While looking for cool ideas for a standard deck, I ran into a nifty thing on MtgSalvation. It’s a deck based on Hero’s Blade and uses various legendary creatures to wield them. Of particular interest, however, is the synergy between these three legends.
I never found Tymaret particularly interesting, but here he fills an important role: When Yasova steals a creature, Tymaret can sacrifice it before you have to give it back. Alesha can bring Tymaret back, if needed, among other things and is generally an efficient first striker to wield a blade. And there is more going on in the deck, like Yisan, who will find increasingly bigger things, but mostly is there for Hero’s Blade too. Because Yisan is pretty slow.
The original deck looks like this:
~ Jund Legendary Heroes ~
It’s a good starting point. It could use a Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth instead of one swamp maybe, to make some splashes easier. And while the Hero’s Blade is fun, there might be some legends that can be left out to make place for a Hornet Queen. If you can somehow dump a queen in the graveyard, with, say Tormenting Voice, Alesha and Tymaret can team up for all kinds of nastyness.
Even though I didn’t have much time, I tried a proof-of-concept version of the deck, to see how it goes. My version looked like this:
~ Jund Legendary Heroes (Experiment) ~
Legends (17)3 Tymaret, the murder king 4 Yasova Dragonclaw 4 Alesha, Who Smiles at Death 1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard 1 polukranos, world eater 1 king macar, the gold-cursed 2 Kolaghan, the Storm’s Fury 1 Atarka, World Render Other creatures (7)3 Humble Defector 2 Shaman of the Great Hunt 2 Stormbreath Dragon Artifacts (5)4 Hero’s Blade 1 Heroes’ Podium Instants (7)4 Collateral Damage 3 Lightning Strike | Lands (24)6 Forest 4 Swamp 6 Mountain 2 Bloodfell Caves 2 Jungle Hollow 4 Temple of Abandon |
The experimental version is a little different. Since the deck has Dragon ‘lords’ and I had a couple of spare Stormbreath Dragons, I included those. I also like Humble Defector which has some cool syntergy with Yasova Dragonclaw. Sadly, during testing a few short games I didn’t run into my defectors, and most of the time Yasova got removed before I could go draw, steal, draw.
I even included the Collateral Damage to use with Yasova, but it’s difficult to get quick enough. It does make a nice addition to Tymaret, but so far I couldn’t steal, sacrifice and burn.
Shaman of the Great Hunt worked really great. Even when he couldn’t be used as a quick hasty attacker, he helped grow the other guys out of reach quickly. I didn’t use the draw ability much, but it’s nice that I could when I didn’t have something better to do.
A turn two Hero’s Blade, followed by one of the 3 drop legends is always awesome. The option to Dash in Kolaghan and do (at least) 8 through the air later on is great as well. There still is some room for improvement, though.
Even though the deck can be explosive, it needs to be as fast as possible to keep outpacing opponents. I’m eyeing Generator Servant to help out ramping things up, maybe supplemented by Satyr Hedonist. The latter might be helpful with the awkward mana, but granting haste seems very important in the deck. The Generator Servant could help provide the mana for a Hero’s Blade ánd drop a hasty Yasova or Alesha -Or a quick Kolaghan.
Both ramp creatures can create quite a jump in mana, and work well with Alesha. Potentially, the Servant can allow Alasha to attack turn 3 and she can bring the servant back, attacking.
Then there is Sylvan Caryatid, which is a popular choice in mana ramp and fixing, while being a good early defense, too. If I had more of these available, I’d probably run it.
Another puzzle to solve is Yisan, the Wanderer Bard. His legendness is handy in this deck for both the Hero’s Blade and the Heroe’s Podium. His ability is nothing to write home about, though: It’s a bit to slow. Still, being an early 5/5 attacker with the blade is nice. What the deck lacks at this moment are valid 1-drops though, so the first activation will always whiff, even when the situation comes up that an activation is a valid option. There might be a couple of options though.
Potential viable one drops are Elvish Mystic, which adds to the ramp in the deck needs. Warden of the First Tree also seems to be a nice option. Being either a 1-drop, or a 3/3 for 3 is pretty good. He could be potentially more, if you’re willing to risk sinking some mana into him. There is some risk in that, but maybe one of these guys could do some incidental cool things.