Frank Lepore
3/28/2012 10:48:00 AM
Every week I make it my personal goal to innovate in terms of decklists and bring something new to you guys. I try not to play run of the mill lists or lists that are dominating the standings, like Esper Control, Wolf Run, Mage-Blade, etc. If I do play something similar to those lists, I try and innovate and add my own personal spin to them. This is actually more difficult than you would think, having to come up with an unconventional decklists each week that won't be boring or trite.

Well lo and behold I was on Twitter the other day when I saw Jesse Smith - known brewer, also known as Smi77y in the Magic community - post the following:

“Round 2 of daily, second person with Ratchet main. Let's see if I can go 2-0 through Bombs.”

He then followed that tweet up with this one a little later...

“2-0, this deck is so unfair.”

Well, as Smi77y is a brewer after my own heart, I was immediately curious what he was battling with. I had to ask him what he was playing. I did so and received the following response:

“A rwb tokens list I threw together. It already has two 4-0s in dailies! Someone copied it today from mine last night.”

O RLY? Well, I was immediately curious so I looked for the deck that he was referring to and found this little gem among the Magic Online Daily Events:

WBR Tokens by Smi77y Main Deck Sideboard 4 Champion of the Parish 4 Doomed Traveler Creatures [8] 4 Faithless Looting 4 Gather the Townsfolk 3 Honor of the Pure 4 Intangible Virtue 4 Lingering Souls 4 Midnight Haunting 2 Oblivion Ring 2 Rally the Peasants 3 Shrine of Loyal Legions Spells [30] 4 Blackcleave Cliffs 4 Clifftop Retreat 4 Isolated Chapel 10 Plains Lands [22] Deck Total [60] 3 Celestial Purge 2 Day of Judgment 1 Divine Offering 3 Gut Shot 1 Oblivion Ring 1 Rally the Peasants 1 Revoke Existence 1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad 2 Timely Reinforcements Sideboard [15] View a Sample Hand! Solitaire this Deck! Click for full deck stats & notes!

I really liked it. It had a lot of the qualities that the BW Tokens deck had but also had the benefit of splashing red for both Faithless Looting as well as the flashback on Rally the Peasants. Rally the Peasants, if you hadn't heard, might be one of the best kept secrets in Innistrad. The card has been labeled as insane by no less than a handful of authors, and I know our own Justin Vizaro thinks it's the bee's knees.

Anyway, I wanted to ask Jesse's express permission to write about the deck, since in addition to occasionally writing for SCG, he also owns and runs 60cards.com. That meant I didn't want to step on his toes if he intended to cover the deck himself. As he usually is when someone shows interest in his creations, he was ecstatic for me to write about the deck! I asked him for an updated list, and he sent me the following:

Lingering Peasants by Jesse Smith Main Deck Sideboard 4 Champion of the Parish 4 Doomed Traveler 2 Mikaeus, the Lunarch Creatures [10] 4 Faithless Looting 4 Gather the Townsfolk 3 Honor of the Pure 4 Intangible Virtue 4 Lingering Souls 3 Midnight Haunting 3 Oblivion Ring 2 Rally the Peasants Spells [27] 4 Blackcleave Cliffs 4 Clifftop Retreat 4 Isolated Chapel 10 Plains 1 Vault of the Archangel Lands [23] Deck Total [60] 2 Celestial Purge 1 Divine Offering 3 Gut Shot 1 Rally the Peasants 2 Revoke Existence 4 Shrine of Loyal Legions 2 Timely Reinforcements Sideboard [15] View a Sample Hand! Solitaire this Deck! Click for full deck stats & notes!

I also asked Jesse if the deck had a name, since I didn't want to just call it WBR Tokens. He agreed that the deck needed a name, but he didn't have one for it, and that it was pretty much up to me. While he suggested things like Faithless Beating, Token Rush, and Faithless Townfolk, I suggested Lingering Peasants. I liked Lingering Peasants because it's descriptive of what the deck does; it implies both of the the black and red splash cards in the name, but it also tells us that the deck is base white and that its goal is buffing tokens. Hopefully Smi77y is okay with that if the deck ends up taking off.

Let's see how it did...

