UW Tokens

Hello guys, Today I want to share with you a twist of the Abzan Tokens deck that plays more proactively but still enjoy the same synergy and at a lower cost.

Token decks have been taking the meta by storm in the past couple weeks thanks to Ixalan’s Vraska, Relic Seeker who took the deck’s power level through the roof. Together with Anointer Priest, Hidden Stockpile, and Anointed Procession, the token deck can go extremely wide and overwhelm the most aggressive decks with dozens of blockers or exhaust the resources of the best control players. If we look at the deck list however, if you manage to take out Hidden Stockpile, the deck stalls and will rely on Vraska.

Hidden Stockpile is the generator but Anointed Procession serves as the accelerator of the tokens deck. It essentially doubles the amount of whatever token we generate. However the deck relies on staying alive long enough to resolve a Hidden Stockpile for the deck to work. Without Hidden Stockpile, the deck doesn’t do much.

I prefer a proactive approach that uses creatures as the main win condition, while playing the token trick in parallel to really cut the opponent’s exit and close the game.

White is well known to be the best at making tokens and Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation gave us good creatures that turn to tokens when they die – thanks to Embalm and Eternalize.

Apart from creatures that turn to tokens, we will also run creatures that make tokens when they enter the battlefield. Good thing they not only bring more creatures with them but they also make them bigger. Angel of Invention remains to be among the best anthem creatures while Regal Caracal has proved itself in the battlefield as a great equalizer against decks that can break out the door super fast with guns blazing.

We will also play Oketra’s Monument which allows us to play our token strategy on top of our creature plan with the added bonus of allowing us to play our creatures faster and sooner.

Blue will be primarily used to make sure we don’t get swept by a Fumigate or Settle the Wreckage. We won’t be focused on countering creatures but we will give our full attention to noncreature spells so we’ll be packing Negate and Spell Pierce main board. With so many UB and UW control decks, Negate and Spell Pierce does a great job choking them on cards and cut their lifeline short by countering their sweepers or Approach. They usually tap out and cast Glimmer on your turn, or Fumigate on their 5th turn so stopping them from resolving these spells are back breaking.

Creatures: 22

4 Anointer Priest
4 Sacred Cat
4 Adorned Pouncer
4 Sunscourged Champion
3 Regal Caracal
3 Angel of Invention

Artifact & Enchantment: 6

2 Oketra’s Monument
4 Anointed Procession

Spells: 9

4 Negate
3 Spell Pierce
2 Dusk // Dawn

Lands: 23

4 Shefet Dunes
4 Ipnu Rivulet
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Irrigated Farmland
4 Plains
3 Island

Sideboard: 15

2 God-Pharaoh’s Gift
4 Gate to the Afterlife
3 Solemnity
3 Ixalan’s Binding
2 Gideon’s Intervention
1 Spell Pierce

The sideboard is my attempt to address as much of the meta deck as I possible can under the UW Colors.

Against black decks that plan to cast Lost Legacy and remove Anointed Procession – we got one trick up our sleeve. Swap out Procession with Gate to the Afterlife and God-Pharaoh’s Gift lines up perfectly against them. They will miss on Lost Legacy, and their increase spot removal against our deck will join come back to haunt them.

Temur, Sultai, 4C energy decks should be punished hard by Solemnity. This card has yet to break out of its shell and with the dominance of energy decks, we can surely use the benefits of running 3 copies in the side and not get affected by it.

We always want to get rid of threats permanently and while we don’t have ways to remove planeswalkers, or pesky enchantments/artifacts, Ixalan’s Binding and Gideon’s Intervention does double duty of stopping them for good, or preventing our opponents from playing more copies.  Without much hate for enchantment outside green, a resolved intervention or binding is crazy good!

I am actually building this deck because it’s not expensive to build, it’s easy to use, and great against most gauntlets.

If you think this deck tech is awesome, let me know at the comments below!

Cheers & Happy Halloween!

Vanson