More and more, I've been playing against brews that show up daily on various YouTube channels that look fun or interesting, but not particularly original. Since there are so many channels and only so many combos to put together, it has made deck building original ideas just feel like variations on something that's been done before. Even those videos have found themselves building around the same cards and voicing how they only made one or two changes to "make it their own".
All that said, I set out to try something different and build around cards that don't show up in any of these decks, and I don't believe have shown up in previous sets either because they aren't that popular anyway.
The first card that caught my attention was Invasion of New Capenna
. I've literally never heard of it. Orzhov colors have always been fun to play and powerful to yield, so I decided this would be a good place to start. This does require sacrificing a creature or artifact to get it's ETB upside of exiling a creature or artifact, which means we need a way to get either, or both, cheap and easy. Holy Frazzle-Cannon
with only Equip 1 has an amazingly powerful effect of putting +1/+1 counters on all of your creatures when you attack, but only as long as they share a type with the equipped creature. Ok, so this means we need to spread wide with a common tribal theme.
As far as criteria for building this deck, I think that's plenty to work with. I need low CMC creatures and artifacts with a goal of having enough to sacrifice for removal and hopefully generate some additional value while continuing to go wide for an aggressive play. Novice Inspector was an obvious two for one that generates a Clue token and a 1/2 Human for just one mana. Humans are aplenty, so maybe that's the tribe? Not exactly. The next card that seemed to fit like a slipper was Teysa, Opulent Oligarch. This 2/3 Human has Deathtouch which is always nice to give your opponent difficult choice to attack into or block, but far more interestingly it investigates at the end of your turn for each opponent that lost life during your turn. There's a ton of ways to lose life, but most basically this just means combat damage. To make things even better, whenever a Clue gets sacrificed with it's ability or for any other reason (like the Invasion) you make a 1/1 flying Spirit Token. Makes sense that this can only happen once per turn, but you can absolutely do this by activating the Clue token during your opponents turn to make a token. That's pretty cool and so far just three cards all work together quite nicely. You can sacrifice the Clue token made from the Inspector to the Invasion to exile early plays by your opponent to tempo them, and exiling is typically relevant. Attacking the player will eventually start generating Clues with Teysa to give either draw advantage and additional spirits, or removal plus additional spirits. Then as soon as you can just take out the Invasion to get the Frazzle Cannon and start swinging for more and more damage by equipping it to one of your spirits.
Sweet! Now we just need to lean into these strategies as much as possible. Getting wide with spirit tokens, a focus on Exile effects, two for one effects, and maybe a top end finisher as a backup plan for longer games.
Well, it turns out all three Kaya planeswalkers in current standard synergize with everything going on. Incredibly well. Going up the curve Kaya, Geist Hunter comes in with three loyalty and can immediately generate a ton of value by using her -2 to double the amount of tokens generated for the turn. This counts Clues and Spirits, both of which Teysa all by herself can generate in a single turn just by using a Clue and attacking to make two spirits and two clues. Sometimes the opponent doesn't have much going on on turn 3 while they build whatever ridiculous engine they've got planned, so slamming down a turn 3 Kaya and +1 into nothing puts an immense amount of pressure on your opponent to deal with her. A lot of current builds plan to load up their graveyard as fast as possible while trying to control your creatures with spot removal or board wipes so they can reanimate a bunch of silly things like Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Etali, Primal Conqueror
. Well a Kaya left alone for a few turns that's allowed to -6 (and yes, this has happened a few times lol) to exile all graveyards and make as many spirit tokens as cards were just exiled. This forces your opponent to have a board wipe or lose to a bunch of flyers, but even if they have the board wipe you just erased all the work their early game tried to set up. All the while you can sit there with your Novice Inspectors and holding a hand of removal.
This isn't a wincon by any means, but it does apply some pressure with an end goal that fits with the rest of the build. Next, Kaya, Spirits' Justice is a great and powerful followup that can +1 to just start making flyers, or even +2 to Surveil 2 to dig for whatever you would like to (or wouldn't like to) draw and start spot exiling juicy targets from your opponents graveyard. This ability loosely works with her Passive if you exile your own Teysa and turn one of your Clue or Spirit tokens into a copy of her plus Flying until end of turn. If this token or any other token can hit your opponent it will still generate a clue at end of turn and if you already had a clue that can be sacrificed then it will still make a spirit as well. All of these things (and her +1) work really well with the -2 of the Geist Hunter. She holds hands with herself very well.
