Mardu MTG Combo Deck Tech: Mobilize Aristocrats Strategy

It's Time to Mobilize the Aristocrats with Mardu Combo!

Explore the best color combos for aggro decks in MTG with our Mardu Combo deck. Discover key cards, strategies, and new mechanics like Mobilize!

There is an ongoing argument in both Standard and Pioneer currently. What color combination is the best for aggressive decks? We have seen people try out Jeskai Aggro to try and incorporate the best of both worlds between Azorius Aggro, and Boros Aggro. Some like to stick with Gruul Aggro because of the high rolls that it allows for, and there is also an argument that sometimes all you need is mono red - and the results have proven as much in major events. There has been a bit of a surge of some Mardu Aristocrat/Sacrifice decks, and today's list will follow that to some degree. We went a little bit more aggro-based, but there is a combo element to it, along with a healthy sideboard that should provide for balanced gameplay. We will look to get a bunch of creatures onto the board, and then create a bunch more based on the amount that we have, while punishing the opponent when they die. If that isn't enough, the go-wide strategy should also allow us to swing for ample damage at an ample pace.

Total Cards:

A new ability called Mobilize that is being brought to us in Tarkir Dragonstorm is going to allow us to pull off some pretty powerful swings in combat. Mobilize allows us to create a bunch of tapped and attacking 1/1 tokens based on either the number behind it, or circumstances that pertain to "X." Something that is particularly fun is that we can benefit from our creatures dying, because the mobilize ability requires us to sacrifice the creatures that we get from mobilizing at the beginning of our end step. This is yet another deck that can allow us to win on the end step which is always fun. Another fundamental reason why I think the deck is good is because we are rewarded for something that would normally be considered a setback. If you find enough ways to turn negatives into positives, it usually can translate into the small margins that win you a match. Enough of me blabbing. Let's take a look at the cool new cards!

Key New Cards

This is a fun card, and I wanted to include two copies in the main deck so that we could hopefully use it to buy ourselves more time to pull off a win. It's also just nice to not have to worry about an opponent messing up your plan on your turn. There is an additional copy of this creature in the sideboard if we need it. The fact that it has a power of two or less is also helpful, as it helps us pull off additional shenanigans with the combos that we have.

This is the creature that sparked the idea for the deck. It was too tempting not to try. It also has a power of two or less, which I promise I will eventually get to why that's relevant. Once we go wide, we will be able to make a ton of creatures, and then use cards like Vengeful Bloodwitch to punish our opponent for letting us have things. The fact that it has deathtouch is also helpful, and allows us to use it as a great blocker. It also threatens as an attacker, because it can basically attack into anything which is helpful when having such a strong attack trigger.

I told you we had a healthy sideboard! Yes, I know, Sunfall is still a thing, but a lot of decks are using Day of Judgment right now, or maybe some other type of damage-based effect. We can easily sacrifice one of the many creatures that we have on the board and protect the rest. This card as an instant with a cost that isn't too high to us seems like an auto-include when insulating ourselves against board wipes.

This card is really something. It allows us to almost create a sort of prison/lockout effect on our opponent after sideboarding. Jace is a really important planeswalker in Standard right now, and we have a good way to deal with him in this card. Artifact decks are also becoming more prevalent, so we like to be able to shut down that stuff too. If you come across a deck centered around Agatha's Soul Cauldron, this just about turns off everything. It is nice to have this creature as a decoy that demands removal while behind the scenes we are building our Mardu Army that kills them before they know it.

Built-In Combos

We have a few combos in the deck. The main reason that we like almost everything to be power two or less is because we will use Delney, Streetwise Lookout to cause additional triggered abilities from our creatures. The deck is effectively centered around a go-wide strategy, and other triggered abilities, so this is incredibly relevant to our success.

If that doesn't work as well, we can simply gain and drain them to death by going wide and mobilizing, then sacrificing a ton of creatures to trigger Vengeful Bloodwitch and Starscape Cleric. Ideally, we will have so many triggers that it is almost impossible to deal with the life the opponent will lose during combat, or on the end step.

Oh yeah, and if that isn't enough, we also have attack triggers that go off with Arabella, Abandoned Doll, who has triggers that revolve around attacking with creatures that have power two or less. This is relevant even more because Delney can make this trigger an additional time. Theoretically, we could kill the opponent by attacking, and just by ending our turn. It is possible that we have finishers at multiple points in our turn outside of combat. This is integral to the well-rounded approach we take in the deck.

Can you tell how excited I am for Tarkir? I hope you are too. The cards that have been coming out have really greased the wheels of my creativity. We will be having early access on Wednesday, April 2nd, so be sure to tune in for that! I hope that you enjoyed this deck review, and we will have it live in action during early access, so come on by!

