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| Avg. CMC 3.09 |
| Card Color Breakdown |
| Card Type Breakdown |
Main Deck - 60 cards, 19 distinct
Sideboard - 23 cards, 9 distinct
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Name |
Edition | $ | Type | Cost | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Rarity | Color | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Creature (6) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Shatterskull Charger | $0.09 | Creature - Giant Warrior | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern | $7.81 | Legendary Creature - God // Legendary Artifact | // | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Thassa's Oracle | $15.53 | Creature - Merfolk Wizard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Instant (7) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Hagra Mauling // Hagra Broodpit | $0.92 | Instant // Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1 | Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire | $4.61 | Instant // Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Saw It Coming | $0.20 | Instant | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sorcery (8) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Bloodchief's Thirst | $0.12 | Sorcery | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Duress | $0.04 | Sorcery | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Enchantment (2) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Footfall Crater | $0.16 | Enchantment - Aura | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Notes
After some Giant testing with Fredo (Which was an absolute blast!) I was intrigued by Grixis giants, which Fredo was trying. It's clear that giants package has potential, and part of it's strength is that it is built around one-sided sweepers and incidental damage. I started with Jeskai as realm-cloaked giant is the most upside giant one-sided sweeper. All giant decks get to have the battle of frost and fire, because glimpse of the cosmos and invasion of the giants being your "giant two drops" in our list. If we go black instead, Fredo put out the idea of Blood on snow, which would be a great one-sided sweeper across decks and snow mana is so easy. Six is a lot though, and I noticed crippling fear functions as a cheaper one-sided sweeper in many matchups. Back to the two drops, the reason this deck is potentially really good is shown in those two cards. They do a lot more than what appear on the card. 8 2 drops in a giant deck is already an improvement, they all cantrip and provide other advantages. Glimpse ensures a land drop or giant on curve, functionally being a giant if we need to be, or seamless sequencing. This is worth as is, I would play a cantrip here if this card didn't exist. Then there is the back side of it where with a giant we get a free copy for U out the yard. This means for an additional mana, any of our giants super cantrip and we will seldom run out of gas. A top decked glimpse with a giant in play is 1UU for, "look at top 6, put two in hand". That's dig through time. Actually, this is better than dig through time in giant decks. Invasion of giants is similar. It basically is scry 2, draw a card, do 2 damage, ramp by 2. Casting a bonecrusher giant for R feels like cheating. The synergies in the giant tribe really pushes each card.
Along these lines Quakebringer is actually very powerful. It curves out as a fine giant that pushes damage and incidentally shuts down lifegain, ramps itself with foretell, and triggers out of the graveyard for free for just doing what we want. This pushes a lot of damage without combat, you can get multiple triggers, and shows the power of calamity bearer. Fredo and I have both been impressed by that card, it closes games surprisingly fast. In my first version I tested epiphany, but for giants this is like a better time warp. Playing multiples is stupid, and it doubles all damage from giant's, including quakebringer triggers, bonecrusher giant triggers, and the Kroxa etb. I won't wax poetic about Kroxa whose power level is well known, but in the context of this deck it's even more. Between the all the incidential damage, we close hard. Quakebringer, Kroxa, and glimpse of the cosmos are all worth full cards when in our graveyard. I think this is potentially busted, so I made the list above.
Before I describe what's going on up there, let me say about the general form of our giant decks. We are a 26 land deck and don't you forget. Our curve is mid-high for the most part, and if we miss a land drop we are not coming back. In some ways the giant deck just accepts it starts behind, so it doubles down on measures to get to the mid game rather than try to be aggressive or more controlling, hence the 2 drops. The turn we untap with a giant is the turn we are able to start pushing damage. So we got to hit all our land drops. The next is that I've felt pretty good at 14 giants at a minimum. This allows allows all our cantrips to function at full capacity without getting bogged down in 4-5 drop creatures. We can range upward from here if desired. Two removal spells, stomp, and a playset of one-sided sweepers gives a pretty excellent amount of midrange interaction. Then there is the cantrips we discussed before. That just leaves a few flex spots generaly, although the land, spells, and giants all have a pool to consider to build into different directions, the standard card pool is deep.
So, self-mill giants. If we run all 12 of the giants graveyard payoffs, incidentially milling them should provide dividends. How far can we push this? I'm starting with mire triton, the best self mill enabler in standard, and it fits like a glove. It lowers our curve a lot, it mills 2 and gains 2 life which improves our aggro matchups, and it's a 2/1 deathtouch body. That body is both applying earlier pressure that our opponents are loathe to block, further increasing our incidental damage plan, and holding back a whole army of attackers. Mill two in this deck either is draw a card, draw two cards, or fuel the escape cost of kroxa. This card is doing entirely too much for two mana. The next piece of mill I've included is in the mana base in Port of Karfell. I've liked the gates of istfell in the white version when we run dry or need to leave up interaction, and this curve is lower, so it acts as an additional haymaker that can't be countered at instant speed. It's not hard to imagine a late game suddenly sealed by returning a calamity bearer on our opponents end step with multiple quakebringers in the graveyard. It's like cruel ultimattum built into a land when you consider how much value we are getting out of milling and recursion. This version also has few taplands, so it's not even hard on our curve. The last mill card I've included is King Narfi's Betrayal. I was doing additional giants in this slot, but this card self mills and recurs a giant, so functionally is, as well as snagging a card from our opponent. A tad slow, but the upside is there, and against aggressive opponents on turn 4 we can snag a 1 drop, like thieve's guild enforcer, and then untap with a free card. The combination of these cards should keep our deck firing.
In relation to this, a note on best of 1. Mill decks are abundant on arena, and most graveyards decks aren't really doing much, but we are, and folks are not playing the maindeck graveyard hate that will hose us. We should flourish in these matchups. Worth considering to include a copy in the maindeck is thassa's oracle for Bo1. If our opponent's are milling us and we put a port of karfell into play, we basically auto win any late game. 7 might be a bit much in these matchups, but I think it'd doable if you sequence well and focus on attrition (into the story is a fucking pain). You just have to live long enough to get milled out and have the mana to activate the port. This is why in a best of 3 I include two in the side, even though they will have more graveyard hate. Unless they play true hate, which most don't, I should overload them on graveyard matters cards.
Back to the last selections then and sideboard. I tend to suffer against aggressive decks as giants, so I've built this version with a split of the lower cost one-sided sweepers. They layer well with stomp to scale up. Battle of frost cand get value on the last mode with another battle, quakebringer, or a kicked bloodchief's thirst. Black gives us the best removal, so squash is no longer worth it, and bloodchief's thirst also helps our early issue.
The land is beautiful if I don't say so myself. We are primarily black/Red, with double in each, with a splash of blue we want to use on turn 2. A tricky puzzle. The trifecta of pathways ensures untapped land drops of the color we desire at the time, we only need 1-2 blue in a game, so largely won't regret putting the black or red side face up. We need a triland, and fabled passage fits the bill. It fetch's any color, fuels kroxa, increases the efficacy of two drops, and comes in untapped T4 on. I always assume that at least 5 basics with a playset of fabled passage ensure they always hit, and I wen up to seven here because of the self-mill. I'm play 3 port of karfell, our only true tapland, making 7 total in the early turns out of 26, only 3 after T4. Because of our lack of one drops mostly, playing a tap land on T1 is to our advantage. 3 port so we have regular access to the effect in the late game pairs with island for 4 true blues sources, which should ensure we don't get stuck on blue in the mid and late game (I don't what hand I would keep only blue sources, so this should occur very infrequently). Even so, we have 16 cards that can make blue if we desire, and 15 of each other color. So having U on turn 2 into T3 BB or RR is doable rather elegantly. There may be some hands I have to choose one spell over another T3, but this should smooth out by 5. By 7 we need UU as we activate the port and need a blue to do so, but our mana should be great at 7. I imagine our T6 land is a second blue source a good amount of the time to cast multiple glimpse/invasion in a turn.
For our sideboard our configuration is a little tight, so we are leaning into the DFC options a bit. We start with the two Thassa's oracle for mill matchups for a weird auto win if they don't remove it. Then For our aggro matchups we switch two port for two hagra mauling, tapland for tapland, and mauling being more useful and the lategame being less important. We trade out the invasion which is slow and taps us out for durdle, to 2 bloodchief's thirst, 2 heartless act. With just those switchs, we have 14 pieces of spot removal, 4 mire triton, and 4 sweepers, should be a nightmare for an aggro deck.
For control we have a couple of competing post board strategies. They both swap a port for a malakir rebirth. Port is very good in the matchup, but we are not locked to do well in the late game, and rebirth offers a 1 mana blossoming defense of sorts when they need to kill a giant on time and instead don't. I'm thinking about when they go to kill a calamity bearer just for it to immediately return, or something like that. It's also a good card in other midrange mirrors where we crash our giants into stuff as removal. The first package is 4 duress, 2 tergrid. Duress replaces the sweepers, tergrid 2 enchantments of our choosing (whichever seems worse at the time). Duress helps us proactively leverage our giants, and is an early play that fuels kroxa, a key card in the matchup. We are often going to be trying to string incidential damge game two as they go to work on our creatures and graveyard. That's where Tergrid comes in. Tergrid is additional threat, which always a winning strategy against control. The best part is the lantern on the back. That card is much better than it looks. As an artifact, it might dodge a lot of removal for one. Any mode the opponent chooses is good for us, and eventually will just be damage if not checked. We can activate in there draw step, which can blow out top decks. Untaping it for double activations is actually absurd, and basically closes the game. Like you can T4 activate, T5 double activate. we hit our land drops, so we might even get to triple activate on a turn cycle, which is beyond good. Combined with our other discard is very strong attrition plan, and a good way to push through threats. Going straight attrition where we can is also really good because of our graveyard value engines. The fail rate is Tergrid herself, who is above average for her cost, and forget snags sagas. The other plan is more straight forward. 4 saw it coming for sweepers, +2 shatterskull charger for King narfi's Betrayal. Saw it coming is very good in this deck, as blowing out a pivotal spell at the right time is really good for this deck, and is powerful across archetypes. Being light on counterspells G1 should also add to this approach. Shatterskull smasher puts the petal to the metal, has trample, can evade sorcery speed removal, gets a free counter off invasion, and is an insane follow up to calamity bearer. If the name the game is let's close, this card helps a lot. I would also consider footfall crater in this spot. Giving any giant haste/trample for 1 mana for the rest of the game is real good, and a fail rate of being a one mana cantrip for Kroxa is pretty awesome. At 5 mana Kroxa will always have haste and trample when it escapes. That's dumb. If I went this way I think i would trim Invasion instead of betrayal for more creature density and all the mill spells for kroxa.
I am 4-5 mythics and 8 rares off this list for arena, but I think it's a serious contender and will build it/ run it.
Along these lines Quakebringer is actually very powerful. It curves out as a fine giant that pushes damage and incidentally shuts down lifegain, ramps itself with foretell, and triggers out of the graveyard for free for just doing what we want. This pushes a lot of damage without combat, you can get multiple triggers, and shows the power of calamity bearer. Fredo and I have both been impressed by that card, it closes games surprisingly fast. In my first version I tested epiphany, but for giants this is like a better time warp. Playing multiples is stupid, and it doubles all damage from giant's, including quakebringer triggers, bonecrusher giant triggers, and the Kroxa etb. I won't wax poetic about Kroxa whose power level is well known, but in the context of this deck it's even more. Between the all the incidential damage, we close hard. Quakebringer, Kroxa, and glimpse of the cosmos are all worth full cards when in our graveyard. I think this is potentially busted, so I made the list above.
