The release of Dragon’s Maze this weekend marks the beginning of the final chapter of Innistrad block in Standard.
That’s pretty crazy really. Time flies when Magic sets are good.
Today also marks the final installment in this Dragon’s Maze set review and the impact the set will have on Standard. Part 1 covered most of the non-blue strategies, while Part 2 covered Jund, The Aristocrats, and blue decks. Today, we’ll be focused on some new decks using some sweet, sweet Dragon’s Maze action.
There’s lot of decks to cover, so let’s dive in. Up first, as alluded to Wednesday, milling for fun and profit.
Creatures (18)
Lands (22)
Spells (20)
Aggro-Mill is an interesting sort of archetype in that it doesn’t really exist yet, at least not in practical form, but the same could be said about the Delver of Secrets / Runechanter’s Pike deck from Innistrad’s set review. Most of these speculative decks don’t pan out, but the gems can prove truly, truly, truly outrageous.
This strategy has existed, at least conceptually, basically ever since Jace’s Phantasm was printed. Wight of Precinct Six offered much-needed redundancy, but we have still always come up short when trying to fully flesh out the deck. That is a fine theme, but there aren’t 60 cards to go that route full on. What’s the rest of the deck do?
Breaking // Entering might be the missing link. Mind Sculpt already offered a potential enabler for Jace’s Phantasm and Wight of Precinct Six, but Breaking is even better. It won’t be common, but you can even use the Entering side of the card from time to time as long as you include at least a touch of red mana.
With so many cheap enablers, we can actually start to form a game plan around the concept of getting both a super undercosted one- or two-drop (3/2 fliers and 5/5 fliers for one, 5/5 ground creatures for two, etc.) and hopefully just clear the way long enough to take the win. If they do stabilize, we have Duskmantle Guildmage for going “long.” Duskmantle Guildmage’s first ability lets us turn Mind Sculpt and Breaking // Entering into seven and eight-point burn spells, which even at five mana total for the combo is a pretty great deal.
Warped Physique is the removal spell of choice, as the card is pretty close to Terminate and one of the compelling reasons to play U/B in the first place. Warped Physique actually has greatly increased utility here because the +X frontend can actually be used very effectively on a Jace’s Phantasm or Wight of Precinct Six (which most decks have few good targets and don’t care nearly as much about making a Fireblast).
Dimir Charm might need to be more Unsummons or Far // Away, but it is passable removal and the instant speed “milling” is cute with our Phantasms and Wights.
Of course, Aggro-Mill isn’t the only way to mill people. If you are feeling frisky, you can go full mill-hard:
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (24)
The blue Lava Spike deck, Turbo-Mill has not had a lot of success over Magic’s history, save perhaps Sanity Grinding. With 60-card decks, you are generally going to have mill somewhere in the neighborhood of 45-48 cards to win, which is a lot more than twenty damage. The advantage, of course, is that Turbo-Mill decks generally don’t run out of gas the same as their mono-red brothers (since blue has card draw and opponents are “taking one” a turn by default).
Using Breaking as an eight ball to the dome is risky business, as it and Mind Sculpt add up to a lot of card disadvantage. Cast two of each and you are still a fair bit away from actually milling someone out, and it is like you paid eight mana for the privilege of quadruple mulliganing.
That sounds horrible!
Well, there’s a good chance it is, but these decks are often metagame calls, punishing slow decks that draw too many cards. It is interesting, however, that Augur of Bolas and Snapcaster Mage add to Breaking // Entering and Mind Sculpt to give us a lot of blue burn spells. Add Thought Scour, Psychic Strike, and Pilfered Plans and you are starting to get a lot of little incremental mills, to say nothing of Jace, Memory Adept coming down and milling ten a turn.
I actually like Far // Away more than usual here, as the edict effect is much appreciated and the blue two-drops ensure that it can turn into a mill card when needed (in a roundabout way).
I considered the various “mill til you hit a land” cards, but none really jumped out at me. Someone like Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker could play into the theme, but I kind of don’t want to turn their removal on, and at five he competes with Jace, Memory Adept. In general, however, milling until you hit four land is going to mill around ten cards, which is respectable to be sure, so Mirko is on the table (if this looney-toon strategy is actually somehow on the table already).
While we discussed Esper a fair bit on Wednesday, it seems the U/B deck people really want to see is Grixis. Ok, you sick freaks, there are no less than nine Dragon’s Maze cards designed to make Sphinx’s Revelation worse, so maybe it’s not the worst time to brainstorm non-U/W control decks.
So what might a Grixis deck look like, and not one of those pretend Grixis decks with Sphinx’s Revelation in it?
