This new set is going to give us a few ubiquitous cards. There are a few that give us a feeling of "someone is going to make this broken somehow" and that truly excites the deck builder in me. We are approaching a Standard that will, for a few months, be a "complete" Standard Format - meaning that we will have every set available to us that is legal in the format to use with deck building. What is unique about it this time, as many know, is that Standard is going through it's first ever three year rotation cycle. It sounds intimidating, and there are some people who are flat-out sick of how many cards we have to worry about in the format. I get that, and I am sick of some cards too. What We will do today with this deck is actually make good use of some pretty old cards in the format and see if we can make them "good" again by abusing the triggered ability of one of our new outlaws from Thunder Junction. Hold onto your cowboy hats, we are going time traveling!
Relevant New Cards from Thunder Junction
Obeka is one of the ubiquitous cards that I was speaking of intially. It is kind of confusing as to what she does. She is a creature with menace, and she wants to deal combat damage to make her ability trigger, so this is an immediate win because we want her to be difficult to block. To think about how we can make her effective, we have to consider her main ability, and what cards help to pop off around that. Given that she gives us extra upkeeps after the combat phase when she deals combat damage, the deck is centered around cards that have upkeep triggers. We are going to try to make spells incredibly cheap, and cast some big spells that give us ridiculous value for very little mana. We also have cards that generate treasure tokens on the upkeep, so they will be even cheaper!
Avarice is great in the deck because it is a turn three play that tutors for a four mana spell. Turn three, we can tutor for Obeka, and then draw the card, then cast her on curve. We can also use it to find another one of her, because we will likely need more than one Obeka to do what we want. Given her ridiculous ability, I fully expect that our opponent will seek to remove the card as soon as possible. It also allows us to gain additional value from other cards in the deck, as the spree costs can end up being reduced greatly. There is a good shot that we can draw some cards with avarice without paying much extra mana.
This is another spree card that can give us insane value for little mana. We can already reduce the counter portion of it to two mana, and then we can also get an additional copy of a creature for as little as one mana. This of course is all at instant speed. If we have nothing else to do of value, we can also draw some cards. This spell is in the sideboard mainly for it's ability to counter spells, but we are looking to also get additional value out of spree cards particularly, so we have it in the deck in place of extra negates, or make disappears.
We do also run some deserts from the new set in Jagged Barrens, Soured Springs, and Eroded Canyon.
Relevant and Possibly Overlooked Cards
Some of the cards that are being used in this deck do not normally see play - and this Obeka is giving us an opportunity to maybe help make them relevant, or at least get better value from them.
Mimic is a really fun card that saw some play when Innistrad Block was the newest thing in Standard, but doesn't see much play now. We are looking to use it with it's disturbed side of the card so that we can get additional upkeep triggers and make more copies of fun creatures. Since it is a fun card that might not always be effective, we are using it as a one of.
We are all more than aware that this card is already relevant, and is in no way forgotten about, but Breach has to be included in the deck for the simple fact that we are looking to cast it for as little as two black mana.
This card isn't necessarily forgotten about, and it does see some play. The idea with Obeka is that we could trigger two additional upkeep steps to reduce our instant and sorcery spells by two as soon as it hits the board, and then reduce it by another one on the following upkeep. This also allows us to reduce the cost of the spree spells and get insane amounts of value from them.
This card has most likely only seen play in limited. Now because of Obeka, we are looking to make the creature more evasive, and protect it. This card does both while having flash, and it also buffs Obeka, so we will get a third upkeep trigger if she connects. Flying, menace, and hexproof - pretty hard to block that!
Anyone wanna take some free turns? I bet you are having some flashbacks from this card being abused with Alrund's Epiphany right now! Well we are going to cleave it for very cheap, and have tons of upkeep triggers that will allow us to commit extra shenanigans, and I promise to make it fun.
Sideboard Choices and Tech
In the sideboard, we are looking to gain value from the saga spells such as The Cruelty of Gix, The Elder Dragon War, and Hidetsugu Consumes All. The saga enchantments will allow us to have the extra upkeep triggers that could allow the entire saga to resolve on one turn, getting us three turns worth of value in one spell. The sagas in use were already effective, this triples the value.
We do have some counter magic in there as well, and we want to use that to counter against boardwipes, or removal spells that target Obeka. Also, there is going to be a new combo that is centered around resolving a sorcery spell for lethal - we need to be prepared for that as well.