Everyone has a pet card of a set. It’s the one that, although they don’t know what the future holds for it, it just looks cool. Your action towards the card can vary from positive speculation to shoehorning it into to every even remotely-relevant deck just because you want to. You’ll watch every set release thinking, “will [pet card] get good support? Will it get enough that I won’t get laughed out of FNM by casting it?”
If you’re anything like me, Fate Reforged provided the support that an otherwise-marooned card needed: Dark Deal, and the pet card to complement it is Waste Not.
I’d been excited for Waste Not for the last year and a half. Since it was the first spoiler for M15 and was designed to showcase the new frame style, we’ve had a long time to ponder its potential. However, no Standard support has come close to the power of Dark Deal.
Dark Deal is a really strange effect… in a way, it’s a black Wheel of Fate. While it does not have near the power level of that long-gone gem, Dark Deal provides a lot of potential to build up a graveyard early in the game and destroy any opponent’s well-crafted plans. It is effectively a two-for-one against yourself, as you discard a net card and you spend a card to cast the spell. However, Waste Not triggers for every card your opponent had in his or her hand, and all of Waste Not’s triggers are so good that whenever you get several at once, it can be outright devastating. Imagine if they discard two lands, two creatures, and two spells. That gives you four mana, a free Divination and a Moan of the Unhallowed in addition to a fresh hand of spells to cast. Heck, with that mana and a freshly drawn Dark Deal, you can chain them together to get rolling value.
Waste Not had sat in a Standard deck I’d been messing with for a while previously; as the root of this deck was still intact at the release of Fate Reforged, it was my starting point for developing something good.
Creatures (16)
Lands (22)
Spells (22)
Sideboard
I was pretty heavy on the creatures in this build and I found most to be underwhelming, especially given today’s metagame of wide, high-creature-count decks. So I shifted the plan a bit. With the potential for an explosive curve from Waste Not into Dark Deal, I decided to take a more controlling route, pulling in all the discard spells I could to make Zombies and Thoughtseize away the cards that could prevent you from dealing with them.
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (25)
Spells (30)
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 4 Sign in Blood
- 3 Hero's Downfall
- 1 Bile Blight
- 4 Waste Not
- 4 Rakshasa's Secret
- 2 Dead Drop
- 2 Crux of Fate
- 2 Tasigur's Cruelty
- 4 Dark Deal
Sideboard
I downsized my creature count, focusing instead on spells that fueled Waste Not. In a midrange-heavy world, hands were generally full of threats just waiting to be played and the time seemed right to implement a strategy like this.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang would be my ace in the hole. Combining an extremely attractive power/toughness ratio and casting cost with the fact that most Dark Deals could get him out right away (assuming they tossed at least one land), adding the new (old?) khan seemed like a winning plan. Beyond that, we tried to jam all the good discard the format offered, including Mind Rot effects in Rakshasa’s Secret and the new Tasigur’s Cruelty. While we’d be mostly black in sources and spells, splashing another color seemed harmless, and no spell would require a nonblack color in its cost. Even the impossible-to-kill Torrent Elemental was reanimated with black mana. Thus, using eight Temples to pay for Tasigur’s ability seemed an easy way to add depth and card selection to an otherwise linear list.
I sleeved up a proxy version a couple weeks before the set release, and let me tell you, it was strong.
Between the one-two punch of Waste Not into Dark Deal and the power of single-mana discard spells, I was always able to stick Tasigur on-time and apply tons of pressure to the board. Tasigur was the real deal, and with most opponents stuck with a slender or stripped hand, he often closed the game without the help of any Zombie tokens. The deck smashed through mono-red aggro, Jeskai Tokens, U/W Heroic, and U/X control decks with ease, presenting threats on multiple axes. This deck was great, but I did notice some flaws and find key points I could leverage to amplify the deck’s strengths even further.
In practice, the deck had the feeling of a deck with Pack Rat, and it wasn’t just the mono-Swamps. With Dark Deal, I can just hold worthless kill or discard spells until I could cast the black Wheel and turn them into something helpful, much like Pack Rat allowed you to turn dross into value. It’s not as good as a Plague Rats, but it’s a start.
Because of this, I decided to focus up. Instead of having two of this and three of that, I got tunnel vision, jamming eight playsets and a few odd singletons to make a consistent, well-oiled deck. I stopped here:
Creatures (6)
Lands (24)
Spells (30)
The best cards were kept, and those most congruent with the plan stuck too. With this list physically in hand, I marched to the first Tuesday Night Magic event following Fate Reforged’s release for some new-fashioned Standard!
Round One – U/B Control
My opponent Brian is a consistently well-performing Legacy player, and I tried to recall if I’d ever played him in a Standard tournament. It became clear that he was on the Temple of Deceit plan, but it didn’t take long for me to get over him with a crushing Dark Deal, drawing four cards off his four spells. An Empty the Pits tied the game down after getting four Zombies in his end step that weren’t met by a Crux of Fate or Bile Blight for several turns. The second game saw him get stuck on land. An Ashiok from the sideboard managed to pressure his two-lander, and while it ticked up, I ripped through Sign in Blood after Sign in Blood to get to a Thoughtseize to deprive him of the Hero’s Downfall he presumably had to undo Ashiok’s hard work. I burned through three Signs and didn’t find it, and the turn after Ashiok ticked up to eleven, he found the third land for his Downfall. He didn’t find much else, though, and a Doomwake Giant and Whipped Doomwake Giant follow-up was enough to keep me ahead of a late Perilous Vault
1-0
Between rounds, I played a side game against a red/white burn deck and came out firmly ahead after two or three games. Thoughtseize the burn, and kill everything else! With a diverse deck that featured strong creatures and searing burn, Dark Deal with Waste Not was always a smorgasbord of choices. In the last game we played, a perfectly-timed Whip of Erebos off the top saved me from certain death. Then the round two pairings went up.
