Shadowy Perspectives on Standard

Shadowy Perspectives on Standard

By Simon Driel

Hey Rabblemaster Readers; what's new?

Felidar Guardian may be banned, but that doesn't mean combo is dead. Far from it - I had a customer come in today building a disgusting brew he called "Bant alternate win conditions" which included Approach of the Second Sun, Mechanized Production and Felidar Sovereign - fortunately, not Hedron Alignment. There's certainly no shortage of alternate win conditions available - but they aren't the only possibility for combo decks.

Today we're looking at a remake, albeit a fairly loose one, of what was one of the most dominant standard decks in its time. Does anyone remember the old Sabre Bargain deck from Urza/Masques block Standard? It's a 'resource conversion' or 'one-big-turn' style of combo deck - like the Mirage block "prosbloom" decks, featuring Squandered Resources, Natural Balance, Prosperity and Cadaverous Bloom where one advantage is turned into another until you've got enough resources available to bluff the opponent into thinking you have the kill card in hand and they concede...

Here's Johnny Magic's maindeck Sabre Bargain from the 2000 invitational for your reference:

Yep - even more broken than Necropotence

4 Academy Rector
4 Grim Monolith
3 Voltaic Key
3 Tooth of Ramos
4 Soul Feast
4 Vampiric Tutor
2 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Dark Ritual
4 Skirge Familiar
3 Yawgmoth's Bargain
3 Renounce
6 Swamp
5 Plains
4 Peat Bog
4 Phyrexian Tower
3 Remote Farm

The deck wins by getting the now-banned-in-most-formats Yawgmoth's Bargain into play as early as possible, thanks to the ridiculously crap Mercadian Masques minor storage lands Peat Bog and Remote Farm and the mana acceleration of Dark Ritual, Grim Monolith and Voltaic Key. These cards can cast Academy Rector as early as turn two, which is fine most of the time - nobody in their right mind actually kills Academy Rector - but just like now, you had to watch out for any spells that exiled it. The deck was perfectly capable, however, of simply hard-casting Bargain on turn three, and sometimes turn two; turn one Peat Bog, turn two untapped land (1BB) then Dark Ritual (1BBBB) Grim Monolith (1BB) then tap (4BB) and cast Bargain is one possible line that doesn't involve turn two double Dark Ritual. Ugh. Vampiric Tutor is used to take care of any missing pieces. If you had to cast Academy Rector, Phyrexian Tower was then used to sacrifice it to find Bargain.

Yawgmoth's Bargain promptly draws a fair portion of the deck, usually to about seven life, which leaves room to Vampiric Tutor twice and draw twice without killing yourself. More fast mana is used to accelerate Skirge Familiar onto the battlefield, excess cards are then discarded for black mana to cast Soul Feast, draining the opponent for 4. The life gained is turned into more cards with Yawgmoth's Bargain.

Rinse, lather, and repeat for as long as you can - you'd like to see two Soul Feasts, at least. This part of the combo isn't infinite, however; eventually you'll run out of life and have a couple of useless tapped permanents like Voltaic Key, Grim Monolith, and lands. Use the last of your black mana to cast Tooth of Ramos, tap and sacrifice for WW, then play Renounce and sacrifice all that junk for two life apiece to feed back into Bargain.

When you've gone as far as you can, sometimes including multiple Renounces, play Yawgmoth's Will. If the opponent hasn't conceded yet, smash out all the Dark Rituals, Grim Monoliths and Voltaic Keys that you sacrificed earlier, re-cast the two Soul Feast from the graveyard, re-cast Vampiric Tutor to find a final Soul Feast and, you should have enough mana for the win.

Let's compare the roles of the newly printed cards in Shadowy Perspectives to their Bargain analogues.

Six mana engine...

Mana engines...

Buying the resources back...

Fast mana...?

Win condition

Fast mana isn't what it used to be, readers, so we can't win on turn two anymore, which (let's be fair here) is probably a good thing for the Standard environment. This deck also differs in that the win condition, Faith of the Devoted, doesn't help stoke the engine the way that Soul Feast does in Sabre Bargain. It's a little more likely to fizzle, but the deck is consistent in the way that Living End decks are - each piece replaces itself, and the deck has a total of twenty six cycling cards.

Now, set honesty to on here: New Perspectives is NOT Yawgmoth's Bargain, and it's a little more difficult to convert resources with it. The rules text does still read "discard a card with cycling from your hand: draw a card" however, and if any of the discarded cards has a "whenever you cycle" trigger, you get that as well at zero cost.
The two keys to the deck are Vizier of Tumbling Sands and Shefet Monitor; whenever you cycle either of these cards, you gain a mana, and if you have a permanent that can tap for two mana, going off is even easier because you gain two mana when you cycle the Vizier.

Here's the list:

Shadowy Perspectives

Creatures

4 Vizier of Tumbling Sands **

4 Shefet Monitor ****

4 Curator of Mysteries *

Spells

4 Weirding Wood
2 Gift of Paradise

4 Censor *

3 Faith of the Devoted

4 New Perspectives

1 Dissenter's Deliverance *
2 Hieroglyphic Illumination *

3 Haze of Pollen ***

4 Shadow of the Grave

Lands

4 Fetid Pools **

3 Botanical Sanctum
2 Blooming Marsh

3 Choked Estuary

4 Swamp

3 Forest

2 Island

Sideboard
4 Feast of Scarabs
1 Haze of Pollen
3 Dissenter's Deliverance
4 Drake Haven
3 Dispel

With New Perspectives in play, you can tap the enchanted land for BB, cycle Vizier of Tumbling Sands to untap it, then tap again (BBBB) followed by cycling Shefet Monitor, searching out a swamp which enters untapped; tap it for a total of BBBBB. If you didn't have either of these two cards available, cycle the rest of the cards from your hand for free, hopefully drawing into them. Each Vizier of Tumbling Sands or Shefet Monitor you find during the process puts you up by a mana (sometimes two) when you cycle it. Cast your kill card, Faith of the Devoted, if you've drawn it, but it doesn't matter if you haven't - it can be done at any point mid-combo. Leave up at least 1B to reload with a Shadow of the Grave, which returns all your cycling cards to your hand. Do it again until you can play Faith of the Devoted with 1. the ability to make ten mana by cycling, and 2. with ten cyclers (or the equivalent in Shadows of the Grave) in hand.

Censor and Haze of Pollen are great at buying the time required to go off; any extras just get cycled away once New Perspectives is down

My original list had Weaver of Currents, which allows you to go off a turn faster, but it is much harder on the mana base while comboing off - it can't tap for BB, so you're reliant on finding a Shefet Monitor - and there are definite advantages to playing a technically creatureless deck; being only vulnerable to enchantment removal and turning off your opponents' creature removal is great.

Anyone interested in running this baby for Game Day? Let me know, and we'll sort you out with some discount cards!