Here's our vow: Every workday during preview season, Insight is taking a quick look at another deck featuring the latest cards from the upcoming Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Green decks remain a fixture of Standard, but there might still be space for further exploration. Let's go big on deathtouch for a change!
While most people use the color green to focus on stomping people plain and simple, let's take a bit of a different route here. I want to toy with deathtouch in Standard. The curve starts with two very strong deathtouch creatures in and . In fact, the whole deck is built around Fynn's ability to win the game out of nowhere by poisoning our opponent. To help the plan along we also run , which will grant our full team this keyword. And there are plenty of creatures to be given deathtouch, because we create a bunch through , , , and the aforementioned Adversary.
On the topic of all those mentioned above, the deck basically plays like a black-green midrange build. It features a ton of solid green cards and some black interaction. Together, and can contain any battlefield we might face. We top it off with a little for a strong mass-removal effect in the later stages of the game. We even have an on-theme removal for noncreature permanents in . For once, its final chapter will be more than mere afterthought.
Finally, Crimson Vow adds a great tool to the shell, making it Abzan: . First, she is a three-mana walker, which already says a lot. Running out a planeswalker on turn three on the play can warp a lot of games around it, and this one does a lot we're interested in. Her plus ability synergizes immensely with the whole deck—we give everyone deathtouch and grow a Wolf, Cat, Zombie, or Treefolk token. The minus is an excellent setup right before we drop our Chariot. It makes her a powerful role player in what the deck is trying to accomplish.
Abzan Deathtouch, Standard
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