I've been writing the Daily Deck List feature on the mothership this year. When Gatecrash came out, before there were any tournaments for me to grab decklists from, I decided to spend a week building a deck for each guild to write about. I knew this would be a good exercise for me because it would get me looking at new cards and at what each guild can do.

The Orzhov and Dimir decks I built were both pretty nontraditional. Each took advantage of its guild's Guildmage, and neither was particularly competitive. I was curious about just how bad each of them were though, so I modified both of them, built them, and found some things I liked.

I was seriously interested in trying to find a way to make the Dimir deck based on Jace's Phantasm and Wight of Precinct Six competitive until I remembered that it had no way to ever beat a Rest in Peace and that people would probably play that card after Brad pushed his Reanimator deck.

That left Orzhov as my pet project.

The original list I built was slow and unfocused. It's only plan against control was to set up the Exquisite Blood + Vizkopa Guildmage combo. I wanted it to be good against opposing creature decks, but it was just too slow. It was far from good enough.

One card I tested in it was Cartel Aristocrat because I wanted a sacrifice outlet for my Blood Artist, which I wanted to push the life gain theme with Rhox Faithmender and Vizkopa Guildmage. Cartel Aristocrat overperformed. I expected it to be a sac outlet with a meaningless ability, but the actual effect of the card was leagues better than I imagined.

First of all, if your deck is based on doing good things with a sac outlet, your opponent probably wants to kill that outlet so that you can't do your thing anymore, but Cartel Aristocrat is very hard to kill so your engine protects itself. Second, if you have Cartel Aristocrat with tokens, it's something of a nightmare to attack into with small creatures.

I also often found myself in games where I got my opponent low on life and then ground out the last few hits by sacrificing tokens to get my Cartel Aristocrat through blockers with some builds of Orzhov.

Anyway, the problem I was having with the deck was that it was too slow for every matchup. That's a big problem, but at least it has a painfully obvious solution: speed it up.

I tried building a synergy-based B/W deck with the lowest curve I could manage.

Gerry Thompson is well known for keeping a notebook of deck ideas and sketches. I do the same thing but with the notes app on my phone. The morning after I got to Jon Finkel's apartment (where we stayed for the first few days of our testing), I woke up early and had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. I stayed in bed, wrote out a list, and then got up and put it together. The first notes I have in my phone read:

4 1/1 Extort (Obviously referring to Thrull Parasite, whose name I couldn't remember.)
4 Diregraf
4 Gravecrawler
4 Doomed Traveler
4 Cartel
4 Skirsdag
4 Blood Art
4 Orzhov Charm
4 Devour Flesh
4 Lingering Souls

This got fleshed into this:

4 1/1 Extort
4 Diregraf
4 Gravecrawler
4 Doomed Traveler
4 Cartel
3 Skirsdag
3 Blood Art
4 Lingering Souls
4 Orzhov Charm
3 Devour Flesh
1 Blind Obedience
8 Dual
7 Plains
7 Swamp
3 Sign in Blood
1 Blind Obedience
1 Skirsdag
2 Tragic Slip
3 Duress
2 Appetite
2 Sorin

The Blind Obedience was bad and obviously should have been a Skirsdag High Priest. After drawing a few hands, I realized that the mana was horrible since I hadn't actually looked at the deck laid out while writing it on my phone, and I cut two Plains for two Swamps.

This deck had some things going for it. It's amazing at making Demons on turn 3 if you draw a Skirsdag High Priest and they don't kill it, as in most of your draws that have it will let you do that. Gravecrawler + Cartel Aristocrat and a Zombie let you reuse Blood Artist or extort. It only has eight Zombies, but at least Orzhov Charm can return one from your graveyard to kick start things.

On the other hand, it was extremely underpowered, and the relatively even white/black mana split didn't work very well. I played against a R/G big creature deck, and none of my cards mattered at all except for Skirsdag High Priest, who could steal games pretty easily.

These games made it clear that I needed to be a little more proactive. I needed to pick a primary color and an aggressive tribe. The first email I sent to my team about the deck said this:

I've been working on B/W. Currently at:

4 Champion
4 Doomed Traveler
4 Boros Elite
4 Cartel Aristocrat
3 Gather the Townsfolk
3 Skirsdag High Priest
3 Blood Artist
4 Lingering Souls
2 Intangible Virtue
1 Sorin
2 Tragic Slip
4 Orzhov Charm
2 Cavern Of Souls
8 Duals
7 Plains
5 Swamps

I like a lot of what's going on. Orzhov charm is excellent.

