U/R/W Martyr in Standard

With Worlds passing us by, and having no Grand Prix or Pro Tour for two months, I found myself on my

computer on Magic Online with not much to do. Geneva is going to include Planar Chaos, so drafting Time

Spiral doesn’t accomplish all that much. There are Extended PTQs going on around now, but

I’m sitting on my rating to qualify for Yokohama. Then there was Standard…I really had no

desire to play standard after Worlds because the DragonTron deck that we chose to play was pretty bad.

Then I was given a list of a Mono-Blue control deck with a bunch of morphs in it (by Greg Hatch and

Matt Sperling). The name of the deck is “The Answer” and it has been gaining a lot of

popularity as of late. The deck has morphs like Fathom Seer, Willbender, and Brine Elemental, and plays

four copies of Vesuvan Shapeshifter to break the unmorphing abilities of the other cards. It runs Teferi

and Mystical Teachings, so that once Teferi is in play, you can use the Teachings to search out

Shapeshifter and Brine Elemental to establish a lock.

I was having fun playing the deck and was doing extremely well in the Constructed 8 man queues. I think the deck is easily one of the best in Standard. This eventually led to the popularity of another

deck. Mono-Green beats. It’s a deck that plays a bunch of random Green weenies and creature

beefing enhancements like Moldervine Cloak and Blanchwood Armor. It also led to the emergence and

popularity of a Mono-Black discard deck featuring The Rack. The matchups against both these decks are

pretty rough, and with the growing popularity of The Answer deck, I was getting sick of losing to

Mono-Green, The Rack, and playing out the mirror.

That’s when I went on a downward spiral of my Constructed rating by trying out a bunch of

different decks. I toyed with U/G Scryb and Force, Triscuit Tron, and others, but couldn’t win on

a regular basis with any of them. I kept losing to the Mono-Green deck, The Rack deck, and other

beatdown decks. I decided I wanted to play something that could handily beat aggressive decks. Then

I remembered about the Martyr decks that were doing well during Worlds. The Martyr engine is very

powerful and can straight up win a lot of matchups. Some control decks can’t actually deal

enough damage to kill you once you get the Martyr engine going. Imagine Psychatog trying to do 100

damage to kill the opponent.

The engine is very powerful but I had a problem with the deck because hand disruption really hurt. I was scrolling through all the cards in Standard and started looking for a White card that

would maybe benefit through hand disruption, and I came across the perfect card…Firemane Angel.

This card welcomes the discard presented by the Mono-Black Rack deck and it’s also a great late

game win condition. Martyr, for the most part, gains a ton of life and has trouble finishing off the

opponent, and it usually involves decking. So I coupled the Martyr engine with Firemane

Angel and began looking for any Boros cards that would fit into the deck. Lightning Helix was an

obvious inclusion, and I figured with both Firemane Angels and the Proclamation Martyr engine, I could

include two copies of Searing Meditation as an additional way to finish off the opponent.

So far, I had Firemane Angels, Martyrs, Helixes, Proclamations, Wrath of Gods, Condemns, and

Faith’s Fetters in the pool of cards to build a deck. The problem of this deck became clear

immediately. I had no way to search through the deck or too many ways to gain card advantage. I

wanted to add a way to draw cards to fill up my hand to maximize the potential of Martyr of Sands. I

thought about Howling Mine but I tried Martyr decks with Howling Mine in the past and I really was not

a fan of my opponents drawing cards. The deck seemed a little underpowered with just two colors, so I

decided to add a third color – Blue. This gave me the ability to play both Compulsive Research and

Careful Consideration. After tinkering with the mana for a bit, here is the initial list that I had:

U/R/W Martyr, Version 1

2 Adarkar Wastes
2 Boros Garrison
2 Islands
2 Izzet Boilerworks
3 Plains
1 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Shivan Reef
3 Steam Vents
3 Hallowed Fountain
1 Urza’s Factory

4 Martyr of Sands
3 Condemn
4 Lightning Helix
3 Azorius Signet
3 Boros Signet
4 Compulsive Research
2 Searing Meditation
3 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Wrath of God
3 Careful Consideration
4 Firemane Angel

Sideboard:
3 Return to Dust
3 Bottled Cloister
2 Zur’s Weirding
3 Faith’s Fetters
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Gigadrowse

This deck was basically designed to crush any form of creature deck aside from “The

Answer”. When I was playing the U/W Martyr Tron deck that made the Top 8 at Worlds, I would

still find myself losing to Boros randomly through mana problems, but that isn’t the case for

this deck. Control was a bit of a problem however, and the Gigadrowses and Teferis were not all that

impressive in the board, because Gigadrowsing them just to resolve a Zur’s Weirding was not that

strong, especially if they had a strong hand afterwards. The Cloisters were also not very impressive

because the Mono-Black discard deck was already a good matchup and there were no other matchups where

this card was boarded in. All forms of aggressive decks were great matchups. I felt that the Fetters

would be better suited in the maindeck, and that the Condemns were unnecessary. This freed up some

space in the sideboard to fit in more cards against control. After some more fiddling around, I came

up with the following deck that I use currently in Standard.

The Teferi’s were not all that impressive, and I decided to add four copies of Lightning

Angels in the board as sort of a surprise aggro element. They will usually board out all of their

removal spells against you. The Cancels were just a card that came to mind to try and fight control,

and to help you resolve your own spells. They have been very effective so far in the control matchups.

The Circle of Protections are there for the aggressive decks that can burn you out, and for against

Dragonstorm. Usually you’ll be able to gain enough life so that the actual Dragonstorm

can’t kill, so the Circle of Protection: Red is great at stalling until you can hit a Wrath of

God.

Now for the actual matchup analysis of decks. There are many viable Constructed decks out there,

and I will try and go over most of the Tier 1 and 2 decks:

Boros, U/R Tron, U/B/W Tron, The Answer, The Rack deck, Glare, R/G Beats, U/G Scryb and Force, Zoo,

Mono-Green beats, Dragonstorm, and U/R/W control, and U/B Dralnu Control.

If I’m forgetting a popular deck other than these, I apologize in advance I just can’t

think of it right now.

Matchups:

Boros: This is one of your best matchups, if not the best. Almost

everything in your deck is great against them. You don’t even really need to draw a Martyr. Any

reasonable draw should be able to blow them out. Firemane Angel, Lightning Helix, Faith’s

Fetters, Wrath of God, and Martyr of Sands are all excellent cards against Boros, and they will usually

end up conceding once you get your Martyr engine going and can begin to recur your Firemane Angels.

In: 2 Circle of Protection: Red.
Out: 2 Searing Meditation.

The most important part of this matchup is to just survive past the first few turns of the game,

because you should not be able to lose the late game. The Searing Meditations are unnecessary because

they have no way to permanently stop you from recurring your Firemane Angels. You simply replace them

with two copies of Circle of Protection: Red so you can’t get burned out.

R/G Beats: This matchup plays exactly the same as the matchup against Boros. You

try to survive the first few turns, try to get a Firemane Angel or two into the graveyard via

Compulsive Research or Careful Consideration, and try to setup the Martyr of Sand and Proclamation of

Rebirth engine. With Wrath of God, Lightning Helix, Faith’s Fetters, Firemane Angels, and

Martyrs, you have to actually want to lose to lose this matchup.

In: 2 Circle of Protection: Red, 3 Lightning Angel
Out: 2 Searing Meditation, 3 Careful Consideration

Unlike Boros, R/G does not have hard-to-block creatures like Knight of the Holy Nimbus and Soltari

Priest, so the Lightning Angels are pretty strong blockers (and they get in there!). Once again, you

take the Searing Meditation because they are a bit slow in this matchup, and unnecessary in winning.

Careful Consideration is a bit slow, and on turn 4 you really want your four-drop to affect the board

in some way. They can board in Cryoclasm and possibly a whole land destruction package, but with six

Signets, land destruction really isn’t too much of a problem.

U/W/R Control: If the deck is anything similar to what Tiago Chan piloted into

the Top 8 of Worlds, then this deck should not be very difficult to beat. Simply put, they have no way

to actually disrupt your Martyr of Sands and Proclamation of Rebirth engine, and their deck isn’t

aggressive enough to actually kill you fast enough before you get your engine going. Their threats

include Lightning Angels and Bogardan Hellkites, but with the Fetters and Wrath of Gods you should be

able to give yourself enough time to kill them with the Searing Meditation or Firemane Angel recursion.

It might be safer to go with the Searing Meditation route to victory because they do pack four copies

of Demonfire in their deck, and those could be used to kill your angels and remove them from the game.

When I start feeling comfortable enough to recur Firemane Angels, I usually make sure to have a

Lightning Helix or two in my hand so that I could kill them in response and recur them on the following

turn.

In: 4 Cancel, 2 Zur’s Weirding, 2 Return to Dust
Out: 4 Lightning Helix, -1 Wrath of God, -1 Faith’s Fetters, -2 Boros Signet

Honestly, you can bring in your entire sideboard in this matchup if you wanted. Lightning Angels

could be a good surprise card because they will likely board out all their Wraths against you. Return

to Dusts could be good because they will probably bring in Annexes and their deck does play six

Signets. Circle of Protection: Red is also good to prevent damage from Lightning Angels, Bogardan

Hellkites, and Demonfires. Unfortunately there are only so many cards that you can afford to cut from

the deck. All in all, the Cancels and the Zur’s Weirdings are the most relevant cards to bring

out, and the Return to Dusts are never really going to be dead cards… but they’re something

you don’t really want multiple copies of in your hand. If you can manage to cast a Zur’s

Weirding with some form of life gain engine going (Martyr Proclamation or Firemane Angels in the

graveyard), you should be able to win pretty easily.

Mono-Blue Morphs “The Answer”: This is by far the hardest matchup for

the deck. You have no disruption maindeck, and if played against a competent opponent it is nearly

impossible to win the matchup. You might have an uncounterable life gain engine but as soon as they

cast a Teferi and use Mystical Teachings to fetch a Brine Elemental and a Vesuvan Shapeshiter, there is

no real way to get out of the lock and you will die pretty quickly. Kill any morph you see as soon as

you can and hope for the best. Fortunately, the matchup gets a lot better after sideboarding.

In: 4 Lightning Angel, 4 Cancel, 2 Zur’s Weirding
Out: 4 Martyr of Sands, 3 Proclamation of Rebirth, 3 Faith’s Fetters

This is one of the few matchups where the Martyr of Sand and Proclamation combination is

irrelevant. Once they can get setup with their Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter lock, it

doesn’t take long to die. Faith’s Fetters also does not do much to their morphs, because

all of their creatures are utility creatures and their unmorphing abilities are really the reason why

they’re in the deck, and not the fact that they bash for two. You get to bring in some counters

to actually fight theirs. With the Lightning Angels, Searing Meditations, Zur’s Weirdings, and

all of the card draw in the deck… it’s going to be pretty tough for them to counter all of

your threats. If you manage to get one of them to stick, you should have a decent shot of winning the

match. Nevertheless, the matchup is still in their favor because you can’t win game 1 and they

still have more counters than you after board. The hope is that the popularity of this deck will wane

as the popularity of the Mono-Green deck grows, as The Answer has an extremely tough time of dealing

with a Cloaked Silhana Ledgewalker.

U/G Scryb and Force: This is a little trickier than playing against your typical

mindless beatdown deck. The fact that they run some number of counterspells makes it a bit more

difficult to beat. Fortunately, U/G generally comes out of the gates much slower than Boros or Zoo

because they will almost always leave two mana up for that Remand or Mana Leak. This means that you

will be taking one or two damage a turn for the first three or four turns via a Llanowar Elves or a

Scryb Ranger. This will generally give you enough time to establish your Martyr Proclamation engine.

They usually won’t be able to deal enough damage to you unless they overextend, and that’s

when you resolve a key Wrath of God to make them start from Ground Zero. Their deck also has a tough

time of actually dealing with a hardcast Firemane Angel. The only creature that can get through that

is a Spectral Force, and possibly Dryad Sophisticate, which aren’t in most lists.

In: 4 Lightning Angel
Out: 2 Searing Meditation, 2 Careful Consideration.

Lightning Angels are pretty strong in this matchup. Not really for the offense because they have

Scryb Rangers, but it does a good job of blocking Call of the Herd Tokens and trading with Ohran

Vipers. It’s better to have some kind of body to stem the bleeding early until you can get your

Martyr Engine set up, and Searing Meditation and Careful Consideration could be a bit slow sometimes.

Generally this matchup is very favorable, as this deck was built to beat just about all aggressive

decks.

Mono-Black Discard deck with The Rack: I don’t actually know the real name

of this deck, but it has a bunch of efficient discard spells like Cry of Contrition, Stupor, Ravenous

Rats, and Smallpox to try to rip away at your hand. It wins by trying to kill you with multiple copies

of The Rack, or by beating you down with Dark Confidants and Stromgald Crusaders. When I first looked

at the deck, it just looked like a pile. While I’m still not convinced that it’s a very

good deck, it does seem to be somewhat popular online. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of being able to

play a deck with The Rack and discard elements in it. Anyhow, this matchup is not too bad. The key in

this matchup is resolving a Searing Meditation. They will basically succeed in taking apart your hand,

but if you can resolve a Meditation, it shouldn’t take long for you to get a Firemane Angel into

the graveyard, and they can’t actually stop you from dealing two damage a turn to them or one of

their creatures.

In: 3 Return to Dust, 4 Lightning Angel
Out: 4 Martyr of Sands, 3 Proclamation of Rebirth

The Martyr engine isn’t that effective against them because they will shred your hand to

pieces. Return to Dust is very good against the deck because after sideboard they will have The Rack,

Phyrexian Totem, and Phyrexian Arena as viable targets. Lightning Angels are pretty good surprise

beaters, and I would imagine that they would board out their removal. The Angels aren’t all that

great considering they have Stromgald Crusaders to block, but as the deck has no way to stop an active

Crusader, it’s good to even be able to hold the creature at bay.

U/R Tron and U/W/B Tron: The U/R Tron matchup is not very bad. Simply put, they

can’t really stop your Martyr engine from going off and you can just gain too much life for them

to be able to kill you with. They don’t really have hard counters to stop your Searing

Meditation, and they should eventually resolve. They can try to hurt your mana through Wildfires, but

with four bouncelands and six Signets, you should be able to recover from them pretty easily. Even

that one random copy of Flagstones might be in play when they do! The U/W/B Tron matchup is much more

difficult, because the list plays the Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter lock. There’s not

much you can do about the lock and like the matchup against The Answer, the matchup is a bit rough.

Against U/R Tron
In: 4 Cancel, 2 Zur’s Weirding, 3 Return to Dust
Out: 4 Lightning Helix, 1 Faith’s Fetters, 2 Wrath of God, 1 Martyr of Sands, 1 Proclamation of

Rebirth

You take out a bunch of your anti-aggro cards and bring in the anti-control package. The Return to

Dusts are very good in this matchup because they are likely to run four to six Signets, and they board

in Annexes and possibly Muse Vessels as well. Getting two-for-one trades with the Return to Dusts

happens pretty often.

Against U/W/B Tron
In: 4 Cancel, 2 Zur’s Weirding, 3 Return to Dust, 4 Lightning Angel
Out: 4 Martyr of Sands, 3 Proclamation of Rebirth, 4 Lightning Helix, 1 Faith’s Fetters, 1 Wrath

of God.

The Martyr Proclamation engine isn’t very good against this version of Tron because they are

capable of locking you out with the Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter so you just board them

out. They don’t have Bogardan Hellkites or Wildfires, so boarding in the Lightning Angels is

pretty strong as they are likely to board out their removal against you. The matchup becomes very

winnable after the board, as you bring in thirteen cards against them because it’s one of your

worst matchups. The Zur’s Weirding is an excellent card against control, as long as you can dump

some Firemane Angels into the yard. It basically locks them out from ever topdecking a spell, and

eventually you can hit the mana to recur the Angels and kill your opponent.

U/B Dralnu: This was the basic inspiration for the Mono-Blue morph deck. However,

this deck does not run the Brine Elemental Shapeshifter lock so it’s possible to gain enough life

for them not to be able to kill you game 1. Instead of the morphs they run Skeletal Vampires and

Dralnu to recur whatever goodies already played throughout the game. It’s hard to stop them from

what they’re doing, but since the Proclamation engine is uncounterable, you can usually gain

enough life for them to not be able to kill you. Firemane Angels are key in this matchup, and

it’s also hard for them to stop you from recurring the angels. They don’t do a real good

job of putting pressure on you early, so the games will always come down to Firemane Angel recursion

and Proclamation recursion with the Martyrs.

In: 4 Cancel, 2 Zur’s Weirding, 4 Lightning Angel
Out: 4 Martyr of Sands, 3 Proclamation of Rebirth, 3 Lightning Helix

You can’t really rely on the Martyr engine here because they will board in Persecutes, so

just take them out and transform into a Firemane control deck. The matchup gets a bit more difficult

after board due to the Persecutes but they have a lot of spells that they must counter after board and

if you can bait them to counter the right spells, you can probably get a Zur’s Weirding or

Searing Meditation to stick. Their only answer is Repeal, which they may or may not keep in. Just set

yourself up to resolve the key spells with the appropriate Cancel backup, and you should be able to win

this matchup.

G/W GhaziGlare: This matchup plays out like the Boros and R/G matchups, and

it’s pretty much a cakewalk. They come out the gates a bit slower, allowing you to setup the

Martyr Proclamation engine going. However, they are more capable of doing explosive amounts of damage

due to Selesnya Guildmage and possibly Thelonite Hermit. Fortunately, this deck was built to beat

decks exactly like this, and without having any disruption, they can’t stop you from doing what

you do best…and that’s gain life! Once the board gets a bit too cluttered with their

creatures, resolve a Wrath of God and it’ll take them quite a while to come back and be able to

deal enough damage to breakthrough the Martyr life gain engine. If they have a Glare in play with a

Vitu-Ghazi, it’s pretty tough to actually kill them with creatures (unless you Faith’s

Fetters all their Glares). This is where you bust out the Searing Meditation and slowly nug them until

they die (from your various life gain cards).

In: 3 Return to Dust
Out: 3 Careful Consideration

Since they will bring answers to kill your Searing Meditations, you bring in the Return to Dusts to

be able to kill the Glares of Subdual. so that you can actually kill them with your Firemane Angels.

The matchup will play out almost exactly the same as the first game. This is one of your best

matchups, and you shouldn’t lose.

Dragonstorm: This matchup is very draw dependent. It basically comes down to how

fast they setup their combo, and whether or not you draw a Martyr of Sands and a Wrath of God. If you

can get a Martyr of Sands in play and gain twelve life or so, their actual Dragonstorm won’t be

able to kill you. Follow that up with a Wrath of God and they actually can’t win. Obviously

it’s not particularly easy to draw both those cards but they won’t necessarily Dragonstorm

for six every game, so sometimes even a Lightning Helix to gain 3 life followed up with a Wrath of God

could seal the deal.

In: 2 Circle of Protection: Red, 4 Cancel, 2 Zur’s Weirding
Out: 2 Searing Meditation, 4 Lightning Helix, 2 Faith’s Fetters

The COP: Reds act as a damage shield against Dragonstorm until you can draw your Wrath of God.

Even if you resolve it on turn 2, they will be able to Gigadrowse you end of turn and then go off and

kill you with Dragonstorm. So drawing a Martyr is very crucial to be able to gain the necessary life

so that the actual Dragonstorm won’t kill you. The matchup does get a lot better after

sideboarding, and it should be in your favor.

All in all, I think this deck is an excellent choice if you expect an aggressive field in your

local FNMs. It’s also just a fun new deck to try out, and just watching the look of frustration

in your opponents’ eyes while you’re at 125 life is payment in itself, so go and try out

the deck. The absolute worst matchup is the Mono-Blue Morph deck, and if you expect decks like that

then it’s probably safe to just go and run a Mono-Green Aggro deck, which absolutely obliterates

that deck. If you do expect a heavy control field including the Mono-Blue Morph deck, I would suggest

trying out this version of U/R/W Martyr:

The aggressive matchups get worse because I took out the three Fetters and a Boros

Signet maindeck, replacing them with four Remands, but you do have more game against Control decks

because the Remands can help you resolve key spells. The sideboard also has two copies of Teferi and

Vesuvan Shapeshifters, as this deck has a tough time dealing with a Teferi on the opposing side of the

board, I figure might as well play them myself. The Shapeshifters are also awesome against The Answer

because you can just freeload off your opponent’s morph creatures. If they’re not careful,

you can end up locking them out with their own Brine Elemental!

I hope this guide was useful, and I look forward to seeing some more Searing Meditations being

played in the Standard 8-man queues!

Good luck!

Paul Cheon