Sideboard


My third brew for Guilds of Ravnica that involves one of my favorite mechanics in Magic. Land Destruction. And what better to way destroy lands than to destroy all of them with Armageddon! It's a shame it's not legal in standard... Hang on to your hats fellow ponza enthusiasts for such a card exists in the form of Fall of the Thran! Combine this with Remorseful Cleric and we've successfully destroyed all our opponents lands whilst protecting our own. Spicy!

If you've not yet caught on to the above combo sure to drive your opponent insane, let me explain. Fall of the Thran destroys all lands and sends them to their respective graveyards. Hooray we did an Armageddon. But wait, they come back over the next 2 turns? That's no fun. Sacrifice Remorseful Cleric to exile our opponent's graveyard and prevent them from returning their lands to the battlefield, putting them back at square one.

If push comes to shove and you're desperate to prevent your opponent having lands (and more importantly think you can manage without) cast Knight of Autumn and destroy the enchantment stopping it from returning lands to anyone next turn. You don't get a land! You don't get a land! Everybody doesn't get a land!

Remember to float your mana before you Fall of the Thran! You can use the remaining mana after it's been destroyed to do more things on your turn. You can't tap it after it's been destroyed!

Because Fall of the Thran requires 6 mana, we ideally want to cast it earlier than turn 6 before our opponent builds up a board presence. Enter stage left: Llanowar Elves, Jadelight Ranger and Song of Freyalise. Elves and Songs allow us to get 6 mana before turn 6 in order to cast Fall of the Thran by giving us creatures to tap for mana, whilst the Ranger gets us to those all important land drops whilst filtering dorks into the graveyard late game in favour of combo pieces or big threats.

Mentor of the Meek helps us draw through our deck to get to the key pieces because all of our creatures have power 2 or less when they enter the battlefield (both Jadelight Ranger and Knight of Autumn allow us to explore then draw thanks to the abilities both being ETBs.)

After the combo we hopefully have enough land and dorks to carry on as normal whilst our opponent is set back to square one.

We have cards like Thorn Lieutenant that we can pump to 6/7 with all the mana we still have and we can give everything +1/+1 counters with the final trigger of Song of Freyalise which is particularity useful if we've been creating 1/1 lifelinkers by tapping Emmara, Soul of the Accord for mana with the song. Sometimes Conclave Tribunal can help us get past that last Steel Leaf Champion after we have blown up their lands to finish them off even if we've no mana thanks to our multitude (pun) of tokens.

Remorseful Cleric having flying is also quite important late game as we can chuck a few counters on it to give it some power to get a few final big hits in.

Opponent rebuilt their mana? Go for the combo again. They probably deserve it anyway.

The deck also has a go wide strategy when needed although I imagine it'll mainly be used to create chump blockers for big early threats. March of the Multitudes is a one of that I had lying around that slips quite nicely in to help us make blockers, Thorn Lieutenant creates 1/1 tokens when she's targeted with removal whilst Emmara, Soul of the Accord creates 1/1 lifelinkers whenever she becomes tapped for convoke (Conclave Tribunal & March of the Multitudes) or to produce mana with Song of Freyalise. Those extra points of life AND chump blockers will help us get to the combo whilst staying plenty healthy and also help make plenty of scary tokens with Song of Freyalise' final trigger.

In case you missed it, Jadelight Ranger also still allows us to draw with Mentor of the Meek on the field before turning into a 4/3 after exploring which is pretty cool. You can also stack the triggers how you like because they go on the stack at the same time as ETBs. Desperately searching for a land? Maybe pay the 2 for the draw off Mentor and THEN explore twice for that final land drop to Fall of the Thran next turn. Most of the time I think you'll be exploring into a card you want to keep on top that you can draw with mentor's trigger afterwards.

The 2x Sentinel Totem is useful game 2 sideboard when we're coming up against a large amount of removal targeting Remorseful Cleric, which if we pulled off the combo game 1, they'll want to do that. In comes the totem and that removal they've just brought in becomes useless and our combo becomes more consistent, just with less bodies. Also super useful against any graveyard strategies our opponent is going for so it's super strong against Golgari seeing as how they have a strong removal suite and will want to bring more of it in to deal with the clerics.

