Korvold, Fae-Cursed King is one of the most appealing new Legendary creatures from the Throne of Eldraine brawl decks. But while it is obviously an awesome card to use as a Commander, the cards from the Brawl decks are also legal in Standard! Korvold is powerful enough to build around and certainly has enough synergies to take advantage of in Standard.
Let's get right into our Day 1 decklist, and then break down the individual card choices:
Jund Sacrifice with Korvold, Fae-Cursed King
We've included a lot of 1 and 2-ofs, since this is a day 1 deck and there's a lot of potential cards to try. Let's discuss the individual cards.
Korvold and Mayhem Devil are the main reasons to build a deck like this. Mayhem Devil has already seen some play in Rakdos Aristocrats lists as a card that sort of serves as extra copies of Judith, the Scourge Diva. It's already pretty solid in a deck that can sacrifice creatures, but Throne of Eldraine has given us an even easier way to create sacrifice triggers – food tokens! Mayhem Devil should be able to contain small opposing creatures and serve as a quick way to burn your opponent out in a longer game.
But let's talk about what Korvold actually does. It's a 5 mana creature that forces you to sacrifice a permanent and draw a card upon entering the battlefield. It then becomes a 5/5 flying creature, which is relatively difficult to deal with. If you get to attack with it, it immediately becomes a 6/6 and exchanges your next worst permanent for another card. This is already pretty solid without considering the synergies we're planning to abuse. If you are able to untap with this in play, you are likely to be able to draw tons of extra cards and put your opponent on a 2-turn clock with this massive creature.
Witch's Oven and Cauldron Familiar is a combination that we're sure to try jamming into a bunch of decks (check out our Orzhov Witch's Oven deck), but it's even more perfect when we can take such good advantage of the endless sacrifice loops. Both of these cards gives us cheap permanents to sacrifice to our aforementioned all-stars on their own, but in combination they ensure multiple free sacrifice triggers every single turn (not to mention the chump-blocking and draining).
Gilded Goose is another card perfectly suited for this deck, as a cheap creature that provides multiple permanents and ramps us into our key 5-drop. Paradise Druid also helps us cast our spells ahead of schedule and fixes the mana, since 3-color manabases in Standard are a bit sketchy at the moment.
Trail of Crumbs is an interesting new card advantage engine. It certainly seems potent, but playtesting will tell whether it's too durdly or not for the new Standard format. At the very least, it seems like an incredible sideboard card for grindy matchups. Aside from the long-term card draw, it at least provides two permanents for two mana up front. Blood for Bones plays well with all of our sacrifice and enter-the-battlefield triggers on relatively cheap creatures, as well as giving us some redundancy on Korvold and Mayhem Devil. It's too bad that we couldn't fit any self-mill enablers into this list to enable it more, but perhaps testing will reveal that we should build more in one of these directions or the other.
There's a lot of competition for the 4-drop slot in this deck, but these two new options certainly seem to earn their spot. Rankle, Master of Ranks does a lot in this deck. It can enable a ton of sacrifice triggers, and can put creatures in our graveyard at card parity to help enable Blood for Bones. Wicked Wolf is another way to include some interaction that does a good Bristling Hydra impression in this deck that is so good at creating Food tokens, not to mention that more free sacrifice triggers at instant speed is always welcome.
The remaining slots of the deck could go in several different directions, as there's so many creatures that we want to test. The toolbox strategy of including several cards as 1-ofs mainly benefits the Blood for Bones package, but it could also be useful since Trail of Crumbs gives us quite a bit of selection in digging through the deck. Midnight Reaper and Judith in particular are insane whenever we are able to assemble the Witch's Oven combo.
Fabled Passage could easily be the best new mana fixer in Standard, but it's sweet that we get to play an Evolving Wilds type card in this deck built around sacrifice triggers at no cost. It's possible this deck might also want to just play some number of actual Evolving Wilds and increase the basic land count. Lotus Field seems cute as another way to sacrifice lands, but it could easily be too awkward as a lot of our 3 mana spells require different colors of mana.
With how beautifully all of the synergies in this deck blend together, it's definitely near the top of our radar to test out once these cards are released. Be sure to check back for videos as we explore the various ways to build it!