There's one more Kaya, Kaya, Intangible Slayer, that fits that top end threat, but also can make a wildly powerful spirit token (or two!) and even has the benefit of having Hexproof so she is very difficult to deal with. Sheoldred's Edict is the best way, but chances are you'll have a lesser Kaya to sacrifice instead. Six loyaly allows her to -3 up to two times in a row unchecked, but alternating between the -3 and +2 probably makes the most sense if the opponent is still alive. The -3 once again exiles a creature, or also very interestingly an enchantment, then as long as that creature or enchantment wasn't an aura you create a token (or two!) that is a copy of that but it's a 1/1 flying spirit. That means it still gets its ETB triggers (like Etali, or even Leyline Binding or even its other abilities (like the ever present Sheoldred, the Apocalypse) for insane value that turns the game upside down for your opponent. Even if they don't have something huge, getting rid of anything useful for your opponent is a good thing, and once again it is exiled so they won't be cheating it back any time soon. The +2 is a 6 point life swing in your favor by draining 3 life from your opponent which also gets a trigger from Teysa if you can't otherwise get any damage in for some reason. The +0 just draws you two cards which is insane so letting your opponents Scry 1 is fair. Honestly this is something I've not used a lot (there's only one copy of her in the main board which is a factor since she doesn't make it into every game) since the other two abilities are so much more impactful. I literally never see any of these Kaya's in Standard (Intangible Slayer gets cheated in every once in a great while, but that's about it), so along with the Invasion I'm feeling pretty good about having something "New".
A happy accident was finding Tomik, Wielder of Law which is a fantastic card against aggro. It gets free hits in the air since it has vigilance, Affinity for Planeswalkers for some reason so you can slam her down for just two mana, and the coolest abilities I've ever seen to combat mono red aggro where "whenever an opponents attacks with creatures, if two or more of those creatures are attacking you and/or planeswalkers you control, that opponent loses 3 life and you draw a card." They have to choose if attacking into you or your Kayas is worth giving you a free card and taking 3 to the face. Since we are trying to be aggressive with spirits as well that's very relevant, but since she's a 2/4 that will never be tapped, that usually means those small red creatures will either just do nothing or die. Even if they plan on using a combat trick to get through her (assuming you didn't read that and blocked anyway) the upside already happened. This means that some opponents will try to avoid giving you that advantage and only attack with one creature. This deck makes chump blockers for days so unless they have trample that kind of takes combat as a wincon off the table for your opponent, or they just have to deal with the consequences. Of course she doesn't pass the "Dies to removal" test, but for only 2-3 mana I'm a big fan of this card. She can also help wear down the Invasion to get to the Frazzle Canon even faster which is nice.
Ok, so what about spells? Another new card that I think is pretty unique and I've literally never seen so far is Treacherous Greed. Since we are mostly dealing damage with expendable spirit tokens, the "drawback" of having to sacrifice a creature that dealt damage this turn isn't much. "Draw 3 cards, each opponent loses 3 life, you gain 3 life." For 3 mana? Holy crap. You can even use this pretty early on an Inspector. It also only has to have "Dealt damage this turn" which means if you blocked a 1/1 with your 1/2 Inspector or it was chump blocked while you were attacking you can still sacrifice it to activate Greed. It's not good enough to have more than two copies however because against the wrong opponent this can be a mostly dead card and you don't want to draw more than one or two of these in a game, but its still a sweet and unexpected trick and most of time isn't too difficult to cast.
Probably the most annoying card in standard right now for some reason is the stupid Deep-Cavern Bat. This deck runs plenty of removal to deal with it, but playing with it doesn't make much sense. You could, but I think Soul Search is just better. It's a Sorcery like most cards similar to it, but unlike Duress this can get any non-land card and it exiles it. On turn 2 though, especially on the play, this can pick off a one cost spell from your opponent, which is something most decks will have, and it will get the spirit train started by creating your first 1/1 spirit token. That's pretty darn close to the same thing as the Bat, except the token doesn't have lifelink but more importantly that card you took is just gone forever. They can kill your token or you can even sacrifice it yourself and that card you got rid of is just gone. It does only make the token if the card you took was 1cmc or less, but it's still pretty effective and makes sure whatever you choose can't just be reanimated or given back because the bat died. I'm a fan.
