Harsh Scrutiny: Breaking Black For Kaladesh Standard

With the full Kaladesh card gallery available, it’s time to get down to the business of brewing. In addition to over 250 new cards, both Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins are rotating out, including Collected Company. This means we’re looking at a radically new format with potentially entirely different rules of engagement.

Today, I’d like to focus on some of the black cards of Kaladesh that strike a chord with me. It’s not that I want to find a deck that uses every card I’m interested in at the same time, but rather that I want to understand how to use every card in the new set.

While some cards require you to go down a different path than usual, Harsh Scrutiny is one of those nuts-and-bolts cards that can help round out a wide variety of strategies. I’m kind of surprised to see almost no buzz around this card. Normally, people get excited about discard spells more than they should, and this one actually seems pretty decent!

One way to look at Harsh Scrutiny is as a Despise that gains scry 1 in exchange for not having the option to hit planeswalkers. Of course, that said, it’s not like Despise is legal or anything. Even Duress just rotated out.

The reason I’m particularly interested in Harsh Scrutiny is threefold:

● There are very few one-mana plays worth considering in Standard right now, so the bar is actually pretty low. If you play a Harsh Scrutiny on turn 1, opposing aggro decks are going to come out a fair bit slower. If you take their only one-drop, they might “lose” a mana on turn 1 (and a lot of damage). If you take the last creature in their hand on turn 3, they might not be able to put together a Crew for Smuggler’s Copter.

● There are a lot of semi-uncounterable creatures in Standard right now, not to mention a shortage of playable counterspells. Emrakul, the Promised End; Distended Mindbender; Elder Deep-Fiend…there are just so many creatures that we want discard for, and that’s to say nothing of stuff like Archangel Avacyn; Ishkanah, Grafwidow; Goblin Dark-Dwellers, Spell Queller, and so on.

● Scry 1 is a powerful effect. It wasn’t too long ago that one of the defining characteristics of Standard was the smoothing provided by the ten Temples that let you scry 1 when played. Normally, a big part of the problem with discard spells later in the game is how often they can become dead cards. With Harsh Scrutiny, you always at least get to scry. Scrying an extra land to the bottom of your deck frequently makes up for the lost card from missing with Harsh Scrutiny. Keeping a two-land hand with Harsh Scrutiny is a thing of beauty. You are so much more likely to hit your Liliana on curve. Even a one-land hand on the draw can be more keepable if you’ve got Harsh Scrutiny!

Okay, let’s start with control, a natural potential home for Harsh Scrutiny.

Tip: If you are going to Liliana to get back a creature, you usually want to do that earlier in the turn than when you cast Harsh Scrutiny.

Harsh Scrutiny helps a lot to make up for the lack of two-mana permission. I considered Revolutionary Rebuff, but the card seems excessively mediocre.

I guess we’ll find out just how low blue mages are willing to stoop…

I’m not saying it looks bad compared to past counterspells. That much is obvious. I’m saying the card just looks pretty weak compared to other mediocre cards, like Horribly Awry (which I declined to play because of the overlap with Harsh Scrutiny but I could definitely see playing anyway). If the card were really just a Clash of Wills for two, I could even live with that. It wouldn’t be good, but sometimes you just want some reliable early-game defense.

The problem is that whole “non-artifact” clause. Someone being able to pay two to stop your permission spell is already pretty brutal, but to not even be able to counter Smuggler’s Copter, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, or Verdurous Gearhulk? Yuck.

I am totally open to the possibility that blue decks just need permission that badly. However, the worlds where I want to play blue in this format are disproportionately likely to be worlds where blue decks don’t need Revolutionary Rebuff. As such, I’m gonna start there.

I’m not sure how to evaluate this one in a non-Energy deck. Just drawing two and scrying two is definitely nice, but I prefer the dig from Fortune’s Favor. With Torrential Gearhulk getting back instants and Liliana getting back creatures, there really is a lot of value to milling ourselves.

Yes! This is exactly what so many of my black decks have been looking for. It’s a little unfortunate that it costs three, since we’ve got an embarrassment of riches of good three-cost cards, but it does line up against the format fantastically. Killing Smuggler’s Copter, Spell Queller, Sylvan Advocate, and more, Essence Extraction is moderately reliable early-game defense combined with a pretty sizable lifegain boost.

While I could imagine a lot of black decks that end up putting Essence Extraction in their sideboard instead of their maindeck, it’s particularly good in a Torrential Gearhulk deck, since it gives us a lifegain card we can Flashback to help put a game out of reach of our opponents.

Torrential Gearhulk is quite the Snapcaster Mage! While much more expensive, at least Torrential Gearhulk packs a ton of extra stats. Besides, it’s not like Snapcaster Mage is even remotely close to a reasonable bar. It might be a little ambitious to play this many sixes, but I do love how good Torrential Gearhulk makes Liliana, the Last Hope going long.

Of course, Torrential Gearhulk isn’t just a bigger Snapcaster Mage. Only hitting instants means we’re going to have to make a few deckbuilding decisions with it in mind. For instance, what ought our split be of Ruinous Path versus Murder?

Harsh Scrutiny makes us even more vulnerable to planeswalkers, so we need some amount of Ruinous Path, but Murder is such a juicy Torrential Gearhulk target!

To the Slaughter is a little bit of a compromise, giving us both more instant-speed removal and more planeswalker defense. In fact, I could even imagine us more fully embracing the card and actually leaning into Emrakul, the Promised End and Scour the Laboratory:

It really doesn’t take much, though this version still has the same glaring lack of a sweeper. I’m not sure what to do about that. I’m hoping that Harsh Scrutiny; Essence Scatter; Liliana, the Last Hope; and To the Slaughter help us play enough small-ball that we just don’t fall behind as much. That might be an ambitious dream, however.

Interesting to note, Harsh Scrutiny makes bounce, like Unsubstantiate, more appealing. It’s obviously not a great primary plan to use two cards to solve one problem, but it does give us some options if we have use for the bounce card anyway. I’m not sure if there’s a Reflector Mage plus Harsh Scrutiny deck, but if there is, that’s a sweet combo.

While Harsh Scrutiny is an inherently control-oriented card, there’s no reason it has to go into a blue control deck. For instance, what about Orzhov?

Kaladesh lands are absolutely amazing. It’s interesting that enemy colors used to have the weakest and strongest of the two-color land cycles. Now they have both of the top two. That seems like it might shift the balance of power towards more enemy-color decks than before.

I love, love, love Cataclysmic Gearhulk and can easily see it proving one of the defining cards of Kaladesh.

Cataclysmic Gearhulk does a pretty respectable sweeper impression, but with the added bonus of being a victory condition and being a legal target for Liliana to get back. With so much discard, opponents are going to be hard-pressed to play around our sweepers, particularly since we also have Fumigate.

Fumigate is a nice upgrade over Planar Outburst. Hitting creature-lands doesn’t matter that much, and using the awaken mode of Planar Outburst was useful sometimes, but gaining a few extra points of life from Fumigate is a really big deal. Whether it’s putting us out of burn range or just buying us a little extra time, it’s a pretty solid improvement as far as five-cost sweepers go.

I’m not sure what to make of Kambal, Consul of Allocation yet. As always, three is a particularly hard fought spot on the curve. That said, Kambal looks like he might actually be kind of sweet. Even though it’s not that hard for most opponents to kill him, we’re usually going to be up a drain for two. That’s pretty decent, particularly when we account for the games where our opponents actually struggle to kill him. Every Anticipate; every Liliana, the Last Hope; every Smuggler’s Copter; every Hedron Archive is another drain.

My biggest reservation is that Kambal matches up quite poorly against Chandra, Torch of Defiance. If she comes down and deals four to Kambal, we’re going to be in a world of hurt, and we can’t even clear the path with Harsh Scrutiny, since it can’t take planeswalkers.

Here’s a version that replaces Kambal and Ayli with Eldrazi Displacer for better Cataclysmic Gearhulk recursion:

Eldrazi Displacer is one of the premier threats in the new world, and the combo with Cataclysmic Gearhulk is sure to be the centerpiece of many a deck in the weeks to come. This is a great combo to be sure, but I actually think Gonti, Lord of Luxury might prove to be a valuable role-player as an additional loop target.

I’m pretty high on this card, even though it seems like no one else is into it. Yeah, Gonti doesn’t let you play land from your opponent’s deck, but you got to choose one of their top four cards. It’s extremely rare that you’ll actually flip four lands. In general, I think taking one of your opponent’s top four cards is going to be better than drawing a card. Their cards are less likely to synergize with yours and lands are misses, but you are usually going to have enough options to choose from to more than make up the difference.

And Gonti, Lord of Luxury isn’t just a 2/3 that draws a card. It has deathtouch! That makes it a bigger force on the battlefield. Besides, black appreciates a cantrip creature more than blue does. Blue has so much card draw anyway. Black, on the other hand, needs whatever it can get, and a creature that draws cards is particularly nice with Liliana, the Last Hope.

Gonti, Lord of Luxury plus Eldrazi Displacer is a deceptively strong card draw engine. With just six lands on the battlefield, you are looking through eight of their cards per turn! It won’t take long to put together the best possible combination of their cards to beat them with.

Noxious Gearhulk is lot less exciting to me than Torrential Gearhulk, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, or Verdurous Gearhulk. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong; I just think it isn’t as game-changing as those three are (though it is better than Combustible Gearhulk). Noxious Gearhulk is also looking at pretty steep competition because of Sorin, Grim Nemesis. That said, the prospect of Eldrazi Displacer plus Noxious Gearhulk makes me want to at least give it a shot. In general, however, I prefer Noxious Gearhulk as a Traverse the Ulvenwald target in G/B Delirium decks.

Lost Legacy might just be a new sideboard card to replace Infinite Obliteration; however, I think it’s actually kind of mediocre at that (and Infinite Obliteration was already fairly modest). It does have at least one other, very different way to use the card:

You can target yourself with Lost Legacy! Just name Eternal Scourge and you’ll get to look through your hand, graveyard, and deck for all four Eternal Scourges and exile them. Any that were in your hand are replaced with new cards. Either way, you now have four Eternal Scourges that you can summon, like a sort of never-ending Call of the Herd.

If this sounds clunky, that’s because it is. However, it is also a three-mana draw four. Besides, it’s not like the 3/3s are just vanillas, either. If your opponent tries to kill them with removal spells, they go to exile to eventually be replayed again.

If Eternal Scourge dies in combat, it actually does die and go to your graveyard. However, after most of your Eternal Scourges are gone, you can use another Lost Legacy to get them all back!

I’m a little concerned about how slow the Lost Legacy plus Eternal Scourge engine is, particularly when Eldrazi Displacer sets such a high bar for what we should be getting every time we spend three mana. Nevertheless, it’s a cool package that could potentially be slotted into a number of decks (or even as part of a sideboard plan against attrition decks).

Here’s another alternative direction to go with Orzhov:

This one is built around Lone Rider and the multitude of efficient ways to trigger it thanks to Kaladesh.

Aerial Responder is respectable body that helps soak up removal and stabilize the battlefield. It’s also exactly the right size to flip Lone Rider. Three is a tough spot on the curve, but this card looks pretty good to me.

Angel of Invention is up against Cataclysmic Gearhulk, Archangel Avacyn, Fumigate, and more. Nevertheless, it’s worth a shot, particularly if we end up pushing some kind of a token theme or sub-theme. I would guess it won’t be good enough, here, but maybe it will find a home in some kind of token deck. The problem is that Verdurous Gearhulk is so much stronger of a card, I’m not sure what the token deck is that actually uses it looks like. Mono-White, maybe? Even still, it’s probably the fourth-best white five-drop, which is a tough spot to be in.

I guess you could do something like:

This list looks like it’s trying a bit too hard, if you ask me.

Of course, we were discussing Harsh Scrutiny, which, as you can see, did not make the cut in my Lone Rider deck. It just seemed like we might need to spend all of our mana early developing our battlefield.

Let’s take a look at Harsh Scrutiny in a different color combination:

Chandra, Torch of Defiance is the perfect card for a B/R Midrange deck, giving them another great two-for-one, a card draw engine, a victory condition, and extra mana to help make sure Goblin Dark-Dwellers comes on time.

Even though Harsh Scrutiny can only take creatures, it lets us see their entire hand. This gives us valuable information for determining what order to play our cards in. It also lets us know if the coast is clear for us to drop a Chandra, Torch of Defiance. I particularly love the play of Chandra into Oath of Chandra or Harnessed Lightning, by the way, which leads to such a tempo-swing.

Harnessed Lightning could just be Incendiary Flow, of course, but it does a couple of very important things in this list.

● Being an instant gives it important strength against Smuggler’s Copter, Spell Queller, Fleetwheel Cruiser, and Shambling Vent.

● We can actually deal four or five damage with a Harnessed Lightning, once we’ve cast Live Fast. There’s obviously not a lot of support for the minor Energy sub-theme here, but even just casting a Harnessed Lightning on a Falkenrath Gorger means we’ve got two extra Energy for when we flash it back with Goblin Dark-Dwellers.

I think it’s a close call between Succumb to Temptation and Live Fast, but it is nice that Live Fast is easier to cast early. The Harnessed Lightning interaction is enough to push it over the top for me.

As for Incendiary Flow, I generally see it being more of a red aggro card. This might look like a traditional Red Deck Wins, but it might also look quite different, such as the following Rakdos deck:

This one is definitely set up to try a few cards out, but it shouldn’t take very many games to be able to start tuning it pretty effectively. I’m just generally interested in figuring out how best to utilize Smuggler’s Copter, which seems like one of the best cards in the set to me.

How much should we push the madness angle?

How about the artifact synergies?

Unlicensed Disintegration looks particularly good to me. Mind Rot is to Blightning as Murder is to Unlicensed Disintegration, at least in the right deck. Besides, Murder is better than Mind Rot, anyway. This card has to be awesome.

Just how much are you willing to do to get a 2/3 for one and an extra three damage on your kill spell?

There are so many ways to build this deck. Should it be Reckless Bushwacker-centric? Should it be nearly mono-red, splashing just Disintegration and Scrounger? Should it be base-black instead?

One of the most interesting black aggro cards, in my opinion, is Night Market Lookout.

Outside of being two damage a turn for one mana, the Lookout is just such an absurdly good Crew member for Smuggler’s Copter. One way or the other, I think there is going to end up being a deck with these two fighting side-by-side. Here’s an attempt at mono-black, though I’m not really sure how much we’re even getting by staying one color.

Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate having lands that enter the battlefield untapped in my curve decks. It’s just that we’re playing a lot of mediocre cards, and it doesn’t seem like it would cost us that much to splash red (for Unlicensed Disintegration, if nothing else).

Okay, I will admit Animation Module is cute with Syndicate Trafficker. Yeah, yeah, we could be playing both of the other Modules for even more mondo combos, but I think that list needs to be built around Energy.

Once you’ve got Animation Module down and something to sacrifice to get things started, you can make Syndicate Trafficker indestructible at will, growing +1/+1 for every mana you’re willing to spend. Scrapheap Scrounger makes a great sacrifice, since you can just rebuy it later.

It’s probably too fancy, but Indulgent Aristocrat works great with Animation Module and even pumps up your Drana, Liberator of Malakir. That said, we probably need a few more Vampires before it’s worth going to this much trouble. Maybe Asylum Visitor?

Weaponcraft Enthusiast is definitely sweet with Drana and happens to be okay with Animation Module. In general, however, I’d prefer to play the card in a deck with more Anthems. It’s cool that it gives us extra artifacts, but the rewards for playing artifacts in black aren’t as appealing as the rewards in red. We probably need a lot more artifacts before Underhanded Designs is worth it, and even then, it’s not as exciting as Inventor’s Apprentice.

We’d have to be getting a lot of mileage out of the deathtouch part of this card, as a 3/2 is nowhere near good enough, compared to the alternatives.

I do appreciate a 3/1 with menace, in terms of putting pressure on people. However, we can probably do better.

Too expensive for an aggro deck. If Eliminate the Competition has a home, it’s probably in a sacrifice deck, a sort of Aristocrats-style G/B deck or something similar. Once we’re G/B, however, why not just be something more like:

This path looks very promising to me. Languish and Collected Company leaving the format opens up a lot of room for this strategy. Verdurous Gearhulk is a powerful new addition that helps us play beatdown while also giving us an artifact.

I don’t think it’s out of the question to play the full four, even with Traverse. That card looks amazing.

One last wacky black deck I’d like to try is something taking advantage of Morbid Curiosity.

This kind of effect isn’t brand new or anything, but it does have new meaning in a world with cost reduction cards like Distended Mindbender. Play a Matter Reshaper, Pilgrim’s Eye, or Filigree Familiar on three and then a Mindbender on four, and your opponent will be extremely disrupted. Follow that up by sacrificing the Mindbender to draw eight, and you should be able to lock up the game fairly quickly.

Even when we’re not living the Mindbender dream, Morbid Curiosity can draw three or four cards off one of our cantrip creatures, which isn’t too bad. In theory, we might sacrifice Emrakul to draw thirteen, but it’s unclear how often it’s actually gonna come down to that.

Alternatively, I could imagine some kind of a deck built around sacrificing Metalwork Colossus to Morbid Curiosity. Drawing eleven cards is obviously ridiculous, and I’m not sure it’s all that hard to cast the Colossus in a reasonable timeframe.

Even just a Hedron Archive on turn 4 lets you play the Colossus on turn 5. If you had a Corrupted Grafstone on turn 2, you could play the Colossus on turn 4. If you had another artifact to play off the Hedron Archive, you could even play the Colossus with mana to sacrifice it to Morbid Curiosity that same turn!

As you can see, there’s much to be figured out now that Kaladesh is here. We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface, and the Prerelease is this upcoming weekend. Where should we focus on brewing next?