Many players think that Domain or RB Discover is the most powerful deck in Standard right now, but the scoreboard does not lie! Nils Gutierrez's Bant Toxic deck took second place at the RCQ at Naples El Nucli last weekend against a field of 44 players, only losing to Mono-Red in the finals.
This deck preys upon the slower strategies in Standard, quickly dumping creatures onto the battlefield and using Skrelv and Venerated Rotpriest to push poison counters onto the opponent in the late game. While most Standard players try to do flashy things like casting Atraxa, Bant Toxic has one plan: get the opponent to ten poison counters.
The downside of playing with aggressive decks like Mono-Red is that if your opponent can stabilize or gain some life, you can be quickly outpaced and lose your lead. If you get your opponent to one life, but then they manage to gain ten life, you'll have a tough time winning that game.
But with this deck, it's a little different; your opponent cannot remove the poison counters. If you get your opponent to nine poison counters, they stay at nine poison counters. Even if your opponent can halt your creatures and gain the advantage, if you can Proliferate just one time, you win the game. And sometimes, if you have a Venerated Rotpriest and a March of Swirling Mists, you can easily one-shot your opponent.
This deck is sneakily strong and can end the game on turn four just as easily as it can end the game on turn ten. With this deck, your opponents will never be safe, and this deck has a great matchup against many of the other tier-one decks. If I hadn't already picked out a deck for this RCQ season, I definitely would be trying this one out for size!
You can also find the decklist here.
Comments