With Edge of Eternities blasting into the Magic: The Gathering wilds after last weekend’s Prerelease, we’re already starting to see it impact constructed formats. New decks are emerging, and old ones are getting powerful new tools. One such list is Orzhov Sacrifice: a well-established Standard deck that could well reclaim the spotlight thanks to some Edge of Eternities additions.
We’ve seen Orzhov Sacrifice do well in the past, but it’s never really been a top meta player. Edge of Eternities introduces some very interesting new cards for the deck, however, which have already propelled it to several 5-0 League finishes. Players are still figuring out the best build for the deck, but the fact that the early experimental versions are doing well speaks volumes of the archetype’s potential. If you’re sick of Dimir and Izzet decks in Standard, Orzhov may be your best port of call.
A Resilient Core Package
Before we look at the updates Edge of Eternities brings to Orzhov Sacrifice, a quick recap of the archetype in general. This is a kind of Midrange/Combo hybrid list, playing a traditional Aristocrats gameplan the best way Standard can support it.
The deck typically starts with a base of one-drops that are recursive, or create additional bodies on death. Whether it’s Nesting Bot, Nezumi Linkbreaker or Infestation Sage, these creatures are the bedrock of the deck. They help hold the ground early, and make great sacrifice fodder later on.
Next, Orzhov Sacrifice adds sacrifice outlets and payoffs. Bartolomé del Presidio is the best option in the former camp, letting you cash in all of your creatures at instant speed. As for the latter, Vengeful Bloodwitch is the closest thing to Blood Artist we have in Standard, and it’s the deck’s primary win condition. If you can sacrifice a bunch of creatures with this out, you can just straight-up end the game.
Speaking of sacrifice outlets and payoffs, Orzhov Sacrifice got a major boost in the form of Final Fantasy’s Sephiroth. This card serves both roles, while also offering the possibility of a busted final form if you can cash in enough creatures at once. Sephiroth is pretty much the ideal card for the deck: it’s just been waiting until now for a real chance to shine.
This strategy is solid, but very likely to run out of gas in most games. That’s where Raise the Past comes in. Arguably the best card in the deck, this brings back pretty much all of your non-Sephiroth creatures from the graveyard. If you can resurrect a sac outlet, Bloodwitch, and a few fodder creatures, that should be enough to ‘combo kill’ your opponent.
New Orzhov Sacrifice Tools From Edge Of Eternities
With the advent of Edge of Eternities, this core Orzhov Sacrifice gameplan gets a lot more consistent and powerful. In yesterday’s MTGO Standard League, RCMerriam went 5-0 with a new version of the list, running a playset of Umbral Collar Zealot.
Wild as it sounds to say, this is arguably an even better card for the deck than Sephiroth. It’s another free sacrifice outlet like Bartolomé, but with a more relevant upside. instead of building up a huge creature for your opponent to chump block, this one lets you Surveil repeatedly. Much of Orzhov Sacrifice’s gameplan revolves around filling the graveyard for Raise the Past, and this lets you do that much more consistently. It also lets you find the pieces you’d rather not mill, like Sephiroth or Raise the Past itself. Throw in an unnecessarily aggressive statline and this is an instant classic.
RCMerriam opted for a fairly traditional list outside of Zealot, but Arturetges took things a little further. Their Orzhov Sacrifice deck also went 5-0 in yesterday’s League, running other new cards Timeline Culler and Syr Vondam, Sunstar Exemplar. Culler is one of the best recursive creatures we’ve seen in years, coming back form the ‘yard any time for one black mana and two life. With one Blood Artist effect out this becomes easy to spam, and with two it becomes free. It’s also just a fine aggressive body on its own merit.
Syr Vondam is a bit more experimental, with Arturetges only running a single copy. It, admittedly, feels a little win-more here, but it plays incredibly well with Culler, and comes back via Raise the Past. I’d say this was less likely to stick around in the deck than Zealot and Culler, but it could well be a nice tech card in Aggro matchups.
To Infinity And Beyond?
It’s fantastic to see Orzhov Sacrifice doing well in Edge of Eternities Standard. Outside of the two 5-0 League finishes above, the deck is also the first new meta pick for many players on social media. A lot of people are excited about this deck, and the early results above are encouraging.
That said, there’s no guarantee that these results will translate into long-term success. Orzhov Sacrifice has some strong competition in Standard right now, and with the current low volume of data it’s hard to predict how things will pan out.
Dimir Midrange is the current best deck in the format, and it actually seems like a reasonable matchup for Orzhov Sacrifice overall. MTG Decks puts it at a 50% win rate, which is solid. Dimir is slow enough to give Orzhov Sacrifice breathing room to do its thing, so there’s a good chance you can grind out wins that way. The deck also seems to be playing less countermagic now than before, so your Raise the Past plays should be relatively safe.
Izzet, both Prowess and Cauldron, is a bit of a trickier beast. There’s no real data on these matchups yet, but I can’t imagine they’re good. Both of these decks play a ton of interaction to deal with your key pieces, and both have the potential for explosive early wins that don’t really care about a board full of fodder creatures. Cauldron also has the titular Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, which serves as incidental graveyard hate that can totally ruin your day.
Even with these obstacles to overcome, Orzhov Sacrifice seems like a sweet deck to try going into the new Standard meta.
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