Brewing With Fate Reforged

The easiest way to build a good Standard deck after a new set enters the format is to take a deck that was already good and add one or two new cards that
fit. For the most part, this process is fairly simple and much less interesting than trying to find what new archetypes a new set might create. Today, I’m
going to try to build decks around some new cards, with the hope that we can find something awesome.

Soulflayer is a difficult card to evaluate with a very high ceiling in terms of power level. A 4/4 flying, first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste,
hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, reach, trample, vigilance creature for BB is obviously better than any card in Standard. It’s also not a very realistic
way to think about Soulflayer. It’s hard to really assess the cost or payoff of Soulflayer at first, which makes it confusing enough that it’s
easiest to just write off, but I think doing so is missing a huge opportunity.

So what would it take to really make something out of this card?

Well, the first step is to identify the abilities you want to have, and figure out how you can get them. For example, hexproof is a great ability, so we
have to ask which playable Standard creatures can give it to us. Sylvan Caryatid is the most obvious that comes to mind, but what else? How about Silumgar,
the Drifting Death?

I think Silumgar might be outstanding. Yes, six is a lot of mana, but this hexproof flier is perfectly sized to rule the skies. When it attacks, it kills
all of Hornet Queen’s insects, leaving you with a single 2/2 to answer if you want to protect your dragon. Wingmate Roc and Stormbreath Dragon can’t block
it and live (unless the Stormbreath Dragon is monstrous, but even then, Silumgar still survives). Its power is low enough to live through Elspeth, and it
kills all her tokens while quickly reducing her loyalty. The size and abilities are perfect for the current Standard format, and it has hexproof on top of
that. Silumgar is an awesome finisher, but it’s also awesome with Soulflayer. Even if you don’t remove any other creatures, a 4/4 flying hexproof creature
for 2-5 mana is very good.

Indestructible is another outstanding keyword, especially when combined with hexproof. A creature with both of those keywords can only be killed by things
like Perilous Vault and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon or potentially Merciless Executioner if you don’t have another creature. So which creatures in Standard
have indestructible? All the gods! That gives us a couple options that have already proven themselves playable, most notably Pharika, God of Affliction.

Likely the single best creature in Standard to remove with Soulflayer is Chromanticore. This requires putting Chromanticore in your deck, which is a
dubious prospect, but one that we’ve seen attempted seriously even without Soulflayer. If the primary goal for Chromanticore doesn’t involve assembling
WUBRG, but that exists as a backup plan, it doesn’t seem like the worst card to include in a deck, and it allows for some really outstanding Soulflayers.

There are other creatures that offer good sets of abilities, like flying and haste from Stormbreath Dragon or Flamewake Phoenix, but the bigger question
now that we know that it’s possible to assemble a good set of abilities is: how we can do this in a consistent and timely fashion? Obviously Soulflayer
will be slow and unimpressive if our goal is to cast Chromanticore, then have it die, and then exile it, but it can be very good if our plan is to have
Chromanticore in our graveyard by turn 3.

Fortunately, as we know, this Standard format is fairly kind to efforts to fill the graveyard quickly, thanks to Satyr Wayfinder and Commune with the Gods.
Another particularly great fit for the purposes of getting a specific card in the graveyard is Tormenting Voice.

So what would all this look like?

Chromanti-Flayer

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (25)

Lands (24)

Spells (11)

Sideboard

This is the dedicated combo version that just tries to assemble the best Soulflayer as quickly as possible. Disdainful Stroke is really appealing to me,
since most of the ways to deal with a good Soulflayer cost four or more mana, and Soulflayer makes it easy to leave mana up for Disdainful Stroke the turn
you cast it. The issue is, the more you build your deck around doing that rather than getting the right creatures in the graveyard, the more it makes sense
to build around Tasigur, the Golden Fang instead.

Consider this deck that tries to use both:

Sultai Midrange

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (21)

Lands (24)

Spells (15)

Sideboard

This deck is low enough on quality creatures to exile that I’m worried about getting Soulflayer flooded, but having access to it in the lategame once I’ve
built up a graveyard with a couple key components seems useful. While this deck has fewer cards dedicated to filling the graveyard, it has more spells,
which means that it will still be very good at casting Tasigur, the Golden Fang with mana up fairly early.

