Why is this Deck?
I built this deck out of sheer love for Smuggler’s Surprise. I saw crazy potential for this card and I wanted to build some kind of reanimator shell around it (as I’ve previously discussed here) but decided to eschew the reanimation angle entirely and simply ramp into huge threats that can be cheated out easily with Smuggler’s Surprise.
The Star of the Show
Smuggler’s Surprise allows us to cheat in huge fatties at instant speed, so it’s critical that we keep an eye on their interaction and find ways to maximize that advantage. Obviously, spending as little as six mana for two 7+ mana value bombs is great, but that is less impressive if our opponent has counterspells available. To get around this, I’ve found waiting until your own end step is often correct. Responding to a tap-out Memory Deluge with this can be absolutely backbreaking.
Additionally, don’t forget the alternative modes. If you have a board state already, the +1 mode can help protect it by giving your large creatures indestructible and hexproof. Also, since we are running four copies, don’t be afraid to cast this for 2G and simply draw two relevant cards into your hand. Losing out on one copy of Smuggler’s Surprise is absolutely worth it if the alternative is missing your land drops.
The Threats
Outlaws of Thunder Junction and The Big Score have brought two key players to this deck in Vaultborn Tyrant and Spinewoods Armadillo. They each serve very specific purposes because Vaultborn Tyrant refills your hand and gains you life as you combo off, meaning that even a Farewell or Sunfall won’t deny you the resources you need to win the game, whereas Spinewoods Armadillo gives you life gain and a land fetch to make sure you survive early aggression while hitting your land drops. The armadillo is preferable over Herd Migration because it’s a large creature that synergizes with the rest of our gameplan.
Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant embodies the essence of win-more by being a huge monster that lets you drop huge monsters into play. I’ve always disliked her because of how narrow the use-case is where she adds anything meaningful to a game. That said, in this deck, her trigger allows a powerful value play to become lethal on the spot. The ideal Smuggler’s Surprise is Ghalta and Terror of the Peaks followed up by pretty much anything. The amount of direct damage this can yield is a beauty to behold. Additionally, if you drop Ghalta and the Vaultborn Tyrant, the cards you draw off of Tyrant go into your hand before you’ve committed to the creatures that drop in from Ghalta, making her even more effective potentially.
Tyrranax Rex is one of the most underrated cards in current Standard just because its toxic creates a clock even if your opponent has gained a ton of life, its ward 4 is the closest thing we get to hexproof these days, and it can't be countered. When I say it's underrated, it's really just because it is a ramp threat that isn't Atraxa, Grand Unifier, and so it often gets overlooked. I'm telling you, though, it's a powerhouse that fits this deck like a glove. We'll almost never get a poison kill off of it, but the eight power and trample damage will definitely help us get there.
The Secret Weapon Against Control
If you’ve ever played a high-cost stompy deck like this before, you’ve probably run into trouble with control. Traditional aggro decks can get under counter magic because their threats are often cheaper than counterspells which forces control players to rely on sweepers to survive. Stompy, on the other hand, is using large creatures that can be both swept off of the field or picked off by individual counterspells or removal spells. Our creatures were chosen carefully to be bad removal targets since most of them provide some kind of value upon entering the battlefield, but counterspells remain an issue.
Enter Cavern of Souls. The keen-eyed among you have probably noticed that most of our big threats are dinosaurs and even our ramp relies on a dinosaur in Topiary Stomper. Cavern naming dinosaur cleanly allows all of these spells to resolve and get those sweet ETBs. This is especially valuable with Vaultborn Tyrant because the ETB replaces itself in hand, but its death trigger becomes relevant as well if the control player lacks exile removal. Archdruid’s Charm is amazing in these matchups because it allows an instant-speed fetch to get the Cavern of Souls online. Waiting until your opponent taps out on your end step and then dropping a Cavern of Souls onto the battlefield will never get old if you ask me.
The Early Turns
The first few turns needs to be spent prioritizing ramp. This deck cannot do its thing until you’ve reached six mana and ideally you’ll have more like eight or nine. Charming Scoundrel is an absolute beauty here because it provides immediate value in the treasure token, but it can also provide early aggression that control mages have to answer. Against control, the wicked role is usually the way to go. In Midrange matchups or against aggro, the treasure is often correct so that you can go over the top sooner.
I will always find Topiary Stomper fascinating because it came out in Streets of New Capenna, but never saw any Standard play until March of the Machine which came out a whole year later because of Invasion of Zendikar. Combining Stomper and Invasion of Zendikar is nothing new since the domain deck has been so popular, but Stomper specifically slots into this deck nicely because it’s a four-power creature that triggers Vaultborn Tyrant and can get four damage on any target off of Terror of the Peaks. Given how this deck pops off in the end, it’s a welcome site both early and late.
In Conclusion
I’ve been playing this deck a fair amount on the ladder and, as of this writing, it’s maintained a 60% win rate across its various iterations. It feels like a deck that can win despite not fitting any of the established norms, and actually flies in the face of some conventional wisdom. Every time I’ve faced off with midrange, I feel like I’ll overpower them, and every time I’ve faced off against control (since adding 4x Cavern of Souls to the deck) I feel like I have the tools to face them. The weakest point is definitely aggro given that the deck can be slow to fire and doesn’t put a lot of stats online prior to the pop off. Spinewoods Armadillos are nice and the three Brotherhood’s End in the sideboard can help, but I may add more early interaction to shore up those matchups. Overall, though, this is a competitive deck for players who like big stompy monsters because, as my character Piggy Banks would say, “Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?”
Happy brewing!
