Extended Thoughts on Evolved Sleeper

I want to go in a little further on why Evolved Sleeper excites me and why I think it will be useful in Explorer and possibly also Pioneer. This may be because I’m on a long road trip vacation right now, but I’ve been thinking about this card a lot and am really excited to play it. I’m writing this on my phone in a hotel room, so, sorry for the bare bones post.

I think it’s important to identify what’s going on in the format and what a card brings to help in expected matchups. Explorer is all about the Rakdos Midrange mirror right now (or pseudo-mirror if you’re playing Jund like me). Typically, your lowest impact cards, and therefore your cheapest cards, are the weakest cards in a midrange mirror, since the games are not usually going to be about tempo and more about card advantage. This hasn’t really been my experience in this matchup, though. The Rakdos decks have a lot of cheap removal and hard hitting medium sized threats to put a lot of pressure on you, and you wind up losing card advantage battles that are tougher for you than they would be because you’re under pressure. So, Sleeper does some things in that matchup that are useful while keeping your deck low to the ground, helping you not get run over early while keeping your top end live as well.

There are a few ways that you lose the Rakdos matchup. First, is just tempo. Bloodtithe Harvester into Trespasser or Fable, then more heavy threats every turn as you try and catch up. Part of what makes the deck so good is that they can just straight beat you up, while still have a good board control and discard element. Sleeper is good here because it’s a cheap spell to cast. That’s really it, it’s just something that gets out of your hand quickly, and if you can trade it off against an opposing creature or removal spell, then that’s great.

The second way to lose is by Chandra. Chandra is both a tempo swing and a card advantage engine. When she comes down and -3’s one of your creatures, the opponent is ahead on cards because Chandra is still around, but if they start netting cards off of her +1 the next turn, then they get a card advantage engine for basically no mana. If you use a removal spell on Chandra, you’re not only down cards, but down on mana usually because of the mana you spent to kill her plus the mana of the creature she nuked. What Sleeper does against Chandra is just exist as an extra body that entered play cheaply to attack a Chandra after she -3s your creature. Sleeper is extra good at attacking Planeswalkers because it can increase its power and hit for more loyalty, leaving you with a bigger sleeper when all is said and done.

Another great way to lose against Rakdos is to force yourself into using spot removal on their Cemetery Trespassers and Fable tokens. Being able to trade with Trespassers and block Fable tokens without spending extra cards to do it is important for getting out of those early turns and having cards left over to battle on with.

Sleeper isn’t going to annihilate Rakdos or anything, it’s not really supposed to. But what it does do is lower the overall mana curve of the deck while not giving up on top end power. That’s going to help your matchups across the board and the effectiveness of the deck without sacrificing too much in the Rakdos matchup.

The deck we’re playing is changing too, and being a sleeker and cheaper deck is going to be critical with Liliana in the list. I’m going to assume that Rakdos decks will pick up Liliana as well, so everything that makes Sleeper effective against Chandra also helps against Liliana. The best way to beat Lili is to have enough pressure so that they can’t untap with her, just like Chandra. But Sleeper also goes well with our own Liliana, getting out of the hand early so you can have it empty and +1 for value, and using extra mana that you’ll have because both players are light on action.

Sleeper also looks like it will be great in conjunction with Riveteers Charm. It’s cheap and proactive, which makes it an excellent card to exile off your library with Charm. Charm is going to be great in the Liliana decks just like it’s been good in the Tireless Tracker decks, so I’m interested in maximizing its strength.

I’m mostly excited about playing Sleeper against UW decks and other matchups where we’re the aggro deck. Sleeper requires an answer by itself, and it’s not that that is super hard to do, but it’s going to open the door for stuff like Liliana or your other bigger stuff to hit. Plus, if you can use Thoughtseize to take away their cheap answers like March and Portable Hole, then they are forced to spend a bunch of mana to deal with your one drop, or you can activate it and draw cards until they have the mana to wrath it.