T2 Lingering Peasants vs. UB Control, Match 1, Game 1



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. UB Control, Match 1, Game 2



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. UB Control, Match 1, Game 3



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. Grixis Control, Match 1, Game 1



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. Grixis Control, Match 1, Game 2



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. Grixis Control, Match 1, Game 3



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. BW Tokens, Match 1, Game 1



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. BW Tokens, Match 1, Game 2



T2 Lingering Peasants vs. BW Tokens, Match 1, Game 3



As you can see the deck isn't terrible against control and it isn't terrible against aggro. More specifically, almost every card is a two-for-one against control decks, and Ii's able to race aggro decks fairly efficiently. The main problem I've come in contact with is the lands. I either have too few, or I don't open on a Plains which is crucial. For this reason I made the following change:

-1 Blackcleave Cliffs
+1 Plains

I'm tempted to take out a single Faithless Looting, or to a lesser extent the Vault of the Archangel, for another Plains as well. I like Looting in the deck, but I don't think you want four. Really this deck wants to be discarding its extra lands or flashback cards and filtering into gas, but it's difficult to do that when you aren't drawing enough lands and the lands you do draw need to be played. The reason I would remove Vault is that, while it's cute, more than cute, really powerful even, this deck seems to live and die by hitting a Plains on turn one and the games where you have five lands in play are few and far between, especially when you consider our other plan which is, as I mentioned, to discard the excess to Looting!

I'm also not sold on the change Jesse made with Mikaeus, the Lunarch. Don't get me wrong, I love a Mikaeus, but I think having the Shrines main deck is so much better. Your entire deck is creatures that die to removal and sweepers, like Day of Judgment and Slagstorm. While you have plenty of two-for-ones as I've mentioned, having a Shrine sitting there, just ticking up ala Shrine of Burning Rage, is often more than a lot of decks can deal with from their maindeck. In addition, every card in the deck is white except for four, and some do double duty as they get flashed back.

I'm not sure if the splash for Faithless Looting is enough to warrant the red, but I do think Rally the Peasants is incredibly powerful and the fact that you can discard it to Looting for value definitely makes it worth looking at. There's a Boros deck in block that takes advantage of tokens, but also uses Hellrider. I'm not sure if we upped the amount of red in the deck if it would be possible to recreate that deck on a Standard power level, but I'd be interested to try. Similarly the black version has Sorin, Lord of Innistrad in the four slot. This means both dual colored versions would top out at four mana with respectively powerful spells.

High Mid Low

Champion of the Parish

$5.74

$4.47

$3.00

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I think mostly my feeling is that there might be a very powerful RW deck or a very powerful BW deck here, but I haven't put in enough testing to determine if all the pieces are working together efficiently enough for a WBR deck. Clearly what we're sacrificing is higher drops for the sake of more early game power. However, don't get me wrong. The deck has something going for it, and the power level is indeed very high, but I do think some of the numbers are off. For example in the mirror match, you really want to win the “Crusade” battle (ie,. have more Honor of the Pure and Intangible Virtue than your opponent). In said mirror match, however, your Rallys aren't that good, because they simply allow you to trade with your opponent's creatures. This isn't really a deck that wants to trade; it's a deck that wants to force poor blocks that are advantageous for you due to having more Crusades than your opponent. In other words your creatures want toughness. Otherwise you're simply ramming your 3/1 spirits into their 2/2 spirits. (Spoiler alert: you do not come out ahead here.) This makes me wonder if fitting in the fourth Honor of the Pure might be better, but as I said, I'm not sure.

Ultimately, as much as I like Rally, I think it's better in a deck with Hellrider where every point of damage matters. I think you might get even more value out of a card like Pyreheart Wolf in such a deck. Maybe going...

Turn 1 Champion of the Parish. (20)
Turn 2 Gather the Townsfolk, attack for three. (17)
Turn 3 Pyreheart Wolf, attack for five. (12)
Turn 4 Hellrider, attack for 14. (-2)

Of course this assumes that you're unblocked and unimpeded, but after the Pyreheart Wolf, blocking gets much harder of course, and this says nothing of being able to cast a Rally at any point.

Anyway, that's about all I have for this week. I hope I've given you guys something to think about and perhaps given you a little more insight into the tokens archetype. As usual, let me know what you think in the comments section and I'll be sure to reply (most likely sarcastically when it comes to the trolls).

Before I go, a question: in the past few weeks people have mentioned to me that they're upset after watching the first game of a match when they see how many games there are. The reason is because if there are two games, they immediately know who won the match. Would it be easier/more convenient/better for you guys if I stuck entire matches in one video? That way the outcome is uncertain? Or do you like it better/is it easier to watch as it is now, where I break a match up by games? Be sure and let me know!

Thanks for reading and I'll see you in seven!

Frank Lepore
@FrankLepore on Twitter
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