Also interested in trying a black version:

4 Diregraf
4 Gravecrawler
4 Thrull Parasite
4 Cartel Aristocrat
3 Bloodthrone Vampire
3 Skirsdag High Priest
4 Blood Artist
2 Butcher Ghoul
4 Geralf's Messenger
6 Tragic Slip / Dead Weight / Orzhov Charm
4 Cavern
8 Duals
10 Swamp

I tested both versions. It was really hard to decide which tribe was better to pursue. The Zombies did a lot of awesome things, and the mana was a little better. Ultimately, I found the aggressive decks were too hard to deal with, and I knew that I'd need to play the tribe that could actually block if I wanted to find a way to have game there.

I ended up playing two Dead Weight and four Tragic Slip in the Zombie build to maximize High Priest and because I only had eight white sources for Orzhov Charm. Thrull Parasite was very cute with undying, but it didn't come up all that often. I tried splashing Restoration Angel later and wasn't too impressed. I attempted to splash Falkenrath Aristocrat after that, and it was a lot better, even though splashing just for that hurt the mana considerably.

After all that, I scribbled some notes, trying to find alternate ways to build the Human shell:

4 Champion
4 Elite
4 Traveler
4 Cartel
4 Skyjek
3 Artist
4 Souls
2 Medic
4 Falkenrath
4 Orzhov Charm

This was an attempt to build for aggression, getting rid of the cute stuff like Blood Artist and Skirsdag High Priest—at the time, Zvi Mowshowitz was impressed with Daring Skyjek, which plays well with Lingering Souls and Falkenrath Aristocrat to create flying battalions. This deck was built during a conversation with Zvi, who was interested in other ways to build Humans since W/G Humans was his pet project at the time. This list was built to show how I would build Humans if my goal was to build a version that might be reasonable against control decks where I'd want to be as fast as possible and would want Falkenrath Aristocrat to beat Supreme Verdict. I learned later that Silverblade Paladin is much better here than Frontline Medic.

The first version I actually played Falkenrath Aristocrat in was the Zombie version, and my first email to the team titled "The Aristocrats" was about this decklist:

4 Diregraf
4 Gravecrawler
3 Thrull Parasite
3 Skirsdag
4 Blood Artist
4 Cartel
1 Bloodthrone
4 Messenger
4 Falkenrath
4 Slip
2 Dead Weight
4 Godless
4 Chapel
4 Crypt
4 Summit
4 Cavern
3 Swamp
SB:
2 Lil
1 Swamp
2 Zealous Conscripts
2 Thrill-Kill
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Appetite
2 Victim
2 Nighthawk

Tom Martell replied asking if we could get Lingering Souls into the deck, but this mana didn't allow it.

Matt Sperling suggested a build that was much more interested in tricks with Boros Reckoner:

4 Boros Charm
4 Nearheath Pilgrim
4 Frontline Medic
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
4 Boros Reckoner
2 Blasphemous Act
4 Cartel Aristocrat
3 Skirsdag High Priest
3 Tragic Slip
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Godless Shrine
4 Blood Crypt
4 Isolated Chapel
SB:
1 Blasphemous Act
3 Riders of Gavony
4 Faith's Shield
2 Rest in Peace
2 Bonfire of the Damned
3 Slaughter Games

I didn't like the curve here very much. Skirsdag High Priest is bad with only four one-drops, and Boros Charm is a little too cute. Also, the removal is pretty bad here since he cut Orzhov Charm to fit Boros Charm.

For some reason, I decided to test the Humans shell with red on Magic Online rather than in person like I'd tested everything else. I like testing on Magic Online because I get to play matches against a variety of decks and can quickly learn which cards I always side out, which cards I always side in, and which cards I never use in my sideboard. After an extremely successful but relatively short Magic Online session on Wednesday, I emailed the team the following:

I'm 90%+ to play this within five cards:

4 Champion of the Parish
4 Doomed Traveler
4 Boros Elite (This is the card I'm least happy with, but there isn't a better one-mana Human.)
4 Cartel Aristocrat
2 Nearheath Pilgrim
2 Skirsdag High Priest
4 Orzhov Charm
4 Boros Reckoner
1 Silverblade Paladin
2 Lingering Souls
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
2 Zealous Conscripts
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Plains
3 Blood Crypt
2 Clifftop Retreat
4 Godless Shrine
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Sacred Foundry
SB:
1 Rakdos's Return
1 Silverblade Paladin
1 Obzedat
2 Sorin
3 Tragic Slip
1 Appetite For Brains
2 Lingering Souls
1 Skirsdag High Priest
2 Rest in Peace
1 Zealous Conscripts

Vault of the Archangel as a 24th land is a consideration.