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I am a Magic The Gathering competitive player, and streamer. I specialize in homebrew decks. My favorite formats are: Standard, Pioneer (Explorer on Arena), and EDH. I first started playing MTG in 2001, and have played on and off since then.

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Explore the power of Rakdos Dragons in this midrange Magic: The Gathering deck. Unleash combos, removal, and ramp for competitive edge in Standard.

This Deck is Sneaky Good! Get Ready for RAKDOS Dragons!

You didn't think I could only give you one dragon deck, did you? I honestly saw too many fun options to do just Boros, so today I'm bringing you another. This one steers toward the more midrange, good ol' honest Magic side of things. I wanted to center a deck around something that is more consistent with the status quo of dragons: carnage and destruction. We have plenty of removal in this deck, and a creature that doubles as a board wipe when needed. Since we aren't doing a super fancy combo in this deck, I wanted to add element of ramp to get to the higher mana spells that we have in the deck. We will be able to use early creatures to help out with that, and also a new fancy artifact. We will torch the board and force our opponents to be more resilient than we are, while flying over the top of what they might manage to keep on the board. Let's take a look at the deck and then I'll tell you some of my favorite things about it. You can see some of the fun that we will have right off the bat with this deck. We are looking to smash aggro decks, and still punish other decks that don't play to the board. Although this one has fewer dragons on paper, we have a few permanents that can actually turn into them, and this leads to some cheeky interactions. Let's check out some of the new cards from Tarkir Dragonstorm that are in this deck, and then we will go over some fun combos! Key New Cards

Demons Are Getting New Toys, and This Deck is ROTTEN

We have seen the vast majority of the cards that will be released in Tarkir Dragonstorm, and the excitement is definitely building. Magic players are expecting this to meet the hype that Duskmourn brought us, and hopefully more. We were left a bit underwhelmed with Aetherdrift, but this is proving to be all but a filler set. It's something that is so easy to be excited for. Who doesn't love dragons?! Anyone with an ounce of nerdiness is interested as soon as they hear the word. Although I don't have a dragon deck for you today, I am going to do my obligatory Mono Black Deck for the new set. If you have read my articles in the past, you know that I do one every set - and this one is no different. We finally have enough cards from Tarkir to give me what I needed to make a new-and-improved Demons list for you. We have a new one that will let us pull off some combos on earlier turns, and hopefully have a better body early on to put pressure on aggro decks. I think that should give us a better shot against the meta, since the threat of a 5 damage crackback can definitely give someone extra things to consider in combat phases. He also isn't a bad creature to discard, as he has an ability to activate from the graveyard. This will help us against the bounce/pixie decks. We have ample graveyard hate and removal for the graveyard combo decks, so I like most of our matchups against the current meta. The only thing we will have to see with time is if the meta shifts with this monster of a new set. We really have some fun cards to add here, and we are adding another type of threat to the deck. We have historically not used our graveyard for much, but now we are able to get additional value from it with a new addition. Our sideboard even has a dragon with an adventure that reads like The Meathook Massacre! I've said enough, let's check out these cards. Relevant New Cards

Free Dragons = Turn 4 Wins!

We are officially in the perpetual spoiler season of the MTG year, and Wizards has not been disappointing us. Most people can get behind a set centered largely around dragons, and it definitely helps that the plane itself is one that we have wanted to see them bring back for a long time. Over a decade later, we are going back to Tarkir. I played a good bit of Magic and did a lot of deck building the last time we had some fun dragons on Arena, and I knew that this set was going to call me back to those days. My favorite archetype a couple of years ago was Boros Dragons. I largely played that in the Alchemy format, but I am going to bring you a Boros Dragons Standard Deck today. We are going to take advantage of a combo that is used in Standard currently, but we are going to use a different payoff this time. We are going to cast dragons for FREE and then either they will have the opponent dead just from entering, or we will hopefully have a way to give them all haste! We will take a look at the new cards that are awesome. Then I'll let you know about the combo that will help us get there. We want to keep the board as clear as we can for our dragons and then slam them all on the board at once to clean things up. We also have some smaller creatures that we can use to chump block earlier in the game. When needed, we also have board wipes to deal with other creatures. New Cards from Tarkir Dragonstorm

