The release of a new set is always my favorite time to play Magic. When a format is getting stale or boring, you can count on a new set to liven things up (at least for a time). While the format often shifts back to being dominated by the previous top decks in a few weeks, there’s still that period where people are trying out new things and it’s fun to play whatever sweet cards or interactions strike your fancy, even if they aren’t the most competitive.
That time is now. The full brunt of Avacyn Restored is upon us. We can quake in fear of the unknown, or we can grab our Moonsilver Spears and Vanguard’s Shields and press onward. Personally, I’m opting to quake in fear. Not everyone can be a hero. But if you’re the press onward type, I wish you luck.
Unfortunately for Block Constructed fans like me, the process of restoring Avacyn won’t happen for a few more weeks on Magic Online. Presumably, she’s stuck in a digital Helvault and only brave WotC programmers can release her from her prison. By the time she finally emerges, the Pro Tour will have happened and we’ll have had a chance to see what cool new decks and cards broke out there.
In the meantime, though, we’re certainly not helpless. We can build and update our own decks in anticipation.
Rather than provide a set review where I go through every card and discuss the implications for Block Constructed, I’d like to instead take some decks and discuss cards from the set that I think will be good fits in those decks, as well as showcase a few new archetypes that I think might arise.
And what would be a better place to start than with the current boogeyman of the format: W/R aggro?
W/R Aggro
If you held a gun to my head and asked me if I thought this was the best deck in the format right now, I would tell you no. If you asked me nicely without the gun, I’d still say no. What W/R (or Boros) has going for it is that it’s the fastest baseline aggro deck in the format. It will punish bad starts from opponents like no other. It’s also the most commonly played archetype. If you can’t beat this, then you should go back to the drawing board.
What the deck looks like now:
Creatures (19)
- 3 Fiend Hunter
- 4 Champion of the Parish
- 3 Doomed Traveler
- 2 Geist-Honored Monk
- 3 Cloistered Youth
- 4 Hellrider
Lands (24)
Spells (17)
How the deck plays out:
The deck has three basic lines of attack. The first is to play Champion of the Parish on turn 1 and then play a bunch of humans and kill your opponent with a huge Champion before they can recover. The second is to play a bunch of token generators and kill them with Hellrider triggers or Rally the Peasants. The third is to get in some early damage with creatures and finish them off with a volley of burn spells.
These plans are not mutually exclusive at all, and they will often overlap. Champion of the Parish into Gather the Townsfolk into Midnight Haunting into Hellrider into Devil’s Play or Brimstone Volley is the feared start that incorporates all three plans and leaves your opponent very much dead, unless they had an equally oppressive start.
What the deck gains from Avacyn Restored:
The haste seems mostly irrelevant on this land, unless games go really long. +2/+0 and vigilance, however, is a very strong repeatable effect. I can see the land doing two things.
The first is letting you continually poke in with one creature in a board stall. The vigilance lets you also play defense with that creature and the +2/+0 should be enough to let it at least trade with an opposing guy. The second is to use it after your opponent declares blocks to make their blocks weaker. You can swing with impunity into your opponent’s bigger creatures if you have this land active.
The presence of this land could make creatures with first strike, like Thalia and Elite Inquisitor, more appealing than cards like Loyal Cathar and Cloistered Youth.
Those starts with Champion of the Parish into Gather the Townsfolk just became downright scary. If your opponent doesn’t disrupt you in any way, Champion of the Parish, Gather the Townsfolk, and Silverblade Paladin will deal 27 damage by turn 4 without any other cards being played. There’s a word for that where I come from: brutal.
Have you ever been lying awake in bed and hoped that one day WotC would print a card that hosed the ever-present Altar’s Reap in Block Constructed while listening to the classic song "Don’t Fear the (Altar’s) Reaper?" No? To each their own, I guess. Thankfully, this Angel does a bit more than making sure your opponents will never sacrifice their Geralf’s Messenger to draw two cards.
Providing an Anthem effect on top of a 3/3 flying body is a very good deal. One thing about the current Block metagame is that there’s a huge lack of flying creatures that see any play. One reason Midnight Haunting is so good in all the Boros lists is because the tokens might as well say "unblockable" on them.
