At this point, Throne of Eldraine Standard battle lines have clearly been drawn – you’ve got Oko, Thief of Crowns on one side and everything else on the other. Oko is in twelve of the sixteen qualifying decks of the MCQW, seven of the eight decklists of the newest MPL split, and roughly 50% of the overall MTG Goldfish reported metagame. On Arena Mythic, I play against Oko decks way over half my games. Simic Food is currently the deck to beat, as much as any deck has ever been the deck to beat.
If you look at the cards the deck plays, it makes total sense. You have high snowball potential with the accelerators and planeswalkers, and also an incredible late-game with Hydroid Krasis and the same planeswalkers. You’ve got good removal in Wicked Wolf and Oko, Thief of Crowns, and you’ve got great consistency because of Once Upon a Time. Since you have eight mana creatures and four Once Upon a Time, you can actually cast all your colored spells, which most two-color aggro decks cannot claim to do. On top of that, you also have a great sideboard. Basically, you’re great at fighting on virtually every axis.
Since it is widely known Simic Food is the deck to beat, it’s natural for players to turn to a splash color to be advantaged in the mirrors. This is what happened, for example, with Temur Energy, where by the end of the format most players had adopted a black splash for Vraska, Relic Seeker to have an edge in the midrange mirrors. This is also what we’re seeing here, with most players choosing to splash black for Noxious Grasp; Vraska, Golgari Queen; and an assortment of removal spells and late-game planeswalkers. I believe that, right now, this is the best way to build Food decks, and this is the deck I chose to register for my MPL split:
Creatures (16)
Planeswalkers (11)
- 2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
- 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General
- 4 Nissa, Who Shakes the World
- 4 Oko, Thief of Crowns
Lands (17)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Noxious Grasp might seem like a weird card to maindeck, but given the popularity of green decks, it’s no surprise that it’s happening. There are very few decks against which Noxious Grasp is a totally dead card (such as Mono-Red Aggro or Rakdos Sacrifice), but even against them you can use it in combination with Oko, Thief of Crowns to turn their creature into a green Elk and then dispatch it. If you ever know what your opponent is playing in Game 1, the cost is even lower, as you can mulligan appropriately and send it back with the London mulligan. Noxious Grasp is the reason the black splash is there, and I believe you want it maindeck or not at all (which means that, if we’re ever in a spot where Noxious Grasp isn’t good enough to maindeck, then you probably don’t want the black splash).
The black splash does a couple of things for you. First, it gives you an edge in the mirror; not an incredible edge, mind you – just a slight one compared to a Simic list that would maindeck, say, Aether Gust – but still an edge because you now have ways to directly kill their planeswalkers, which is the one thing that straight Simic cannot do. It also gives you an edge against the Bant versions, as it’s an instant-speed way of killing Deputy of Detention.
Second, it gives you much better game versus Selesnya Adventures. A lot of people think the main motivator for the black splash is the mirror, and while that is certainly a motivator, the main one for me was Selesnya Adventures, which was a deck we identified early on as one of the few that had a positive matchup versus Simic Food. Selesnya Adventures is traditionally a deck that can overpower Simic Food by just getting out of the gates very quickly, but the black splash helps with that immensely by giving you cheap ways to answer Edgewall Innkeeper (Noxious Grasp, Legion’s End, potentially Disfigure) as well as Massacre Girl, which is a way to answer a swarm that you can actually Once Upon a Time for. Now that most people have adopted the black splash, Selesnya Adventures has become way less appealing.
There are costs for this, of course. First, you have a card that is just bad in a reasonable percentage of matchups. Yeah, Noxious Grasp is not totally dead versus a deck like Esper Dance – you can kill their Teferi, Time Raveler, after all – but it’s certainly a very bad card that you’d prefer not having in your deck. Your mana base becomes way more painful with eight extra lands that damage you, and there’s always the risk of having colored mana issues and not being able to cast your cards. However, at this point in time, I believe the costs to be worth it.
Garruk VS Liliana
There are two types of games in the mirror – either they’re extremely lopsided, with someone coming out of the gates much quicker and leveraging their planeswalker advantage to an insurmountable win, or they’re extremely grindy and even, with players exchanging resources back and forth and fighting for battlefield control so their planeswalkers can survive. Noxious Grasp is an attempt to at least put up a fight in the first type of game and the black planeswalkers are an attempt to win the second type. If your opponent nut draws you on the play, then having Vraska, Golgari Queen; Garruk, Cursed Huntsman; or Liliana, Dreadhorde General is not going to save you, but if the game is even, they’re the type of card that can break parity.
Not everyone plays Garruk or Liliana, but I like having one copy. It’s highly annoying that your “late-game trump” isn’t a creature, and therefore you can’t search for it with Once Upon a Time, but at the same time it’s a trump specifically because it isn’t a creature that can just be killed, so I’m not sure there’s a solution there.
Between the two cards, I’m firmly in the camp of Liliana, Dreadhorde General, for one single reason: it’s not green. A lot of people are currently maindecking Noxious Grasp and Aether Gust even in other decks (Chris Kvartek, for example, qualified with a Golgari Adventures build with four maindeck Noxious Grasp), and having your “trump card” being answered by the most played two-mana removal spell makes it a very lousy trump. I believe that Garruk is the more powerful card, and if they both cost 4BB I would play it instead, but right now there’s no question in my mind that Liliana is the best for the slot.
Mulligans
This deck has some clunky hands, and you need to mulligan very aggressively. As a general rule, my heuristic for mulliganing is this:
- If I’m on the draw and I have no play before Turn 3, I automatically mulligan. I consider Once Upon a Time to be a play, as well as Noxious Grasp blind (though obviously if I know they’re not playing a deck Grasp is good against, it’s not a play). On the play, I will only keep a hand without a Turn 2 play if it has both Oko, Thief of Crowns and Wicked Wolf, and even then I’m not sure it’s right.
So, for example, this hand against an unknown opponent:
This, on the draw, would be an automatic mulligan for me. On the play, it would be an unenthusiastic keep. If you replace the Wicked Wolf with, say, a Vraska, Golgari Queen, I would mulligan it.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you’re going to keep any hand that has an early play; this is the bare minimum. For example, this hand:
This hand has a play on Turn 2, but it’s overall not a good hand, and I would mulligan it on the play and on the draw. I would mulligan it even if I knew for a fact that Noxious Grasp was a good card in the matchup.
Basically, games can be decided very quickly in this format, as mana creatures and planeswalkers snowball very easily, and you simply can’t afford to keep a bad hand on seven cards.
Sideboarding
When you build a sideboard with this deck, you have to be conscious of the fact that you have four must-side-outs in a lot of matchups, and these matchups sometimes overlap with decks where Wicked Wolf and Vraska, Golgari Queen are bad. Since you need to be able to bring in a lot of cards against decks like Jeskai Fires, Temur Reclamation, and Esper Dance, I’ve opted to play two Thrashing Brontodons instead of the more traditional Lovestruck Beasts. Lovestruck Beast is clearly a great card against Gruul Aggro and Mono-Red Aggro, but Brontodon is passable against red decks as well, and I felt having a high-impact card to Once Upon a Time for in these matchups was important.
I think you need to have at least four generic disruption spells (not counting Veil of Summer). I think a mix of Duress and counterspells is likely the best, and I think Negate is the best counterspell. You don’t need to counter Golos, Tireless Pilgrim anymore, so I think Negate just hits more relevant things.
Assassin’s Trophy was a concession to Rotting Regisaur decks that also happens to be good against Gruul Aggro. If you don’t think people are going to play Rotting Regisaur, you can replace them.
VS Simic Food/Sultai Food
Out:
None.
In:
None.
It might surprise you that there’s no card in the sideboard for the most popular matchup, but the reason is that, if there was anything better than what we’re currently playing in the maindeck, we’d just be playing that instead. Four copies of Noxious Grasp maindeck already show that we’re willing to do this.
Some people like a variety of cards in the mirror – I’ve seen Disdainful Stroke, Duress, Legion’s End, Veil of Summer, and even bigger trumps like Casualties of War. I think there’s just nothing you can reasonably take out that doesn’t hurt your gameplan more, and I’d argue that, if you believe cards like Legion’s End should be in for the mirror match, you should just adopt them maindeck.
There are some exceptions to this, but it’s highly dependent on their list. For example, when I played against someone with multiple copies of Casualties of War, I sideboarded in one Veil of Summer (which is incidentally the reason I don’t like Casualties in the sideboard very much either; if you’re going to play that, it should be maindeck before they can Veil of Summer you, but I think planeswalkers are just a better version of that effect). When I played against Brian Braun-Duin, who had two Garruk, Cursed Huntsman and two Casualties of War, I sideboarded in Negate. Once you know what they have exactly you can be a bit flexible, but in the dark I’d just resubmit my deck, no changes.
VS Selesnya Adventures
Out:
In:
It’s very easy for them to pressure planeswalkers, so Vraska is usually a four-mana sorcery-speed removal spell. Between Noxious Grasp, Wicked Wolf, Massacre Girl, and Legion’s End, you usually have enough ways to kill Edgewall Innkeeper that you don’t need to resort to such a bad effect.
VS Gruul Aggro
Out:
In:
This is the matchup my version suffers the most against, since you don’t have access to something like Aether Gust or Lovestruck Beast – straight Simic versions with Aether Gust maindeck should fare much better. Still, Assassin’s Trophy is a pretty good card against them, dealing with Embercleave inside combat.
VS Mono-Red Aggro
Out:
In:
VS Golgari Adventures
Out:
In:
This matchup is highly dependent on which list they actually play. Some Golgari Adventures decks have Questing Beast and Vivien, Arkbow Ranger, for example, which means Noxious Grasp isn’t that bad versus them. If they don’t have Noxious Grasp, Veil of Summer is also not as good. If they’re a more controlling or combo-y version, Massacre Girl is bad. If they have Lucky Clover, you don’t want to take out Vraska, Golgari Queen.
This is the most extreme sideboarding I’d do (and I take out a Once Upon a Time because I really have no idea what to take out as my last card), but you need to customize it based on their version.
VS Esper Dance
Out:
In:
VS Rakdos Sacrifice
Out:
In:
Overall, I don’t think Sultai Food is going to stay as popular as it was in the previous weeks. It’s certainly not invincible and the metagame will adapt. It is, however, a good version of the best shell, so it’s going to remain a contender for as long as Oko, Thief of Crowns remains in Throne of Eldraine Standard.