Welcome Magic lovers!
As the Duskmourn Standard season heats up, starting with the World Championships being held this weekend at MagicCon Las Vegas, there has been no shortage of spicy brews flying back and forth on Magic Online and elsewhere.
Of all the new toys released in Duskmourn: House of Horror, it's the cycle of Duskmourn heavy-hitters, the Overlords, that have been making the biggest impact on the format. While established tier 1 decks like Domain Ramp wasted no time slotting in a playset of the almost tailor-made Overlord of the Hauntwoods, and white-based, token-heavy decks leaning on Caretaker's Talent quickly adopted Overlord of the Mistmoors, some intrepid grinders out there went even further.
Snatching a 2nd place finish in the Magic Online challengespan class="correction-yellow" style="background: yellow">this past Thursday, it was this Overlord-heavy, Naya Control deck that caught many players’ eyes:
The Plan
Running no less than ten Overlords, with playsets of both Overlord of the Hauntwoods and Overlord of the Boilerbilges, backed up by a pair of Overlord of the Mistmoors, this deck is looking to get some serious value out of its cards. No Atraxa, Grand Unifier is necessary here, as all the Overlords can easily be hard-cast late in the game to go over the top of whatever the opponent is up to. Despite almost exclusively running green, white, and red mana-producing lands, with only a couple of Hedge Maze to provide blue, this deck still manages to play powerful domain card Leyline Binding to good effect. This is, of course, due to the impending Overlord of the Hauntwoods providing its signature Everywhere land token, allowing the pilot to have all of the land types in play as early as turn three.
Not only is this excellent at ramping into a Sunfall to sweep pesky creature decks on turn four, but it also helps accelerate the deck into a second, hard-cast Overlord of the Hauntwoods. Once the deck has ramped up to seven, eight, or more mana, it can start slamming Overlords onto the battlefield as creatures, or absolutely explode with a card like Doppelgang, which copies any impending Overlords that may be lying around, bringing them into play as creatures, in addition to Leyline Binding if the situation calls for additional removal. The most common path to victory is simply having an impending Overlord of the Boilerbilges in play and copying that a few times with Doppelgang to do a tremendous amount of damage out of nowhere, which is often lethal.
The Interaction
Interaction with the opponent is handled by the efficient catch-all removal spell, Get Lost, in addition to the aforementioned Leyline Binding. Sunfall is still the strongest sweeper in Standard, and the playset in this deck does a lot of heavy lifting against the midrange and aggressive creature decks. Absent are Temporary Lockdown and Lightning Helix, which some Domain Ramp lists were experimenting with previously alongside Ancient Cornucopia. This deck eschews the early game interaction in order to ramp as quickly as possible. Once it's gotten to four mana, the four damage dealt by Overlord of the Boilerbilges is usually enough to keep the board under control until more pressure can be brought to bear.
A single Pawpatch Formation is almost certainly in the 'flex slot' here and can be substituted for something else, though the green instant is a nice way to manage non-creature permanents, in particular the Talent cycle from Bloomburrow.
The Card Advantage
A flood of card advantage comes in the form of four Up the Beanstalk, which trigger off of each Overlord being cast, even for its impending cost. That means the deck can smoothly curve a turn two Up the Beanstalk into a turn three Overlord of the Hauntwoods, ramping its pilot and drawing them a card. From there, it's a simple matter to keep triggering the Beanstalk, as every spell in the deck aside from Spelunking and Get Lost is technically five mana or more. One thing pilots of this deck must take care to monitor is the size of one's library, as having more than two Up the Beanstalk in play can quickly lead to discarding on cleanup step each turn, followed by the danger of decking oneself if the game goes long.
The Mana
With twenty-seven lands, it's clear the deck desperately wants to make all of its land drops, plus ramp, in order to start throwing Overlords around for full price and bring the hammer down to end it all with Doppelgang. A full set of Cavern of Souls seems great here to ensure cheap countermagic out of decks like Dimir Tempo and Azorius Reanimator doesn't have a chance to ruin the deck's plans. Resolving an Overlord of the Hauntwoods as early as possible is absolutely critical to the success of this deck's gameplan, and as an untapped land which produces three different colors in order to cast all of the creatures in the deck, Cavern of Souls greatly increases the chance of that happening.
Spelunking also has an important role to play when it comes to mana production, ensuring the plethora of come-into-play-tapped lands that the deck runs don't cause it to fall too far behind on curve when facing more sleek, low-to-the-ground decks. This allows the deck to smoothly curve into a hard-cast Overlord a turn sooner than would typically be possible, enabling the pilot to go over the top of the opponent much more quickly.
The Sideboard
The sideboard is fairly straightforward, with a set of Elspeth's Smite to give the deck additional ways to stave off the red-based, aggressive strategies like Gruul, while Exorcise is a nice, flexible answer to everything from Caretaker's Talent and Urabrask's Forge, to Bloodletter of Aclazotz or Archfiend of the Dross.
A pair of Ghost Vacuum come in against graveyard-based decks, which can also be attacked with a trio of one of the best sideboard cards in Standard right now, Tranquil Frillback, which is so versatile that it can be sideboarded in almost every matchup.
A playset of Negate rounds things out as a way to stop Mono-White Control decks which rely heavily on key cards Caretaker's Talent, Archangel Elspeth, and Jace, the Perfected Mind.
Conclusion
A powerful, consistent ramp deck running a ton of built-in card advantage via its creatures and Up the Beanstalk, backed up by excellent interaction and an 'oops, I win' haymaker on the top end? This could be the best deck in Standard at the moment. Only time will tell.
Will this be the new face of the Domain Ramp decks going forward? Will the reign of Atraxa, Grand Unifier as the best creature to ramp into in Standard end, as the Overlords assert their dominance? What do you think of this new twist on an established Standard archetype? Let us know in the comments below!