"The Saga of the Janking Tree" is a mostly-Abzan sagas control deck for Kaldheim standard. This deck is the result of several questionable choices, but it delivers interesting, fun, and powerful lines of play.
Overall, we're trying to keep the board clear with a ridiculous suite of sweepers and spot removal, then land a threat, then win. Most of the one-for-one creature removal in the deck can be pointed at any non-land permanent, so Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, The Great Henge, and Shark Typhoon aren't as scary to us as they are to other decks. The win condition is usually either Yorion, Sky Nomad, Setessan Champion, or some combination of the two. Just to make things spicy, and to make use of all my new cards in arena, there is a small The World Tree package, which is basically a very spicy Thassa, Deep-Dwelling. The deck is soooo grindy, getting to 11 mana of double rainbow is not THAT uncommon.
There are a ton of really wacky interactions in this pile of nonsense. Flicker of Fate makes for awesomely deep Yorion, Sky Nomad plays with all of the Sagas and Banishing Light. You can eventually soft lock your opponent out of the game with a Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, Yorion, Sky Nomad, and 2 sagas. In particular, Binding the Old Gods paired with Elspeth Conquers Death will provoke a quick concede. Sinking the chokehold is pretty tricky, and usually requires a ton of mana, or a Flicker of Fate to close the loop.
To set this fever dream of interactions up, we need to maneuver Thassa, Deep-Dwelling into play, either from our hand, or from a World Tree activation. Play a saga. It doesn't matter which one. Next Turn, play Yorion, Sky Nomad, and blink our Saga. At the end of the turn we get to blink Yorion, Sky Nomad from Thassa, Deep-Dwelling's triggered ability, at the same time our Saga comes back. When Yorion, Sky Nomad reenters, we blink our Saga AGAIN, getting the third activation of the first removal effect...:P. This will reloop every turn to the tune of Saga chapter one and chapter two every turn until our opponent disrupts us. Playing any additional sagas makes everything that much worse for the opponent. If we get to chapter two of Elspeth Conquers Death and Binding the Old Gods every turn, we're imposing a permanent 2 mana tax on everything that isn't a dude, exiling their biggest threat, destroying their other one, and thinning our deck/fixing our mana. Every. Turn. It's suffocatingly oppressive for even one complete loop.
On Flicker of Fate: Flicker of Fate in hand can protect each part of the combo individually, or keep a saga juggling for an extra turn while we set up the lock. Just juggling it for a couple of turns without Thassa, Deep-Dwelling can power out the lands we need to tutor the sea goddess into play. Flicker of Fate on Yorion, Sky Nomad in response to an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon sweep will protect all of our sagas, and remove the filthy planeswalker in one move. We lose Yorion in that case, but that's fine. Coming out of the Ugin, the Spirit Dragon exchange on top by way of a two mana piece of draft chaff is VERY satisfying. It might not be the best card, but it gives us very flexible responses to so many situations that I want to include it. #toocutecardcrush. Second tier value can be claimed by blinking Sigrid, God-Favored. If we keep our eyes open, we can spot some 5 mana blow outs. The last Flicker of Fate play I want to highlight is using it to reset Valki, God of Lies
, but that's not usually a very good return on the card. On the other hand, should our opponent fetch and reveal something crazy, or return something dangerous from the graveyard to their hand, blinking Valki, God of Lies
is probably worth it.
Sigrid, God-Favored is an embarrassing inclusion. Not because it plays poorly, but because I initially included it for it's creature type. Unfortunately, I didn't actually read what it's creature type was... '._. Nonetheless, it turns out that it plays pretty well as a singleton in a blinky control deck. We could definitely replace it with something more powerful, but it has provided so many hilarious sequences that I'm leaving it in my list. If you make a version of this deck for yourself, I would point to that card as the first to replace. Probably with a cool god that you could grab off of The World Tree... The ceiling with this card is roughly a 2.5 for 2, but it can get better over time, so I'll keep it in my pile. :D
The rest of the card choices are pretty self explanatory, but we can take a quick look at the remainder here. Extinction Event can be played as a one for one in needed, but even a two-for one on this card is probably worth it. We field 15/16 other removal spells, so we don't need to be stingy with these. Valki, God of Lies
provides early game disruption, or late game reach. The Planeswalker side is awesome, as casting spells from it is huge when you have a million mana. Setessan Champion is card draw and win condition, and it comes back from the third chapter of Elspeth Conquers Death Double spelling on turn five or six with Setessan Champion and Birth of Meletis or Banishing Light feels nice, but double spelling on seven or eight with the champion and either saga feels huge. Birth of Meletis is another pretty weak choice...it could probably be a Mazemind Tome. I like that it can stabilize bad early hands pretty well, and provide a path through to good removal. I dunno. Banishing Light can remove almost anything, either long term or temporarily, thanks to Yorion, Sky Nomad. Resetting it to exile a resilient or recurring threat is worth it, even if it releases the initial target; whatever we set free is bound to meet a swift end soon enough. Mythos of Nethroi kills everything at instant speed, which is more than enough.
Regarding the mana base, it's not perfect, or even great. That being said, it is versatile. Triomes have three land types, so Binding the Old Gods can fetch any of our triomes when it reaches chapter two...That's really the most important part, maybe tied with The World Tree. I mean...we have rainbow all the time. We only need red for Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor, and blue is just for Thassa, Deep-Dwelling. And to activate The World Tree, which just gets the wet Goddess anyways. I might mess with the pathways after I get full playsets of Darkbore Pathway
, and Blightstep Pathway
.
Please let me know what you think! I definitely you to play with these ideas; a ton of my hare-brained card choices can be improved, I'm sure. If you're on Arena and you don't have a playset of Binding the Old Gods, I officially suggest remedying that. :D
