Daily Dynasty Deck Tech: Tamiyo's Plot Twist

"Compleation" refers to the process of removing a subject's organic matter and replacing it with artificial parts. To be fair, this new form looks fascinating. But what do we do with in Standard?

We can start by doubling down on the Phyrexian mana discount, setting ourselves the goal of having a five-mana planeswalker out on turn three. Tamiyo's plus does a good job of defending her early on, and puts her at four loyalty if we took the Phyrexian route, six otherwise. Her ultimate is a bit underwhelming, though. The mana discount will come in handy for what we try to achieve, but it's not even an emblem! It's a frail token that's just asking to be bounced into oblivion. No, what we really want to exploit is Tamiyo's duplication ability. It makes more tokens that die to , but they can be more impactful.

Tamiyo's newfound penchant for cloning uses the graveyard, so we need to put her targets there. Sadly, Ikoria's cycling creatures are gone, and Standard doesn't have other self-discard options at the moment. But it's about to! Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty brings back channel, and that's a good way to discard something for value. In Simic colors, we can find a couple of interesting nonland permanents to channel into the graveyard for Tamiyo to pseudo-reanimate. has flexible channel options, including a two-mana bounce, and it's a big, flying, resilient threat. amounts to three cards for three mana and two loyalty. is ramp. is slow, but blocks well early on, develops our mana, fills our graveyard, and regrows stuff.

Speaking of filling the graveyard, Simic has focused on a self-milling theme for a few sets now. Alas, it was mostly a Limited strategy. Cards like , , and don't seem efficient enough. A digger like could be useful, though, and so is a looter like . But the most important interaction in a Tamiyo deck is, once again, . Remember how those she creates are tokens? We can even be very reckless with our charioting. If our two-Cat open sleigh dies in combat, Tamiyo will bring it back as a token, so it will copy itself! And die to the legendary rule, sure, but the new Cats will stay!

Perhaps this new Tamiyo will perform better in formats where self-milling is more efficient and proliferate exists. But for now it seems fun enough to take her pristine Phyrexian body for a break-in Standard ride.

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