With the (nearly) full spoiler out, I wanted to quickly hit on a couple of cards that stood out to me, and go over some early bird deck sketches.
Rakdos Cackler
R/B Creature – Devil
Unleash (You may have this creature enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. It can’t block as long as it has a +1/+1 counter on it.)
1/1
A single hybrid-mana 2/2 with a minimal drawback? This will be one of the most played uncommons in the set, and may even surpass the Charms in Standard. It may not have an extended tenure at the top, but for the immediate future you can expect decks with even more relevant one-drops than usual.
Sweet reprint.
Electrickery
R – Instant
Electrickery deals 1 damage to target creature you don’t control.
Overload 1R
While it isn’t quite Pyroclasm, Electrickery was the kind of card a number of people were waiting for. A cheap weenie sweeper in red, the question now is if creatures stay small enough for this to matter. It certainly intimidates Lingering Souls, mana dorks, and Invisible Stalker.
Racecourse Fury
R – Enchantment – Aura
Enchant land
Enchanted land has “Tap: Target creature gains haste until end of turn.”
More like Racehorse Fury, amirite?
Hellhole Flailer
1BR – Creature – Ogre Warrior
Unleash (You may have this creature enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. It can’t block as long as it has a +1/+1 counter on it.)
2BR, Sacrifice Hellhole Flailer: Hellhole Flailer deals damage equal to its power to target player.
3/2
So in any aggressive strategy this a 4/3 for three that can’t block, and if the board gets gummed up, just does his best imitation of Lightning Blast. He may not be in the right tribe for aggressive synergy, but the stats are certainly there.
Lyev Skyknight
1WU – Creature – Human Knight
Flying
When Lyev Skyknight enters the battlefield, detain target non land permanent an opponent controls. (Until your next turn, that permanent can’t attack or block and its activated abilities can’t be activated.)
3/1
This card is a bit old at this point, though not talking about it would be a mistake if there’s an aggressive UW strategy. This is effectively a much better Kor Hookmaster, and that card was inches from seeing play in Constructed. This card definitely has the possibility of being a big game, and if blink effects are playable then the Skyknight could be a key component.
Rakdos, Lord of Riots
BBRR, Legendary Creature – Demon
You can’t cast Rakdos, Lord of Riots unless an opponent lost life this turn.
Flying, trample
Creature spells you cast cost less to cast for each 1 life your opponents have lost this turn.
6/6
I can see that 6/6 for four is something R&D didn’t mind pushing in this set. This card has a bloodthirst feel, which seems to be taken for granted at this point. I’m not sure why so many people think it’s a guarantee that they’ll be in a position to cast it turn four either via the very strict mana cost or having the opponent lose life and still have four mana open.
Think of this common scenario: you get blasted by a turn four Supreme Verdict. You aren’t casting this guy as a follow-up unless you have a 5th mana source, one mana burn spell, and the proper mana left after all that. Apply [card bonfire of the damned]Bonfire[/card] or anything else where appropriate. Since it can’t easily be applied post-sweeper, that limits how much I want to play a four-drop like this in the first place.
On most clogged boards you won’t be casting this unless you get through with creatures, which may be harder said than done depending on how the midrange options shape up. Losing most of your team on an alpha strike to rely on this creature isn’t ideal. Then comes the question of why you would play the Lord of Riots over Falkenrath Aristocrat—who has haste, an easier mana-cost, and was practically built to combo in the Zombies deck.
Speaking of Zombies: at first glance Zombies and Jund would both be the likely landing spots for this guy, but even they can’t expect to hit the proper mana on turn four consistently. That second red does a lot of harm here, when every other relevant red card only costs a single R or is six or more mana.
There are strong points to the card—the body is huge and can’t easily be stopped in combat by… well, by anything really. It also has a neat ability that could come up t in a midrange deck where you have fours, fives, or sixes and are handicapped by mana constraints. It seems a bit like a win-more, but if you end up in a haymaker fight, being able to empty your hand one turn could be just what you need.
I’m sure Riot! will see some play, I just don’t think the Rakdos Lord fits particularly well anywhere.
Rogue’s Passage
Land
T: Add to your mana pool.
4,T : Target creature is unblockable this turn.
Normally I wouldn’t bother with a second glance at this card, but just the idea that Geist of Saint Traft and Wolfir Silverheart exist makes me stop and consider. The idea of stabalizing on-board with creatures, and the opponent plopping this down and snap-killing me is a sobering thought. Clearly there will be a lot of decks that don’t or can’t run this card due mana base issues.
Still, I think this card could find a niche home, and there will be nothing fair occurring.
There are plenty of other playables, many of them role-players, so while I won’t be covering them right now I’ll be testing plenty of cards out. Certain interactions that looked to be getting a lot more powerful (graveyard effects especially) now look far more in check. I also now know that the three and four slot are going to be where many battles are fought, and while we’ll still have massive Sphinxes and Dragons afoot, they’ll be nowhere near as commonplace as the Titan cycle. It also looks like Mono-Red may be a deck again, with nearly all the practical hate rotating out and only a handful of cards being printed that are good against it.
