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Gatecrash Rough Drafts, Part 1

Happy 2013; I hope everyone’s holidays were awesome! While I took a break from writing over the past couple of weeks, the excitement of Magic the Gathering continued with GP Indianapolis, the Magic Online powered Holiday Cube, and Wizards of the Coast gifting us with Gatecrash spoilers. Several big events are coming up in the near future—GP Atlantic City, the Gatecrash Prerelease, and GP Quebec City/GP Charleston—so it’s time to dust off the card sleeves and get back to business.

More Gatecrash cards are being spoiled every day, and they’ll start flooding in during the next few weeks. I have a lot of mixed feelings on the set. From a Limited standpoint, Gatecrash is an entirely new format. Some people are tired of RTR Limited and eagerly awaiting this new set. Personally, I haven’t gotten to that point yet. To be honest, I’m not crazy about any of the five new guild mechanics, but maybe I need to see them in action first. The “choose your guild” aspect of the Prerelease is also a little less interesting to me the second time around.

From a Standard point of view, though, I’m ready to see what Gatecrash has to offer. Not that Standard has necessarily gotten stale, but it has definitely settled down to a comfortable level. I’ve been playing a lot of Modern recently, and playing Standard with only half of the shocklands feels a bit constricting.

We still don’t have a lot of information about Gatecrash yet, but we know that the five shocklands alone will have a major impact on Standard. New decks and ideas open up that weren’t available to us previously. Let’s take [card]Stomping Ground[/card], for example:

[deck title=”GR Aggro by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Stromkirk Noble
2 Stonewright
4 Ash Zealot
4 Flinthoof Boar
3 Pyreheart Wolf
4 Hellrider
2 Thundermaw Hellkite
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Pillar of Flame
4 Rancor
4 Searing Spear
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag
2 Evolving Wilds
12 Mountain
1 Forest
[/Lands]
[/deck]

[card]Flinthoof Boar[/card] might enjoy [card]Stomping Ground[/card] more than anybody. He fills the weak two-drop slot that current Mono-Red or Red-Black decks have, replacing less desirable cards such as [card]Gore-House Chainwalker[/card], [card]Rakdos Shred-Freak[/card], [card]Knight of Infamy[/card], or [card]Thrill-Kill Assassin[/card]. (Note: The sideboard for this deck would no doubt begin with “4 Skullcrack.”)

This next deck, based on Brian Kibler’s [card]Predator Ooze[/card] list, would never work without a Gatecrash manabase:

[deck title=”Domri Ooze by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Arbor Elf
3 Ulvenwald Tracker
3 Lightning Mauler
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Predator Ooze
3 Wolfir Avenger
3 Deadbridge Goliath
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Wolfir Silverheart
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
3 Domri Rade
[/Planeswalkers]
[Spells]
4 Rancor
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Gruul Guildgate
11 Forest
1 Mountain
[/Lands]
[/deck]

The jury is still out on Domri Rade’s playability, but if there’s any deck that wants such a planeswalker, I imagine it will be one with nearly 30 creatures that love to “fight.” [card]Stomping Ground[/card] serves as an [card]Arbor Elf[/card] target and, along with Gruul Guildgate, allows you to splash some red spells and still cast [card]Predator Ooze[/card].

The Gruul mechanic, bloodrush, seems much more fit for Limited play, and we haven’t seen any powerful bloodrush cards for Constructed yet. So far, it seems like every bloodrush effect is a combat trick, which isn’t particularly exciting for Standard.

Naya has to be one of the more talked-about color combinations for Gatecrash Standard. Gruul and Boros are both aggressive guilds, and both Naya Humans and Naya Midrange decks have already had success in Standard. Here are a couple different ideas for updating those types of lists:

[deck title=”Naya Battalion by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
4 Champion of the Parish
3 Lightning Mauler
4 Mayor of Avabruck
2 Fiend Hunter
3 Silverblade Paladin
4 Firemane Avenger
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
3 Zealous Conscripts
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Gather the Townsfolk
3 Selesnya Charm
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Temple Garden
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Stomping Ground
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Sunpetal Grove
3 Gavony Township
[/Lands]
[/deck]

By tweaking Ben Wienburg’s current Naya Humans build to include Firemane Avenger, we’re potentially able to apply a faster clock and have more ways of removing opposing creatures. [card]Gather the Townsfolk[/card] and [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card] (stealing an enemy creature) can each turn on battalion on their own. [card]Lightning Mauler[/card] can pair with Firemane Avenger so she’s able to swing on Turn 4. Admittedly, battalion is a fairly fragile and easy-to-disrupt mechanic in Standard, but so is soulbond, and individual cards or combinations can be powerful enough to make it worth the extra work and risk (see [card]Silverblade Paladin[/card] and [card]Nightshade Peddler[/card]).