Before I describe what's going on up there, let me say about the general form of our giant decks. We are a 26 land deck and don't you forget. Our curve is mid-high for the most part, and if we miss a land drop we are not coming back. In some ways the giant deck just accepts it starts behind, so it doubles down on measures to get to the mid game rather than try to be aggressive or more controlling, hence the 2 drops. The turn we untap with a giant is the turn we are able to start pushing damage. So we got to hit all our land drops. The next is that I've felt pretty good at 14 giants at a minimum. This allows allows all our cantrips to function at full capacity without getting bogged down in 4-5 drop creatures. We can range upward from here if desired. Two removal spells, stomp, and a playset of one-sided sweepers gives a pretty excellent amount of midrange interaction. Then there is the cantrips we discussed before. That just leaves a few flex spots generaly, although the land, spells, and giants all have a pool to consider to build into different directions, the standard card pool is deep.
So, self-mill giants. If we run all 12 of the giants graveyard payoffs, incidentially milling them should provide dividends. How far can we push this? I'm starting with mire triton, the best self mill enabler in standard, and it fits like a glove. It lowers our curve a lot, it mills 2 and gains 2 life which improves our aggro matchups, and it's a 2/1 deathtouch body. That body is both applying earlier pressure that our opponents are loathe to block, further increasing our incidental damage plan, and holding back a whole army of attackers. Mill two in this deck either is draw a card, draw two cards, or fuel the escape cost of kroxa. This card is doing entirely too much for two mana. The next piece of mill I've included is in the mana base in Port of Karfell. I've liked the gates of istfell in the white version when we run dry or need to leave up interaction, and this curve is lower, so it acts as an additional haymaker that can't be countered at instant speed. It's not hard to imagine a late game suddenly sealed by returning a calamity bearer on our opponents end step with multiple quakebringers in the graveyard. It's like cruel ultimattum built into a land when you consider how much value we are getting out of milling and recursion. This version also has few taplands, so it's not even hard on our curve. The last mill card I've included is King Narfi's Betrayal. I was doing additional giants in this slot, but this card self mills and recurs a giant, so functionally is, as well as snagging a card from our opponent. A tad slow, but the upside is there, and against aggressive opponents on turn 4 we can snag a 1 drop, like thieve's guild enforcer, and then untap with a free card. The combination of these cards should keep our deck firing.
In relation to this, a note on best of 1. Mill decks are abundant on arena, and most graveyards decks aren't really doing much, but we are, and folks are not playing the maindeck graveyard hate that will hose us. We should flourish in these matchups. Worth considering to include a copy in the maindeck is thassa's oracle for Bo1. If our opponent's are milling us and we put a port of karfell into play, we basically auto win any late game. 7 might be a bit much in these matchups, but I think it'd doable if you sequence well and focus on attrition (into the story is a fucking pain). You just have to live long enough to get milled out and have the mana to activate the port. This is why in a best of 3 I include two in the side, even though they will have more graveyard hate. Unless they play true hate, which most don't, I should overload them on graveyard matters cards.
Back to the last selections then and sideboard. I tend to suffer against aggressive decks as giants, so I've built this version with a split of the lower cost one-sided sweepers. They layer well with stomp to scale up. Battle of frost cand get value on the last mode with another battle, quakebringer, or a kicked bloodchief's thirst. Black gives us the best removal, so squash is no longer worth it, and bloodchief's thirst also helps our early issue.
