Welcome back! We've had some time to play with Gatecrash; time to find out what the big players are and how the metagame plays out. What comes next is the best part; once people know what the metagame looks like, they can build sweet decks that come from new and unexpected angles to steal games and tournaments. This week we've got five sweet decks to take a look at, so let's get started!
Let's start with a twist on a classic. You thought you were done with Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets when Ponder and Vapor Snag rotated. Until now, you were right. In the coming weeks that may not be so true. Joseph Pinkley won a PTQ with a Blue-Green Delver deck and subsequently wrote an article about it. Let's take a look.
[Cardlist Title=UG Delver - Standard | Joseph Pinkley, PTQ Winner]
Unsummon and Simic Charm have taken the place of Vapor Snag, helping you to force through huge chunks of damage rebuy your Snapcaster Mages for value. Think Twice not only helps you recoup lost card advantage, but is absolutely incredible with Quirion Dryad when you're ahead on the board.
All in all, this seems like an awesome new take on aggro-control for this Gatecrash Standard environment, and I hope to see more of it!
There are few things I enjoy more than getting value out of my lands. Whether it's setting up an Academy Ruins/Engineered Explosives lock or rebuying manlands with Crucible of Worlds, turning lands into valuable resources is something that I've always enjoyed more than most. That's part of why I'm so excited to see a little bit of a resurgence from Lands in legacy. What does Lands look like in the current Legacy metagame? Here's the list obv used to 3-1 a Legacy Daily Event:
This deck is awesome! There are only so many ways to interact with lands in this format. While some, like Wasteland, are very popular, you are more than capable of powering through those with your Life from the Loams and Explorations. This deck is one of the most unique decks in the format, attacking from an angle that is completely perpendicular to the rest of the metagame. Here's the rundown:
Against control decks and combo decks, your mana denial is generally good enough, but you also have Karakas to keep Griselbrand and Vendilion Clique under control as well as Chalice of the Void to shut off problematic mana costs. All of these engines are tied together by Life from the Loam and Tolaria West to dig for, tutor up, and recur key lands that prevent your opponent from interacting meaningfully.
Sometimes you just have to go bigger, and that's what Josh Silvestri is looking to do with this WBR Tokens deck he posted in an article this week. This deck looks to aggro out some of the more midrangey decks, while still having the capability to grind out long games with Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and Assemble the Legion. Let's take a look:
[Cardlist Title=WBR Tokens - Standard | Josh Silvestri]
There aren't a ton of people trying to jam Doomed Traveler in their constructed decks, but the card has proven itself to be more than solid on a number of occasions. This deck looks to curve out with token generators and then anthem up with Rally the Peasants and Intangible Virtue.
The deck can have very explosive draws that are capable of just killing some of the midrangey decks that play primarily at sorcery speed. Even if you can't just kill them by curving out into a curve-topping Rally the Peasants, you can still just make some giant tokens and grind away with Vault of the Archangel.
Perhaps the best part of this deck is the sideboard, since it really gives you the opportunity to sculpt a flexible gameplan depending on whether the matchup and whether you'll be playing or drawing. Sometimes it's going to be a grind, and you need your Assemble the Legions and an extra land to make sure they come down on time. Or maybe the matchup is about racing and being resilient to Supreme Verdict, and you'll need your Falkenrath Aristocrats. Either way, having that kind of flexibility is powerful.
Let's head on over to Modern for our last deck. White aggro decks have a pretty miserable reputation in most formats. This is generally because they generally don't have the most efficient creatures, best disruption, or ways to recover from sweepers. So why is it that you should play White-based aggro deck in Modern then? Let's take a look at a build by DrNutzlos that 4-0'd a Modern Daily Event:
[Cardlist Title=Flickerwisp Aggro - Modern | DrNutzlos, 4-0 Modern Daily Event]
It could be that this is a little underpowered for the format, but it's also more than possible that this is just efficient and disruptive enough to get there.
First Diaochan, then Thrun, and now Barrin, Master Wizard. This week we're looking at foo_intherain's Barrin build that pushes blue in a little bit of a different direction. Instead of playing a ton of spells, he's building around Barrin's ability, and thus his deck is very permanent-oriented. That's very out of character for Blue, but I think this deck pulls it off pretty well.
This deck does a lot of awesome things. Just look at the sweet things that enable Barrin to activate all the time. Salvaging Station plus Flayer Husk. Hatching Plans. Even Spine of Ish Sah. These interactions are subtly powerful, but very stylish, and that's exactly what I'm looking for out of a Commander deck.
Sure, the deck jams can just infinite people to death with Palinchron any number of ways, but you don't have to go that route if you want. You can go even grindier with pieces like Nim Deathmantle to go with your Mimic Vat, or start bouncing your own value creatures.
The engines of this deck are ones that you can use to enable a lot of different things, and when you start bouncing lots of permanents the sky is the limit. The deck plays plenty of card drawing and countermagic, but that doesn't mean it plays like every other Blue deck, or that you're obligated to play it that way. You can certainly trade the combos and counterspells more more cute bounce interactions. Besides, who wouldn't love an excuse to play Homarid Spawning Bed?
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