Instant (14)
Sorcery (7)
Creature (11)
Enchantment (8)
Sideboard
Hi all,
As Foretold is a card I have always wanted to build around, and I believe I finally have found a good home for it in Standard.
The main premise of the deck is to put a bunch of instants and sorceries into your graveyard to pump up your Enigma Drake, a solid strategy. With this, we will use As Foretold to take advantage of all the little sorceries and instants that we play to cast them for free every turn. Your drakes will become monsters, and with the removal of Grasp of Darkness, it's difficult for them to be removed. Walk the Plank exists but at sorcery speed it's difficult to play effectively.
Without further ado, let's break the deck down a little more!
CREATURES:
We are playing a whopping total of ELEVEN creatures in this deck. Ridiculous, right? Somehow, it always works out well enough. Our first creature is a play set of Soul-Scar Mage, because prowess is dope. His prowess ability allows us to pull off a slew of combat tricks versus our opponent with cards that aren't even usually combat tricks, and we get a ton of value off of him. Though he's just a 1/2, on most turns in the later game, he's a 3/4 or even a 4/5 depending on our combo. (ALTERNATIVES CAN INCLUDE Spellweaver Eternal, Firebrand Archer, AND Bloodwater Entity.)
Three copies of the lovely Cryptic Serpent make an appearance here as the Standard version of Gurmag Angler for us, and he's a dope card to have in here. Usually you can cast him for 1UU or 2UU mid game, which is good considering he's a 6/5. If he had some form of evasion he'd be even better, but unfortunately he doesn't. He'll still be a beater that we can cast for almost nothing.
Our best creature in the deck and definitely trouble for our opponent to deal with is Enigma Drake. I've always liked this card but I never really played with it. I definitely underrated how good it is in a deck like this, especially with As Foretold. Most times, he's a 5/4 or 6/4 on turn 4 and that's pretty hard to deal with. The fact that he has flying and can block the majority of creatures in Standard as a 3 drop is pretty insane. He's the U/R version of Longtusk Cub in my opinion.
NON-CREATURES:
This is the real bread and butter of the deck. I've always loved decks that play a ton of low cost spells and cantrips, sort of how the Delver of Secrets decks play in Modern, Legacy, and Pauper. With that in mind, I attempted to make a deck function similarly, though it does lack the powerful cantrips like Serum Visions, Thought Scour, Ponder, and Brainstorm. We make due with what we have, and what we have is by no means bad at all.
CANTRIPS:
For starters, we have Opt, recently reprinted in Ixalan. Opt is great at what it does, draw us a card for 1 mana. You can't ask for much more, and it really does filter your deck pretty well when you cast it at the end of your opponents turn, Scry 1, draw a card, and then draw a card at the beginning of your turn. I'm so glad this card was reprinted and it does such a good job in Standard.
Chart A Course is our next cantrip, and it's a hell of a good one. two mana draw two is fantastic in Standard, especially if you play it after you attack and don't have to discard a card. Even if we do have to discard a card, that's okay because it'll add on to our Enigma Drake.
Crash Through A RED CANTRIP. WHAT. Actually this card is pretty nuts. Everything gets trample and we get to draw a card, activate prowess, and activate Riddleform? Hell yeah, let's do it. There's no reason not to play 4 of this card in this deck.
DAMAGE TO THE DOME:
It wouldn't be a U/R deck without some burn spells, right? Of course we're going to play Shock and Lightning Strike as four of's in the deck, simply for the fact that they can either remove troublesome foes or they can be used to deal damage directly to our opponent. They're perfect in this deck, as they contribute to Enigma Drake, Cryptic Serpent, and Soul-Scar Mage. But we also have another "creature" of sorts that is also activated by all of these spells...
ENCHANTMENTS:
Riddleform is such an incredibly underrated card, and should immediately go in any deck that runs a ton of non-creature spells. It's always going to be a 3/3 for 2 mana, and returns to an enchantment and protects itself at the end of your turn. It is activated by almost every single spell in this deck. You can even play a Riddleform after you've played Riddleform and activate it right there. It's ridiculous how fun this card is to play with.
As Foretold is probably my favorite pet card in Standard. The card really has no use because it's a 3 mana Aether Vial for the most part, but in a deck like this, it can really shine. All of our spells that we cast are 2 or less mana, so it instantly helps out a ton. More than one of these is really good, especially if you have a turn where you can spend the mana to cast another without losing too much tempo. There's nothing better than casting free spells every turn.
PROTECTION:
Dive Down is another addition from Ixalan and it actually works really well in this deck. We don't always want to leave mana open, but when we're aware that our opponent is playing a ton of removal spells, it works really well and they don't usually see it coming. I used to use Dispel in the same manner in previous decks, so as that rotates out, this comes in as the next best thing.
MANA BASE & SIDEBOARD:
Our mana base is pretty basic, but we don't play a lot of lands. We're going to run 20 in this deck and I've gotten mana screwed a few times, but it's pretty rare. Everything is very low CMC so as long as we can get 2-3 mana out, we're actually pretty solid. Spirebluff Canal, some islands, mountains, and that's about it. Nothing fancy or flashy.
The sideboard really fluctuates a lot. I like playing Magma Spray in the side for aggro decks as a lot of extra removal. Spell Pierce and Negate come in when we need to play a more counter-spell strategy, mainly against control. Lastly, Unsummon and Perilous Voyage are great ways to remove big creatures that we can't deal with well. There's nothing better than having someone drop a Hazoret the Fervent just for it to be Unsummon'd back into their hand.
And that covers the majority of what I've come up with! There is a ton I would love to experiment with, such as Tormenting Voice, Cathartic Reunion, Glimmer of Genius, Supreme Will, Strategic Planning, etc. In essence, they're all ways to drop a ton of shit into our graveyard to pump up drake, ramping him. I personally like the way the deck is now, but it's a good alternative and there is definitely some room for some of the aforementioned spells in the deck as is.
Please let me know what I can do better, what you would add in or do better, or what you liked about the deck! Please note this deck is NOT meant for competitive play, and will not win you a Grand Prix. This deck is fun to pilot, fast paced, and people really don't see it coming. Temur Energy will always be a better choice, but some times you have to do something different and keep the game alive!
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| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 6 years |
| Last updated | 6 years |
| Legality | This deck is not Standard legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 4 - 0 Mythic Rares 8 - 0 Rares 8 - 2 Uncommons 24 - 13 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.12 |
| Folders | Saved Decks, Decks to Try, ix ur, ixalan, Cool Concepts |
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