“If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? You watching?
“And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake…
“I… drink… your… milkshake!
[sucking sound]
“I drink it up!” — Daniel Plainview, There Will Be Blood
I’m a bit of a movie buff, and I always knew that Daniel Day Lewis was a good actor. Then, in 2002 I watched Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, and Day Lewis’ Bill “the Butcher” Cutter… it was a revelation. The man had transformed himself, subsumed himself in the role. He looked nothing like Daniel Day Lewis; he was Bill the Butcher, and gave the villain such depth and nuance it took my breath away. I just knew he was a lock for the Oscar.
Things ran off track though when he was nominated for Best Actor… when he wasn’t the lead actor in the movie; the movie focused on Leonardo DeCaprio’s character Amsterdam. Bill the Butcher had a big role in the movie, but Day Lewis was then pitted against actors who actually played the lead in their films, those movies were about their characters, and he lost out to Adrien Brody, who gave a stellar performance in the heartbreaking war film The Pianist.
Day Lewis should have been in the running for Best Supporting Actor; the Oscar went to Chris Cooper in Adaptation, and while Cooper did a fine job in that odd little film, Day Lewis’s performance was head-and-shoulders better.
So why do I go on about something that happened six years ago? Well, I finally got around to watching There Will Be Blood. Day Lewis again played a dark and complex historical villain, and from the descriptions of his performance I had a feeling he was back in Bill the Butcher form.
There was a line from the movie that I found particularly enticing, one that I had heard several times, and it was the “milkshake” line. I mean, who would have thought that someone could talk about drinking milkshakes in such an aggressive and menacing way? So, while I was looking forward to watching Day Lewis’ performance, I was particularly looking forward to the milkshake line, so I could see it in context.
Turns out this movie is incredibly bleak, and incredibly long, and the milkshake line comes at the very, very, very end of the movie. I was exhausted and depressed by the time I got to it. I’m not even sure I can say that I liked the movie; I tend to be more of a “happily-ever-after” man. Real life has enough crushing disappointments that I like my escapist stories to have at least a glimmer of hope at the end.
But Day Lewis was phenomenal in There Will Be Blood.
In a way, the current Standard metagame has me similarly exhausted and depressed. Like the blazing talent of Day Lewis, there’s no denying the magnetism of the power cards of the format: Cryptic Command, Bitterblossom, Reflecting Pool, and Reveillark. These cards just dominate the Standard landscape, and since they’re all from pre-Shards sets, we’ve been playing and playing against these cards for a while.
Soon the collective attention of Magic columnists will turn to Standard, and likely stay there for quite a while since there is going to be a crush of Standard events in the next several months. Regionals is fast approaching, about a month and a half away, and we’ve also got the Qualifier season for Pro Tour: Austin starting in May, and that’s Standard too. Most of the columnists see it as their duty to present to their readers the best decks possible, and so I’m dreading the piling on of even more column inches on Faeries and Five-Color Control and Boat Brew and Black/White Tokens. These decks have been winning, they’re winning today and they’ll be winning tomorrow.
It’s amusing to read StarCityGames.com alum Tom LaPille popping up here and there in his Magicthegathering.com column gushing about how the Standard metagame is so diverse. “I used this column two weeks ago to talk about how excited we are about the state of Standard. Unsurprisingly, the DCI has chosen to change nothing,” Tom said when explaining why no bannings came down for Standard. “The Top 8 of Pro Tour—Kyoto was diverse and full of reasonable decks, and the rest of the field was also quite varied.”
Diverse… reasonable… varied?! Is it reasonable that we’re just getting reconfigurations of the same old power cards from Lorwyn over and over? Have you taken the time to look through the Magic Online Standard decklists from the Decks of the Week? It’s the same decks, multiple copies filling out the Top 8, over and over and over and over! That’s diverse, varied?
The most recent StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open is pretty much nearly as redundant. Even the “unusual” decks ended up being mostly a rehash of the same old cards. Even Patrick Chapin, our beloved innovator, went backwards – he took Brian Robinson’s mildly refreshing new version of Doran, stripped out most all of the new stuff and replaced them with a bunch of Lorwyn cards and achieved a 14th place finish. I can see Dark Bant fans around the globe tossing their Ancient Ziggurats and War Monks and Rafiqs into the “meh” pile.
