My name is Tyler Priemer, and I am a brewer. I have spent countless hours on Cockatrice and at my local games store testing homegrown decklists. For me, there is nothing more satisfying than doing well with my own concoctions, and when I stumble upon something awesome, I just have to share it with the world.

Back in Shards-Zendikar Standard, long before the Titans ravaged FNMs, there was an archetype called Super Friends. It combined the most powerful planeswalkers of all time, [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card], [card]Elspeth, Knight-Errant[/card], [card]Gideon Jura[/card], and [card]Ajani Vengeant[/card], into a powerhouse control deck. In an era dominated by Jund, Super Friends was able to hold its own, which was a daunting task back then. It truly showcased the power level planeswalkers brought to the game, and it is what inspired this little monstrosity of mine:

[deck title=The Guild of Calamitous Intent]
[Planeswalkers]
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Garruk, Primal Hunter
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Sorin Markov
2 Karn Liberated
[/Planeswalkers]
[Creatures]
4 Viridian Emissary
4 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Phyrexian Rager
2 Acidic Slime
2 Massacre Wurm
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
3 Doom Blade
3 Go for the Throat
1 Creeping Renaissance
[/Spells]
[Land]
8 Forest
8 Swamp
4 Woodland Cemetery
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Evolving Wilds
1 Grim Backwoods
[Sideboard]
4 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Curse of Death’s Hold
2 Beast Within
3 Autumn’s Veil
1 Massacre Wurm
2 Batterskull
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

You may notice two things about this deck that makes it stand out from the Super Friends list of yesteryear; the first being that I am not playing any of the same colours as the original deck and the second being that this is more of a Rock-style deck than a true control deck. The main reason for the shift in colour is that quite frankly, Green and Black have the only good planeswalkers right now. Blue’s only planeswalker is a shadow of his former self and Red’s planeswalkers have always been niche at best. Elspeth’s been downgraded to one or two in B/W tokens, and Gideon’s role as a meat shield means little when Wolf Run allows creatures to swing for 10+ damage at a time.

As far as being a Rock deck goes, despite the resurgence of U/B control decks after Grand Prix Baltimore, the majority of the meta is Delver/Spirit decks, Zombies, and Wolf Run. Playing this deck means more often than not you will be sitting in the control seat. Not to mention that against actual control, being able to beat down with a steady stream of 2/2 value creatures and tokens can force them to be on the defensive for the entire game.

Now for everyone’s favourite part of brewing articles: the breakdown. Let’s start with the all-star cadre of planeswalkers. [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] is a cheap Edict effect that gets around [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]/ [card]Mirran Crusader[/card]/ [card]Dungrove Elder[/card], and can strip away an opponent’s hand rather quickly if left unchecked. My favourite part about Liliana is that most players will swing blindly at her just to get her off the field, effectively acting as a [card]Fog[/card], and since we run four, they look really dumb when you drop another and make them sacrifice yet another creature.

[card]Garruk Relentless[/card] also counts as relatively cheap removal, but the token production and tutoring when he turns to the Dark Side is where he really shines. Sometimes you really need to ditch that piddly [card]Solemn Simulacrum[/card] and search out a [card]Massacre Wurm[/card]. You know, Circle of Life and whatnot. [card]Garruk, Primal Hunter[/card], on the other hand, makes tokens bigger than anything Delver can throw at you, all the while drawing a monstrous amount of cards. With the amount of lands you can get into play, you can even cast and ~3 multiple Primal Hunters in one turn, sifting through your deck until you have the perfect cards in your hand.

[card]Sorin Markov[/card], which I feel is vastly superior to his newer incarnation in terms of versatility, is absolutely insane here. He is removal and life gain against aggro decks, a burn spell, and a freaking [card]Mindslaver[/card], all in one card! His +2 can devour opposing planeswalkers, chew through armies, and go to the face if you are lacking a better target. Not to mention his second ability in conjunction with [card]Massacre Wurm[/card] can rain instant death on an unsuspecting opponent. Let’s not forget that sometimes a [card]Mindslaver[/card] on a control player can basically spell GG. “How kind of you to [card]Blue Sun’s Zenith[/card] me for 7! Why thank you!” What’s not to love here?

Last but not least is [card]Karn Liberated[/card]. Seven mana is a lot for colours that don’t start with a ‘G’, but we can drop him as early as turn five. Karn is basically what Liliana and Sorin wish they could be, liberating the opposition from their hand and board. For a lot of decks, Karn is nearly impossible to get rid of. Adding four loyalty every turn while ripping their hand apart is tough to fight, and the very threat of restarting the game with a Titan or Elesh Norn is often enough to nab a concession. By their powers combined, these five planeswalkers are a colossal pain in the ass to play against.

The lifeblood of any good Standard deck these days is the creatures, and for the most part the creatures I have included act as bodyguards, throwing themselves into harm’s way to keep the planeswalkers safe and getting some value out of it too. [card]Viridian Emissary[/card] and [card]Solemn Simulacrum[/card] clog up the ground and ramp us up. [card]Phyrexian Rager[/card] helps us dig through the deck. Dropping these guys in the early game is necessary, since they enable our late-game plan of dropping threat after threat. Despite acting as cannon fodder for the most part, these guys also serve a secondary purpose. They set up absolute blowout hands when you cast [card]Creeping Renaissance[/card]. You drop them into play, six turns later you bring them all back, then dump them back into play and overwhelm the opponent. [card]Acidic Slime[/card] is something of a Rock staple in recent years, since it acts as a Swiss Army knife, blowing up the things [card]Doom Blade[/card] and [card]Go for the Throat[/card] cannot handle. Initially I included Slime as a concession to Wolf Run, but being able to kill an [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] that otherwise answers our planeswalkers is pretty sweet too. For a deck that prides itself on value creatures, it is very difficult to argue with a creature that is always a two-for-one.

[card]Massacre Wurm[/card], however, is a complete monster in every sense of the word. It is the very embodiment of the phrase “jack of all trades, master of curbstomping the opposition”. For a mere six mana, we a get a 6-power, one-sided board wipe that smacks the opponent every time one of their creatures dies. What most people fail to realize about Gary Busey’s body double here is that it is just leaps and bounds better than [card]Grave Titan[/card] right now. I mean it, look at the top lists from Pro Tour: Dark Ascension, or any recent SCG Open, and count how many creatures in the Top 8 have two or less toughness. [card]Grave Titan[/card] may give you bodies to block with, but [card]Massacre Wurm[/card] devours entire armies, and punishes the opponent for having the audacity to play creatures.

The removal suite is fairly simple. Since Liliana, [card]Garruk Relentless[/card], [card]Massacre Wurm[/card], and combat handle most small threats, we really only need six slots for instant-speed kill spells. I prefer a 3-3 split between [card]Doom Blade[/card] and [card]Go for the Throat[/card], since it gives the best options for a meta that shifts as rapidly as the current Standard does. Basically, we only need to use these on Titans, [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card], [card]Hero of Bladehold[/card], [card]Consecrated Sphinx[/card], and the occasion lethally-pumped [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card]. [card]Creeping Renaissance[/card] is one of those techy little cards that your opponent will have to pick up and read every time you play it. Given U/B’s revival as a deck, it is the perfect solution for those long, drawn-out control matches where both sides have both sides have exhausted their resources, and there are more cards in the graveyards than the decks. Renaissance essentially reads “3GG: Take all the creatures/artifacts/planeswalkers your opponent worked so hard to kill and put them in your hand. 5GG: Repeat”. It is also a great card to pitch to Liliana early on without losing any real value, which is always a perk.

The manabase for this deck is ridiculously basic. There are plenty of Forests and Swamps for Solemn and Emissary to fetch up, [card]Evolving Wilds[/card] smooths out your colours, and [card]Ghost Quarter[/card] kills annoyances like Wolf Run, Inkmoth, [card]Moorland Haunt[/card], and [card]Nephalia Drownyard[/card]. The one-of [card]Grim Backwoods[/card] may not even be necessary, but having a sacrifice outlet to get extra value from your value creatures and tokens seems fine in my book. Sometimes in the late game you need to dig one card down, and not having to use a spell to do it seems fine in my book.

Sideboarding is a fairly easy endeavor, since there are so many options in G/B to work with. For example, my meta is full of Wolf Run, Zombies, Humans, Solar Flare, and the occasional token deck. That is why I have a third [card]Massacre Wurm[/card] and [card]Curse of Death’s Hold[/card] for Zombies/Humans/tokens, just to put the last nail in those coffins. Curse is also amazing against Wolf Run since it shuts off their Inkmoths. [card]Nihil Spellbomb[/card] is our best weapon against Frites, as well as shutting off [card]Gravecrawler[/card] and Messenger, the two best cards in U/B Zombies. [card]Autumn’s Veil[/card] is an absolute house against U/B control, since resolving a planeswalker like Sorin or big Garruk can make short work of a control player. [card]Beast Within[/card] kills anything that moves with very little drawback, and giving them a 3/3 Beast token is inconsequential when we can make our own via Garruk or just kill it through combat. [card]Batterskull[/card] is a concession to aggro, since it allows for some major comebacks, especially when hitched up to any of the tokens we make. Depending on your local metagame, I might even suggest switching the [card]Batterskull[/card]s to the main and moving [card]Acidic Slime[/card] to the board.

While the sideboard is great for my local meta, it may not be so good for yours. Some other cards I would recommend depending on your meta are [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card], [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card]; [card]Sever the Bloodline[/card], or [card]Surgical Extraction[/card]. The Bomb stops tokens and Delver dead in their tracks, forcing them to play around however many counters you put on it. Wurmcoil helps against mono-red, but it is mostly for Wolf Run, since it is downright painful to try to race, and leaves behind Mini-Mes when he trades with a Titan. Speaking from experience, creatures with undying, such as [card]Geralf’s Messenger[/card], and [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card] can be a major pain in the neck to play around. They force you to use resources for little gain, which can hurt a Rock deck. [card]Sever the Bloodline[/card] handles both with ease, especially in multiples, and comes recommended should those two become metagame staples. [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] is mostly a matter of preference over [card]Nihil Spellbomb[/card], since it kills only one card, typically Elesh Norn/[card]Unburial Rites[/card], but is more difficult to play around, and who can say no to a free spell?

The deck is an absolute blast to play, with the dynamism of Rocky II, and the never-say-die playstyle of Rocky IV. I have lost track of how many times I have been on the ropes, when one haymaker completely turns the game around. This deck goes big. It’s swingy. It’s grindy. It’s everything to love in a Magic deck. Hopefully I have convinced some of you to give it a shot, and see how fun it is for yourselves.

Tyler Priemer
@tylerthefro on Twitter
@tylerthefro on Cockatrice