Welcome Magic lovers!
What a weekend! It’s always such a treat to watch the best Magic: the Gathering players in the world duel one another for the title of Pro Tour Champion, but its not often that we get to see them do it in a Standard format that, only one week prior, welcomed its eleventh set, Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Eleven sets make this a massive card pool for Standard, and with so many mythic and rare powerhouse, build-around cards being jammed into this strange new set, the player base at large waited with bated breath to see what the finest minds in the game would cook up.
Not a lot, as it turns out.
While there were some flares of innovation here and there among the field, most pro tour participants relied on the tried-and-true strategies that had thus far led the Standard competitive tournament scene: Esper Midrange, Boros Convoke, Temur Worldsoul’s Rage and Domain, which combined to make up a whopping 60% of the decks in the tournament. One outlier, the ‘flash-in-the-pan’ Four-color Legends deck finally established itself in the pantheon of Standard’s tier 1 archetypes after picking up key card, Honest Rutstein, from Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
However, it was the other 12% of the field that took a chance and brought something new to the tournament that had many players glued to the official Pro Tour stream and buzzing online. Today, we’ll briefly cover a couple of these sweet rogue decks which may have untapped potential to be mined with more tuning, or when Standard rotates in a couple of months.
Our first list is one that’s mostly built around cards from the new set, specifically Caustic Bronco, a.k.a. the Snorse, which has the ability to not only draw extra cards for its pilot in exchange for life, à la Dark Confidant, but can also burn the opponent out by using its saddle ability and attacking. This led a couple of Pro Tour competitors to craft a deck attempting to not only get value from Caustic Bronco by drawing extra cards, but to also use it as a win condition when combined with ridiculously expensive spells like Shadow of Mortality.
Say hello to Orzhov Bronco.
The game state that the deck is trying to set up is to untap with a Caustic Bronco in play, cast Insatiable Avarice to search the library for Shadow of Morality and place it on top, then saddle the Bronco and attack, revealing the Shadow and causing the opponent to lose fifteen life. It only requires a couple of hits with an early creature or triggers from Sheoldred, the Apocalypse to either put an opponent within range of the combo or finish them off once their life total has been decimated.
The rest of the shell built around this combo consists of cheap creatures with at least three power, such as Tenacious Underdog, Anointed Peacekeeper, Steel Seraph and Raffine’s Informant, if its pilot has connived a spell away. Anointed Peacekeeper also does great work here by forcing an opponent to play their sweepers or spot removal off-curve in order to buy a turn or two to set up the combo.
Steel Seraph is a criminally underplayed creature in Standard that not only saddles the Caustic Bronco, but also happens to dodge the most commonly played removal in the format in Cut Down and Go for the Throat. Revealing a Seraph on top with a Bronco to casually deal six to the opponent is just icing on the cake.
Skrelv, Defector Mite makes an appearance here mostly to act as a bodyguard for Caustic Bronco, however it also allows the pilot to push through damage by making a creature effectively unblockable, which is all this deck is trying to do. With the Caustic Bronco and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse draining the opponent, the deck only needs a few swings with some creatures to put the opponent within lethal damage range.
In addition, Insatiable Avarice is not only a powerful three-mana draw spell that also sets up the combo, it can also be pointed at an opponent to get in those last few points of damage. Backed up by premium black removal spells like Cut Down and Go for the Throat, this deck can easily manage the board, giving itself the time it needs to quickly set up the win.
In the sideboard we find additional disruption in Duress, Invasion of Gobakhan and the new, excellent Aven Interrupter, as well as graveyard hate for the Aftermath Analyst decks in Kutzil’s Flanker and Rest in Peace. New hotness Pest Control is here to keep Boros Convoke in check, while the final few slots are used for a couple of copies of additional removal/protection spell, Touch the Spirit Realm.
A fun, new midrange deck with a powerful back-door combo built into its value engine will definitely have many players testing and tuning it to work out any consistency kinks. Issues with the deck include Caustic Bronco being quite soft to Cut Down, as well as potentially drawing an un-castable fifteen mana creature off the top when one doesn’t want it. We’ll have to wait and see if this deck can make a dent in Standard going forward, or if the Snorse has to wait in its stable until rotation.
Our next list may not be a true rogue deck, since its core is built around the proven, two-card combo of Nissa, Resurgent Animist and Aftermath Analyst, but its definitely a very uniquely powerful shell. This is Jund Analyst.
The deck operates in a similar vein as its Temur counterpart, as it tries to get its bevy of New Cappena sacrifice lands into the graveyard, either by playing them naturally, or milling them with Aftermath Analyst or Shigeki, Jukai Visionary. From there it’s a simply matter of sacrificing Analyst or casting a Splendid Reclamation in order to get all those lands into play again, generating a ton of mana off of Nissa, Resurgent Animist, and using that to cast a massive Worldsoul’s Rage to finish off the opponent. There are a few different tricks that this deck can get up to, however, and they revolve around the two new powerful black spells from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Pillage the Bog and Pitiless Carnage.
One of the most important cards in the Temur version of this deck is Memory Deluge, which allows the pilot to dump all the mana that the deck is capable of generating into a way to dig through their library at an alarming rate in order to find that Worldsoul’s Rage or Doppelgang to finish the game.
However, with no blue card draw spells, the Jund version relies on the new sorcery, Pillage the Bog to do its digging. When one considers how quickly this deck can get up to ten or more lands in play, it becomes readily apparent how deep into the deck this powerful tutor effect often digs in order to find what the pilot needs. The power of paying a paltry two mana to look at ten or twelve cards in order to find whichever tool one needs is extremely potent in a deck like this. Add to that the fact that one can plot it in order to play it the following turn with mana up to pay for No More Lies or Make Disappear, and it gets even more appealing.
The same can be said of the other crucial card advantage spell, Pitiless Carnage. This haymaker sorcery can be plotted and simply left to simmer in exile, waiting patiently until the pilot has either an Analyst in play or a Splendid Reclamation in hand. Then it’s a simple matter of floating all their mana, casting Pitiless Carnage, sacrificing all their lands in order to draw thirteen or fourteen cards, then using the floating mana to bring all the lands back with the aforementioned Analyst or Reclamation. With a Spelunking in play, one gets to even use all those reincarnated lands immediately, and with the enormous influx of cards drawn, it’s fairly straightforward to end the game from there.
Aside from the Worldsoul’s Rage, Gix’s Command is the only other interactive spell in the deck, mostly as a nod to the prevalence of Esper Midrange. The sideboard is where most of the interaction lives, with a suite of Cut Down and Go for the Throat, as well as Path of Peril for the Boros Convoke match. Pick Your Poison and Tear Asunder are here to keep Rest in Peace or Unlicensed Hearse off the battlefield, while Duress comes in against Azorius Control. Titan of Industry shows up as a one-of here as sort of a plan B finisher against decks running multiple Stone Brain.
With this compelling new take on an already powerful core entering standard, players will now have to determine which version of the deck, Temur or Jund, is the best approach for their expected meta game. Having another powerful choice is never a bad thing!
While there were several more decks that debuted at Pro Tour Seattle that we haven’t broached today, rest assured I’ll be exploring them very soon, so stay tuned for more!
