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By: kelvinmai, Kelvin Mai
Jul 09 2013 12:57pm
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Everyone has been making a big deal about Modern Masters as they should be, have you seen how much a foil Tarmogoyf is going for? But with all that craziness people have forgotten about the current and new standard sets. I honestly haven't even wanted to draft RTR block because Modern Masters is just better in my opinion. And M14 is just around the corner and so far I'm not all too excited for this core set, even the limited format looks a bit lacking. But then again spoiler season just started for me and by the time you read this it might be ending, so let me ask you are there any hidden gems in this set? But my indifference towards the set isn't going to stop me from experimenting with the stuff that IS in it! 

And the release of M14 we are in a brewer's paradise, why is this? As most of you know standard rotates every year when the new block is released and that's the fine print, the rotation doesn't happen until Theros comes in. So we'll have access to an enormous card pool and we're basically playing extended at this point. It is the time to play anything we want, and we even have perfect mana in standard with Ravnica's shocklands. How crazy are the decks we're talking about? Well this time last year some decks that were made possible was the turn 2 infect deck that tore up tournaments everywhere it went thanks to Rancor, the recursion heavy artifact deck thanks to Trading Post and even Battle of Wits made it into an SCG open.

This is the card that I am most excited to play with. You could do anything with it! Auto includes to any deck with these guys are Immortal Servitude and a demon of your choice. Wanna win with Battle of Wits? Sure let's just put 100 of these guys in, your Diabolic Revelation, Increasing Ambition as your tutors and Harvester of Souls for card draw. M14 gives you Dark Prophecy for increased card draw and Xathrid Necromancer to give extra value to your apostles. Mutilate will be your sweeper of choice. And if you want to make Search the City work the same choices go for them. Personally I don't like Search the City but I have a friend that is really trying to make it work with this. As for me I'd really just want to go the more aggressive route with this card and here's my pet project for it.

Mono Black Apostle
 
Creatures
1 Lord of the Void
3 Desecration Demon
4 cards

Other Spells
18 Shadowborn Apostle
4 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Dark Prophecy
3 Immortal Servitude
4 Sign in Blood
2 Mutilate
9 cards
Lands
22 Swamp
22 cards
 
Lord of the Void

 

  

I'm not sure if most of you know or not, but I always gravitate towards black. It's my favorite color in magic after all and M14 actually gives us some great cards for mono black control. I haven't had my love affair with Liliana of the Dark Realms yet so I'm very glad she is being reprinted. And Rise of the Dark Realms is a great finisher, it may cost 9 but we live in a world with Crypt Ghast and Liliana's ultimate. Corrupt is another expensive kill spell but again we'll almost always be able to cast it, and it can easily be a game ender if you shoot it at their face. The life gain is relevant here too, you'll notice that I included Crypt Incursion in my Grixis deck because the life gain against aggro is so important in those colors because we don't have access to things like Sphinx's Revelation, well now we have a card can actually impact the board while still giving us life. Mutilate isn't being reprinted so I have to do play this deck soon. Grim Return is a great reanimation spell, we're going to be killing things all day anyways so with an extra 3 mana we can turn our kill spell into a Mind Control. Not to mention it could bring our creature back from a wrath. But we just came from a gold set wouldn't that mean that a mono colored deck is weaker? Well we don't have to be mono colored, we can go mono swamp control. We now have access to four guilds and their best cards!

 

It's no secret that Mutavault is an amazing card, it's a colorless manland that basically has changeling. And the reason it is in the set is probably for the sliver support. It counts as a sliver so it'll get all the sliver buffs. But it's not here for the sliver interaction instead it's here for a  (Desendants' Path) interaction that is quite amazing. This is going to be one of those decks that are only going to be possible in this small time window of double core set. But basically what happens is every turn Descendants' Path triggers and in response you animate Mutavault and since it's every creature type if the top card of your library is a creature you'll cheat whatever's on top into play. It's like a much cheaper version of new Garruk -3. Not saying the new Garruk is bad, but you know what's better than a Worldspine Wurm on turn 6 (5 with ramp)? A Worldspine Wurm on turn 4 (3 with ramp)!

 

So what's next on the hype train? Haunted Plate Mail looks good. 4 mana equipment that gives +4/+4, sounds pretty mediocre, equips for 4 sounds like a bad card but what's this? 0 costed activated ability?? We haven't seen that since Planar Chaos, ok so is it something good? Yes, yes it is, it turns into a 4/4 creature until end of turn. This is an amazing card! It's a creature that is immune to sorcery speed removal and it's a big beater, what more do you want? It has the clause that you can't control any other creatures but that's perfectly fine for a control deck that operates better when there is nothing on the field anyways. I would say that it may not find a home so quickly though because Aetherling does everything this does except it's better at it. But Trading Post will rejoice with this and it may bring some new life into the post before it rotates out.

 Rotation Proofing

Alright I think that's enough of the new stuff. The thing most budget players do during this season is make their deck rotation proof and I'll be here to help you guys with that. Sure decks that only exist in these next couple months are fun and powerful but some of us don't really have the expenses to purchase cards only for a limited amount of uses. Instead these people try to make their deck ready for when the next set comes in. So in this case we're going to lose all of Innistrad and M13. I'm going to use my Grixis Control deck as the example as I love this deck and I would love to keep playing it even after Theros. So in this deck I lose A LOT of cards and I'm going to look desperately through M14 to see if I can find good replacements.

Loses

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

What do I lose? Vampire Nighthawks, old Chandra, Pillar of Flame, Think Twice, Forbidden Alchemy, Magmaquake, Victim of Night and the big bad Planeswalker himself Nicol Bolas. Seeing these leave breaks my heart a little bit as these were the best parts of the deck. The reason we were heavy black was because of Vampire Nighthawk and Victim of Night's double black mana costs. And the whole reason I splashed blue instead of just going straight black red control was of Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. The blue splash was just for the card draw and even those are leaving.

Gains

To figure out what to replace everything with, first you have to figure out what each card's purpose is. Magmaquake and Victim of Night are by far the easiest to identify and replace. Mizzium Mortars will take the place of Magmaquake for the sweeper potential and now it can act as an independent removal the downside is that it doesn't hit planeswalkers and there is a lot less control over how much damage is being thrown (sometimes I want to magmaquake for more than 4). As for Victim of Night we have plenty of options, Doom Blade and Ultimate Price are both good contenders although both less effective than it's double black counterpart. The upside of the black removal replacement is that it isn't double black so we can now switch our base color. Hopefully not blue though because then we'd have to rely on counterspells and that just isn't my style.

Next on our shopping list is Vampire Nighthawk's replacement. He provided early pressure blocking power and life gain, unfortunately I don't think we'll get something that fits all 4 but I'm considering Young Pyromancer in his slot. He does the first two, he'll pressure the board because the deck is based in removal so you're basically turning all of your opponent's creatures into creatures of your own and then those creatures become blockers until we stabilize or they could just swing and we'll win that way. The next consideration in this slot is Liliana's Reaver which is another token maker, the only problem with this one is that it's a four drop which isn't a good fit for our three drop slot. And if we're really desperate for life gain we can always go to Daggerdrome Imp which is an evasive flier with lifelink but bad blocker.

The draw engine is even more horrendous, Think Twice was amazing because it gave us a turn 2 play which we wouldn't have otherwise and we can't really afford to replace it with Sign in Blood as the life payment is much too high in this deck. Cremate could work but it's very conditional, Izzet Charm is also possible but there's no card advantage there which is pretty bad and that leaves us with Inaction Injunction as the last draw spell costed under 2 within RTR block and this has the same problem as Cremate and requires a legal target. As for cards over casting cost of 2, Pilfered Plans is one that is definitely coming in. Glimpse the Future is as close as we're going to get to Forbidden Alchemy and I'll take it!

Now onto the planeswalkers. Chandra, the Firebrand was mainly used to double spells and no one does it quite like her. Both Jace, Architect of Thought and Ral Zarek are eyeing her position. Jace is a good contender because his -2 is almost as good as Chandra doubling a draw spell but Ral might make it because his -2 is the second kill spell in a turn.

Other Decks

 

That's enough of my deck, in case you weren't reading because you guys aren't playing that. The best decks to hold onto right now would be Aristocrats of any variation as M14 is giving a lot of good additions to it. But that doesn't mean it's the only one that you can hold onto, green white tokens is still going to be good come rotation. You may think Ratchet Bomb is going to ruin all your fun but there are ways around it, one being Pithing Needle naming the bomb and the other is Rootborn Defenses for indestructibility. A bad deck is one that graveyard reliant because of Scavenging Ooze, he will wreck your whole plan and eat your yard. In addition evolve decks right now are also not so good. Those evolve decks get extra mileage out by using Rapid Hybridization on it's own creature that happens to have Undying, but unlike the mechanic it's not coming back into the next standard. Curses, Werewolves, and Zombies all fit in this criteria and they are not rotation friendly so don't build this deck if you want to make your money count for more than 2 months.