Hey everybody! I was pre-occupied this week travelling to a tournament offering a 1st place prize of a trip to Mexico and being from Cornwall this meant that the trip took all weekend and I was unable to catch any of the weekend coverage! I may write a short article later this week once I have had a chance to review all the action. So instead of a weekly review I thought I’d explore the various tournaments I’ve played in recently with Abzan and the various changes I’ve made to it over the course of this standard season.

Some of you might recall that I wrote about Abzan Control at the start of BFZ standard and posted the following list:

Abzan Control – Mathew Tonkin

Creatures:                                                                                                                      Spells:

4 x Den Protector                                                                                                         3 x Despise

3 x Nissa, Vastwood Seer // Nissa, Sage Animist                                                      3 x Ruinous Path

4 x Siege Rhino                                                                                                             1 x Utter End

1 x Greenwarden of Murasa                                                                                       1 x Murderous Cut

1 x Tasigur, the Golden Fang                                                                                       4 x Abzan Charm

2 x Dragonlord Dromoka                                                                                             2 x Languish

Lands:                                                                                                                            2 x Crux of Fate

4 x Sandsteppe Citadel                                                                                                2 x Ob Nixilis Reignited

4 x Shambling Vent                                                                                                      3 x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

2 x Blighted Fen

1 x Caves of Koilos

1 x Llanowar Wastes

3 x Windswept Heath

2 x Canopy Vista

3 x Swamp

3 x Forest

1 x Plains

Sideboard:

2 x Wingmate Roc

2 x Self-Inflicted Wound

1 x Tragic Arrogance

3 x Arashin Cleric

2 x Dromoka’s Command

1 x Murderous Cut

1 x Duress

2 x Transgress the Mind

1 x Utter End

This list, whilst solid in my initial thoughts, suffered from too few lands and from being too slow for the early stages of Standard.

Creatures:

Den Protector: 4 copies of this card felt like one too many, there were a lot of spells to buy back with Den Protector but you already have a lot of late game action.

Nissa, Vastwood Seer/ Nissa, Sage Animist: Another card that I felt I had too many copies of in the deck, whilst Nissa can ensure you hit your lands in the early game and helps to draw you cards in the late game whilst working towards a pretty powerful ultimate, you never wanted multiple copies of the card.

Greenwarden of Murasa: This card has value written all over it and can be a double Eternal Witness, however you do not want to be tapping 6 mana in a G/B/x control deck and the 5/4 body ensured that it always traded down with creatures.

Dragonlord Dromoka: Dromoka varies between being really strong in the metagame to being a card that you never want to tap low to play. There are too many effects to remove the Dragonlord, and with greedy manabases there is very little chance to play some Haven of the Spirit Dragon to buy her back.

Overall I felt I wanted creatures that would trade up in value, were fairly cheap to cast and were efficient. Cards like Heir of the Wilds, Anafenza, the Foremost and Deathmist Raptor were cards that sprung to mind initially.

Spells:

Despise: Initially this card was a fantastic inclusion, being able to take a Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, Mantis Rider or opposing Siege Rhino was a great way to get value for a single mana. However cards like Ojutai’s Command and Kolaghan’s Command allowed decks like Abzan and Jeskai Black to re-buy these creatures with ease. The shift throughout the weeks showed that it was, generally, correct to sideboard your hand disruption change despise to duress to try and prevent the 2-for-1’s from the various commands.

Ruinous Path: Hero’s Downfall this card is not! Whilst the Awaken cost can be a game breaker in the mid to late game, having to tap out on your own turn for a removal spell prevented you from achieving the advantage of casting it on your opponents turn to remove their threat or tap them down and allow you free reign on your turn to cast your spells. Abzan Charm is a better removal spell, and the easy red spell made Crackling Doom a better partner in the deck.

Languish/Crux of Fate: The split on these two wrath effects was to try and allow me to cover all of my bases. However the correct thing would have been to sideboard one of these, or Planar Cleansing, and have additional creatures (or an easier to cast wrath in WW instead of BB).

Achieving BB with this manabase was harder than it seemed and I found myself switching to spells that only had a single requirement of each colour.

The rest of the spells were pretty good in the deck, Sorin and Gideon made a great double-act, Utter End took care of any trick permanents and Abzan Charm was the flexible spell that you wanted at every point of the game.

Manabase:

As mentioned above, achieving BB in this deck was a lot harder in reality than it was in testing. I spent weeks practising with the deck and then was mana deprived in the first tournament I took the deck to. The manabase was simply too greedy with only 24 lands, 2 of which were utility lands acting as additional removal spells.

I am normally slightly greedy with my manabases, trying to fit the most in to the fewest spots, but this deck needed 27 lands all of which produced coloured mana.

The use of Battle Lands plus Fetches inevitably proved to be the better choice and allowed a free choice of splash colours and additional powerful spells.

After the initial wreckage that was my tournament with the list above, I had the chance to redeem myself the next day at a local GPT. I submitted the following list:

Abzan Red – Mathew Tonkin

Creatures:                                                                                                                    Spells:

3 Warden of the First Tree                                                                                           3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

3 Heir of the Wilds                                                                                                       4 Abzan Charm

3 Anafenza, the Foremost                                                                                           3 Dromoka’s Command

1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer/ Nissa, Sage Animist                                                            2 Crackling Doom

4 Siege Rhino                                                                                                                1 Murderous Cut

1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

2 Wingmate Roc

3 Den Protector

2 Hangarback Walker

Lands:

2 Canopy Vista

2 Cinder Glade

2 Smoldering Marsh

3 Windswept Heath

3 Wooded Foothills

3 Bloodstained Mire

3 Forest

2 Swamp

2 Plains

3 Shambling Vents

Sideboard:

3 Silkwrap

2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor

2 Painful Truths

1 Utter End

1 Murderous Cut

1 Ultimate Price

1 Surge of Righteousness

2 Duress

2 Radiant Flames

I found this list to be more fitting for what was being played around me. There is a good mix of cheap, efficient creatures and solid, flexible removal, whilst the fetchlands + Battle Lands allow you to sculpt the mana you require throughout the game.

Whilst I won’t be highlight every single card I will talk through some that I really like and are important to the deck.

Heir of the Wilds: With a world full of silk that is trying to wrap itself around your creatures to exile them, it’s important to have a creature that can be returned to the battlefield after the silk has successfully been removed. I made the switch to Heir of the wilds for this reason, and the card works really well with the number of creatures with power 4 or greater!

Wingmate Roc: It was shocking how underplayed this card was until G/W Megamorph came along and changed that. This creature is an inherent 2 for 1 and provides 6 power of flying for 5 mana! The downside to the bird is when you can’t trigger the Raid ability.

Painful Truths: Do you like drawing cards as a Green payer? Then this is the card for you! We’ve recently seen Painful Truths show up in modern decks, the card is simply that good! I know there was even some Pro Teams testing the card with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben to make it cost 4 to cast and allow them to draw an extra card!

So that’s the deck I’ve been playing with recently, I even played a variant splashing blue for Disdainful Strokes in response to the rise in Esper Dragons and Rally the Ancestor Decks.

That’s the wrap for this week, do you have any thoughts on the above list? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section. This weekend is the Team World Magic Cup, the Weekend Review will be back next week to analyse the unified standard decks that the different Countries bring to the tournament.