The land is beautiful if I don't say so myself. We are primarily black/Red, with double in each, with a splash of blue we want to use on turn 2. A tricky puzzle. The trifecta of pathways ensures untapped land drops of the color we desire at the time, we only need 1-2 blue in a game, so largely won't regret putting the black or red side face up. We need a triland, and fabled passage fits the bill. It fetch's any color, fuels kroxa, increases the efficacy of two drops, and comes in untapped T4 on. I always assume that at least 5 basics with a playset of fabled passage ensure they always hit, and I wen up to seven here because of the self-mill. I'm play 3 port of karfell, our only true tapland, making 7 total in the early turns out of 26, only 3 after T4. Because of our lack of one drops mostly, playing a tap land on T1 is to our advantage. 3 port so we have regular access to the effect in the late game pairs with island for 4 true blues sources, which should ensure we don't get stuck on blue in the mid and late game (I don't what hand I would keep only blue sources, so this should occur very infrequently). Even so, we have 16 cards that can make blue if we desire, and 15 of each other color. So having U on turn 2 into T3 BB or RR is doable rather elegantly. There may be some hands I have to choose one spell over another T3, but this should smooth out by 5. By 7 we need UU as we activate the port and need a blue to do so, but our mana should be great at 7. I imagine our T6 land is a second blue source a good amount of the time to cast multiple glimpse/invasion in a turn.
For our sideboard our configuration is a little tight, so we are leaning into the DFC options a bit. We start with the two Thassa's oracle for mill matchups for a weird auto win if they don't remove it. Then For our aggro matchups we switch two port for two hagra mauling, tapland for tapland, and mauling being more useful and the lategame being less important. We trade out the invasion which is slow and taps us out for durdle, to 2 bloodchief's thirst, 2 heartless act. With just those switchs, we have 14 pieces of spot removal, 4 mire triton, and 4 sweepers, should be a nightmare for an aggro deck.
For control we have a couple of competing post board strategies. They both swap a port for a malakir rebirth. Port is very good in the matchup, but we are not locked to do well in the late game, and rebirth offers a 1 mana blossoming defense of sorts when they need to kill a giant on time and instead don't. I'm thinking about when they go to kill a calamity bearer just for it to immediately return, or something like that. It's also a good card in other midrange mirrors where we crash our giants into stuff as removal. The first package is 4 duress, 2 tergrid. Duress replaces the sweepers, tergrid 2 enchantments of our choosing (whichever seems worse at the time). Duress helps us proactively leverage our giants, and is an early play that fuels kroxa, a key card in the matchup. We are often going to be trying to string incidential damge game two as they go to work on our creatures and graveyard. That's where Tergrid comes in. Tergrid is additional threat, which always a winning strategy against control. The best part is the lantern on the back. That card is much better than it looks. As an artifact, it might dodge a lot of removal for one. Any mode the opponent chooses is good for us, and eventually will just be damage if not checked. We can activate in there draw step, which can blow out top decks. Untaping it for double activations is actually absurd, and basically closes the game. Like you can T4 activate, T5 double activate. we hit our land drops, so we might even get to triple activate on a turn cycle, which is beyond good. Combined with our other discard is very strong attrition plan, and a good way to push through threats. Going straight attrition where we can is also really good because of our graveyard value engines. The fail rate is Tergrid herself, who is above average for her cost, and forget snags sagas. The other plan is more straight forward. 4 saw it coming for sweepers, +2 shatterskull charger for King narfi's Betrayal. Saw it coming is very good in this deck, as blowing out a pivotal spell at the right time is really good for this deck, and is powerful across archetypes. Being light on counterspells G1 should also add to this approach. Shatterskull smasher puts the petal to the metal, has trample, can evade sorcery speed removal, gets a free counter off invasion, and is an insane follow up to calamity bearer. If the name the game is let's close, this card helps a lot. I would also consider footfall crater in this spot. Giving any giant haste/trample for 1 mana for the rest of the game is real good, and a fail rate of being a one mana cantrip for Kroxa is pretty awesome. At 5 mana Kroxa will always have haste and trample when it escapes. That's dumb. If I went this way I think i would trim Invasion instead of betrayal for more creature density and all the mill spells for kroxa.
I am 4-5 mythics and 8 rares off this list for arena, but I think it's a serious contender and will build it/ run it.
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