The rotation of Cryptolith Rite left something of a hole in my heart…or at least in a lot of my favorite decks. Growing Rites of Itlimoc isn’t quite the same thing, but I’m looking forward to seeing if it can make a suitable replacement in some of the decks where I’d been playing Cryptolith Rite. It’s a little slower, but getting a creature up front and not needing to tap your creatures are both very large advantages. To start with, I thought I’d try to update my old decks for the new format.
Creatures (21)
- 3 Marionette Master
- 4 Anointer Priest
- 4 Sacred Cat
- 2 Angel of Sanctions
- 4 Ruthless Knave
- 4 Dire Fleet Hoarder
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
A lot has to change from my old deck, with Thraben Inspector, Blisterpod, Tireless Tracker, Ulvenwald Mysteries, Westvale Abbey, and Cryptolith Rite leaving the format. Without Thraben Inspector and Ulvenwald Mysteries, we can’t naturally go big without playing dedicated finishers, and we lost our dedicated finisher in Westvale Abbey.
To deal with this, I’ve added the combo of Ruthless Knave and Marionette Master. Ruthless Knave is a powerful engine with Anointed Procession, especially in multiples, and Marionette Master can easily with the game without Ruthless Knave thanks to Hidden Stockpile.
If you have two Anointed Processions, Ruthless Knave allows you to spend three mana and sacrifice a creature to make eight Treasures, which translates to five mana and a card or two mana and two cards; given how many tokens you can often end up with when you have two Anointed Processions, this means you can probably find another Anointed Procession or Marionette Master and kill them on the spot.
Dire Fleet Hoarder isn’t quite as good as Blisterpod, but it has some things going for it. It helps that the tokens don’t get caught up in a sweeper and gives colored mana. You can potentially accumulate them to cash in when you find a Ruthless Knave. Beyond that, obviously, Blisterpod isn’t legal and we need creatures to flip Legion’s Landing and to find with Growing Rites of Itlimoc.
Legion’s Landing often won’t flip early, but when it does, the token-making ability is clearly outstanding in this deck, and the extra mana helps, especially with casting Marionette Master.
One big advantage of this deck over the old build is that Growing Rites of Itlimoc is the only green card, so the mana is a lot easier.
The sideboard is very much in flux at this stage in a format, but I think these are most of the important cards to cover most bases. Settle the Wreckage has an interesting backup option of killing your own Servos to get lands, which is particularly nice if you were attacking them into certain death to flip Legion’s Landing anyway, and it’s possible that it wants to be a larger part of your gameplan.
Creatures (29)
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
- 4 Minister of Inquiries
- 4 Rogue Refiner
- 3 Sacred Cat
- 3 Angel of Sanctions
- 3 Vizier of Many Faces
- 4 Champion of Wits
- 4 Vizier of the Anointed
Lands (22)
Spells (9)
Vizier of the Anointed is a Bant deck that I never got to the point where I could play it in a tournament, but it was extremely fun to play. Mostly, I had problems with the fact that I didn’t win the game quickly and too many of my opponents were casting Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Given that that will never happen now, I figured the deck might have a chance in the new format.
The idea behind this deck is to use Vizier of the Anointed to spend all of your mana casting returning creatures from your graveyard and drawing more cards, either by finding Vizier of Many Faces if you’re low on action to loop the chain or Sacred Cat if you have spells and need to draw lands or want to advance your battlefield without investing too much mana. Growing Rites of Itlimoc lets you chain further and cast all your things.
Because the deck has so many cards that do something from the graveyard and so much energy, Minister of Inquiries becomes a solid card advantage engine, and these cheap creatures help flip Growing Rites of Itlimoc or Legion’s Landing as soon as possible to start making more mana.
The end-game for this deck is to switch modes to finding Angel of Sanctions and then copying that with Vizier of Many Faces to exile all of your opponent’s important cards and attack with a bunch of fliers.
Out of the sideboard, Approach of the Second Sun lets you sidestep battlefield stalls or decks that gain a lot of life and just win, and Minister of Inquires happens to work perfectly to let you cast the same one on back-to-back turns for a quick win.
Against control decks, we can switch gears to finishing the game with Carnage Tyrant and God-Pharaoh’s Gift.
