Standard – Selesnya Adventure

Edgewall Innkeeper is a card we've already written about in the Golgari adventure deck, but it goes even crazier in the Selesnya version! White lets us a play a ton of 1-drop adventure creatures, and from there we're basically playing a more powerful and more flexible version of a Selesnya tokens deck!

Selesnya Adventures Decklist

4 Edgewall Innkeeper
4 Giant Killer/Chop Down
4 Faerie Guidemother/Gift of the Fae
2 Flaxen Intruder/Welcome Home
1 Shepherd of the Flock/Usher to Safety
1 Conclave Tribunal
1 Emmara, Soul of the Accord
4 Once Upon a Time
4 Lovestruck Beast/Heart's Desire - Showcase
1 Unbreakable Formation
4 March of the Multitudes
4 Venerated Loxodon
1 Trostani Discordant
1 Castle Ardenvale
8 Plains (331)
8 Forest (347)
4 Temple Garden

Selesnya Adventures (Arena Formatted Decklist)

Edgewall Innkeeper is by far the most important card for this archetype to exist at all. Putting a bunch of cheap bodies into play and then taking advantage of the swarm effect has always been a signature strategy of Selesnya decks, but if you can play a 1-drop that turns all of your other creatures into cantrips, your deck gets a ridiculous power boost. Since we're so much better when we have access to our key card, 4 copies of the overpowered Once Upon a Time is an obvious inclusion. It doesn't guarantee that we'll start with Innkeeper every game, but between this and the new mulligan rule we're sure to see it in the vast majority of games.

While we're on the topic of Once Upon a Time, let's talk about the other all-star in this deck. Venerated Loxodon has always been a driving reason to play small white creatures, and this deck is no different. We're playing so many 1-drops and have more access to this card than previous decks that we're going to have more of the type of draws where we just curve out into the Loxodon and get an extremely easy win.

OK, we've referenced them a lot but let's take a look at the actual adventure creatures. Giant Killer is certainly the premium creature that we get from white. It strongly resembles Law-Rune Enforcer, which has been a staple in white weenie decks since it was released. It also has the upside of giving us access to surprisingly efficient removal against any of the creatures that our deck would have a hard time attacking through. Faerie Guidemother is mostly just a 1/1 flying creature, but it could also provide a bit of extra evasion damage to kill a planeswalker or a massive chunk of damage on a Lovestruck Beast. Flaxen Intruder similarly is mostly used for its 1-mana adventure creature status, but there are plenty of powerful enchantments in Standard that we might randomly get to snipe for free, and the sorcery side provides a bit of late-game flood insurance. Shepherd of the Flock is capable of protecting an Innkeeper from removal, getting an additional creature in your hand for additional Innkeeper triggers or access to its situationally useful adventure, or resetting a Venerated Loxodon, but since it costs two mana on an otherwise impressive body we're not going to run very many copies. Lastly, Lovestruck Beast tops the curve in terms of its creature half but its adventure is very castable and contributes to our density of 1-drops to live the dream of a turn 3 Venerated Loxodon. In games where you don't just run over your opponent, the 5/5 body is quite nice, especially since we're packing so many 1/1 creatures anwyay.

This deck goes fully in on the powerful March of the Multitudes, which greatly increases the overall power level of the deck. A bunch of 1-drops are obviously good with any convoke cards, but when those 1-drops also cantrip, it's easy to see how March of the Multitudes will get out of hand. The first casting of this card will be larger than normal, and all of the card draw will dig us into the second and third copies which get even nuttier.

We're running the full four copies of Flower // Flourish in this deck, since the mana for allied-colored decks is so bad right now. Flower is essentially an enters-the-battlefield-tapped land that produces either color, though it does slightly help with thinning the deck. It's worth noting that we sometimes have information regarding the bottom 5 or 10 cards of our deck due to Once Upon a Time and can plan our shuffling accordingly. The Flourish half of the card is still massive game since our land is also a double anthem finisher in the late game.

We round out the deck with a smattering of Selesnya's greatest hits from Guilds of Ravnica. Emmara, Soul of the Accord is great at being used with convoke, but she is legendary so we don't want too many copies. Trostani Discordant is an excellent effect in this deck as well, though we're not overly eager to run too many actual 5-drops. With Once Upon a Time, having access to a few powerful 1-ofs is stronger than just having multiple copies of the same creature. Conclave Tribunal could put us too high on convoke cards, but it's nice to have access to at least a copy to deal with any problems that our swarm cannot otherwise deal with.

Here's a quick video of us piloting Selesnya Adventures on Arena:

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Michael Schuller

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