Land (24)
Creature (17)
Enchantment (11)
Sorcery (8)
Sideboard
Artifact (5)
Sorcery (2)
What is this Deck?
This deck attempts to flood the board with creatures and inevitably transform Growing Rites of Itlimoc. But it begs the question "What do we do with all that mana?". I've been scouring for an answer and I have come to the conclusion that Eternalize and Embalm creatures are Standard's best mana sinks. Eternalize and Embalm paired with Anointed Procession is just so absurdly broken. The creatures come down early mostly to mitigate early aggro and enable Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun and come back later on in the game as "better" versions for our game plan. It mostly operates like a token synergy deck; winning through beats, mostly via the sheer number of tokens the deck produces. The deck has a lot of inherent synergies in a variety of card combos. The insurmountable amount of creature beat-down along with back-breaking card draw will shut the door on many opponents.
Card Choices:
In a nutshell, these two cards inherently go well together as they both desperately crave for a wide board-state to operate. You realize that it becomes even more degenerate when Growing Rites of Itlimoc helps find Tishana, Voice of Thunder via its ETB effect, as well as effectively "cheat" out Tishana, Voice of Thunder to refill our hand.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc - The card's ETB effect is generally great in our deck as it's composed of a variety of creatures; but we are mostly interested in it's Gaea's Cradle impression, accelerating our mana; allowing us to do multiple things in a single turn that would otherwise be impossible. A card like this demands decent mana-sinks to be effective and aside from Embalm and Eternalize creatures we have one of the best ones in the card found below.
Tishana, Voice of Thunder - The Regal Force of our dreams, with the amount of creatures produced before the Tishana turn usually nets us an average of 5 cards. This unrivaled card draw is mostly the reason for playing the deck. Allowing us to put the game out of reach for many opponents; as it allows us to be far ahead in resources whether it be more creatures or more solutions for their threats. It doesn't hurt that she is usually a giant creature on the battlefield. Because of the casting cost I think it is fair to only play 2-3 copies because we don't want to see multiples of this card in our opening / early hands, but make no mistake that this is one of the most backbreaking plays the deck can make.
Anointed Procession
This card deserves a section of its own, just because of how much work it does for the deck. It enables the most broken synergies available in the deck and can bring back our board state from 0 to 100 real quick. It allows Embalm and Eternalize creatures to enter the battlefield in multiples thereby triggering multiples of their ETBs. Drawing 8 cards from Champion of Wits when one is out, but drawing 16 cards when 2 is out is even better.
In my opinion leveraging the powerful effects of a number of Embalm and Eternalize creatures is the best usage for our ever-growing amount of mana. They help in the early part of the game, ultimately bridging us to our mid and late game wherein they are still part of those phases of the game.
Anointer Priest - This card on it's own is great for bridging our early game to our mid-game just by being a wall for the early 2 power creatures, but the real draw to this card is its ability to gain us life when a token creature enters the battlefield. With an Anointed Procession out we are able to gain 4- 16 - 64 - 256 life just on its own through a single Embalm.
Champion of Wits - 2U Faithless Looting on a 2/1 body that will eventually be one of our mana-sinks once Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun is online, through its Eternalize ability. It's our best hand sculpting tool in the deck; its Eternalize ability is on the slow side, but given how much mana we should ideally be producing, it should not be an issue. Drawing 4 more cards and putting a 4/4 body on the board is very strong and even stronger in multiples through Anointed Procession.
Sunscourge Champion - This card is a nightmare for aggressive decks and starts to become a real threat once it's back as a 4/4 through Eternalize. This along with Anointer Priest buys our deck time to set-up for our Anointed Procession and Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun shenanigans. By now you probably haven't forgotten how incredibly insane it is to Eternalize this creature with X copies of Anointed Procession out.
Angel of Sanctions - We need this to effectively answer match-ups that present single high value targets. Having its Embalm ability happen on curve can easily 2 for 1 opponents if they want to remove the angel. With an Anointed Procession out; your Angel of Sanctions is going to feel like Angel of Serenity
These cards help us flood the board with creatures to help transform Growing Rites of Itlimoc; as well as providing Tishana, Voice of Thunder the foundation for her card draw engine.
Sram's Expertise - The most broken token generation card in the deck, we almost always want to cast this on turn 4; netting us 3 or more tokens, gains us a billion life with Anointer Priest and if we've cast any semblance of a creature before this turn, we can immediately slam down Growing Rites of Itlimoc, ideally find Tishana, Voice of Thunder in the top 4 cards if we don't have one yet; and more often than not immediately have Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun be online at the beginning of the end step. The floor with the card is incredible as we can cast any of our 3CC or lower drops.
Servo Exhibition - Nets us 2 creatures to get the ball rolling on Growing Rites of Itlimoc. In more aggressive match-ups this will be a good turn 2 play to kill off some weenies.