Honestly, there are about 65 non-land cards that I think have at least a fair shot of showing up in a Standard deck. Throw in the lands and you have nearly a full third of the set as possibly playable. If I had to narrow them down to cards I definitely think will see play or eliminate some of the niche/role-players, then the list of non-lands probably drops to about 35-40. Even then that’s a pretty great showing, and I’ve definitely missed a couple that I’m sure other creative people will pick up and run with.
Deck Sketches
Obviously I haven’t tested these outside of goldfishing, in an attempt to get the mana ratios to a reasonable point. Now that nearly the entire spoiler has come out, I’ll start putting together some sweet ones to playtest.
Mono Red
The first couple of weeks will be prime for this type of deck to take centerstage. You have a fine creature base, and can pick and choose your power-to-mana ratio at every point on the curve. It will also be perfectly positioned to take advantage of people leaning heavily on the shocklands, alongside the weak mana-bases you’ll see at the beginning of the format. Of course this isn’t the only way you could take the deck. Slowing it down and going up the curve can yield a different angle of attack:
B/R Zombies
Rakdos Cackler combined with real two-drops, instead of just mono-Highborn Ghoul, is a big game for Zombies and they lose the least from the rotation. You also can run another strong 3 in Hellhole Flailer if you want to slow the deck down slightly, and the same goes with the Rakdos Lord.
Notably, you also don’t need to run Cavern of Souls in the deck anymore, and you can safely run a couple of Mountains since you aren’t 100% punished by your two- and three-drops. Sure Messenger hates it, but Shred-Freak and Cackler don’t care if you start off Mountain into Dragonskull Summit, which was unacceptable in the original Zombies decks.
It also gives you the best anti-creature and planeswalker options, between Aristocrat, [card brimstone volley]Brimstone[/card], and Dreadbore. You can board in another red source, and blast mirror matches with Pillar of Flame and Lingering Souls with some Electrickery. Red gives you plenty of options, and while you don’t nab the Lotleth Troll, you get plenty of other solids.
B/G Zombies
On the other hand, you get Lotleth Troll here, which is one of the best pure aggro two-drops printed in quite a while. Lotleth Troll and Dreg Mangler also make Cavern of Souls a lot more reasonable, since they actually count as Zombies, making Decay and Rancor the only cards that can’t be cast off two Swamp and Cavern of Souls.
The lower mana curve means you can also get away with 22 lands if you want to, though I could see going back to the 23rd to be safe, and for more sideboard options. Rancor gives you a nice anti-Souls option, and it rewards going suicide watch on your creatures, something only Blood Artist did. This version arguably gets even more mileage out of Cackler, and I suspect the real Spineless Thug will see plenty of play.
Junk Ramp
Other cards I was considering: Diabolic Revelation, Sigarda, Host of Herons, Vraska the Unseen, Angel of Glory’s Rise, Griselbrand, Unburial Rites, Liliana of the Veil, splash Supreme Verdict, splash Bonfire of the Damned, and others.
There’s a lot of ways to take this deck, but I honestly like the core values of ramping with Farseek, Ranger’s Path, and something else into Thragtusk and Staff of Nin. Angel of Serenity as a 4-of may be too much, but with test decks I like to start with the max and work out cuts from there. Staff of Nin was one of those cards that just never had enough immediate impact compared to a Titan, and games ended too quickly most of the time to grind people out with the draw ability. Now with a fresh format free of super powerful six-drops, I feel that Staff of Nin may be the best of what’s remaining. Think of it as an artifact planeswalker that combines the Jace draw with a Chandra ping every turn, can’t be attacked by creatures, but with no ultimate attached.
Notice this version also respects Zombies and aggro in general, with the maximum amount of Thragtusk main deck and a low-cost removal sweet. Sure Terminus would be a sweet one, but it’s no good if you cast it after you’ve been knocked down to 4 life. You can ramp ahead, grind for a few turns, and then slam a pair of haymakers to get ahead. If that doesn’t work, any Lingering Souls with Gavony Township can do a hell of a lot of work against creature-based decks. Vampire Nighthawk is a great option against other fast decks, I just ran out of room in this version, and I would definitely sideboard it at the least.
UWR Miracles
The mana could use a few more tweaks, and the fourth Steam Vents will likely be added, though if any two-colored deck didn’t want max shocklands it would be this one. Most of the time you don’t particularly need them, and often if you have to play more than one untapped in a game you’ll probably be too deep in the hole life-wise to get out of. This is one deck in which you really ride the margins in terms of how much early damage you take, and Feeling of Dread may be necessary purely as extra stall.
I do like Azorius Charm to a degree, as cycling and Aethertow are both cards this deck respects early, it just gets let down by the sheer damage potential of many aggro decks though. Maxing out on sweepers is a good testing tool and gives me a feel for how many I need to see on average to fully stabilize against Zombies.
That’s all for this week, next week we’ll either revisit with some updates to the above, or I’ll do the next installment of the event-running series. Right now people just want every bit they can get from Return to Ravnica, and I can’t wait to physically play with some of these cards—in formats with 40 and 75 cards alike.
Josh Silvestri
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom
