GRN = Going ‘Round Nexus

Wow.

2 weeks of zero writing, zero articles, zero deck techs. I’m so ashamed. After GP Hong Kong, which I lost in the win-and-in with Esper Mill, I really had to come back in full swing to catch up with work, wedding preparations, home renovations and last minute stuff here and there.

While I was sorting my decks from Hong Kong and taking out rotating cards from my “active standard” gift boxes, I noticed that my Bant Nexus deck will lose some of its pieces after rotation. For those who are still using the deck or want to know if casing Teferi with Fog mana up is still worthwhile in Assassin’s Trophy’s world – let’s find out.

Cards we’re losing.

Glimmer of Genius did a great job at digging for the succeeding Nexus of Fates or tucking excess Fog effects. It was also a good card to bluff Settle the Wreckage with.

Haze of Pollen I think was a bigger loss for the deck’s integrity because it was never a dead card. When your hand becomes full of fogs, cycling helps.

The same way with the Amonkhet lands, getting flooded while running 26-27 lands is not a problem if you can cycle excess lands away and dig for more Nexus of Fates.

By integrating cantrips with key cards, you do not need to compromise card selection and deck size to get the best of both worlds. This I think is the biggest loss for this archetype.

What about Guilds of Ravnica? What can we use from this amazing set?

Shocklands is back but not enough to support the BANT colors but at least we have Temple Garden which helps our Glacial Fortress and Sunpetal Grove enter the battlefield untapped. With decks slowing down a bit with the loss of Bomat, Khenras, Ahn-Crop, Glorybringers, we may be able to afford the life loss which we sort of gain back with Gift of Paradise. But running all 12 shocks for our colors is not the direction we’re going to take when all of Ravnica is standard legal. We might run 3-offs for some colors depending on the colors we’re leaning heavily on.

Thankfully Guilds of Ravnica has given us some options for card draw and card filtering. Radical Idea resembles ‘Think Twice’ which is good if you have the mana, and full of cards you don’t need like excess lands or spells you can’t cast in the next few turns.

Chemister’s Insight is not Glimmer but atleast you can get 4 cards from 1 spell. That’s enough value even if you pitch an extra fog, land or wrath.

We also have to rely on some cards to step up and fill the holes in the deck.

Settle the Wreckage can’t help save Teferi the turn you cast it but it will still be our go-to sweeper against very aggressive decks. For those who wish to play around Settle, Cleansing Nova should clear the board the turn after. Losing our low cost Fog effects makes this deck 2 turns slower. Instead of casting Teferi on 5, we now need to wait until the 7th turn to have enough mana for Settle. But because the meta is trying to maintain its speed with UR wizards, Mono Green and maybe Tokens/Convoke trying to dish out as much as damage as possible, the turbo-fog archetype’s survival depends on how it can effective stay alive, defer the damage, and stabilize with a Teferi on the board.

Speaking of Teferi, a lot of hype is given to Assassin’s Trophy, giving modern Jund pieces  a price bump when it was spoiled. Yes it can kill Teferi for 2 mana, or anything else for that matter however 1 card should not be the reason we don’t play certain decks anymore. In the likely event that they do kill our Teferi with Assassin’s Trophy, we would still be able to draw a card, untap 2 lands, and bring out a basic into play. We still got something out of the deal despite losing Teferi.

Definitely the sideboard should help with against removal like this similarly how we side in Negate against decks that run Duress and Vraska’s Contempt,

The sideboard is somewhat similar prior to GRN but the main difference is the Gaea’s Blessing in the sideboard which helps us recover dead Teferis. A bit of synergy goes a long way.

I’m sleeving this up and hopefully catch people off guard. Usually FNMs after a new set is focused on aggro so I’m excited to test this build against them.

Till next time!

Vanson