Against the Odds: Jumbo Cactuar (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! It's Final Fantasy time, and we're kicking off our exploration of our new Standard format Against the Odds style with the most hyped meme card from the set: Jumbo Cactuar! Jumbo Cactuar is hilarious. The seven-mana 1/7 gets 10,000 power whenever it attacks, making it one of the very few creatures in Magic that is guaranteed to kill your opponent with just a single attack! Of course, the challenge is getting in that attack since the Cactuar costs a ton of mana and doesn't have haste or any form of evasion. What are the odds of winning with Jumbo Cactuar in Final Fantasy Standard? Let's find out!
Against the Odds: Jumbo Cactuar
The Deck
Our deck today has a singular goal: win with Jumbo Cactuar. The good news is that all it takes to win with Cactuar is getting in a single hit since it will deal 10,000 damage. The bad news is that actually getting in an unblocked attack with the Cactus takes a bit of effort. By my estimation, we need to do four things to win with Jumbo Cactuar:
1) Find Jumbo Cactuar
Apart from just naturally drawing a Jumbo Cactuar, we've got a couple of ways to tutor it up. Analyze the Pollen can snag a land early in the game to make sure we hit our land drops up to seven so we can cast Jumbo Cactuar; then later, once we have enough evidence to collect, it can snag Jumbo Cactuar for just one mana. Meanwhile, Archdruid's Charm can ramp us into Cactuar, be removal so we can stay alive long enough to cast it, or tutor it up at instant speed, hopefully during our opponent's end step so we can play it and win the following turn.
2) Get to Seven Mana
Challenge two is getting up to seven mana (or ideally even more) to cast Jumbo Cactuar. We have a bunch of ramp spells for this, ranging from Llanowar Elves to Overlord of the Hauntwoods to Lumbering Worldwagon.
3) Give Cactuar Haste
While technically this step is optional, it's much easier to win with Jumbo Cactuar if we can give it haste so it can attack the turn it comes into play. If our opponent knows it's coming, they'll do their best to keep up removal to stay alive, but a hasty Cactuar is a great way to catch an opponent by surprise. For this, we turn to Enduring Courage, The Fire Crystal, and Amonkhet Raceway, which leads us into our final challenge...
4) Make Cactuar Unblockable
Finally, we need to make Jumbo Cactuar unblockable because otherwise, our opponent can simply chump it forever with a random 1/1. We have two cards that help here. Hazoret, Godseeker and Escape Tunnel both do the same thing—making Cactuar unblockable for one mana—which means we technically need to get up to at least eight mana if we want to play Cactuar and use one of these cards in the same turn. Hazoret is also a great crewer for Lumbering Worldwagon even when it can't attack and block, and it helps us get up to max speed to turn on Amonkhet Raceway for haste and Muraganda Raceway for even more mana!
We also have one backup plan for Cactuar, which is throwing it at our opponent's face with Voldaren Thrillseeker for 10,000 direct damage, although it's tricky to pull off in practice for two reasons. First, we need to attack to get Cactuar up to 10,000 power, which might mean our opponent just dies to combat damage before we get a chance to fling the Cactus. Second, playing and activating Voldaren Thrillseeker take four more mana, which means we either need to play Jumbo Cactuar a turn early and have it stick or get up to at least 11 mana to make the Fling kill work, and 11 mana is way more than seven or eight. Still, if we can't make Cactuar unblockable, Voldaren Thrillseeker gives us a potential way to win the game even through our opponent having some blockers. And it's not a bad card on its own, making it a fine addition to the deck.
Wrap-Up
Heading into our matches, I was expecting this to be an Against the Odds deck where we lost a ton but pulled off a super-spectacular kill a small percentage of the time. But it turns out that we managed to win nearly 50% of the time, with almost all of our wins coming from Jumbo Cactuar! While seven mana is a lot, if you go all-in building around Jumbo Cactuar, winning with it is way more realistic than I had realized. While I don't think the Cactus is the new meta or anything like that, I came away from playing this deck feeling like it's better than most people realize and that it's actually a pretty hilarious way to win some games of Magic!
Oh yeah, one card that I missed that I wish I had added to the deck was Surrak and Goreclaw, which can give Jumbo Cactuar both haste and trample. The problem with the six-drop is that you need to play it and have it stick on the battlefield for a least a turn for it to work, which is a challenge. But as a one-of tutor target for Analyze the Pollen and Archdruid's Charm, it does seem worthwhile as another way to one-shot kill with Jumbo Cactuar.
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.
