Dominaria Has Arrived!

Posted On 3:12 PM // Leave a Comment

Newsletter
Thursday, April 26th

It's Danny West again! Cedric is so blown away by Dominaria that he needed to step out for a second to catch his breath! He flew to Europe for a few days, but little did he know that the entire world is hyped for Dominaria this weekend! Everywhere you try to run, Cedric: Dominaria is going to follow you!

And it's following us all to the Atlanta Open Weekend for the SCG Tour's first stop since going back to the place where Magic began 25 years ago! The only thing better than a new set is team Magic, so of course, we figured we may as well just do both!

Our pros are as excited as we are, if not more. Let's see, what's on the docket for Dominaria's big week? Jadine Klomparens will not let go of her favorite pet as she prepares all the Winding Constrictor fans with massive updates to her signature archetype, and Ben Friedman is dead set on going next level on week one with Teferi, Hero of Dominaria-based decks. If you're the Modern rep for your team at #SCGATL this weekend, Sam Black is doing some incredible outside-the-box things with Sagas!

Look, I'd love to talk more, but I'm trying to get out of here early today so I can brew up more Dominaria decks. Nobody tell Cedric! (Something tells me he's going to see this...and understand.)

— Danny West, Content Assistant/Copy Editor

May 5-6
Team Constructed

May 19-20
Modern

May 26-27
Modern

Building Winding Constrictor
For SCG Atlanta
By Jadine Klomparens  

If we want to move forward with a list reminiscent of the Sultai Constrictor deck from Rivals of Ixalan Standard, I don't think Llanowar Elves has a place. Bristling Hydra is too key a part of that deck, and Servant of the Conduit is too integral in making Bristling Hydra an effective card. Playing both Llanowar Elves and Servant of the Conduit is possible, but without some way of making their bodies relevant, I'm extremely hesitant to play that many mana creatures.

But here's the thing: I don't even like Bristling Hydra that much. It's four mana for a creature that is little more than power and toughness. If the U/B Control deck didn't exist in the format, I would absolutely have explored versions of the deck that trimmed on or cut Bristling Hydra entirely. Versions without Bristling Hydra are much more suited to playing Llanowar Elves, and it's possible that making effective use of Llanowar Elves is enough of a power level spike to justify such a variant, U/B Control or no U/B Control. So, what would this deck look like?

Holding Out For A Metagame Hero
By Ben Friedman  

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria will do its best work as a sideboard juke for U/W/x midrange decks. Just as Chandra, Torch of Defiance has enabled red decks to go bigger post-sideboard for the entirety of her existence, Teferi will enable focused decks to incorporate a totally orthogonal gameplan in the sideboard that neatly sidesteps whatever answers an opponent might bring in to target the pre-sideboard plan.

This means U/W Gift. This means Esper or Bant Midrange. This means U/W Wizards (assuming, of course, that R&D intends to string out the powerful Wizard creatures over the next couple of sets to encourage cross-set deckbuilding.)

Watch what happens when the following U/W Gift deck (cribbed mostly from a recent Andrew Jessup list) changes gears completely in post-sideboard games in order to embarrass sideboard cards like Abrade, Silent Gravestone, Scavenger Grounds.

Sagas
By Sam Black  

As for the construction of the maindeck, I wanted a healthy mix of good early legendary creatures to make my Mox Ambers work, and then I wanted to focus on planeswalkers that make tokens to maximize the value that I'm getting from Song of Freyalise while minimizing my exposure to sweepers.

The big choices were filling out the four-ofs in the deck: Noble Hierarch, Nest Invader, Song of Freyalise, and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. Song is the point of the deck, so I want to start by pushing it, but I could imagine ultimately cutting one; it was very common to only play three Cryptolith Rites, but extra Songs aren't entirely redundant. Noble Hierarch feels pretty obvious. I didn't want to entirely rely on Mox Amber and Song of Freyalise for mana acceleration, because this deck definitely doesn't want to wait until Turn 4 to cast a four-mana planeswalker.

Nissa, Voice of Zendikar seemed to be doing everything I want to be doing here, and it's a pretty easy planeswalker to cash in if you draw two. Nest Invader is probably the card I'm least sure about, but I think it's the best card for making two bodies early, it's the most reliable way to cast a four-mana planeswalker on Turn 3 through disruption, and it helps a lot with the more expensive sideboard cards. I fully expect it to be great in this deck.