Budget Magic: $69 Max Speed Aristocrats (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! This week, we're heading to Aetherdrift Standard to see if the max speed mechanic can bring Aristocrats Sacrifice back to Standard, all on just a $69 budget! The deck's goal is simple: play a bunch of cheap sacrificable dorks, sacrifice them all to Bartolome del Presidio to trigger our Blood Artists Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and Vengeful Bloodwitch, reanimate everything with Raise the Past, and then do it all again, hopefully while making a bunch of Zombie tokens to sacrifice with Zahur, Glory's Past for even more sac fodder! Are the Aristocrats back in Standard? How good is max speed in a sacrifice shell? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Max Speed Aristocrats
The Deck
The easiest way to understand Max Speed Aristocrats is simply to walk through the different parts of the deck. First, we have our max speed cards, which seem designed to work in a sacrifice deck. Gas Guzzler starts our engines on Turn 1 to help ensure we hit max speed as quickly as possible; then, it eventually lets us sacrifice creatures to draw cards for just a single mana, which works well with our sac plan. Meanwhile, Zahur, Glory's Past is a medium sacrifice outlet (since it only works once each turn, although the surveil is a nice way to fill our graveyard and dig for our key pieces). But it's an incredibly powerful combo piece once we hit max speed as it essentially doubles up our sacrifice fodder by making a Zombie token whenever one of our non-token creatures dies. But more on this in a bit.
Gnawing Vermin and Snarling Gorehound give us cheap creatures that fill our graveyard for Raise the Past. Snarling Gorehound is especially powerful since our deck is full of creatures with two-power or fewer, so it often surveils each turn and sometimes multiple times in a turn. This not only lets us stock our graveyard but also lets us control the top of our deck to dig for our most important cards.
Infestation Sage and Splitskin Doll are basically just sacrifice fodder. Infestation Sage gives us two bodies to sacrifice for the price of one thanks to the Insect it makes when we die (which is actually a decent way to hit max speed since it has flying). Splitskin Doll sometimes helps us fill our graveyard with its enters trigger, although it more often just draws us a card, which is also great.
Now, we're finally getting to the important stuff. Bart's our best sacrifice outlet since it doesn't have a once-per-turn restriction like Zahur, Glory's Past does and doesn't need mana (and max speed) like Gas Guzzler does. It's one of our most important cards, and it's tricky to combo kill without finding a copy of it to sacrifice our board.
As far as actually getting our opponent's life total to zero, we have two Blood Artists in Vengeful Bloodwitch and Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim, both of which drain our opponent for one when one of our creatures dies. Winning the game typically requires at least one of these cards, and having two or more makes it even easier to drain our opponent out of the game.
Finally, we have Raise the Past, which is by far the most important card in our deck. For four mana, it reanimates every creature in our deck (since they all cost two or less), which typically wins us the game. The idea of the deck is that in the early game, we play random dorks, do some chump blocking, and fill our graveyard. To win the game, we need a free sac outlet (typically Bartolome del Presidio), at least one Blood Artist effect, and some random creatures to sacrifice. Zahur, Glory's Past makes winning even easier since each creature we have gives us two creatures to sacrifice thanks to the Zombie it makes as our nontoken creatures die. Once we get things set up, we sacrifice our entire board to drain our opponent for as much as we can and then Raise the Past to return everything to play so we can sacrifice everything again, which should be enough to drain our opponent out of the game!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 3-3 with the deck, which is a solid, if unspectacular, performance for a budget deck. In general, the deck felt pretty strong, although it is really soft to graveyard hate. We had a couple of games where our opponent played a Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void and our deck more or less stopped functioning. As such, we added some more enchantment removal to the sideboard, which helped. If you decide to pick up the deck, make sure to bring in enchantment removal aggressively against anything you think might be bringing in graveyard hate because it's difficult to win through it. Basically, Max Speed Aristocrats felt legit, but there are some really powerful answers to it floating around in the format.
As far as the deck's budget, the good news is that I wouldn't change much, even with an infinite budget. The biggest upgrade would be turning Temple of Silence into Shadowy Backstreet. On the other hand, the bad news is that the deck can't really get a ton cheaper. The only cards in the deck that cost more than a couple of dollars are Bleachbone Verge (which can be cut for a cheaper dual to save about $27) and Authority of the Consuls in the sideboard, which is really good against aggro but could be swapped for more cheap removal. These changes would knock just over $30 over the cost of the deck, getting the total price down in the $40 range.
So, should you play Max Speed Aristocrats in Standard? If you like sacrifice decks and are looking for a fun budget option, I think the answer is yes! While graveyard hate is annoying, the deck felt strong and synergistic in general. It also really feels a lot like some of the OG Aristocrats decks from 10 or 15 years ago. While we don't have a modern "free win" nut draw, the deck can grind, has a ton of tricks, and can deal a ton of damage in one massive turn once it gets things set up!
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.
