We’ve seen Stephen Datka’s exploits with Puresteel Paladin before on the Daily Digest and Wizards just keeps printing cool new toys for his Equipment-combo deck. While previously “Cheerios” was more reminiscent of a Storm deck with its ability to completely go off and draw its entire deck before fueling a lethal Grapeshot, the inclusion of Stone Haven Outfitter from Oath of the Gatewatch has made this Puresteel deck more of a resilient hybrid deck.
If either of the two marquee creatures stays on the battlefield, this deck can run wild with hard-hitting threats that are constantly generating card advantage while elements like Squadron Hawk and Flayer Husk make it difficult to run out of bodies.
The Steelshaper’s Gift package is another nice midrange element of the deck. Previously, Stephen just wanted a critical mass of the cheapest equipment, even if they weren’t particularly valuable on the battlefield. Instead, we now have a wide berth of versatile options to adapt to any situation in a fair game while also effectively playing eight copies of Flayer Husk, our best “velocity” equipment.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is a criminally underplayed card in Modern relative to its power level and Puresteel Paladin makes nice use of it here as another grindy element that simply threatens to kill the opponent at a moment’s notice.
Stephen’s sideboard looks a bit goofy, but hidden among all those fun-ofs are a variety of ways to cover all the angles you would expect from a white deck that also has a lot of velocity. Notably, there has been a fair amount of attention paid to Eldrazi still with Worship and Intreprid Hero, but the kind of care that the format has required is likely to be diminishing soon.
This deck looks great at playing longer games while also being capable of ending the game fairly quickly with a few effective threats. Best of all, it is a highly adaptable archetype with a huge ceiling on design space to explore.
Creatures (16)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (21)
Spells (23)
