Mana Sculpting

Standard Deck of The Week: Playing with Swords

Posted by: Trevor Isham 4 months, 1 week ago (comments)

Standard deck of the Week:

Each week I will bring you guys a new Standard list to try out at your local store. Some will be very innovative, some will be tweaks on tier one strategies, and some will be stock lists from pros with some advice on how to best play them from yours truly. So without further ado here is this week’s list that features my favorite colors with one of my favorite cards of all time, hint it’s in the name of the deck.

I will almost always use this format to lay out a deck as it gives the reader the best visual presentation of the types of cards that are being used.  For example with the number of instants presented in this build 14 of your 34 non-land spells are at instant speed so the deck can keep your opponent honest with counters and then take advantage of openings with cards like Think Twice and Midnight Haunting.  But 14/34 isn’t a Draw-Land-Go deck by any means.  This deck plays draw go in the early game but then moves to a more tap out style as you play out your walkers and bombs; hopefully though, you will be quickly untapping your mana with Sword of Feast and Famine anyway.  Let’s talk card choice and then move into strategy.

Snapcaster Mage:  This is probably the best blue drop in every constructed format and it shines in our deck snapping back Counters, Midnight Hauntings, and DOJ’s in a pinch.  Plus he makes for a very effective sword carrier as he can be flashed in after your opponent taps out.

Blade Splicer: This guy is the swiss army knife of our deck. He provides blockers for the aggro matchup, a cheap threat for the control builds, and two bodies for three mana; which is very important when it comes time to start suiting our guys up.

Consecrated Sphinx: Draws cards blah, blah, blah, but the real reason he is in this deck over a second Sun Titan is that he can fly over your opponents with a sword for some guaranteed hits in the end.

Sun Titan: This guy plays clean up in a pretty large way.  He returns Blade Splicers, Snapcaster Mages, Swords, and to a lesser extent Oblivion Rings.  All these cards have amazing board impact late game and nothing is more backbreaking than seeing that Sword come back in game 2 after you used one of your two artifact removal spells on it. L

Mana Leak/Dissipate: Counterspells keep your opponent honest and oftentimes just the threat of them makes your opponent play sub-optimally, plus with Midnight Hauntings you aren’t sacrificing much to hold these up.

Think Twice: Unfortunately this is the best card draw spell in standard right now…fortunately it plays well with our early draw-go game plan.

Midnight Haunting:  Spirit tokens “holding” swords will more often than not be our go to win plan and so casting these is always a good idea, especially if you can catch your opponent tapping out into your turn five…

Oblivion Ring:  Handles anything, check; cheap to cast, check; WOTC knew what they were doing when they brought this card back to the light.  I am happy to play this universal answer spell.

Day of Judgment:  Moorland Haunt has lessened the effect of DOJ but it is still one of the best spells to be casting in this aggressive creature-based meta game.

Elspeth Tirel: Elspeth brings soldiers with her to battle which provides, guess what, more bodies to carry swords…(if you haven’t figured out that we are trying to equip our guys and beat for the win yet, I am not sure what to tell you.)

Sword of Feast and Famine: Umm yeah, it’s kind of the point of the deck…you put it on a guy and bash, untap, play more stuff, counter theirs, winning more!

Lands of Note: 4x Inkmoth Nexus and 1 Moorland Haunt, Inkmoth’s can sometimes just steal games out of nowhere and they carry a sword quite cheaply, plus they are a threat that can’t be countered or Vapor Snagged which seems pretty relevant right now.  The one Moorland Haunt is a nod to most of our creatures being tokens and not wanting to get too greedy with our mana, but it should shine after your opponent burns most of their removal.

Sideboard: The sideboard is a pretty stock list with enough cards for each matchup.  Timely Reinforcements could almost be main deck, Flashfreeze and Phantasmal Image help against the Primeval Titan decks, while Negate is there as a nod to the control matchup, the fourth DOJ helps against most aggro strategies, Wurmcoil and Purge comes in for the red matchup to make it laughably in your favor and lastly Elesh Norn comes in against any deck relying too heavily on little creatures.

Here is also a list of cards that are currently not in the maindeck or sideboard that could be depending on your local meta, personal playstyle, or just because you just want to tweak the list a bit: Timely Reinforcements (main deck), Mirran Crusader, Hero of Bladehold, Frost Titan, Sword of War and Peace, Dismember, Gideon Jura, another Sun Titan, Vapor Snag, Batterskull, Delver of Secrets, Preordain…err arggh I mean Ponder…sigh…., and my personal pet favorite Turn Aside.

The deck plays out somewhat similar to Caw Blade after the banhammer.  You draw-land-go for 2-3 turns responding when you can to their threats while praying that they tap out so you can slip your sword into play.  The mid game is where this deck takes over as Sword of Feast and Famine basically gives you a free turn and strips your opponents hand at the same time when you land a hit with it…god that card is good.  This is the part of the game where protecting your sword is of the utmost importance and you get to do dumb stuff like snapping back counter spells and midnight hauntings or just recurring Blade Splicers and Swords with Sun Titan.  You want to spend most of your resources protecting your sword as it is really your engine at this point. This is obviously harder to do in games two and three, but with smart use of counterspells and Sun Titan you should be able to break your opponent pretty quickly.

I am always looking for feedback so leave some below. Also if you pick up the list or something close to it let me know how you fared and what went wrong or right.  I am looking forward to throwing out sweet lists each week and will take any list sent in under consideration and of course give credit where it is due.  Until next week, may your swords stay sharp!