There’s no Standard Event in Tampere this week, so I can’t do my usual test run with the deck in an FNM. I’ll do that next week and write a report. However, since this thing seems to interest people, I’ll write about it right now.
I played against someone at GP Prague who was playing a slightly different version of Atarka Red. It had [scryfall]Self-Inflicted Wound[/scryfall] in the sideboard to fight all the Abzan Aggros (or Hangarback Abzans in WotC coverage nomenclature). Seemed like (and he admitted it too) he was streching his manabase just a little too much by having the one Swamp in the sideboard with a set of [scryfall]Bloodstained Mire[/scryfall]s and [scryfall]Mana Confluence[/scryfall]s in the main.
However, in the world of Battle Lands (or Tango Lands or whatever), this isn’t such a bad idea. Couple of [scryfall]Smoldering Marsh[/scryfall]es that doesn’t even have to be in the sideboard can do the same since you want to play all the fetches that can get you mountains anyhow.
This is strictly a thought experiment. I was looking at Todd Anderson’s and Brian Braun-Duin’s video on SCG yesterday. Anderson was playing a version of Esper Dragons (and winning), while BBD was playing a monogreen deck. That latter deck had plenty of “spell lands”, such as [scryfall]Foundry of the Consuls[/scryfall], [scryfall]Sanctum of Ugin[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Spawning Bed[/scryfall]. It had total of ten such lands.
I thought to myself, “well, the mana is very good in the format, but the format also has plenty of good colorless lands, maybe we could do a colorless deck?”. Can we? Probably not, because colorless creatures are always much higher on the curve than similar creatures with colors (with the expection of [scryfall]Wurmcoil Engine[/scryfall]). It will be a slow deck, but I wouldn’t completely discount it. Just mostly.
This feels like a list of random cards I find interesting, but I’m telling you there’s a point. Somewhere. Its a bit of control deck and I have no idea whether it would work or not, because bringing in a new resource (this time exiled cards owned by opponents) complicates things. Still, why not?
Despite flavor problems, I’m choosing to call this Rakdos anyhow.
The core is kind of a no-brainer with all the Landfall-creatures, but there’s more to this deck than that. Finding ways to use all the mana you have on table after triggering the Landfall numerous times has to be used in some way.
Anyhow, the basis for this deck are these two:
Long time readers (if we have such) have probably noticed my tendency to go this way. I just like the disruptive aggro archetype. The problem, of course, is the loss of [scryfall]Thoughtseize[/scryfall], as well as several good aggressive creatures which made this archetype playable, but I think this little beaut holds some possibilities:
(What happened to her? Why did a 4/4 become a 2/3?)
Sam Black was playing a monowhite deck during the Standard portion of this year’s World Championships. It was largely based on a deck played by the famous White Weenie afficionado (this may be the first time I’ve ever used that word) Craig Wescoe, which in turn was based on a monowhite tokens deck played by some lesser known player. (Sorry, I forgot your name and TCGPlayer is down, so I can’t go and check either.)
Most of the card will survive the rotation, but I thought maybe I’d like to bring in black anyhow. Just as a splash, though.
We are probably only in the early stages of allies. There will probably be more coming later, but this is what I would do at this point. Not many choices actually, but what can you do?
Admittedly I’m not getting the same kind of inspiration from this set as I get from other sets, but I do have some ideas. Here’s one. [scryfall]Smother Abomination[/scryfall] is a bomb.
[scryfall]Forerunner of Slaughter[/scryfall] is probably pretty good too.