With all the midrange decks in Standard, it might be somewhat disappointing to play four Sylvan Caryatids maindeck, only to side them out in most of your
matchups. Those games tend to go long, and Caryatid is often a pretty useless topdeck in the lategame. For the most part, there seemed to be just enough
matchups where you’d want Sylvan Caryatid in Game 1 to warrant keeping them.
Well, some brave souls have tried cutting them, and they haven’t been doing too badly.
ManuGodineau has recently cashed a string of Daily Events on Magic Online using the top decklist. It’s pretty much a normal Abzan deck, but it has maindeck
End Hostilities, more lands instead of Sylvan Caryatids, and Hornet Queen to close things out.
The second decklist is a tad strange, but it looks kind of nice. Both decks elected to play without Caryatid, but Jyuri’s deck is actually a B/W deck that
splashes just for Siege Rhino. It’s similar to a deck that Brad Nelson played earlier in the season, but it does make me wonder why Brad wasn’t splashing
Siege Rhino.
Both of these seemed to benefit from cutting Sylvan Caryatid from their decks in order to have more robust topdecks in the lategame. Is that the new
technology or just a passing phase?
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