Three Kings

Greetings All! My name is Stephen, and I am the second champion of this Deck of the Day blog.  I am also a champion of wacky deck ideas, much like our first author, Travis.  The deck I am bringing to the forefront today is something I like to call The Three Kings, or more simply, Villainous Wealth.

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 temple of mystery
4 temple of malady
4 polluted delta
4 opulent palace
4 island
3 swamp
1 llanowar waste

1 murderous cut
4 hero's downfall
3 sultai charm
2 bile blight
4 dissolve
3 kiora, the crashing wave

4 sylvan caryatid
3 courser of kruphix
3 king macar, the gold cursed
2 reaper of the wilds
3 Villainous Wealth
---
Sideboard:
2 back to nature
1 perilous vault
2 negate
2 ashiok, nightmare weaver
2 bile blight
2 disdainful stroke
1 sultai charm
2 stymied hopes
1 yavimaya coast



While I am sure you all are familiar with the Villainous Wealth card, you are likely not familiar with this shell.  Currently, standard is a format ripe with one thing in common: one spell per turn.  Typically, that one spell is something in the air of Sidisi, Siege Rhino, Goblin Rabblemaster and the like.  What this deck aims to accomplish is much the same, but with the ability to get ahead, and stay ahead.  The key to this deck working is none other than King Macar. 

King Macar provides us with something no other card in the format does right now: the ability to kill creatures for profit, repeatedly.  All we have to do is attack.  But how do we do that?!?! Easy. Kill everything.  Downfall and Kiora are the ways in which we eliminate, or turn to pillows, the blockers in question, and attacking is all we do afterwards.  At that moment, they actually have to use a premium removal spell on a 2/3 in order to begin resolving additional creatures, meaning we no longer care about siege rhinos and their kin.  We actually can sit back and counter their walkers before doing anything else, say, resolve the wealth, which is just the nail in the coffin.

Essentially, this is a 57 card control deck that attacks for 2 (or 4) until our opponents are forced to react, in which case we cast the wealth and take the game back over.

How does this deck fair in the current metagame?  Quite well actually.  I personally have run this list to 2 IQs with fair results each time, with my opponents curious as to what King Macar is, and surprised when their creatures turn into excess mana.  Other midrange decks fall apart to the strategy of 'kill all the things' because they aren't able to crack us.  Control decks can't decide if they should kill our 2 power creatures, in which case we attack until they do, then we fight over our creature to tap them down, and wealth our way to victory.  And even swift strategies like Jeskai Tokens or the resilient Whip strategies fall to maindeck Bile Blight and Sultai Charm, 2 very powerful cards in today's standard.  It's very hard to argue with a deck that becomes a full on control deck post board that still has threats with which to win the game!

However, we are prey to turn 2 Rabblemaster, something I'm sure everyone is weak to.

Until next time, may your Kings be Wealthy!
-Stephen