MTG Arena has a new Standard format called Alchemy, so we need to look at some decks! Some of these may seem very familiar because it’s still Standard. So everything in the current meta is fair game. However, we’ve got about 60 new cards added to the game, and some current cards have been balanced (nerfed or buffed) to make them viable. We covered Alchemy in detail, and we have also covered the new cards you can look forward to. If nothing else, MTG Arena’s Alchemy decks should be interesting. The idea is that it will be a more flexible Standard meta because cards in this Standard can be adjusted. It’s essentially Hearthstone but in MTG Arena.

How popular is this mode going to be? That is an excellent question, and we can’t answer that question yet. We’re going to look into it though, but for today, we’re going to highlight some Alchemy decks in MTG Arena that are worth trying. It’s too early to say which are the most powerful though. Every one of these decks will feature at least a handful of these cards if at all possible. Sure, you could just play regular Standard decks here. But will they have the same power as an Alchemy deck? I sure doubt it. Some of the new Alchemy cards are absolutely filthy, in terms of power. Sometimes, a deck only needs a few cards to really make it stand out.

Of course, we start with Mono-Red! It’s a deck that always seems to persist no matter what happens. A few really incredible cards have shown up for Red, and I stand by that statement. Town-Razer Tyrant might be one of my favorite Red cards right now. It forces a player to make one of the hardest choices – do they keep an important land, or sacrifice it? Nor is it a Legendary, so you can have all four of them in play at once!

We also include the new Toralf’s Disciple for Lightning Bolt spam; that’s right, Lightning Bolt is back! We went years without a Lightning Bolt, because it’s “not balanced” or “too powerful”, or whatever you want to say. But now we can in theory have 16 of them in our deck? Easily? All we have to do is attack with Toralf’s Disciple.  We finally use Rahilda, Wanted Cutthroat to steal spells from the other player, and simple deal damage. This is a very aggressive deck, and it gets going very fast.

Even Hall Monitor comes back! A 1/1 Haste, you can pay 2 and tap it to make a creature unable to block. If your opponent only has one blocker, no they don’t. We have a few creatures that need to safely attack, like Toralf’s Disciple. A 3/3 Haste for 3, whenever it attacks, conjure four Lightning Bolt cards randomly into your deck. So we want to have this in play when we can make sure it won’t die.

If we can do that several times, the more’s the better! We could have 20 or even 30 Lightning Bolts in the deck and just spam them. Lightning Bolt, for those that don’t remember or didn’t see it, is a 1-cost Instant that deals 3 damage to any target. So we want to keep attacking with this. You can use Hall Monitor to make something unable to block, or use Play With Fire and Roil Eruption to deal damage to blockers.

Rahlida, Wanted Cutthroat/Rahilda, Feral Outlaw is a very useful transforming Legendary. They’re a Day/Nightbound card, so it fits nicely in Innistrad. When this card, a 2/2 First Strike deals combat damage to a player, exile a non-land card from that player at random. Any turn you attacked with a Wolf or Werewolf, you can cast that card, and use any mana to do so. The other form is far more powerful. Now you have a 2/2 Double Strike. You have the same ability though, so if you deal combat damaged o a player, exile a non-land at random.

I absolutely love this just to steal a card from our opponent’s decks and use them. Any card your opponent can’t use is a powerful card. We don’t have a ton of Werewolves in the deck though. Reckless Stormseeker is a Wolf/Werewolf, and so is Rahilda. So we can still make that happen. Most of this deck is pretty inexpensive, too. But on turn 4, we want to drop Town-Razer Tyrant.

The more valuable/powerful lands your opponent has, the better. When this 4/4 Flyer comes into play, you choose a land you don’t control. It loses all abilities except mana abilities, and gains “At the beginning of your upkeep, this permanent deals 2 damage to you unless you sacrifice it.” Suddenly, that land is a liability. The more valuable, the more useful the land is, the better this trade becomes. If your opponent has a two-colored deck, and they can’t draw into more than one of the second land, time to make them suffer.

There are lands like Faceless Haven that are in so many decks. Like this one! The ability to suddenly have a creature with vigilance is terrific. We have aggressive cards like Voltaic Visionary/Volt-Charged Berserker and the non-stop power of Reckless Stormseeker/Storm-Charged Slasher. We combine these with drawing non-stop Lightning Bolts. Chandra, Dressed to Kill is going to help this too! Especially since we can easily get her ultimate.

That -7, where we exile the top five and can cast red spells from among them this turn? Oh yes. Then we get the emblem that deals damage to any target each time we cast a red spell, based on the Mana Value. So sure, Lightning Bolt now hits 4 damage for 1 red mana. Or we play Roil Eruption, pay the Kicker (7 total) for 12 damage to any target.

Decklist

Deck

2 Chandra, Dressed to Kill

4 Hall Monitor

4 Falkenrath Pit Fighter

4 Voltaic Visionary

4 Rahilda, Wanted Cutthroat

4 Toralf’s Disciple

4 Reckless Stormseeker

4 Town-razer Tyrant

4 Play with Fire

2 Roil Eruption

19 Snow-Covered Mountain

1 Den of the Bugbear

4 Faceless Haven

That’s how we win the day. Bombard people with Lightning Bolts hopefully nonstop. Town-Razer Tyrant helps us chip away, while also swinging for 4 with flying. We have a nice variety of low-cost, high-value creatures. It’s pure damage, and it can start going hard on turn 2. If your opponent has a slow deck or doesn’t have many creatures, we can use HallMonitors to make sure the other player never really gets off the ground. It’s excellent.

Hullbreaker Horror is the new flavor of the months when it comes to powerhouse control cards. The ability to use any Instant or Sorcery as essentially a counterspell? That’s power. When Alchemy came to MTG Arena, I knew these Blue instant and sorcery cards would show up in decks, that’s for sure. Even White has a spell we can put to serious use as well. What do we do to win with this deck though? It only has one creature in it!

We can use our Land Creatures, our Angels from Emeria’s Call, and the Hullbreaker Horror itself. If our opponent has no creatures, we can just attack with it with impunity, after all. Since aggro decks tend to have low-cost creatures, one of our new spells is going to put these to rest. More than likely.

Hullbreaker Horror is a 7-cost creature though, but it’s so important to the deck. A ⅞ with Flash that can’t be countered, we’re not playing it on our turn. When you cast a spell, you can choose one of two effects: Return a spell you don’t control to its owner’s hand, or return a non-land permanent to its owner’s hand. That first choice is the big one for us, frankly. But we can also cast our counters and sorceries to bounce permanents that got into play away. Or bounce tokens out, so they leave forever.

So how do we get the game to stretch out long enough to get this thing going? A lot of control spells, quite frankly. You can bounce a creature to it’s owner’s hand with Fading Hope, Or use counters like Jwari Disruption (unless controller pays 1 colorless). You can bounce cards back to their owner’s hand that cost 1 or more mana, and Learn, via Divide by Zero.

We do have some incredible new cards though. We have some expensive cards, or at least, some slightly costly ones, but we can fix it. Absorb Energy is an incredible new rare. It costs 3 mana, and it counters a target spell. Cards in your hand that share a type with it perpetually gain “This spell costs 1 colorless less to cast”. So if you counter a creature, and you have Hullbreaker in your hand, it now costs 6 mana instead of 7. You can do this a few times too.

We also have Kindred Denial, as a useful new Uncommon. It counters a spell for 4 mana and Seeks a card with the same Mana Value as that target. If you counter a 7-cost spell, you get your Hullbreaker in hand, or Emeria’s Call.

Not everything that’s new is a counter. Discover the Formula, which is a pricey 6-mana Instant. But you seek three nonland cards, then nonland cards in your hand perpetually gain “This spell costs 1 less to cast.” Can you imagine doing stuff like this, and making your Hullbreaker cost 3 or 4 mana? Then you have the spare mana to counter something or use his ability on your opponent’s turn.

We do have some wild board wipes too because we do need to slow the game down. Divine Purge is new, and I love it. A White Sorcery for 3, you exile all artifacts and creatures with Mana Value 3 or less. They perpetually gain “This spell costs 2 more to cast” and “This permanent enters the battlefield tapped.” As long as they remain exiled, the owner of that card can play it. We have one card that can get caught up in it, Slayer’s Bounty.

It’s a Legendary Artifact – Clue for 1 White mana. When it comes into play, look at the creature cards in your opponent’s hand. Whenever you sacrifice this or another clue, draft a card from Slayer’s Bounty’s spellbook. You can also pay 2, and sacrifice it to draw a card. There’s a lengthy list of possible spells. Most of them are control spells, but you can’t guarantee you’ll get what you need. There’s one copy of Slayer’s Bounty in the deck, and that’s frankly enough.

But what about when your opponent starts playing those Divine Purged cards again? We’ve got Doomskar! We have that to clear the board, fear not. We can win via Emeria’s Call too. Those 4/4 Angels can deal quite a bit of damage. It’s a deck that takes some thinking though. You have to know what to stop and what to let through (and then get rid of it later). You can do so much with Hullbreaker (or several of them), and it’s going to be a blast.

Decklist

Deck

3 Hullbreaker Horror

3 Fading Hope

3 Jwari Disruption

4 Divide by Zero

3 Absorb Energy

4 Memory Deluge

1 Kindred Denial

2 Discover the Formula

4 Sunset Revelry

2 Divine Purge

4 Doomskar

4 Emeria’s Call

1 Slayer’s Bounty

6 Island

4 Plains

4 Hengegate Pathway

1 Cave of the Frost Dragon

3 Hall of Storm Giants

4 Deserted Beach

 

Sideboard

2 Environmental Sciences

2 Teachings of the Archaics

1 Reduce to Memory

1 Introduction to Prophecy

1 Mascot Exhibition

I’m such a big fan of control decks. You can make people simply give up and stop playing, and that’s why I love them. You can stall a game out until the other player simply gives up. If you can keep creatures off the board, you can slowly whittle someone down with a few low-health tokens, or just batter down the gates with the power of Hullbreaker Horror. Love. To. See. It.

I never thought I’d say this, but Omnath is back. Again. He’s been officially unbanned thanks to this new Alchemy Standard meta in MTG Arena, so decks will feature him. What brought back the 4-color Omnath, Omnath, Locus of Creation? He absolutely broke the game with how powerful he was. He was nerfed, which should be said with the heaviest of air quotes. Omnath, Locus of Creation now costs 5 mana, instead of 4. It’s 1 Red, Green, White, Blue, and one colorless. Is that going to make it unplayable?

It probably will. It won’t be as powerful in Standard as Historic (since Mana ramp is more feasible), but I think it will see play. It’s going to make getting Phylath, World Sculptor and Felidar Retreat shenanigans significantly easier to trigger. It’s also got Wrenn and Seven and Druid Class to make sure you are constantly dropping lands for your Landfall triggers. That’s really what this deck is – Landfall Combo.

