facebook

CoolStuffInc.com

Register for CommandFest Atlanta today! Happening June 14-16, 2024!
  
Account Meeple
Location IconLocations
Account MeepleLogin
0 Item
Advanced Search
   Sign In
Create Account
Main » Articles » Five Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Five Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on April 20, 2013
 Reddit

Welcome back! Dragon's Maze is about to shake up Standard and Modern, which makes it a little awkward to scour the internet for new decks for those formats. Fortunately, with Grand Prix Strasbourg and the Starcity Games invitational in the books, we've got a ton of sweet Legacy action to discuss. Let's get started!

Let's start with a deck that has never gotten a ton of credit in Legacy, as well as the deck that won Grand Prix Strasbourg. Death and Taxes is a White-based aggressive deck that uses various combinations of Wasteland, hatebears, and Aether Vial shenanigans to beat down while preventing your opponent from executing their gameplan. Let's take a look at Thomas Enevoldsen's list that took down Grand Prix Strasbourg:

[Cardlist Title=Death and Taxes - Legacy | Thomas Enevoldsen]

The key difference between this deck and other white-based aggressive decks is the emphasis on resource denial and Aether Vial tricks. Other White-based aggressive decks may play Wasteland, but they tend to opt for splashes for Geist of Saint Traft or Knight of the Reliquary over Rishadan Port, and they certainly don't spend their turn one playing Aether Vial.

So what exactly does Aether Vial do in this deck? Generally you're going to want to get your Vial up to three as soon as you can so that you can start to take advantage of Flikerwisp and Mangara of Corondor. Of the two, the Mangara interactions are the most straightforward.

Because of how Mangara is worded, you can activate it and then "flicker" it with Flickerwisp or Karakas. The end result is that Mangara does not get exiled, but your target does. Aether Vial is a huge part of this interaction, since it gives your Flickerwisps flash and lets you Karakas your Mangara without having to invest effectively four mana every turn.

These powerful midgame synergies backed by hatebears can be very difficult to fight through and can lead to complex board stalls where you can really leverage Mangara of Corondor. You even get to protect all of your key piece with Mother of Runes, which can single-handedly shut down some of the fair decks in the format.

Our second Legacy deck comes from the mind of Sam Black. Sam is known for building decks that crush Pro Tours, and for his assertion that sacrificing creatures is the most powerful ability in Magic. In his article this week, Sam detailed the innovative Humans deck that he played last weekend. If you're familiar with his other decks built on this principle, like The Walking Dead and The Aristocrats, you certainly won't be disappointed by this one:

[Cardlist Title=WB Humans- Legacy | Sam Black, 37th Starcity Games Legacy Open]

Who else but Sam Black would be looking to play Skirsdag High Priest and Doomed Traveler in Legacy? This deck seems sweet against the fair decks in the format. You have all kinds of ways to put yourself ahead in grindy matchups against Tarmogoyf decks. They'll have a tough time fighting through Cartel Aristocrat and Mother of Runes, and probably can't beat a Skirsdag High Priest once it starts producing Demons.

My biggest concern is how this deck fares against unfair decks. You have eight discard spells, which is pretty reasonable, but it seems like it will be difficult for you to tear their hand apart while still applying enough pressure to win before you get topdecked.

I think one of the biggest cards missing from this deck is Champion of the Parish. This is the kind of card that generates aggressive starts that put you into an advantaged position heading into the midgame, where your Skirsdag High Priests and Mother of Runes can take over. And it's not like Champion of the Parish is bad in creature match ups either. You can easily grow this to a point where it can compete with Tarmogoyf, which is pretty incredible.

Sam isn't done tweaking this shell, and I can't wait to see where it goes. This seems like a powerful shell that attacks from an angle that a lot of decks aren't prepared for.

For our last Legacy deck, let's head back to Grand Prix Strasbourg, and take a look at a deck that combines elements of a number of successful decks. What happens when you combine the late game elements of Landstill decks with the aggressive tempo elements of RUG Delver? You end up with Andreas Peterson's 14th place GeistStill deck:

[Cardlist Title=UWR GeistStill - Legacy | Andreas Peterson, 14th Place Grand Prix Strasbourg]

Geist of Saint Traft is a powerful Magic card. There aren't a ton of sweepers in Legacy. Realistically, there are very few ways to deal with a Geist of Saint Traft besides countermagic. Enter Cavern of Souls. At this point, your opponent is forced into aggressively using Liliana of the Veil and Tarmogoyf so that they don't just die.

This deck is built around the interactions between Geist of Saint Traft, flash Creatures, and Standstill. There's a very interesting and powerful tension here that this deck is uniquely poised to take advantage of. Sometimes you stick a Geist of Saint Traft, kill their blocker, and resolve a Standstill. Sometimes you flash in a Vendilion Clique on their endstep and untap into a Standstill.

