The Cat is Back!

Hello internet, my name is Blue, and many of you know that I’ve been away for a while. I’ve been dealing with some serious personal stuff lately and I needed to take some time away from everything to get my life in order. I did some soul searching and I moved back to my childhood home and now I feel much happier with myself. To celebrate, I’d like to indulge you all with an article about a deck I’ve been playing with for a while that I call, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Before we begin, you all know the drill! Remember to check me out on Twitter @TwoBlueUntapped and the site @MTGOracle to keep up with everything Magic. Let’s get started!

So first things first, let’s discuss what exactly this deck is, because the name doesn’t exactly tell you much. At its core, it’s an aristocrats deck centered around the Cauldron Familiar/Witch’s Oven combo that has surged in popularity since Oko, Thief of Crowns was banned a few weeks ago, but it has a slight twist. Every build I have seen so far has been Rakdos or Jund, but my version goes a different route: Mardu. Adding white gives you access to amazing cards like Cruel Celebrant and Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord while still keeping the really good stuff out of red, like Chandra, Acolyte of Flame and Mayhem Devil. The deck has quickly become my favorite thing to do in standard right now, easily beating out Esper midrange, my normal go-to in a fresh format. Below is the list I’ve been working with and it has been killing it!

So the first thing I want to bring to your attention is the new cards from white. In the main deck, we see the addition of Cruel Celebrant, Tithe Taker, Kaya’s Wrath, and Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord. Tithe Taker can make some games completely unwinnable, such as Simic Flash. By the time they’ve answered it permanently, it’s already done its damage and they are so far behind that catching up would take a major mistake on your part. Sorin is there as a way to stay ahead against aggro with the lifelink and catch up against control with the reanimation. Kaya’s Wrath looks a little weird in an aggro deck, but we don’t mind our creatures dying all that much so it’s an easy way to catch up against other aggro decks.

Through all of that though, the most important addition to the main with white is Cruel Celebrant. It doubles up triggers from Cauldron Familiar and makes board wipes really bad from our opponent. Against aggro, the incremental lifegain can make or break the entire game and when used in conjunction with the aforementioned Kaya’s Wrath, we can end the game without even attacking if we have the right board. I have had so many games where I’d play a Kaya’s wrath into me having 10+ creatures in play because I knew Cruel Celebrant would trigger for each one to end the game immediately. No games, no tricks. A solid game-ender.

In the sideboard, white gives us access to a lot of different options, but I decided to keep it simple. I have the fourth Kaya’s Wrath as a safety valve and with Rakdos aggro and aristocrats becoming popular, Devout Decree becomes a decent sideboard slot. The rest of the board is fairly typical stuff, Duress and Theater of Horrors for control, Bedevil and Flame Sweep for aggro, and Noxious Grasp for a tad bit of color hate.

The last thing I want to talk about from the main deck is the handful of top-end cards; Cavalier of NIght, Massacre Girl, and God-Eternal Bontu. Massacre Girl serves triple duty as a board wipe when things get sketchy, a way to kill off some of our own creatures for Cruel Celebrant, and as a really efficient threat as a 4/4 menacing body. Cavalier also serves triple duty, being a one-time sacrifice outlet, a one-time reanimation outlet, and a really good body as a 4/5 lifelinker. Bontu is definitely the weakest of the bunch, seeing as he’s only good against control, where the others are good against a lot more, but he is capable of drawing an absurd amount of cards, especially late game when you might be flooded on lands and such. He doesn’t do a whole lot the second or third time though since you can run out of permanents to sacrifice rather quickly.

I’ve been working on the deck for a while now and I’m incredibly proud of how consistent and powerful it is. I honestly couldn’t be happier with a deck I created and I’m glad to see it doing as well as it is. If you think you might have any ideas to improve the deck or you just want to discuss things, feel free to let me know in the comments below or on my Twitter.

If you enjoy the deck and the things that we do, feel free to support us by sharing my articles and letting others know about the site. We are affiliated with TCGPlayer so follow any link found on the site and any purchases made go to help keep us running. Before I head out, one last reminder to follow us on Twitter @MTGOracle so you never miss out on anything from the Oracles! This is Blue, signing out!