Aetherdrift Orzhov Combo Deck: Aristocrats in MTG Standard

These Aetherdrift Aristocrats are Racing to Victory!

Discover the new Orzhov Sacrifice Combo Deck for Aetherdrift in MTG Standard. Explore top cards, strategies, and deck tech for competitive play!

We are coming to the end of spoiler season, and we are ramping up for early access for Aetherdrift. Almost all of the cards have been revealed, so Magic players are dashing to find the new deck that will work for them. This is an exciting time for creators as well, because it is our chance to make predictions on what the most impactful cards will be. We can straight up make a prediction, we can come out with a top 5 or 10, or we can theory craft new decks. I'm going to be dropping a few decks over the next couple of days that I think will be really fun to play in Standard, and that I will be playing in early access for Aetherdrift! Here is a look at the first deck I made that is an Orzhov Sacrifice Combo Deck!

Total Cards:

This new Orzhov Creation looks to take advantage of a lot of low-mana high-value creatures. We have multiple different sacrifice outlets, and a couple of different ways to interact with our graveyard. Most of the creatures are two mana value or lower, so we can even use a card from Foundations to bring them all back at once! We will draw a ton of cards, drain our opponent's life total, and have tons of blockers for the various aggro decks that we may come across. We can even punish the opponent for killing our creatures. The deck also features 23 lands due to the fact that our curve is pretty low, and we can operate pretty well with two or three mana. You might be wondering: "OK, so what is actually new about the deck?" We are looking to take advantage of the Start Your Engines mechanic that has been brought to us in this set. If you are unfamiliar with how that works, you can read my most recent article for a deep dive! For now, let's take a look at some relevant new cards from the set!

Relevant New Cards

Magic the Gathering Card - Magic the Gathering Card - Gas Guzzler - MTG Circle - MTG Circle

There sure are some interesting names in this set. The race theme really applies to a lot of aspects of these new cards. Gas Guzzler is an easy auto-include in our deck that allows us to immediately commence the Start Your Engines mechanic, and start to amass value from our early turns. It has relevant stats, and begins to snowball with some of our other creatures that are on the board later on. Once we hit Max Speed, this card demands removal, and it will be hard for most decks to keep up with all of our high-value threats.

Magic the Gathering Card - Magic the Gathering Card - Zahur, Glory's Past - MTG Circle - MTG Circle

Zahur is awesome in the deck, and as your brain may have already connected the dots for you, it is our combo piece with Gas Guzzler. These cards effectively let you draw as many cards as you can pay one black mana for each time. Zahur also attacks well, and is its own sacrifice outlet. It also allows us to surveil, which will become relevant later on with another new card that is in the deck. The nice thing about playing a sacrifice deck is that we want our creatures to die, so even if we do draw an extra Zahur with one already on the board, we can cast it, then sacrifice one and still benefit from it. Once we get to Max Speed and this is on the board with Gas Guzzler, it will be a race against the clock for our opponent.

Magic the Gathering Card - Magic the Gathering Card - Embalmed Ascendant - MTG Circle - MTG Circle

We are stepping into the higher mana portion of this deck, which is an interesting thing for me to say, considering I'm a midrange/combo player and this deck is unusually low to the ground compared to what I'm used to. Our three mana zombie is going to give us an instant three-for-one. We will get the body, another 2/2 token, and the Start Your Engines trigger. It will continue to play off of our Max Speed dynamic that we are hoping to achieve throughout the game with the plethora of ways to make our opponents lose life. This will effectively give us another Blood Artist effect when there are already a few instances of it. We can keep stacking them and dish some serious punishment when our creatures die. The fact that it is an uncommon adds to the appealing price point of this deck, which can be very enticing for someone looking to get into Standard without dishing out too much money.

Magic the Gathering Card - Magic the Gathering Card - Quag Feast - MTG Circle - MTG Circle

This is an interesting one, and is something that I will be trying out in the deck. I'm not entirely sold on it for now, but I think that we have a decent amount of ways to put things into our graveyard, and I can't turn down a black card that possibly allows me to destroy artifacts. That is unprecedented. Also, it allows us to mill cards, which can help us fill the graveyard for when we cast Raise The Past.

Magic the Gathering Card - Magic the Gathering Card - Muraganda Raceway - MTG Circle - MTG Circle

The Raceway may not be incredibly relevant in the deck, but it seems almost free to try and take advantage of possible extra mana from the Max Speed value engine. This can help us with activated abilities from our permanents, and for casting our three and four mana value spells if we happen to get stuck on mana. I only included two of them since it does not tap for any colors, and because we aren't a big mana deck.

Can it Compete?

I believe this deck could be good. There are already some decent Aristocrat decks floating around, and I believe that we can get a good bit of life gain into this deck and have chump blockers for days once our engines are running. We should be able to buy time and draw enough cards to find what we need to always find a way to win, or at least give ourselves a fighting chance. Stay tuned next week to my Twitch Channel on Wednesday, the 5th of February - I'll be trying out this deck and a few of my other creations during Early Access!

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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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I See a Monument and I want it Painted Black

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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!

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Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed

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Zombies are Coming back from the Dead with Aetherdrift

Whenever I see the word "Zombie" in a new set, I always like to revisit the archetype a bit in order to see if anything could be good. I decided to raise these zombies from the dead due to some cards that I saw from Aetherdrift, and I thought that we could at least make a deck that is fun, and who knows, it may be competitive too. We have received decent support lately with cards like Gisa, The Hellraiser. Although she isn't a zombie herself, she creates them every turn, and acts as a lord for them. Not to mention, the ward cost on her makes it so that she adequately fills out the top end of our list. She will help us immensely with swarming the board with skeletons, and efficiently rebuilding after board wipes. There are also going to be some ways to play our zombies from the graveyard, whether it be re-casting or embalming. Since we have the opportunity to raise our dead, we have to give it a shot. There is too much flavor that entices me. This will be my mono black list for the new set, as I think this is the best mono black deck to showcase as many new cards as possible. Any other mono black deck would likely just be adding one or two cards into an already good mono black deck, so I wanted to give you as much as I can with the new cards showcase. Without further ado, let's check out the deck! As you can see, we have plenty of lords in the deck. We are going to make these vanilla zombies huge, both to use as infinite blockers, and to have a threatening attack. We also brought back Unstoppable Slasher for some extra fun, and to guarantee that we have alternate win conditions when needed. In typical zombie fashion, we also don't mind getting rid of some of our creatures if it produces extra value for us. We can get rid of one of our zombies to deal with any problematic creature with Final Vengeance. I chose this over Eaten Alive because it allows us to sacrifice enchantments too, and there are some useful enchantments that support our zombies, so that could prove useful too. There are new cards in the deck, so let's take a look at those. Aetherdrift Zombie Support Cards

This Deck is Sure to be EXHAUSTING to Play Against

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I See a Monument and I want it Painted Black