Daily Digest: Going Deep At #SCGPHILLY

Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage as the primary win condition in the powerful Lands archetype. Even fewer will recall when Vampire Hexmage was the only way to cheat a Gerry Thompson token into play and everyone gleefully did just that in the old Extended format.

Suffice it to say that putting a 20/20 flying, indestructible creature token into play by turn 3 is an easy way to win a lot of games, and this deck is singularly focused on doing so. The maindeck is composed of combo pieces, various ways to search for lands, and discard spells to protect the combo, all held together by Legacy MVP Brainstorm. One thing to note is that, while this deck only has six fetch lands to shuffle after a Brainstorm, all of the tutor effects give you more than enough ways to see reset the top of your deck.

With all the ways to find specific lands, you would expect to find some sort of toolbox, and I am happy to see this one is not excessive. Bojuka Bog is a nice way to shoehorn some interaction into the deck with a land that produces a color you want anyway. Still, I could easily see relegating it to the sideboard, given how focused the maindeck is.

However, the Sejiri Steppe and Wasteland have important functionality for executing the combo. The Steppe, in conjunction with Crop Rotation, allows you to protect a Marit Lage from Swords to Plowshares or similar removal. Finding it at sorcery speed can let you sneak your token past a blocker in a race. For the cost of one slot, turning your tutors into something more than combo pieces gives a needed flexibility.

The Wasteland also provides protection for the combo, specifically protection from opposing Wastelands. Because of how Dark Depths is worded, if it is destroyed with the sacrifice trigger on the stack, you will not get a token even if it had zero counters. Thus, a single Wasteland can undo all your hard work. While using your Wasteland to destroy theirs is not pretty, it is the cleanest answer that fits into the maindeck. Also important to note is that Wasteland can destroy Maze of Ith or Karakas, two more problematic lands.

The sideboard is filled with typical ways to answer opposing hate and cards against opposing combo decks that may be able to race you. Note that Surgical Extraction pairs nicely with the large discard suite in the deck and Pithing Needle provides a more robust answer to all the cards that Wasteland is tasked with answering in Game 1. The only curious inclusion to me is the Ghost Quarter, which could simply be due to the high price of Wasteland on Magic Online.

This deck is certainly raw, as it is likely too focused on executing its own gameplan, but there are certainly enough pieces to support the archetype. Historically, combo decks that players are unprepared for are very good choices in Legacy. If you are a little lost for this weekend, then Sultai Depths could be a powerful, not to mention absurdly fun, rogue option.