In person, I noted that Boros Elite was the least impressive card and could be cut for other things if we wanted to add the 24th land and raise the curve, but it was definitely the next best one-drop. While the card itself is really bad, I like where it leaves you strategically (a little more focused) and what it does to the curve. I think it's weak enough that we were right to cut it, but I'm still not completely sure. Since we ended up moving away from that, my "within five cards" ended up being a bit of a stretch, but it was emphatic enough to get other people to take it seriously and get on board. We built a few physical copies so that others could get a few games in with it.

After playing more, I sent out the following:

Cards I'm pretty sure about:

24 Land with Vault
4 Champion
4 Doomed Traveler
4 Orzhov Charm
4 Cartel Aristocrat
4 Reckoner
2 Lingering Souls
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
2 Zealous Conscripts

That leaves eight slots. At the moment, I have one Silverblade Paladin. I see this slot as a flexible one that could fill in at any point in the curve; it could be Lingering Souls, Obzedat, Tragic Slip, whatever.

I have one Boros Elite. The ninth one-drop sounds good to me, but the card is a lot weaker than the eighth one drop. I definitely want a lot of early game, so I think at least six of the eight slots should cost two or less.

Two-drops to consider:

Skirsdag High Priest -- I really want at least two. It was mostly a lie to list this as a flex slot. The third is negotiable.

Nearheath Pilgrim -- I think life gain is important, but I could easily be wrong. This is definitely a card I sided out a lot on Magic Online, and it's not a card that's really better in game 1, so I'm likely just being stubborn about it.

Thalia -- If we move away from Sorin in the sideboard (possibly toward Obzedat), this gets better. Also, fewer Lingering Souls is obviously better for Thalia. I've generally liked Thalia in the past.

Knight of Infamy -- Exalted is good with Champion early and Falkenrath Aristocrat late. Also awesome when pushing through Cartel or a Spirit. Good against U/W/R Flash. Awesome against Champion of the Parish. Naya Humans is real; this has upside.

Loyal Cathar -- Almost certainly wrong. On plan, but slightly hard to cast

Gather the Townsfolk -- Losing Elite makes this less exciting, but it's still good with Champion, Priest, and sacking. Doesn't fight Augur well.

Thrill-Kill Assassin -- Human, three toughness, attacks into anything, and doubles as a good blocker against aggro. There's definitely something to like here.

Also possible to add a five. I guess Conscripts three, but Thundermaw and Obzedat are on the table.

If we wanted another four, it would be Restoration Angel due to its favorable interactions with creatures in the deck. Good to keep them guessing and can blow people out with Boros Reckoner. Can usually find a way to level Champion of the Parish, so it's an honorary Human. Also unreal with Conscripts. I definitely don't hate the first one. Lots of value in Top 8/well-scouted situations.

From there, the rest got finalized in a round table discussion with a large group at the player's hotel in Montreal and in a smaller group with Zvi, Andrew Cuneo, David Heineman, and myself later. The final touches, like agreeing on Mentor of the Meek and Blasphemous Act in the sideboard, happened the morning of the tournament.

(David Heineman is the one name in this article that I expect over 99% of you not to recognize. He's been my best friend since I was four years old, and we learned to play Magic together. This was the first Pro Tour he qualified for, and I brought him out to New York with me to test with us.)

Overall, our performance was pretty average outside of Tom winning the tournament, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that no one knew the deck at all, which is particularly problematic here because the deck has a lot of flexibility in switching roles. Sideboarding in particular can be extremely tricky as well as sequencing, especially of two-drops, and that's before even getting to the complexity of on board play and when to commit to sacrificing how many creatures. If you're looking to play a deck that gives you a lot of options, this is a good place to be. It can be a lot of fun, but it's definitely dangerous if you're not extremely familiar with it.

Going forward, I think I want to experiment more with Boros Elite, but I know that it's probably bad. I think more Zealous Conscripts or Mark of Mutiny is worth checking out. I definitely want to try having access to more Skirsdag High Priests and Blasphemous Acts. Sorin was extremely impressive against control and not bad against others. We were very much on the fence on playing it maindeck, and I definitely want to try it. Depending on how the format shapes up, I could see Boros Reckoner eventually becoming a sideboard card or split between the maindeck and the sideboard.

I've heard comments that the deck is too tight of a package to really evolve much, but I hope this has given you some idea of how many different ways there are to approach these kinds of synergies, where this deck can safely be tweaked, and what's really important. Also, it's nice to be able to show you a long evolution of a deck.

Thanks for reading,

Sam

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