Your opponent might take a few hits before trying to break your Standstill, but when they do you're going to draw a three cheap, interactive spells. One of the issues with older Landstill decks was that you'd draw Jaces and Fact or Fictions off of your Standstill. Instead, this deck is drawing Spell Pierce and Lightning Bolt.

I'm a little bit surprised that this deck is playing four Swords to Plowshares and zero Vapor Snag. I also feel like this probably wants some number of Stifles, but this shell is very powerful, and I'm excited to see more of it. The combination of cheap interaction, disruptive threats, and Standstill seems like a very difficult and rewarding deck to build and play, and I look forward to seeing the evolution of this shell.

Legacy isn't the only format where Geist of Saint Traft has proved it's mettle. The card dominated the previous Standard format and is a prominent player in Modern as well. Recently, Geist of Saint Traft has fallen out of favor in Standard in favor of threats that are better in a more midrangey format. Geist is good at racing and against control decks; it's not awesome against a format of Huntmaster of the Fells and Thragtusks. That didn't stop Adam Prosak from trying to build a Geist deck that just killed his opponents instead of trying to interact significantly with the format. Here's the deck he discussed in his article:

[Cardlist Title=UWR Geist - Standard | Adam Prosak]

There are no wrong threats, only wrong answers. This is a principle that has defined the way we build decks for years, and it holds true in this Standard format. Midrange decks are playing all kinds of powerful, haymaker cards. Thragtusk, Olivia Voldaren[/card, [card]Restoration Angel, Prime Speaker Zegana, Planeswalkers. All of these require different answers and methods of interacting. Instead of trying to build a deck full of two-of answers and hoping to have the right ones, Adam wanted to build a deck that has a powerful, proactive, and resilient gameplan.

Honestly, I think this deck is very close to pulling it off. Your good draws are going to be awesome. Blind Obedience into Geist of Saint Traft into tempo spells and extort triggers seems very difficult to overcome. Alternatively, you have the UWR Flash gameplan of Boros Reckoner/Harvest Pyre just getting people when they get a little too greedy.

I think that the biggest issue for this deck is that it's effectively a midrangey burn deck, and I don't see this racing Thragtusks and Craterhoof Behemoth especially effectively. Your clock starts on turn four, since that's the first turn you can attack with a Boros Reckoner or Geist of Saint Traft.

I'd really like to see a take on this deck that has more aggressive one- and two-drops to really apply the pressure. Your Geists and Reckoners make you more resilient to sweepers since you don't have to overcommit, and your Snapcaster Mages and Restoration Angels give you long game, but sneaking in damage early is something this deck feels like it's missing.

Maybe we could trim some of the top end for Delver of Secrets or Stromkirk Noble. Delver likes that our deck is reasonably spell-based, while Stromkirk Noble lets us take further advantage of our tempo spells.

Ghave, Guru of Spores is a pretty cool guy who can do a lot of things. Ghave is generates tokens, manuipulates +1/+1 counters, and is even a cheap, repeatable sacrifice outlet; there are very few things that he can't enable you to do. It's actually pretty unfortunate that he so frequently gets overshadowed by Karador, Ghost Chieftain. But not this week! This week we're taking a look at fruitoftheshroom's take on Ghave:

[Cardlist Title=Tokens and Counters and Value, Oh My! - Commander | fruitoftheshroom]

Junk decks are nothing new in this format. Decks packed with efficient removal and all the best recursion have been around as long as Tenenb, the Harvester has been a Commander. Those decks got an upgrade when Karador was printed, but Ghave, Guru of Spores does something just a little different.

Just look at the awesome interactions you get to take advantage of. Ghave is awesome at powering Primordial Hydra and Mycoloth, and they feed right back into him. These kinds of two-card interactions can fight against other player's entire boards, generating pseudo-card advantage. We can even go a little deeper with Sigil Captain and Asmira, Holy Avenger.

The exciting things start happening when you look at what you can do with Ghave's sacrifice effect. There's the obvious Skullclamp and Fecundity, sure, but we can do better than that. Nim Deathmantle, Blade of the Bloodchief, and Cauldron of Souls are downright unfair in Ghave decks. We could even look at slotting in creatures like Mindslicer and Symbiotic Wurm to push the sacrifice theme a little further. One of the cutest things that I saw looking through Ghave lists was Knight-Captain of Eos and Spike Weaver to Fog for days against creature-based decks.

You can even push the combo potential of Ghave with cards like Earthcraft and Doubling Season, or even Parallel Lives and Corpsejack Menace. The point is, there are near infinite things that you can do with this combination of abilities. Fruitoftheshroom's deck does a great job of showing off some of the universally powerful interactions, but is even better at showing off Ghave's potential for awesome interactions and decks.

Order Dragon's Maze singles and boxes today!

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, current events, deck lists, legacy, commander, carlos gutierrez, decks of the week

Recent Articles

View Archive
Sell your cards and minis 25% credit bonus