We still want to drop Omnath, Locus of Creation as soon as possible, because it’s super powerful. It’s the only card that was added to the deck, and that’s fine. If we pair it with Druid Class, things get out of hand fast. If we can get two out and both at level 2, even better! Druid Class at level 1 gives you 1 life whenever a land enters play for you. Level 2 though, lets you play an additional land each turn. So we could double-dip on lands each turn, and make sure we get that 4 mana from Omnath far more often.

This is a pretty simple deck to pilot I think. We certainly want that to happen. However, we do have other mana ramp. Roiling Regrowth sacrifices a land to search for two Basic Lands, and put them into play tapped. That would let us have 3 lands on one turn. That would be nice to get all three of Omnath’s abilities back to back to back. The first grants 4 life, the second gives you 1 Red, Green, White, and Blue mana. The third does 4 damage to each opponent and each of their planeswalkers.

We have other ways to pick up lands. Neverwinter Dryad can be sacrificed to put a Forest into play tapped. A Basic Forest mind. While we don’t have a ton of mana ramp, with Druid Class, and Wrenn and Seven, we can reliably get that 4 mana. Wrenn and Seven’s +1 reveals the top four of your deck, and you can put all lands revealed this way into your hand, and his +0 puts any number of lands from your hand into play tapped.

It comes down to planning. Because we have several major ways to deal damage/win the game with Landfall. So we want to hold off some of our lands until it’s time. That’s why we want to ramp out Felidar Retreat and Phylath, World Sculptor into play.  Felidar Retreat is an Enchantment with Landfall. Each time a land drops for you, you can create a 2/2 white Cat Beast creature token, or you can put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control, and they gain Vigilance for the turn.

We don’t drop a whole bunch of creatures, though. What if there was a better way though? Enter Phylath, World Sculptor. A 6-cost, which can be made cheaper through Omnath, it creates a 0/1 Plant creature token for each basic land you control. So you want to drop him when you have plenty of them out. His Landfall reads, “Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, put four +1/+1 counters on target Plant you control.”

We have 10 basic lands in the deck, so we can have 10 plants. Even if we only have a few, we can drop landfall for the nonbasic lands, to make one big plant. Wrenn and Seven can also make a Treefolk that has Power and Toughness equal to the number of lands you control. So we want, through one of these methods, a huge stat creature. That’s because of our potential win condition, Kazuul’s Fury. It’s an Instant we’ve used before. You sacrifice a creature to cast this (alongside 3 mana), at Instant speed. It deals damage to any target, equal to the sacrificed creature’s power.

So you could very easily, feasibly one-shot someone through the Plant and Landfall triggers, or Felidar Retreat, or Wrenn and Seven. If you manage to get 20 mana, and Crackle With Power, you can win the game that way too – if they’re at 20 HP. Crackle With Power is 2 Red+XXX. It deals five times X damage to each of up to X targets. So we need 20 mana (2 which must be red) to get 20 damage out of it. Either of these works to just shatter someone’s chances of winning.

That, or you can just keep slamming them with Plants that just get bigger and bigger. If you’re worried about mana types, The World Tree will help. It comes out tapped, and taps for green mana. However, if you control six or more lands, all lands you have tap for 1 mana of any color. We also have Valakut Exploration with Landfall. It exiles the top card of your deck when you play a land. Then, on the beginning of your end step, you if there are cards exiled with Valakut Exploration, put them into their owner’s graveyard, and this deals that much damage to each opponent. You can play those exiled cards on your turn as well, but at the end, they go to the grave.

Through Wrenn and Seven, you could in theory play 10/12 lands on a single turn. You could use this to whittle someone down for some serious damage if you’d like. You can also slow down foes with Burn Down the House for AOE damage, Heated Debate for a single-target burn, or you can just keep stacking life and laugh as your opponent fails to get through.

Decklist

Deck

3 Omnath, Locus of Creation

1 Island

1 Plains

2 Divide by Zero

4 Neverwinter Dryad

1 Lair of the Hydra

1 Kazuul’s Fury

1 Field of Ruin

2 Heated Debate

3 Evolving Wilds

2 The World Tree

2 Jwari Disruption

6 Forest

2 Mountain

3 Deserted Beach

2 Needleverge Pathway

2 Prosperous Innkeeper

2 Wrenn and Seven

4 Druid Class

3 Roiling Regrowth

2 Phylath, World Sculptor

3 Burn Down the House

2 Valakut Exploration

2 Rockfall Vale

1 Crackle with Power

2 Felidar Retreat

1 The Celestus

 

Sideboard

1 Environmental Sciences

1 Mascot Exhibition

1 Teachings of the Archaics

2 Battle of Frost and Fire

2 Negate

1 Test of Talents

3 Malevolent Hermit

2 Burning Hands

I don’t think this deck is going to be insanely overpowered. It has a lot of tools, and several ways to win the game. It definitely feels like it could be used, even if some people are upset that Omnath was nerfed. He will still have his fans, no matter what. He’s very useful and can ramp some major cards out early, through mana and his second landfall. Either way, I’m a fan of this deck, and I am curious to see if one of the flavors of Omnath combo decks come to life.

Mono-Black Sacrifice isn’t as powerful as it used to be, but the addition of Blood Artist makes me happy. The card comes back courtesy of the new Alchemy card Sanguine Brushstroke. With that in mind, we shouldn’t play more than one of them at a time, just in case. The new Sanguine Brushstroke is an enchantment, that creates a card named Blood Artist and gives you a Blood Token. It’s how we get to the endgame. We just have to keep sacrificing our allies, or killing other creatures, and that sets us up for success. But how? And why? That’s what I’m here to help with.

