Talrand BUGgery

Standard* BUG (Sultai) Control

Nemo1342

Creature (14)

• 2x Acidic Slime
• 1x Frost Titan
• 1x Massacre Wurm
• 3x Snapcaster Mage
• 2x Solemn Simulacrum
• 4x Talrand, Sky Summoner
• 1x Wurmcoil Engine

Planeswalker (2)

• 2x Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

Land (23)

• 3x Drowned Catacomb
• 4x Forest
• 3x Hinterland Harbor
• 6x Island
• 6x Swamp
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Artifact (3)

• 1x Sphere of the Suns
• 2x Staff of Nin

Instant (6)

• 3x Go for the Throat
• 3x Mana Leak

Sorcery (13)

• 4x Ponder
• 4x Rampant Growth
• 3x Sever the Bloodline
• 2x Sign in Blood

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Sideboard

Artifact (2)

• 1x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x Tormod's Crypt

Instant (11)

• 2x Dissipate
• 2x Doom Blade
• 2x Essence Scatter
• 3x Natural End
• 2x Negate

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Bramblecrush

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This deck was the result of a few days of testing around Talrand decks. Initially I tried a few of the most obvious combinations, i.e. Mono-blue Delver, Mono-blue control, Spirit Delver, but Talrand pretty plainly did not markedly improve those decks. Then I tried a number of control builds, Esper control, Grixis control, RUW control, but building up a token army really doesn't jibe with the board sweeping nature of those decks. Eventually I settled on this deck, and I think it's pretty decent.

The basic idea is that Talrand really can't be played on four land, but either a) needs to be played on 6+ land to get value from him immediately, or b) needs to be played with a dun of Phyrexian mana. The latter solution just doesn't really make sense to be, especially as those cards will be departing standard in the not so distant future. If you CAN play him on 6+ land and then immediately follow up with a Ponder, Go for the Throat, or just sit on a Mana Leak to protect Talrand once he's down.

So, once I realized that I needed to hit that 6 land mark to play him, I settled on a BUG ramp-y build that you see here. Anyway, I'd love to hear suggestions from folks, particularly regarding sideboarding. At the moment the sideboard is basically just "stuff". Also, I'm trying to stay away from adding cards that are going to rotate out in a few months, and looking for subs for cards that are in here that will be rotated out.

Date added	12 years
Last updated	12 years
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 18 - 0 Rares 9 - 7 Uncommons 13 - 8 Commons
Cards	61
Avg. CMC	3.21
Tokens	Drake 2/2 U, Emblem Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink