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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 August 22, 2015
 Reddit

This weekend is Eternal Weekend, one of the biggest celebrations of formats like Vintage and Legacy. Players will be gathering from across the United States, sleeving up all of their Force of Wills, Wastelands, and Moxen, and doing battle in some of the most degenerate formats in all of Magic. We'll see new classics like Delver of Secrets and Dig Through Time alongside cards like Oath of Druids, Time Vault, and Show and Tell which have defined older formats for many years. In our own celebration of Eternal formats, this week we'll focus in on Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. We'll start with a Planeswalker-centric Standard brew, then move on to Modern where we'll look at what Magic Origins has added to the format. Then we'll move on to some a new brew featuring Dark Petition in Legacy and Survival of the Fittest in Vintage. Let's get started:

Last weekend we saw the absolute dominance of aggressive Abzan strategies. Where does that mean that Standard is heading next? Those abzan decks rely heavily on the efficiency of their creatures, and are traditionally beaten by a combination of sweepers and card advantage. That means it may be time for Control strategies to make a comeback, and JAYJAYJAY0410 has one of the most exciting builds I've seen in quite some time.

Esper Walkers - Magic Origins Standard | JAYJAYJAY0410, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

Forget Dissolve and other instant-speed nonsense. There's no need to be tricksy when you can just cast powerful cards on every turn of the game. Every card in this deck has a profound impact on the board or generates an enormous amount of card selection and advantage. The Planeswalkers are particularly powerful, because they help you to accumulate card advantage and board advantage the longer they stay in play. Additionally, they force your opponent to dedicate time and resources to interacting with your Planeswalkers rather than your life total, giving you time to get set up and take over the game with your more powerful spells.

Languish is a new card from Magic Origins that is particularly important in this deck given the popularity of Abzan Aggro. Before, all Abzan had to do was monstrous a Fleecemane Lion, and the Blue-based control decks would have very little they could do to win a protracted game outside of chumping with Elspeth tokens or sticking an Ugin. Now you have an efficient answer that ignores both indestructible and hexproof, which is spectacular for this style of deck.

The other powerful interaction in this deck is the combination of Ojutai's Command and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Jace is a card that can quickly get out of hand in this deck, as flipping it early means that you can more easily protect your other Planeswalkers and force your opponent to overcommit into your sweepers. Later on in the game, you can Ojutai's Command Jace at the end of your opponents turn to start flashing back sweepers and Dig Through Times and really take over the game.

Magic Origins brought with it all kinds of awesome cards for Elves. Given that Collected Company had already brought this archetype back into prominence, it shouldn't be surprising that ProPlayer77 has added some of the awesome new pieces from Magic Origins and started crushing events. Let's take a look at what the new face of Elves may look like:

Elves - Modern | ProPlayer77, 4-0 Modern Daily Event

Dwynen's Elite should be obvious here. This is the perfect card to curve into with Heritage Druid, allowing you to ritual out even more of your hand early on in the game. Similarly, this is fantastic to hit off of Collected Company, since you can make it almost mana neutral, which is a fantastic place to be. Unfortunately, ProPlayer77 has cut Eternal Witnesses, so you can't chain Collected Companys together anymore, but somehow I think we can find other things to do with that mana.

Particularly, now this deck has Sylvan Messenger as a card advantage engine, as well as Lead the Stampede. This combination doesn't have the same kind of top end as Glimpse of Nature, where you can end the game on the spot, but it does make it substantially easier for you to grind your way through Electrolyze, Anger of the Gods, and Lightning Bolts.

Don't be fooled though. Just because this deck has the ability to grind out longer games doesn't mean it can't win early. It is not at all difficult to use Heritage Druid power out enough elves that Elvish Archdruid and Ezuri can both present enormous quantities of damage, particularly in conjunction with Nykthos. Unfortunately, there's no space for Chord of Calling in this particular build, but with the number of cards you can see, it won't be too hard to find an Overrun effect when you're trying to deal lethal.

Love it or hate it, Splinter Twin is a classic Modern combo that reaches all the way back to Pro Tour Philadelphia where Modern was unleashed on the world. That said, since that first event, we've seen many iterations of the combo, with some builds opting to max out on cantrips and combo pieces, some going more controlling with the likes of Keranos, God of Storms, and some going more aggressive with Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Even after all of this, the archetype is still evolving, and inosta is ready to show us yet another interesting take:

Blue-Red Twin ? Modern | inosta, 3-1 Modern Daily Event

The technology here is the inclusion of Pia and Kiran Nalaar from Magic Origins. On its surface, this may seem like a strange inclusion, given tat Pia and Kiran have seen relatively little Standard play, much less Modern. Digging a little deeper though, this card starts to make a little more sense. Some people will make the comparison to Huntmaster of the Fells - a card that has never really had a chance to shine in Modern. Personally, I think Lingering Souls is a more apt comparison because there is an enormous difference between tokens with flying and without.

