This is my post rotation look at a Mardu deck for Battle for Zendikar. The deck aims to kill basically everything and absolutely anything efficiently, and uses card advantage spells to gain steady advantage over the course of the game.
The Awaken cards are actually really cool, because Planar Outburst and Ruinous Path both turn into wincons of sorts in the late game, making them essentially never a dead draw. Outpost Siege has the benefit of getting us pseudo-card draw without pain. A resolved Outpost Siege can be game over for a lot of decks, as only abzan has a good answer to it, and even then its only one card which they don't necessarily have at all time.
The deck features the best removal spells the format has to offer, including
Crackling Doom
, Valorous Stance, Murderous Cut,
Draconic Roar
(for small creatures, there is pretty much no better instant speed answer than this right now that I'm aware of). Gideon's Reproach is something I considered, but the stipulation that the creature has to be attacking makes it a bit lacking in removing threats like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
and Hangarback Walker when they are using it to buff itself.
My finishers were chosen for being the hardest hitting, most resilient threats in my colors. I also considered using Archangel of Tithes in some capacity because it is very oppressive to ornithopters, but I just think that the power of Sarkhan and Kolaghan is too great to ignore. The evasion and haste from both cards makes them really fun for other people to answer, and in a format where Hero's Downfall is no longer sorcery speed, they can't hit Kolaghan at all and sarkhan has a guaranteed strike at the very least. Plus, we have our backup plan of manlands to get to the promised land if any creature isn't enough.
Against removal heavy decks that will ruin our fun by killing our finishers, we have Duress and
Mardu Charm
in the board to help finish them off. These cards are mostly for other control decks, although mardu charm also has game against pretty much any strategy, and it might just end up in the main deck.
Overall, the deck is still rough, and needs testing for sure, but it seems like in a new format anything goes, at least for the first week. So here we go!