To touch quickly on Knight of the Ebon Legion vs Sleeper, I think that Knight might be a little underplayed at the moment. It’s a great card, a good draw early and a good draw late. But, it’s a little bit one-dimensional, and that causes it to only get played in a few decks. Plus, black aggro feels like quite an underdog against Rakdos, which is just not where you want to be. I think that Sleeper is going to fit better in midrange decks than Knight, since it ties your mana up less and leaves you with cards after they find an answer instead of just damage, and I don’t think that Knight was that far away from making the cut to begin with.

I’m less confident in Sleeper than I am in Liliana out of this set, part of that is because Liliana is a known entity, part of that is because Sleeper is a style of card that isn’t done very often. Cards like Sleeper have been hit or miss in the past, but there’s potential there. There have been some solid role players and all-time great threats among cards with this design. But mostly I’m excited for Sleeper because I think it’s going to be really fun to play with. It gives the player a ton of options and it looks to be the type of card that gets better with practice. I plan on playing them for a while and finding out just how good they are.

Gimme Five, Still Alive

 

I think we jam four of these in Explorer.

She has her limitations, for sure. Clearly she's pretty bad against stuff like Witch's Oven, but there are a bunch of token decks out there where she's not going to be good. Also, the plus 1 ability can get you into trouble against stuff like Phoenix and Parhelion, but whatever. She's still the queen.

What do we need to build around her? Not a lot, really. In fact, stuff like The Raven Man are kind of a trap with Lili, because they don't protect her well and are bad topdecks. You gear your deck to keep the board clear and get everyone down to zero resources, then topdeck stuff. This is kind of the whole strategy of black midrange anyways, but she pushes that to the max. Your weak topdecks are going to turn into blanks when Liliana is on the board and in cruise control, since a Fatal Push with no creatures just gets binned to her +1, but you definitely need that effect. The cards in the format that I think are going to work well with Liliana are Bonecrusher, Murderous Rider, maybe even Blacklance Paragon, removal spells that you can just cast proactively if you draw them and your opponent doesn't have any creatures. Cut to Ribbons is a neat one as well. Other planeswalkers fit this description too, but they're not going to be your early plays.

Liliana works well with Kroxa, of course, but any escape or graveyard cards get a little bit of a boost from her. I've found Polukranos to be really good in Explorer at the moment, and there's stuff like Tenacious Underdog and a new card that are good too. Not necessarily that it's a great value play to put a Kroxa in your graveyard, just that you've gotta discard something, so it might as well be that. It's nice that she "enables" your graveyard synergies but is a threat in and of herself so if they have the graveyard hate you just win with Lili.

I think you're also just going to want to keep your mana costs down. A pretty common thing in Modern is when your hand is just two copies of Bloodbraid Elf or whatever and you want to tick up your Lili, but you can't. If you can empty your hand quick, then the +1 has no drawback for you.

I guess the only other thing is to make sure you have some plans on what to bring in for matchups where she's not good. In Modern, I'll board out Liliana in a lot of matchups, like basically and deck with Inkmoth Nexus or Mutavault or Noble Hierarch. She's not great against Thalia, either. And of course, Dredge and whatever. If you can figure out what cards are good in the matchups where she is bad, say, Lava Coil, then you'll make sideboarding a lot easier for yourself.

This is the card I'm actually most excited for. It works excellently with Liliana, being a one mana card that empties your hand quickly but is also a fantastic late game topdeck. It plays defense halfway well against aggro decks. It also just gets on the board quick so that you have something on board and can't get blown out by planeswalkers. It kind of does fills the role that Knight of the Ebon Legion does but you get blown out by removal less often because its activations cost less, and it gives you more material advantages so removal spells are too late once you've put your mana into it.

Unlike stuff like Warden of the First Tree (which I like a lot and might play if given the chance), drawing cards is a great way to close out a game, instead of just getting big. If you hit with a big Warden and they rip a Fatal Push, they're right back in the game, but if you've drawn two cards with Sleeper before they find the Push, they might be buried. And it's not like attacking for four or five is nothing, the game will end quickly either through attacking or through the card advantage. 

This is going to require some more black mana sources early, like Blooming Marsh, so maybe we go right up to four Overgrown Tombs and four Blood Crypts. I'll talk more about that later.

