Against the Odds: Innkeeper's Talent (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! During spoiler season, I sort of overlooked Innkeeper's Talent. While the enchantment looked fine as a weird non-creature version of Luminarch Aspirant that also offered a touch of protection once leveled up, it turns out that the enchantment is way, way better than I thought. Once we get it to level three, it's literally the counters mode of Doubling Season but legal in Standard! This means that once we hit level three, we can play Liliana of the Veil and immediately ultimate it to wrath away half of our opponent's permanents (including lands!), or play Vraska, Betrayal's Sting to win the game on the spot by giving our opponent 18 poison counters (since Innkeeper's Talent will double those up too)! How good is Innkeeper's Talent in Standard? What are the odds of winning by using it to instantly ultimate planeswalkers in Bloomburrow Standard? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Innkeeper's Talent
Wrap-Up
Innkeeper's Talent is insane, to the point where I think it might be one of the best cards from the entire Bloomburrow set! The enchantment's power is twofold...
First, Innkeeper's Talent is a very strong fair card, coming down for two mana to add a +1/+1 counter to one of our creatures each turn and, once we get to level two for just one additional mana, offering a bit of protection by giving our permanents with counters ward 1. If you look at our games, you'll see that sometimes we won by playing things like Deep-Cavern Bat, Mosswood Dreadknight, or Preacher of the Schism and using Innkeeper's Talent to snowball them into massive threats, Luminarch Aspirant style. This is already good enough for Innkeeper's Talent to have a home in our deck, especially once you consider that we'll start adding two counters a turn instead of just one once we get to level three. But it gets even better...
Second, and just as importantly, the third level of Innkeeper's Talent essentially turns our midrange deck into a combo deck by giving us a way to win the game out of the blue with the help of a planeswalker. The trick here is that Innkeeper's Talent will double the loyalty counters of our planeswalkers when they enter the battlefield, which means Liliana of the Veil and Vraska, Betrayal's Sting will come into play with enough loyalty to ultimate right away. While Liliana's ultimate doesn't literally win us the game, it often does by wrathing away half of our opponent's permanents, including their lands. Worst case, a Liliana ultimate will slow our opponent down a ton and buy us time to find Vraska, which literally does win us the game. Vraska's ultimate gives our opponent nine poison counters, except Innkeeper's Talent doubles them up as well, so our opponent actually will get 18 poison counters—more than enough to kill our opponent right away from any life total!
Oh yeah, one weird quirk about Vraska, Betrayal's Sting that I didn't realize while I was recording the video: you can do the instant-ultimate trick even if you use Phyrexian mana to play Vraska for just five mana. If we play Vraska for Phyrexian mana, it will enter with two fewer loyalty—so, four loyalty rather than six, and four doubled is eight, right? So, how does this actually work? The trick is that we get to choose which effect to apply first: the "two less loyalty" ability from Phyrexian mana or "double the counters" from Innkeeper's Talent. If we choose to double first, Vraska will have six loyalty times two (so 12) minus two (so 10), giving us more than enough to activate Vraska's –9 ability to win the game!
The Record
Overall, Innkeeper's Talent felt incredibly strong. So far, I've played 13 matches with the deck and won 10 of them, giving us a 77% match-win percentage, which is great! Innkeeper's Talent itself is incredible, and so is the deck. The ability to play like a decent Golgari midrange deck but also win randomly with the combo makes the deck super tough to beat. I wouldn't be surprised to find that some similar Innkeeper's Talent deck is a legit tier option in Standard. It felt that good!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
