Iiiiiiit's Standard!
I don't know about you, but it's getting pretty hard for me to want to play Standard any more. Most people have settled on a deck they can stomach and they're not playing anything different unless they absolutely have to.
I've gotten to that point and have been locked into Red White Devotion for the last month. Now that's not to say it's completely a bad thing, RW Devotion has done very well for me! I'm just very ready for a change of pace and, until Born of the Gods hits the shelves, I plan to draft whenever that's an option.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for you guys, there's no draft on Wednesdays so I decided to play a wacky deck instead of sticking with Ol' Faithful. Ali Antrazi just started writing articles for Channel Fireball and he talked briefly about a Junk Reanimator deck that I thought looked sweet. Here's the list as I played it, I wiggled a couple of cards around based on personal preference but the overall vision is Mr. Antrazi's.
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Pack Rat
2 Obzedat
1 Pharika's Mender
2 Shadowborn Demon
2 Angel of Serenity
3 Sylvan Primordial
2 Ashen Rider
3 Commune with the Gods
4 Grisly Salvage
3 Obzedat's Aid
2 Deadbridge Chant
2 Whip of Erebos
6 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Godless Shrine
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple Garden
4 Temple of Silence
Sideboard
2 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Doom Blade
2 Golgari Charm
2 Sin Collector
1 Trading Post
3 Blood Baron
1 Angel of Serenity
The changes I made were to juggle the 3rd Angel of Serenity to the board in place of the 3rd Primordial which I moved main.
I also took out some cards I think Ali plays out of habit like Ratchet Bomb and Pithing Needle.
I was particularly excited to play with Pharika's Mender as well as Deadbridge Chant.
While assembling the deck I was a bit surprised to find I only owned 1 Ashen Rider! I remember pretty clearly trading them off right after Theros was released but I also remember trying to trade for them at some point....
Luckily my buddy Brian had roughly 100 of them for trade and I was able to scoop up the rest of a playset.
And here's how it went!
Round 1 - Travis B. with BWR Midrange
Travis travels down with his brother Grant and they are both really cool fellas. For a while there it seemed like I was destined to play Travis in every single tournament for the rest of eternity but lately we've managed to avoid each other. He was running a fairly typical list with Reckoners, Demons and Obzedat paired up with a pile of removal.
Game 1 - I was on the back foot to a pair of Reckoners pretty quickly and spent a lot of turns casting dig spells without any way to capitalize on them. Just before I got too low on life I drew into an Obzedat's Aid and Ashen Rider was good enough.
Game 2 - I got on the back foot fairly quickly again to an early Reckoner followed by an Obzedat. I spent a few turns casting Salvages and Communes and was already fairly low on life by the time I was able to resolve a Blood Baron. The board bogged down with both of our Obzedat's draining and re-draining but eventually Travis drew an Erebos to shut down my Blood Barons and Obzedat life gain and that was that.
Game 3 - I lost a couple of mana creatures to an early Anger of the Gods, a card I thought for sure would have been sided out, and the loss of a Caryatid stranded an Angel of Serenity in my hand for the entire game. I was able to get one Angel out early thanks to an Obzedat's Aid but I never drew the third white source, instead finding Overgrown Tombs and Forests galore. Travis had a Whip in play to go with his 2 Rakdos Keyrunes and so I couldn't go on the offensive effectively and my deck refused to cough up action. Eventually time was called and we drew. It looked like I was going to be able to pull back into the game there at the end but I was certainly only a Rakdos's Return away from death.
I was a bit frustrated with the match there, somewhat with myself for forgetting to phase out Obzedat at least twice but also a little with Travis. He spent a lot of time thinking over his plays every single turn and I'm positive he used over double the time that I did. This is something I struggle with sometimes and I'm not sure there's a good way to deal with it. I'm not upset with Travis about the draw and I only bring it up because I'm hopeful that someone out there can share their solution to slow opponents.
Round 2 - Don S. with Rw Devotion
Don has been playing Bg Devotion for quite a while and it absolutely shocked me to get attacked by an Ash Zealot on turn 2. I found out after the match that Don had swapped decks with Nick for the night for a change of pace.
Game 1 - I kept a hand that I thought was reasonable against Black, it was slow but powerful. I immediately regretted it when Ash Zealot came down on turn 2. Don curved out with Zealot, Zealot, Hammer, Reckoner, Fanatic and I died with nothing to do.
Game 2 - I kept what felt like a better hand this time with Pack Rat and some accelerators. Don had a Chained to the Rocks for my Rat and I stopped drawing lands and started drawing large monsters. Fanatic x 2 burned my face and I was dead.
I laughed with Don about losing to the good deck that I decided to leave at home and we played a 3rd game for laughs. I ended up winning it but not by reanimating sexy creatures, I won with Pack Rat. It was a perfect way to sum up the outing with Junk Reanimator, don't make big creatures when you can just make Rats!
I ended up wimping out at that point and dropping from the tournament.
In retrospect I should've stuck it out to have more to write about for you guys but 2 frustrating matches back to back put that far from my mind. I'm sorry, please know that I do not love you any less.
In lieu of more Standard content, I have a little info about a Modern deck that I've been crushing on lately. I stumbled onto it in a Magic Online Daily Event where it had performed somewhat well and it immediately locked eyes with me.
Take a look at this beauty:
1 Ajani Vengeant
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Isochron Scepter
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
2 Path to Exile
4 Remand
3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
5 Island
1 Mountain
4 Misty
4 Tarn
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Academy Ruin
I can't remember the sideboard but that's neither here nor there.
Now there is some interesting stuff going on with this deck and Tezzeret is very odd, especially in that he's usually going to find a thing and then die immediately. I guess that's alright most of the time.
It's awkward that you don't get to run any Sacred Foundry and I can definitely see swapping that odd looking Tec Edge for one since we don't want to drop our Island count.
I already want more Shackles, if we're jumping through all these hoops with our manabase and not using Colonade I want to make it count.
So I got to play some games and I had a lot of fun. The deck is by far not insane or anything but it's definitely powerful.
A few things that came up:
2 main deck Needles and Relics feels pretty bad. Drawing 1 of each is never going to kill you vs. anyone but drawing multiples in the wrong matchup can. I want to move at least 1 Needle to the sideboard for something like Engineered Explosives or Ratchet Bomb.
In any matchup where they can't remove them the Scepters are absolutely bonkers. I imagine you have to side them out against decks with 4 Abrupt Decays but oh baby is that card awesome.
The Remands felt pretty weak but I think that's a result of the matchups I was playing (Burn and Merfolk). I only drew Cryptic Command once and it was as good as that card always is.
Jamming Shackles on turn 3 after Bolting / Helixing feels unbeatable some amount of the time. Again Abrupt Decay is a card that exists but man, Shackles!
Tezzeret makes me want mana rocks of some kind, Signets or Talismans so that his +1 is more useful. It's probably not worth it but it was a thought I had.
A Snapcaster Mage wouldn't be the worst thing to have access to.
Overall I'm excited to play some more games with the deck. If you have any sweet ideas let me know!
That about wraps it up for today. FNM is upcoming and then on Saturday the Tournabenefit for Jason Lejeune's family. I'm really excited and nervous about this thing and I hope a million people show up to play. You should come!
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