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Hierarch Tower

When I first started considering Noble Hierarch in Standard, my thoughts initially went to building a straight-up Bant deck. However, after a pause to reposition my thoughts a bit, I realized that there was no requirement to use all three of the Hierarch's colors. Pretty clearly if you just want green, it's almost universally better to go with an elf, but if you wanted, say, green and white...

...and if, perhaps, you were planning on running out a 3-mana Legendary tree who would make the Hierarch hit for 2...

That prompted the deck list in the extended entry. Click through to see it.

Hierarch Tower

22 Creatures:
Birds of Paradise
Noble Hierarch
Doran, the Siege Tower
Chameleon Colossus
Shriekmaw
Cloudthresher
14 Spells:
Thoughtseize
Path to Exile
Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Profane Command
24 Land:
Treetop Village
Murmuring Bosk
Llanowar Wastes
Brushland
Wooded Bastion
Twilight Mire
Swamp
Plains
Forest

Hopefully it's clear that this is still in the conceptual stage, but I really do think the idea of Hierarch accelerating into Doran is a cool one. Not only do you get a potential turn-two Doran, you also get a Hierarch swinging for 1 damage even without Exalted taking effect (or, more likely, the Hierarch hangs back and Doran smacks for 6, which is also quite good). The combination of Hierarchs and Birds means that you can drop your beasts early and often, backing them up with spot removal from new star player Path to Exile and finishing things off with Elspeth or a Profane Command.

Interestingly, after I'd knocked this list together, I read Patrick Chapin's latest article. At the end of the article he includes a Hierarch-based deck list featuring Hierarchs, Birds, Doran, some Cloudthreshers, and Path to Exile. Notable, their version of the deck is almost entirely creatures (check out that quadruple Rafig of the Many) so it can use Ancient Ziggurat to race out multicolored beaters as soon as possible.

My deck list above is totally untested, but I think something like it holds a lot of promise as a solid list for Standard play right now.

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About the author

Alexander Shearer is a biologist, gamer, and writer. He has written for games and educational comics, and writes the ongoing In Development column at ChannelFireball.com when he's not collecting his gaming thoughts here at Gifts Ungiven.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 03, 2009 10:09 AM.

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