The 3x Settle the Wreckage are the secret MVPs of our sideboard. Because our deck plans to go longer into Fall of the Thran we have a hard time against decks like mono-green stompy which is way more explosive and boasts threats like Steel Leaf Champion that our tokens do nothing against. A well timed settle leaves them wide open to our go wide strategy and firmly puts us in control.

Shapers' Sanctuary is another very important bit of side board that will be coming in most game 2s as our opponent will be leaning heavily on removal post sideboard. That extra card draw allows us to pick out another threat anytime our opponent tries to deal with one on board.

Tocatli Honor Guard is the new spice people have found to play against Golgari decks to stop them going off with Wildgrowth Walker but it also works against Mono Red stopping their Viashino Pyromancers from burning our face and Izzet with their Crackling Drakes.

Conclave Cavalier is for the large amount of Jeskai and Creature-less Izzet control in my meta at the moment, if they clear the baord I'm still left with 2 bears, and Sorcerous Spyglass is for the planeswalkers that come with them (Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Ral, Izzet Viceroy, either Vraska in Golgari.)

If you're looking for a fun Selesnya deck with a side of pure, unadulterated spice then definitely give this deck a go. Pulling off this combo has resulted in some of the most fun I've had in standard in a long time and if the meta is slowing down any, it may actually have a chance of making an impact at your local FNM.

Any feedback is very much appreciated and if you've made it this far, thank you very much for reading!

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Updates Add

Yesterday I managed to play this deck minus 2 Temple Gardens and the listed sideboard (I threw some bits and pieces together close to what it is now) and went 1-2-1 at FNM. Whilst that may not sound great, I had one of the most fun standard experiences I've had in a long time.

The one win was against an Izzet Counter-Burn control deck in which we ramped way too fast for it to deal with. Any individual removal, which it was packing a lot of, did nothing against our field full of creatures and we beat them 2-0 without even touching their lands. Sad, but the deck is still fun without the combo.

The draw was against Dimir Disinformation Campaign Control. All of the games were so tight and the campaign was just acting as a 3 mana draw spell as we could just dump our hand with relative safety of no removal. Thoughtbound phantasms and big spybugs kept him in most games and game 3 ended with me survivng by the skin of my teeth with a top deck knight of autumn to gain enough life to survive his big spoopy ghosts swinging in and putting me to 1 so I was happy to scrape the draw.

One of the losses was against Jeskai control with Teferi's and counter spells and removal and it was so one-sided it was unreal. We did manage to steal game 2 off him keeping a slow hand and us getting underneath with tokens but he did not make that mistake again...

The final loss was the most exciting and rewarding game all night. It was against mono green elves which I never saw coming but oh my days was it pretty damn impressive. Game 1 they exploded onto the field with llanowars, steel leafs, marywn and clancallers. Ow. Game 3 we lost in a similar fashion but game 2.. Oh boy game 2... We pulled it off ladies and gentlemen. With 6 mana, a field full of lifelinkers, a cleric on board and 2 health keeping us alive we yolo-ed it. Fall of the thran, hit in with lifelinkers and cleric, exile graveyard, fantastic. They never managed to draw enough lands to get back into the game or even pump their thorn lieutenant and next turn we got enough lands back to settle their steal leaf. Would we have won if Fall of the Thran was any other 6 mana threat.Quite possibly. Would the win have been as satisfying as that? Most definitely not.

All in all we pulled off the combo once and blew up a jeskai players lands a few times just to annoy him. I had a great time but I've tweaked the deck a bit to make it more competitive whilst still having that spicy combo.

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Top Ranked
  • Achieved #32 position overall 6 years ago
Date added 6 years
Last updated 6 years
Legality

This deck is not Standard legal.

Rarity (main - side)

1 - 0 Mythic Rares

30 - 9 Rares

11 - 6 Uncommons

4 - 0 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.86
Tokens City's Blessing, Elf Knight 2/2 GW, Elf Warrior 1/1 G, Soldier 1/1 W w/ Lifelink
Folders Standard, standard, Interessant, Standard, Ideas, decks of interest, MTG Arena Decks, Fall of Thran
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