Brewing Theros Standard

Hi, readers (if someone's still there), I'm Beusapu. After six days of inactivity, we finally got time to write. I'm gonna talk about some decks i've been testing in the new standard, with different success. Keep in mind that most of them are a bit unpolished, and i'm not gonna write a long guide about them, the goal is to discuss possible new archetypes and roguedecks.

JUNK REANIMATOR:

During last standard, Junk (BGW) reanimator decks dominated for a long time. Unburial Rites bringing back Thragtusk and Angel of Serenity created a lot of value and card advantage, specially against aggro. But many key cards of the deck have rotated, specially our reanimation spell, Unburial Rites, so... how is it possible to keep the monsters coming? The answer is simple:

Junk Whip Reanimator

Creatures:

2 Angel of Serenity

3 Obzedat, Ghost Council

1 Shadowborn Demon

2 Sin Collector

4 Sylvan Caryatid

3 Elvish Mystic

3 Reaper of the Wilds

2 Blood Baron of Vizkopa

4 Loxodon Smiter

Spells:

3 Whip of Erebos

3 Hero's Downfall

1 Putrefy

2 Grisly Salvage

4 Commune with the Gods

Lands:

4 Forest

4 Godless Shrine

4 Overgrown Tomb

4 Temple Garden

4 Temple of Silence

3 Swamp

Sideboard:

SB: 1 Sin Collector

SB: 2 Lifebane Zombie

SB: 1 Hero's Downfall

SB: 1 Blood Baron of Vizkopa

SB: 1 Trostani, Selesnya's Voice

SB: 1 Underworld Connections

SB: 3 Thoughtseize

SB: 2 Golgari Charm

SB: 1 Ashen Rider
SB: 2 Obzedat's Aid

This deck has a similar gameplan to the reanimator decks from last season. It's a midrange deck, with cheap mana producers, cards like Loxodon Smiter to put pressure on the early game, and a graveyard package consisting on 2 Grisly Salvage and 4 Commune with the Gods. The main difference is that here our reanimation spells won't just fall to the graveyard like Unburial Rites did, we need to have a Whip in play if we want to get value (that's why the list plays 4 Commune with the Gods).

Once we get Whip online, we can start getting a lot of value and grinding our opponents. Obzedat, Ghost Council works perfectly with the Whip (once we get him back, we can exile him and get him as a "normal" creature), and we can get many ETB effects.

An interesting spot is the 4-drop creature. I've chosen Reaper of the Wilds over Desecration, simply because it's infinitelly better against aggro decks, and it's more resilient against control.

Our best matchup is probably aggro. The lifelink from Whip makes it impossible to race us, and our creatures will be big enough to hold our opponent's hordes. Against control, we can enter the "fatty mode", and start dropping bombs every turn, and recovering them with whip later. The matchup against Mono Black devotion is tough, and games get really grindy, but we have helpful cards in the side.

BIG PROPHET BANT

Our next deck is a midrange deck that can generate absurd amounts of mana, and kill with a huge army of creatures:

Big Bant:

Creatures:
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Elvish Mystic
2 Voyaging Satyr
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Prime Speaker Zegana
3 Prophet of Kruphix
3 Polukranos, World Eater
2 Kalonian Hydra

3 Archangel of Thune

4 Loxodon Smiter

4 Voice of Resurgence

Spells:
2 Sphinx's Revelation

Lands:
4 Temple of Mystery
4 Breeding Pool
3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Forest
1 Island
4 Temple Garden
3 Selesnya Guildgate
2 Plains

Sideboard:
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 3 Mistcutter Hydra
SB: 2 Cyclonic Rift
SB: 3 Detention Sphere
SB: 3 Ready // Willing
SB: 3 Negate

This deck tries to generate a lot of mana early (we have 10 mana dorks), drop big creatures, and then play a huge draw spell like Sphinx's Revelation or Prime Speaker Zegana to finish the game. Prophet of Kruphix is one of the key cards. Once our hand is full of cards and we have a lot of mana, we're just going to drop a lot of creatures every turn until we kill our opponent. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx usually makes great Revelations.