I think flying is a powerful ability on her that’s overlooked. Her Anthem effect seems a bit worse than Hellrider’s effect and the lack of haste takes away the ability to provide huge blowout turns, but almost every card in the deck is white and she might see play as a Hellrider replacement purely to make the mana base easier.
Riders of Kiki-Jiki was the playtest name for this card because it breaks the mirror open. It seems like quite a good card out of the sideboard against other W/R decks. Some W/R lists play Stromkirk Noble because of this effect, and Riders of Gavony takes it a step further by providing actual protection instead of just the "can’t be blocked" effect.
One of the best ways for your opponent to beat this card would be to remove it with Fiend Hunter, but if you choose Humans then Fiend Hunter can’t even target it. Vigilance just puts it over the top. Not only can your opponents not block it, but they can’t even attack into it? Come on Riders of Gavony, give them at least a glimmer of hope of winning the game.
Now that I think about it, this card may even be maindeck worthy. The effect is certainly strong enough.
Put a counter on my Champion of the Parish, dome you?
I think we all know that what this deck has needed for a good long time is a vanilla 6/1 for five mana in a format where a large percentage of decks play Geistflame. Finally, they heard our pleas and gave us what we wanted.
Other cards that have good potential but I’m not going to discuss in depth are Thunderous Wrath, Zealous Conscripts, Pillar of Flame, and Divine Deflection. I wouldn’t be surprised to see any of those make their way into this deck in the coming weeks.
RUG
If you held a gun to my head and asked me if I thought this was the best deck in the format right now, I would say yes. I would also kindly request that you stop holding me up at gunpoint to answer casual Magic inquiries. RUG has the best mana base of any of the three-color decks, has access to a variety of cards to punish both control decks and aggressive decks, and has the flexibility to take on a variety of different roles depending on the matchup.
What the deck looks like now:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (18)
How the deck plays out:
In the early turns of the game, you craft your hand and gain control of the board by using the burn spells as removal, Thought Scour and Desperate Ravings to draw cards, and Snapcaster Mage to double up on whatever effects you want. In the midgame you use Huntmaster of the Fells and Garruk to take control of the game, and in the endgame you finish them off with burn spells or Kessig Wolf Run activations.
The deck is very versatile. It can play aggressive against other control decks, can play like a burn deck against combo decks, and plays like a typical control deck against aggressive decks. This is the deck that is most like an aggro-control deck in the format.
This is also the best Huntmaster of the Fells deck. This deck plays more instant speed cards than pretty much any other deck, so you can generally pass the turn to flip Huntmaster without incurring any loss to yourself (you were going to pass the turn anyway). With Snapcaster Mage, cheap burn, Thought Scour, and Desperate Ravings, it’s also very easy to cast two cards on your opponents turn to flip Huntmaster back. Two or three turns in a row of flipping Huntmaster back and forth is going to quickly grind your opponent out of the game.
What the deck gains from Avacyn Restored:
Flash on this card makes him a great fit with all the other cards that play at instant speed, as well as a perfect card to combine with Huntmaster of the Fells. The 3/3 body is very relevant in the format. He’s perfect size to trade with a Hellrider or eat one if you have regeneration mana up. He also combos very well with Kessig Wolf Run to provide a hard to kill attacker that can repeatedly take chunks out of your opponent’s life total.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t do. Without a card like Curse of Death’s Hold, one issue that RUG sometimes has is cleaning up the mess from a bunch of 1/1 tokens from Midnight Haunting, Gather the Townsfolk, or Geist-Honored Monkey. I imagine those cards will find themselves slowly roasting over an open fire in the days to come.
As I cast cards like Bonfire of the Damned, I like to make a little sweeping motion with my hand, demonstrating to my opponent that all their guys are now dead and should be placed in the graveyard. It’s just a bit of common courtesy I like to graciously extend.
I like this card a lot more than Blasphemous Act. While Blasphemous Act is a class act when it comes to dealing with stuff like 10/10 Ghoultrees and 12/12 Splinterfrights, Bonfire seems a lot more relevant against the rest of the format where most creatures are in the 2/2 ballpark. You don’t have to spend a lot of mana to wipe the board with this, and it’s reasonably castable even if you can’t trigger the miracle on it.
This card seems really awesome in this archetype. It digs you to the cards you want, it doesn’t take up a slot in the deck (except that it might nudge out Kessig Wolf Run), and it functions at instant speed. If your opponent plays a threat you need to dispatch you can hit it with a Brimstone Volley or Geistflame, but if they don’t then you can use the end of turn to loot and sculpt a stronger hand.
I saved the best for last. Tamiyo provides exactly the kind of effect this deck is currently lacking. One issue that RUG currently has is fighting creatures that you can’t really burn out, such as Vorapede, Predator Ooze, and Splinterfright. Tamiyo easily handles those problem cards, and her -2 ability is fairly synergistic in a deck that makes a lot of 2/2 Wolves from Garruk and Huntmaster of the Fells.
The purpose of Dungeon Geists in the SB of my RUG list is purely to deal with these "unburnable" types, and Tamiyo provides that effect without also being vulnerable to removal. I can’t wait to play her and see if my opponents are able to keep up with her tap dance.
Other cards that I’m not going to discuss but would like to try out include Lone Revenant, Temporal Mastery, Vanishment, Thunderous Wrath, Abundant Growth, Borderland Ranger, Ulvenwald Tracker, and Wolfir Silverheart.
Naya
Naya is the most fun deck in the format for me to play right now. The archetype also has a lot of variety in how to build it. My Naya list doesn’t look anything like other Naya lists I’ve seen (which also don’t look anything like each other). The only common theme of these lists are the color combination, playing cards like Avacyn Pilgrim for acceleration, and topping the curve with Garruk Relentless and Huntmaster of the Fells.
What the deck looks like now:
Innistrad Block
Creatures (15)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (17)
Creatures (15)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (17)
How the deck plays out:
While decks like RUG and Jund are midrange control decks, Naya takes the other end of the midrange spectrum by being a midrange aggro deck. Naya plays the aggressor role against a control deck like RUG or Jund but takes the control game plan against a deck like Boros.
The deck offers a nut draw that looks like turn 1: Avacyn’s Pilgrim. Turn 2: Daybreak Ranger / Midnight Haunting. Turn 3: Huntmaster of the Fells. Turn 4: Gavony Township. It’s hard for any deck to beat without a sweeper or a lot of timely spot removal.
Naya also offers a combination of different lines of attack. You can beat them with the token game plan with Mikaeus, Garruk, Midnight Haunting, and Gavony Township. You can beat them with the brute force game plan by just playing must answer threats like Huntmaster of the Fells, and you also have a limited amount of reach with Devil’s Play and Brimstone Volley.
The most common way Naya loses is to its own mana base. Faithless Looting helps a bit in fixing draws and making sure you don’t flood out later in the game, but it can only do so much; oftentimes the problem is not having a red mana source in the first place to even cast the Looting. That makes the first card to pick up for this archetype fairly easy to figure out.
What this deck gains from Avacyn Restored:
While Cavern of Souls is a card that will fit into a variety of decks, this is the one that benefits the most from it. Most of the creatures are Human, so Cavern will take the pressure off your mana base to cast Avacyn’s Pilgrim on turn 1, Mikaeus on turn 2, and Huntmaster of the Fells on turn 3.
I can’t wait to play this card and see how much it helps to solve the mana woes. While it doesn’t cast Garruk, Midnight Haunting, burn spells, or activate Gavony Township, making sure you can cast your creatures is the most important thing in Naya.
Restoration Angel seems like a natural fit with Huntmaster of the Fells. If your Huntmaster doesn’t immediately die, you can pass the turn to flip it, and Restoration Angel both protects it and allows you to flip it back with only one spell. Flash and flying are both highly relevant abilities in this deck, since evasion is great with Gavony Township and Mikaeus to provide an ever-growing clock. Her portly 3/4 frame means that she will ambush many an attacking creature in the days to come.
This guy is a Human, which plays nicely with Cavern of Souls. He also fetches a land, which plays nicely with the demanding mana base. The 2/2 body is pretty small, but this deck makes use of random creatures better than any other deck by turning them into real threats with Gavony Township and Mikaeus.
I’m not sure how easy it will be to cast this card, but if there was ever a home for her, this would be the deck. Avacyn’s Pilgrim gives you the ability to accelerate into her, and she plays both the defense and offense game well. They also can’t target her. And they can’t make you sacrifice her. And she’s a 5/5 flier for five. You know a card is good when all you have to do to show it off is just read the text box. Watch out Baneslayer: you have competition in the ridiculously underpriced Angel competition.