Blood Artist is a 0/1, so it’s fragile. However, when it or another creature dies, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. So you could make yourself lose life for certain combos. But you want to make your opponent constantly lose life, and you keep gaining it. Sanguine Brushstroke is a 3-cost Enchantment as well. It grants you that Blood Artist, and also a Blood Token. So whenever you sacrifice a Blood Token, each opponent loses 1 life, and you gain 1 life.

That’s what makes this deck so powerful. It’s not our only way to make our opponent lose life though. For example, we have Warlock Class. Level 1 makes your opponent lose 1 life if a creature died this turn. Level 2 has you look at the top three of your deck, put one into hand, and the others into your graveyard. Then there’s the 7-mana Level 3. At the beginning of your end step, each opponent loses life equal to the life they lost this turn.

Suddenly, we’re doubling your opponent’s life loss at the end of your turn. Meathook Massacre also makes your opponent lose 1 life whenever your creatures die, and you gain 1 life when an opponent’s creature dies. Even more life loss. In theory, we could get our old Witch’s Oven combo back too in this deck! But how?

Cursebound Witch is a new Alchemy card. When this ½ dies, draft a card from the Cursebound Witch’s spellbook. Among those spells, Witch’s Oven, and Witch’s Familiar exist! You could get lucky and get them both! Suddenly, the game is very well within your reach. Or you could get Torment of Scarabs! It makes your opponent lose 3 life on their upkeep unless they sacrifice a non-land permanent or discard a card. Cursebound Witch is amazing value to get you to your goal.

We also have Eyetwitch as a 1/1 flyer, and when it dies, Learn. So we get even more value. Shambling Ghast can give us a Treasure Token, or give a creature -1/-1 for the turn, when it dies. Or we could just keep sacrificing/attacking with Decayed Zombies (2/2), through Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia. If you don’t have a creature with Decayed, you create a Zombie creature token with Decayed. These creatures can’t block (because of Decayed), but if we attack with them, sacrifice them at the end of combat.

Thus, Blood Artist has a funnel of constant aggression and life gain/loss. Fell Stinger has Exploit (and is a 3/2 Deathtouch), which allows you to sacrifice a creature. If you do, a player loses 2 life and the target player draws 2 cards (us). We can also sacrifice with Deadly Dispute, which draws us 2 cards and grants a Treasure Token. That’s what makes this deck so great. We get that Blood Artist, Warlock Class, and just drain someone’s life, nice and slow. If we can get Warlock Class to level 2, and have a really solid turn of sacrificing, we can just drain someone to nothingness and win!

Decklist

Deck

4 Eyetwitch

4 Cursebound Witch

4 Shambling Ghast

4 Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia

4 Fell Stinger

2 Infernal Grasp

4 Deadly Dispute

4 Warlock Class

4 The Meathook Massacre

4 Sanguine Brushstroke

18 Snow-Covered Swamp

4 Faceless Haven

 

Sideboard

1 Confront the Past

1 Environmental Sciences

3 Pest Summoning

1 Necrotic Fumes

1 Mascot Exhibition

How annoying is this?! Incredibly. It’s why I love this kind of deck. Sure, we can win by attacking with Eyetwitch, and our constant jerk Zombies. We can also keep pushing people around with Faceless Haven because it’s so good. We can add extra tokens and things to our army for sacrificial lambs, through our Learn sideboard. If your opponent has no removal, I’d probably drop several Sanguine Brushstrokes if possible. That way, I can wear someone down so much faster.

Mono-White is almost always going to be viable. But what expansion or update would be complete without some obnoxious new low-cost powerhouses for White? One of these, Sigardian Evangel, if we cast it in the late game, could be infuriating. We could just keep playing them ad nauseam until our opponent has no blockers left. Each time it comes into play, it taps a permanent and conjures a copy of it into play. We could just tap all their lands if we wanted! Granted, that would take a lot of spare mana.

Evangel isn’t our only new card either! We actually use three new cards in this deck. Inquisitor Captain and Captain Eberhart join the crew. Captain Eberhart makes sure our cards cost less and our opponents cost more, and the Inquisitor Captain is a new version of Green’s Collected Company. Now we don’t need to splash in green at all! That makes it worth using all on its own if you ask me.

This is a deck that uses 0 spells. It’s all creatures, all the time. Most of it is 3-cost or less, too. In fact, the only creature that costs more costs 4 – Inquisitor Captain. When it enters play, this 3/3 Vigilance creature rewards us for having 20 or more creature cards that costs 3 or less in our Graveyard/Hand/Library. We seek two of those creatures with Mana Value 3 or less, put one into play, and the other into our deck. This sounds like we can pull something from the grave, and then put it into our deck or into play. We have so many useful creatures too.

It’s my hope we’ll draw into a turn-2 Captain Eberhart though. A 1/1 Double Strike is okay, but we can buff it via Luminarch Aspirant. We want this to be in play as long as possible. Spells cast from among cards you drew this turn cost 1 colorless less to cast, which s awesome. Spells cast from among cards your opponents drew this turn cost 1 more to cast. So keeping this in play is going to make cards drawn into easier/harder to use. This stacks with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. She makes noncreature spells cost 1 more to cast.

Reidane, God of the Worthy slows people down too! It makes noncreature spells your opponent casts with 4 or higher Mana Value now cost 2 mana more! That’s going to make infinite turns much harder. It also makes Snow Lands of your opponents come in tapped. In a way, this is a control deck! We have all those creatures that slow down the game. Elite Spellbinder shows up too, and it can exile a non-land card from an opponent’s hand. Sure, they can still play it, but it costs 2 more mana to do so.

If your opponent has tokens, we can stop that with Brutal Cathar. When it enters play or transforms, exile a target creature an opponent controls until this creature leaves the battlefield. So we can use it to get rid of things that have tokens on them (to get rid of tokens), or exile tokens – because tokens can’t come back that way.