Our biggest problem, as you probably have noticed, are board wipes. UW and esper control are awful matchups, and we need 3 copies of Ready // Willing or Rootborn Defenses in the side if we don't want to see all our creatures killed by one Supreme Verdict. Our aggro matchup is good, obviously much better on the play. MonoU devotion can be a problem sometimes, since we don't have enough maindeck removal. The deck is a bit fragile, but it's fun to play and it can win epic games.

JUND MIDRANGE

This is the classic midrange deck using big creatures, good removal, and hand disruption. It's an effective deck, the best example of a "fair" deck that can win against any opponent.

Jund Midrange:

Creatures:
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Elvish Mystic
3 Reaper of the Wilds

3 Desecration Demon

2 Scavenging Ooze

2 Polukranos, World Eater

2 Underworld Cerberus

2 Stormbreath Dragon

Spells:

3 Hero's Downfall

2 Xenagos, the Reveler

3 Mizzium Mortars

4 Thoughtseize

2 Rakdos's Return

Lands:

4 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
4 Temple of Abandon
4 Blood Crypt
4 Stomping Ground
3 Rakdos Guildgate

Sideboard:
SB: 3 Lifebane Zombie
SB: 2 Underworld Connections
SB: 3 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Doom Blade
SB: 2 Mistcutter Hydra
SB: 3 Flames of the Firebrand
SB: 1 Hero's Downfall

We have 8 mana dorks, and a lot of high impactful 4-drops. Our removal and discard package has the best options avalible: Hero's Downfall, Thoughtseize, and Rakdos's Return. It might be confusing that we're running Mizzium Mortars over Dreadbore, but it has the option of becoming a wipe, and it also kills Blood Baron of Vizkopa. Doom Blade is a good option too, and it depends on the metagame you're expecting.

UR GLASS CANNON

Our last deck today is, like the title says, a glass cannon. It can win extremelly fast, even on turn 4, but it's also easy to disrupt.

The gameplan is to use creatures that reward us for casting spells, cypher cards, and cheap removal/disruption. Our key creatures are Nivmagus Elemental, Akroan Crusader, and Young Pyromancer. One of our best starts is a turn 1 Crusader, followed by Hidden Strings or Trait Doctoring. Now, we can encode our cypher spell on the haste token, and swing for another effect. Add Nivmagus or Pyromancer, and you just get an army that will make any monoR deck feel ashamed.

UR Glass Cannon:

Creatures:
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Nivmagus Elemental
4 Akroan Crusader

2 Firedrinker Satyr

2 Frostburn Weird

Spells:
4 Hidden Strings
4 Quicken

4 Lightning Strike

2 Magma Jet

2 Izzet Charm

4 Trait Doctoring

4 Spell Rupture

2 Mizzium Mortars

Lands:
5 Island
5 Mountain
4 Steam Vents
4 Izzet Guildgate

Sideboard:
SB: 2 Mizzium Skin
SB: 3 Izzet Staticaster
SB: 2 Frostburn Weird
SB: 1 Island
SB: 3 Negate
SB: 1 Izzet Charm
SB: 3 Spellheart Chimera

Trait Doctoring might look a little clunky, and in fact, the whole deck is a bit clunky. But it's awesome when it works, and all our creatures have synergy with it. The deck is obviously fragile. We have only 16 creatures, and sometimes our turn 1 Nivmagus dies to a Shock and we have nothing to do. 18 lands is the correct number, as all our maindeck cards cost 2 or less, and we have another land in the side if we side in our 3 drops.

The rest of the deck includes cheap removal spells, like Lightning Strike or Mizzium Mortars, and disruption. Spell Rupture isn't Mana Leak, but with Nivmagus Elemental it can be even better, and it's great at stopping early blockers. Keep in mind that Hidden Strings can let you have the mana untapped for the counterspell.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you liked the decks, and we'd like you to suggest us your ideas and discuss how to improve the decks!

Have fun playing!

Beusapu

w00t.

Hi, readers! Unfortunatelly, we can't bring an article for today, but tomorrow we'll post about Standard Mono Green Devotion.

Commander Cube!

