It’s time! Spoiler season is here and Eldritch Moon is kicking things off with style.
If there’s been a strong theme in Shadows Standard, it’s been the dominance of white cards. The aggression of Humans; efficient removal like Declaration in Stone and Dromoka’s Command; Gideon, Ally of Zendikar; sweepers in Tragic Arrogance and Planar Outburst; and even the powerful top-end threats of Archangel Avacyn and LInvala, the Preserver – white literally has a bit of everything. It’s no surprise that the Top 100 metagame of #GPPIT was roughly 90% white-incorporating strategies.
Admittedly we are at the very beginning of getting a taste of Emrakul’s influence on Innistrad, but we may have to prepare for white’s continued dominance. Sigarda’s sisters are here, but perhaps not in the way that she or we imagined them:
First, let’s take a look at Gisela. As the cheaper of the pair, it is more likely that she will be played in higher quantities.
While she directly competes with Gideon, Ally of Zendikar at four mana, her rate is excellent and she serves a different role from the powerful planeswalker.
Gideon is more about building traction on the battlefield and serving as a sticky threat. He is not particularly effective alone against the forces of Collected Company or Humans decks and is himself fairly vulnerable to fliers.
Gisela may be a tad vulnerable to Reflector Mage but is likely to be a brick wall against all of the aforementioned while also sporting lifelink, perhaps the most powerful keyword in modern Magic. She contributes a big part in making various white decks more resilient to fliers, including Archangel Avacyn, and putting her controller out of reach quickly.
Functionally, she’s a four-mana Baneslayer Angel impersonator, and that’s completely ignoring her meld ability.
Bruna, the Fading Light is far more expensive but has a strong immediate impact on the battlefield when cast – critically, not when she enters the battlefield (which I suppose is also a connection to the Eldrazi?). While Bruna has a far worse rate than her sister, she rewards you for just playing Magic, which is vital for any card with her casting cost. Not only can you simply rebuy Gisela to assemble Brisela, but there’s nothing shabby about returning Tireless Tracker, Archangel Avacyn, or Linvala, the Preserver, just to name a few. I find it fairly unlikely that one will lose a game after rebuying the aforementioned should the battlefield be relatively under control.
This makes Bruna not only an excellent breaker against spot removal, but she has two easy avenues to cushion a life total by putting a ton of lifelink power on the battlefield or immediately triggering Linvala, the Preserver.
Card advantage and catch-up power are exactly what make expensive threats great.
Getting to Brisela and the new mechanic meld, here’s the link to the Eldritch Moon mechanic guide, but to make a long story short: the two physical Angel cards form their Final Fantasy boss-esque Eldrazi hybrid. Any effect that would cause Brisela to change zones moves both Gisela and Bruna to that zone face-up.
As for the Voice of Nightmares herself (themselves?), the meld-ination appears to be fairly comparable to Ormendahl, Profane Prince. An incredibly difficult-to-remove nine-power lifelinking threat is extremely potent, but Brisela also drastically limits an opponent’s ability to play Magic and consequentially kill her. Declaration in Stone, Stasis Snare, and Reflector Mage are off the table, mostly limiting options to Ob Nixilis Reignited, Planar Outburst, Tragic Arrogance, and back-door Collected Companies as common ways to remove this threat as of the current Standard format.
Not only is Brisela difficult to directly kill, but she is functionally impossible to race due to her lifelink and vigilance; it would basically require Evolutionary Leap, Hangarback Walker, and a ton of other additional resources and mana to mitigate her abilities.
I hesitate to call Brisela even a payoff, as it is basically (and literally) just an incidental part of the other two cards. Gisela is a generically good Magic card, and at that point there’s very little reason not to touch a few copies of Bruna in most decks that would be interested in the former, due to how well she plays with other powerful cards in Standard, including her sister.
Let’s take a look at a few hypothetical decks, starting with an update of G/W:
Creatures (17)
- 1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 4 Hangarback Walker
- 1 Linvala, the Preserver
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 2 Archangel Avacyn
- 2 Bruna, the Fading Light
- 3 Gisela, the Broken Blade
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (13)
This is clearly a different take on G/W Tokens, functionally removing Gideon, Ally of Zendikar from the deck to incorporate the Angel package. It wouldn’t surprise me if this made G/W a more balanced strategy overall. While Gideon, as I mentioned previously, is an excellent tool against control decks, Gisela’s ability to dominate the battlefield of small creatures can’t be understated. Further, she is excellent to curve into off Nissa, Voice of Zendikar as a means to protect the planeswalker – potentially all the way to Nissa’s ultimate.
Additionally, there’s still the incredible end-game of G/W Tokens headlined by Evolutionary Leap – which even feeds into Bruna and ultimately the Voice of Nightmares.
I also want to look at two U/W decks. The first is an update of Jacob Wilson’s U/W Ojutai/Always Watching deck, because what could make Gisela better than actually turning her into a Baneslayer Angel with vigilance?
Creatures (25)
- 4 Knight of the White Orchid
- 3 Dragonlord Ojutai
- 4 Eldrazi Skyspawner
- 4 Reflector Mage
- 1 Archangel Avacyn
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 2 Bruna, the Fading Light
- 3 Gisela, the Broken Blade
Lands (26)
Spells (9)
The incidental “ramp” effects of Knight of the White Orchid and Eldrazi Skyspawner play well for not only accelerating Dragonlord Ojutai and Archangel Avacyn ahead of schedule but also for eventually deploying Bruna, the Fading Light.
Reflector Mage is also just about the best “worst-case” scenario with Bruna that I can think of and this deck is generally good at buying time and bogging down the battlefield with annoying creatures while providing resistance and working toward the larger payoff cards. Always Watching not only plays well with Dragonlord Ojutai, like before, but Gisela essentially becomes Brisela-Lite with the powerful enchantment on battlefield.
Our last Angel-centric deck accounts for an odd creature type in this dynamic duo’s text box: Horror.
Creatures (14)
- 1 Linvala, the Preserver
- 4 Reflector Mage
- 4 Thing in the Ice
- 1 Bruna, the Fading Light
- 4 Gisela, the Broken Blade
Lands (26)
Spells (20)
Who would have thought the Kraken under the ice would be best friends with some corrupt Angels? The new Unsubstantiate does a lot of work towards making a deck like this possible. We will be trading resources fairly aggressively to put our opponent on a short clock, and the fixed Remand will put in a ton of effort toward not only keeping our opponent’s battlefield clean, but also protecting our threats.
Reflector Mage may be a little bit of a stretch here, as there is little other incidental pressure with which to leverage the body, but it is still one of the best cards in Standard. It wouldn’t surprise me if we were more interested in touching on the Knight of the White Orchid / Thraben Inspector package, as they also work well with getting bounced and chip-shotting our opponent, but the details are mostly up in the air.
The fact that there are other cheap and powerful options to pair with Thing in the Ice to close the door on an opponent is extremely exciting.
Speaking of powerful blue two-drops, if you’ve missed Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy in this Standard format, there’s a new land that I believe may put the Telepath Unbound back in the spotlight:
I think folks are a little more disappointed with this meld card than the Angel duo overall, but I believe that to be because they are directly underestimating how good having haste for this cheap is. In fact, I think Hanweir Battlements with only two lines of text would prove to be a powerful Standard staple.
That being said, Hanweir Garrison is no slouch either, and the two directly play well with each other even without melding. The ability to meld on one’s own terms is actually exciting and forces opponents into a squeeze where the threat of it may be more imposing than the reality, similar to Westvale Abbey and Ormendahl, Profane Prince.
Before we get to Jace, though, let’s take a look at a pretty obvious inclusion for this new colorless land.
Creatures (23)
- 3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- 4 Hangarback Walker
- 4 Thopter Engineer
- 4 Vile Aggregate
- 4 Reality Smasher
- 2 Thought-Knot Seer
- 2 Hedron Crawler
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (26)
Spells (5)
Add three Hanweir Garrison to the above list and you’re set.
While the individually largest threat, Reality Smasher, already has haste, Hanweir Battlements can result in a lot of incidental chip shots as well as powering up Hanweir Garrison and Vile Aggregate nicely. Additionally, the Battlements gives this Mono Red Eldrazi deck yet another powerful utility land and mana sink, effectively making it impossible for the deck to flood.
Further, Westvale Abbey got even better in the deck, now that the Garrison can spit out even more Thopter tokens.
Maybe this deck is still a little off on power level, but I can’t imagine it’s by much at this point, especially when Spatial Contortion appears to be well-positioned against most common threats besides Archangel Avacyn.
Okay! Let’s get back to Jace.
This first deck isn’t particularly flashy, but I think that Hanweir Battlements helps to solve one of the fundamental problems with U/R Goggles – that its copies of Jace were so vulnerable to removal.
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (27)
Spells (27)
Again, there’s nothing too new or crazy going on here, although a few copies of Unsubstantiate make a lot of sense, but Hanweir Battlements directly facilitates Jace as being a viable choice for the only creature in the deck. This directly increases the power level of the deck substantially (which also enables some interesting options for getting aggressive out of the sideboard).
What kind of deck could we build to abuse the more aggressive nature of Hanweir Battlements?
Creatures (14)
- 4 Thunderbreak Regent
- 1 Dragonlord Kolaghan
- 2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- 4 Hangarback Walker
- 3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Lands (26)
Spells (16)
Add four copies of Hanweir Garrison to the above list for the full 60.
This is roughly based upon the old R/B Dragons decks from last season, although it largely uses Goblin Dark-Dwellers as its big finish. There isn’t a huge amount of card advantage in this deck; mostly it is interested in dealing with an opponent’s key threat or piece of interaction and hammering them. This becomes a lot easier when all of your creatures suddenly have haste and become awesome topdecks in the late-game. In particular, Goblin Dark-Dwellers’s ability to clear a creature and then immediately come across with menace likely means it is impossible to block.
These chunks of four damage quickly add up and many of your threats even leave incidental creatures behind. Just as with Mono-Red Eldrazi, this is another aggressively slanted deck that should be able to use its mana every turn and never flood thanks to the power of Hanweir Battlements.
We are in the first week of spoiler season and I couldn’t be more thrilled for the coming month. A new Standard format is looming and #PTEMN is in sight. What do you think about the goodies we’ve been given so far? Do you think that meld will prove to be the real deal?