Land Boy Steve's Magic The Gathering Blog

If you’ve noticed, there’s a lot of aggro running rampant in Standard right now. Boros is as fast as Superman on a bad day. I remember getting smacked for 20 in one turn just before I was about to swing for lethal. How’s that for frustrating?

But fear not. Control is viable in Gatecrash. And you can thank this guy is part.

Obzedat, Ghost Council  (5)
Legendary Creature — Spirit Advisor (5/5)

It’s time for yet another great deck idea. You’re going to love this one if you like mid range decks that not only beat your opponent’s face in but also gains you a crap ton of life in the process. If that’s your bag, keep reading for one heck of a fun and effective deck for Gatecrash Standard.

It all starts with this guy:

Master Biomancer  (4)
Creature — Elf Wizard (2/4)

Every once in a while, this game comes out with an interesting enchantment that you can either build a deck around or add to an existing deck to make it even better. We’re going to tackle the latter with this latest offering from Gatecrash.

If you’re at all familiar with “Pillow Fort” the basic premise is simple. Cast Sphere of Safety and as many enchantments as you can to keep your opponent from attacking you. Against mill decks, board in Witchbane Orb and they can’t even mill you anymore. But enchantments are key to making this deck work. And Gatecrash’s latest enchantment, Assemble The Legion, is a perfect addition to the “Pillow Fort” deck.

Assemble The Legion reads as follows:

At the beginning of your upkeep, put a muster counter on Assemble the Legion. Then put a 1/1 red and white Soldier creature token with haste onto the battlefield for each muster counter on Assemble the Legion.

The enchantment costs 5 to get out but by that time, you should already have one Sphere of Safety out, provided you’re playing some ramp, and enough enchantments to already keep your opponent at bay. Assemble The Legion then starts to build the “win” condition.

The turn after cast, you get 1 token, then the next turn 2, then the next turn 3 and so on. So after each turn, you have 1,3,6,10,15,21 and 28 tokens in just 7 turns. With your opponent virtually unable to attack you, by turn 4, it’s not long before your tokens begin to take over the board and the game. So the question is, aside from Assemble The Legion and Sphere of Safety, how do we round out the rest of the deck?

Mana Sources – You want to ramp as hard and fast as possible. To this end, Mana Bloom is a great card. It’s an enchantment and gives mana. In some cases, a lot of it depending on when it’s cast. Plus, if it stays out on the field, it adds to the number of enchantments that your opponent has to pay for in order to attack you. You want to run 4 of these.

Abundant Growth allows your land to cast any color mana and draws you a card when it’s cast, giving you very important card advantage.

Touch of the Eternal played as a one of essentially makes it impossible for your opponent to kill you once you’ve gotten to a certain number of permanents. Doing 20 to 30 damage to you in one turn is a tall order when you have 8 lands and 12 enchantments out of the field.

Nevermore is a great enchantment to play when you run into pesky cards that are difficult to deal with. In most cases, this card won’t help you until game 2 unless you really know your meta and can tell what your opponent is playing just from a few land drops. In that case, you may want to main board a few of these.

Agoraphobia is a great new Gatecrash enchantment aura that is perfect for this deck. The enchanted creature gets -5/-0 and if for some reason it goes to the graveyard, you can return this aura to your hand and use it again on another creature. If you’re in an aggro heavy meta, run 4 of these. Sensory Deprivation does the same thing but can’t be returned. You may want to run them both.

Blind Obedience is great if you’re running black. With Abundant Growth, Chromatic Lantern and Gilded Lotus, color should not be a problem. This is a win condition all by itself and all you need to do is cast spells and keep a black or white mana open each turn. And it’s an enchantment to boot. Can’t beat that.

For removal, Detention Sphere and Oblivion Ring should do the trick nicely and they’re both enchantments.

And of course if you want to speed up the kill process, you can run a couple of mill conditions like Jace, Memory Adept and Nephalia Drownyard.

As for land, the deck is mostly blue and white with some red and black. You can probably get away with running Blue/White and Red/White shocks in addition to the Abundant Growths and other mana producers to get what you need when you need it.

The deck used to play very slow, but with the addition of Assemble The Legion, the deck speeds up considerably as that enchantment needs to be dealt with quickly or it can get out of hand fast.

All in all, it’s a fun deck to play and can be competitive in the right meta.

Give it a whirl sometime. You might be surprised by the results.

To YOUR Magic The Gathering Enjoyment,

Steven “Land Boy” Wagenheim

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If you’ve been hanging around Gatecrash for any length of time (or maybe not) you’ve probably noticed that mill is a thing. In fact, it’s quite competitive in Gatecrash Standard. So the question is, how can we best take advantage of it? What’s the best build? Well, I tinkered with a couple. One didn’t work out so well but the other was quite good. I’ll cover the good one here.

For starters, it’s interesting that prior to Gatecrash, when Bant Control was actually a thing, Jace, Architect of Thought was the better of the Jace planeswalkers. Now, the tables have turned. With mill being a thing, Jace, Memory Adept is the hands down clear winner with the other one seeing very little if any play anymore.

Anyway, Jace 3.0 is the star of this deck. You want to at least run 3 of him and 4 isn’t a bad idea. I think you can still get him for pretty cheap. Last I checked, he’s going for about $15, which isn’t too bad.

In addition to Jace, you want to run a couple of Nephalia Drownyards at least. Three may be too many but not sure. You can try it with 3 and see if you end up with too many. This land is a great way of milling your opponent without having to rely on casting spells.

Okay, but we’re talking about a half dozen cards here. How do we round out the rest of the deck? Well, mill works best in a control shell and we have some pretty good control spells in Standard right now.

Terminus and Supreme Verdict – Best board wipes in blue and white. These are must have cards in a heavily aggro dominated Standard that we have right now. Personally, I run 4 of each but you might want to go with 3 and 3 or 4 and 2 or maybe 4 and 3. I would not run less than 6. If you find you’re going against control, you can always board them out.

Azorious Charm – This is a great 3 in 1 spell though you will probably use it mostly to either draw a card or return an attacking creature to the top of your opponent’s library. I’d run no fewer than 3 of these.

Sphinx’s Revelation – This is your main card draw and life support card. This card can literally turn games around. Between the life gain, which is almost imperative against all the fast aggro, and the card advantage you get once cast, this one card can make all the difference. I run 4. I wouldn’t run less but you could try 3.

Obzedat, Ghost Council – This guy can be an alternate finisher to your mill. He is almost impossible to get rid of, especially with how little instant speed removal we have in this format right now. There is no way for your opponent to deal with him on their turn because he’s exiled at that point. At a 4 life swing per turn, this guy is a real threat and you don’t even have to attack. I run 3. I wouldn’t run fewer than 2.

Counter Magic – This is a tough call. Cavern of Souls is still a thing but there aren’t a lot of tribal decks right now outside of boros and maybe a couple of others. But loading up on counters is probably not a great idea. At most you probably want to play 4. I’d go with 4 Dissipate and hope for the best. For the control mirror, take out the Terminus and Supreme Verdict and board in Negate.

This leaves you with about 10 flex spots, assuming you’re playing 25 to 26 land.

Since you’re in black, blue and white, you might want to add more removal such as Tribute to Hunger and/or Tragic Slip. Maybe a few Think Twice for card draw.

If you need more removal, you can round out the remainder of the deck with Detention Sphere and/or Oblivion Ring.

Other considerations include Tamiyo, The Moon Sage and Cyclonic Rift, especially if you have to deal with a board full of threats.

As for the land base, aside from the Drownyards, you want to run 12 shocks, Black/Blue, Black/White and Blue/White. You also want to run the same color combination lands from INN and M13. If you’re running 26 land, play 1 island and 1 plains.

The deck is resilient and competitive if not a little pricey.

Give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

To YOUR Magic The Gathering Enjoyment,

Steven “Land Boy” Wagenheim

Get my FREE report “7 Steps To Magic Success” and become a better Magic player