One card I've always wanted to play is Arashin Sovereign. I think that might actually be the answer I'm looking for. Against control decks this deck is all about grinding out creature threats every turn and trying to gain an advantage, so it makes sense to just keep that going. With Evolutionary Leap and 8 lands you can effectively return Arashin Sovereign to your hand to save it plus draw a new card for turn. It loses to a counter spell or opponent chosen discard, but so does pretty much everything. The problem with this is that I can't likely do anything else on a turn I cast a 7 drop and the opponent can likely kill it and do something else late game.

If I'm not mistaken the interaction would be: I cast Arashin Sovereign with Evolutionary Leap in play. At some point The opponent casts a removal spell targeting Arashin Sovereign and I respond by sacrificing it to pay for Evolutionary Leap's ability. Arashin Sovereign dies and goes to the top of my library, Evolutionary Leap's ability resolves and I reveal Arashin Sovereign and put it in my hand. The removal spell resolves and fizzles. Next turn I do it again until the opponent hopefully runs out of removal for a turn.

Check out this Channel Fireball article about a very familiar looking deck: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/attack-the-first-week-of-standard-play-gw-aggro/

It's basically this 75 but they jammed in 3x Archangle Avacyn even though it kills every creature in their deck

If I were you, just for some token generation and good pummeling tools, Avenger of Zendikar in lieu of Arashin Sovereign.

Granted you get tokens based on your land but Arashin Sovereign seems to be a little...out of place in this deck. It serves no purpose, to me, other than having flying and being able to cycle back into your deck. Granted, it's great for saccing and cycling.

However, I think getting seven 0/1 tokens that get buffed by playing a land or that I can sac, would help more. If there was a way to add in a quick bounce without breaking the balance of the deck, it'd be great to play the following turn onto Avenger. Even with cycling your creatures, using Sovereign to cycle in the Den's or Deathmist's seems slow as you have to wait to draw him. Avenger hits for his mana cost...that's 7 sac tokens. Even with only four lands out and you sac something to drop Avenger, you now have 4 sac opportunities and a 5/5 out too.

Thanks leon_bulminot, Avenger of Zendikar looks awesome! I've never seen it before, clearly a great combo with Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. Unfortunately this is a SOI standard deck and Avenger of Zendikar rotated out long ago.

I haven't actually tested Arashin Sovereign yet, but I think it might be great. It's far from a big blow out win condition, but it will let me continue my defensive slow recursion them into the air in the late game. I like how Arashin Sovereign can trade or kill almost every creature people will play. I'm going to test this list at FNM tonight, just with something in place of Declaration in Stone

@PlagueRats Crap. Reprinted in the BFZ Duel decks so I figured they'd have him in the set. Oh well lol

Hangarback Walker is fairly amazing with Evolutionary Leap. +1 for mainboarding the leap though, one of my favourite cards.

DaftVader, I played Hangarback Walker with Hardened Scales and Evolutionary Leap for a long time, that was great! Here I find it's too slow, in a deck that's already fairly slow. I find I usually tap out from turns 2 - 5+ and so ticking Hangarback up would come at the expense of doing something else. Maybe it is the best option to side in against aggro flyers if that's a thing going forward.

At FNM last night I got completely destroyed, I faced 3 very good pre-rotation aggro flyers decks in a row. Declaration in Stone would have helped a lot in a couple games. First match I couldn't stop or get much past Mantis Rider, 2nd match it was temur flyers, those two red phoenix's, 3rd it was aggro thopters, that was rotation friendly so I'll have to face that again. In that match up if I played Hangarback Walker I could have maybe bought myself one or two turns of defense, but I need to find something better if the format has many aggro flyers.

Either lifegain and/or a flyer like avacyn could help you. Maybe Lantern Scout.

Westvale Abbey  ^Flip seems like a great fit in this deck.

