Red players are now celebrating, including me, on the revealing last night of the latest Red burn spell named Skewer the Critics. The card is the latest addition to the direct damage spells in Standard and today we will Continue reading
In today’s post, we start with my attempt to create a deck based on the card from the Ravnica Allegiance named Awaken the Erstwhile. This is a five-mana Sorcery that discards players’ hands and turns them into 2/2 Black Zombies. This card is sort of very interesting in terms of flavor and would take some Magical Christmasland scenarios to pull it off. Here below is its card image:
Upon checking on the Reddit discussions, there were a lot of suggestions posted. Deck archetype such as a discarder deck with Raiders’ Wake or ramping mana into Awaken plus Crafty Cutpurse and even the one with a Divine Visitation. One strategy that I have seen to be viable is the Experimental Frenzy/Treasure Map route wherein you still have your top cards on the deck as your pseudo-hand while building your unusable actual hand into a huge Awakening later on. I just have to find the right cards to include to be able to consistently pull off the main card strategy. The colors I have considered are Grixis or Black Blue and Red and here below is the initial decklist.
Grixis Awakening version 1.0
Creatures
4 Riverwise Augur
Instants and Sorceries
3 Anticipate
4 Awaken the Erstwhile
3 Cast Down
3 Golden Demise
2 Ritual of Soot
3 Thought Erasure
Artifacts and Enchantments
4 Treasure Map
4 Experimental Frenzy
4 Raiders’ Wake
2 Search for Azcanta
Total non-land: 36, Lands: 24
Let us discuss the card choices.
Awaken the Erstwhile, Treasure Map, Experimental Frenzy, Raiders’ Wake – These are the main combo components which the deck revolves around. The map fixes your draws while also ramping you to an early casting of Awaken the Erstwhile. Experimental Frenzy is your post-awakening card advantage while Raiders’ Wake is basically the one that will deal most of the damage on opponents. The only issue here is the opponent might be playing all of the top-decked cards after the hand was discarded.
Cast Down, Golden Demise, Ritual of Soot, Thought Erasure – These are the board and hand control. The demise works well on one-side removal once it ascended which can easily be achieved with the Zombies created from the Awakening and the Treasure Tokens.
Riverwise Augur, Anticipate, Search for Azcanta – This filters the draws to pull off the turn 4 Raiders’ Wake into turn 5 Awaken the Erstwhile as much as possible. Riverwise Augur’s Brainstorm ability gets the cards needed and you won’t discard back into the top of the deck, that which you can arrange to use later on or with the Experimental Frenzy in play.
Overall, the deck looks clunky with the four and five mana costs and chaining spells with the frenzy is near to impossible. Nevertheless, the important thing is to pull off the main cards combo while being consistent as a regular midrange deck.
This is again open for comments and suggestions so you just please post them in the comment box below. I’d like to hear your line of play on this card.
That is a wrap. Until the next blog post.
The current spoiler season is on its full swing and soon we will be completing the whole Ravnica Allegiance set. We still continue on the card discussions and rating its potential for Standard play. Continue reading
Today’s card preview takes us to a closer look at another creature that is in line with those that punish players who activate card abilities. We had Harsh Mentor in Amonkhet which only saw play in its early days in Standard, but this version looks to be more useful than just pinging opponents. Check out immolation Shaman.
It has the same cc with the mentor but the 1/3 power and toughness make it less vulnerable to cheap removals like Shock. What makes this dude better is its pump ability which is pretty much useful in the late game. The +3/+3 with Menace can finish up most of the games and that makes it also a good top deck. Limited-wise, this is a good addition to your deck as it checks on Adapt creatures from Simic. It can also stall some early aggro 2/2 and 2/1s.
Standard Red-based decks might have one or two copies in the main deck unless there is a top-tier deck archetype with a lot of activations that this shaman can be benefit of.
That is a wrap. Until the next blog post.
Red Green or Gruul aggro is slowly shaping up with each spoiler cards in the Ravnica Allegiance Set. I have already identified a few that will most likely become part of the deck list. The option here is to go straight Continue reading
In preparation for the upcoming release of the set Ravnica Allegiance, Wizards has a couple of activities on the weekends before that. First is the Ravnica Allegiance Open House Continue reading