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And Now For Something Completely... Midrange?
So check this deck out:
Orzhov Bounce | TDM Standard | Ezily, 5-0 MTGO Standard Leagye 4/24/25
- Creatures (15)
- 1 Beza, the Bounding Spring
- 1 Loran of the Third Path
- 1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- 4 Nurturing Pixie
- 4 Preacher of the Schism
- 4 Sunpearl Kirin
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 2 Liliana of the Veil
- Instants (1)
- 1 Get Lost
- Enchantments (18)
- 2 Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber
- 4 Hopeless Nightmare
- 4 Momentum Breaker
- 4 Nowhere to Run
- 4 Temporary Lockdown
- Lands (24)
- 4 Plains
- 4 Swamp
- 1 Shadowy Backstreet
- 3 Restless Fortress
- 4 Bleachbone Verge
- 4 Caves of Koilos
- 4 Concealed Courtyard
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It has a lot of things that you might have hated - or at least been annoyed by - from the previous Standard. Nurturing Pixie! How creative! In fact, Nurturing Pixie... Picking up Hopeless Nightmare and Nowhere to Run? Isn't this well-worn ground?
Well... I think only at first glance.
The Esper "Pixie" decks were a real force in some recent Standard formats... The It Girl of the occasional big paper tournament, and in competition with the "Mice" decks of various color in terms of how much you had to be prepared for them in order to compete in Standard.
This style, though?
This is different.
First of all, the cards are a bit more expensive. You have actual Sheoldred, the Apocalypse at the top of your curve. You are very commonly playing the five mana half of Ritual Chamber before you unlock your Unholy Annex.
And Planeswalkers?
Instead of trucking in with a one- or two-mana creature to sneak in Kaito, Bane of Nightmares; you're going old school. You're going positively ancient school with Liliana of the Veil as a source of card advantage and disruption.
As far as disruption goes... This deck does have the Hopeless Nightmare opening that make Pixie a household scourge. And while moving from Esper to Orzhov has cost the deck Fear of Isolation as a synergy card, it does get back the new one: Sunpearl Kirin.
Because it has Flash, Sunpearl Kirin actually offers both some interesting features and more opportunities to screw up than the 2/3 Blue version. It's cool when your opponent spends a Lightning Strike on your incoming Nurturing Pixie but you're like "Zoink! Not so fast!"
... And then sometimes you get run over by one of the Red Decks because you held back. "I have Flash! What could possibly go wrong?" Zero percent chance you need me to explain this beyond all the prowess triggers and surprise trample Standard Red Decks are capable of these days.
Now in terms of disruption, the first lesson I learned playing Orzhov is...
1. Discard Can Be Really Weird
The games against Omniscience are remarkably polarizing. Many are non-games.
You cast a Hopeless Nightmare in the dark. Your opponent snidely emotes "Good Game" and discards an Omniscience. You re-think all the life decisions that brought you to a first turn Hopeless Nightmare.
These games will often result in a turn four loss. You just helped the opponent by putting Omniscience into the graveyard for them... All they have to do is find Abuelo's Awakening on time.
Or is it?
I've found that almost half the "discard" games against Omniscience go a different way. Sometimes you have an overabundance of discard. You have more Hopeless Nightmares or you can follow up with Nurturing Pixies or Sunpearl Kirin. You land Liliana of the Veil on turn three.
Maybe they don't have a fourth land. Or maybe their fourth land comes into play tapped.
What might happen - even if they can preserve the Abuelo's Awakening to return Omniscience to the battlefield on turn our - is that they don't have any follow up. They can't keep their reanimation card and the Invasion of Arcavios that laces together the win. Or all they have is the Invasion, so you can easily Nowhere to Run the pathetic 1/1 "Omniscience" (nice name) and leave them with almost nothing. I've found myself hitting the Liliana Ultimate multiple times per Event.
Is Omniscience a good matchup? Honestly, probably not.
Is discard awful against Omniscience? No. It can be good. But Hopeless Nightmare in the dark can get you into trouble.
2. Temporary Lockdown is the Best-Worst Card in This Deck
More accurately, Temporary Lockdown is the reason the deck exists.
No one woke up and was like, "You know what the world needs? A slower version of Esper Pixie that draws fewer extra cards." Literally no one thought that!
What someone did realize is that the Cori-Steel Cutter decks created a need that could be filled by Temporary Lockdown. Lockdown was already a playable card! But its ability to hit artifacts and not just small creatures really elevated the favorite enchantment for the present Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard.
It's really good in the format, and this deck can do some cool things with it.
For instance it can often be fun to pick up your Lockdown to lock the opponent down again. If you have a Sunpearl Kirin or Nurturing Pixies already hiding under your Lockdown, you can do cool things when picking it up. Casting (and then picking up) Temporary Lockdown (in concert with Nowhere to Run) is actually one of the main ways the deck can kill an opposing Sheoldred.
Why is it the worst?
First of all, this deck plays a metric ton of cards that get hit by Temporary Lockdown! You're catching strays from your own signature card.
But secondly, Lockdown is a little bit of a precarious cast. The mana in this deck is actually pretty good... But it's not single color like a Screaming Nemesis deck, and doesn't have fixing like a Ramp deck. You're not splashing one Mountain for a Fireball here. You can get stuck on colors, and really the only reason for that is because you wanted to play a double-White three-drop.
Finally if you've never piloted this specific combination of cards before, you might be in for a surprise or three. Like Lockdown will lock down the Demon from your Ritual Chamber.
3. This Deck Uses Every Part of the Buffalo
You think of creatures like Sunpearl Kirin and Nurturing Pixies.
You glue them, mentally, to cards like Hopeless Nightmare and Nowhere to Run. You build your own Ravenous Rats or Flametongue Kavu.
But that's not the extent of your ability to bounce weird stuff!
One play I find myself making fairly often is to bounce my Temporary Lockdown (so I can immediately re-play it). Sometimes exciting stuff will happen! Like your Hopeless Nightmares that were hiding underneath the Lockdown jump back out to Shock the opponent (who probably doesn't have a lot of cards in hand already).
This is a non-intuitive play because when you re-play the Lockdown, you'll exile your incremental Pixie or Kirin. But if the opponent rebuilds an army it's something that you should have in your back pocket as a potential play.
The weirder one?
Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber
Bounced one of those today because my Izzet opponent put me to one and my own Room was about to kill me. Don't worry! I re-deployed it later as Ritual Chamber so I'd have a 6/6 for defense instead of a two life point tax.
4. It's Not Actually That Great Against Red
I know.
I know!
What good are you if your Temporary Lockdown deck doesn't even beat up on all the Cutter decks?
Don't get me wrong. I would rather be on the Black-White side than the red side most of the time. But the number of games where you empty your opponent's hand at 10+, play Sheoldred, and get comfy in your chair...
Only for them to rip some kind of Might of the Meek into a Monstrous Rage (yes, that's two spells) so that they now trigger not one but two Cutters... And did I mention the Monstrous Rage?
Really I think the lesson I learned is to not be too greedy.
You don't need to win by 100.
You don't need to get 3 cards with Temporary Lockdown. 2 is still an advantage. It's often better to just have more life total. Especially going second you'll often want to wait a turn because you can get a three-for-one; but you maybe should just suck it up and use your Momentum Breaker on that Heartfire Hero and eat the one point. Otherwise you will end up writing bullets like "it's not actually that great against red."
Because really, if you're going to slow down your Esper deck, raise the curve, and play a Temporary Lockdown that sweeps so much of your own stuff... You had best be beating up on the Cutter decks.
5. Other Versions Lean In More on Demons
You'll see other variations of the same style. Black and White (no Blue), lots of bouncy removal; Lockdowns for Cutters and small weenies...
But more copies of Unholy Annex and not only Archfiend of the Dross to support it from four; but even Soulstone Sanctuary. The Demon part of the deck is an underrated source of not only damage but life gain going long. (Unholy Annex + Sheoldred is a riot; Unholy Annex + Sheoldred + a Demon of any kind is playing another format entirely).
I know last week I said you should be playing a Cutter deck.
I've found a lot of solace and a surprising amount of win rate actively trying to blunt the Cutters this week! Black-White isn't the biggest deck. Sometimes you put their Omniscience into the graveyard for them; but the disruption can be so overwhelming sometimes that you can even contend with Up the Beanstalk decks, and if you want to keep your life total manageable against Mice, there probably isn't a better option in Standard.
LOVE
MIKE
