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.