Hi guys, I hope you had a good and well spent weekend. Today is another Standard evolution day as we discuss archetypes evolving from the current metagame. Last weekend at WMCQ III was the showing of Junk Aristocrats, with the conversion of red to green in favor of Varolz, the best Dragon’s Maze card Voice of Resurgence and undying geists. I won’t go into detail on that as there are a few existing articles you can find online discussing this deck. What I’ll present today is its midrange relative. Instead of Scavenging Varolz, we have Deadbridge Chant.

First, here is the proposed decklist.

Lands
2 Blood Crypt
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple Garden
2 Stomping Ground
2 Godless Shrine
3 Sunpetal Grove
3 Woodland Cemetery
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Kessig Wolf Run

Creatures
3 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
3 Restoration Angel
2 Angel of Serenity
2 Sire of Insanity
4 Thragtusk
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Arbor Elf

Spells
2 Deadbridge Chant
4 Grisly Salvage
4 Farseek
3 Unburial Rites
2 Bonfire of the Damned

The list has been referenced to the 4color frites piloted by Rob Castellon from PT Dragon’s Maze and functions similar to the Junk Reanimator, but with a twist. What are those?

First, Deadbridge Chant is the deck’s mid and late game play and gas, and which combos with Sire of Insanity. You can fast ramp to an early chant to provide card and board advantage, like milling Rites and its juicy targets.

The next question is how do you fix a good trigger for the chant? Enter Deathrite Shaman. This guy takes away unnecessary lands and spells like Far Seek to get you advantage on your every upkeep trigger. Plus, he is a main deck answer to Reanimator, messes up Snapcaster flashback and at most deals the final life loss points.

Now for the Red splash, we have Sire of Insanity, Huntmaster of the Fells and Bonfire of the Damned. These are the best cards that the color can offer and gives you various options on the deck i.e. Sire of Insanity against Esper and American, Huntmaster versus Gruul, Naya Blitz and RDW, Bonfire for agro decks.

I’ve chosen Bonfire as the only maindeck removal of the deck as because it costs only one Red and works well even if you don’t Miracle it. A late game return-to-hand with the chant can also make it your finisher.

As for the sideboard, which is the only thing I can offer from the untested list are as follows:

2 Abrupt Decay
3 Acidic Slime
3 Centaur Healer
1 Duress
2 Purify the Grave
2 Sin Collector
2 Slaughter Games

It is pretty much related to Reanimator’s sideboard plan which I think is best for the current metagame. The card choices are just basic against certain matchups. The only ‘red costed’ card Slaughter Games are for removing certain threats like Aetherling, opposing Angel of Serenity and Sphinx’s Revelation.

If there are certain expected decks in your local scene like the Junk Aristocrats, you can board in cards like Curse of Death’s Hold and Gaze of Granite. That depends on specific decks aside from what I’ve listed.

That’s about it for this deck tech for the week. Any questions and suggestions are very much welcome. As a conclusion, innovation never stops and that makes Standard still a fun format to play.

Until next time.

@zeichen95 on Twitter.