I can’t believe I’m playing Standard.
Here’s a deck I’ve been playing and having fun with (that is not the same as winning) in the casual room:
[d title=”Grubby Aristocrats” style=”embedded”]Creatures
4 Doomed Dissenter
4 Smothering Abomination
4 Carrier Thrall
4 Zulaport Cutthroat
4 Plague Belcher
4 Sifter of Skulls
4 Baleful Ammit
Spells
4 Vampiric Rites
4 Grasp of Darkness
Lands
1 Blighted Fen
1 Mortuary Mire
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
21 Swamp[/d]
This deck does something I’ve been a sucker for years: it gets value off cheap durdly creatures. Normally, an Aristocrats build relies on reusing a sacrifice ability, such as my favourite junk drawer creature ([mtg_card]Carrion Feeder[/mtg_card]) can provide. Thanks to my main exposure to MTG culture these days being through Loading Ready Run’s Tap Tap Concede, I’ve been picking up their lingo – such as calling all those grindy, value-driven graveyard/sacrifice dorks-and-beef decks ‘Aristocrats’ style builds.
There’s no doubt a lot of good stuff to durdle around with in standard right now, and I’m happy to keep playing with them, but this built has a manabase I can scarcely beat for price: It’s cheap as heck.
The main thing you want to do with this deck is barf cheap creatures on the board, then feed those little creatures to the much bigger, much scarier creatures like the Plague Belcher and the Ammit. Shout out to the lifelinkodile, I love this thing so much. If you throw -1/-1 counters onto an Eldrazi Scion, you can sacrifice it in response to some other effect, like its own ability, by the way.
I’ve been considering putting some cards in that let you haul out of the graveyard, because the main thing this deck can do is run out of gas or be stranded with nothing but a Smothering Abomination to play. If this deck could have Death Denied, it absolutely would have it in place of Smothering Abominations. Not that they’re all that bad, but every time one of them has gotten rolling I’ve felt a tiny bit like I’m just getting more of what I already was getting