CASUAL 60: Angelgrave

Avacyn Restored is coming soon and it promises to have a lot of big scary angels. We’ve already seen one, so I thought I’d build a deck around her. Here’s a old school deck archetype with some new tech…

Lands:
4 Woodland Cemetery
4 Evolving Wilds
6 Swamp
6 Forest

20 Lands

Creatures:
4 Llanowar Mentor
2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1 Luminous Angel
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

11 Creatures

Other Spells:
4 Dread Return
2 Vigor Mortis
4 Mulch
4 Explore
3 Go for the Throat
2 Swiftfoot Boots
4 Flash Foliage
2 Naturalize
4 Noxious Revival

29 Other Spells

ISN’T SOMETHING MISSING?

the first thing that might jump out at you is that this deck can’t produce any white mana. That’s right, this deck relies entirely on dumping angels into the graveyard and then reanimating them with Dread Return or Vigor Mortis (two of my favoritest spells).
Here’s how it should go:
Using Llanowar Mentor and Mulch you build up some mana, while simultaneously dumping your BSAs into your graveyard. Then you use Dread Return to bring them back (or Vigor Mortis. which has the potential of making them even bigger). Bonus points if you get Reia (or Sheoldred) on the board, allowing you to reanimate angels for free!

DEFENSE AND CONTROL

Swiftfoot Boots can protect your angels and get them swinging right away, and the Go For the Throat/Naturalize suite can clear out anything that threatens your heavenly host.
It is important to remember that decks that rely on graveyard strategies can get out of control fast, that is why Noxious Return is there to fish out the Swiftfoot Boots that accidentally get mulched, remember that Dread Return has flashback allowing you to cash in your Llanowar tokens to bring back your flying deathdealers.

THE HOST

The angels I picked are just ones I happen to like, Avacyn is new and shiny, while few things are scarier than seeing Akroma hit the board. Feel free to swap out other angels to see what you like best. You’ll note that all of the angels in the deck are fairly expensive, since we’re never going to hard-cast them we don’t have to worry about their mana cost. Lastly since this deck is all about cheating creatures onto the battlefield you can substitute angels for pretty much anything, I’d recommend that you have a look at some of the sphinxes (sphinces?) that have come out since M10, there’s a lot of power and utility there.

Hope you guys enjoy this deck, if you get a chance to play it let me know how it goes.