I think there might be spots where this is an improvement over Chandra, but the -2 removal ability just pales in comparison to Chandra's -3 so badly. However, I don't think that that's what Jaya is supposed to do, be a removal spell plus a free card every turn. She's supposed to protect herself with the Monk token, then use her -1 five times and be five copies of Preordain basically. If you can make that work, then that's great, because the -1 will be great in late game situations where you're just looking for gas, and if you're setting your deck up to be ahead or even on board in the midgame to facilitate Liliana, then that works for Jaya, too. Again, that's a lot easier said than done. But if you have her in play for one turn and then she gets hit by Murderous Rider, that's usually going to be better than Chandra would have been, so if you expect that to be the case most of the time, then she might be a good choice. Just not sure that that's the format we're living in.

If you're ever playing a list that's got a more aggressive slant, then a Squee or two might not be the worst idea. Haste creatures are excellent against Planeswalkers, which is a lot of what the format is about, and it gives you material every turn, so that's great too. Plus, it's got some graveyard synergy, which is a welcome addition in the Liliana decks. The damage piles up fast, and it's going to be hard to effectively remove. Worth a shot, but I'm not really loving playing 2 toughness creatures for 3 in the Bonecrusher Giant format.

This card has reach and trample, and the ability is 7G: Return from your graveyard to play and exile it if it would die, and it costs 1 less to activate for each land type you control. So for us, it's usually going to be 4G, so that makes it a little like a Seasoned Pyromancer. 4/3 reach trample for 3 are great stats for a card that can be a little bit recursive. You're not sad to pitch it to Liliana, it hits really hard for a three mana card, and it also protects you against flying creatures with Curious Obsession. I like what's going on here, but the three drop slot is just so crowded, and we're trying to trim our mana costs down.

There's a lot going on here, and I don't think that we're going to really be able to grasp everything until we try it. It's got really good size for its cost, and can get you value immediately, even if they have removal for it. It's got a slight graveyard synergy thing going on, but can get around graveyard hate by just being a four mana 5/4. It's got a slight build-around aspect, but can also just do its thing without a ton of help. Five power creatures are a sweet spot in Explorer, since they can attack down a Teferi or a Sorin after they +1, but four toughness is not great against Chandra. Soul of Windgrace seems like the type of card that is going to look really good in the games where it works, but won't get to work very often because the format is a little too hostile for it. For what it's worth, the reason why Evolved Sleeper is good even though it costs a lot of mana to maximize is because it's cheap to start with, Soul of Windgrace is a mana sink that already costs a lot of mana.

This card intrigues me because flying and haste are so good against Chandra and other planeswalkers. The fact that you can just spend two mana and pick off a Chandra, or you can spend 10 mana and win the game, all of that looks great. Probably going to be a lot better in Standard, but two mana to pick off a low loyalty planeswalker and leave behind a flying body is a great split card to put on Thundermaw Hellkite.

I can't really figure out if I like this or not. I think it might end up being a little too narrow, but we're always in the market for cheap removal. Strangle and Bloodchief's Thirst look a little better in my eyes for Fatal Pushes 5 through whatever, but this could do some work.

I wouldn't say that we really missed having these in Arena, but it's another good option. You don't really want to draw two painlands, and you don't want them in decks where you don't have many colorless mana in your costs. Like, say, you're taking one damage for sure if you're casting a Bloodtithe Harvester on two, but not if you're casting a Scavenging Ooze, so lots of RB or BRG costs will end up costing you. I like the idea of playing more turn one black sources, but if the cost is dealing damage to yourself each turn, then it really puts a damper on some of the cheap black cards we're trying to facilitate, like Thoughtseize and Evolved Sleeper.

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I'm going on vacation starting in about twenty minutes from when this will go live, so I'm doing a spoiler season post a little early, and then I'll be back just in time for the set to go live on Arena. I'm really stoked about Liliana, obviously, but the whole set looks great, and I also just love playing Jund mirrors, so I hope more people are incentivized to play Liliana decks going forward. Thanks for reading.