I have been playing Mardu tokens for most of the Dragons Standard and it is alot of fun. Virulent Plague can be offset with Obelisk of Urd and Mardu Ascendancy can save you from Drown in Sorrow. If you're not swinging with your greater numbers, you're doing it wrong. Sitting on tokens that did their 1 ping each is bad when people main board End Hostilities and Crux of Fate, atleast in my meta. Outpost Siege is a great way to win/win by swinging with your tokens, as they take another 1 damage when they're blocked and die. Sorin, Solemn Visitor is also another great 4 drop that will immediately make your tokens a much greater threat. Plus 1 for sure!

Check out my Mardu token build here Zerg Rush

Firstly, +1 from me.

So I can speak to this deck from a Mardu Dragons perspective, which has felt like an amazing answer to the meta for me. I played this on Cockatrice yesterday and got exploded by Impact Tremors + Purphoros, God of the Forge triggers. I mean, I had a great hand and lethal the following turn but literally any spell just killed me, so I lost in 3.

At first, I thought that Virulent Plague was going to be a hard counter to your deck but with the combo I mentioned above, it hurts but doesn't shut you down like it does Jeskai tokens since you still get the ETB trigger even if the tokens immediately die. However, Virulent Plague really does hurt your offense. Against any black deck, you have to reasonably assume that card is coming in against you and I worry that 2x Utter End in the board as your only defense to problematic enchantments and the like isn't enough.

I agree with the other poster who said if you're not attacking with your higher numbers, then you're really doing it wrong. So what if you lose a few tokens in an attack against most decks? You're the aggressor and those extra 2-4 points of damage per game can be the difference.

Along the same lines, and also in agreement with another poster, you should absolutely be swapping Lightning Strike with Collateral Damage. Or at the very least, some other card since it feels to me like a mediocre option. Collateral Damage is far more mana efficient and when swinging with 3-4 tokens, you can blow up whichever one is blocked and go right to their dome. It's very reasonable for you to swing 3-5 tokens at their Courser or Caryatid and deal them 6-8 damage with Collateral Damage on the one that's blocked. You're consistently looking at turn 5-6 kills with it.

Not playing Stoke the Flames in this build seems insane to me, especially if you're trying to leave blockers behind. In many cases, it's a free 4 to their face. I've tried a similar-ish build and Stoke was gross, as was Butcher of the Horde, although I understand you're not trying to go the Butcher route.

I don't love End Hostilities mainboard for you. I understand your reasoning but your deck can't afford to be more flexible with catch-all answers in the mainboard to this degree - this is what the sideboard is for. I know you may not think it since you've emphatically said you're trying to be more midrange, but your deck is very akin to monored aggro in that you're trying to just flat-out murder face in game with no slowing down. You're just going about it in a different way that takes an extra turn or 2, which in my opinion is more effective. Outpost Siege gives you reach along with Elspeth, Sun's Champion (which I'm not sure should be a 2x main), but everything else is just some form of explosive burn, whether it's spells or triggers.

Lastly, and I realize I've gone on at great length already but I personally appreciate detailed feedback so I'm giving you the same, you run far too few lands for this deck. It's a deceptively mana-hungry deck and no deck playing Elspeth main should be running less than 24 lands, not to mention that you want to over-charge your Secure the Wastes. I'm sure you'll say "I haven't had problems with it," but I'm telling you, mathematically speaking, you will have difficulty casting spells on curve with mediocre draws because, let's face it, we can't always draw the nuts.

Hope this helps.

So I put the 24th land in, removed the board wipes, and switched in collateral damage. Right now I am down to 8 removal cards and I generally like to have like 10. Do you have any suggestions on what to lower/increase to either put in stokes or something else? This is the point where I like everything and don't know what needs to go. I also could switch out my raise the alarms for Dragon Fodders if I put stokes in.

I still worry about collateral since if Virulent Plague comes out in can be a dead card.

I am not also super against Butcher of the Horde. Just not sure what to take out. I just know that fodders will go in if stokes go in.

So after play testing a few hands and playing against some random decks I could not put Collateral Damage in. Almost every time I either had no tokens or really needed one to live. Only one out of every ten instances did the one mana really matter. I had no way to handle any initial threats. Switching back in Lightning Strike which has been super reliable.

This is funny, cuz I was LITERALLY coming onto this site to try and put together a very similar deck I have the makings of in my head. I'd been thinking R/W tokens based around ETB damage, and had just now thought about splashing black for Sorin and board stuff.

Awesome deck, and I'll keep this in mind when working on my own list! Seems indomitable almost... so resistant to most disruption. Especially against decks without green or white for enchantment hate.

One thing I'm thinking right off the bat, I'd prolly play Magma Jet over Strike. The 1 damage is usually not too big a deal since most BIG threats that are outside of 2 damage are outside 3 as well IMO. That scry 2 can be huge in decks pushing those last few points of damage.

Thanks all. BTW you are right about Magma Jet. The only card it wouldn't hit is Fleecemane Lion which i see commonly but with a single blocker its dead. Ill try it out.

right. the Lion, or a leveled up Warden of the First Tree are the only early-game threats it doesn't hit alone, and late-game you're racing -- not trying to get rid of a Siege Rhino or whatever. That said, the deck MAY want a few Roasts in the 'board for especially creature-heavy decks.