Rite of Oblivion has certainly seen play, but not for a while. This is the same effect as the Invasion, but slightly better because it's less restrictive on what you can sacrifice and what you can ultimately target with it. Flashback is a nice bonus that allows you to comfortably play just 2 copies of this but still have four removal effects. There have been times when sacrificing an extra Invasion on the field made sense or even a low loyalty Kaya, but otherwise this has the same clue sacrifice synergy with Teysa as the Invasion so that's the most likely fodder. The flexibility of this makes it fit right in.
Legions to Ashes can also just exile a non-land permanent but with the unique upside of also exiling all tokens that same player controls that have the same name as whatever you target. In a "go-wide with tokens" mirror this is an incredible one-sided board wipe. Destroying tokens vs exiling them doesn't matter, but you can also just blank a planeswalker, or an artifact, or an enchantment, or anything without hexproof that isn't a land that your opponent would rather have kept in the game. To my surprise I haven't run into this card often if ever. Good thing too, against this deck it would be devastating lol.
Path of Peril is definately a card that gets some play. I really like it here because the standard mode of this card for three mana will wipe out a lot of things, but not Teysa or Tomik. Even if you have to sacrifice some spirit tokens by playing this, since they fly you can typically attack first and then clear the board while keeping your engine. Sometimes everything just has to go, so for six mana you can do that. This is another flexable card that I think is pretty well justified.
Now for a few questionable adds, but they do their job decently well. Foul Play can destroy (I know, not exile) a creature with power 2 or less, and then you Investigate. The clue token is obviously relevant, and there are certainly plenty of good targets that have 2 or less power. Any mana dork will fall, early threats like Monastery Swiftspear, Deep-Cavern Bat or Squee, Dubious Monarch, even Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon or Adeline, Resplendent Cathar before they get out of hand all are good targets. Now I understand completely that all six of those examples also die to Cut Down which is strictly a better card for half the mana and at instant speed, but we're going for two for one effects here, and Cut Down doesn't make a clue token. Where's the value?? That's just stubborn deck building on my part, of course this could be improved slightly by swapping out the two of these for two cut downs...HOWEVER!!! How many times has cut down been a truly dead draw? Happens quite a bit in the decks where I run it. Foul Play can turn a lowly Inspector or a spirit token into a clue token which can in a very roundabout way replace itself. The same can be said about Render Inert. In best cases you can use it to immediately flip an Invasion to get the equipment on the same turn before you attack and effectively double your damage output across spirit tokens which is sweet. It's a funny mainboard response to Archfiend of the Dross to immediately win the game if your opponent doesn't have a response. It's also very good at killing planeswalkers. Overall, pretty useful. Sometimes there just isn't a target for it. That's ok though, because it's "up to" five counters and then you get to draw a card. That makes this a 3 mana clue token in your hand if you just have no other options and need to draw a card. That's obviously the last position you want to be in, and the main reason for the card is to one-shot a battle. It's reasonably flexible though for being able to deal with planeswalker or even a Quirion Beastcaller and I'm happy to have access to a couple of copies.
Finally, Invasion of Tolvada
certainly gets play to reanimate crazy things on the spot but my inclusion here only has a handful of targets. Of course it can get back any of the Kayas that may have made their way to the yard, but otherwise there are only 10 creatures and none of them are huge valuetron targets like Etali or Atraxa. No, the real reason here is flipping this battle over into The Broken Sky
which buffs all of your spirits with an extra +1/+0 and lifelink. If that was all that it did, I wouldn't bother. HOWEVER!! This also generates a free spirit at every one of your end steps which creates a persistent threat. Games that go long enough to find, cast, and flip this card will need repeatable token drops to get by an otherwise stalled game. That might make a case for only putting this as a sideboard card to use against decks that actually allow games to go that far, but at only five mana it comes up more often than you'd think. It's not worth adding better value targets to the deck because we'd also need a discard or mill outlet and then too much of the deck changes to accomodate the reanimate effect instead of having the flipside of this being there to accomodate the rest of the deck. Also, the nature of this deck is to build while simultaneously tearing down whatever your opponent is doing so games tend to get to where you can use this and flip it over anyway.
The manabase I feel is pretty typical since not a lot has changed. Restless Fortress is an allstar though. This deck runs into stalled board states by being able to hang with other mid-range control decks and being able to sneak in three damage and gain two life is big. You can even put a Frazzle Canon on your Fortress to make it get bigger and bigger while your opponent struggles to find instant speed spot removal before they die.
Shadowy Backstreet is actually decent here because it is a Plains and a Swamp. The Fortress and the Frazzle Cannon get hit by Boseiju, Who Endures but allow you to replace it with a basic land type, not just basic, so this is a fine target because you can Surveil when you grab it. It has actually happened enough times that I don't feel like I need to cut down on these or replace them with something else like more Caves of Koilos so it enters untapped. There's so much aggro out there and not a ton of mitigating life gain here that the ping damage is pretty bad. One copy is fine though and hasn't been a problem.
Shattered Sanctum is the best land in the deck but also the budget breaker if you're looking for one in 2024. These could be swapped out for either two plains and two swamps or maybe Scoured Barrens or more Koilos, but that's only by necessity if you don't have these.
Overall the mana feels good, in testing I haven't been delayed too many turns because of tapped non basics and literally never been color locked waiting for a particular land. The average CMC is plenty low enough that playing a tap land after turn four is just fine.
The sideboard is up in the air, but there's some good options with some reasoning behind them. Call a Surprise Witness is a generic reanimate spell with limitations, but it can hit all 3 of the actual creatures in the deck, it comes back untapped, doesn't get exiled if it dies again, and for some reason also becomes a flying Spirit. The flavor alone is awesome, but making Teysa or Tomik a Spirit actually has extra synergy with the Frazzle Canon and other Spirit tokens.
Lucky Offering isn't a good card. I know that. There are a lot of good targets though, and for just one mana you can deal with an artifact a lot sooner than having to wait for Oblivion or a sac target for the Invasion. There's no chance this was going in the main deck, but it could be useful in the right matchup. Long Goodbye is a better card than Foul Play for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't make a clue does it? Actually, this is the perfect answer for Haughty Djinn and my goodness am I glad for it. Mono blue matches show up from time to time and Goodbye is so aptly named to deal with that garbage. Uncounterable, just meets the Djinns mana value and there's nothing they can do about it. Not even creatures with Ward like Graveyard Trespasser
can do anything about it. This is the most likely candidate to replace Foul Play, especially since it is an instant. Game one is more about trying to setup the engine though, and also I'm stubborn. Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim works really well for this deck. Honestly, the big reason I didn't main board him was because I have multiple decks that already use him as a strategy and I wanted to do something different. That's it. Solid card. Finally, besides a few extra copies of main board cards theres Jirina, Dauntless General. This is primarily there as a two mana version of the exile a whole graveyard effect like Kaya, except this is one sided and you can do it for two mana whenever you want. Giving your humans hexproof and indestructible is kind of a dud since it has such limited use here since we went with spirit tokens instead of humans as a tribal build.
That's it, my attempt to build something fun and original for what has turned out to be a long and predictable standard with everyone using the same pool of the the absolute best cards available. They were fine a few years ago, but boy am I ready for a shake up. I'm actually surprised at the consistancy of this build, but sticking to a strict idea certainly helped clear up the possible muddiness of throwing in Sheoldred or Atraxa just because they are incredible value most of the time. This deck can exile both of them before they do anything so overall I'm pretty happy and it's been fun using cards that either just don't see play or using them for different end games than everyone else.
It's also interesting that the four Sanctum lands and two Tomiks make up 85% of the cost of this deck in paper which means you could easily omit those cards with basics and extra copies of Kayas or Removal and still get pretty much the same experience for less than $30 which I am all for.
Give it a try, let me know what you think ;)