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
There are several easy “additions” to Grixis (as though it is an existing deck) as well as several less clear possibilities. To begin with, Aetherling is the premier kill creature for control if you want durability. Restoration Angel is a better card if you are going that road, but it can’t really be counted on as a kill card. As long as you have Nephalia Drownyard, there is much less need for these reliable kill cards, but Aetherling is a special case. Its power level is a fair bit higher than its peers, and it is so fast that it can actually solve a lot of problems by racing. It’s quite possible the second one is less good than just having another threat that hits from a different angle, but Grixis, more than Esper or Bant, leans threat heavy.
The one Olivia Voldaren might be fantastic and deserve more slots or might be more of a sideboard card. We’ll see how much removal people actually play.
This is a few more Jaces than people have been playing lately, but when you have as good of spot removal as Grixis (which has the best of the best) and do not have Sphinx’s Revelations to draw cards, we need more weight lifted. I definitely like Jace, Architect of Thought better at the moment. Jace, Memory Adept is a great kill card if a lot of people play slow decks, but that’s not where I see the format week 1. I do like it better than the fourth Architect of Thought just to give us some more options going long, but honestly, I wouldn’t even mind playing five Jaces.
Desperate Ravings is a sight for sore eyes! The card is awesome but has been warming a lot of benches since the printing of Sphinx’s Revelation (and miracles don’t help). Grixis is the perfect home for it, with plenty of removal spells to want to cycle through, plenty of big threats to make discard less risky, and a higher curve (meaning we have more need to dig to lands early).
Warped Physique continues to be an awesome removal spell, and the only reason there aren’t four is the added dimensions that Pillar of Flame, Dreadbore, and the various edicts offer.
Syncopate is a blast from the past, but I actually kind of think the new format will have us more inclined to Syncopate than the previous one. Being able to counter a spell on turn 2 is a big game, and the exile clause is not trivial.
Notion Thief out of the board (as well as Slaughter Games) makes for enough of a game plan that we aren’t just laughed out of the room by Esper. Reap Intellect even gives us one more way to go over the top of other blue decks (along with Psychic Spiral; Jace, Memory Adept; Rakdos’s Return; and Aetherling). In control mirrors like this, it’s excellent to be threat heavy whenever the threats you have access to are better than the answers. Hitting from so many angles makes reactive cards not a great plan for opposing control decks.
No Ral Zareks? This isn’t really his scene. You could go further down the planeswalker route, but I think you’d have to be playing more creatures and be a more aggressive deck to have that really be better than all of the other “advantage” options for Grixis.
It’s probably crazy, but Aetherling isn’t the only six-drop I’ve been eyeing for Grixis…
Creatures (11)
Lands (25)
Spells (24)
Melek has some pretty stiff competition from Aetherling and Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius, but the ability to “go off” is pretty exciting. The games he wins that Aetherling or Niv-Mizzet wouldn’t have might be a little corner case, but the effect is so powerful that it deserves some amount experimentation. After all, playing instants off your deck is often going to be better than a personal Howling Mine (thanks to your ability to change the top card with cantrips, mills, or shuffles), and Twincasting each one is twice as nice. Notice the use of Searing Spear instead of Warped Physique. Warped Physique is a better card, but in trying to take full advantage of Melek, I wanted to err on the side of proactive cards I could copy with Melek to get an advantage.
This build probably has too much card draw, with six double cantrips, eight cantrip creatures, and even plays like Far targeting Augur or Snapcaster for even more card draw.
Not that I have any idea, but where Melek starts to get kind of exciting to me is if Time Warp happens to be in M14.
While we are taking a brief tour of control decks, we might as well cover at least one that is a real color combination:
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (27)
Spells (21)
I am less of a fan of this planeswalker-centric approach, but it’s still fine and a lot of people would rather go this route than a Restoration Angel approach. The primary feature is the maindeck Aetherling, but Warped Physique and Far // Away are both quality as well. The sideboard probably has too many anti-control cards, but there are just so many good new ones that it’s hard to resist!
There are a number of non-blue decks I want to cover, I swear, but first here a couple of Bant decks that go a slightly different direction than Wednesday’s.
Creatures (17)
Lands (22)
Spells (21)
This list is a similar to a concept Zvi Mowshowitz was working on for Montreal but ultimately abandoned because of its shaky mana. Sadly, it gains nothing in that department; however, it does gain Advent of the Wurm, a deceptively powerful new card.
Advent of the Wurm may look like just another Juzam Djinn, but it has a lot of other elements going for it. Obviously it’s fast, which is already going to lead to some blowouts. It can be easy to overlook it, but the token also tramples, which is not inconsequential. Where things start getting really freaky is if you exploit it with populate. Rootborn Defenses is my favorite, but I gotta tell you, the new Scion of Vitu-Ghazi is begging to be used.
Advent of the Wurm is also an instant, making it synergize with Delver of Secrets, Snapcaster Mage, and Augur of Bolas if you like. It can be tough for Bant decks to always meet all the thresholds they want (such as wanting both a lot of creatures but also a lot of sorceries/instants). Advent of the Wurm does this and at a great rate, plus happens to cost the same as Restoration Angel and Plasm Capture. I kind of think it will be so good that we are going to see a very different evolution of Bant Control decks. Having the ability to find such a hard body off your Augur of Bolas, not to mention getting so much action out of your Snapcaster, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bant overtakes Esper and U/W/R as the default blue deck.
Want to Prime Speaker Zegana? Advent of the Wurm can surprise flash down, letting you untap and draw six. Need help against fast aggro? This guy is a brick wall. Need help against planeswalkers? It can take most of them down in one shot. Trying to make Uncovered Clues work? I know somebody who should be right up your ally!
I want to talk about more Advent of the Wurm decks, but first we might as well as well knock out one other Bant deck while we’re on the topic:
Creatures (20)
Lands (22)
Spells (18)
Unflinching Courage is an obvious addition to Bant Hexproof that greatly improves its ability to race.
While Unflinching Courage doesn’t have the hidden utility Armadillo Cloak had (being playable on your opponent’s creature as a bad removal spell), it is extremely potent with Ethereal Armor. There is no shortage of edict effects, but in general the line of Invisible Stalker into Unflinching Courage into Ethereal Armor is going to be pretty tough for a lot of people to beat, particularly if you load up the Rancors and Spectral Flights. Really, any hexproof creature with an Unflinching Courage is going to be devastating, and with trample, first strike, and flying, we aren’t short on ways to make the creatures difficult to block.
Less obvious is the addition of Ascended Lawmage:
While the Lawmage’s rate doesn’t compete with Geist of Saint Traft or even Invisible Stalker, it is the next best hexproof creature for beating down if that’s what you want to buy. Four mana might be a little much, but one of the challenges I always found with the Aura decks was needing more than eight threats and the non-hexproof ones (Silverblade Paladin, Fencing Ace) making their spot removal good. That it naturally flies really helps play into the heavy evasion theme.
One of the best ways to fight Aura decks is with edict effects, which will probably be on the rise. Fortunately, Dragon’s Maze brings us a new tool that can help us sideboard against this sort of attack.
Voice of Resurgence has been pretty hyped, but it’s pretty good and pretty good here. Being able to stop their next two edicts is awesome, and the ability to punish instants on your turn is especially valuable when you are pushing all-in on a single giant monster. The Elementals aren’t going to grow that big, but they add up to counter a lot of edicts. If your opponent Supreme Verdicts, at least you are left with a body to throw more Auras on.
While Voice of Resurgence is pretty good here, here’s a deck I think will make the card look bananas:
Creatures (21)
- 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 2 Wayfaring Temple
- 2 Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
- 1 Armada Wurm
- 4 Experiment One
- 4 Voice of Resurgence
- 4 Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
Lands (25)
Spells (15)
Here, the Elementals will be monstrous and potentially multiplying thanks to populate. Advent of the Wurm is just a great card on its own but can be pretty nuts with a card like Scion of Vitu-Ghazi.
This is my single biggest sleeper of the set. As of this writing, the card was at $0.99, suggesting a perception that it is a bulk rare. I couldn’t disagree more.
On its own, it is a 4/4 that gives you two 1/1 fliers. That is a pretty good Cloudgoat Ranger impression, if you ask me, and that is without even trying.
Once you combine it with any of the big token making, you are talking about some pretty serious business. Most notably, Advent of the Wurm lets you surprise your opponent on their turn 4, perhaps while you have an empty board. Then, untap and Scion of Vitu-Ghazi, and suddenly you have fifteen power worth of creatures!
Obviously the card is crazy good with Advent of the Wurm and curves perfectly, but it is also excellent with Voice of Resurgence, Call of the Conclave, Armada Wurm, and any other token that lets you get even more out of your Cloudgoat Ranger than a second 1/1 flier. There is a lot of competition at the five spot, but this card is really serious and totally in the top tier. It is not an accident that I have included Scion of Vitu-Ghazi over Thragtusk in this list. I would sideboard the Thragtusks, but Scion is just a huge board presence.
It is worth noting that your opponent does get to respond to the populate trigger, so if they Unsummon your Wurm token, you will be stuck copying the Bird (which you do get to choose on resolution).
It isn’t that hard to play around this type of interaction, but it is important to keep in mind that bounce will likely be on the rise. To begin with, Far // Away is a powerful new bounce spell that can get played for other reasons and then incidentally add some bounce where someone wouldn’t have played any before. Additionally, Advent of the Wurm is so good that people are going to want to be able to Unsummon those tokens. Conversely, if you are in some pseudo-mirror, you can Unsummon your opponent’s blocker (maybe even a Wurm!) to make your Wurm trample over for added reach.
Far // Away is a potentially devastating removal spell against Advent of the Wurm decks, as it will generally just be two removal spells whenever you want. They even both dodge Rootborn Defenses, a very powerful tool that will be seeing even more play now that lots of people will have random 5/5 tokens running around.
G/W’s ability to completely dominate the ground is so far above and beyond what anyone else is capable of that it might be worth trimming a little bit of the core engine to play a few role-players to help with difficult problems, like Oblivion Ring or more Selesnya Charms.
While Scion of Vitu-Ghazi is at its best in G/W, enough of the G/W cards get used elsewhere that I think there’s a good chance it ends up in a lot of decks that run a third color. Really, the recipe is mostly just play Advent of the Wurm and have use for a Cloudgoat Ranger. Everything else is just gravy. Some other notable tokens to potentially copy include Huntmaster of the Fells and Garruk Relentess’s Wolves, Thragtusk and Garruk, Primal Hunter’s Beasts, and Grove of the Guardian’s 8/8 Elemental with vigilance. Not everyone is always in the market for a bunch of bodies at an excellent rate, but I would be shocked if Scion of Vitu-Ghazi didn’t prove to be a quality tournament card (and not even that far into the future).
Of course, this certainly doesn’t mean all G/W/x decks are going to be token-centric. Restoration Angel still exists and can kind of lead you down a different road. For instance:
Creatures (33)
- 4 Arbor Elf
- 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 4 Restoration Angel
- 3 Thragtusk
- 2 Thundermaw Hellkite
- 4 Loxodon Smiter
- 1 Aurelia, the Warleader
- 1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
- 2 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
- 4 Zhur-Taa Druid
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (23)
There are so many sweet fatties that we can’t possibly play them all, but Ruric Thar, the Unbowed is certainly exciting. Notice there’s almost no noncreature spells, very much breaking the card’s inherent symmetry. A complete breakdown of Ruric Thar can be found here.
It may be that we just need more Ghor-Clan Rampagers to help make up for the lack of spells, but I kind of just like making lots of durable threats and bashing. I did not include any Experiment Ones, but he is also a potential path to explore. I just wanted to get to the big dogs as fast as possible. Avacyn’s Pilgrim and Arbor Elf are nothing new, but I also like this little guy right here:
The damage really adds up and can be invaluable in a deck with so few spells (meaning an inherent lack of reach). A more in-depth analysis of Zhur-Taa Druid can be found here.
It should go without saying, but Domri Rade is absolutely fantastic here. He draws cards more often than should be fair, and so many of them will be big threats. The turn 2 Domri Rade is just going to steal some games outright. Finally, the fight ability is super valuable for a deck with as few spells as this one. It is worth noting that Renounce the Guilds does make life a little more hostile for Domri Rade, but the even bigger problem invented by Dragon’s Maze is Advent of the Wurm, which can give tempo and control decks a surprise threat that Domri Rade decks are generally going to struggle with. Not only will he often get value when blocking, but he will provide a surprise attacker that can even trample over blockers to keep Domri Rade under control.
Naya is a pretty logical place to go with this sort of strategy, but you don’t actually need the white.
Creatures (34)
- 3 Borderland Ranger
- 4 Arbor Elf
- 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 4 Strangleroot Geist
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 4 Thundermaw Hellkite
- 4 Flinthoof Boar
- 3 Ghor-Clan Rampager
- 2 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
- 2 Zhur-Taa Druid
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (23)
Flinthoof Boar and Strangleroot Geist are also certainly options for Naya, although the Geist may be hard on the mana. If you play enough two-drops like Flinthoof Boar, Lightning Mauler, and Zhur-Taa Druid, you could even consider Burning-Tree Emissary.
