Dear StarCityGames.com Open Series,
I have been attending your events for almost a year now. You have the best tournaments I have ever played. Your staff is amazing; the prizes are great; and the atmosphere is relaxing and fun. I just have one complaint. You don’t let me Top 8! All of my friends I test with make the Top 8s of Opens and Invitationals, yet I am constantly on the sidelines waiting to go home. I even play the same decks as they do. Grands Prix are nicer to me and let me in the Top 8, and I take goofy decks to those.
I just hope you consider me for the Top 8 of the Edison Standard Open this weekend. It would really be nice to Top 8 and get Josh Cho off my back, since he makes so much fun of me for never making it to the single-elimination rounds.
Thank you so much for the time it takes to read this, and I hope you can send me some luck before the event starts.
Sincerely,
Last weekend was a blast! I might not have won the event, but I got to watch Brian Braun-Duinit get all the way to the finals and almost win the whole thing. The deck was sweet, and it was awesome to see the look on my opponent’s face when I had to explain to them that I was gaining infinite life, and they were most certainly dead. I also got to sign hundreds of tokens with my face on them. RAWR!!!!!
The only thing that was bad about the weekend was my deck tech. I FORGOT TO EXPLAIN THE COMBO! How on earth could I have missed that! I can no longer consider myself a professional. What a punt! This just means it must be done here and now.
Creatures (17)
- 4 Fiend Hunter
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 4 Angel of Glory's Rise
- 1 Cathedral Sanctifier
- 4 Cartel Aristocrat
Lands (23)
Spells (20)
The Combo
The deck is based around three cards.
Once both Humans are in your graveyard, find a way to get Angel of Glory’s Rise into play. The trigger resolves, bringing back both Humans, and a Fiend Hunter trigger goes onto the stack. Target Angel of Glory’s Rise and let the trigger resolve. Sacrifice the Fiend Hunter to Cartel Aristocrat. This brings back Angel of Glory’s Rise and creates another trigger to bring back all Humans in the graveyard.
Now this doesn’t do anything on its own but can be enough to buy time. Simply passing with a Fiend Hunter (with Angel of Glory’s Rise underneath it) and Cartel Aristocrat makes it very difficult to attack. At any time, you can give the Cartel Aristocrat protection from a color and bring back the Angel of Glory’s Rise. This also lets you just bring the Fiend Hunter back to play to remove an attacker from the game and block with Angel. This is not what you are looking for though. You want one of these these
This is where the money is at. If you have the combo, you just sacrifice one of these guys before you sacrifice the Fiend Hunter that has the Angel of Glory’s Rise. This will allow you to continue to get the come into play trigger from one of these guys as well and can create a loop allowing you to gain as much life as you want to.
There is another combination of creatures that lets you do something almost as powerful as gaining infinite life.
You can forever remove creatures from the game with this combination. When the Angel of Glory’s Rise trigger resolves, you target the Angel with one Fiend Hunter and an opponent’s creature with the other. Sacrifice the Fiend Hunter targeting their creature before the trigger resolves. This removes the creature permanently. Let the other Fiend Hunter resolve like normal.
One of the only ways to disrupt the combo while in progress is to either kill the Fiend Hunter or Angel of Glory’s Rise while triggers are on the stack. The most common spell you will want to play around is Searing Spear. This combination of creatures is perfect to play around the burn spell. Do not get greedy and target their creature the first time you set the combo up. Let both Fiend Hunters target the Angel of Glory’s Rise and see if your opponent has a response. Once you gain all of the lives, you can pick off their board. That is if they haven’t already.
Kessig Malcontents
I got a surprising number of messages asking me why I didn’t play Kessig Malcontents in the deck. It does just win the game when it is part of the combo, but that doesn’t make it a good card to play for many reasons.
Kessig Malcontents is the perfect example of a “win more” card. This is the best card to have when going off, but it does next to nothing at any other point in the game.
“But it can block!”
Blocking isn’t a good enough reason to have a useless combo piece in a deck.
You don’t have to kill an opponent when they have no way of killing you next turn. Infinite life is something very few decks can beat. The only way to really beat it is to mill an opponent out or have infinite damage yourself.
I would have a different opinion of Kessig Malcontents if it was good in the mirror match, but it does absolutely nothing. If you get to combo first, you can sit back and wait for them to try to go off. When their Fiend Hunter targets the Angel of Glory’s Rise, you can sacrifice your own Fiend Hunter. This brings back Angel, and then Angel brings back Fiend Hunter. Then you just target their combo piece, leaving them to die to a swarm of Wolf tokens.
I never want cards that help me win more. Flexibility when behind is where it is at with combo decks like this. You want as many pieces of the combo to have some effect on the game, and that is what the life gain creatures do. They come down and muck up the board, giving you more time to get everything set up. Kessig Malcontents is a waste of a slot in this deck.
Zealous Conscripts also can win the game when going off if you have enough power on the board to kill them. You can also steal all of their lands and do all the coolest things in the world—but only when you are combing off. Other than that, it is a dead card.
You won’t lose many games after you combo off and make infinite Wolf tokens. Supreme Verdict doesn’t beat the combo, so let them wrath away. It just doesn’t matter. These cards WILL cost you more games than they will save you.
Fighting Hate
Fighting graveyard hate can sometimes be difficult for Unburial Rites strategies. The best thing going for this deck is that people will never run enough hate to justify drastic change. It takes much more than the two Rest in Peace, Grafdigger’s Cage, or Tormod’s Crypt to swing a match in an opponent’s favor.
