Every set, Wizards of the Coast prints rares and mythics that look super niche and, generally, are considered missed opportunities by the larger community. Brewers like me, though, look at these cards and it feels like WotC is saying, “I dare you to build around this thing.” And today, we're building around one such I-dare-you build around: Funeral Room // Awakening Hall.
The Build Around
Maybe I've oversold how niche this card is. A Bastion of Remembrance type effect for three mana is not bad on its face for aristocrat strategies and Commander players will likely lean on this card a fair amount, but in current Standard, no good aristocrat shells exist, so I doubt it will see much play. For our purposes today, though, it presents some interesting synergies.
Funeral Room can kill our opponents if a lot creatures die on our side of the board at once, and Awakening Hall can put a lot of creatures onto the board simultaneously. If those creatures can die immediately, we could theoretically drain our opponent out of the game in one go, especially if we can establish multiple Funeral Rooms on the field or double the death triggers in some other way.
The Kill Shot
Drivnod, Carnage Dominus finally fits a Standard deck because it can double triggers of Funeral Room and it comes in for free off the Awakening Hall trigger. The current build only has one copy of Drivnod, but I did experiment with more in previous builds. Four proved a bit excessive due to the legend rule killing off excess copies before anything else died. But how did they die, you ask?
It would be ideal to have an infinite sac outlet like Bontu the Glorified or Woe Strider in the deck, but we don't currently have any in Standard that wouldn't complicate our mana, so I opted to go without. Instead, we're leveraging four copies of Harvester of Misery because it can be early removal if necessary and it nukes the board upon entering. This will kill the vast majority of our creatures that come in alongside it and trigger our Funeral Room a whole bunch. This is obviously best in multiples, and it has the possibility of destroying our opponent's board should we not have enough to end the game on the spot.
One word of caution, though: be very careful about when you fire this and keep in mind that power is also reduced. If you’re counting on combat damage to drive home the win, you might not have it after Harvester cleans up the blockers.
The Ramp
I know we’re going in reverse order here, but just go with as we Tarantino our way through the build. Unlocking the door to Awakening Halls is the inciting incident that enables our win. This trigger is going to cost us a whopping eight mana, so we can’t exactly rely on getting there fairly.
Aftermath Analyst and Blossoming Tortoise both mill us and allow reanimating lands. The amount of ramp this can provide is pretty nuts as we've seen over the last year with “Analyst” becoming a whole archetype in Standard. Those decks often included fetch lands and Nissa, Resurgent Animist which is a consideration for this build, but I've been enjoying the all-in mill dork philosophy for the moment. If we could consistently draw more cards and had more places to sink the mana, I think Nissa would perform better. As it stands, the turtle and detective get it done.
This deck is the perfect opportunity to test out Hedge Shredder and my analysis so far is mixed. On the one hand, it allows other mill creatures like Gnawing Vermin or Overlord of the Balemurk to ramp us, but with it costing four mana to establish and not milling anything upon entering there's a high risk of it providing zero value in game. When it goes off, though, it's incredible – especially with cards like Underground Mortuary that can surveil lands effectively directly to play.
Important note: if Hedge Shredder is down when a Blossoming Tortoise trigger resolves, be sure to take lands that were already in the graveyard if possible. If you grab a land already marked to return off of Hedge Shredder, you'll apply redundant effects and possibly miss out on value.
The Graveyard Loops
In addition to our land millers, we also need a critical mass of creatures that we can throw into our graveyard that the Halls can bring back. Duskmourn has provided an absolute home run in this regard.
The overlord cycle are all awesome and Overlord of the Balemurk is no exception. This two-mana enchantment mills four cards and brings back a creature or walker to your hand. Two-mana mill four is already worth the price of admission, but it drawing nearly any creature in the yard is incredible. Milling four and replacing itself with selection just rules and fits any graveyard strategy perfectly. Additionally, it's a creature in our graveyard that the rest of our cards care about.
Given that our deck is very dependent on getting the Funeral Room in play, we need some way to tutor for it. Given that we're filling our graveyard aggressively, plucking any permanent out of it is as good as a full-blown tutor effect. Coati Scavenger gives us that while also putting a two-toughness creature online that the Harvester can brutally squish when the big turn rolls around.
The Conclusion
I've experimented with this deck a bit on the Standard Best-of-3 ladder and I fear the deck is, in fact, a gimmick, but it's one that I've been having fun with if it doesn't win as often as I'd like. The sideboard is designed to use creatures to attack enchantments like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void as they shut down our strategy completely. Unfortunately, cards like Lord Skitter and Tranquil Frillback still present considerable challenges since they're difficult to prepare for and can blow us out of the water. I believe this deck as it stands is a solid base, but could likely be improved to be more consistent and resilient that might include adding an additional color. If you have on what that could be, please leave a comment below and let me knowp>
As always, thank you for reading, and happy brewing!
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