This list is aggressive enough that I don’t mind leaving Thragtusk in the sideboard. We don’t even have Restoration Angel for the wombo-combo. That said, we could certainly take a good look at Wolfir Silverheart. If enough people are going the all-threat route, Silverheart is an absolutely fantastic way to take over a board. Attacking with a 6/5 Strangleroot Geist while your 8/8 Silverheart holds the ground actually goes a long way towards beating an opponent with a Scion of Vitu-Ghazi, two Wurm tokens, and a Bird.
While Naya Human decks are the default at this point, is it possible that straight Boros makes a comeback?
I’m not sure what an exact list looks like yet, but I know I like Tajic, Blade of the Legion, particularly if we have haste creatures like Lightning Mauler. Viashino Firstblade has a lot of competition at the three spot but looks respectable.
While I like Tajic a fair bit, I actually think Firemane Avenger may be a little underplayed. If you can actually ever trigger the Helix, you have gotten some pretty sick value. If people move away from removal, that bodes well for it. There are also enough critical threats that we can try to overload people’s removal. After all, they may be able to deal with the Champion of the Parish and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Silverblade Paladin, but how long can they keep this up? Interestingly, Tajic and Firemane Avenger are the opposite sort of card. One lets you punish people that kill creatures too much, while the other beats people that don’t kill them enough.
One other option to consider is Warleader’s Helix, although I think the card is more of a U/W/R card. Paying for the life gain in an aggro deck is suspect, while a tempo deck may value the four life as much as a card, plus can use it with Augur of Bolas and Restoration Angel.
There are a few other cards I want to touch on real quick.
Recursive creatures always at least deserve a second look, and while this one isn’t super-efficient or anything, it does have two things going for it. First, obviously it is a bloodrush tool, which lets you use it as a sort of buyback card without ever putting it into play and exposing it to Pillar of Flame. Additionally, it’s a Goblin, which doesn’t matter a ton yet, but it feels like we’ve been flirting with the edge of a playable Goblin deck for a while now.
This is a pretty heavy-handed anti-Delver design and might have been one of the most important cards in the set in an alternate reality where Delver of Secrets completely dominated after the rotation of Ponder. That said, you are getting a lot of abilities tacked on for not much cost. This is a pretty solid tool against Snapcaster Mage, Lingering Souls, Augur of Bolas, and possibly even Ral Zarek or Jace (as a surprise way to deal two damage that can’t be easily blocked by Augurs or whatever).
It takes so little to make Renegade Krasis pretty sick that I kind of imagine you could add him to an aggressive deck that isn’t even full on evolve. How much more do you need than four Experiment Ones and four Cloudfin Raptors? Maybe you play Shambleshark, and maybe you play Zameck Guildmage. Maybe you even play a little scavenge, but you don’t have to do much. If you have just a single other creature in play with a +1/+1 counter, you are already up to a Wooly Thoctor’s worth of body after a single evolve trigger.
While you could just play this as a weird two-for-one, I am interested in using it as a combo card to let us dome people for a lot. In Standard, I guess you can choose a Boneyard Wurm, Splinterfright, Consuming Aberration, or just some random 9/9 (although a ten power creature would be way, way better). What we really want is something like Lord of Extinction, which lets us just do the full twenty in one shot. Maybe Consuming Aberration is the best we can do, but it is an area to explore.
While Blood Baron of Vizkopa has to compete with cards like Obzedat, Ghost Council, it does offer a lot of compelling features. That it is a lifelinker is basically enough to have us pay attention. It is its protection from abilities that give it unique purpose. It’s not clear what the metagame is going to shape up like, but if there is a move away from cards like Thragtusk and towards black and white, the Blood Baron can just win games on its own. As an additional note, it’s the closest thing we have to a Baneslayer Angel and sometimes is going to be used as sideboard plan to switch it on people. I wouldn’t get too hung up on its flavor text, but it is better than a sharp stick in the eye or protection from Demons.
Tithe Drinker is in a different class than the other cheap extort creatures and is just a pretty respectable body. He belongs in a deck with plenty of removal that uses a fair number of dangerous threats to try to overload opposing removal. It’s possible it could fit in a variant of The Aristocrats, but it kind of wants to be surrounded by other deadly threats, not tokens.
Ok, I am out for today, but I will be back Monday with an outside-the-box deck I’m working on as well as the control deck I’d play if it was tournament time. I think Scion of Vitu-Ghazi is way underrated. What card do you think everyone is missing from Dragon’s Maze? Also, Grand Prix Portland is coming up. Any thoughts on Modern? See you Monday!
Patrick Chapin
“The Innovator”
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The first rule of Dimir Guild is you do not talk about Dimir Guild. The second rule of Dimir Guild is you do NOT talk about Dimir Guild. My official response? Izzet and proud… |