Westvale Abbey  ^Flip will find its way in here some how. Initially I just didn't want to pay $20 for one, but I see the price has come down. I think what this needs is actually two Westvale Abbey  ^Flip and a total of 25 lands. I'm going to think about what to cut, obviously one plains, but what else? Maybe the one Nissa, Vastwood Seer  ^Flip, I'll go ahead and give that a try.

I lost two games to Westvale Abbey  ^Flip in my prerelease, it is very tough to deal with.

That's interesting to hear.

I took them out of my deck but am now thinking they might be quite good.

I was lucky enough to crack two at prerelease.

Westvale Abbey  ^Flip may actually be so good here that it may be worth playing something like Ulvenwald Hydra to fetch it. The hydra isn't very good on its own but if next turn it means your flipping Westvale Abbey  ^Flip you will probably win. It's very easy to make 5 creatures here if you want to. That will pressure the opponent to spend removal on my tokens and raptors which is usually in my favour because they don't make any real progress.

Why don't they make any real progress if they Exile your Raptors?

I'm just thinking of a situation were I have Westvale Abbey  ^Flip in play and I'm making tokens with the planes walkers and the opponent is pressured to spend mana and cards trying to stop me from getting to 5 creatures.

If you actually exile a Raptor your making progress, but not so much if it just goes in the graveyard and it's definatly good for me if you spend a card to kill a token and I sac it to Evolutionary Leap. That's the game you want to be playing with this deck. It's just steady card advantage in my favour.

What's up with the selling price of Westvale Abbey  ^Flip!? I thought it went way down because when you hover over its name in some earlier comments it says $7.07 at TCG. Must be an error on the site because other places show TCG = $17.95, and its $28 at my cheapest LGS. Maybe I only want one now... :(

Nobody wants to see Ormendahl, Profane Prince  ^Flip. It will have your opponents focused on preventing it. But make sure it doesn't take too much effort to flip it on your part or you may miss a play somewhere.

I played a lot of games at prerelease trying to flip that damn card only to be successful once on the very last match. As satisfying as it was, I focused too much on it. So just be aware that this demon will have you sacrificing your own mother just to flip it!

I don't even try to flip it.

I just like the steady stream of chump blockers in the late game.

That might also be because me deck can run out of Creatures at that phase.

I haven't had enough time to properly test this yet, but I thinking 4x Secure the Wastes and 2x Westvale Abbey  ^Flip may be the way to go. What's better a Ulvenwald Hydra or the second Westvale Abbey  ^Flip? With my Evolutionary Leap and very few creatures trick, you have a very good chance of finding Ulvenwald Hydra around the time your ready to find and flip Westvale Abbey  ^Flip. I'm a little worried about how it may be vulnerable in this situation because you have to reveal Ulvenwald Hydra when you put it in your hand, then cast it on your turn, and fetch Westvale Abbey  ^Flip. The opponent knows whats coming now and may find an answer. On your next turn you sac 5 creatures just to have Ormendahl, Profane Prince  ^Flip eat an exile spell. There aren't many instant speed exile effects, but I just looked over Argeaux's removal/control deck and found a lot of maindeck cards that can beat this. Anguished Unmaking. To the Slaughter if I sac'd all my other creatures. After revealing it with Evolutionary Leap they could just cast Transgress the Mind to exile Ulvenwald Hydra from my hand. Against a deck like yours Argeaux, it's better for me to just have a second copy of Westvale Abbey  ^Flip and hope to draw it.

One interesting defense this deck has against an opposing Ormendahl, Profane Prince  ^Flip is blocking it with a thopter or Topplegeist from the sideboard and sac'ing it to Evolutionary Leap so they don't get the 9 life and then exiling it with Declaration in Stone on my turn.

I like your deck and I have something similar to this. I thought about adding the morph package. But I'm scared that a 2/1 turn 2 will not be good enough. Don't you think we are going to be forced into Sylvan Advocate?

In case you are interested, here is my list (I'm currently trying a red splash)

Naya Superfriends

Standard UnleashedHavoc

SCORE: 2 | 4 COMMENTS | 599 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER