or the raw power of Taranika, Akroan Veteran.

If we run anything at four, I can't see it being anything but Archon of Sun's Grace together with all the enchantment creatures plus possible Conclave Tribunal and maybe Blinding Light.

For an unrealistic five we get Cavalier of Dawn or God-Eternal Oketra, or for a fake five there is Venerated Loxodon, who I doubt we leave home without. In theory, six would be Harmonious Archon. Probably we stop before this, except for Venerated Loxodon, which means we now want a bunch more 1-drops even more than before. We can also try and be cute with Daybreak Chimera, as the scenarios where we can't play it for ww and have nothing else to do should ideally not be that common, but it can get us into a lot of trouble if we also run Venerated Loxodon.

That seems to be it. As far as spells go, we can think about Gideon Blackblade, Conclave Tribunal, Blinding Light or perhaps Heraldic Banner or Ajani, Strength of the Pride. We want to keep playing creatures to keep getting triggers, so even those we want to be careful not to overdo. Gideon comes with lifelink so that seems natural.

My first draft is something like this.

Soul Sisters | THB Standard | Zvi Mowshowitz

As noted above there are several other cards that might be good and that should be tried. This attempts to lean on the enchantment theme with Shepherd of the Flock, which has fifteen ways to get pumped although the discount only works with half of them.

Blue

These cards are ignored because it's not even close and if they're good I'll metaphorically eat my hat (NO STARS):

Cards I don't think are good enough but which would not make me metaphorically eat my hat if they had some roll to play somewhere (1 Star):

Cards in brief:

Ashiok's Erasure (4 Stars) is a devastating four-mana counter if you can protect it, representing a game changer because it can take out an escape card or Hydroid Krasis, which substantially improves the prospects of pure control. Alas, that in turn means that you cannot play Planar Cleansing, so you will likely need to move toward Shatter the Sky and lean on Realm-Cloaked Giant and/or Time Wipe instead. This to me represents a better core method than Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis by which to pull ahead

Glimpse of Freedom (2 Stars) is the escape card for when you don't want an actual escape card. Think Twice wasn't terrible, and this is essentially Think Twice with a twist if you don't care about taking cards out of your yard. It should not change any of your plans, but it could be fine to play one.

Kiora Bests the Sea God (4 Stars) - For seven mana you start with an 8/8, then get a tap down, then steal a permanent. As 'overpower them and end this' effects go, that is not bad at all, and this is an enchantment for Idyllic Tutor and various triggers. If we are choosing between this and Agent of Treachery, this seems like it plausibly gets the nod, especially if you can kill people after tapping their side down.

Nadir Kraken (3 Stars) - This costs mana, but the rate for that mana is quite good. I can see playing this card fairly but it seems more like something to do under a Fires of Invention with all that extra mana, while you will often draw multiple cards per turn. Combining this with a free Cavalier of Gales or Cavalier of Flame seems like a great idea, and we can also draw extra cards in a few other ways. The problem, as always, is whether this will play when you don't have a fires, as that means your mana is busy all the time. We can compare this to Legion Warboss in which the potential seems like it is there to at least be worth shuffling in, but displacing existing options will be very hard, especially with Idyllic Tutor fighting for the three slot.

Omen of the Sea (3 Stars) - You pay an extra mana for Preordain. In exchange you get flash and a later option to scry, plus an enchantment trigger and devotion if those ever matter. The more relevant rivals are Witching Well and Shimmer of Possibility.

Sage of Mysteries (2 Stars) gives Blue another self-mill engine alongside Drowned Secrets, if you are willing to move in on enchantments and expose a 0/2. I don't see any way to make this remotely good enough, but I'm barely nervous enough to give the second star. I've seen the work of similar things in the past.

Thassa, Deep-Dwelling (1 Star) - Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It's a good thing she floats. I would rather pay four mana for old Thassa than three mana for new Thassa. If somehow a Blue deck comes together that has devotion and good reason to flicker, then maybe? I don't know what this is supposed to be combining with. I hope it isn't Thassa's Oracle - that card is not worth that outrageously packed text box.

Thassa's Intervention (2 Stars) - Neither mode is that good on its own but the combination provides a powerful fork. If you cast a spell worth countering, I can counter it. If you don't cast a spell worth countering, you can dig. In both cases, your spell isn't great, but it likely will serve. Control players love this sort of thing.

Thirst for Meaning (3 Stars) - Enchantments are no artifacts and time is short, but draw three discard one is draw three discard one. One could also use this mainly to fuel escape with the only discarding one option as a bonus.

Whirlwind Denial (3 Stars) - Counters Hydroid Krasis for real. That's exciting. Has various corner case utility. Too much mana to work against storm in older formats.

Threnody Singer (2 Stars) - This is an upgraded Faerie Duelist, not that I have any need of one; but, if I did, she's the one to call.

There are a few individual cards one could put into a deck, and probably will. What is there to brew?

Nothing if we are focused on the Mono-Blue cards, but there are some gold cards worth thinking about. Something about Uro and a few others. We'll double back.

Black

These cards are ignored because it's not even close and if they're good I'll metaphorically eat my hat (NO STARS):

Cards I don't think are good enough but which would not make me metaphorically eat my hat if they had some roll to play somewhere (1 Star):

Cards in brief:

Agonizing Remorse (4 Stars): Sounds about right. Agonizing Remorse seems likely regarding printing this, hat tip to whoever snuck that name in. I get that Theros previously had Thoughtseize, but that's not what our nostalgia was, that was something getting in the way. I thought we all knew that. Now the idea is we can do it again and even give it a second mode when it misses, so long as it costs two? Or rather, we were having so much fun with Thought Erasure we had to return it to a playable set of colors? One life is nothing. I'm at a loss here, this is ridiculous. It should not exist. Play it.

Aphemia, the Cacophony (3 Stars) - You need to do some work to make this happen, but it is an enchantment itself, and if you pull it off you get a very good return on investment. The base body isn't great but it's not that bad either. It isn't super high impact on its own, so the other enchantments will have to impress first and justify playing Black.

Cling to Dust (3 Stars) - I like the options this card presents combined with getting longer term advantage by leaving this up late via the escape clause. There are going to be some juicy targets out there.

Demon of Loathing (2 Stars) - The reanimation barrel is near enough to the bottom that this isn't purely out of the question.

Drag to the Underworld (3 Stars) - You can't play this turn two, but you can play it for two mana later on reliably if you are Black enough. That makes it an excellent removal spell for those who are sufficiently dedicated. I do think such decks want to mostly avoid removal, and Murderous Rider is hard to compete with, but there is no arguing with the rate.

Erebos, Bleak-Hearted (2 Stars) - There are places you can afford to pay a lot of life to this, and presumably other places where trading creatures off is good, and this provides another way to get the sacrifices rolling and cards flowing. I don't think it does enough to earn a slot in such strategies but I'm being a coward and giving it the second star.

Fruit of Tizerus (2 Stars) - Two is not three, and four is a lot, so this is not aging well as I consider it. Rate is lousy and it seems hard to find it a good home.

Gravebreaker Lamia (2 Stars) - Slow Entomb is Entomb, and the best escape cards cost six mana to use, so the timing works out, but this is a lot of mana for what you get.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel (2 Stars)- Bolas's Citadel, ahoy. You get a full refund from that alone. The problem is, what is the rest of the deck that is going to make playing Gray Merchant of Asphodel the rest of the time not a giant waste of mana? If you have to do lots of work to make Bolas's Citadel win the game then why are we even doing this?

Mogis's Favor (2 Stars) - Two is not many cards with which to escape. You could mow down quite a few vulnerable enemies, if such a thing matters and you have time to pay three mana for it. You could also sustain the extra 2 power once you run out of better things to do, but that seems far less exciting. Perhaps this could work in older formats.

Nightmare Shepherd (2 Stars) - These are exactly the cards that get you. They draw you in with numbers that look reasonable and cool extra abilities, only to have it pointed out how messed up modern Magic cards have become. It could be a reasonable enchantment creature that generates a bunch of additional enchantment triggers, if you can find enough good other reasons to justify that.

Treacherous Blessing (2 Stars) - We need to get rid of this quickly, and probably also benefit from the enchantment trigger, or else be in a matchup where we flat out don't care about our life total at all and somehow have enough time to refill our hand. I don't have a plan yet; the payoff does not seem to be enough.

Tymaret, Chosen From Death (2 Stars) - Answers to graveyards are good and this gets you some useful devotion, but the Black devotion deck simply is not there. There is a Black deck, but it is a sacrifice engine based around prior concepts that might want a new card or two. This seems like a reasonable sideboard option for such an operation.

Black devotion is not getting there any more than Blue devotion is getting there. There are already sort of variations of Black devotion without the devotion cards. They should be able to pick up Drag to the Underworld and Agonizing Remorse and otherwise move on with their lives. That does not count as a brew.

