Simic Standard

Standard GU (Simic) Ramp

Cipher_8

BriarbridgeTargets (3)

• 1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1x Ulvenwald Hydra
• 1x Void Winnower

Mana (23)

• 11x Forest
• 8x Island
• 4x Lumbering Falls

Search&Ramp (12)

• 3x Bring to Light
• 2x Cryptolith Rite
• 2x Nissa's Pilgrimage
• 2x Nissa's Renewal
• 2x Nissa's Revelation
• 1x Traverse the Ulvenwald

SearchCreatures (4)

• 4x Collected Company

TriggerInvestigate (17)

• 4x Erdwal Illuminator
• 2x Nissa's Judgment
• 1x Ongoing Investigation
• 3x Rabid Bite
• 2x Tamiyo's Journal
• 4x Tireless Tracker
• 1x Trail of Evidence

Wincon (4)

• 4x Briarbridge Patrol

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Sideboard

Other (15)

• 1x Altered Ego
• 3x Bounding Krasis
• 1x Confirm Suspicions
• 1x Epic Confrontation
• 2x Gather the Pack
• 2x Nissa's Renewal
• 1x Oath of Nissa
• 1x Reclaim
• 2x Seasons Past
• 1x Ulvenwald Mysteries

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Maybeboard

Other (27)

• 1x Byway Courier
• 1x Clash of Wills
• 1x Daring Sleuth  ^Flip
• 1x Dromoka's Command
• 1x Drownyard Explorers
• 1x Expose Evil
• 1x Fertile Thicket
• 1x Foe-Razer Regent
• 1x Gather the Pack
• 1x Glint
• 1x Gone Missing
• 1x Jace's Scrutiny
• 1x Kiora, Master of the Depths
• 1x Mizzium Meddler
• 1x Negate
• 1x Press for Answers
• 1x Reclaim
• 1x Reflector Mage
• 1x Scatter to the Winds
• 1x Seasons Past
• 1x Skyline Cascade
• 1x Unnatural Aggression
• 1x Void Grafter
• 1x Void Shatter
• 1x Wild Instincts
• 1x Willbreaker
• 1x Woodland Stream

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I love playing Simic even when there's not much support for it in Standard. I feel the color combo offers a lot of value in what it can bring over other color combinations.

Show

There seems to always be more 'search for land and/or search/reveal for creature' type cards within green. (Collected Company, Gather the Pack, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Nissa's Pilgrimage and Bring to Light)

Outside of those though Green has always had a strong creature focus. Ramping with mana creatures or just heavy +1/+1 counter synergy. They usually have a lot of access to Trample to go along with the buffs making green one of the colors with the strongest board presence.

Where as Blue usually has some of the weakest board presence with less of a focus on creatures and more of a focus on other spells. Blue offers plenty of non-creature based strategies. Counter spells and bounce/flicker spells which can be used alongside creatures with ETB effects.

Even with their focus usually being non-creatures they still have some nice flyers now and then and their creatures usually come with powerful abilities such as Willbreaker for example. Blue creatures usually want you to focus around their abilites but some of my favorites have simple yet effective mechanics like Unblockable or Hexproof which make them hard to deal with and quite powerful. And you seem to find more creatures with these abilities within blue than any other color.

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Introduction

As soon as I saw Briarbridge Patrol I knew I wanted to play around with it and the new Investigate mechanic to get a massive creature out into play faster than casting it.

Our Wincon is Briarbridge Patrol putting massive colorless creatures out like Void Winnower or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger before they could normally be played.

There's enough ramp though that eventually you'll be able to cast anything no matter how much it costs.

The amount of lands you'll have in play makes your secondary Wincon be a massive Ulvenwald Hydra.

How it Plays

This deck is fairly self-explanatory, what it boils down to is Investigate!

Investigate

Most of the good Investigate cards fall within our colors and (There are quite a few also in ) so I figured a Simic Shell is naturally a good place to start.

With Briarbridge Patrol being our main WinCon it makes the decision of when to sacrifice a Clue more interesting. You don't always do it as soon as possible to draw a card because if you can save up three and sacrifice all three in a turn thanks to the mana ramp we got in this deck you can put anything in play for free from hand. Yes, any creature no matter how much it costs.

Briarbridge Patrol | Art by Greg Opalinski

Briarbridge Patrol

It's important that it says, "Deals Damage" and not only "Deals Combat Damage".

You can just as easily Investigate with the "Fight" cards and cards that make him deal direct damage to creatures.

Having him Rabid Bite or Nissa's Judgment deals damage without having to fight them where they deal damage back to it.

Sideboarded Epic Confrontation works fine too but make sure they don't kill your Briarbridge Patrol.

(There's also Wild Instincts, Unnatural Aggression or even Dromoka's Command but I'll put them in the maybeboard. There's also the Ultimate of Kiora, Master of the Depths but that defeats the purpose of doing this whole thing fast because we gotta build her up first. Moonlight Hunt doesn't work because he's a Human and not a Wolf/Werewolf.)



I use to have more of a counter spell focus based around the Trail of Evidence as my way to Investigate a lot.

Even though we could answer there cards with counters and stall the game more it didn't play quite as well. You either didn't have Trail of Evidence in play and then the counterspells didn't Investigate at all or you had it in play and not enough sorcery/instant spells to cast, or running both search for lands and counter spells meant you didn't have a board presence with creatures and just a bunch of spells and lands.

So I decided to focus more on the creatures that Investigate.

Tireless Tracker in a search land into play Ramp deck is insane. That's why he costs so much.

