Immortal Ones

[Travis Lannoye]

I played against a deck very close to this one on Cockatrice the other day, and it looked really neat.

Creatures (21):
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Cathedral Sanctifier
4 Doomed Traveler
3 Wingcrafter
3 Boros Elite
3 Legion Loyalist

Spells (15):
4 Faithless Looting
3 Mass Appeal
4 Immortal Servitude
4 Supreme Verdict

Lands (24):
4 Clifftop Retreat
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Sacred Foundry
8 Plains
- EDIT: this is a rough estimate of what the mana base would look like.

Sideboard:
- Blind Obedience for creature mirrors
- Negate for planeswalkers
- War Priest of Thune for enchantments
- Boros Charm for mass removal

The goal of this list is to jam out a ton of one-drops, wrath the board liberally, and cast Immortal Servitude for 1 to bring them all back. Wingcrafters give evasion, Legion Loyalist makes things hard to block, Sanctifiers keep the life total high. Mass Appeal and Faithless Looting keep the gas coming.

The original list I saw only ran UW colors and played Delver of Secrets, but it never flipped against me and I only saw a few non-creature spells.

Thoughts on this? Should it be expanded to cover two-drop creatures like Snapcaster as well? Is there a better shell for this than UWr? Maybe add green for Mayors and Experiment One?

EDIT: The other side of this concept would be to go black and play a curve of something like Deathrite Shaman/Lotleth Troll/Gravecrawler/Young Wolf/Strangleroot Geist/Experiment One, but that would require more two-drops and does have the draw power of Mass Appeal/Faithless Looting.

[John Galli]

Ran into a guy on cockatrice, played about 10 games or so against him. He had a really interesting Immortal Ones deck as well and it was surprisingly consistent-

4 immortal servitude
4 alchemist apprentice
4 azorious arrester
4 blood artist
4 bloodthrone vampire
4 cartel aristocrat
2 falkenwrath noble
2 keening apparition
4 faith's reward
4 forbidden alchemy
(36 Spells)

4 ghost quarter
1 glacial fortress
2 godless shrine
2 hallowed fountain
3 island
3 isolated
3 plains
4 swamp
2 watery grave
(24 land)

[Travis Lannoye]

Thinking about playing something like this for Saturday's TCG Player event: sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=55746

I like this deck for three reasons:
- It has the versatility to play as an aggro deck (Geist/Voice/Souls), a combo deck (High Priest/sac outlet), or a control deck (trading resilient creatures like Geist/Voice and then bringing them all back with Servitude). It can also just win out of nowhere with Blood Artist triggers.
- It has the surprise factor of bringing back your whole team with Immortal Servitude (since everything except Deathrite Shaman is a two-drop).
- It has a Vault and a Township to break stalemates.

John also brought this idea to my attention: magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=11188

This deck relies more on Vorolz and the Aristocrats combo (I would add in some Skirsdag High Priests), as well as a ton of other resilient creatures (Doomed Traveler, Young Wolf). I like the fact that Vorolz can be a win-con as well as a sac-outlet. I also like the addition of three Sorins for either more bodies or an anthem effect. My only problem with it is that I don't have any Vorolz right now, and I might also be missing Young Wolves/Tragic Slips.

[John Galli]

Here's Sam Black's full article (minus the videos). He had a revised decklist at the bottom that I missed the first time-

B/W/G Aristocrats
Sam Black
0th Place at Test deck on 6/2/2013
Standard


Creatures (28)

4 Blood Artist
4 Cartel Aristocrat
4 Doomed Traveler
1 Maw of the Obzedat
4 Skirsdag High Priest
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Young Wolf
3 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
Lands (23)

1 Plains
1 Gavony Township
4 Godless Shrine
3 Isolated Chapel
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
4 Woodland Cemetery
Spells (9)

1 Putrefy
2 Ready
4 Tragic Slip
2 Lingering Souls
Sideboard

4 Sin Collector
2 Gift of Orzhova
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Ready
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2 Alive





I went with Gift of Orzhova in the sideboard over Unflinching Courage because I don't want my opponents to be able to block with multiple creatures to kill my enchanted creature and I don't think the extra +1/+1 matters that much if one of them is going.



This first game was pretty epic, and I won because we both made big mistakes at the end. I should have just attacked without sacrificing for one turn and then moved in the next turn, and he should have sacrificed another creature to end at two life so that he wouldn't be dead to my Blood Artist. Having gotten himself into that position, he still could have won by passing and sacrificing creatures in my upkeep, letting his Artists resolve but not any of mine.

In game 2, I couldn't cast spells, so he blew me out. In game 3, I had an answer to his High Priest, and he didn't have an answer to mine (also, being on the draw with a slower start, his likely would have been too slow).



Slumbering Dragon was a surprise card that I had to figure out how to play around, but it turned out the best answer was just to wait for Demons. In the second game, my opponent never found red mana, and my draw ended up working out quite nicely.