The biggest game here is Agonizing Remorse. Paying a life and not getting to scry are a big step down from Thought Erasure, and hitting the graveyard is only a minor additional benefit, but Thought Erasure is redonkulous. Thoughtseize is one mana cheaper, but again, that card is redonkulous. Agonizing Remorse offers the part that matters most at a price we can still afford. Duress is often held for later in the game anyway. Expect Agonizing Remorse to make its way into a wide variety of decks and boards.

Red

These cards are ignored because it's not even close and if they're good I'll metaphorically eat my hat (NO STARS):

Cards I don't think are good enough but which would not make me metaphorically eat my hat if they had some roll to play somewhere (1 Star):

Cards in brief:

Anax, Hardened in the Forge (3 Stars) - If you back this up with Torban, you get to hit for seven plus whatever else you get from anything lying around. Without our Dwarven friend, we are looking at a reasonable creature, and you get to generate tokens from your alpha strikes by your cheap 1-drops, which in turn then can get pumped by Torban later. Only one thing to do, which is to slot it into the standard issue Red deck where we previously had Tibalt or Chandra and see if it does anything cool.

Blood Aspirant (2 Stars) - Seems like it is trying too hard and won't make the cut in the decks where he is most at home, but does grow fast when one is shoving lots of cats into ovens and sacrificing to forgotten Gods.

Deathbellow War Cry (2 Stars) - I checked and it is currently quite the sorry bunch, but that could change. New world could be full of these things. In theory. Still probably too expensive though.

Infuriate (2 Stars) is already in Standard.

Ox of Agonas (3 Stars) - Bringing this back is super awesome if you can fill your graveyard with this and eight other cards. Casting this for five mana is fine if you have an empty hand, but certainly not thrilling. In older formats this is an exciting card and worth a fourth star, since you have better tools to make the good scenarios happen.

Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded (3 Stars) - This opens the door to a Big Red deck, but suffers from an identity crisis. You want big payoff, but you also want lots of ways to get that payoff that make you want to branch into other colors. Paying five mana as a pure investment is a lot to ask if Purphoros does not turn on, or does not turn on without 7-drops backing him up. I still give this credit for tempting me to brew.

Storm Herald (2 Stars) - Can we brew up a way for this to kill the opponent? Perhaps we can self-mill a lot to set up some monstrosity?

Storm's Wrath (3 Stars) - There was a time when four would have been enough. That time has passed. Perhaps we can instead take advantage of four not being enough, instead, and save our Lovestruck Beast or Rotting Regisaur while sweeping any blockers aside. Shame this does not work well with Polukranos, Unchained or Nullhide Ferox. Big Red has to be interested.

Terror of Mount Velus (2 Stars) - This attacks for ten and doubles the rest of the team, so seems like a good candidate for the big Red plan. Kills outright when combined with Ilharg, the Raze-Boar, or with Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded and anything that provides the remaining pips.

Thrill of Possibility (3 Stars) is already in Standard.

Underworld Breach (4 Stars) - If I am reading this card correctly, you can cast the same spell multiple times. That means that instead of playing one card in four, you can play one card in three, and also mow people down. You can also save the card you used to do this again on a future turn. One fun idea is to mow the opponent down with Skewer the Critics rather than messing around too much. Another is to recurse on Merfolk Secretkeeper, since each activation gets you four new cards and only costs you three. All of this for only two mana. This card should scare you in all formats.

Underworld Rage-Hound (2 Stars) - Seems like the best of the three options for random Red escape creature, over Phoenix of Ash and Satyr's Cunning, which I'm therefore downgrading to one star each.

Red leads us to three categories of brew, in addition to several instances of 'put this card into the Red deck and see if it helps.'

Category one is to try and build Big Red. We use Irencrag Feat, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded and Ilharg, the Raze-Boar to power out cards like Terror of Mount Velus, Drakuseth, Maw of Flame, and Sundering Stroke. We can potentially abuse Fires of Invention. Our biggest issue is that accelerating our mana or getting reanimation tricks online is going to be very tricky, as Purphoros really, really does not want us to play a second color.

Category two is to lean on Underworld Breach until it breaks.

Category three is to try to move in on Ox of Agonas via highly aggressive self-mill and card cycling.

Let's start with Big Red.

As with White, my current method is to make a spreadsheet matrix of potential cards that one could include in the Big Red deck, by mana cost.

Looking at this list, our big problem is what are we even doing with our first three turns? We're clearly using Bonecrusher Giant, but beyond that what can we usefully do beyond playing more removal and perhaps some three-mana acceleration to get to five on turn four?