Since we don’t use those, it won’t harm us. The two of them should slow down our foe nicely. This is a very simple, straightforward deck. We play humans/warriors, and we attack with them. Sigardian Evangel, I’m willing to wait to cast. When you play this, conjure a card named Sigardian Evangel into your hand; discard it at the beginning of your next end step. As long as you have a spare 2 mana, you can keep doing it.

When this card enters play, tap a permanent you don’t control. With enough mana, you can tap your opponent’s entire creature line, and just swing unimpeded. We’re going to use the new Hopeful Initiate too – well, new as far as Innistrad: Crimson Vow. It’s a ½ with Training, so it gains +1/+1 when it attacks with another creature with greater power. At 1 mana, it’s a steal. You can pay 3 and remove two +1/+1 counters from the creatures you control to destroy an artifact or enchantment – just in case.

If we want to buff our allies in the late game, we can play Intrepid Adversary! You can pay the 2 mana over and over when you cast this. Each time you do, put that many Valor Counters on this card. All creatures you control gain +1/+1 for each Valor Counter he has! That counts for all the tokens we generate too. What’s that? Tokens? Adeline, Resplendent Cathar creates a 1/1 white Human token, tapped and attacking for each opponent you have. Its power is also equal to the number of creatures you control.

Usher of the Fallen has Boast for 2 mana; so when this attacks on a turn, you can pay this to create a 1/1 white Human Warrior token. You can give a creature +1/+1 every turn as well, with Luminarch Aspirant. Whichever is most useful, that’s who gets it. With all of these awesome humans, you can start pushing the other player around very early. If you can keep the Aspirant around, you can make Captain Eberhart into a huge Double Striker, making sure his damage almost always gets through. Just keep pushing the other player and force them to respond to your threats – but hopefully also slowing down their gameplay with all the control cards.

Decklist

Deck

4 Faceless Haven

19 Snow-Covered Plains

3 Skyclave Apparition

2 Reidane, God of the Worthy

3 Elite Spellbinder

3 Adeline, Resplendent Cathar

1 Intrepid Adversary

3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

4 Luminarch Aspirant

2 Captain Eberhart

2 Sigardian Evangel

4 Usher of the Fallen

4 Inquisitor Captain

4 Hopeful Initiate

2 Brutal Cathar

This could easily be one of the top MTG Arena deck in Alchemy’s meta. I’m a fan of mono-white aggro decks, and this one isn’t just ‘attack all the time’. It has other strategies! Look at all those control cards that also serve as possible attackers! I’m a really big fan of the new Alchemy cards, like Inquisitor Captain in particular. I could see this sticking around, in some shape or form.

I have to include another control deck, and Mono-Blue could be a lot of fun. This deck has some pretty high-mana spells, but fortunately, we have ways around that. In particular, the new Geistchaneler is going to make some of our counterspells and Sorceries cost less mana! This is a Hullbreaker deck too, at its heart. Surprised? Don’t be – Hullbreaker’s amazing! We can make our expensive cards easier to play through that Geistchannelr, including new spells like Discover the Formula. But how fun would it be to play Sea Gate Restoration on turn 4, with a full hand?

The best thing about this for me is a turn-3 Tireless Angler. A ¼, whenever you play an Island, draft a card from the Tireless Angler’s spellbook. I had to research what’s actually in his spellbook. But when I wrote about the spoilers, I guessed it would mostly be sea creatures – and it is! A few favorites from it, Sea-Dasher Octopus, Ruin Crab, and Fleet Swallower. If you can manage to play that ludicrous 7-cost Fish, the game’s going to get significantly easier.

After all, whenever that 6/6 attacks, a player mills half their library, rounded up. If your opponent has no spells to play, they can’t push you around. The Tireless Angler is important, in my opinion. He’s a steady source of creatures that we don’t have to actually put in our deck. He’s key to our success. Our two-cost Geistchanneler as I said, is incredibly useful. When it enters play, pick an Instant or Sorcery in our hand with a Mana Value 3 or greater. It perpetually gains “This costs 2 less to cast.”

This will make Discover the Formula or Sea Gate Restoration cost significantly less, and makes Inscription of Insight even cheaper to boot. My ideal card to cast is Sea Gate Restoration if I’m honest. Draws cards equal to the number of cards in hand, and grants us no maximum hand size for the rest of the game. Discover the Formula is a new card, and it has you seek three non-land cards. Then nonland card sin your hand perpetually gain “This spell costs 1 less to cast.”

Casting this a few times is a serious godsend. That way, every non-land is just a little cheaper. Helps us get Hullbreaker Horror out faster. The whole purpose of this deck is to slow people down and stall them out. We want that Hullbreaker as soon as possible, or a few Tireless Anglers. That way we can just keep casting annoying, incredibly powerful sea creatures.

We also run Lier, Disciple of the Drowned to give all instants and sorceries Flashback in the grave. It also makes spells uncounterable. We don’t run a lot of counters for that reason. Instead, we run cards that return cards to their owner’s hand. We want an early Jacob Hauken, Inspector too. A 0/2, you can tap it to draw a card and exile a card from your hand. You can look at it as long as it remains exiled. You can also pay 6 mana at this time. If you do, transform him into Hauken’s Insight.

That’s why I love this card. You exile the top card of your deck every upkeep of yours, and you can look at it anytime it’s there. Once during each of your turns, you can play a land or cast a spell from this spot, without paying its mana cost. Great in conjunction with Lier, so we can play Hullbreaker without paying for it. My way to win with this deck is Tireless Anglers, and bully people with powerful sea creatures. My goal is the Fleet Swallower though. There are several great Mutation cards here too, so we can just start smashing people.

Decklist

Deck

3 Geistchanneler

1 Jacob Hauken, Inspector

4 Tireless Angler

3 Lier, Disciple of the Drowned

1 Hullbreaker Horror

4 Consider

4 Fading Hope

3 Jwari Disruption

4 Divide by Zero

4 Discover the Formula

2 Inscription of Insight

1 Sea Gate Restoration

3 The Celestus

20 Island

3 Field of Ruin

 

Sideboard

2 Environmental Sciences

2 Teachings of the Archaics

1 Introduction to Annihilation

2 Mascot Exhibition

This isn’t a deck with a lot of counterspells like you’re used to. Instead, we want a heavy hand full of cards, and the ability to play spells from the grave via Flashback. We just keep bouncing cards back to our opponent’s hand – the correct cards, that is. Find their most important card, and never let it stick around. Build a powerful force of sea creatures, and laugh as your opponent’s deck thins out, and victory becomes assured.

I adore Flicker decks, but we lost so many of our awesome Flicker tools. A Flicker deck is one that requires you to bounce cards in and out of play, to continually trigger ETB (Enters the Battlefield) abilities, and Teleportation Circle is just the card for us. It isn’t as powerful as some previous spells/abilities, but it’s an Enchantment that will trigger an artifact or creature to bounce out of play and back in. This will trigger their special abilities yet again, provided it’s an ETB.

Thanks to amazing new cards like Inquisitor Captain, suddenly, it’s not going to be bad at all! We’re going to keep bouncing him back and forth in and out of play every turn, and then seek a pair of creatures, and put one in play! If we can get a few of these into play, we can keep triggering flicker over and over. It’s a fairly straightforward deck, and I’m very excited about it.

This is a deck that kind of comes out of nowhere and has pretty devastating results. Even if we don’t have the 4-cost enchantment, Teleportation Circle in our starting hand, we can fetch it. Moon-Blessed Cleric lets us search our library for an Enchantment, reveal it, and put it into our hand. Of course, we only run one enchantment – Teleportation Circle. But what does it do?

At the beginning of our end step, exile up to one target artifact or creatures we control, then return it to the battlefield under its owner’s control. This is great if we have something enchanted by an opponent, but more likely, it’s going to be used to flicker an ally back and forth for maximum results. If we want to slow our opponent every turn, we can flicker Elite Spellbinder to keep making someone exile cards out of their hand. They cost 2 more to play from there, and that’s perfectly fine!

Intrepid Adversary isn’t one we want to Flicker though. We want to wait for it until we have enough to add plenty of Valor Counters. That way, our allies are freakin’ huge. We combine this with the new Antique Collector to win the game. It can’t be blocked by creatures Power 2 or less and is a 2/2. He also grants our creatures a perpetual “When this creature dies, you may shuffle it into its owner’s library if it’s in your graveyard. If you do, investigate.”

We want this card to be around, that’s for sure. If our creatures die and have that ability, they can just shuffle back in, which will help out Inquisitor Captain. If we want to get a few creatures out without casting them, we can use Grizzled Huntmaster to help us get going. It’s also a new Alchemy card! This 4/3, when it comes into play, you can exile a creature card from your hand. If you do, search your hand and library for cards with the same name, and exile as many as you’d like. Choose a creature card you own from outside the game. Conjure a duplicate of that card into your hand for each exiled this way.

So that’s why we have a sideboard. Grizzled Huntmaster is our biggest, baddest card if you ask me. We can exile, say, 4 Prosperous Innkeepers, and get 4 Brutal Cathar cards. More likely, we’re going to just exile one creature, and get Yasharn, Implacable Earth or Koma, Cosmos Serpent. The best part is that we don’t need to worry about losing them. We can keep getting them from outside of the game! We can use copies of Skyclave Apparation to exile nontoken permanents that cost 4 or less too! This is an amazing combo. Yasharn can also bring us a Basic Island and Forest from our deck, reveal them, and put them into our hand. For me, it’s about groups of Brutal Cathars to exile creatures and attacking with them. Koma is also excellent to help us swarm people with serpents and win.

We can get a swarm of Sigardian Evangels in the mid-game too, and that’s hilariously powerful. The best part about this is that we can keep blinking Inquisitor Captain. When this 3/3 comes into play, we can seek two creature cards with Mana Value 3 or less and put one into play. The other goes back into the deck. This requires us to have 20 or more creature cards with Mana Value 3 or less among cards in our graveyard, hand, and library. So keep track!

If things are getting dicey though, you can use Glorious Protector. It has Flash and Flying and is a ¾. When it comes into play, you can exile any number of non-Angel creatures you control, until this leaves play. So you can play this, trigger ETB abilities, or use it to avoid boardwipe. I would use this to keep using Elite Spellbinder over and over. The Antique Collector and Inquisitor Captain working together is just ridiculous.