Other cards I’d like to try out include Terminus, Entreat the Angels, Divine Deflection, Righteous Blow, Blessing of Nature, and Revenge of the Hunted.
I could spend a long time discussing other current archetypes that gain a lot of new toys from Avacyn Restored, but the fact of the matter is that Innistrad Block Constructed is a fairly open format with a lot of viable decks and it wouldn’t be feasible to list them all. Instead, I’d like to close out this article by talking about a few new cards that I think could spawn their very own new archetypes.
Possible New Archetypes
One archetype that has been notoriously absent from Innistrad Block Constructed is any kind of pure control deck. I think Avacyn Restored finally gives us the tools to change that. What control decks lack in this format are the removal spells that have enough versatility to handle the wide array of threats decks can present.
Blasphemous Act is good against Invisible Stalker and Splinterfrights, but what about when your opponent has two Doomed Travelers and a Loyal Cathar or a Predator Ooze and Vorapede? White especially suffers from a lack of removal that isn’t extremely situational. Fiend Hunter can give them the creature back. Bonds of Faith doesn’t work on Humans. Divine Reckoning lets them keep one creature.
Thankfully, there’s a sweet new card that helps address that problem.
Get out of here Gravecrawler. Get out of here Geralf’s Messenger. Get out of here Predator Ooze. Get out of here Strangleroot Geist. Your kind isn’t welcome here. There’s finally a good sweeper effect in the format, and I think this card is going to be the backbone of a new breed of control decks that actually have the capability to handle opposing threats effectively.
Once you’ve taken care of their threats, the next step is to kill them.
I think Entreat is going to be a go-to finisher for control decks in this format. It scales with your mana, you can cast it reasonably without the miracle cost, and it’s relevant as early as turn 4. In Standard it has to contend with Vapor Snag, but in Block the most common removal spells are cards like Brimstone Volley and Devil’s Play, which are pretty ineffective against this card.
I definitely think we could see a control deck pop up that utilizes both of these cards to good effect.
The next card is one I haven’t seen much discussion about:
G/W Humans was definitely an archetype at some point during Innistrad Block Constructed, but it’s something I run into very infrequently these days. I think this card, Silverblade Paladin, and Cavern of Souls can help solve that. The biggest issue with G/W Humans is the bad mana base, but Cavern of Souls lets you cast both Champion of the Parish and Avacyn’s Pilgrim on turn 1 and helps you cast both Silverblade Paladin and Champion of Lambholt on turn 3.
Angel of Jubilation gives Humans effectively five Anthem effects, with Mayor of Avabruck, Hamlet Captain, Angel of Jubilation, Mikaeus the Lunarch, and Gavony Township. Joe Budden was thankfully reached for a comment on this archetype, and he responded: "Pump pump pump pump pump pump pump it up." I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I also can’t wait to play Increasing Devotion with a Champion of the Parish and a Champion of Lambholt in play while singing "We are the Champions." Your opponent might have a different tune in mind, probably the song "Loser."
The last card I want to talk about is one that I’m not sure exactly where its home is, but I know that it definitely has the power level to see play.
If he’s paired with a creature, he’s effectively giving you +8/+8 in power spread over two creatures. That’s a lot. He also has great synergy with Wolfir Avenger, because being able to soulbond with him at instant speed can lead to a lot of blowouts or your opponent taking a lot of damage they didn’t expect to take. I also think this combo might be a bit cute, but Village Bell-Ringer plus this guy? Your opponent’s team is gonna get their bells rung.
I hope this has given you a good look at some of the cards Avacyn Restored has to offer for Block Constructed and some ideas on how to update your decks or build new ones. By virtue of being a big set, there are a lot of cards to digest and a lot of new cards entering the fray.
I’m sure that Block Constructed will change a lot with Avacyn Restored, and I’m pretty excited to see it evolve. What deck is going to come out on top? Will there be any new sleeper cards that break out? I hope you’re as excited as I am to see how everything shakes out.
Thanks for reading,
@BraunDuinIt on Twitter
BBD on Magic Online