New Year, New Orzhov

Hey everyone, I am new here at MTG Oracle and I wanted to start out the new year and say goodbye to the last decade by giving you all my pride and joy: Orzhov Aristocrats in the latest format, Pioneer. This deck gives you all a good idea of my play style and hopefully will spark the interest of many new Pioneers next year.

This deck is very grindy and loves to wait until mid to late game to unleash a powerful combo. It consists of 2 main themes: recursion, and lifegain. It combines the annoying combo of making Kitty Pies (Cauldron Familiar and Witch’s Oven). With Rally the Ancestors and drain outlets.

This deck at first wants to stop the opponent from gaining much traction, it uses Spark Harvest and Kaya’s Wrath as well as a few Priest of Forgotten Gods to keep you drawing cards along with numerous replaceable bodies that don’t mind dying. on top of this draw engine, there is Grim Haruspex, slamming 1 or 2 of any of these cards will give you the edge to grind out against almost any decks. Because remember, if there’s no graveyard hate out, you don’t care if your creatures die.

How do we get things dying on our terms, however? Well, that’s where the term aristocrat comes in. Cartel Aristocrat is our main sacrifice outlet, it protects itself and costs no mana to chuck its allies in the graveyard. As well Witch’s Oven gives us the useful food tokens and can enable the grindy and annoying Kitty Pie combo.

As we grind our enemies into dust we utilize Cruel Celebrant and Zulaport Cutthroat to slowly drain our opponents to death, Gaining life in the process and once we hit 4 lands we can usually unleash the Rally and deal just enough damage to end any opponent.

Now sometimes we have a stubborn foe and they kill our graveyard, no biggy our sideboard has plenty of removal for graveyard hate. Using Fragmentize or Mortify to take out most enchantments and artifacts. As well we can put in some Thoughtsieze to remove most problem threats from annoying control players.

Using the manipulative and Draining forces of Orzhov almost any foe will fall. Hopefully this deck will give new players a decent deck at a decent price. Thank you for reading my first article. Happy Pioneering!