The Duskmourn streamer event was this past week, and it gave jank-minded creators like myself a chance to tinker with some absolutely busted new cards in a low-pressure environment where we could focus on experimentation. I was drawn to a ton of cards like many folks such as the overlords and Valgavoth, Terror Eater, but the splashy mythics weren't the only gems tucked into this set. The rare slot also has a ton of potential and today, I'm going to talk about a deck featuring The Jolly Balloon Man.
The Gimmick
The Jolly Balloon Man is basically the Reflection of Kiki-Jiki but as a standalone card. You pay one mana and tap it to get a copy of another creature you control, but the creature has haste and you sacrifice it at end of turn. In this case, the creature is also only a 1/1 flying balloon, so it isn't a great way to multiply large attacking creatures, but this does have one key feature such Kiki-Jiki cards don't have – it can copy legends.
Normally, making a legendary clone of a legendary creature is a terrible idea because you’ll lose one of them immediately. Of course, death triggers or strong enter-the-battlefield triggers can make this kind of play worth it. Enter our next guest.
Ratadrabik of Urborg has been living rent-free in my brain its release and this is the perfect excuse to bust him out again. Ratadrabik triggering on any legendary creature's death to make a 2/2 copy of it means that a legendary flying haste balloon that dies to the legend rule immediately makes a 2/2 flying, vigilant, haste zombie balloon. If Balloon Man copies Ratadrabik himself, you can start getting exponential copies very quickly. Not to mention the chance to get multiple Balloon Men that copy each other. You get the idea.
Pulling it Off
While this strategy sounds fun on paper, getting all these pieces together and the mana to execute is a bit tricky, which is why we have a suite of other legends, many from Duskmourn, to enable the combo and protect it.
Skrelv is awesome in any deck that requires a creature to survive for any amount of time and, in this case, it can be fed into our Ratadrabik engine to get a large force of toxic attackers in a pinch to close out the game. Often, your opponent will spend their first piece of removal on Skrelv which is one fewer piece of removal to hit your Ratadrabik or Balloon Man later on.
Marvin, Murderous Mimic is a bizarre card and when it's not breaking judges' brains trying to figure out how it resolves Sakashima, the Imposter, it is a two-drop that gives us additional instances of Skrelv's or Balloon Man's ability. Since these abilities require a tap, redundancy is welcome.
All the creatures we've described so far are inexpensive and legendary, so they can synergize with our engine and hopefully punch our opponents to death once the engine pops off. Arabella, Abandoned Doll and Toby, Beastie Befriender are here to synergize with this engine while adding either a punishing drain effect on attack or additional large token bodies that will increase our clock dramatically. By adding more damage to the board, we're able to end games quickly even if we don't get all of our engine pieces. One or two balloon copies of Toby can make a significant army, even if the token Tobies themselves die to the legend rule and a Ratadrabik isn't around yet to catch them.
The Interaction Suite
Unwanted Remake is an amazing card from Duskmourn because it gives unrestricted creature removal at one mana to white in Standard. That alone is worth the price of admission, but additionally powerful in this deck because the creature's controller manifests dread. If Ratadrabik is online, this can let us trade in one of our legends for a token copy and also a 2/2 Manifest Dread creature that might flip face up into one of our other valuable legends. The flexibility to target your own creatures with this card is excellent and I would encourage you to be open-minded as you play with it.
We also have two copies of Get Lost because enchantments are everywhere and some of the best cards in Standard at the moment. Speaking of.
The Strongest Card in the Deck
It's not from Duskmourn, but Caretaker's Talent is one of the strongest cards in the entire format if your deck contains white mana and any token generators. Since this deck contains many, the card is an absolute slam dunk. Being able to draw additional cards each turn cycle is massive and nobody does it better in Standard right now.
Impressions Upon Playing the Deck
With any Streamer Event deck, it's difficult to tell how well a deck will hold up once it's stress tested on the actual Arena ladder. Streamer Events generally feature the new cards heavily and rarely have as much interaction as we see in the competitive queues. Heck, you could argue that this list itself should include more cheap kill spells like Torch the Tower or Go for the Throat and that would be valid.
That said in the few games I played with it in the Streamer Event play queues, I was impressed with how often it popped off. I don't believe this is a mainstream competitive deck, but the felt more consistent than I expected, and I've done this kind of combo with Jaxis, the Troublemaker so know the potential. The Jolly Balloon Man feels fairly costed for how strong the effect is, and Caretaker's Talent adds the card advantage that past iterations of my Ratadrabik brews have lacked.
If you're looking for a deck that can show off some fun interactions in Duskmourn, this one is a great time and I highly recommend it. As always, though, if your goal is to rank up on the ladder quickly, this deck is probably going to be less consistent than a Gruul Surprise or red deck featuring Slickshot Showoff and Leyline of Resonance, but you'll see plenty of those decks in the coming weeks, I'm sure. For the fun-lovinganksters, I wholeheartedly recommend this beast.
Thank you for reading, and happy brewing!