Legion's Landing - This cards provides us lifelinkers for days. It's a great turn 1 play, but with the current manabase there are not enough W untapped resources on turn 1; but that's okay because we are mostly interested in Adanto, the First Fort anyway as a token generation engine. It also acts as a pseudo-ramp in most cases.
These card slots I feel are not core to the deck and can be swapped out for different options given a local meta.
Cast Out - I have found this card to be a necessity as the deck's main weakness is its difficulty to handle a powerful threat, because it can only do so by blocking that particular creature or attacking that particular walker, it has little pinpoint removal spells in the main and Cast Out is our best option as it handles basically everything. The floor with this card is incredible as we can cycle it out if we are in need of something different. Ultimately it's more of a tech-choice and I feel that there are better cards to play in this slot but have not figured that part out for myself yet.
Oketra the True - One of the cards I am almost certain is core. It's never an issue to fulfill Oketra's conditional attacking and blocking, she feels right at home in this token deck, but really the real draw to playing her is that she is a token generation herself and with our albeit limitless mana we can activate her token generation ability in multiples.
Carnage Tyrant - We board in Carnage Tyrant against control to increase our threat density. We have enough ramp to support the card; and I imagine this card will be giving control players nightmares for the remainder of its stay.
God-Pharaoh's Gift - What's even worse than Carnage Tyrant for a control deck is multiple recurring threats and this effectively makes every creature in our deck a recurring threat. Not to mention it gives them haste; now that's carnage.
Aethersphere Harvester - It works wonders in the mono-red match-up as its resilient to the can't block abilities of their creatures and has a strong upside of having Lifelink.
Settle the Wreckage - The deck doesn't respond well to a board-wipe so if we need one of our own, this will be our weapon of choice as a 1-sided wipe. The deck generally cares less if the opponent ramps up a bit; as we have generally better late-game presence than most (any other) decks.
Negate - This deck is particularly cold to sweepers and this is one of the ways to help shore that up. We have other options such as Heroic Intervention but in a world of Approach of the Second Sun and Settle the Wreckage this is probably our best bet
Approach of the Second Sun - This is actually an inspiration from Sam Black, for those match-ups (mirror?) where there are just incredible board stalls, it gives us a way out with a different win condition. I wouldn't be surprised if this really is a worthy inclusion because of how much card-draw the deck operates on.
Inspiring Statuary - One of the payoffs for running a bunch of artifact creatures in our servo tokens, but I felt that Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun provided us enough ramp anyway. It operates on the same level that it's only one mana with no creatures around and X mana with our servos around; but comes with the downside that we have to tap our servos to cast. Some people might still like the inclusion of this card for more ramp but from my perspective; it's unnecessary
Walking Ballista - Some would argue that this is possibly one of the best mana sinks in the game, given our abundant mana going into the mid / late-game. I haven't dismissed the card just yet as a worthy inclusion. In preliminary testing it seemed that it was a hot-pick for removal and using all that mana for a measly 5 - 6 damage felt underwhelming.
Rhonas the Indomitable - This card provides a great mana sink for closing out the game, paired with our insane amount of mana, it makes our tokens considerably larger, no less with trample; it maybe worth including 1 copy of this card in the mainboard in place of one of the tech choices.
It might be worth exploring in an Abzan(Junk) shell keeping the Sram's Expertise + Growing Rites of Itlimoc but having different pay-off cards. Razaketh, the Foulblooded comes into mind for card draw engine. Herald of Anguish with its natural improvise mechanic could also be a great pay-off card. I think the main draw to using instead of is Torment of Hailfire, with all the mana provided for as early as turn 5; it could spell the end of the game on the spot
Updates:
4 Angel of Invention - The card was just not cutting it in the role I wanted it to play, the anthem effect is usually short-lived as it's a magnet for removal, and the token generation is sub-par. It was replaced by copies of Anointed Procession and functionally replaced by the inclusion of Shefet Dunes
4 Merfolk Branchwalker - Another card that performed poorly for the role I wanted it to play, It's a terrible blocker and the card-filtering aspect was mediocre at best. Champion of Wits is enough card selection and better in that aspect by aeons. Replaced with Anointer Priest to support the switch of play style
2 Negate Mainboard - The deck is better off playing an all-in token generation plan in the first game, and we moved 2 negates to the sideboard to shore up the U/W Approach match-up. It was replaced with Legion's Landing
2 Vizier of Many Faces - It was sub-optimal for the deck, it made the 4-drop slot Janky and it's a terrible card in the opening hand. It was replaced with some copies of Sunscourge Champion
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| Date added | 6 years |
| Last updated | 6 years |
| Legality | This deck is not Standard legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 6 - 2 Mythic Rares 34 - 9 Rares 11 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 4 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 3.36 |
| Tokens | Angel of Sanctions 3/4 W, Anointer Priest 1/3 W, Champion of Wits 4/4 B, Copy Clone, Servo 1/1 C, Sunscourge Champion 4/4 B, Vampire 1/1 W, Warrior 1/1 W w/ Vigilance |
| Folders | Ixalan STD, stealing this, Interesting |
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