As the Innistrad-RtR Standard comes to a close, I find myself feeling the lovely pair of Falkenrath Aristocrat and Cartel Aristocrat still have a lot to offer.
This Modern Brew of The Aristocrats attempts to take the powerful interactions of the standard deck, and make them more appropriate for a Modern Metagame.
Between Doomed Traveler, Bloodghast, Lingering Souls and Cartel Aristocrat the deck can fight through spot removal and board-wipes quite well, and provide a versatile and powerful offensive team.
Blood Artist, Skirsdag High Priest and
Teysa, Orzhov Scion
grant additional value from these creatures in the form of attacking my opponent's life totals while bolstering mine, generating 5/5 Demons, Swarms of 1/1 Tokens and (occasionally) exiling a creature.
At the top of my curve, Falkenrath Aristocrat does the same thing she did (and for a little while longer, continues to do) in Standard; pressures enemy Planeswalkers and swoops in to threaten life totals. Sorin, Lord of Innistrad provides streams of chump blockers and speeds up the clock.
THOUGHTS
Now that Thoughtseize has been spoiled for Theros, its likely that they shall take the place of my Inquisitions of Kozilek, most likely depending on whether I like them enough in that slot. I haven't played much with the 'seize before, nice to finally have a reason to.
I'm having difficulty constructing my sideboard. I feel like my deck is particularly weak against very fast Aggro decks (Sligh, Affinity, etc), R/G Tron and wants a more stable game against UWR and Hatebears. I haven't yet tested against most of the field, but that's my feeling right now. As always, combo seems like a boogeyman that I don't really want to randomly lose to.
Slaughter Games is a house, and seems like its definitely worth including to nail decks that rely (or are greatly improved by) a number of high cost power cards.
Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Grafdigger's Cage, Nihil Spellbomb et al seem necessary in some capacity, and all have their merits. They feel like fairly powerful silver bullets against decks like Living End Cascade, DredgeVine or even just Melira Pod.
Malakir Bloodwitch, Phyrexian Crusader and Sword of War and Peace all seem like they'd position the deck a lot better against G/W Hatebears and UWR.
Sowing Salt
and Ghost Quarter both seem like they make my match up against Tron a lot better.
I'm not sure how best to approach the Aggro side of things. Maybe Pyroclasm?
All comments, suggestions and +1s are greatly appreciated.