 With the release of Commander 2013, and my mind firmly fixed on limited, I decided to make my first foray into the world of cubing! Now, bear in mind I have no previous knowledge of how to cube, nor any real need to make a cube "competitive" whatever that means. Now, on to the cube itself!

 This cube consists of only Commander 2011, Commander 2013, Planechase, and Commander's Arsenal cards, and even then, it seems to have touched 700 cards, which seems like a big deal. It's a singleton cube, and the multiples in Planechase aren't really multiples in the cube. Fixing is plentiful, 71 cards to do that for us, and a ton of creatures and powerful, multiplayer themed spells.

 Speaking of multiplayer, the way this cube is played is an 8 player draft, and the first round will be two tables of 4 players each. That's right, just like EDH is played. Now, the deck size minimum is upped to 60 cards, to support this multiplayer format, and to top it off, your deck needs to have a commander, and is regulated by normal commander rules. The commander is either a) Drafted by you or b) Given to you by our dear friend, EDH Ultimate Bravery. A commander is by default assigned to you by Ultimate Bravery, and you can choose to use it, or use one you drafted. Now, the deck is not limited color-wise by your commander at all. It simply needs to share colors with your Commander. (After all, what's a commander if he/she is not castable?) The final match, after the two FFA victors are crowned, is a 1vs1 match, so be sure to board your True-Name Nemeses!

EDH Ultimate Bravery: http://www.falconsyndicate.net/EDHGen.aspx

 The cube itself will be tweaked over time, and some cards removed, some cards added, depending on which deck ends up being broken or much weaker than the others, and it will all be fixed over time. For now, the cube only consists of cards from the above sets, but I'm willing to add more fun, interactive cards over time. Some cards seem kinda poor at first, and I'm willing to give some cards a shot. The list will probably be ever changing over the first few tests, and we'll go from there.

The Cube Itself: http://tappedout.net/mtg-cube-drafts/commander-cube-25-10-13-1/

Anyway, let's hope we have fun cubing!

Cheers,
Brick

EDIT: Since the Commanders themselves make too much of an issue, we will be doing away with them entirely. So the games will be 4-way FFA and then a final 1 vs 1. Now, some cards seem bland at first sight and some pretty amazing, and we'll see where it goes. I'm open to suggestions to add cards instead of such cards like Colossal Might but we'll deal with that later.

Draft Run-Through!

Hi everyone!!! I'm here with a new kind of article! A report of a draft (from cockatrice), with all the pics and the most important choice explanations. Of course, the goal is to discuss about picks in the comments, tell me what you think of my choices and what you've had done. Keep in mind that i make mistakes often, and the goal is to learn to evaluate cards and signals better. Feel free to criticise me in the comments!

Ok, let's start!

Pack 1:

My choice: Rage of Purphoros.
The right choice here is Heliod's Emissary. Rage is a good removal spell, but emissary is an awesome card, both as an aggro card and as a finisher on a flying creature. My best drafting advice: when you draft, don't listen to rock music. Triad of Fates is a pretty mediocre card, it doesn't do much and it forces you to go two colors from the first pick. Anyway, i had good luck later in the draft, and Rage ended being very useful.

My choice: Cavern Lampad.

This is one of the worst packs I've seen in a lot of time. Colossus of Akros is too slow in most decks, there's no good removal, and all the creatures are vanilla or directly bad. Lampad isn't awesome, but it's good as a finisher with big creatures.

My choice: Pharika's Mender.

There were a lot of good red cards here, but Mender is a great card for any deck that can splash it, providing card advantage on a huge body. This pick could bring me to RGx Monsters, or 5 color green, but Mender is definitelly worth a try.

My choice: Time to Feed.

It was this, or Ill-Tempered Cyclops. In the last pack, i passed a lot of good red cards, and i prefered to pick the green removal and wait to see if they wheeled back (spoiler: They did!).

My choice: Artisan's Sorrow.

Sorrow is a versatile card, and you always want to have one in your side. Two-Headed Cerberus is a good card for aggro decks, but the double red cost is a bit too restrictive, and I still was unsure if i was gonna have to fight for red in the second pack.

