Last week I wrote a post about cards I was thinking of putting in a new standard deck for the upcoming Standard Showdown season. Which I believe is kicking off this coming weekend.

So it was about time I came up with a first build of the deck. That’s where the decked app comes in handy. It keeps track of the number of cards, mana curve etc.

Before giving you the deck listing, the stats and boring you with talk of it’s tactics, here is my boiler plate disclaimer.

“I’m not claiming these are the best decks in the world, they certainly are not top competitive decks. They are hopefully fun, affordable (subjective I know) decks. I don’t try and keep to a target price point. I try and use as many cards in my collection as possible to keep my costs down. I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming this deck will win tournaments, if it is fun to play and does it thing then I’ll be happy.“

Tactics

So the deck wants to ramp, get lots of land out early. To do that I have Llanowar Elves, Open the Gates and Growth Spiral. The more mana I can get out the better for this deck. Or that’s the plan.

There are three cards that love having lots of mana available in the deck. The first is Hydroid Krasis. The bigger I can make that X when casting the better. Not just from being a big thing to swing in with on the battlefield. But the life gain and card draw is half (rounded down) of that value of X.

The other two are mana sinks. Which if I have multiple copies of Wilderness Reclamation are going to be abused a lot in the end step.

The first of these mana sinks is Biogenic Ooze. Before it’s end step ability kicks in, the end step ability of Wilderness Reclamation needs to fire off. For illustration of how this can be abused, let’s assume there are six lands out, two Wilderness Reclamation’s along with a Biogenic Ooze. On this turn I’ve not cast anything. So there is six untapped lands. Start of the end step the Ooze trigger goes on the stack followed by the two reclamation triggers. In response to the first reclamation trigger I tap all six lands. So I now have six mana in the pool. The first trigger resolves untapping the lands. Then in response to the second reclamation trigger I once again tap all the lands and add six more mana to the pool, which is now sitting at twelve mana. The lands untap. I can now decide to tap the lands again, or leave them untapped to cast any counter spell during the opponents turn. For this illustration I’m going to tap the lands again now in response to the Ooze trigger, taking me to eighteen mana in the pool. Still in response to this trigger I now add four 2/2 Ooze tokens to the battlefield. The trigger now resolves making these new tokens 3/3 and puts addition +1/+1 counters on any other oozes on the battlefield.

If the other mana sink Simic Ascendancy is out this little shenanigans above adds five +1/+1 counters plus on to that. Plus a similar abuse of multiple Wilderness Reclamation’s can be done on that instead. Also if I had kept the mana open and not used it on my opponents turn. During their end step I can spend it on Ascendancy’s activated ability.

Both these mana sinks force the opponent to do something about them. If they are left to do their thing as you can see things could potentially get out of hand.

But the key card for me in this deck has to be Wilderness Reclamation. I really love the card. Why decide whether to cast a creature on your turn or hold off and use a counter spell or some other trick on your opponents turn? This let’s you do both. Plus as you can see how it can be used to abuse paid abilities.

The Decked App stats

Ok here is the bit you really want to see the actual cards in the deck. Let me know what you think, or how would you change it?

I’m not sure over the land base for the deck. It may be too slow. I’ll have to see how the Memorials go. Flipping them to basics may help.

Creatures:17

4 Llanowar Elves
2 Hydroid Krasis
3 Wall of Lost Thoughts
2 Steel Leaf Champion
2 Zegana, Utopian Speaker
2 Biogenic Ooze
2 Carnage Tyrant

Spells:21

2 Open the Gates
2 Applied Biomancy
2 Blink of an Eye
3 Essence Capture
3 Growth Spiral
2 Simic Ascendancy
3 Thought Collapse
3 Wilderness Reclamation
1 Vivien Reid

Lands:22

2 Breeding Pool
6 Forest
1 Hinterland Harbor
5 Island
1 Memorial to Genius
2 Memorial to Unity
4 Simic Guildgate
1 Woodland Stream

Sideboard:15

1 Hydroid Krasis
1 Steel Leaf Champion
3 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Biogenic Ooze
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Open the Gates
1 Blink of an Eye
1 Essence Capture
1 Simic Ascendancy
2 Slimebind
1 Thought Collapse
1 Wilderness Reclamation