Adventures in the Forgotten Realms has been out for a little under a week, and players are trying out all sorts of new brews to see which cards can break Standard. Forgotten Realms took the place of the regularly scheduled Core Set, making it unsurprising that some cards seem a bit underwhelming for players looking for the new best deck. Though that shouldn’t stop players from experimenting with brand new lists. Here are 3 more Forgotten Realms decks that could be interesting additions to the Standard meta game.
[Related: 3 Decks to Try Out on Forgotten Realms Release Day]
Drizzt Do’Urden is one of the most fascinating cards in Forgotten Realms. It creates a token with weird stats and a name that’s pretty tough to pronounce. Drizzt is a card that provides two bodies, 13 power, and an incredibly explosive ability all stapled onto one package. At it’s core, this is an incredibly powerful card. However finding the right shell can be tricky for a creature that dies to all of the common removal in the format.
That’s why it’s time to call in the big dumb green creatures to help out. The Witherbloom demons failed to find any home in Standard due to their extremely restrictive downsides. Other sacrifice decks cared about how many creatures died, not how big the creature was when it was killed. Drizzt on the other hand happily welcomes a Daemogoth Titan dying during combat. Granting Drizzt 8 more power is good enough for an instant kill assuming the opponent has 20 or less life. Luckily green and black have plenty of good support in these colors, so waiting till turn 5 shouldn’t be too much of a problem for this slower style of deck.
There is nothing quite like a brand new “build around me” card. The Book of Vile Darkness is a new artifact that tests a player’s ability to build their own 8/8 Zombie God. Triple Black is a tough casting cost for deck building, however the current standard mana-base allows for a somewhat streamlined White/Black that can cast BBB without much of an issue. Because the combo demands two other cards to be in play at the same time, the whole deck is a bit fragile to most forms of interaction. But hey, why not give it a shot right?
The key of this list is to have multiple ways of finding all of the pieces at reasonable pace. Ingenious Smith and Oswald Fiddlebender are the two cogs in this massive Zombie making machine. They both come out early and can help players find the last piece of the combo at all stages of the game. This deck also aims to use plenty of cheap artifacts to help Oswald find what he really needs. It’s also incredibly helpful that cards like Portable Hole and Glass Casket are artifact removal spells that can be sacrificed later if any of the combo is missing. The Book of Vile Darkness might not find that many wins, but when it all comes together, it’ll be worth it.
A long time ago at the start of the current standard, Gyruda ruled the format. Thanks to a combination of Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Spark Double. However, once War of the Spark rotated, and the Companion rules were changed, Gyruda fell deep into the depths of obscurity. Teleportation Circle is here, and it just may be the card that pushes Gyruda back up into the face of Standard players everywhere.
Having a non-legendary option to blink creatures is what may be the key to bringing a new blink deck to life. The deck won’t have the same explosive finishers as it did previously, but there is no doubting the pure value this deck can provide. Gelatinous Cube is the main source of removal in the list, with Professor of Symbology finding the other lessons needed to punch through damage. Massacre Wurm is here to handle large board states of small creatures, and Malakir Blood-Priest is the thorn in the side of burn decks. There are so many great options for creatures to blink in Standard, so this deck is really far from properly optimized.
Featured image courtesy of Olivier Bernard and Wizards of the Coast
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