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Main » Articles » 5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on April 4, 2015
 Reddit

Dragons of Tarkir is here, and we've got one weekend of results in the books. But that's just the beginning of the excitement. We've got a Pro Tour on the horizon! Next weekend, the best players in the world will convene in Brussels, Belgium to battle for Standard supremacy with a new cohort of potential dragons for allies. This week we take a sneak peek at what the new set has to offer Standard, as well as exploring a few Modern and Legacy brews as well. Between a new takes on Cruel Ultimatum[ and Living Wish, we've got plenty to cover, so let's get started!

Dragons have arrived in Standard, and few of them have had a bigger impact than Dragonlord Ojutai. This powerful midrange threat is an incredible boon to strategies that need a resilient, stabilizing presence or win condition. Ojutai has been slotted in to all manner of Blue-White strategies, but this printing has particularly revitalized the Esper control archetype:

Esper Dragons ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Brad Nelson

This deck does a lot of really interesting things to help provide a consistent and resilient control gameplan. You still have access to all the disruption and card drawing of traditional Blue-Black lists, but now you have a more proactive way to end games than Pearl Lake Ancient. Instead of relying on seven drops and Ugin, you can tap out for a Hexproof dragon that generates cards and ends the game in four hits. You even gain access to Haven of the Spirit Dragon to rebuy your win conditions against other Hero's Downfall decks. There's even the cute corner-case of using Crux of Fate to wrath your opponent and leave your dragon in play.

What's especially exciting is this deck's ability to use Silumgar's Scorn effectively. Not only can you use it as a reasonable counter in the early game as your opponents are trying to curve out, but because you're relying on Dragons as your primary win condition, you also have an efficient hard counter going long.

Last but certainly not least, Anticipate is exactly the kind of card this deck was looking for to fill out its curve and provide additional options when you leave up mana. Now you have options for fixing your hand before either Dig Through Time or Jace's Ingenuity come online to help ensure that you aren't being run over. This deck has picked up a lot of powerful and exciting tools, and I can't wait to see how it evolves from here.

One of my favorite decks in Modern when the format was first beginning to mature was Blue-White Tron. I always loved the big mana control decks in old extended; the ones that used Tron lands and signets to cast powerful spells like Fact or Fiction and Thirst for Knowledge and bury opponents in cards all while holding up Condescend and Spell Burst. For a long time now, this style of deck has been largely unplayable in Modern due to the existence of the Green-Red Tron deck and the hate that opponents are packing for that archetype. However, Sam Pardee thinks it might be time for the archetype to make a comeback.

Blue-White Tron ? Modern | Sam Pardee

The deck's gameplan is still largely the same. This is, first and foremost, a Gifts Ungiven deck built around Unburial Rites packages. In many matchups, cheating in the appropriate monster is enough to end the game on the spot, and signets allow you to cast Gifts ahead of time after trying to interact for a few turns. Tron lands give you the ability to go big with Celestial Colonnade and actually cast the giant monsters if it comes down to that. You also gain the ability to cast both Gifts Ungiven and Unburial Rites on turn three if you curve out with tron lands and a Signet to make eight mana on turn three.

This deck has gained exciting new tools though. Sphinx's Revelation in particular is a backbreaking singleton that is more than capable of stealing games against numerous archetypes. Similarly, Ugin and Jace, Architect of Thought give you powerful top end against both control and aggro. Jace in particular does a good job of forcing Infect and Affinity to overextend into removal and sweepers while also shutting off Deceiver Exarch kills from Splinter Twin.

Unfortunately, this deck still gets hit with an enormous amount of splash hate. Fulminator Mage. Blood Moon. Even Stony Silence is positively backbreaking for a deck that is reliant on both nonbasics and artifact mana. However, if you're expecting your opponents to be trying to play fair midrangey decks, this is a control deck with an enormously powerful midgame that can easily overwhelm a big chunk of the competition.