My choice: Polis Crusher.

When i recieved this pack, i couldn't believe what i was seeing. Crusher is p1p1-worthy, and seeing him in Pick 6 is the clearest signal you can get that nobody else is playing RG.

My choice: Pheres-Band Centaurs.

It's not an awesome card, but they are solid blockers, and they are a good side card against aggro decks.

My choice: Two-Headed Cerberus.

My choice: Wild Celebrants.

The card is mediocre, but getting it now is still a good signal.

My choice: Titan's Strength.

My choice: Borderland Minotaur.

This pack was the definitive clue that Red was totally open. Three playable red commons! I picked Borderland because at that point I seemed to have a slow curve, and it's better than Skullcleaver against aggro.

   

         



Pack 2:

My choice: Vulpine Goliath

A plain and big beater, from a pack that didn't have much. Titan of Eternal Fire, while being rare, is a vanilla creature, and the trample from the fox makes it better. Blue has some good cards too, and it's something to keep an eye at.

My choice: Polis Crusher.

TWO!!! Not only one, but TWO!!! This guy is one of the greatest cards in Theros limited, it skips a lot of blockers, is a big beater, and monstrified it's just insane. Definitelly, RG is our best option.

My choice: Purphoros's Emissary.

A good evasive creature, and also an awesome finisher. There were other good options like Feral Invocation, but the Emissary is simply the best one.

My choice: Burnished Hart.

I had a dilemma here. Nemesis is a rare-worthy card, and i should have probably picked it, but i had a very high curve with expensive drops, and Hart is the best Ramp/Fixing card in the format. This is one of those picks that i'd like to discuss in the comments.

My choice: Karametra's Acolyte.

I was tempted to pick Griptide here, and either cut a very good card from an opponent's deck or have a splashable option. Acolyte lets you have 6 or 7 mana on turn 5, which isn't bad, and i'm not a fan of having random Heroic creatures that are bad on their own (and at that moment I only had one possible enabler).

My choice: Minotaur Skullcleaver.

A good early drop for our curve, which is very slow right now. When you already have a lot of high-impact 4-drops, you need cards that put pressure earlier, so you can finish quick, or ramp, to get to play the monsters before. I'm not getting passed any ramp, so I guess I'll have to go for a more midrange-ish strategy.

My choice: Opaline Unicorn.

This looks like a mistake, and it might be a mistake, but I already had a lot of 4-drops, and I wasn't sure if i would want to splash Black. 

 My choice: Pheres-Band Centaurs.

My choice: Titan of Eternal Fire. 

Red is totally open, from both sides.

My choice: Arena Athlete.

 My choice: Boulderfall.

 My choice: Breaching Hippocamp.

Pack 3:

My choice: Reaper of the Wilds.

A great rare, it's a 4/5 on turn 4 (or 3), that's resilient to removal, trades with giant bombs, and gives card advantage. This and Mender are definitelly worth a splash for black in any deck.

My choice: Rage of Purphoros.

Decent removal, out of a mediocre pack on our colors. There weren't many other options, and I didn't want to go heavily on the black splash, or splash another color (blue).

My choice: Deathbellow Raider.

There were different choices in this pack. I still needed early drops, and Minotaur puts a lot of early pressure. Spearpoint is a decent choice too, and I didn't want another 4-drop. Getting passed two Thassa's Emissarys is a signal too, and it's a perfectly splahable card, but the deck needs more cheap creatures.

My choice: Voyaging Satyr.

Satyr is an awesome creature. It filters mana, and it jumps from turn 2 to turn 4. It's specially good when our 3 best cards cost 4, and they have higher impact on the early game.

My choice: Satyr Hedonist.

There were many options here. Leafcrown Dryad is a very solid creature, and the Scorpion is great in the early game, but Hedonist offers a lot of ramp, which is really necessary when looking at the deck's curve, and I wanted to have at least one copy of it. I'm still not sure of this one.

My choice: Nemesis of Mortals.

Another awesome card getting passed late. Playing this turn 3 thanks to Satyr Hedonist is one of the strongest plays in the format. This is a rare-quality bomb.

