Much Abrew: The Kami War (Standard)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. One of the most exciting aspects of Streets of New Capenna is the return of the Triomes, giving us powerful three-color lands in Standard. Today, we're going to test the power of the land cycle in our new Standard format with a five-color enchantment-ish deck built around The Kami War! Is Standard's mana good enough to make The Kami War work? How good is Spirit-Sister's Call in a deck full of enchantments? Is The Prismatic Bridge playable if it can flip into Titan of Industry every turn? Let's get to the video and find out on this week's Much Abrew About Nothing!
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Much Abrew: The Kami War
Discussion
- Record-wise, The Kami War was solid. We ended up 4-2 with the deck. (The second loss was another matchup versus Esper Control that I didn't bother to include. Actually, we played Esper Control four matches in a row at one point, and I just scooped the last two in game one for the sake of my sanity and diversity of matchups.) In total, we went 4-0 in non-Esper Control matchups and 0-2-ish against Esper. While losing to Esper might seem like a vote against The Kami War, in reality, I feel like I lose to Esper no matter what I play, so I'm not sure it really makes a difference.
- The goal of the deck is pretty straightforward: ramp into The Kami War using cards like Binding the Old Gods (which is much more powerful as fixing now that we have Triomes to tutor up with its second ability), Courier's Briefcase (which is also a solid source of card draw in a five-color deck), Azusa's Many Journeys, and The Celestus and trust that the double removal plus eventually big body of The Kami War will be enough to win us the game, which it often is.
- The deck also has a couple of really interesting backup plans. For one, we have a one-of Spirit-Sister's Call to loop our various enchantments (and sometimes Titan of Industry) from the graveyard. Many of our Sagas end up in the graveyard naturally, while Fable of the Mirror-Breaker lets us loot to fill our graveyard, which means Spirit-Sister's Call is usually pretty insane by the time it comes down, to the point where adding another copy or two to the deck might be worthwhile. That said, my favorite backup plan is The Prismatic Bridge. Our deck has only six total creatures: two copies of Esika, God of the Tree (and considering The Prismatic Bridge is Esika's backside, if we play a The Prismatic Bridge, we'll have at least one copy of Esika out of our deck) and four copies of Titan of Industry. This means that once The Prismatic Bridge hits the battlefield, we're incredibly likely to spin into a free Titan of Industry each turn, which is unbeatable for most decks. Thanks to The Celestus and Courier's Briefcase, it isn't uncommon that we're casting The Prismatic Bridge on Turn 4 and getting our first Titan of Industry on Turn 5.
- The other part of the deck that I really like is Battle of Frost and Fire and Burn Down the House. There are a ton of planeswalkers in Standard right now, with Esper overloaded on The Wandering Emperor, Lolth, Spider Queen, and Kaito Shizuki and many aggro and sacrifice decks trying to put multiple copies of Ob Nixilis, the Adversary into play on Turn 3. The power of Battle of Frost and Fire and Burn Down the House is that they can typically sweep away not just a board full of creatures but also planeswalkers as well. Killing all of Esper's planeswalkers one by one or even just getting through two copies of Mob Nixilis is almost impossible without falling super-far behind. Battle of Frost and Fire and Burn Down the House let us clean the board with just one card, which is huge in these matchups.
- So, should you play The Kami War in Standard? I think the answer is yes. While the deck does sometimes get off to slow starts and has the potential to be overrun early, I was surprised by just how powerful the deck felt and how well it played. If we can make it to the point of the game where we can start casting The Kami War, [[Spirit-Sister's Call],] and The Prismatic Bridge, it quickly becomes hard to lose. Plus, the deck is just super sweet and built around a lot of really cool cards that haven't really seen much Standard play. The only drawback is that it's also super expensive pretty much everywhere, coming in at $440 in paper and having nearly 60 rares and mythics on Arena. But if you have the wildcards (or cash) or already have the cards for the deck, it's a blast to play and shockingly competitive!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
