Today we'll be taking a look at a 5-0 decklist from this past week, UW Cycling.
This deck is very well positioned at the moment with a meta full of creatures and creature removal. A spell heavy deck will allow us to answer all the creatures our opponent can deploy, whilst our go-wide win condition is too much for the one for one removal.
The strategy is centered around Drake Haven.
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If we can survive the early game then this card is an army in a bottle, but surviving the early game is the hard part. Our removal package takes up almost the entire deck, this is where our removal suite comes in:
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These four cards form an early barrier, designed to keep things from ever hitting the board and then answering anything that does. Countervailing Winds is almost always a hard counter, we can fill up the graveyard at an extraordinary rate thanks to our Cyclers. Meanwhile, the mere threat of a Censor will often give us an extra turn, and when it doesn’t we can get them anyway.
Cast Out and Settle the Wreckage will answer anything that hits the board with ease. These two don’t care what the problem is, it will go away. They both exile, and Cast Out can hit any problematic permanent. Fumigate gives us extra insurance against wide boards and Farm // Market does the same against single threats.
Hieroglyphic Illumination and Renewed Faith round out the Cycling package. The extra life from a Renewed Faith can Fog an early attack step, and the Illumination can help us dig for answers when we need them. These two are invaluable to the deck and simply cannot be cut.
The icing on the cake is the combination of Search for Azcanta and Abandoned Sarcophagus. Between them we get to choose what cards we draw, and which we want to cast from our graveyard.
I love the sideboard in this list, since it is incredibly well built.
Authority of the Consuls hoses any aggressive strategies, gaining us life and shutting down anything with Haste. Forsake the Worldly pulls double duty, permanently answering God-Pharaoh’s Gift while also giving vehicles a real headache. Nimble Obstructionist is another key piece against so many decks, whether it be causing a waste of Energy or countering a Planeswalker Ultimate.
Negate and Jace's Defeat protects our key pieces from control, giving us vital resilience. River's Rebuke is a blowout for tokens, and Ixalan's Binding will answer everything in the format, shutting down key cards like Hazoret the Fervent. The only thing this Sideboard could be missing is graveyard hate. You could almost run a pair of mainboard Scavenger Grounds just to help out in this area.
In conclusion this is a very competitive archetype and RRozanki has built and exceptional version of it. This is a great budget way to play at FNM or at a GP, but be ready to concentrate the whole time, because it is a nightmare to pilot. Every decision you make will affect the game in a huge way, making it incredibly easy to misplay.
The Sideboard
This is a section where each week I will discuss something from Magic outside the world of Standard.
This week I want to talk Frontier. From next week I will be competing in a competitive Frontier league. So far we have the deck selection narrowed down to Atarka Dragons, UW Spirits, Panharmonicon Combo, 4C Jeskai Ascendency and GB Hardened Constrictor. If you have any preferences be sure to let me know. And if you have a brew you'd like me to try out, be sure to send me a link through my Facebook
Anyway, thank you guys for reading. Be sure to check me out on Facebook for constant updates on the Magic community and weekly Standard Articles.