Round Two – R/W Midrange
Rob, my opponent, had fought my last Waste Not iteration and had an abysmal draw against me at the time. This time, I was the one in trouble. After two games with mulligans to five and consistent threats on Rob’s side, I was floundering. Land was in short supply on every remotely-keepable hand, and I just never got off the ground. It wasn’t until Rob and I played a few practice matches afterwards, with him switching to his Temur Ascendancy combo deck, that he figured out my plan and recognized that I was playing a Waste Not brew.
1-1
A frustrating but understandable loss. Sometimes you just get bad hands. The frequency of those dead hands will help define the deck’s overall viability.
Round Three – U/R Burn
Austin was a recently-returned Magic veteran, with his Journey to Nyx Event Deck box serving as a carrier for his newly acquired Standard deck. After some out-of-date cards were replaced from his list, he was ready to go!
In game one, I had no problem keeping his few creatures under control, and his burn was not aggressive enough to hurt me despite the significant damage I was taking from Sign in Blood and Thoughtseize. The second game, however, was a different story. After siding out considerable amounts of spot removal and keeping costly, life-draining hands, I found myself on the business end of a mean Spellheart Chimera with six instants supporting it in the yard. I dug furiously for my remaining removal spells, paying blood with each spell, only to come up short, crumbling to the Chimera and a Flameheart Phoenix. In game three, I removed all of my targeted discard and Sign in Blood for planeswalkers. At one point, I was able to maintain one of each, and Ugin cast Ghostfire each turn to close the game.
2-1
I really liked his plan. I’ve always loved “number of instants and sorceries” decks. Cards like Spite of Mogis, Pull from the Deep, and even the new fringe Limited fodder Bloodfire Enforcers have piqued my interest in this theme. More on that later.
Round Four – R/W Midrange
Seemingly a popular deck tonight, I kept a loose one against a turn-one Monastery Swiftspear, and I feared I was in trouble. A bad choice to keep in game one meant his burn shredded me. Game two was a bit closer, where I stuck some of my discard and drew answers to his creatures. Tasigur came online, and things looked pretty good. I still wasn’t applying a ton of pressure, though, and in the quiet turns that followed, he started banging out multiple Outpost Sieges.
Let me tell you, folks, that card is my worst nightmare.
As the turns went on and as I failed to deal with a card I can’t interact with at all, I quickly fell behind as he stuck two creatures and a burn spell a turn. Flailing and defenseless, I succumbed to the advantage.
2-2
Although we were the last game to finish, I decided to tap out before the last round fired, handing back my borrowed Ugin and trotting off to my car, ambivalent with my finish.
The deck had some trouble with good draws, and a lot of times I wasn’t exerting much pressure. The Zombies were somewhat impactful, but Tasigur finished the game nine times out of ten, though I did get to Dark Deal in the last game in round three until I hit my last Sign in Blood to aim at my opponent who had stabilized at two life. Dark Deal was just as often a loot spell for me as it was a Waste Not value-driver.
That being said, Murderous Cut and Bile Blight were outstanding along with Empty the Pits and Whip of Erebos, all of which heavily impacted the games in which they appeared. While those almost always got cast, many of the discard spells I drew were tossed to a mid-game Dark Deal, and I didn’t miss them. Despise, in particular, was lackluster. From the sideboard, Ashiok did provide a nice level of early pressure, especially for decks that couldn’t stick turn-one creatures. Doomwake Giants, on the other hand, were pretty mediocre, mostly just being nonlegendary versions of Tasigur, the Golden Fang. I didn’t have enough enchantments to really go deep enough on the constellation plan. Ugin, while neat, was pretty win-more, as the only times I saw him I was already way ahead. However, Ugin is an essential answer in a deck that has no way to answer some permanents, so another copy or two might actually help close long-game gaps.
In general, I felt the blue was OK, but I’d definitely add another Island, as Tasigur’s ability was surprisingly blue-hungry. I often stalled on being able to use it. That being said, almost all the spells were black, so shifting to another color is probably pretty easy. As it’s in line with Tasigur’s ability, the other Sultai color, green, came up for consideration. Its ramping and redundancy could make Dark Deal even more consistent, and it could be packed with threats that could be easily accessed.
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (24)
Spells (23)
The sideboard could feature fringe cards like Death Frenzy, which can eat your own Zombies and your opponent’s creatures to gain lots of life when the 2/2s on your side don’t matter, plus enchantment removal will be easier to come by.
I know I’m not the only one to see Dark Deal’s success; several other players in the shop exclaimed that they’d been on the same line once they saw my deck in action. Show us what you do with your opponent’s trash!