Decklist

1 Moon-Blessed Cleric

1 Elite Spellbinder

2 Antique Collector

2 Glorious Protector

2 Intrepid Adversary

3 Professor of Symbology

3 Grizzled Huntmaster

3 Sigardian Evangel

3 Skyclave Apparition

4 Inquisitor Captain

4 Prosperous Innkeeper

4 Teleportation Circle

1 Tangled Florahedron

2 Plains

2 Forest

3 Deserted Beach

4 Barkchannel Pathway

4 Branchloft Pathway

4 Overgrown Farmland

4 Hengegate Pathway

4 Glasspool Mimic

1 Yasharn, Implacable Earth

1 Brutal Cathar

1 Containment Breach

1 Environmental Sciences

1 Fateful Absence

1 Koma, Cosmos Serpent

1 Mascot Exhibition

1 Skyclave Apparition

2 Negate

2 Portable Hole

3 Elite Spellbinder

I’m unsure if this would wind up being Tier 1, but I’ve been hearing a lot about Teleportation Circle shenanigans. There are likely quite a few ways you can do it, but this is my favorite so far. It comes down to wisely using the Teleportation Circle with your various creatures. If your opponent has nothing but weak creatures, you can just build up a powerful Antique Collector, and just attack with it nonstop. We can do a lot of learning too, thanks to Professor of Symbology. You can use the Circle to keep pulling as many of them as you need. Big fan of this deck, to be honest.

I wanted to see Toxrill, the Corrosive used in a deck. It’s one of my favorite cards this year, just in terms of how ridiculous it can be. It gives enemy creatures -1/-1 each turn, thanks to Slime Counters. We’ll get into it shortly. This is another deck where we can do fun, annoying things with Grizzled Huntmaster, because it’s again, a fantastic new card. There are some brilliant cards in our sideboard, and it can lead to some frustrating combos. Predatory Sludge plus Toxrill means we can keep creating more Sludges.

We can destroy our enemies over and over, like Path of Peril and Shadows’ Verdict. We have a pair of very useful planeswalkers to slow down or simply destroy our foe, with Lolth, Spider Queen, and the new Garruk, Wrath of the Wilds. He’s more to make sure we have enough damage possible to win the game.

Our early game is going to be spent getting some mana together. Dig Up on turn 1 is an excellent way to pull a Basic Land from our deck. We have to reveal it for sure, and it’s only basic lands, but that’s what we need. We can use Sculptor of Winter to tap a snow land, and then untap it for another use. It’s not exactly mana ramp, but it’s very close. If we’re playing against low-cost, high-speed decks, Path of Peril will obliterate their field. It destroys all creatures with Mana Value 2 or less. You can use the Cleave Cost instead (6 mana) to destroy all creatures instead.

Though we do have Grizzled Huntmaster to exile a creature card in our hand. We don’t have a ton of creatures, but I’d probably pick Ishkanah, Broodmother as a solid one. As we said before, we can exile as many copies of this card as we want. We then pick a card from outside of the game (Sideboard) and make a copy of them for each exiled card. None of our sideboard picks are Legendary, so we can get huge benefits. We still have to cast the copies, but it will be just fine. Especially if we use Primal Adversary in the late game. We can get some major swarm damage going.

These have all kinds of control uses. Citystalker Connoisseur is excellent for discarding. It also creates a Blood Token and is a 3/3 with Deathtouch. If we have Toxrill in play, Predatory Sludge is a combo I want to use. Predatory Sludge has you choose a permanent you don’t control when it comes into play. When that permanent enters the graveyard from play for any reason, you conjure a card named Predatory Sludge into your hand. Then you repeat the process. You can even use lands as the targets, if you sacrifice Field of Ruin.

However, Toxrill a 7-cost Legendary Slug Horror. A 7/7, on top of that. Garruk, Wrath of the Wilds can make that cheaper. He’s a new planeswalker, and he’s a blast. Here’s what he can do:

• +1: Choose a creature card in your hand. It perpetually gets +1/+1 and perpetually gains “This spell costs 1 less to cast.”
• -1: Draft a card from Garruk, Wrath of the Wild’s spellbook and put it onto the battlefield.
• -5: Until the end of turn, creatures you control get +3/+3 and gain trample.

There are quite a few useful creatures that you can draft from his spellbook too, but I prefer the +1. When we’re ready to win, we can pop the -5, to start slamming people with damage. We can make Toxrill much cheaper, and when he shows up, here’s what we take advantage of.  At the beginning of each end step – including our opponents, put a Slime Counter on each creature you don’t control.

Creatures you don’t control get -1/-1 for each Slime Counter on them. Then when a creature we don’t control with a Slime Counter dies, we create a 1/1 black Slug Creature Token. We can’t pay for their final power, which is to pay 2 mana (1 blue, 1 black) and sac a Slug to draw a card. We can use Forsaken Crossroads for that. That’s why I like Toxrill though. We use it to keep crushing enemy creatures. If our opponent cannot field anything, they can’t defend against my creatures.

We also have Infernal Grasp to destroy creatures, even at the cost of 2 life. Ravenous Pursuit is going to make either Toxrill or Gitrog into a terrifying damage dealer. Gitrog, Horror of Zhava. This 6/6 with Menace can be tapped by our opponent if they sac a creature. He also grants our lands a perpetual “2 Mana/Tap, Sac this Land: Draw a card.” We probably won’t be using that as much.

Ravenous Pursuit gives a creature in our hand +X/+X, and this spell deals damage to a creature we don’t control, based on a creature in play we do control. So we put Gitrog in play, and make Toxrill even bigger. It’s more likely we’ll play Grizzled Huntmaster to put a sideboard creature in play. Then we can use Ravenous Pursuit. If we’re doing that, Froghemoth is going to be excellent to put into play. A 4/4 with Trample/Haste, it exiles its combat damage in cards from your opponent’s graveyard. For each creature, Froghemoth gains that many +1/+1 counters, and we gain 1 life for each noncreature exiled.

We aren’t going to have a ton of creatures in play, but we have lots of cards to deal with the board state. Some of them are even in our favor. Shadows’ Verdict exiles all creatures and planeswalkers that cost 3 or less, and all creature and planeswalker cards that have Mana Value 3 or less in all graveyards as well. Considering we only have one creature that costs 3, it’s going to be useful. Blood on the Snow also destroys all creatures or all planeswalkers. Then we can take a creature or planeswalker that costs X or less (based on Snow Mana spent) and put it into play.

