Standard

Selfless Spirit: Why You’ll Love It

My initial reaction to Selfless Spirit, as someone who has enthusiastically been playing [card]Rattlechains[/card] in standard, was one of pure hype. This card is more than a mistral charger with dauntless escorts ability. Here are the three reasons I’m very excited for Selfless Spirit:

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Reasons I Am Pumped for This Card:

1. This card provides a preemptive answer to destroy/damage based sweepers; such as kozilek’s return, radiant flames, and planar outburst. This will put pressure on the opponent to have an answer ready for Selfless Spirit before they can wipe away your board. If you delayed playing Selfless Spirit until turn 4, you may be lucky enough to have a [card]Rattlechains[/card] ready to make your opponent’s life even more miserable.

2. Selfless Spirit helps provide a critical mass of strong flyers that all have relevant text attached to them. Few things feel as good against GW Tokens as going turn two flyer, turn three flyer, while they lethargically play Nissa Voice of Zendikar into Gideon Ally of Zendikar. I like [card]Dimensional Infiltrator[/card] more than the next person, but it’s activated ability is benign compared to the sweeper trumping ability of Selfless Spirit.

3. Between Selfless Spirit and [card]Rattlechains[/card], I think there are enough ways to protect a creature enchanted with [card]Invocation of Saint Traft[/card]. I’m not sure if it’ll see maindeck or sideboard play, or if it will be metagame dependent. However, Invocation provides a much needed burst of damage that a deck full of 2 power attackers requires to close out the game quickly.

The initial places I’m looking to play Selfless Spirit is in a flyer based Bant Company list and UW flyers.

The RattleTrain CoCo

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Canopy Vista
4 Evolving Wilds
3 Forest
3 Island
2 Lumbering Falls
2 Plains
4 Prairie Stream
3 Yavimaya Coast
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Clash of Wills
4 Collected Company
3 Dromoka’s Command
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Bygone Bishop
2 Duskwatch Recruiter
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
4 Rattlechains
4 Reflector Mage
3 Selfless Spirit
3 Stratus Dancer
3 Sylvan Advocate
2 Void Grafter
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Dromoka’s Command
1 Clash of Wills
2 Declaration in Stone
2 Negate
3 Tragic Arrogance
2 Archangel Avacyn
1 Plains
2 Silumgar Sorcerer
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

If GW Tokens continues to be the top dog after Eldritch Moon’s release, then this is roughly where I want to be with Bant Coco. Having 10 turn 2 flyers makes me a happy camper. Between Selfless Spirit, [card]Rattlechains[/card], and [card]Void Grafter[/card] anyone trying to remove your board is going to have headaches. We’re not even accounting for possibly hitting what you need with [card]Collected Company[/card] in response to targeted removal.

Next up is UW Flyers!

[deck]
[Lands]
9 Island
2 Meandering River
5 Plains
4 Port Town
4 Prairie Stream
[/Lands]
[Spells]
3 Clash of Wills
2 Essence Flux
1 Invocation of Saint Traft
2 Ojutai’s Command
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Archangel Avacyn
4 Bygone Bishop
3 Dimensional Infiltrator
4 Rattlechains
4 Reflector Mage
4 Selfless Spirit
2 Silumgar Sorcerer
3 Stratus Dancer
2 Thunderclap Wyvern
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Invocation of Saint Traft
3 Lone Rider
1 Ojutai’s Command
3 Declaration in Stone
7 Unknown
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

UW flyers currently has a lack of spirit based synergies. The best “spirit lord” is [card]Rattlechains[/card]. Selfless Spirit does not fully remedy this problem, but it’s still an excellent threat alongside [card]Rattlechains[/card] and compliments the strategy perfectly. I think that with fourteen two drops alongside a boat load of interaction this deck has a great shot of taking down GW Tokens, while still being capable of putting pressure on the slower decks in the format.

That’s the end of my gushing over Selfless Spirit. I hope these lists gave you a place to start and inspired some other wacky ways to use Selfless Spirit. If you have any questions or ideas to share please feel free to leave them in the comments or reach me on Twitter.

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