So far, I'm feeling good about Ready // Willing and Maw of the Obzedat, but I've always wanted cheaper removal and Putrefy is always the first card I side out. Also, I'm not really using my sideboard, which is fine if I'm just not playing against the decks it's there for, especially if I'm winning, but still suggests I should reconsider it.

In my reevaluation, I realized that I don't have anything that fights the graveyard, which I probably should. For now, I think that means I want Deathrite Shaman since it's a powerful card that's basically on-plan, but if that isn't enough Ground Seal would also be a perfect fit, especially if I don't use Deathrite Shaman, where it would have the upside of turning off my opponent's Deathrite Shamans while letting me do all my graveyard stuff.

For the next matches, I'll be playing:

B/G/W Aristocrats
Sam Black
0th Place at Test deck on 6/2/2013
Standard


Creatures (28)

4 Blood Artist
4 Cartel Aristocrat
4 Doomed Traveler
1 Maw of the Obzedat
4 Skirsdag High Priest
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Young Wolf
3 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
Lands (23)

1 Plains
1 Gavony Township
4 Godless Shrine
3 Isolated Chapel
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
4 Woodland Cemetery
Spells (9)

1 Orzhov Charm
2 Ready
4 Tragic Slip
2 Lingering Souls
Sideboard

2 Deathrite Shaman
4 Sin Collector
1 Gift of Orzhova
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Putrefy
1 Ready
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
1 Alive





Orzhov Charm is great here. I have Blood Artists to make up the life loss and lots of one-mana creatures I'll sometimes be happy to return. I might want more of them, but in the maindeck I don't want too much removal and in the sideboard I think I want painless removal for aggressive decks. It's still likely better than the Putrefy, but I want to keep one around for a bit just to see if I ever want it.



Sometimes a turn 3 Acidic Slime just gets you. Ordinarily, this isn't the kind of deck that should mind a Slime so much since my curve is so low, but when I'm a bit land light and it comes down on turn 3, it's a different story.

I won game 2 because of my opponent's mana issues, but I felt good about the decisions I made—siding out Voice of Resurgence and killing his Elf when I did.

Both of us had terrible draws in game 3, but mine were a little less terrible. Overall, this didn't make me feel much better about the Reanimator matchup, but I think I might be favored to win any game where I draw a Skirsdag High Priest and Deathrite definitely helps after sideboarding. I probably need more of those if there's much Reanimator.



In the first game, I got punished for playing my Blood Artist too aggressively into removal and fell behind on tempo because I didn't play the Carter Aristocrat earlier, but I don't think I could have beaten his Blood Artist. He mostly won this game because he drew more removal than I did, which says something important about the matchup—even though many of the creatures are good against removal, it's the ones that aren't that win the games.

In game 2, I mulliganed into the perfect Skirsdag High Priest draw, but what's important to note about this game is that I actually won because his removal spell was Putrefy rather than something that cost two mana, which could have killed Skirsdag High Priest in time.

In the third game, I got Blood Artist superiority, and won as soon as I had it. (It may look like he conceded early, but on his turn I could blank his Blood Artist by sacrificing a second creature after allowing the triggers from my artist to resolve after sacrificing a first creature and repeat until he was dead without letting his Blood Artist do anything).

I've heard reports from others that they haven't loved this deck, but so far it feels good to me. I'm looking forward to further testing with it.

Thanks for watching,

Sam

[Travis Lannoye]

I think I would cut the Read/Willing and the Maw of Obzedat in favor of Sorin main-deck. Vorolz + Cartel should be enough sacrifice to turn on High Priests and Tragic Slips, and Sorin is super hard to deal with on his own.

Definitely need to keep 3-4 Deathrite Shamans. If there was room for him main-deck, I'd probably do that, which was a perk of the Servitude list, but as long as they somewhere are in the 75, that's fine.

[John Galli]

Grrrr Brad Nelson just won the open with Junk Aristocrats a few min ago. Noooo. I guess ill have to keep my blasphemous acts in my board (which actually was great for me on Friday)

[Travis Lannoye]

Yeah that really made me feel good about skipping the TCG Player thing, as that's very close to the same list I was gonna run.

[John Galli]

This list in the top 8 looked like a fun deck -

BUG Control

Creature [9]
1 Ætherling
1 Progenitor Mimic
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Thragtusk

Instant [11]
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Far // Away
3 Think Twice
3 Warped Physique

Sorcery [7]
4 Farseek
3 Mutilate

Land [24]
4 Breeding Pool
4 Drowned Catacomb

4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Nephalia Drownyard
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Watery Grave
2 Woodland Cemetery

Planeswalker [9]
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

60 cards

Sideboard:

4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Notion Thief
1 Sepulchral Primordial
2 Cremate
2 Gaze of Granite
1 Pithing Needle
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Jace, Memory Adept