Ikoria: Lair Of Behemoths Set Review: Multicolored

We’re hitting the multicolored cards today, and there’s lot of them, and a lot of them are quite strong. We’ve already covered white, blue, black, red, and green, if you need to catch up. We’re going a mile a minute, so hold on!

Song of Creation

Song of Creation is like a super-powered Recycle. Its uses range from combo to “not really a combo deck until it plays Song of Creation.”

The only thing keeping this crazy engine in check is that whole “discard your hand” clause. Every turn.

Of course, since this is Magic, there are ways to get around this, if only we are savvy enough. Jump-start, Adventure, and escape can ensure we’ve got spells we can play to get things going again.

There are also some pretty sweet ways to turn this drawback into upside. We could easily put ourselves in a situation where we’re up to ten cards or more before then having to discard. That could be a lot of damage to our opponent if we’ve got a Glint-Horn Buccaneer, and if it’s our first discard of the turn, Rielle will draw us a massive amount of cards (and that “discard your hand” thing only happens once a turn).

There are so many ways we could potentially take this. For instance, it’s probably crazy, but can you imagine if we had Hard Cover on Blisterspit Gremlin going with Song of Creation?

Trying to strike the balance between “cards that are good when you’ve got Song” and “cards that are good when you don’t” presents some interesting questions. 

Given how well Adventures work with Song of Creation, maybe we can go whole-hog:

Rosethorn Acolyte is nice when you’ve got Song of Creation!

This is especially true when you’ve got Lucky Clover getting you actually ahead on mana, so I decided to see how far I could take this part of the strategy.

Zero-mana draw-two? Don’t mind if I do. And when you add Rosethorn Acolyte into the mix, that’s more than a quarter of our deck getting top billing. 

Finally, I wanted to try it in a red deck, where it’s probably going to… underperform, yeah, let’s say that. Still, here’s giving it the ‘ol college try:

If you want to play a red deck that’s actually good, I might consider building around Obosh, the Preypiercer instead (which kind of rules out Song of Creation’s four-cost self).

Obosh is a strong five-drop just on its own, but when you consider it not costing you a card and being something you can rely on? Insanity. Obosh also works well in Black/X sacrifice decks.

As for Song of Creation, weirdly, there’s another Song of Creation in the same set.

Whirlwind of Thought is a lot less out of control than Song of Creation, so even if it’s a lot less explosive, it seems the more reliable option for just playing “straight-up.”

First off, if we get to play Inspired Ultimatum, you know it’s gonna be a good time…

Inspired Ultimatum is kind of a Sphinx’s Revelation, and while it may have some Cruel Ultimatum in its DNA, it’ll work better for you if you don’t ask it to do as much heavy lifting as Cruel did.

Ahh yes, the companion for all creatureless decks. Got it.

The Jeskai four-drops are out of this world. Narset of the Ancient Way is a powerful card draw engine, respectable control over the battlefield, and generally just works well with the really good Jeskai cards.

That said, Narset also works really well with some cards that aren’t Jeskai and aren’t… ehem, well, aren’t really good. I think that’s fair.

Offspring’s Revenge

Offspring’s Revenge is a sizable investment, but you start getting paid immediately, as you can drop it and then go straight into combat.

Drakuseth and Agent of Treachery both generate massive advantage, regardless of the size of the token. This first draft is probably too crazy, but damn if it isn’t a good time.

I think I like Narset better than Channeled Force, but I figured I might as well give it a shot too. It could turn out to surprise us, and if it’s just worse, we can quickly replace it after a few games.

On the note of cheating Agent of Treachery onto the battlefield, the real new hotness is combining it with Winota, Joiner of Forces. You know, Humans and non-Humans, aka, Forces.

Winota has an absolutely unreal ceiling for a 4/4 for four. You just cast Winota and attack, and you’re likely to completely take over the game. Remember that Winota doesn’t actually need to attack, and in fact doesn’t trigger herself. Also, super-important to remember you get a trigger for every single non-Human creature you attack with. If you attack with three random 1/1s, they may be on their way to the slaughter, but if you get to rip through eighteen cards looking for Humans to join the attack, that’s a big game.

First of all, Raise the Alarm’s tokens aren’t Human!?

Yeah, because of course these two creatures aren’t Humans. What was I thinking?

Anyway, they’re great for attacking alongside Flbthp when you’ve got a Winota. And besides, even if you only get one Agent of Treachery, maybe you’ll find an Elite Guardmage or Charming Prince.

Charming Prince may seem an odd one to be excited about, but when it’s blinking Agent of Treachery, you’re gonna be excited to.

If you’re looking for the most comically over-the-top way to “cheat” Agent of Treachery onto the battlefield, look no further.

Emergent Ultimatum may not seem as obviously, ridiculously powerful in impact as the others, but when you compare it to Tooth and Nail, it does kind of make you raise an eyebrow.

Yeah, it’s got all kinds of mana symbols all over the place and is more restrictive and less predictable, but it costs two mana less. That’s a huge deal when it comes to game-winning bombs.

I haven’t done the math; but I assume we’re about 60% to open up:

• Turn 2: Growth Spiral
• Turn 3: Migration Path
• Turn 4: Emergent Ultimatum

Even though we can only get monocolored cards, that doesn’t mean we can’t get an absolutely unreal bunch.

All these breathtakingly powerful bombs makes me want to try Titans’ Nest as an additional accelerator.

Sadly, it doesn’t play nicely with Emergent Ultimatum, so I think we’ll have to look elsewhere for Titans’ Nest combos.

There we go!

One of the most challenges to playing Emergent Ultimatum is giving up Hydroid Krasis. I mean, it’s not that we can’t play it, I guess. It’s just, how many sixes, sevens, and eights are we really gonna play? Maybe it doesn’t matter and we can just play a couple, but there are plenty of other ways to build Hydroid Krasis these days. For instance, what about straight-up Simic ramp?

Parcelbeast is underrated presumably on account of being a little confusing to wrap your head around. Let’s think about this for a second. Isn’t this ability pretty obviously better than drawing a card? And it doesn’t even need to connect to draw the card? And it’s a 2/4? Like, isn’t this card basically the second coming?

While Parcelbeast’s ability being a tap ability rather than a hits trigger or a mutate trigger may be one of its greatest strengths, it’s also a huge limiting factor for stacking mutations. Still, it just seems so powerful, I’m not sure we can’t just slot it in all sorts of decks, even those that don’t maximize it.

This format looks ripe for the right tempo deck to come along and completely clean up. What that looks like remains to be seen, but there is a lot of appeal to Simic.

I guess if you were truly all-in, you could get into a headspace where Trumpeting Gnarr would be a worthy consideration. Part of the issue, though, is that it’s just not that good of a mutate play for five. The three-cost mode is mana efficient, but then frequently leaves you vulnerable for a turn.

I don’t love it maindeck, but Primal Empathy could be kind of a nice sideboard card for grindy matchups. We’ve already got Parcelbeast and Sea-Dasher Octopus, though. How much of this stuff can we actually get away with?

Sea-Dasher Octopus

Sea-Dasher Octopus is a really efficient Curiosity variant that doesn’t need to be all about mutating if you want to just play a more normal deck. All it really needs is a tempo strategy (and ideally a flying one-drop or two).

With Staggering Insight available as another copy of this effect, I decided to try building a Skycat Sovereign deck with both Insight and Octopus.

Skycat Sovereign is a solid card, but it’s not actually optimized for a tempo deck with lots of sorceries and instants and Auras. It’s a bit more of a go-wide card for a deck with more of a Skies feel. Still, here’s an attempt:

See what I mean? Once you factor in all all the buffs, the permission, the planeswalkers, the cantrips, we’re really not actually playing all that many flyers.

If only this stopped abilities, too….

It’s not a zero in Standard, I guess, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. In slightly more powerful formats, it is a Human and a Wizard…

Slitherwisp

Now this is a Magic card. 

Dear lord, this card just looks unbelievable to me. I just have to believe there’s a high Tier 1 Dimir Flash deck made possible because of Slitherwisp’s out-of-this-world rate.

Everything I Know About Dimir Flash In Ikoria Standard

While I love Slitherwisp, I merely like Cunning Nightbonder (and probably too much, even if it’s not all that much, but I want to believe).

The uncounterable ability is nice, I guess. Slitherwisp, though, I mean is it crazy to want to play it in Modern?

I still want there to be a Sea-Dasher Octopus  + Vadrok, Apex of Thunder deck…

But I don’t know what that is supposed to look like yet. So far, here’s where I’m at:

Vadrok has proven a tough nut to crack. There are so many ways to use it in medium-minus decks. But just think of the synergies!

Token-making spells are kind of interesting with Vadrok, giving you something to mutate with (yeah, not the Human half of the friendship, so be careful) and something to get back with Vadrok.

Lore Drakkis could be made to stack with this, and Regal Leosaur, Huntmaster Liger, and Cubwarden all speak to the token theme…

The thing is, if you try to do all that at once… well, let’s just say I don’t like the look of it.

