Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Retraction Helix rotated out and I hadn't really done much with the Standard deck that I built. I've stayed away from Standard, but this deck I've been seeing mentioned lately has my interest piqued. If I'm going to put together a Standard deck it's got to be a combo deck. Well, Eldrazi Displacer offers that possibility. It's more mainstream than Jeskai Ascendancy was and I'm seeing the deck called different things. I don't really care what people call it. Here's an example...
Sideboard:
3 Forest
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Caves of Koilos
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Llanowar Wastes
3 Westvale Abbey
4 Yavimaya Coast
24 lands
3 Brood Monitor
4 Catacomb Sifter
4 Duskwatch Recruiter
4 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Loam Dryad
4 Reflector Mage
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
3 Cryptolith Rite
4 Collected Company
Sideboard:
1 Enlightened Ascetic
4 Reality Smasher
4 Sylvan Advocate
2 Thought-Knot Seer
2 Negate
2 Transgress the Mind
The idea is to use Cryptolith Rite and Loam Dryad to accelerate, often into Collected Company, which is what speeds the deck up enough to be viable. The preferred kill is to set up Zulaport Cutthroat, Brood Monitor, and Eldrazi Displacer. Activating Eldrazi Displacer on Brood Monitor makes three scions, which can be sacrificed for mana to activate Eldrazi Displacer again, looping infinitely and killing the opponent with Zulaport Cutthroat triggers.
It's a little elaborate and very creature-heavy, but it is a combo deck and the pieces do come together quite nicely. I apparently can't help opening Westvale Abbey in booster packs, so I have four of those now, and they're a nice alternate kill condition. I seem to remember pulling four copies of Eldrazi Displacer too, and most of the other cards aren't even rares. To build this, I might have to buy a few copies of Collected Company, which isn't cheap, but I think I have everything else. Worth it? I don't know. It's a silly exercise on my part. I don't actually want to get involved in Standard, but I like combo decks and if there's a sufficiently interesting combo deck in Standard, I might build it. Anyone run into decks like this yet? Or any other combo decks in the current Standard?