I know many of y'all are excited for the Heroes and Villains and Plans coming up with Marvel Super Heroes, but I just had to share my most favorite of the Secrets of Strixhaven Standard decks.

Five-Color Converge

Five-color Converge | SOS Standard | Michael Flores

• Instants (18)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Firebending Lesson
• 1 Fire Magic
• 1 Sear
• 1 Shoot the Sheriff
• 1 Thunder Magic
• 2 Consult the Star Charts
• 2 Flashback
• 4 Inevitable Defeat
• 4 Jeskai Revelation

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Arcane Omens
• 1 Strategic Betrayal
• 2 Together as One
• 3 Deadly Cover-Up
• 4 Stock Up

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Nowhere to Run

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Tablet of Discovery

• Lands (26)
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Cori Mountain Monastery
• 1 Mistrise Village
• 1 Steam Vents
• 2 Sacred Foundry
• 2 Shattered Sanctum
• 2 Starting Town
• 2 Undercity Sewers
• 3 Bleachbone Verge
• 3 Riverpyre Verge
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 4 Great Hall of the Biblioplex

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Emeritus of Ideation
• 1 Disdainful Stroke
• 4 Duress
• 4 Intimidation Tactics
• 1 Deadly Cover-Up
• 3 Pyroclasm

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

The very glimpse of this dark Tablet variant came up on a CovertGoBlue video and I was fascinated. I've been tinkering with it since. At this point I've played dozens of Events, partly because the deck is so fun, but mostly because it's been chopping up Standard like veggies during broth prep. Converge ultimately comes full circle around the various Tablet of Discovery/Jeskai Revelation variants we've been looking at over the last month or so, ending in a position of utter dominance.

Starting Town, Bleachbone Verge, and a pair of Undercity Sewers link arms to lean ever harder into the multicolored splashing we saw with Four-color Jeskai... Here we have all four copies of Inevitable Defeat. And instead of one basic Plains for our token Demolition Field defense, we end up with one basic Swamp.

With that Swamp - the heavier movement into more "Rakdos" / less "Izzet" in general - is the difference that makes the difference in this version. You'd be surprised how much mileage you get out of one copy of Arcane Omens. It's a powerful setup card when the opponent taps out for a Stock Up or Tablet of Discovery of their own, even if you can't get them for all five colors.

Sometimes you cast it on turn seven after having just dropped your solo Mistrise Village and that's that. The game isn't technically over, but you both know it's over. Together As One, the other Converge spell, is powerful but clunky. While a little more life gain can be welcome, you usually have something smoother to do than tap six mismatched mana during your own main phase.

Rather, the big innovation comes from another expensive Sorcery, moving from Day of Judgment and/or Ill-Timed Explosion to Deadly Cover-Up as the sweeper of choice. In anticipation of Marvel Super Heroes I've even added a third Deadly Cover-Up to CGB's main deck!

Revelation vs. Revelation

The mirror, or any number of quasi-mirror dances between Jeskai, Four-color, Lessons, etc., tend to revolve around Jeskai Revelation. Most of these decks (all of which now pack the full four copies of Jeskai Revelation) tend to do most of their damage with that big Instant.

Yes, you can all get in with Great Hall of the Biblioplex, Four-color can chip-shoot you with Inevitable Defeat, Jeskai has Lightning Helix, and Lessons can poke for one with Gran-Gran as early as turn one... but most of your damage is coming from Jeskai Revelation and the Prowess-powered Monks it leaves behind. They're all built around four because they intend to cast multiple copies in almost every successful game.

These decks all look for specific opportunities to land Jeskai Revelation [at least against one another]:

1. You play your fifth Land with a Tablet of Discovery already down... and a dream. It will tell you a lot about a mage depending on if they target an opposing Tablet or a Land that the opponent will (or at least will probably) have to put into play tapped the next turn.
2. The end of turn when they have 7-9 mana... even if the opponent has open mana. You don't want to get caught by It'll Quench Ya! here, but it's not like Swallowed by Leviathan or No More Lies are exactly picnics. The goal is to pick a fight on the opponent's turn. Really what you're looking for is for the opponent to Jeskai Revelation you back... Though how they do so will vary. Sometimes (like with #3, below) they will Revelation your Revelation. Other times they'll let your Revelation resolve and pick off your Monks... lower immediate impact but more remainder.
3. You have nine mana including a Mistrise Village to set up Revelation. An opponent full of their own cleverness will often say "I can't counter what, you say?" and Revelation your Revelation. Which is actually what you want.

However they do it, the opponent will put Jeskai Revelation into their graveyard for you, often assuming they are "winning" the exchange.

Which of course is when you pop Deadly Cover-Up!