Then, of course, there’s Lolth. Her ultimate gives you an emblem based on combat damage. At that point, it doesn’t matter how big the creature is. If it does less than 8 damage this turn, that player also lose life equal to the difference. We can use the spare Slugs, Spiders, or Beasts from Garruk to make sure our opponent loses plenty of life. Even 1 point of life lost in combat makes them also lose 7 more.

Our creatures are few, but they are all useful, and powerful. We can keep our opponent’s creatures away from the field, and we can deal a wealth of constant damage. We even have The Meathook Massacre to destroy all creatures on the field, if we have enough mana. It’s my favorite way to destroy token swarm decks.

Decklist

Deck

3 Gitrog, Horror of Zhava

2 Shadows’ Verdict

2 Field of Ruin

3 Forsaken Crossroads

8 Snow-Covered Swamp

2 Grizzled Huntmaster

2 Dig Up

2 Toxrill, the Corrosive

3 The Meathook Massacre

3 Sculptor of Winter

3 Lolth, Spider Queen

2 Path of Peril

2 Garruk, Wrath of the Wilds

3 Ravenous Pursuit

3 Infernal Grasp

3 Ishkanah, Broodmother

2 Deathcap Glade

9 Snow-Covered Forest

3 Blood on the Snow

Sideboard

1 Primal Adversary

1 Outland Liberator

1 Citystalker Connoisseur

1 Graveyard Trespasser

1 Predatory Sludge

1 Geistpack Alpha

1 Froghemoth

We create frustrating, gross monsters, and deal damage. It’s a really fun way to play. I want to get Toxrill in play and laugh as our opponent just gets weaker and weaker creatures every turn. Especially since the enemy creatures also get weaker on their own End Step. If you don’t want to sacrifice/exile important cards, and we’ve got mana, we can get rid of the Sculptor of Winter cards, to get those side card copies. Thankfully, it only creates copies, so if you need to get more and more Predatory Sludge cards. It’s a style of deck I genuinely enjoy playing.

Wizard Class is so obscenely powerful in the right combos. All we have to do is make sure it hits Level 3. Now, whenever we draw a card, a +1/+1 counter gets added to a creature we control. That doesn’t sound too bad, but what about just loading a deck with draw power? One of the new cards, Windreader Sphinx definitely gets us ready. After all, it has us draw a card if we want, anytime a creature with flying attacks – even if it isn’t ours! Most of our deck draws cards. We’re just going to slow the game down and make sure we can hit very hard.

Quite frankly, this is an incredibly easy deck to get going. It’s only technically a Dimir Deck. It has two (admittedly important) Black spells – The Meathook Massacre and Blood on the Snow. Most of the cards in this deck draw, so it’s not going to take long to find Windreader Sphinx. It’s also a 3/7 Flyer, so it’s amazing even though it costs 7 mana.

The beginning of the game will probably be spent on Fading Hope and Chilling Trap to rebound cards, and give them -4/-0 respectively. Chilling Trap though, also has us draw a card if we control a Wizard. That’s pretty much all of our creatures, except the ones that are Sphinxes. Warden of Evos Isle also grants our creatures with flying a 1 colorless mana cost reduction – and it stacks with other Wardens of Evos Isle. They are 2/2 flyers as well, so amazing on turn 3.

They make the deck just move faster. Cloudkin Seer for example normally costs 3 for a 2/1 flyer, but it also draws a card when it comes into play. With two Wardens in play, our entire deck is exponentially faster. One of the other fun Wizards is Windrider Wizard. It draws a card whenever we cast an instant, sorcery, or Wizard spell – if we want. If we do, discard a card too though.

Speaking of Wizards, A Sphinx Wizard, Master of Winds can shift its stats around when we cast an instant, sorcery, or Wizard. It can either become a base 4/1 or ¼ for the turn. It also has you draw two and discard 1 when you play it. So we can make it incredibly aggressive, and use Wizard Class to buff it.

Windrider Sphinx is probably the best card to pair with Wizard Class though. Drawing a card anytime we attack with a flyer is very strong. We want to hit Level 3 Wizard Class as fast as possible – Turn 5 would be the best. As long as it’s in play, we have no maximum hand size anyway, and when it becomes level 2, we draw 2 cards. This is a very simple deck. We play Wizards, use our counters, and control spells to slow the other player, and hit harder and harder every turn. Having no maximum hand size and a wealth of cards means we can almost always have a solution to problems.

Decklist

Deck

4 Fading Hope

4 Shipwreck Marsh

3 The Meathook Massacre

4 Clearwater Pathway

4 Snow-Covered Swamp

2 Master of Winds

2 Blood on the Snow

4 Warden of Evos Isle

4 Cloudkin Seer

10 Snow-Covered Island

2 Windreader Sphinx

3 Divide by Zero

4 Chilling Trap

4 Windrider Wizard

4 Wizard Class

2 Faceless Haven

Sideboard

2 Mascot Exhibition

2 Introduction to Annihilation

2 Environmental Sciences

1 Teachings of the Archaics

This is a pretty silly deck, but I love it anyway. Just playing Wizards every turn and being rewarded for drawing cards? All we’re missing is an optional win condition for running out of cards. I don’t think we have

many of those in the game right now though. It’s very satisfying to just punch the other player with creatures that just get so strong they get out of control. If our opponent has no flyers, we can just hammer them without repercussions, which is just the best. You’ll be able to overwhelm them in no time.