Erdwal Illuminator doubles our first trigger of Investigate each turn. If you have more than one in play each triggers an extra Clue token. For every Erdwal you get 2 Clues. If you have 2 in play that's 4. If you have 3 in play that's 6 Clues!

Collected Company is such a powerful card right now in Standard it's taking the format over. Bant Company is the top deck right now.

We use it here to bring out the two main creatures that Investigate.

Collected Company + Erdwal Illuminator / Tireless Tracker

Gather the Pack works too and Bring to Light alongside Cryptolith Rite for mana fixing.



The idea of this deck is now to ramp first, casting early spells to search out lands. Then casting creatures when you can or powerful pluck'n'play spells like Collected Company to get the Investigate creatures into play two or three at a time. This along with other specific cards that Investigate for doing other things helps put out a bunch of Clues that you can use immediately to draw card advantage or save for later to sacrifice to Tamiyo's Journal or Briarbridge Patrol.

The journal can tutor up any card you need like the Eldrazi for B.P. to put into play for free. If the game goes on long enough though you'll have enough lands where you don't even need B.P. to play the Eldrazi.

The Main Cards

There's plenty of land search in this deck and each puts the lands into play from the library. Every time a land is put into play via these cards, often multiple lands at a time, it helps trigger Tireless Tracker to Investigate a whole lot.

Then using Erdwal Illuminators to double, triple, or quadruple the Clues we can effectively use them as fuel to get the big baddies out into play via Briarbridge Patrol.

Instead of sac'ing them and paying the mana and also drawing cards there's a better way.

Tamiyo's Journal simply sac three without paying mana just tapping it to it and search for any card, choose a Eldrazi, put it into your hand. It'll trigger Briarbridge Patrol because three clues went bye bye this turn and now you have an Eldrazi in your hand that you put into play for FREE!

This is our main combo.

Briarbridge Patrol + Tamiyo's Journal along with any massive creature.

Searchers & Other Important Cards

Nissa's Pilgrimage

On T3 there's no better play. It really gets the ramp going allowing us to cast anything in successive turns and not stalling because of mana.

Nissa's Renewal

My favorite of the searchers. 7 Life is pretty big gain but I love it for the ability to grab either Island or Forest.

Nissa's Revelation

This card is insanely powerful when Ulvenwald Hydra, Void Winnower, or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger are still in your library somewhere. If you find one of them your gaining a ton of life and drawing a ton of cards! Just for pure ability to sift through the top of your library and set up your draws this card is worth running in this deck.

Traverse the Ulvenwald once we get Delirium through cards like Gather the Pack lets us search for any creature otherwise it works like rest of the search for land cards except for it goes to hand instead of play.

Oath of Nissa sideboarded for now.

Bring to Light

Another crazy versatile Simic card.

When run alongside a mana fixer like Cryptolith Rite you can reliably cast it for along with 3 creatures to tap.

This is a really good combo search out anything 5CMC or less with 3 creatures in play.

Grab any Creature, Instant, or Sorcery that costs 5 or less.

Basically it's meant to grab your Briarbridge Patrol if you need it and don't have it.

While it cannot grab Nissa's Renewal or Revelation it can go grab Nissa's Judgment your best removal card.

It can also grab Collected Company which lets you basically play up to 8 copies of this powerful card in your deck. If you could play more than 4 collected companys everyone would. Am i right or am i right?

It's also okay to cast when you don't have Cryptolith Rite in play to search out Erdwal Illuminator which has a 2 CMC for the 2 color you cast it for.

All of those cards gives this deck quite a bit of Ramp. All those lands really help make Tireless Tracker our main Investigate engine and Ulvenwald Hydra bigger than any of them Eldrazi. Also it let us cast them Eldrazi from our hand without the help of Briarbridge.

Even though we took the focus off Trail of Evidence we still can use it. Whenever you cast instant/sorcery land searchers, like those listed above, you can investigate. At the same time as you bring out lands that you'll ultimately need to sac these Clues.

The mana we need for the clues (2+2+2) shouldn't be a problem at all with this deck having so much lands in play.

Altered Ego great mana dump later on when you have a ton of lands. Copy any creature with +1/+1 counters on it.

Lumbering Falls

The best of the dual lands for our colors and it lets us animate it as a creature.

If you need more creatures though there are more creatures to work alongside Collected Company.

Bounding Krasis

Void Grafter and Mizzium Meddler helps keep the combo alive.

(Glint too helps protect things.)

Seasons Past

Reclaim

Great cards after a Gather the Pack. Plus it allows you to block and kill your creatures and not worry for you can replay them again and again.

Maybeboard

Maybeboard Show

Mainly filled with more Investigate cards.
There are a few exceptions though;
Willbreaker along with the fight cards that target their creatures lets you take control as long as you don't deal too much damage and kill them off. There are better cards to run alongside this card though that target and even double target their creatures without them taking damage so you can reliably steal control of them.
Thing in the Ice   could be worth it if we went back to the counterspell and trail of evidence focus. This more control build lets us have a few defensive creatures like Titi and casting a bunch of instant/sorcery early to take counters off it. Once it flips and bounces everything else copy it with Altered Ego for not one but two Awoken Horrors.

This deck is very similar to the Blue's Clues decks and Bant Company decks going around Standard.

Date added	8 years
Last updated	8 years
Key combos	Briarbridge Patrol + Tamiyo's Journal
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 2 Mythic Rares 24 - 5 Rares 10 - 6 Uncommons 7 - 2 Commons
Cards	63
Avg. CMC	4.00
Tokens	Clue, Human Soldier 1/1 W