Lingering Souls is an enormously powerful spell in Modern because it creates attackers that are resilient to Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile, are incredible blockers against Affinity and Infect, and force control decks to make difficult choices about how to spend their spot removal. Pia and Kiran Nalaar as less mana efficient and don't generate as many flying bodies, but the idea is the same. You generate a bunch of blockers and if they go uncontested, you buy enough time and pressure to find an opportunity to steal the game with your Splinter Twin combo. Against aggressive decks, untapping with Pia and Kiran means that Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager, and other pump effects are largely turned off so long as you're willing to leave up mana. Even if your opponent has multiple effects, you still have Lightning Bolt and Spell Pierce to fight over their additional pieces of interaction.

I don't know if Pia and Kiran are the next big piece of technology, but it certainly appears that they could pull their weight as a card with a high impact on the board both offensively and defensively. It's also worth noting that while putting a Splinter Twin on Pia and Kiran doesn't just win the game, it's far from the worst thing in the world.

We've seen many variations on Tendrils of Agony in Legacy over the years, from typical Ad Nauseam builds all the way to ones featuring Crimson Kobolds, Glimpse of Nature[card], and [card]Cull the Weak. There are even some variations that utilize Cabal Therapy, Veteran Explorer, and Summoner's Pact to rip opposing hands apart. Those versions are all well and good, but Magic Origins has brought with it an exciting new twist on Tendrils combo. Let's take a look:

Dark Petition Tendrils - Legacy | zachinflames

This build cuts a lot of the disruption and cute singletons from typical Ad Nauseam builds for Dark Petition out of Magic Origins. Between Infernal Tutor and Dark Petition, this addition gives you access to a full eight Demonic Tutors, which changes how this deck functions. This new variant has cut Ad Nauseam altogether, opting instead to go all in on the plan of chaining tutors into Past in Flames.

This new emphasis makes this deck a little more linear and consistent, and should make the deck a little simpler. Additionally, you are no longer dependent on having a high life total to get enough cards off of Ad Nauseam to combo off. However, you lose the ability to cast a threat on your opponent's end step to sculpt a win on the following turn. In exchange, you get to run a higher density of business spells, and are more consequently more resilient to discard spells.

At first glance, it seems that Dark Petition builds offer speed and consistency while Ad Nauseam versions are more resilient and interactive. Regardless, it seems clear that Dark Petition is a powerful option in this style of deck, and will earn its keep in some number in any number of different Tendrils strategies.

If you've been playing Magic for awhile, you may remember the rise of Survival of the Fittest. It wasn't always a card that was powerful enough to be banned in Legacy. There was a point where it just tutored for Genesis and Squee, Goblin Nabob so you could chain Flametongue Kavus and value your opponent to death. Then Rise of the Eldrazi was printed, and Vengevine changed everything. Suddenly you could Entomb a bunch of Vengevines and chain a pair of Basking Rootwallas to put an enormous amount of power into play early on in the game

Eventually, these Vengevine builds gave way to combo builds featuring Loyal Retainers and various monsters to cheat in. These Survival variants defined the format for many months, and led to the banning of Survival in Legacy, relegating it to Vintage where it has generally sat in the shadow of Oath of Druids. Inkfathom Biomage is looking to change that:

Survival - Vintage | Inkfathom Biomage

This deck has the same end game as many Oath of Druids builds: cheat Griselbrand into play. Even your early game can be kind of similar, featuring some counterspells and Abrupt Decays. The difference is that you can tutor up powerful, matchup-specific singletons like Scavenging Ooze for Dredge, Reclamation Sage for Workshops, and Vendilion Clique or Snapcaster Mage for other Blue decks. The first advantage that Survival of the Fittest has over Oath of Druids is this ability to pick and choose what creature you're going to get, allowing you to effectively pre-sideboard against some portion of the metagame.

Additionally, this deck is stronger against sideboard hate than Oath of Druids. Grafdigger's Cage is an enormously popular sideboard card that gives Oath builds fits, particularly when protected by countermagic or tutored up via Trinket Mage. Survival of the Fittest doesn't care about Grafdigger's Cage. Sure, you can't cheat Griselbrand into play right away. But you can tutor up your one-of Reclamation Sage and clear the way, while Oath builds would be stuck cantripping through their deck until they found an answer.

Sure, Oath of Druids has substantially more raw power, but Survival of the Fittest is certainly suited to playing a controlling role in the current Vintage format, featuring powerful singletons that can crack games wide open. You won't win as many free games, but there's no reason that this style of deck couldn't win a Vintage tournament if you called the metagame correctly. Besides, who doesn't want to see Survival of the Fittest on the battlefield again every once in awhile?

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

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