I See a Monument and I want it Painted Black

It's been a few weeks since Aetherdrift came out, and we are starting to see the cards that are standing out in the meta. We didn't expect the set to change things too much with regard to what we have been seeing. What we did get from it is a nice supplement to many other decks. Although we did not get a ton of format-shaping cards, we have seen a couple that have lit up fringe archetypes. What I've brewed for today plays off of a familiar archetype, and it was one that we kind of already had, but it allows us to pivot in a certain way and get additional value from it that we may not have gotten in the past. One of the biggest things that our deck can do is have plenty of action on the end step/cleanup step. It's an interesting scenario because usually when we think of the cleanup step at the end of each turn, we remove damage, and we discard to hand size. Usually discarding to hand size is pretty much the final step, and there aren't any triggers... until now. We will be using Monument to Endurance to have triggers when we discard to hand size, and get additional value from it. Now we don't care if we end the turn with nine or ten cards in hand, because we are going to benefit from it. This will help us possibly get in some finishing damage against our opponent, or get extra value. It is worth noting that this will cause triggered abilities on the cleanup step, and this is something that our opponents can respond to. This has historically been a point in the turn where no player can respond to actions. We'll take a look at the relevant cards in the deck, and then I'll detail a few fun combos that we may see during gameplay. Relevant Cards

We've had a Couple of Weeks to Try Achievements on MTG Arena, and I have Opinions

The economy on MTG Arena has always been a pain point, and a grand debate over how far a digital version of a card game should go to ensure players feel as if they are getting proper value for their time. Wizards has two different versions of its beloved game on the internet, and they both seem to have their benefits and drawbacks. On February 11, Arena launched the Achievement System to reward players for hitting milestones in-game, and completing specific tasks. While it is always fun to do these kinds of things in each game, something that gamers always do is assess whether the reward for doing so in-game is worth putting forth the extra effort for the task. While there are some things in the achievement tab that I believe to be kind of fun, and certain things that I know people will want, I view the entire thing as largely a waste of time. Today we will look at why the new feature on Arena simply isn't enough for what the game should have, and what it could be. The Good and The Bad There are plenty of things that we love about Arena, with how it is the easiest way to play our favorite decks from Standard, and not spend thousands of dollars in doing so. It is probably the most efficient way to try out decks. We also love the wildcard system. Although it is not the easiest to obtain them, it is great that a rare/mythic wildcard could buy a rare/mythic card that is of any value and it still just costs one wildcard. This was especially helpful in getting a play set of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. I still don't have a play set in paper simply because I don't want to spend that much money on it, but on Arena it was easy. I had the wildcards to do what I needed. The only part where this may be lacking is the economy itself. What if we could earn wildcards for hitting certain achievements (I.E. the achievement tab giving us wildcards instead of sleeves, etc.)? I believe that the rewards from this new feature being solely cosmetic underscores the ongoing issue of the economy on Arena simply not being enough for us.

Recapping the Pro Tour and Examining the Deck that ALMOST Obliterated Us All!

Pro Tour Aetherdrift has concluded, and it was no surprise that Domain is still the best deck in the format. It is too powerful, and the high amount of mana availability simply provides too much value for other decks to consistently have a chance against it. Matt Nass was able to secure the win in the mirror match, as Domain Overlords were the most popular deck in the top 8. Since we have a new set that just came out, that calls for innovation and some overall spice. The deck that we will examine today isn't exactly a new concept in the meta, but it certainly is something that nobody previously has had the stones to enter as a list in a Pro Tour Event. There were a couple of well-known pro players with this list, including Javier Dominguez, who has been known for having some unique decks in the competitive circuit. Although Javier didn't do as well as we normally see this past weekend, Christoffer Larsen nearly made the top 8 with this list. The deck went 9-1 in Constructed, and it's safe to say that it was one of the top performers on that side of things. Had Larsen maybe won one more match in Limited, he would likely have been in the top 8. It goes without saying that this deck has a spot in the current meta, and probably has some legs in Standard. It was something that was rather unexpected in the event, sure, but the high roll of the combo within the deck is undeniable. Even without the combo that the deck has, outside of that, it is simply a Golgari Midrange Shell. Those decks always carry a competitive win rate, so everyone has to keep it on the radar either way. We will take a look at the deck, and then I'll go over the combo, then see if we can figure out why the deck is seeing a resurgence. Obliterator is an incredibly fun card. Everyone wants it to have a home in some format, because there are few things more satisfying than watching your opponent sit there trying to figure out which land(s) they are going to keep, or deciding if they want to keep playing after they were just forced to sacrifice all of their permanents. We historically think of this interaction happening during combat. What makes this deck fun is that it can happen during combat, or with a simple one - mana fight spell. Something else that is noteworthy is the fact that this deck plays only 23 lands. My best explanation for it is that the spell that allows you to fight for one mana also allows you to get any basic land from the deck for the same price. I think that this almost treats it as having 27 lands, and in turn helps figure out what cards to remove in order to squeeze in the extra spell. Let's take a look at the relevant cards, then we will see why it's back and better than before.

This Deck is Sneaky Good! Get Ready for RAKDOS Dragons!