I’m inclined to give Vadrok a rest, at least in the context of mutate tokens. The mutate tokens theme that seems much more interesting to me is something built around Hero of Precinct One and some number of gold and hybrid mutate creatures.

It’s a different sort of gold monster, but I wanted to see if I could put Godzilla to good work in Standard.

The thing, five-cost is a really tough spot on the curve right now. The five-drop options out there are Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Elspeth Conquers Death and stuff like that. Are we really trying to just drop a giant monster?

Quartzwood Crasher seemed a little higher-impact (at the very least on the turn you cast it), and that’s even more competition at five.

Who plays five-drop creatures they actually have to draw, anyway?

Speaking of build-around Dinosaurs, Labyrinth Raptor is kind of okay, I guess. We’d have to want to play a lot of menace creatures anyway, and there really aren’t enough quality menace creatures to make this really enticing, at least in Standard.

There are a few cards that happen to involve it, but hardly a reason to play an explicit enabler. There are other good, cheap options in Pioneer, but I’m just not seeing Labyrinth Raptor’s “payoff” being strong enough to justify going to the trouble.

We’ve already seen a few Zenith Flare decks earlier in the week, so rather than show you my Draft deck, I decided to build a Legacy Fluctuator deck…

But then I cut the Zenith Flare.

That’s okay, Zenith Flare! You’ve always got Savai Thundermane to play with!

On the topic of crazy combo decks that rip through your whole deck on their way to a one-shot kill…

Gyruda, Doom of Depths

That’s kind of Gyruda’s jam. It’s like, what if you had a one-card combo, but you didn’t have to actually draw that one card? Is that something you might be interested in? It’s the kind of card people who’ve played a thousand games with Primeval Titan and still love it will love.

I’m not talking about a Gyruda/Titan deck (although, now that you mention it…). I’m also not revisiting the Standard version we already hit. Instead, in keeping with the whole “Legacy is broken” theme, here’s a really fast Gyruda list:

It’s the same idea as the Standard one, we’re just looking to do it a little earlier (like Turn 1).

Because sometimes you need to switch it on ’em, you know?

Of course, this isn’t even my favorite Lotus Petal / Lion’s Eye Diamond / Grim Monolith / Ancient Tomb / City of Traitors Turn 1 companion kill deck!

Zirda makes Grim Monolith or Basalt Monolith produce as much colorless mana as you want. It turns out, this can be exploited.

In a different landscape, it’s kind of interesting that Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy also makes unlimited mana with the Monoliths.

However, the colors are not friendly, so I’m probably saving this one for an Elf deck.

Geeze, that Zirda deck looks pretty busted. It’s a good thing there aren’t any companions even more broken, amiright?

Since Lurrus of the Dream-Den is basically unplayable in every other format, here it is in Vintage:

If you can manage to end up with a Lurrus of the Dream-Den in your sideboard, Black Lotus is basically a Mishra’s Workshop that taps for any color, plus an outrageous amount of other modes, and you get a victory condition.

Finally Black Lotus gets a chance to shine!

Again, sometimes you gotta switch it on ’em.

Lurrus is so broken in Vintage, they had to clarify recently that they can ban cards in Vintage. It’s embarrassing, a black eye on the game, and really, really disappointing….

…but it is an option “if” Lurrus gets out of hand (since obviously restricting it doesn’t really help, when you only wanted the one in the first place). Personally, I hope they consider just banning it as a companion (if it comes to that). But what do I know? I still want Shaharazad to be my companion.

Keruga, the Macrosage is one of the most defining companions in Standard. That it slots neatly into what was already one of the best decks, with very few concessions needed to support it, well, that’s a winning formula.

This deck is really strong, so anything you’re looking to show up with better be prepared for this deck, Cauldron Familiar decks (whether Lurrus or Obosh), and whatever Uro flavor of the week people are into. Just as the Cauldron Familiar decks have had success with multiple different companions, so has Fires of Invention.

Yorion is incredible. Obviously, 80 cards is a big ask, but that’s an incredible ability to know you’ll have access to when you hit five mana. Play it alongside lots of enters-the-battlefield triggers, and you’ve got a very powerful engine baked into your deck that you don’t even have to draw.

Both Ruinous Ultimatum and Genesis Ultimatum to get with Fae of Wishes? I like the cut of Bielzito’s jib.

Yorion actually scales well in formats like Pioneer and Modern. In those formats, there are tons of redundant options, making it easy to get up to 80 and still have a very cohesive deck. While this also works in even higher formats, there’s such a disparity in card quality between various options in those formats that your average quality really starts to suffer.

Here’s my take on Soulherder Bant in Modern:

This deck was just tailor-made for Yorion!