The lifegain out of the sideboard buys time against Ramunap Red, where I think the maindeck is a bit too slow.
Something New
So those were my old Cryptolith Rite decks, but I think there are other ways to use Growing Rites of Itlimoc.
One puzzle of this format is how best to use God-Pharaoh’s Gift. It’s a powerful card, and most of the important pieces of the deck that was successful before rotation are still legal, but Insolent Neonate was extremely important to the deck filling the graveyard for Gate to the Afterlife.
The Explore mechanic allows you to put cards in the graveyard; not a lot, but an extra creature matters a great deal. Still, it might be hard to rely as much as we had on Gate to the Afterlife, which is where Growing Rites of Itlimoc comes in:
Creatures (29)
- 1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
- 4 Minister of Inquiries
- 4 Rogue Refiner
- 2 The Scarab God
- 4 Champion of Wits
- 2 Hostage Taker
- 4 Merfolk Branchwalker
- 4 Seekers' Squire
Lands (24)
Spells (7)
The idea here is that I basically just want to play a bunch of Elvish Visionaries with Growing Rites of Itlimoc and God-Pharaoh’s Gift, and I’m wondering if the Explore creatures can do a good enough Elvish Visionary impression. Hitting extra lands off Explore and getting mana from Growing Rites of Itlimoc let this deck use Champion of Wits and The Scarab God to the fullest in addition to hard-casting God-Pharaoh’s Gift.
Hostage Taker; Gonti, Lord of Luxury; and Walking Ballista all seem like great other creatures to euse with God-Pharaoh’s Gift and The Scarab God, but there’s only room for so many of them, and I don’t know what the best mix is at this point.
Unclaimed Territory is a weird land in this deck in that the tribes are really all over the place, but Growing Rites of Itlimoc is the only noncreature spell in the maindeck that requires colored mana, so it can fill in for whatever you need in the short term until you draw a missing color. Unfortunately, there are very few types you can name that hit multiple creatures.
Human:
Rogue:
Scout:
Ultimately, I think this deck suffers from a lack of interaction, especially against flying threats like Heart of Kiran and Glorybringer.
The last place I’d like to try to use Growing Rites of Itlimoc in is Dinosaurs:
Creatures (27)
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
- 3 Carnage Tyrant
- 4 Regisaur Alpha
- 4 Ripjaw Raptor
- 4 Drover of the Mighty
- 4 Ranging Raptors
- 4 Kinjalli's Caller
Lands (22)
Spells (11)
It feels really weird to splash Elvish Mystic in a green deck, but as it happens, the legal Elvish Mystic is white, and green decks really want Elvish Mystic. The one-mana creature is also important for flipping Growing Rites of Itlimoc. Legion’s Landing is hard to cast on the first turn because you can’t use Unclaimed Territory, but the point is just to get the land eventually, so it doesn’t matter much if you have to wait a bit to cast it.
I’m really not sure about Ranging Raptors when your only way to damage them is Savage Stomp. It’s possible Deathgorge Scavenger is better, since it hits considerably harder. It really depends on how much of the removal in the format is red, and I’m currently guessing that a lot of it will be, which makes me want the creature that’s good against it.
With Growing Rites of Itlimoc potentially allowing me to get huge amounts of mana, I was really tempted to play Gishath, Sun’s Avatar, but I just can’t justify it over Carnage Tyrant. It’s possible that I’m supposed to be using Walking Ballista as the mana sink for Growing Rites, especially since it plays well with Ripjaw Raptor and Ranging Raptors, but I’m not sure there’s room for it with Kinjalli’s Caller, as I just want mana and Dinosaurs.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc is a really unusual card, and extremely difficult to evaluate. I was excited about it initially; then I couldn’t figure out how to use it. Now I’ve thought of some ways to use it, but I worry that it constrains decks too much and asks too much of them. It’s clearly fantastic in casual formats, especially Commander, but I think its place in Standard, if it has one, is very much still an open question.
Of these decks, I think I’m most interested in the Abzan deck, but I’m not sure if Ruthless Knave is just too fragile to try to combo with. Still, I think Marionette Master is an exciting addition to the tokens strategy that can help cover for a lot of what it lost by just ending games quickly.