Let’s brew!
Standard
A few weeks ago
we looked at the manifest mechanic, and with Fate Reforged officially spoiled we can get fully into trying to brew with it. We had a few awesome manifest
cards spoiled already, and now that we have the full spoiler we can check out all the other sweet manifest cards….
Oh.
There are no new manifest cards besides the ones we spoiled.
Well that stinks a little. Regardless, we’ve had some cool ideas, so let’s run with them and see where it takes us.
Creatures (19)
- 4 Elvish Mystic
- 4 Courser of Kruphix
- 4 Hooded Hydra
- 3 Master of Pearls
- 3 Whisperwood Elemental
- 1 Dromoka, the Eternal
Lands (24)
Spells (17)
One of the big draws to manifest is that we can use it to cheat creatures or effects into play for less mana than we are supposed to.
Hooded Hydra and Master of Pearls are our best options, as by making their mana cost their unmorph cost, we can get their powerful unmorph triggers for a
huge discount.
Hooded Hydra normally costs five mana to flip up, but because its converted manacost is only GG, a manifested Hooded Hydra can flip up into a 5/5 with
insurance for only two mana! Hooded Hydra is a great card that just isn’t mana efficient enough for Standard, but now we get to frustrate our opponent’s
removal spells and attack through Siege Rhinos at a reasonable cost – assuming we hit our manifest, of course.
Master of Pearls is a bit less exciting, but also must be respected. Giving your team +2/+2 for only two mana is quite the swing, and considering how
creature-dense the deck is, it can make for quite the killing stroke. Hooded Hydra and Master of Pearls are not amazing when naturally drawn and cast, but
they are still serviceable.
As far as our manifesting, we’ve got a few good things going on.
Soul Summons is pretty simple and does what we want it to do. While Soul Summons borders on unexciting, Wildcall is quite the opposite. At worst, Wildcall
is a slightly difficult to cast Soul Summons, but at best, it is a very mana-efficient creature at every point on the curve. Have three mana? Get a 3/3.
Have seven mana? Get a 7/7. Wildcall is a very reasonable card even without building around manifest, and is the cornerstone of the deck.
The other big reason to want to play the deck is Lightform. What’s better than flipping up a Hooded Hydra for only GG? Flipping up a flying, lifelinking
Hooded Hydra for only GG! Lightform gives us both evasion and lifegain, and making our own Baneslayer Angels is huge for racing other decks. Flying is very
good at the moment, and Lightform lets you take to the skies.
Whisperwood Elemental is really good. Even if you don’t care about manifest, a five- mana 4/4 that spits out 2/2s every turn and provides you some
protection against mass removal effects is pretty awesome. Luckily, we do care about manifest, which makes Whisperwood Elemental extra good for us. All our
manifesting hopefully means we can manifest one of these bad boys and flip him up later, which will manifest even more creatures.
Mastery of the Unseen is a slow but interesting card, and provides us a lategame mana sink and a source of consistent lifegain. Four mana to manifest is a
lot, but with our deck built to take such advantage of manifest, we are getting much more than just a 2/2. This card might fit better into a more
controlling deck and definitely has diminishing returns, but is a nice one-of.
The biggest issue with manifest is that it is random, and while we can build our deck with manifest in mind by using Hooded Hydra or Master of Pearls, we
can’t guarantee that we will actually manifest them. If only there was a card in Standard that was really good and a pillar of the format that was green
and let us see the top card of our library so we could control our manifests better…
Oh well. We’ll just have to get lucky I guess.
Ghostfire Blade is a card that I’m not completely sure about; it could either be an easy four-of or not even belong in the deck. We are going to have a lot
of colorless manifest creatures and morph creatures in play, and Ghostfire Blade does a fantastic job of making them very legitimate threats, but we also
have a number of non-colorless creatures where it is very inefficient. I think starting at two is very reasonable and we can go from there.
Dromoka, the Eternal is a sweet one of that can provide you with a big surprise push when you unmorph it from manifest. Much of the power in the deck will
be coming from deception, and your opponent having to deal with a surprised five power of flying that is going to be pumping up another one of your
creatures could easily be taken for quite the loop. There’s no harm in just casting a five mana 5/5 flier either.
Hey wait, I’ve got an idea!
Courser of Kruphix can help us set up our manifests! Courser of Kruphix is at its best in this deck, as not only is it a powerful card on its own, but it
has two major synergies with manifest. The most obvious is that we can see the card we are manifesting, and we are much less likely to manifest a land, as
we will be able to clear those from the top of our deck. Manifesting also plays great with Courser as once we manifest, we get to see a new card on top and
get another shot at hitting a land each turn.
Is this deck competitive? Honestly, I’m not sure. It definitely has some powerful things going on, is pretty good against removal, and makes excellent use
of one of the best cards in the format. Unfortunately, manifest is a relatively random mechanic, so time will tell how good it really is.
Legacy
I love Bloodghast.
Bloodghast has been one of my favorite cards since it came out. I love that it never goes away, and I love that it’s not too powerful but extremely
interesting. You can do all kinds of stuff with it, from using it with sacrifice effects to getting advantage out of discard effects and so much more.
One of my favorite plays in Cube Draft is the simple Entomb into Bloodghast. From there I can sacrifice it to Braids, Cabal Minion or Smokestack every
turn, feed it to Smallpox, just attack with it, discard it to Survival of the Fittest or Fauna Shaman, or (my favorite) equip it with Skullclamp.
So when I saw Gerry’s Daily Digest featuring a Bloodghast
deck, I got all excited. I’d never really done any brewing with Bloodghast in Legacy, but I know full well the power of Bloodghast + Entomb + Cabal
Therapy, and was as surprised as Gerry that the deck had no Cabal Therapy and only one Entomb.
My experience with the three comes from a deck I used to play in Classic, the Magic Online only format that predated online Vintage.
Creatures (12)
Lands (24)
Spells (24)
- 1 Umezawa's Jitte
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 3 Entomb
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 1 Skullclamp
- 1 Demonic Consultation
- 2 Chrome Mox
- 1 Life from the Loam
- 4 Smallpox
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 2 Maelstrom Pulse
Sideboard
This deck was sweet. Of course, Magic Online Classic is a completely dead format, so card for card the list isn’t that valuable, but there’s a lot
of awesome stuff going on in the deck that we can definitely use.
The core of the deck is Entomb, to the point that I’m not really sure why I only played three copies. Entomb ends up being an instant speed, one mana
Bloodghast, a Cabal Therapy if you already have Bloodghast, or it can also give you a very minor toolbox with cards like Life from the Loam. I even
included Bitterblossom in one of my lists as a way to make Entomb into a +2/+2 effect for Tarmogoyf, while also just being a reasonable card to cast as
well.
The deck also features some powerful disruption with another one of my favorite cards ever: Smallpox. Smallpox is an insanely powerful Magic card, but it
is also very difficult to use effectively. Smallpox and Bloodghast are like peanut butter and jelly. If Bloodghast is in your hand, you can easily pitch it
to Smallpox, and a Bloodghast in play allows you to play other creatures in your Smallpox deck.
More targeted discard is an easy add, and Wasteland helps to push the disruption even further.
Of course, Legacy has changed quite a bit in five years, so we have a lot of options of where we want to go with the deck.
What Colors?
The biggest question is, what do we want our support color/colors to be?
While green was the initial color pairing, Tarmogoyf has lost quite a bit of its luster in a world populated with so many Young Pyromancers. Tarmogoyf also
makes cards like Innocent Blood and Smallpox harder to play and doesn’t really synergize that well with the rest of the deck besides being a quick beater
to beat down on a disrupted opponent.
As we saw in Klobster’s Grixis Standstill deck, red is an excellent support color, as it offers us both Young Pyromancer and Faithless Looting as powerful,
synergistic options, while also opening us up to one of the best removal spells in the format in Lightning Bolt, all the while giving us one of the best
sideboard cards in the format in Pyroblast.
Blue is interesting as it offers us one of the most powerful cards in the format in Treasure Cruise, but as this deck is so heavy black, I don’t think I
would want to go all the way with Brainstorm, Force of Will, and company.
White has a few nice things to offer like Lingering Souls and an abundance of powerful sideboard cards, but it seems like the worst choice.
The question really begins and ends with Young Pyromancer. Aside from being one of the best creatures in the format, Young Pyromancer has excellent synergy
with many of the cards in the deck. Cabal Therapy is amazing with Young Pyromancer, as are Smallpox and Innocent Blood.
So we are going to go with red to start, although I think I am going to touch on a few other colors as well. While Wasteland, and to a lesser extent
Stifle, was once a major pillar of the Legacy format, there is now often hardly a Wasteland to be seen outside the fringe archetypes. This is mostly
because Treasure Cruise is so good; decks that would want to play Treasure Cruise and Wasteland just want to play more mana-producing lands so they can
have more mana for all the cards they draw, and decks that have Treasure Cruise in them do a great job recovering from Wasteland.
This means we want to try to find a way to use Wasteland effectively, and we can afford to be a bit greedy with our manabase.
Creatures (11)
Lands (20)
Spells (29)
- 2 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Entomb
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 1 Darkblast
- 1 Life from the Loam
- 3 Smallpox
- 2 Thoughtseize
- 2 Nihil Spellbomb
- 4 Gitaxian Probe
- 3 Faithless Looting
- 3 Treasure Cruise
Sideboard
This deck tries to accomplish a number of things I’ve wanted from a Legacy deck in this format:
- It is a shell for Wasteland where Wasteland makes sense
- It plays Deathrite Shaman and Treasure Cruise without them interfering too much
- It plays maindeck graveyard hate in Nihil Spellbomb with a low opportunity cost to metagame against everyone playing Treasure Cruise (with nice splash
damage against Snapcaster Mage, Reanimate, and so on) - It has excellent non-blue disruption in Cabal Therapy + Gitaxian Probe supplemented with Thoughtseize
- It plays one of the best creatures in the format in Young Pyromancer
- It plays good removal
- It has a reasonably fast clock
There are about a million and a half ways to build this deck, but this is definitely where I want to start.
What do you guys think? Is manifest viable? Is Bloodghast the best creature of all time? Is this Legacy format solvable?