This deck came about about a month ago from the rotation of Squadron Hawk. I wanted to find a replacement- a card that would generate a sea of dudes like the hawks once were. And I found him.
| When Garruk Relentless has 2 or fewer loyalty counters, he gets drunk. |
Things get even better when you take a look at the saucy tech from the new set that everyone's been talking about.
| Aw, snap! |
Secondly, take a look at Garruk, the Veil-Cursed's -1 ability. Garruk can start a cycle, turning Snapcaster Mage on the board into Snapcaster Mage in hand, meaning you only run out of triggers when you run out of spells.
Garruk also has a pretty nasty ability to turn a Snapcaster into Sun Titan, an absolute gamebreaker in this list. The Sun Titan can not only return a Snapcaster every turn, but Garruk helped you fill the 'yard with them first for maximum effect.
A sleeper hit to partner up in this list is Phantasmal Image, but not for the reason you might think. Image can't hold a sword, doesn't have flash, and is all around weak just for extra Snapcaster triggers. No, this lovely duo is between Image and Sun Titan.
You see, when Sun Titan hits the table, You pull a Phantasmal Image out of the yard, and then have it copy Sun Titan. Now the image triggers, and you get to pull another card out of your graveyard. Maybe a snapcaster, maybe an Inkmoth Nexus, maybe a sword, maybe even another Phantasmal Image for triple the fun. That's a lot of power for one card out of your hand or one loyalty counter from a planeswalker.
The rest of the list is Sword of Feast and Famine, an obvious slot, alongside Gideon Jura and a wide array of targets for Snapcaster. Dismember, Day of Judgment, Beast Within, Ponder, Mana Leak, Stoic Rebuttal, Timely Reinforcements, it's all there. The idea is to have everything once and then get one thing twice. And then three times. And then four times. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
| Anyone else find it odd that something 'timely' is a sorcery? |
BantBlade
Creatures (9)
Other (26)
- 4 Ponder
- 4 Mana Leak
- 1 Stoic Rebuttal
- 3 Sword of Feast and Famine
- 3 Dismember
- 1 Beast Within
- 2 Timely Reinforcements
- 3 Day of Judgment
- 3 Garruk Relentless//Garruk, the Veil-Cursed
- 2 Gideon Jura
| Why Ponder when you can Preordain? Well, first of all, you can't. |
Lands (25)
- 4 Glacial Fortress
- 4 Sunpetal Grove
- 3 Hinterland Harbor
- 1 Inkmoth Nexus
- 7 Island
- 5 Plains
- 1 Forest
Sideboard (15) (tentative)
Playing Bantblade can feel rather strange, like you're trying to play a tempo game and yet draw-go at the same time. It may be easy to misplay with the deck, since a lot of the cards are bullets. You'll get one chance to do it right and then never do it again, flashing back a card at the wrong time will cost you the game. I don't recommend it to the average FNM regular. If you've got the drive and the talent, however, this list will take you places. It's unsure how well this list is situated, given the unclear metagame at this stage. In a vacuum, I have yet to hear anything negative on it aside from concerns of a 3 color deck in general, and every format you'll hear that no matter how much fixing you have access to. Even those known to reject everything I've shipped have endorsed this list. It really has been getting that much love.
I want to give some thanks to this list for both Rob Wagner of Team Leeds, who suggested some cuts for the Inkmoth Nexus, and Greg Haenig of MTGLeaks providing a great soundboard to flesh out ideas and the numbers, as well as the importance of Surgical Extraction that I had completely forgotten about. Keep up the good work, gents!
This has been Yo Mama, saying I'm sick of coming up with one of these stupid one liners at the end of every article. I really need to change my signoff; this is getting ridiculous. I've been doing this for what, like nine months now?
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Boweh, out.
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