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By: romellos, A. Atasoy
May 29 2014 12:00pm
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              Worship Week photo WorshipWeek_zps40126b74.jpg

   

     Hello everyone and welcome back. I really enjoy the concept of special themed weeks at PureMTGO during the last week of every month. This gives us the opportunity to brew and play with the flavorful decks that out of a box that normally we don't even think to explore. The best thing about the MTG is that, there are vast of strategies and approaches that we can follow without restricted by any borders. 

Remember the very first days that you started to play MTG and the naivete excitement that we all felt. We were brewing lots of casual decks with the new interesting cards we saw without any concerns that this is not what Pros playing or the status of meta.

Year by year this habit changed. We mostly started to focus on just the best and only the best. This is a normal situation that we all faced or will face in the course of our journeys. We change, we forget or we don't forget the reason why we started to play this game. And this awareness becomes a Rogue that opens the door of possibilities and innovations. And this is the main reason why I love these special themed weeks, where we can see lots of different ideas and imaginations that are gathered to compose unique decks.

The Worship theme is really a vast concept that we can approach from very different angles; Gods, Avatars, Angels, Demons, Eldrazi, Clerics, devotion to a color or even with the Constellations... 

Today, I will review two different decks with different natures that they only share Worship flavor with their own ways. My first deck will utilize the actual Worship card with lots of Hexproof creatures and lots of Auras. Here is the Worship of the Saint... 

 

This deck is basically operates as normal Bant Hexproof deck, except it's utilizing some extra midrange options that we don't usually see in this deck archetype.

Slippery Bogle  Invisible Stalker

Slippery Bogle and Invisible Stalker are our bread and butter for early turns as our main targets for the Aura spells. 

Geist of Saint Traft  Thrun, the Last Troll

Geist of Saint Traft is clearly one of the best creatures at three CMC range. His Hexproof ability makes him hard to kill and clock will turn fast when he starts to swing with attached Auras. We also got the right tool that will help us to ascent Saint into a true Archangel.

Thrun, the Last Troll is our high end Hexproof creature due to its Regeneration ability that can virtually lock the game with Worship for good.

Worship  Gift of Immortality

Worship is the flavorful secret engine of this deck that will ensure our survival against most of the dominant deck types. And our creature base with the Hexproof ability doubles the potential power of Worship as it will be so hard to disrupt the creature side of this combo.

Gift of Immortality is our safeguard against mass destroy or sacrifice affects that will threat our Worship to Serra. It can be also handy when we want to attack with Geist of Saint Traft recklessly.

Ethereal Armor  Rancor

Ethereal Armor is the catalyst of this deck with its synergy for each enchantment we control. Basically, Ethereal Armor will multiply with each attached Aura, Enchantment or Enchantment creature as Ancestral Mask does in Pauper Aura deck and First Strike bonus can be huge when combined with other enchantments.

In my opinion, Rancor is the best Aura spell ever printed. It will provide us the breaking point with +2/+0 & Trample bonus. And the plus effect will come from its re-usable ability.

Spirit Mantle  Angelic Destiny  Path to Exile

Spirit Mantle will help us to turn our any creature into the Beloved Chaplain. Protection from creatures bonus can be devastating, when dealing an unblockable damage every turn.

Angelic Destiny is the future template of Rancor type Auras with fixed wording. The recycle trigger of Rancor occurs when it goes into the graveyard, regardless of the creature's situation. But, Angelic Destiny will only recycle when its attached creature dies. And that excludes exiling effects, which can ruin your plans. Otherwise, Angelic Destiny is a strong and a very flavorful card to play with.

Path to Exile is the best one CMC removal spells in the Modern. Most of the times, its Rampant Growth drawback won't be an issue. And in some rare desperate moments, it can be a useful tool for us to search for the extra Land by targeting our own creatures.

 

My second deck is approaching to the Worship theme from a different & a more darker angle; as the worship of apostles to summon Demons with their sacrificial rituals. I have inspired the idea of this deck from AJ_Impy's singleton tribal deck, where he abuses unlimited number advantage of Shadowborn Apostle, you can find it here.

 

This deck is quite fun to play with due to its casual nature. We got seventeen Shadowborn Apostle as our main deck engine and circumstantial consequences that will trigger as drain and/ or extra creature resources.

Shadowborn Apostle  Dark Supplicant

I really liked to play with Dark Supplicant within a Cleric tribal deck during the Onslaught block. And Shadowborn Apostle is presenting us very similar engine with its toolbox nature to bring any key Demon cards into play based on the board's situation.

Blood Artist  Xathrid Necromancer

Blood Artist and Xathrid Necromancer are here to keep us alive against aggressive strategies or give us extra benefits for our efforts to play with Shadowborn Apostle engine. We don't have any other sacrificial enabler, maybe except Demon of Death's Gate itself. But, most of the times it won't be an issue with the support of our non-creature spells.

Demon of Death's Gate  Griselbrand

Our Shadowborn Apostle strategy may need some attention. Luckily, Demon of Death's Gate simplifies things for us with its alternative CMC. We can either bring it via Shadowborn Apostle path or play it from hand by sacrificing three Black creatures & pay 6 life, which we can compensate with the assistance of Blood Artist and Xathrid Necromancer duo.

Griselbrand is our main summoning target for Shadowborn Apostles that we can %100 rely on. We all know what Griselbrand can do as the best existing Demon.

Thrumming Stone  Immortal Servitude

Thrumming Stone will provide us the Ripple 4 possibility, that we can abuse with the huge numbers of Shadowborn Apostle. Basically, we can cast one Shadowborn Apostle and ripple. Then dig for all the other existing copies at our library and turn this into a wave. This is a huge passive effect that can help us to get the required six sacrifices.

Immortal Servitude is a cheap and very effective reanimation spell that will help us in our game plan. Immortal Servitude will really matter in such dedicated decks as this one.
 


 

WRAP UP:

I really liked how these decks turned out to be for such a casual deck ideas. And it was also a very entertaining process to test and adjust these decks step by step, for this special themed week. I hope, you also enjoy while reading this article.

See you next time in the Modern Days. I will return with the prophecy of the flame...