Saturday, December 27, 2014

#7 "I hope Ornithopter is in my opening hand..."

Standard

4 scuttling doom engine
4 chief engineer
4 phyrexia revoke
3 daring thief
4 ornithopter
3 hypnotic siren
3 singing bell strike
4 spring leaf drum
2 bident of thassa
4 ghost fire blade
1 hour of need
4 ensoul artifact

Land
1 nykthos, shrine to nyx
3 tomb of the spirit dragon
4 darksteel citadel
12 island

SB
2 tormods crypt
3 staff of the mind magus
1 aetherspouts
1 stubborn denial
3 negate
2 disdainful stroke
2 triton tactics
1 singing bell strike

As you would expect, this deck relies on explosive draws. Anything short of 3 permanents on turn 1 is abysmal. It is possible to cast Scuttling doom engine as soon as turn 3, though that rarely happens. Scuttlebutt primarily plays the role of finisher and sees the most play against control decks. Daring theif is easily activated with convoke and spring leaf drum - he's the threat most likely to catch your opponent offguard. Revoker is surprisingly relevant as it is able to shut down any mana dork or planeswalker, and you can even get real cute and permanently lock a singing bell struck creature by naming it. With that said, you are hard pressed to win games without drawing ensoul artifact in a timely manner. The deck could easily be titled "Ensoul or Bust".

As for the land base, tomb of the spirit dragon is excellent against many decks. While jeskai aggro is far and away the worst match up for this deck, other aggro archetypes, such as mono red, mono black, and abzan are more tenable thanks to the life gain provided by the unlikely utility land. Darksteel citadel's inclusion is obvious. Between blue creatures, bident, and cumulative singing bell strikes, it's not unreasonable for nykthos to net you a couple mana when your thirsty for a doom engine or mind control siren.

The sideboard is just a smorgasbord of counterspells, a few effective cards against aggro, and a couple of tormods crypts for those nasty Whip - based decks.

In summary, this deck loses a lot because of the generally low power level of cards. That said, you get a reasonable number of wins by slamming a T2 ensoul and quickly riding it to victory. Certain matchups are unwinnable, but the deck is quite cheap (even cheaper than mono red w/ rabblemaster) and has much more play than your run of the mill standard deck.

Edit: This list went 4-0 at the LGS.

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