My choice: Read the Bones.

The best option in the pack in my opinion, having random heroes without enablers is usually bad, and I prefer the utility and card advantage from Read the Bones than Mogis's Marauder, which would just be a bear with the possibility to give fear to one creature.

My choice: Ill-Tempered Cyclops.

Oh my god. The whole pack was playable! And there were 4 good cards! Cyclops is the most solid of them, but Fanatic of Mogis is a very nice surprise finisher. I don't think we have enough Minotaurs to make Warcaller good.

My choice: Satyr Hedonist.

My choice: Spark Jolt.

My choice: Borderland Minotaur.

My choice: Spearpoint Ordead.

My choice: Titan's Strength.

THE DECK:

And the side:

For the final deck, I decided to keep the black splash only for Mender and Reaper. I had a bunch of playable cards that were left in the side. The think I like from the deck is that the curve got very midrange-ish, and during the tournament it was easy to open with some cheap guys, and finish putting a lot of pressure during turns 4-6 (well, i like that and the 3 awesome rares). I think this draft was an obvious example where you can see perfectly which colors are open, and get those cards. The first pick was probably a mistake, and I'd like to hear your oppinions about the article and my choices.

I hope you enjoyed it!
Have fun drafting!

-Beusapu

Standard: UW heroic

Hi everyone! For today, we have a guest article! Remember you can send us your articles about standard or limited, and we'll publish them!

Hey there! CheeseMeistro here with a quick write up about my Blue/White Heroic Standard deck. Some of you may know me from Cockatrice but if you don’t, feel free to chat to me on Cockatrice. Sometimes I won’t be at the keyboard but most of the time I will. Time for a little bit about myself.

I am currently 20 years old and have actually only been playing Magic: The Gathering for around 3.5-4 months. Since I started I mostly focused on EDH and got really, really into the deck building side of it. When I started Standard a month ago the same thing happened and I got really into the deck building aspect of it. When I first started the decks were awful but when I got a hang of what cards were good in standard and what were bad I decided I started getting a bit better at it. After drafting Theros for a while I decided I wanted to build something based around Theros cards and thus this deck was born.

Why did I make this deck?

My very first physical Magic: The Gathering event was about 3.5 weeks ago. I drafted Blue/White heroic. It was my first time drafting and I went 3-0 and got first place. The next week I decided to test it again if it was luck and went 3-1 and got second, just losing to a red/blue burn deck. After that I decided I HAD to make this deck Standard legal as we had a Standard event coming up!

Why U/W Heroic and not U/W/X, Y or Z?

I decided to make it a heroic deck after some successful trials and deciding that I wanted a deck in these colours that played the way I wanted and was effective. Many people have told me I should ditch the heroic creatures and some other creatures and put X Y Z in to basically turn it into U/W control. But heroic is an incredible mechanic, and blue/white is probably the best colours for it, maybe tied with red/white (Which I plan on making and maybe an article about soon!).

Why play this deck over any other deck? Well, from my testing so far it has proved quite effective against a wide variety of decks. The only major deck I haven’t had a chance of playing against often so far has been RDW but I have a feeling I could still pull a win out. Basically it’s a fairly cheap deck to build if you take out the Hallowed Fountains (Fiendslayer Paladins are required) being only approximately 50 dollars without them and is very, very effective for the price.

The List:

Creature:                                                            

4 Fabled Hero                                                  

4 Favored Hoplite                                        

4 Phalanx Leader                                           

2 Cavalry Pegasus                                          

3 Banisher Priest                                            

4 Fiendslayer Paladin                                    

Instant:                                                              
3 Gods Willing                                                 

2 Syncopate                                                                                                           

Sorcery:

4 Hidden Strings

Enchantment:      

3 Aqueous Form 

3 Ordeal of Thassa         

2 Ordeal of Heliod                                                                

Land:

4 Azorius Guildgate

4 Hallowed Fountain

3 Island

11 Plains

Sideboard:

2 Gainsay

2 Aetherize

2 Render Silent

2 Voyage’s End

3 Brave the Elements

2 Dispel

2 Glare of Heresy

Budget options:

If you’re on a tight budget you can trade out 4 Hallowed Fountains for 2 Island and 2 Plains, dropping the price of the deck by 50 dollars. That leaves the only big expense being Fiendslayer Paladin. Unfortunately these can’t be removed or the deck just falls apart against the huge amount of red burn and black removal. If they must be removed (Due to major budget concerns) there isn’t really a good replacement so I would put another Banisher Priest and either (Meta call here) 3 Wavecrash Triton or 3 Brave the Elements. If your meta has a lot more targeted removal take Brave the Elements but if they just like to play lots of big fatties (Or RDW with Boros Reckoners) then Wavecrash Triton or something else that controls creatures goes in this slot. Wavecrash is a meta call of mine as there is a lot of people who play RDW or big fatties at my local game store while not having the 4 damage burn spells to remove Wavecrash.

Mana Distribution and Converted Mana Cost:

Using deckstats.net we can see that our Mana Distribution is 77% white and 23% blue while our Mana Source Distribution is 63% white and 37% blue. This was done on purpose to ensure that we have blue early game for Aqueous Form, Hidden Strings and counterspells. We will be relying a lot on our dual lands and if you have to pay 2 for Hallowed Fountain it is ALWAYS the right call, we have a lot of life gain. 

The average CMC of our deck, without sideboarding, puts us at a 1.97. This is a very, very low mana curve and means that in the worst case scenario where we only hit 3 lands for a number of turns, we can still play all of our deck as the highest cost card (Before sideboarding) is three. That means that we are less likely to be hit with mana screw as we don’t need all that many lands to begin with.

Strenghts & Weaknesses:

·          

      Strenghts:

      Speed

This deck is fast. I frequently get a turn 4 or 5 win and end up with over 35 life at the time. Even if the deck doesn’t win that fast (It should about 40-50% of the time with the right hand) we have a lot of stuff to deal with longer games such as the Fiendslayer Paladin, Fabled Hero, etc. Mostly you want to get your stuff down and swing fast with it though, win before the opponent has a chance to react to it.

·          Unblockable 

One of the major things about this deck is making our creatures not able to be blocked. The obvious provider of this is the Aqueous Form but we also have two of the Cavalry Pegasus for a reason. Every creature in the deck except for the Cavalry Pegasus is a Human. That means that the Cavalry Pegasus gives all of our creatures flying. Most of the time people won’t use a Shock/Lightning Strike/Doom Blade on the Pegasus so we don’t even have to waste a Gods Willing keeping it alive to get our flying attacks the next turn.

·       

      Strong Early Game:

The best thing about this deck is its ability to keep a strong field early game even if the opponent has removal. We have a lot of very low cost spells and the ability to get 4 things down/cast by turn 2. We can then protect our creatures with Gods Willing to keep our early game board state and cause the opponent to not set their board state up because they are too busy focusing on removing our creatures.

Weaknesses

·          Spot Removal

Probably the biggest threat to this deck is spot removal in the form of Mizzium Mortars, Magma Jet, Lightning Strike and any number of black removal spells. A good turn two play won’t matter if you play second and they just bolt your Favored Hoplite when you are tapped down or don’t have a Gods Willing in hand.

·       

      Protections

One of the biggest problems I have run into is creatures that have protection from white. Creatures that are protected from white completely stop us from swinging through if we don’t have an Aqueous Form on our creatures or a Cavalry Pegasus on the field (Assuming they don’t have a flying protection from white) to get us over the creatures. Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot we can do about these except sideboard in Voyage’s End to remove them. 

·          Slow starting hand

A slow starting hand can really mess our deck up. If we don’t get some creatures down and start the train rolling early enough our opponents will be able to set up their board state before we can do anything to them. Also, if we lack a Fiendslayer Paladin or two against black/red decks we won’t be able to keep our board state, buying them time to get mana down for their big bomb spells.

Notable Interactions and Synergies:

This deck is all about synergies and card interactions and here is a list of the main ones that will help you win the game (hopefully).

