Against the Odds: Push the Limit (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we're heading to Standard to play a deck I've been working on ever since Aetherdrift spoiler season but just finally figured out: Push the Limit! The idea basically is to replicate Modern Living End—the deck that cycles a bunch of creatures and then wins by reanimating them all with Living End—but in Standard, with Push the Limit replacing Living End and janky cycling Vehicles replacing the cycle creatures.
As I mentioned before, I've been trying to make this deck work since spoiler season but kept running into a problem: Push the Limit costs seven mana. While the deck worked, a lot of the time, we'd die before we got enough mana to cast our namesake card. Then, a few days ago, I realized the perfect solution to this problem was staring me in the face the entire time, and it's one of my favorite Aetherdrift cards, in Monument to Endurance! We've played Monument a few times before, but its purpose is a bit different in this deck: as we cycle our Vehicles, it makes Treasures to ramp us into Push the Limit so we can actually cast it before we, you know, die. What are the odds of winning with Push the Limit in Standard? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Push the Limit
The Deck
Our goal today is simple: fill our deck with Vehicles, cast Push the Limit to reanimate them all with haste, and smash our opponent to death with one huge attack!
Just like Modern Living End, our primary plan for filling the graveyard is cycling. We've got three vehicles in our deck that can put themselves into our graveyard by cycling, including Valor's Flagship, which can make some 1/1 tokens when we cycle it. We don't really plan on casting any of these Vehicles pretty much ever. Instead, we're hoping to get them all from our graveyard in the same turn with Push the Limit, which should be enough to close out the game thanks to the evasion on Clamorous Ironclad and Valor's Flagship as well as Detention Chariot being able to remove a blocker with it enters trigger.
Salvation Engine is just a one-of since it doesn't have cycling, but it is super powerful on the battlefield, not only pumping our other artifact creatures +2/+2 but also reanimating an artifact when it attacks. While we don't have many creatures in our deck for crewing (which is the other reason we only have one Salvation Engine), we do have a planeswalker that can get the job done...
We've also got a few other cards to help stock our graveyard, in Scrapwork Mutt, Brass's Tunnel-Grinder, and Chandra, Spark Hunter. Chandra, specifically, is amazing in the deck. Its static ability lets us crew vehicles with no creatures and even give it haste until end of turn, which can be pretty scary with Salvation Engine or Valor's Flagship if we do end up hard-casting them. The +2 gives us another way to stock our graveyard and also trigger Monument to Endurance, while the ultimate is actually pretty achievable and deals a ton of damage by essentially casting a Lightning Bolt whenever an artifact enters the battlefield.
As I mentioned in the intro, this wasn't supposed to be a Monument to Endurance deck. Actually, Monument to Endurance is the last card I added to the deck. I started working on Push the Limit way back in spoiler season, but it always felt too slow and clunky to be a real deck. The addition of Monument changed everything. Since we're already playing a ton of cards that discard (all of our cyclers, Chandra, Scrapwork Mutt), we naturally support Monument, and it does everything once it's on the battlefield. Its primary job is making Treasures to ramp us into Push the Limit, but if we're light on Vehicles we can use it to draw cards to find them (drawing two when we cycle is super powerful) and if our graveyard gets locked down we can can use the drain mode to try to win the game. While we're not a Monument deck, oddly Monument might be the most important card to actually making the deck function.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 9-7 with the deck for a 56% win percentage, which is pretty solid, and doubly so for an Against the Odds deck. You probably noticed we played in best-of-one this week. I wouldn't recommend playing Push the Limit in best-of-three—there's just too graveyard hate floating around in sideboards. In best-of-one, though, graveyard hate is less prevalent, and the deck felt great.
As far as matchups, hardcore aggro is probably the toughest. Our plan isn't especially fast, and we don't impact the battlefield much early on, which makes matchups like Mono-Red or Gruul tricky. Hardcore counterspell decks can also be tough, although Monument to Endurance and Chandra, Spark Hunter help here, giving us cards that potentially can win the game on their own if we can resolve them. (Against control decks, finding a window to resolve Push the Limit is tough.) On the other hand, the deck felt great against midrange and Domain.
So, should you play Push the Limit in Standard? In best-of-one, I think the answer is yes! While I don't think the deck is busted or tier or anything like that, it won way more than I expected, and I found it super fun to play. Plus, it has Monument to Endurance—what more could you want?
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, or you can email me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com or reach me on Twitter or Bluesky @SaffronOlive.
