Aetherdrift brought new tools to toy with, and today, we will cover a deck that takes full advantage of graveyard movement: 4-color Insidious Roots. With its unpredictability and recursion engine, this deck is one of the newest innovative pieces that the new set has brought to us, but does it have what it takes to compete against the standard top decks? Let's find out!
4c Insidious Roots Standard Deck Overview
4c Insidious Roots is a graveyard-focused midrange deck that thrives on moving cards in and out of exile to generate an overwhelming board presence. If you enjoy a deck that rewards careful sequencing and graveyard manipulation, 4c Insidious Roots is a strong contender in Standard. Let's see now why!
Best Card Choices for 4c Insidious Roots in Standard
The best choices for this strategy include recursion spells that bring back key permanents, enablers that exile creatures for extra value, utility pieces that keep the engine running, and, of course, Insidious Roots.
Key Cards
As the name suggests, this deck revolves around Insidious Roots, a card that creates a plant token whenever one or more creatures leave your graveyard. Plus, it adds a +1/+1 counter to each plant you control.
With a deck focused on moving cards between your graveyard and other places, it's easy to generate multiple tokens in a single turn—sometimes as many as three or four—especially if you have multiple copies of Insidious Roots in play.
To make this work, I rely on several cards that trigger whenever a card leaves your graveyard. Cache Grab is my favorite—it lets you return any permanent from your graveyard to your hand, which is crucial for getting back additional copies of Insidious Roots, or planeswalkers like Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, and Ketramose, the New Dawn.
Dredger's Insight is a bit more limited, only returning lands, artifacts, and creatures from the cards you mill. But the upside is that you gain one life every time an artifact or creature leaves, which is great for surviving aggressive decks like Burn and giving you time to set up your game plan.
Overlord of the Balemurk is another solid choice. For just two mana, it returns non-avatar creatures or planeswalkers from your graveyard to your hand. The bonus here is that it doesn't limit you to the cards you mill, making it incredibly versatile.
These three cards work together to fuel your graveyard and get key cards back into your hand, effectively acting as payoff cards for things leaving the graveyard.
Agatha's Soul Cauldron is a game-changer in this deck. It's the key card to consistently make creatures leave your graveyard while also pumping your other creatures. What's even better is its ability to copy the abilities of creatures you've exiled. If you've exiled a creature like Molt Tender, for example, your plant tokens can keep exiling cards to trigger Insidious Roots repeatedly.
Adding Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler to the mix makes things even better. With Tyvar in play, your tokens essentially gain haste, allowing them to activate their abilities right away. When paired with Insidious Roots, your tokens become nearly endless, especially if you have enough fodder in the graveyard.
The Mana Dorks
This deck can be set up quickly, thanks to early mana dorks like Llanowar Elves and Molt Tender. Not only do they help you fix your mana, but they also enable you to cast multiple spells in a turn, speeding up your setup.
The Utility Creatures
Next, we have utility creatures like Cenote Scout and Rubblebelt Maverick. Cenote Scout mills the graveyard when it enters the battlefield, which helps build your graveyard. Rubblebelt Maverick does the same but has the added benefit of being able to exile itself from the graveyard, which is useful because it doesn't require any payoffs. Because of this, I like to keep Rubblebelt Maverick in the graveyard and return other creatures or permanents instead of it.
Ketramose, the New Dawn is a critical addition to the deck. It provides essential card advantage, and once you have seven cards exiled, it can turn into an indestructible creature for just three mana, putting pressure on your opponents.
Scavenging Ooze serves several roles: it helps make your creatures bigger, abuses your exile effects, and, thanks to Agatha's Soul Cauldron, gives your other creatures the exile abilities as well. Plus, the life gain from Scavenging Ooze is invaluable when facing aggressive decks, helping you stay alive while you set up your plays.
4c Insidious Roots Standard Sideboard Guide
Note that this deck doesn't have main-deck removal, so we need to run at least a few copies of it post-sideboard.
Haywire Mite is our main way to deal with opposing artifacts and enchantments that could otherwise be tough to handle. I want to pause here and emphasize that graveyard hate isn't as much of a concern for this deck as long as Insidious Roots is in play. This deck doesn't rely on keeping creatures or cards in the graveyard. Instead, those hate cards will only help fuel your Ketramose, the New Dawn plan.
With that in mind, we also include Anoint with Affliction to deal with pesky creatures like Preacher of the Schism and Mosswood Dreadknight, which are otherwise hard to kill.
Skyfisher Spider is another tool for taking out troublesome permanents and hate cards, such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. Additionally, when it dies, you gain a lot of life, especially if you have multiple creatures in your graveyard.
Obstinate Baloth and Tranquil Frillback both serve a similar role in gaining life, but Tranquil Frillback is useful for hating on graveyards, artifacts, and enchantments. On the other hand, Obstinate Baloth is a must-have against Liliana of the Veil.
Tips and Tricks for Playing 4c Insidious Roots in Standard
- I've mentioned this before, but I really want to emphasize it: on turn two, your main priority should be playing Insidious Roots. If you don't have it, the next card to focus on is Cache Grab, as it helps you find Insidious Roots.
- If you don't need to create a token immediately by exiling your own creatures with Agatha's Soul Cauldron, I recommend waiting until your opponent's turn to do it. Trust me, it's not fun to fall into the trap of an end-of-turn Free the Fae that mills a Valgavoth, Terror Eater, only for your opponent to hit it with a Zombify on their turn.
- Also, keep in mind that with Scavenging Ooze and a Llanowar Elves exiled via Agatha's Soul Cauldron, you can use each creature to add green mana and then use the Ooze's ability to exile another card from the graveyard. You can bring Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler into the mix for even more value.
Thanks for reading!