Popping Deadly Cover-Up

Popping Deadly Cover-Up does several things at once. First and most immediately, it should clear their Monks. There go two 1/1s you no longer have to worry about...

But presuming you have enough fodder for Collect Evidence, more importantly, the win will almost always be in hand. Your opponent will just not have that many ways left to deal twenty damage to you. They might have lots of card drawing left, but they'll draw into what exactly? "All dressed up with nowhere to go" as the old adage says.

Ideally, you'll still have three Jeskai Revelations with which to build greater and greater margin of victory. To be transparent, yes - I've lost a game where I Mind Twisted my opponent and then Covered Up their Jeskai Revelations (to Biblioplex Beatdown). That's unusual, like when you beat Doomsday Excruciator after they executed their Superior Spider-Man combo with a Cavern of Souls on "Human." Even when it happens you're kind of incredulous that it actually just did.

Deadly Cover-Up (and to a lesser degree certain other Black cards) give you some additional play against Superior Spider-Man Reanimator. It's always been an option to catch up with Day of Judgment-types (assuming you weren't already dead to Terror of the Peaks), but Deadly Cover-Up is just better than a mere catch up. You can remove all their Superior Spider-Mans, Bringer of the Last Gifts, or Terror of the Peaks (depending on the stage of the game) and force them to beat you fair and square. Which is an uphill battle to say the least against four Inevitable Defeats.

Earlier in the game you can also slow them down with the one Strategic Betrayal, which can often take out a key Creature while preventing reanimation shenanigans, at least for a few turns. Don't be afraid to double up with a Flashback on this one: It's not as exciting as a Jeskai Revelation for eight, but the time you buy will usually open up opportunities to get card advantage in other ways while they're trying to build toward just a basic game.

I also really liked the one Nowhere to Run in a variety of spots. Gets Kona and Slickshot Show-Off, often when the opponent can't play around it.

One thing I can think about going deeper on (which is in opposition to liking the Black removal) is to play more Abrades. You will often be able to answer Simulacrum Synthesizer after Simulacrum Synthesizer with a sequence of Inevitable Defeats. Which is cool while you're doing it, but you can actually, counterintuitively, get out-Synthesizer'd. One Repurposing Bay can make four Synthesizers, and they probably have four United Battlefronts, too. Unless you literally draw four Inevitable Defeats (or two Flashbacks) you're not going to be able to keep up forever.

Better is to Abrade one Synthesizer and then get them all with Deadly Cover-Up. If you get a token also that's sweet but ultimately unnecessary. Unfortunately, you have to destroy at least one Synthesizer to pull this off, and Inevitable Defeat exiles up front... The long strange downside to a typically more powerful form of removal.

That's most of the deck.

Adding more Black adds complexity to the mana base, and moving back away from Lessons definitely costs us the mirror-breaking speed of Gran-Gran. But in the arms race of four Tablet of Discovery/four Jeskai Revelation mirror-ish decks, this one is the definitive breaker, thanks to its unique ability to remove the opponent's last three Jeskai Revelations. Worth it, regardless of the gaudy costs.

Sideboarding

The sideboard I presented up top leans on Duress for mirror matches. If Arcane Omens is good, than certainly a pinpoint card that is almost certain to resolve would be an even better setup man for exiling Jeskai Revelation, right?

That's the theory, at least. The slightly modified main deck also has three copies of the much aforementioned Deadly Cover-Up, which should be great against Heroes, Villains, and Sagas Powering out Progenitus.

But how about this swap?

Sideboard:

• 2 Emeritus of Ideation
• 1 Disdainful Stroke
• 4 Price of Freedom
• 4 Intimidation Tactics
• 1 Deadly Cover-Up
• 3 Pyroclasm

Here we borrow from Lessons for their eminently capable tool, Price of Freedom. Duress is generically good, but mana screwing the opponent might be even better, especially if you're drawing cards (And have access to Flashback). We have all of one Swamp. Four-color has one Plains. Neither of us can easily withstand even two copies of Price of Freedom. Even Jeskai and Lessons, with so many Islands and Mountains, can get all their White mana blown up, limiting their ability to cast the all-important Jeskai Revelation.

I'm not certain which one is better but I am sure you want to go four-of whichever way you lean. I'm sure you want to mean it. You want to apply a lot of pressure in one place until the opponent breaks, rather than having a variety of tools. Your win conditions are already super flexible, so you'd rather your sideboard cards be fast and surgical.

Conclusion

I'll guess we'll find out soon how this deck holds up against the Avengers. Or the Masters of Evil. Or the Fantastic Four? Who'd have thunk cute Rabbits or Ravnican Detectives would ever find themselves in such battles?

LOVE

MIKE