The other type of Naya deck likes to go higher up the curve, which sounds like a good home for a certain Boros guild leader…

[deck title=”Naya Midrange by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
2 Arbor Elf
3 Borderland Ranger
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Restoration Angel
4 Thragtusk
3 Aurelia, the Warleader
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Farseek
3 Selesnya Charm
3 Bonfire of the Damned
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Stomping Ground
4 Temple Garden
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Clifftop Retreat
2 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Plains
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Kessig Wolf Run
[/Lands]
[/deck]

Again, this Naya update is more about getting your opponent dead. [card]Angel of Serenity[/card] gives the deck a powerful late-game engine, but Aurelia can simply kill your opponent immediately while dodging common removal spells like [card]Ultimate Price[/card] and [card]Selesnya Charm[/card].

[card]Mutilate[/card] is a powerful black sweeper that hasn’t seen nearly as much play as I imagined it would. The [card]Swamp[/card] requirement has certainly limited its use, and so far in Standard since M13, we’ve only really seen it in Mono-Black. Non-white control decks have ceased to exist and could certainly use a Wrath effect. Perhaps BUG or Grixis Control will share some of the success that Bant Control has had. [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] is a huge loss, but cards like [card]Ultimate Price[/card], [card]Olivia Voldaren[/card], and [card]Curse of Death’s Hold[/card] are appealing.

[deck title=”Grixis Control by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Olivia Voldaren
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Jace, Memory Adept
[/Planeswalkers]
[Artifacts]
3 Rakdos Keyrune
1 Staff of Nin
[/Artifacts]
[Enchantments]
2 Curse of Death’s Hold
[/Enchantments]
[Spells]
3 Pillar of Flame
1 Tragic Slip
3 Desperate Ravings
2 Ultimate Price
1 Dissipate
2 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Tribute to Hunger
4 Mutilate
1 Syncopate
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Blood Crypt
4 Watery Grave
2 Steam Vents
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Sulfur Falls
6 Swamp
2 Nephalia Drownyard
[/Lands]
[/deck]

[card]Delver of Secrets[/card] went from ruling Standard to being basically non-existent last year. Could Dimir be the guild to revive Delver in Standard?

Their guild mechanic reads:

Cipher (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of the encoded card without paying its mana cost.)

The first thing to note is that you must have a creature in play to get the cipher effect. This means that you’ll want to have a low curve of creatures, and pushes you toward being an aggro deck.

The “deals combat damage” part of cipher means that you want evasive creatures and cheap removal to allow your creatures to get in. Delver’s old friend [card]Invisible Stalker[/card] is the perfect cipher host—he’s cheap, hexproof, and unblockable.

Cipher is restricted to instants and sorceries, which are the basis of a Delver deck’s synergy. Cards like [card]Augur of Bolas[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], [card]Runechanter’s Pike[/card], and [card]Goblin Electromancer[/card] (and, of course, the ability to reliably flip [card]Delver of Secrets[/card]) all improve with the quantity of instants and sorceries present in your deck. We might assume that one or two cipher spells will end up being Constructed-worthy; here’s a very rough sketch of a Delver deck utilizing some that we know about so far:

[deck title=”U/B Cipher by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Invisible Stalker
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Geist of Saint Traft
[/Creatures]
[Artifacts]
2 Runechanter’s Pike
[/Artifacts]
[Spells]
1 Faith’s Shield
4 Thought Scour
2 Unsummon
4 Azorius Charm
4 Hands of Binding
2 Ultimate Price
2 Dissipate
2 Whispering Madness
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Watery Grave
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Drowned Catacomb
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Moorland Haunt
[/Lands]
[/deck]

Hands of Binding is the only cheap cipher spell that we know about, and it provides a good effect for our tempo deck. Encode it on a [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], and you’ve made your own [card]Frost Titan[/card]. Whispering Madness is tough to evaluate, but gives some amount of extra advantage by fueling your [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], [card]Runechanter’s Pike[/card], and [card]Moorland Haunt[/card].

The guilds that are most shrouded in mystery are Simic and Orzhov—how good are their mechanics, and will new archetypes emerge in Standard from these mostly unrepresented color combinations? Obzedat, Ghost Council, is a very intriguing card, and the Simic leader, Zegana, is the only guild leader left to be spoiled. Hopefully, more is revealed next week to help shed some light on the two remaining guilds so I can finish part two of this article!

Alex Bianchi
Gemmanite on Twitter and MTGO

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