I'm thinking maybe 3x Anger in the board may not be that great, too -- since it hurts you so much as well, there's not a lot of matchups where you really want it.

Also, 1-2x Valorous Stance in main or side could go a LONG way sometimes.

I am going to be playing this deck tomorrow at FNM. I play it at work and got destroyed by any deck than ran 2-3 toughness and flooded the field (warriors n such). I probably could drop it down to 2 but I don't know if I want to completely remove it.

I dropped it down to 2 and added another Ultimate Price for dragon match ups.

Cool! I'll be stuck at work for FNM this week, but will DEF be going next week -- so I for one would be very interested in hearing about your results! Not just how you did, but specifically which matchups created the most problems and whatnot.

I wouldn't think Warrior decks would be too much of a problem usually, since you can flood the board with as many dudes as they can, and chump blocking all day isn't a huge negative for the deck. Damage that gets thru from an actual attack is like gravy. That said, I've only gold-fished this list -- never played a live game with anything remotely similar.

I tried it out a bit. The Impact Tremors + tokens synergy performed really well. The biggest problem I had was just not drawing enough cards fast enough. Outpost Siege is so important for this deck. You might also need to throw in Ire Shaman or Chandra, Pyromaster just for the card draw.

I'm not convinced Mastery of the Unseen is what this deck wants. It's not bad, especially against control. I'd be tempted more by cards like Foul-Tongue Invocation, Qarsi High Priest or Myth Realized, that can give you different angles.

Brave the Sands seems ok from the vigilance idea, but you can get that from Heliod, God of the Sun too. The extra blocking doesn't seem that relevant because you can certainly generate enough blockers against many vanilla attackers, but nothing for attackers that have evasion. Maybe Triplicate Spirits is more what you're looking for.

that is all good info -- Trip Spirits is INSANE in this type of build.

also, 1-2 Spirit Bonds ?

Spirit Bonds only activates with non token creatures, and Purphoros wont even activate it, so its not gonna work here. It would work great in a cheap dash deck where things are coming out every turn but can leave behind a blocker for 1 extra mana.

Man this is so good! I'm currently running something similar in my LGS with good results! Would you mind checking it? Maye you can give me some ideas! RW Tokens

Personally, I love Elspeth, Sun's Champion + Purphoros, God of the Forge combo and win condition, it's amazing. But I find it quite slow. I decided to abuse from Impact Tremors and aforementioned god with little creatures with 'dash' that don't even need to stay on the battlefield, so you can cast them every turn for massive ETB damage :)

I play a similar list. I cut black and add in green for atarkas command. It helps blocking flyers. It anthems well. 3 tokens hitting plus atarkas is 9 dmage to face. I have myth realized instead of rabble. Gives me a turn 1 play and almost every play is an instant or sorcery. Use xenagos instead of impact tremors and 1 chord. Helps ramp and the tokens can fetch for outpost or purphoros. Anyhow it works great.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/nayational-anthem/

what are your planning to do with this once origins rotates in?

To be honest, probably nothing. Every card that was released would change up how my deck would function. I could easily put in the sigil that gives crazy exalted but rabblemaster screws that up so I would have to change to mentor but he is slow and would need cards to back him up. Valor of akros is amazing but I would have to layer token generators in and take out my removal since how triggers stack allows you to put in a bunch of crazy instant speed blockers that are huge if I wanted to be consistent. I mean its an option but not one I want to do with this. It really just comes down to seeing how some of the new cards play and if they can replace things. I probably will only make major changes once Theros cycles and I have to replace Purphoros since he is my major kill condition. The only cards that I could swap out for something straight and not change things are Prism ring (since almost all my spells have red) and maybe swift reckoning.

At this point its up in the air since cards reveal to be amazing after the fact and some to be terrible but I don't think anything will swap out at this point. I'll just play it as is and watch to see if people start going crazy about one and it fits my strategy.

How has Outpost Siege worked for you? I have a post rotation build for a similar deck, but didn't want to run too many enchantments. I like the idea of having Outpost Siege out and then a board wipe though.

Here's my deck if you're interested:

Mardu Token Burn Playtest

Standard Harbynger

SCORE: 5 | 4 COMMENTS | 671 VIEWS

Also... Death to the False Emperor! Glory to Chaos!

Absolutely love this concept! I would love to see Zada, Hedron Grinder in it as well! I think if you put him in, taking out 2 carrier thrall would do well, and maybe add some pump spells such as Titan's Strength, Lithomancer's Focus, Sure Strike or Feat of Resistance to pump all your tokens.

Could you check this deck out? I need some help with it and you seem to have a skill with building decks... Here it is...

CoCo is Love Playtest

Standard Carson12rocks

SCORE: 1 | 0 COMMENTS | 66 VIEWS

Looks intersting! I like the effort lol. I can see cards like languish and control decks giving this a problem because your creatures are high value and losing one is a big loss. I like the enchantment business though looks like a very damaging set up whether or not your shit dies or gets countered