Building a Better BUG in Kaldheim Standard

https://twitter.com/dominharvia/status/1376307467383103490

After some success in the Standard Challenges with Sultimatum and 4c Doom, I wanted to see if I could build a deck that kept the elements I liked from each while avoiding the weaknesses (namely, Ultimatum's clunkiness in a format increasingly moving towards RUG Adventures with a lot of cheap interaction as well as Mono-Red and Rogues, and Doom's need to play cards like Omen of the Sun or Elspeth's Nightmare to fuel Doom and Yorion). 

I had worked with Kyle Boggemes on his list of 4c Doom that had Esika's Chariot over Archon of Sun's Grace - at that point, the only white cards were Omen and Doom Foretold so cutting the fourth colour seemed like a less radical step.

The basic formula I knew I wanted was:

- 4 Heartless Act + 4 Eliminate along with 4 Extinction Event. The two-mana removal is necessary for keeping up with Mono-Red (or Cycling, or aggressive starts from Rogues) as well as stopping RUG from playing an aggro-control game or creating a cascading advantage with Innkeeper. Extinction Event is an excellent sweeper in general but against RUG in particular thanks to Obosh and the natural skew that the Adventures package puts on your curve. Note that Esika's Chariot and its tokens all have even CMC, so you can often sweep the board and attack with Chariot on the same turn.

- Esika's Chariot + Polukranos as mid-game threats. Chariot is the ideal roadblock against aggro but also the perfect threat against other grindy decks as none of their removal cleanly answers every part of it and it's easier to stomach playing it into a potential Binding as you still keep a board presence. The old Doom decks and Sultai Control decks often had trouble turning the corner quickly and putting the game away - Chariot along with Yorion makes that much easier. The focus on Chariot made me higher on Shark Typhoon as a way to re-activate it and have better tokens to copy.

Polukranos always over-performed in my Sultai and Doom SBs to the extent that I wanted some copies MD and more in the SB. It's the best card you can hope for against Rogues, is an on-board answer to Goldspan Dragon that doesn't give them a Treasure back, and is a fast clock that's difficult to handle permanently - you'd be surprised how Chariot and Polukranos backed up by disruption can steal games even in bad matchups or positions. It's also a great way to hedge against similar proactive pivots from other decks - your Polukranos can eat a Shark token or opposing Chariot that's putting you on a clock.

 

- With Chariot/Polukranos, Extinction Event, and Binding, you have a glut of four-drops - this is the thing that actually first made me want to cut Doom Foretold and why I added Wolfwillow Haven to my 4c Doom deck from the Challenge. Haven lets you cast one of these in a reasonable time frame on the draw and put your opponent in a bind with T3 Chariot/Polukranos on the play. Additionally, with 8 two-drop removal spells as well as Omen, Negate/Stroke, Mazemind Tome etc, you have so many ways to use that exact increment of extra mana - T2 Haven into T3 double two-drop or T2 two-drop into T3 Haven + two-drop is very common. 

Haven is also important with Mystical Dispute - jumping to the point where you can play an expensive card and defend it with Dispute is crucial in any blue matchup. 

Some takeaways from the tournament:

- Jwari Disruption was really, really good. I added the one copy as a last-minute change because it seemed good in theory, though I couldn't articulate a reason why it would be better here than in other shells people have tried it in (where it seemed like an automatic inclusion but underperformed). What I realized in my games was that it effectively satisfies your desire for two-mana interaction while being more flexible in important ways than the others - for example, against RUG Adventures I was often torn between using Heartless Act on a T3 Lovestruck Beast/Bonecrusher Giant or saving it for a Goldspan Dragon that I couldn't cleanly answer otherwise. With this many high-impact four/five-drops, your priority is surviving to the point where you can deploy those effectively and you only need Jwari Disruption to be good in a short window for it to help with that. I'd like to rework the mana to include a few more copies. 

- Yorion as a MD plan was fine (and important vs Sultai/Doom in particular) but it can be awkward vs faster decks as it wants you to have material on the board already and getting it Disputed is a blowout. I often swapped Yorion for Elder Gargaroth, which was impressive enough that I kinda want to maindeck those instead and build accordingly. 

With that swap, Behold the Multiverse may be better than Tome in some number; it lets you play a reactive game so well and digs for key cards like Extinction Event in a more timely way. 

Perhaps you can build a 60-card Sultai deck that's more consistent across the board but Yorion access is powerful enough that I think it's still worth it - you don't have to worry about running out of action or drawing the wrong half of your deck as much when you have this excellent finisher on demand. 

The Sultai Control decks from the start of the format - before they were quickly outmoded by Ultimatum - may be a useful source of inspiration here.