Card availability and personal preference can make deck selection easy, or even borderline deterministic, for a lot of players. While preference does impact my decisions somewhat, I'm usually open to play anything.

As such, I think, overthink, then agonize over deck selection. The extremely diverse results of SCG DC were pretty overwhelming for me. Sultai Control, Abzan Aggro and Temur Ascendancy Combo all struck me as sweet new options.

There isn't a lot of time before SCG Regionals, so it's hard to say at this point which of these decks would position me best to win that tournament. I spent a lot of time looking the DC decks and decks posted on various content sites, and nothing jumped out at me as being the best option. I kind of liked and kind of hated everything.

Fate Reforged has had a clear and large impact on Standard, but that doesn't mean we have to forget about pre-Fate Reforged decks. In particular, the first deck that I was actively excited about playing after seeing the results of DC was Minnesota legend Ken Bearl's Chromanticore deck:

This deck looks to answer the question, "What if we literally just jammed every one of the best spells in the format together?"

The mana is a little rough around the edges, and some aspects of the deck are undoubtedly clunky, but there is no shortage of haymakers to punish opponents for stumbling. I'm also extremely excited about the idea of playing Chromanticore.

There's something about cards that cost WUBRG. Casting them feels almost like you're cheating or that you've somehow beaten the system. Even Fusion Elemental felt impressive in its own special way. I would be amazed if anybody thought that Chromanticore wasn't objectively powerful when in play. The downsides are finding a good shell and being able to cast it.

In order to update Ken's deck, I would look to Fate Reforged to find a way to replace Magma Jet. It's the worst card in the deck by a country mile, so it's difficult to imagine there not being any better options.

Of course, while pondering this dilemma, I came across a deck that was even sweeter delivered in the form of an SCG versus video. In this video, Todd battles Brad using a Sam Black inspired Chromanticore delve deck:

This list features all the awesomeness of Chromanticore and incorporates strong card selection in Commune with the Gods as well as a nice little value package in Flamewake Phoenix. Turn three Savage Knuckleblade is awesome, but this deck can have a much more explosive turn three. Imagine this scenario:

• Turn one: Tapland
• Turn two: land, Sylvan Caryatid
• Turn three: land, Commune with the Gods milling Flamewake Phoenix, Chromanticore and Sagu Mauler. Cast Soulflayer, removing the lot of them.

#thedream

While I really like the idea here, I have a number of issues with the execution. For starters, Mana Confluence just seems immensely better than Evolving Wilds. This allows you to cut the basic Island, which is straight terrible in this deck and makes you a lot better at actually casting Chromanticore--and your spells in general. We're not as aggressive as Bearl's deck, so maybe we can't support the full four, but I'm thinking that three is the minimum.

As for spells in the deck, I really don't like Pharika, God of Affliction or Silumgar, the Drifting Death. Both are primarily in the deck to grant Soulflayer indestructible and hexproof. These are both awesome abilities to stick on a Soulflayer, but neither card is especially good when you draw it and try to play regular Magic with it.

Pharika has a reasonable ability, but maintaining adequate devotion to Golgari is difficult and she has massive diminishing returns. Additionally, the cards that I really don't want to lose to when I don't have to are Chained to the Rocks, Silence the Believers and Banishing Light. End Hostilities and Crux of Fate will happen, but we have no shortage of fat and Flamewake Phoenix.

Silumgar is just in every way underwhelming. He makes sense in control deck as a hexproof threat that can sweep tokens, but this deck goes so far over the top of that that we don't even care. We have more fitting options.

I see Sagu Mauler as a huge upgrade for this deck. Not only does Sagu Mauler contribute the hexproof that Silumgar would, but it's also easily within the range of what a Standard playable midrange card looks like. Morph is a relevant upside, as if you play it face down and they kill it, you've still set up hexproof for your Soulflayers.

I've been toying with the deck a good amount, and the key is finding the right balance of set-up and payoff cards. We don't want to be a deck with too much setup, as this will make us function as a worse ramp deck. We also don't want to load up on top-end because we'll just do nothing until we die. This is where I'm currently at with it:

For the record, I definitely think that Tasigur, the Golden Fang is strong enough and belongs in this deck, but I don't own one and am not about to drop $9 on one either. If I can borrow one, I'll play it, but I'm not about to spend $9 on a regular rare in a small set that features fetch lands as bonus rares. Tasigur likely takes the slot of the fourth Tormenting Voice.

Financial Relevance

While Chromanticore is the cheap mythic rare in the shuffle here, I don't know that there's a lot to be gained by it as a spec. This format is probably too diverse for a Chromanticore deck to really take off, and I am having difficulty imagining this card rising much above $5.

The card that I see showing the most promise is Mana Confluence.

There were 9 copies of Mana Confluence in the Top 8 of SCG DC, and the number was only this low because a number of the people in the Top 8 who should have been playing it weren't.

The vast majority of Standard decks can and should be playing at least one. The popularity of pain lands demonstrates the fact that your land dealing 3-4 damage to you is often more desirable than both coming into play tapped or being off-color. If your 3-color deck is playing 7-8 pain lands and zero Mana Confluence, then I recommend some revision.

The buy-in is high on these, and for that reason I don't advocate dumping cash on Mana Confluence. But I 100% recommend trading for any that you see in binders.

Sagu Mauler also has some upside as a spec. They're dirt cheap right now and they're pretty definitive in this list, as they're the singular card that turns this from a midrange/reanimator type deck into something closer to Mythic Bant. That said, literally millions of copies of this card have been opened and they may very well only be good in this deck. I'd pick up a set for now and as many copies as you can get in the quarter range.

~

I'm extremely excited to play this deck at Regionals. I've played a few Commune with the Gods decks in the past, but this one strikes me as the build that most consistently pays off. There are so many resilient, powerful threats that this deck will rarely stumble, and none of its payoff cards get offed by Lightning Strike.

If you have any ideas on how to refine the deck I would love to hear them. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter