UW Angels in Dominaria

Hello everyone,

A lot of people have been talking about the newest set that brings a nostalgic feel back to Magic. With the Weatherlight Crew coming back in full force and with the Gatewatch tagging along, I can’t help but look at this as one big crazy reunion.

With some spoilers getting hyped across all of social media, some cards have caught my attention and I wanted to build some hypothetical deck ideas that I know will be in the horizon for the pros to meddle and test with.

Ignore the ‘white’ edges on the photos for now – I will replace them once the Gatherer has them uploaded.

Lyra Dawnbringer is by far the strongest creature in Dominaria, cost wise and abilities wise. A 5-mana 5/5 flier is already quite rare with your usual 4/4 for 5 mana Air Elementals occupying the uncommon slot. Bumping this up to Mythic grade includes the following perks:

• First Strike – kills almost anything in the sky that attempts to block her.
• Lifelink – get you right back into the game.
• Anthem – gives all other angels a stat boost and lifelink making damage races ridiculous.

I really love her, and at $14.99 pre-order price, I suggest you guys to BUY HER NOW.

Shalai, Voice of Plenty is another card that immediately caught my eye. Very seldom do we get a hexproof ability shared with you or your creatures. It was first attempted in Sigarda but looking at Shalai, she has both Sigarda’s iterations in one card. Yes she’s not packing a 4/5 or a 5/5 body but she can get you there with 6 mana. One thing to note that she is also 1 mana cheaper and easier on the color requirements. At $8 preorder, I am willing to invest.

Casting them on curve is strong but casting them way before their intended cost is nuts. Though we’re not using green to help us ramp, we have one way to bring the cost of our creatures down.

Oketra’s Monument has slipped from a breakthrough card to a fringe combo piece. Though it did give us some solid performance with the mono white tokens deck utilizing 2 copies of Aviary Mechanic to generate a 1/1 warrior token for 1 white mana, bouncing the Mechanic to each other. It’s an awesome 2-card combo that’s relatively easy to pull off and with Shelai to protect them and beef them up late game, it’s convenient to have a go-wide win condition that takes up just 8 card slots.

Baird, Steward of Argive is another great way to help us stabilize. The built in Prison effect is great against very aggressive decks and with 4 toughness, Baird is not a push-over in combat either. Curving a Glorybringer on turn 5 will still hold it back without the extra one mana to swing with, it giving you time to cast your Lyra and really stop the 4/4 dragon on its tracks.

For removal, apart from Baffling End which is one of the better removal cards from Rivals that deals with Champion of Wits, Khenras, Scrapheap and other small stuff cleanly, now we have Seal Away which stops almost anything that Baffling End can’t. Hazoret? Try and attack. Glorybringer? Sure, you get to swing once. Rekindling? Go ahead and never get to see your token. I like these 2 together very much.

Then we have Angel of Sanctions which is another great removal spell and coincidentally is an angel too. With Shalai on the board, killing this will not be so easy. And even if you do, it’ll come right back!

To close off the deck’s beaters, we have Angel of Invention as well as Benalish Marshal to provide more redundant anthem effects and get our creatures beyond burn range.

The light blue splash is for Arcane Adaptation which makes all our creatures including warrior tokens from the monument into angels. This makes everything benefit from Lyra which is super awesome, making your monument warriors into mini-Serra Angels!

Here’s my Angel Tribal for Dominaria Standard:

Creatures: 23

4 Aviary Mechanic

3 Benalish Marshall

2 Baird, Steward of Argive

4 Shalai, Voice of Plenty

3 Angel of Sanctions

3 Angel of Invention

4 Lyra Dawnbringer

Spells: 12

4 Oketra’s Monument

3 Baffling End

3 Seal Away

2 Arcane Adaptation

Lands: 25

4 Irrigated Farmland

4 Sunpetal Grove

2 Scattered Groves

1 Botanical Sanctum

3 Shefet Dunes

2 Scavenger Ground

9 Plains

While building this deck, I am already setting my eyes on a more mid-range Black White Angel shell. Stay tune for that!

Cheers,

Vanson