MTG Combo: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Blood-Chin Rager

Odyssey on Mardu Warrior

8 years ago

FYI, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Blood-Chin Rager doesn't work as a combo. Blood-Chin Rager's trigger occurs when he attacks, but Alesha puts him into play tapped and attacking. "When he attacks" refers to an event, but "tapped and attacking" is just a state. You can still reanimate him as a 2/2, but you won't be able to make use of his ability unless he survives until next turn to attack regularly.

My suggestions:

You won't need 25 lands when you curve out at 3 in an aggressive deck like this. If you keep 25 lands, you should add warriors with bigger payoff like Mardu Strike Leader (you almost always want to dash him) or Brutal Hordechief (who wins games against decks that just clog up the board with fatties). As it is, you're going to get flooded more than you would like.

Herald of Dromoka is a defensive card in an otherwise aggressive deck, and therefore seems very out of place. It's a warrior, yes, but you have no way to take advantage of your creatures being untapped except blocking. Mono-red and Atarka red are faster decks than yours, so it's an ok card against those decks, but you have BW colors available, so lifegain options (e.g. Surge of Righteousness, Brutal Hordechief, Mardu Woe-Reaper, etc) would be preferable to vigilance if you are worried about other aggro decks, and most appropriate in the sideboard. Lifegain options also help with your manabase, since you're playing 8 painlands.

Touch of Moonglove is a cute card when you can kill two creatures using Blood-Chin Rager, but that doesn't stop it from being a bad card. Many players overrate cards like these because they seem SO good when they're good, but easily forget all the times cards like this just sit in their hand doing nothing. In the case of Blood-Chin Rager + Touch of Moonglove that you describe, you spend two cards and 3 mana to deal with two of your opponents creatures (likely two cards, but sometimes 1). This is a fairly even trade since it's two-for-two in terms of cards, but could be worse if your opponent has tokens (e.g. Hangarback Walker thopters). The risk you run with combat tricks like this is that if your opponent responds by casting a removal spell on the creature you target, Touch of Moonglove fizzles and your creatures just die. In 99% of the cases, Touch of Moonglove can just be replaced by a removal spell (e.g. Valorous Stance does double duty protecting your guys and killing their fatties). Touch of Moonglove and company are bad topdecks if you have an empty board, whereas another creature or a removal spell is not.

For a combat trick to be worth including in a Standard deck, it has to be good enough to win you the game on the spot (e.g. Monastery Swiftspear + Temur Battle Rage + Become Immense ) or have enough flexibility to be used for other purposes (Abzan Charm + Den Protector to make a pseudo-unblockable Den Protector). If you are just using a combat trick to act as removal, you should probably just replace it with actual removal.

Sideboard:

Mardu Woe-Reaper is strictly better than Dragon Hunter unless you actually want to block a dragon (which you won't, 99.999% of the time).

Infinite Obliteration is only really good against ramp decks that want to cast Ulamog or Atarka. You should be much faster than these decks and have no trouble beating them. I would side in haste creatures against these decks (e.g. Mardu Strike Leader) or burn to finish them off just in case they do manage to wipe your board with Atarka. Deflecting Palm is also a possibility against ramp decks.

Otherwise, I like what you're doing. Especially the inclusion of Alesha. I have a similar deck that may give you some ideas: Mardu Warriors.