I played against Rest in Peace five of my ten rounds in Atlanta and never lost to one. It isn’t a tough card to beat. You have Ray of Revelation to help beat the card. Whenever Ray of Revelation is in the graveyard, it can turn the Rest in Peace into Tormod’s Crypt. You can also play around it sometimes. Instead of trying to throw everything into the graveyard as fast as you can, you can simply play the creatures and try to keep them from dying. When you know the coast is clear from Rest in Peace, you can just go for it, and it will usually work.
The only scary Rest in Peace are those that come out of Human Naya. This matchup is already rough because of how aggressive they can be, as well as because of the backbreaking Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. There really isn’t a great way to deal with them if they draw Rest in Peace. You have to slow the game down and invest time into controlling their board presence. This was an oversight going into Atlanta and something that needs to be corrected.
Slaughter Games was the scariest card going into Atlanta. I thought there would be a high number of Jund players since the tournament was so close to rotation. This is why I played Appetite for Brains in the sideboard. My own Slaughter Games were to beat the mirror if anyone else played the combo.
We will see a lot more graveyard hate moving forward. The list I played was pretty much the meat and potatoes version of this deck. It wasn’t cute or sophisticated. It just had one job to do. We accomplished this because no one had the deck on their radar.
I think there will be a high number of Grafdigger’s Cages in the following weeks because this list didn’t have any answers for it.
Moving Forward
Creatures (17)
- 4 Fiend Hunter
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 4 Angel of Glory's Rise
- 1 Borborygmos Enraged
- 4 Cartel Aristocrat
Lands (24)
Spells (19)
All of the changes I have made are still theoretical. I am also still learning how to sideboard and what I can get away with during sideboarding. I need to wait until I can play this deck on Magic Online before I come to any conclusions, but rest assured that you guys will be the first to know once I do.
Borborygmos Enraged is the perfect 1-2 in the maindeck. I wanted another creature to reanimate since the deck loses when all four Angel of Glory’s Rise are on the bottom of the library. You also always have 3-5 lands in hand in game ones. Faithless Looting and Grisly Salvage always want to fill the yard with spells leaving a surplus of lands in your hand. This makes Borborygmos Enraged the perfect secondary win condition. Even if they kill the guy, they probably don’t have any creatures in play.
The Rolling Temblor and Abrupt Decay numbers might shift due to needing Pillar of Flame for the Human Naya matchup, but for now this is what I want to be testing out. Abrupt Decay is the best card we have to fight Naya Humans. It can kill an annoying creature to buy us some time or a Rest in Peace that is stopping us from going off. It also works well with Huntmaster of the Fells when we want to kill multiple creatures. Oh, and it beats those pesky Grafdigger’s Cages we will most likely have to play against.
Griselbrand works well with Borborygmos Enraged after sideboard in Slaughter Games matchups. It doesn’t take up too many slots in the deck and can help “combo” the opponent out with a high density of lands in hand.
Purify the Grave is the best sideboard card for the mirror match, since it is still amazing when you mill it. Deathrite Shaman is one of the cards people constantly ask me about, but it really isn’t that scary. You have multiple removal spells for it including a combo piece. I have never been afraid of a Deathrite Shaman, making it a terrible sideboard spell for the mirror match.
Cathedral Sanctifier rounds out the sideboard as a great way to gain some life against Saito’s R/G deck. You only need to gain infinite life against them, and Huntmaster of the Fells can sometimes be too slow. This card allows you to interact with your opponent and still have mana to work on finding the combo.
Playing the Deck
Game One
The aggressive decks are the only ones who stand a chance to beat you. Control decks are so focused on killing creatures that they just can’t interact with you efficiently. You have more Unburial Rites than they have sweepers, meaning that you can just beat down without the combo. Once you have the combo, the game should be over outside of a lucky Terminus. You can also beat a Terminus if you have two copies of Cartel Aristocrat and Fiend Hunter.
Playing creatures as chump blockers is a great way to stay alive. The only instance that this is bad is when using Cartel Aristocrat against a deck with red. Pillar of Flame can cause a serious headache and force you to find another copy. Huntmaster of the Fells is fine to throw out there since you can combo off in different ways without the flip card. Don’t throw a Fiend Hunter into play unless you have to or have another one in the graveyard or cannot combo next turn.
Reanimating Angel of Glory’s Rise to bring back just a handful of Cartel Aristocrats and Huntmaster of the Fells is also enough to either win the game or stall it out for a long time. You also get to combo off once you find a Fiend Hunter. Do not be afraid of just throwing a ton of power onto the board. We are still playing Magic here.
Sideboarded Games
There is a shift once you get to sideboarded games. Depending on the hand, you will hold Faithless Lootings for the midgame to give yourself more information on where the game is going. This will also help you develop your hand and help figure out what you want to protect and what you want to get in the graveyard. Cast it on turn one if you’re looking for something or your hand has two flashback spells already. You always want Ray of Revelation and Unburial Rites in the yard anyway. You will also be discarding more lands after sideboard.
The same goes for Grisly Salvage. You will find yourself selecting creatures over lands more often.
You also want to be a little more aggressive with just playing creatures. This will help out in the later turns and lower the impact of Rest in Peace.
Again, I wish I could help out a little more, but I don’t want to give you guys misinformation. The one thing I am certain of is that you can cut Farseek when you shave on Huntmaster of the Fells against aggressive red decks. This is enough slots for Cathedral Sanctifier and Abrupt Decay.
This deck is a blast to play and is a great choice right now. I promise you that there will be less graveyard hate out there than you think. Let’s gain all the life!