Alternatively, if you're not a fan of colorless lands, you can give RaptureReady's four-color Cruel Control deck a shot. This is a take on control unlike any other I've seen in Modern to date, and some of the interactions generate more value than anything else in the Modern format. Let's take a look:

[Cardlist Title= Cruel Control ? Modern | RaptureReady]

I really like what this deck is trying to do. One of the biggest issues with control decks in Modern has traditionally been that the threats tend to be more efficient than the answers. It's hard to have answers for both Tarmogoyf and Goblin Guide and Arcbound Ravager. You know what does a great job answering generic threats? Tarmogoyf and Abrupt Decay. RaptureReady has made these two spells the backbone of his Grixis control deck, using Lotus Cobra to both fix his mana and help accelerate out answers and expensive haymakers.

Speaking of which, the haymakers are what make this deck so exciting. Thragtusk. Olivia Voldaren. Keranos, God of Storms. Can you imagine losing after resolving a Cruel Ultimatum rebuying Thragtusk? You can even Snapcaster Mage back a Cruel Ultimatum if the first one wasn't good enough. Sure, the mana base isn't quite robust enough to handle [card]Cryptic Command in addition to these midrangey green answers, but both the Jund and Sultai core of this deck have been proven to be reasonably solid. Adding Cruel Ultimatum to go over the top of other midrange decks seems like an exciting place to be.

At this time last year, there were very few people playing Infect in Legacy. The deck really broke out in Modern at Pro Tour Return to Ravnica, with a few players placing just outside the Top 8, but it took a long time, and a string of incredible finished by Tom Ross to really put it on the map in Legacy. Recently though, the deck has been good enough that people have learned how to play against it and have even started packing hate for it. That means that it's time to adapt, and Tom has a few ideas:

[Cardlist title=Living Wish Infect ? Legacy | Tom Ross]

Previously, Infect relied on opponents not respecting its ability to kill out of nowhere. End step Crop Rotation for an Inkmoth Nexus. Attack with an exalted trigger, double Invigorate. You've even got mana up to use your Spell Pierces to force through your combo. Now that people have not only learned to respect the deck's ability to kill from nothing, but also to play around the best cards in the deck, something has to change.

Tom thinks that change might be Living Wish. Tom has previously tried builds with Green Sun's Zenith as additional copies of Glistener Elf and to have a small toolbox of utility creatures. Living Wish takes that to a new level. Now you can have an enormous toolbox of non-green hatebears and lands. Karakas against Show and Tell. Wasteland to shut off Lightning Bolt against Delver. Containment Priest, Vendilion Clique, Meddling Mage, or even another Poison creature. This gives you a mechanism of interacting more effectively with what your opponent is doing as games go longer so that you can more effectively sculpt a position where you can force through a win.

When Khans of Tarkir was initially released, there was a lot of hype around Jeskai Ascendancy in Modern. It was purported to be this unstoppable turn two combo deck that was capable of winning through all manner of hate. This proved to be untrue, but as the four color Sylvan Caryatid builds gave way to the three color combo control builds with Fatestitcher, there were rumblings about the combo deck making the jump to Legacy. People seem to have largely given up on this project, but this week Sam Black shared his most recent take:

[Cardlist title= Jeskai Ascendancy - Legacy | Sam Black]

The gameplan for this deck has not changed. Resolve a Jeskai Ascendancy. Use the looting triggers to sculpt your hand and get a Fatestitcher into the graveyard. Once you've assembled a critical mass of cantrips, you can unearth Fatestitcher and start cycling through your decks, with each spell untapping and pumping Fatestitcher. Eventually, you can find enough additional Fatestitchers to tap down your opponent's relevant permanents and smash in for enough damage to end the game.

When this deck was first making the rounds we were in the middle of a format warped by Treasure Cruise and the decks that it enabled. With the banning of Treasure Cruise, this deck has to adapt. Sam's new plan involves slotting in Dig Through Time, Faithless Looting, and Deep Analysis as a cheap way to loot through your deck and find both Fatestitchers, Jeskai Ascendancy, and to get Deep Analysis in your graveyard as a pseudo Treasure Cruise.

One of the big innovations in this build is the inclusion of Wind Zendikon as another mana creature with pseduo-haste that interacts favorably with Jeskai Ascendancy. Additionally, you have access to way more free spells in Legacy than you do in Modern. Gut Shot is much more reasonable in Legacy where there are more elves and Delver of Secrets. In addition to that though, you also gain access to both Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox to help get the combo going a turn early.

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, deck lists, legacy, decks, commander, modern, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks

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