The good news is that we can use that five-on-four to get Purphoros or Ilharg, with a good chance we then kill on the fifth turn attack, but that seems a tad slow and vulnerable, and it is terrible against Brazen Borrower or counters. Plus it means your third turn can't be used for defense if we do that. The interactions with Fires of Invention are quite weird, although it might mix quite well with the lockets, since if you flood on alternate mana sources you can start cracking the lockets.

Lockets also give you a cheap splash for things that are more expensive. One option is to use that plus Blood Crypt to support Rix Maadi Reveler, but getting spectacle is tough and the impact of a 2/2 on the second turn is not what it used to be so probably not.

The idea of using Embercleave on Amplifire as an alternative victory condition is interesting. If you hit a 5-drop or bigger, that's 20+ damage. Doing this on Cavalier of Flame off of Fires of Invention on turn five is only eighteen, but it all sticks around and the death trigger is already looming. Playing Amplifire as the companion to Fires of Invention seems pretty exciting on turn four, opening up the world. Irencrag Feat into a 7-drop, or even in many cases a 5-drop, on turn four does not seem bad. Play Cavalier of Flame, cycle your hand, activate it, kill your planeswalker as our fourth turn? Seems pretty good.

How much high end do we need to make this fourth turn sweet, and how much space does this leave us for later? We can't exactly play eight 7-drops (the two big creatures) and eleven 5-drops (two Gods and Cavalier of Flame) and twelve 4-drops (Fires of Invention, Amplifire and Irencrag Feat). That is 31 already, which would be 25 land and four Bonecrusher Giants, which seems like it's short two lands and also the rest of its cheap interaction, without the sweepers that make all this acceptable in Jeskai Fires. You can run the new one of Storm's Wrath, but that's another 4-drop, so it doesn't solve our problems.

This is the normal fate of trying to combine cards that want to be offensive with cards that cost a lot of mana. There are not enough slots, and winning more does not do that much for you.

Let's cut Amplifire, since it runs straight into cats and each copy makes the other copies much worse. I'd love to leave one, but alas. Let's run only three of each God since, again, drawing two does not go well. Let's cut the fourth Drakuseth, Maw of Flames along similar lines. The fourth Fires of Invention comes next. I've done this before. We love having it, but we definitely don't need it in many spots. That's seven slots. We can use three of them to get to 28 lands, and add another interaction spell. Let's say Scorching Dragonfire. Our mana base can include a bunch of Temples to help smooth things out a bit.

Then let's sleep on it, which I did, come back, and realize that if we can't spend four mana on turn three, the whole concept is a pure non-starter. Those interaction slots have to be mana acceleration, no matter what. That means we're going into Green.

We know we want Paradise Druid and Gilded Goose. We can consider Arboreal Grazer but we are going to have mulligan problems where we have a good seven but any subset of six is missing something important. Ilysian Caryatid seems risky but will tap for two mana in some situations where that matters, like activating Purphoros twice or casting a 7-drop. Looking ahead to Green, Ilysian Caryatid is the only plausible include.

We can probably trim a few lands down to 26 at least for now, if we are going full Green acceleration without Arboreal Grazer. That gets us to 10 mana acceleration cards. Now we have to worry about Irencrag Feat. Pulling out a third turn 7-drop this way is a dream, but what is our mana base? We need Green early and need to pivot to triple Red. That's harsh. Certainly Sundering Stroke no longer sounds realistic.

The first eight duals are easy, as we now have Temple of Abandon. Anything more is going to cost us. Fabled Passage is not cheap given we already run a set of Temples, but we only have 8 Green lands and we need about 14, and 6 is too many to not have real worries of drawing multiples. It's also not looking great for our first turn Gilded Goose. Double splashing purely for Growth Spiral seems impossibly expensive - Growth Spiral into Irencrag Feat is certainly pushing it. But this suggests a route one can go.

Fires of Invention now looks both less necessary and less good, since we won't have the lands in play to make it work right.

For now, let's not go there, accept that our goal is mainly four mana on turn three to get the ball rolling, and see what the deck looks like. There's a new obvious problem which is that we cut all our 4-drops, so unless we draw Feat what does our third turn do for us even with the acceleration? Can we fix that? Maybe something like this?

Big Gruul | THB Standard | Zvi Mowshowitz

I don't see it but it's a place to start, at least.

That concludes part one of this look at Standard All-Stars from Theros: Beyond Death. Come back tomorrow when I'll cover the rest of the set and my closing thoughts. Until then!

Zvi Mowshowitz

@TheZvi

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, review, analysis, decklist, zvi mowshowitz, theros beyond death, #mtgthb, thb standard, 01162020

Recent Articles

View Archive
Sell your cards and minis 25% credit bonus