This is a deck I've been playing on MTGO for the past few months now. It's not super competitive, but it's a ton of fun to play. The flip lands from Ixalan were some of my favorite cards, and I jumped on making a deck around Journey to Eternity
and Arguel's Blood Fast
as soon as I could. This deck is built all around reanimating creatures with ETB effects and solid overall value while drawing tons of cards and using Temple of Aclazotz to refill our life.
The Flip Lands
As stated, we're running two of the flip lands in this deck that work very well together: Journey to Eternity
and Arguel's Blood Fast
. Journey is an aura that brings a creature back to the battlefield when it dies, then flips into a land we can use to reanimate creatures in our graveyard. Arguel's generates value for most of the game, and it lets us sac our stuff for life gain later on. These two work great in tandem, letting us sac our stuff and then recur it for tons of value.
ETB Creatures
All the creatures in this section have "enter the battlefield" triggers, making them prime targets for Journey:
- Dusk Legion Zealot - generates early game card advantage
- Ravenous Chupacabra - kills a creature, making it one of our best recursion targets
- Verdurous Gearhulk - dumps a pile of counters on our board, beefing up a bunch of creatures or setting up a finisher
- Arborback Stomper - we run one of these for safety, keeping us alive against burn or healing us back up through our painful card draw
Value Creatures
The creatures here are largely there to keep our hand and the enemy's board state in check:
- Thrashing Brontodon - Having a creature that can blow itself up is really useful in this deck, especially when you kill an artifact or enchantment in the process. In a pinch, you can attach Journey to Brontodon, then sac Brontodon targeting Journey. Journey's trigger will resolve before Brontodon's, flipping it and keeping it safe from destruction while bringing your dino back to the field.
- Glint-Sleeve Siphoner - This is just a great early-game creature, giving us some solid damage with its Menace ability and generating card advantage. We can also use that energy to power our Aether Hubs and Bristling Hydras. Speaking of which...
The Finishers
- Verdurous Gearhulk - Covered above, but worth repeating here; getting an 8/8 trampler for 5 is pretty hard to deal with for a lot of decks. Or you can buff another creature if your opponent is running artifact hate.
- Bristling Hydra - This guy is super resilient, capitalizing on our energy generation to buff and protect himself. He's also a good Journey target, since you'll get 3 more energy when he reenters the battlefield.
- Vraska, Relic Seeker - When all else fails, Vraska usually doesn't. She kills artifacts, enchantments, and creatures; she generates menace tokens; and her ult absolutely doesn't care about all the life gain decks running around Standard right now.
Sac Outlets
If our opponent is playing around the Journeys, we need ways to flip them ourselves. That's what these are all for:
Costly Plunder - flips our Journey and generates card advantage, all at instant speed. Also gets value out of chump blocks you might need to do, and it powers up Fatal Push.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan - Yahenni can eat our creatures to make himself indestructible, he's hasty, and he gets bigger when our opponent's creatures die. He's a good sac outlet that grows into a finisher.
Temple of Aclazotz - once we've flipped Blood Fast, we can use Aclazotz to sac our stuff. Ideally, we'll have Journey flipped before then, but this will do as a last resort.
Removal
Pretty straightforward stuff for black:
- Fatal Push - kills a thing for one mana. If you trigger Revolt, kills a slightly larger thing for one mana. Drawing cards off a Costly Plunder and then Fatal Pushing something feels great.
- Vraska's Contempt - deals with gods and planeswalkers, and the incidental life gain isn't bad either.
The Sideboard
This deck does pretty well against aggro matchups, but sometimes needs a little extra. Two copies of Fatal Push is usually enough, but we've got two Doomfalls as well for larger single threats (plus you can pick apart your opponent's hand with it). Control is a harder matchup, so most of the sideboard is devoted to dealing with that. Duress is a no-brainer, and Lost Legacy hoses combos and things that rely on one or two win conditions. Naturalize is largely there to deal with God-Pharaoh's Gift and Aetherflux Reservoir decks, and Sentinel Totem keeps GPG and The Scarab God from getting too out of hand. Sorcerous Spyglass is an insurance policy against planeswalkers, and Gonti, Lord of Luxury can grab vital combo pieces from our opponent's deck while offering some decent protection on the battlefield. Also, he's a good candidate for Journey.
