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White may have access to the best removal currently in Banishing Light. In Red, the removal was already bad, but losing Mizzium Mortars hurts evenĪbout it, Lightning Strike will be the premium red removal.
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Removal just got way worse in this format,Īnd that’s only looking at black removal. That we lost includes Dreadbore, Abrupt Decay, Putrefy, Doom Blade, Devourįlesh, Ultimate Price, Orzhov Charm, Dimir Charm, and Golgari Charm. I say “good” because I don’t think Hero’sĭownfall and Silence the Believers actually do much of anything if you can’tĬurve two drop removal into three and four drop removal, and the ability to do This is Magic - crazy things happen.īlack currently has access to 4 “good” removal spells: Murderous Cut, Hero’sĭownfall, Silence the Believers, and Bile Blight. A few good draws later, I was the one with the upper hand, and ended up turning in the match slip when I was so close to conceding just a few turns into the game. On my turn, I killed his Eidolon with Soul of Shandalar and played a Polukranos drawn off the top. However, Soul of Shandalar had first strike, and hadn't taken any combat damage, so my opponents attempt to kill it failed. I blocked, and my opponent played a second Doomwake giant and another enchantment after combat. Instead, my opponent swung with their Doomwake Giant. I was without cards in hand and things were looking grim, and very close to conceding (hint: NEVER CONCEDE.) I eventually drew a Soul of Shandalar and cast it, and was shocked when it wasn't met by a removal spell. He dealt with everything I cast on curve, and then established the engine of Doomwake Giant + Eidolon of Blossoms and drew some twenty cards. However, a Thoughtseize kept me from playing my dork and I failed to draw another. I kept an amazing hand with 3 lands, dork into Polukranos. I'd say my visions of the metagame were pretty accurate in these regards. Meanwhile, there were 6 (six!) copies of green devotion in the top 8's and 4 copies of Monsters decks. And as for R/W control, this is a very meta deck that is obviously insane against aggro and played 4 copies of Anger of the Gods and 4 copies of Brimaz, and I don't doubt that it had great matchups against a lot of the field. As for the Mardu Midrange deck, I think the biggest factor to look at is the 9 copies of Stormbreath Dragon (4 Dragon, 3 Butcher of the Horde and 2 Sarkhan) and the 5 copies of Thoughtseize (4 Thoughtseize, 1 Despise) over the Removal suite. The other one definitely relied more on its copies of Fleecemane Lion, Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Siege Rhino than its relatively small removal suite. However, one of the Abzan Midrange decks was basically more Dredge than Midrange and the only removal it played was Murderous Cut. There are really only 4 "Midrange" decks in the Top 8's of the events - two Abzan Midrange in Indianapolis, a Mardu Midrange in New Jersey and a R/W Control in New Jersey. In short, Ascendancy combo is a weird deck. In addition, all cards have varying amounts of effectiveness when drawn in multiples, and piloting the deck well means having an accurate understanding of which cards are good when and tailoring your draws to your specific situation. All cards in the deck are good in some situations and very poor in others, and when making decisions like scrying or Dig Through Time, you need to really evaluate what you're trying to find, what resources you have available, and how the cards you're looking at interact with the cards in your hand. This deck is so interesting to me because of how non-linear it is. Some people label the deck as Storm, which would make sense for the prior iterations of the deck, but the ones that are seeing play now are less like Storm and more like a pile of random infinite combos that give you the resources to kill your opponent in strange ways. To the surprise of most, there is a playable combo deck in Standard, and to the surprise of no one, I will be playing it.Īscendancy combo is a very interesting, weird, and unique combo deck. Let's talk about all the good cards and the bad cards that may be.