Yeah, Nassif, I see you, buddy!

Another spot in Standard I tried was in some kind of a Mardu deck, aspiring to take advantage the power of Yorion + Treacherous Blessing.

Treacherous Blessing changes substantially when you know you’re going to have access to a way to target it automatically.

I don’t love how awkwardly Yorion fits together with Adventure creatures like Bonecrusher Giant and Murderous Rider. I guess I’m also just not sure what we actually need red for. I assume we’re actually supposed to just play blue instead, picking up Teferi, Time Raveler; Elite Guardmage; and a little bit of permission.

Ehh, fine, I guess.

Oh, there’s more of these? Wait a minute, didn’t we talk about this one earlier?

In creatureless decks? That’s the only way you can think to use it is in creatureless decks?

Whoa, chill. Also, welcome to the party. Been a little quiet this week.

Well, you were doing all right for a while.

Thanks, I guess. Here are some Cats (and Dinosaurs, and Beasts, and Nightmares, and Elementals):

Yeah, of course, Lurrus stealing the show, as always. That’s kind of its jam. And this is not to be confused with Jegantha, the Wellspring.

Jegantha, the Wellspring’s jam is kind of just hanging out, being a mopey 5/5 for people who don’t want 5/5s that taps for all kinds of mana people don’t want.

So what’s the upside? Why bother?

Jegantha is low-maintenance. You may not want a 5/5 for five, but if you happen to not offend Jegantha’s sensibilities, are you telling me you’re turning it down?

All jokes aside, I’m kind of into Death’s Oasis.

This is kind of the Trail of Crumbs I always dreamt of, and you don’t even need to do the whole hardcore eating thing, either.

The white kind of takes us in a different direction, but I could imagine Skull Prophet finding a home in a Death’s Oasis deck.

You’d think I’d be into an Abzan Ultimatum, but I dunno. I guess Eerie Ultimatum is just a little straightforward and niche, and not what’s jumping out at me so far.

It’s kind of a bigger Command the Dreadhorde, if you’re into that sort of a thing. Given how even more extreme it is of that, it’s generally going to be a sideboard card in small numbers for grind-fests, letting you go way over the top.

It’s also got combo potential, getting back a combination of permanents that wins on the spot, but so far, Nethroi, Apex of Death looks a little more promising to me in that department.

I could actually imagine Nethroi, Apex of Death in some kind of a Mythos of Brokkos deck. That mutate ability is a really strong option from a “creature” and may be able to set up some game-winning combo, even if our deck isn’t really white.

For now, though, I just want to try it in a Cauldron Familiar deck with lots of Corpse Knight / Ayara, First of Locthwain action. If we can live long enough to mutate it, we might be able to just one-shot people (well, one-shot insofar as we’ve probably already shot them for one half a dozen times, but you know what I mean).

Fiend Artisan looks really strong to me (and not necessarily even always in Black/Green/X decks, either, since hybrid mana is easy to sometimes conflate with traditional gold).

Umori is a companion I’ve been finding myself building with quite a bit, actually. The ability to reliably have access to a four-drop is excellent (particularly one with such a solid body). That it helps us get Nethroi before we die? That’s where the card actually gets great.

It’s definitely not trivial for a lot of decks to stay all creatures (or whatever one nonland permanent is your thing).

For instance, when I build around General Kudro of Drannith and his Enforcer, I always end up wanting to play planeswalkers and some of the excellent removal that comes along with such a strategy. The build of Abzan Humans I’d recommend can be found here, which also makes great use of Chevill, Bane of Monsters and Dire Tactics.

Finally, we’ve come to one of the companions you generally never accidentally can support (at least assuming you’re playing 60-card formats).

Lutri is a good body with an incredible enters-the-battlefield trigger. Yeah, your deck is gonna be pretty random, but talk about a nice eighth card!

The higher-powered the format, the easier it is to support Lutri. You’ve just got so many good alternatives for various effects. This doesn’t mean a Lutri companion is off the table for Standard, though.

I definitely prefer the Yorion/Lutri side of the companion experience a bit more than the Lurrus/Gyruda side, not gonna lie. Yorion and Lutri seem like they really add some variance back in to help make up for how deterministic the mechanic is; plus, building 80-card decks and highlander decks is super-fun! Lurrus and Gyruda seem like they kind of lead to a lot of repetition.

Building highlander decks for new formats can be deceptively challenging, so for the deck above, I think you could also consider these, just to name a few:

That’s it for today, but I’ll be back tomorrow (yes, Sunday!) to tie a bow on this thing as we make our way to the finish line for Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths!