Nothing too terribly crazy has happened to the format but people seem to be spreading their wings a bit and trying out more decks. GR Monsters had a couple of weeks of dominance there but most recently Mono Black has been on top. All the while we've seen UWx control decks, Mono Blue and various other devotion strategies doing well enough.
The deck I want to tell you about is one that I haven't been brave enough to bring to a tournament yet.
This list sprang from what I'm fairly certain was a large FNM in Japan. It was a 7 round, 90+ person event, in which a Chromanticore deck finished 5th with a 6-1 record.
Here's the original list to blow your mind a little:
4 Sylvan Caryatid
3 Manaweft Sliver
3 Courser of Kruphix
3 Sin Collector
3 Polukranos
4 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Chromanticore
2 Xenagos the Reveler
2 Lay of the Land
2 Peregrination
2 Rakdos's Return
3 Dreadbore
3 Far // Away
1 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Island
2 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Stomping Ground
1 Breeding Pool
3 Temple of Abandon
2 Temple of Triumph
I may be off a card or two but I think this is right. This looks like a horrible pile from the outset, I mean it's playing Chromanticores right, but after goldfishing a few hands the mana felt very, very good. Lay of the Land, despite looking just awful, worked very well to make things castable and the low land count kept flooding to a minimum.
You're working off of a Jund shell which means you're playing powerful cards like Dreadbore, Rakdos's Return, Poly-K and Stormbreath Dragon. You're stretching your mana for Chromanticore, Sin Collector and Far//Away. Far Away is 100% a powerful card. Chromanticore is really the rub and I guess it's really the entire discussion here. Is it worth stretching our mana?
The things I wasn't blown away by were the Sin Collectors and the Peregrinations. Sin Collector is one of my favorite cards in Standard right now but he is decidedly a sideboard card in our current Devotion-fueled format. Peregrination was definitely powerful but entirely too slow at fixing the mana.
I knew 100% I wanted a 4th Courser of Kruphix in the deck and I also knew I wanted Lay of the Land #3 & 4. I also knew I wanted to try out some other 5-drops since Stormbreath, while obviously great, is not at his best here. Blood Baron was my first thought, and he's probably actually the right one, but Archangel of Thune kept popping into my head as something powerful. She pairs up nicely with Courser and, once we adjust the manabase to allow double white to be found through Lay of the Land, plays right into another card I want in the deck: Elspeth!
Here's where I ended up before playing some actual, honest to goodness, games.
4 Sylvan Caryatid
3 Manaweft Sliver
4 Courser of Kruphix
3 Polukranos
3 Archangel of Thune
4 Chromanticore
2 Xenagos, the Reveler
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
4 Lay of the Land
3 Dreadbore
3 Far // Away
2 Rakdos's Return
1 Mizzium Mortars
2 Forest
2 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Island
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Stomping Ground
1 Breeding Pool
1 Godless Shrine
2 Temple Garden
1 Temple of Abandon
2 Temple of Plenty
2 Temple of Triumph
I added a Mizzium Mortars kind of at random in one of the spots vacated by the 4th Archangel. Truthfully the reason is that I don't own 4 Archangels at the moment but I think the change is reasonable since I added 2 6 drops to the deck. Mortars is a nice answer to a lot of the strongest cards in the format and conveniently gives us a sweeper effect going long.
I also adjusted the manabase a little to make it easier to cast our new double-white spells. A second plains was obvious but I also swapped 2 of the RG Temples to WG ones. I am far from confident this is enough.
I got to play a set of 5 or 6 games against Mono Black Devotion piloted by a very good player. The deck did VERY well pre-board but I attribute a lot of that to his list running 4 Bile Blight, a card that kills very little in the Chromanticore deck. Far//Away was impressive vs. Pack Rat and bestowing Chromanticore was almost always a win.
After we sideboarded I couldn't manage a win, though most games were pretty close. It's hard to believe that simply removing Bile Blights made that much of a difference but it seems to be the case. Only 1 sideboard card in particular made much of an impact, but oh buddy was it a big one. Erebos won every single game he showed up to simply by shutting down Archangel of Thune, of course I didn't bother to include anything like Revoke Existence or Unravel the Aether so that problem is solvable.
I'm actually pretty optimistic about this shell being a workable one. The way I see it we have the following "essentials" in the deck.
4 Sylvan Caryatid
x Manaweft Sliver
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Chromanticore
4 Lay of the Land
22 - 23 Land
This is sort of the engine that allows the deck to function and cast spells as well as the trump card that we are bending our mana all over the place to use. Because we are including Chromanticore we have access to basically any support spell in the format as long as it doesn't cost more than 1 of any color.
It makes sense to play Rakdos's Return because it's one of the best spells in the format without a home.
It makes sense to play Dreadbore because it's a very efficient removal spell that will never be dead. It's also easier for us to cast than Hero's Downfall and the sorcery speed will rarely be a problem.
Far // Away I am less sure about. When cast for 5 it's great but I think this deck has enough powerful things to do at 4+ mana that we probably want something cheaper and more reliable. I'm inclined to try some combination of Abrupt Decay and/or Golgari Charm.
Polukranos is another card I'm not sure about from the original list. He's obviously a good card but this deck doesn't really make a ton of mana like the Devotion decks. Against most of the good decks in the format he's not even particularly scary! I don't know what else I would want to play though.
I think the next thing I'd like to try is a build focused more on Junk colors.
Something like:
4 Sylvan Caryatid
3 Manaweft
4 Courser of Kruphix
2 Polukranos
2 Reaper of the Wilds
4 Archangel of Thune
4 Chromanticore
3 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
4 Lay of the Land
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Ultimate Price
3 Hero's Downfall
2 Forest
2 Plains
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Island
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Temple Garden
2 Godless Shrine
3 Temple of Plenty
2 Temple of Silence
Here we're essentially Junk Splash Chromanticore which is....odd to say the least.
I think a list like this would really show us whether or not Chromanticore is worth the effort since we're jumping through all of the hoops possible just to cast it.
I do like the rest of this deck though, it's doing very powerful things and should always be able to cast it's spells.
So now that I've taken you down the Rabbit Hole into Magical Chromanticore'smas Land I want to make a sharp left turn.
I recently got my hands on some sweet Foreign Black Bordered Basic Lands. I've had my eye on these for quite a long time but never pulled the trigger because I couldn't find enough of them that matched and that didn't cost a fortune. Luckily, a kind gentleman on Facebook was able to hook me up with a pile of them for a great price!
I bring these lands up because choice of basic land is very important to me. It's one way to personalize your deck in a sea of people all running similar lists of cards. Is there a type of land that you prefer to use? Am I silly to care?
Let's talk about these pressing issues!
Thanks for reading my blog friends, if you liked it please share it with your friends and enemies. If you hated it please tell me why so I can
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