While looking through creatures I might want to exile with Soulflayer, I came across Gurmag Swiftwing. This is a card you can only barely get away with
putting in a Limited deck, and it’s thoroughly embarrassing in Constructed, but it does offer a really nice set of abilities. It’s a lot harder to fill the
graveyard without green or blue enablers in Standard, but I wonder about a B/R aggro/skies deck:

B/R Aggro

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (20)

Lands (25)

Spells (15)

Sideboard

Gurmag Swiftwing is pretty obviously terrible, especially once I realized I could use Monastery Swiftspear as a source of haste and I was already well
stocked on flying. I left one in just to try it. The hope with this deck is to use Thoughtseize or a fetchland and Tormenting Voice to play Soulflayer as a
three-mana 4/4 on turn 3 that might have additional abilities, but a black/red deck is happy enough to have a three-mana 4/4 even if it doesn’t. Some
portion of the time, Hordeling Outburst or morphed Ashcloud Phoenix will be the turn 3 play, and Soulflayer will come down with another spell later.

Really the draw to this deck is much less Soulflayer and much more Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury and Flamewake Phoenix with lots of fliers that can keep the
Phoenix coming back and plenty of creatures for Kolaghan to pump.

Barrage of Boulders probably looks out of place in a deck with this much evasion, but I’m worried about Hornet Queen locking up the skies and wanted to
hedge.

Another card with a ton of potential that’s hard to find a home for is Monastery Mentor. Everyone seems to agree that it’s a great card, but what do you do
with it?

Maybe something like this:

R/W Tokens

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (13)

Lands (22)

Spells (25)

Sideboard

This is an aggressive prowess deck with a high spell count that focuses on cheap spells with a good amount of convoke and ways to protect creatures in
order to get as much value out of Monastery Mentor as possible. I like what’s going on, but my biggest concerns are that I’m not doing enough to really
take advantage of all the tokens I’m making and that I don’t have any way to draw cards, so I can’t really “go off.” I can just cast the few spells I
happen to draw. I’m not sure if this will be enough spells in practice to win with Monastery Mentor or not.

If it isn’t, we’d likely need to add blue, going the direction of Jeskai tokens to fix that issue. That deck could look like:

Jeskai Tokens

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (8)

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands (24)

Spells (27)

Sideboard

The last card I want to try to build around is one of those cards I just feel obligated to try to make work: Outpost Siege. This card rewards defensive
creature strategies that try to win by attrition and exploit creatures that like to die, so it’s definitely a card that I can get into. This works best
with Mardu, but I’m not sure that you have to play all three colors. First, let’s look at just Red/Black:

B/R Aggro

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (25)

Lands (23)

Spells (12)

Sideboard

The biggest question with this deck is the four-drop. I like how Outpost Siege and Ashcloud Phoenix play here, but it’s not clear that they’re better than
Brutal Hordechief. Given that the primary pull to white is likely Butcher of the Horde, the fact that the four-drop is already overloaded makes that a
little less exciting. However, I’d also like another two-drop, and Raise the Alarm would be perfect.

Mardu Aggro

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (18)

Lands (23)

Spells (19)

Sideboard

Between Chained to the Rocks, Crackling Doom, and Merciless Executioner, this deck has enough removal to reliably be able to use Outpost Siege as a card
advantage engine and take a control role against other creature decks. Butcher of the Horde is at its absolute best here, and combines with Outpost Siege
to allow you to fling your entire team whenever your opponent is in range.

The last combination to try for Outpost Siege is R/W, which would obviously build off R/W Tokens:

R/W Aggro

Sam Black

Test deck on 01-14-2015

Standard

Creatures (14)

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands (24)

Spells (20)

Sideboard

This is the closest to a tweak on an existing deck, and while I’m curious about how Oupost Siege plays here, I’m skeptical that it will be a huge
improvement. I’m more excited about how it plays with the black cards.

Somewhat to my surprise, I actually think the Mardu deck looks best.

Fate Reforged is an interesting set. I don’t think it has anything anywhere near the top end of Khans of Tarkir, even ignoring the brokenness of Treasure
Cruise and Dig Through Time in older formats. This set doesn’t really have anything that looks as obviously strong as Siege Rhino and the other three-color
bombs, with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and a few other cards as possible exceptions, but there’s nothing I’m absolutely sure will be great (Tasigur,
the Golden Fang is possibly the card I have the most confidence in). Still, with Standard already in a state of constant flux, it’ll be interesting to see
how the new cards fit in, and I’m sure several will exceed expectations–we just have to do the work of finding them.