Fiendslayer Paladin/Fabled Hero + Hidden Strings (Ciphered):

If we can get our Fiendslayer/Fabled hero to stick to the board with a Hidden Strings ciphered onto them AND managed to swing through, we are in a great spot. This is because of how Cipher works with first strike damage. After first strike damage our Cipher triggers occur meaning that we can pump triggers onto Phalanx Leader or any other Heroic creature to buff them up before normal damage occurs.

Heroic Creature + Ordeals:

All of our heroic creatures have the staple that they get a +1/+1 counter when they are cast upon. This means that casting an Ordeal on one of them then swinging nets us an immediate 2 counters. The next turn? That turns to three and it pops. Bonus points if we manage to get another ordeal onto the creature that turn giving us 3 counters, then 5 when we swing triggering both and either refilling the hand or getting us loads of life.

Gods Willing + Heroic Creature:

Super simple here, we get a Heroic trigger giving us a +1/+1 counter, protecting from the colour of whatever we need to protect against and scrying one. All for one W mana and one card. That is huge.

Banisher Priest + Phalanx Leader + Heroic Triggers:

This is quite a minor interaction but basically getting the heroic triggers on our Phalanx Leaders buffs our Banisher Priest up making him more resilient to red burn spells. Ideally you want him at 5/5 to prevent Mizzium Mortar kills. This also has the side effect of making him a good blocker. It must be noted that this will occur very, very rarely and is just noted here as a way you can save a Banisher Priest (exiling a Boros Reckoner, Purphoros etc.) from a Shock or Magma Jet.

Sideboarding:

What we’re using our sideboard for here is certain specific situations. Sometimes we may come up against a deck that has a lot of protection from red creatures that we can’t remove. What about that guy playing big blue bombs and cheap counters on instant spells? Or the other guy with heaps of tokens or counters on creatures, making them too big to remove normally? This is what the sideboard was created for.

Gainsay is probably my favourite counterspell in blue. We can sideboard this card in after one match when we know the opponent is casting lots of spells with blue in them, making it cheaper to remove these spells over the alternative Dissolve or Syncopate. Two of these swapped in over Syncopate against mono U or predominantly blue decks.

Aetherize deals with so much so easily for a measly four mana. This card can remove that huge token army that’s swinging at you for lethal. It can remove that army with 5 +1/+1 counters on it that’s about to kill you. It can do so much. Two of these swapped in over Cavalry Pegasus against these types of decks.

Dispel: Going up against nothing but instant speed removal from black and/or red and can’t deal with it after game one? This card stops them completely for just one mana. Nice. Two of these in over Cavalry Pegasus against instant speed removal decks that don’t use many creatures.

Render Silent is quite a powerful card. It is two cards combined into one. Counterspell (UU) and Silence (W). Basically this card lets you cast two spells spliced together for the same cost. It didn’t make the main deck as sometimes you don’t need the silence effect. Really shuts down RDW from dropping 4 creatures in a turn when you counter that first Burning Tree Emissary or Boros Reckoner. Two of these in over Syncopate against decks that like to cast lots of spells in one turn.

Glare of Heresy is actually a meta call on my part. At my store approximately every person that isn’t me managed to pull an Elspeth or Foil Elspeth (Some people got two foils and a non-foil…) so I sideboard this to deal with that. It has the bonus effect of being able to easily deal with Boros Reckoners or any other painful white creatures. Two of these in over Cavalry Pegasus’s.

Voyage’s End lets us bounce any creature the opponent controls unless they have protection from blue or hexproof. This means that big fatty that cost most of their mana just got removed or we can have it early game to disrupt their big creature play early (If they ramp). We can also target remove creatures with counters on them if they aren’t swinging. A good example of this is Gyre Sages who are being overloaded with tokens and just used for mana. Two of these in over Cavalry Pegasus’s.

It must be noted that if you need multiple of these sideboard cards against a certain deck you will have to judge yourself on what to remove to put both in. Good targets are removing one Hidden Strings and one Phalanx Leader (Or two Phalanx leaders if it is that bad) if you need the Cavalry Pegasus’s to swing into the opponent.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you liked the deck. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

CheeseMeistro