The wait for Amonkhet is over!

Posted On 3:09 PM // Leave a Comment

Newsletter
Thursday, April 20th

In case you missed it—and we don't know how—Magic's newest set arrives this weekend! Amonkhet prereleases around the globe are the perfect precursor to the anticipation of Monday's banned and restricted announcement and next weekend's huge Amonkhet SCG Tour debut in Atlanta! This week, we've got GerryT looking at all kinds of different archetypes for new Standard, SCG Tour star Brennan DeCandio examining all the cards that have him hyped, and of course, insanely sweet brews from Conley Woods! Bans or no bans, unbans or no unbans, we wish you the best of luck rising among the worthy at your Amonkhet prerelease this weekend!

— Danny West, Content Coordinator

Building Around Nissa And Other Big Amonkhet Bombs
By Gerry Thompson  

Lightning Axe is another great card that I'm not playing, but that's basically because of how tough it is to fit in the artifact synergies with Inventor's Apprentice alongside the madness enablers. If, for whatever reason, we wanted to remove the artifact stuff like Key to the City and Pia Nalaar, we'd had enough room for a potentially powerful madness deck. Soul-Scar Mage could be a fine replacement.

My main issue with that is once you go down that road, you still have over ten artifacts you want to play anyway, which makes it hard to justify not working a little bit to get Inventor's Apprentice in the deck. Plus, the manabase definitely benefits from having Spire of Industry. Keeping Unlicensed Disintegration active is a huge boon as well.

One card that could probably sub in for Hazoret the Fervent and do quite well is Heart-Piercer Manticore. Given the aggressive nature of the deck, Hazoret seems much better, but I could totally see a different version utilizing Heart-Piercer Manticore or at least using it as a sideboard card for grindy matchups. While the Saheeli deck didn't have many creatures with high power for their casting cost, this deck has plenty of that.

Regardless, once I think about it, I kind of need to build it.

April 29-30
Standard

May 5-7
AKH Limited

May 20-21
Team Constructed

New Standard, New Hype!
By Brennan DeCandio  

While it looks like it's something you have to build toward with the Nissa, Steward of Elements you cast on turn 3 of the game by scrying a bunch, I don't think that's how the card will play out. My theory is that it will be similar to how Nissa, Vastwood Seer was, where it has an effect early in the game and might trade off or get killed, but if you happen to draw her late in the game, it's insanely powerful. Dealing ten damage for eight mana is an absurd amount of reach for any deck sporting blue and green mana. It can just serve as a Fireball to finish games against opponents without any kind of air defense or just a huge card advantage engine as a personal Howling Mine / Dark Ritual effect, putting whatever lies on top of your library onto the battlefield turn after turn!

The shape of the format might dictate if that style of deck exists in Standard, but there are certainly plenty of tools for a deck with Nissa, Steward of Elements to exist in. Building off a strategy Michael Majors mentioned on Premium earlier this week, Nissa, Steward of Elements seems like it could slide right into a Crush of Tentacles variant.

Of Second Suns And Frog Horrors
By Conley Woods  

Approach of the Second Sun may very well not be cut out for a job in Standard, or it might, but I know I am not going to wait around for some other people to decide that for me. So what is the best shell to harbor this beauty?

Being that this is a seven-cost sorcery with no impact on the battlefield, there are really only two homes worth considering. The first would be in some sort of combo shell, like we have seen out of Enduring Ideal in the past. I took a look through Standard to see if anything had the potential to make this card into a combo win condition, and while there a few cute interactions, none of it seemed priced for Standard consumption. That leaves its best home likely to be in a control shell of some sort.

Luckily for us, Approach of the Second Sun does not demand a lot out of the rest of our deck. It asks for a little bit of time to do its thing, but we don't need to specifically devote any deck slots to making the card function the way we want it to. Time is the key ingredient here, and it shall be the thing we focus most on achieving. Most control decks already make this a prime objective of theirs, so we won't need to look too far for support.