I know what you’ve all been thinking:
“I really wish I could play a Bant deck in Standard with Spell Queller. That card is criminally underplayed!”
When you’re in my line of work, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of the community. Really get inside their heads and show them something completely unexpected.
Or, you know, you could build a deck with a bunch of powerful mythic rares and some reasonably priced interaction.
Fortunately, despite sharing some cards and its colors, this deck is nothing like Bant Company. The few aggressive elements make it a midrange deck by name, but with how Magic is played these days, it’s essentially a control deck. Ideally you’re playing defense for five or six turns, countering a few spells, maybe trading off a Sylvan Advocate, and then you land one of your heavy hitters and turn the corner in a hurry.
The card that melds these two modes together is Tamiyo, Field Researcher. On a lot of battlefields you will immediately +1 on two of your opponent’s creatures, meaning at worst Tamiyo will be four mana for two cards and five life, which is a fine card for this kind of deck. And if your opponent doesn’t have the means to deal the full five, then they have a tough choice.
They can try to pressure Tamiyo, at which point you will draw a card or two and then untap with it on the battlefield to repeat the plus ability, only this time with the potential to put more blockers in the way or use a removal spell, all while your life total is under no pressure. And if they choose to ignore Tamiyo, you can either use its -2 to buy the time for your other powerful cards to take over or quickly ramp to a game-winning ultimate if you have the interaction needed to survive.
It’s important to note that Spell Queller is the perfect pairing with Tamiyo, giving you a body to defend the planeswalker and a tempo play to ensure you land it on a stable battlefield. Tamiyo then returns the favor by giving you a card that leverages the early tempo advantage so well that the opponent can’t catch up, even if they off the Spell Queller.
Last, Tamiyo’s -2 also helps you turn the corner when you have a creature or two, letting your Sylvan Advocates and Dragonlord Ojutais turn sideways without fear of a counterattack. Tamiyo really does it all here.
We’ve seen her as a role-player in Bant Company decks, a far cry from the impact that the other major storyline character cards, Emrakul, the Promised End and Liliana, the Last Hope, have made. The presence of Collected Company means Tamiyo isn’t the focal point of the decks she appears in, but that may be our failing rather than hers.
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (17)