Will Alara Reborn break up the monotony? Will the solid gold set give us a gold rush of innovation and smash the metagame to pieces?
My logical assumption is no. Magic blocks tend to fluxuate between high power and low power, and it’s pretty obvious now that Lorwyn/Shadowmoor was at the apex of the cycle, and Alara is on the downside. The odds are pretty bad that anything’s going to shake people away from their Cryptics and ‘Blossoms.
And yet, being a “happily ever after” guy, I have hope that maybe, just maybe, Alara Reborn will give us something new and powerful to work with. Starting with Invasion, Wizards had rebooted their approach with gold cards – since playing gold cards is naturally more difficult than playing monocolored cards, it was okay to raise the power level of those cards in comparison to similarly costed monocolored cards.
It’s my hope that there will be some powerful, mana efficient creatures in Alara Reborn that will push Ancient Ziggurat decks into a stronger position. I think my current build is pretty strong, and I plan on giving it a run at FNM tonight. Here’s how it stands right now:
Ziggy Hierarch and the Faeries from Hell
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Treefolk Harbinger
2 Path to Exile
4 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Nameless Inversion
4 Rhox War Monk
4 Doran, the Siege Tower
2 Vendilion Clique
4 Sower of Temptation
3 Rafiq of the Many
3 Shriekmaw
1 Battlegrace Angel
4 Ancient Ziggurat
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Murmuring Bosk
3 Treetop Village
2 Yavimaya Coast
2 Brushland
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Island
My sideboard is still in flux so I didn’t include it here.
There are some big differences between Ziggy Hierarch and the stock versions of Dark Bant. The biggest is the inclusion of two of the best non-tribal faeries from Lorwyn block. Vendilion Clique supplements the disruption of Sculler, has evasion and hits hard through the air with or without Exalted boosts, but imagine a start of turn 1 Hierarch, turn 2 Clique, turn 3 Rafiq, swing with the Clique through the air for 10. Beats!
Ziggy Hierarch also focuses like a laser beam on clearing away blockers. In a world full of Bitterblossoms, Cloudgoat Rangers and Spectral Procession, that can be very difficult for Dark Bant decks to accomplish, but Ziggy’s got Sowers of Temptation, Shriekmaws, a couple Paths to Exile and a Nameless Inversion does a nice job of it. Also, many of my creatures have evasion, mostly flying but also Fear, so I can focus my removal on a smaller subset of potential blockers.
The Treefolk Harbinger is something I wanted to try to improve consistency, either in fixing your mana with a Bosk or in finding Doran, the superstar. Battlegrace Angel adds a little more lifegaining to the deck, boosts the Exalted count and adds yet another evasion creature to my arsenal.
Now, as luck would have it, the hardworking sleuths at MTG Salvation have posted several confirmed creatures from Alara Reborn, so let’s take a quick gander and see if they might be the ticket to sending Ziggy Hierarch to the next level.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
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Aven Mimic – 1WU
Creature – Bird Wizard (Rare)
Flying
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a wing counter on target creature. If you do, that creature is 3/1 and has flying as long as it has a wing counter on it.
3/1
I have to admit this card is intriguing for Ziggy; the colors are fine, it’s got flying, it’s reasonable costed. You can make your little dudes hit harder and gain evasion. With your Doran in play you can instead target the biggest creatures your opponent has and pretty much make your Doran invulnerable to creature damage unless they want to go 5-for-1. On the bad side Aven Mimic dies to everything and I’m not sure I would replace anything currently in Ziggy with this guy. Sideboard maybe?
Ether-caste Knight – WU
Artifact Creature – Human Knight (Common)
Exalted
1/3
I’m definitely keeping a special eye out for more quality Exalted dudes for Ziggy. This Knight is a decent blocker, and attacks by himself as a 2/4. He doesn’t die to Volcanic Fallout. Definitely something to try.
Dragon Broodmother – 2RRRG
Creature – Dragon (Mythic Rare)
Flying
At the beginning of each upkeep, put a 1/1 red and green Dragon creature token with flying and devour 2 into play. (As the token comes into play, you may sacrifice any number of creatures. It comes into play with twice that many +1/+1 counters on it.)
4/4
I have to admit I’m stoked that this is the prerelease card, since I am soooo going to immediately stick this in my EDH decks. A flying Verdant Force that makes little baby dragons—how cool is that? Not just baby dragons, but hungry baby dragons that are perfectly willing to eat their brethren or whatever other tokens are hanging around. Personally, one of the things I’m most looking forward to from Alara Reborn is seeing what the art looks like on the token cards for 1/1 red and green Dragon tokens with flying and devour 2.
Anyway, regarding Ziggy application, I’m not seeing this fellow making the cut unless it undergoes a serious mana reconfiguration, since right now red isn’t a color we’re even thinking about using. I do think this card will certainly be worth considering in various R/G Ramp configurations.
Spellbreaker Behemoth – 1RGG
Creature – Beast (Rare)
Spellbreaker Behemoth can’t be countered.
Creature spells you control with power 5 or greater can’t be countered.
5/5
If you squint your eyes the right way, this guy’s flavor text says “I’ve got yer Remove Soul right here!” Okay, I can’t lie, I love this big guy who’s like a super Scragnoth, and one day when I’m sick to death of getting countered into oblivion after a tournament I’m gonna be glad to turn to my playset of these. For Ziggy, I could certainly cast him without too much trouble off Birds or Ziggurat for the red, but I don’t see bumping the Sowers or Rafiq for him. He might be sideboard material against creatureless or creature-light decks if we ever see those.
Knight of New Alara – 2GW
Creature – Human Knight (Rare)
Each other multicolored creature you control gets +1/+1 for each of its colors.
2/2
This is a very interesting card that sadly can’t hold a candle to Wilt-Leaf Liege, and the Liege isn’t even making the cut in my build. I suspect however that it might be a block powerhouse, especially given the multicolored hybrid and five color creatures that will running around.
Pale Priest-Spider – 4GW
Creature – Spider (Common)
Reach
Forestcycling {2}
Plainscycling {2}
4/5
Now I do like the ability to go fetch Bosks with this fellow, and it’s certainly a much better late-game top-deck than Treefolk Harbinger. And it’s a spider! Mmmm…
Sage of the Anima – 3GU
Creature – Elf Wizard (Rare)
If you would draw a card, reveal the top three cards of your library instead. Put all creature cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
3/4
Alright, this card is likely stone-cold nuts for a Ziggy deck that’s going to be nearly all creatures anyway, though keep in mind that so long as the Sage is out you won’t ever be drawing another land (or non-creature card) again. At a five casting cost, that’s likely not a drawback at all. I have to say I’m surprised at the four toughness, which tells me this card might have been pushed a little bit; in the past, I would have expected this to be a 3/3 and thus not really tournament playable.
So I think the question this card poses is, would this or Mulldrifter be better in the deck? I don’t currently have Mulldrifter, but it’s been something I’ve considered. So if Mulldrifter doesn’t make the cut in my deck, does the Sage? Is Sage better or worse? You don’t get the cards right away; however, a 3/4 is big enough to shrug off a lot of the common removal options around. I would not at all mind ripping this off the top of my deck in the mid- to late-game. Definitely something to try out!
Jund Muckcutter – {BG}R
Creature – Goblin Berserker (Common)
As long you control another multicolored permanent, Jund Muckcutter gains +1/+1 and haste.
2/1
This guy is begging for a one mana hybrid to pair up with! Unless you’re going nuts with Knight of New Alara (which makes this guy 6/5), the best you can hope for in a Ziggy deck is dropping this the turn after you drop a Sculler, Doran or I-Hop, in which case you’re getting a hasty 3/2 for two colored mana. Not terrible but not exactly amazing. Berserker, eh? Should have given him Rampage!
Marisi Twinclaw – 2{rw}G
Creature – Cat Warrior (Uncommon)
Double strike
2/4
For four mana, this kitty’s competing with some core power players in Ziggy, so I think I’ll pass. Again, she is stone-cold nuts with Knight of New Alara, turning into a 5/6 double-striker—ouch!
Okay, so far Alara Reborn has shown a couple cards that are worth thinking about, and considering only 10 or so cards have been spoiled, I think odds are pretty good that something is going to come out that’s going to really be amazing in the Hierarch deck. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
That’s it for this week; wish me luck at FNM, I’ll catch you next week with some real-life experiences with Ziggy and where to take it from here. I’m particularly interested in hearing from anyone who’s been able to run some games with the deck, since I posted the original version of it several weeks back. Hit us back in the forums, or drop me a message.
Have a great weekend!
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com