I Stole Every Land They Played, Every Turn | Brewer's Kitchen
Well, hello there, Brewer’s Kitchen here! Today we are stealing the hopes and dreams of our opponents. And by hopes and dreams I’m talking about their permanents. Some of you probably already expected this to be the first thing I’ll do in the new Explorer format: We are finally playing with Agent of Treachery again.
The Gameplan
The premise of this deck is to cheat out Agent of Treachery as fast as possible. I know a lot of people hate to play against it but as viewers of my older content (back when it was legal on Arena) or Commander Clash know, I absolutely LOVE the card!
Let’s first talk about how we are going to get everybody’s favorite kleptomaniac on the battlefield.
The fastest and most reliable way to put an Agent of Treachery onto the battlefield is by Polymorphing it out of a token. Transmogrify and Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast allow us to turn a creature token into any creature we want, as long as it is the only one in our deck. When the spell or ability (Lukka -2) resolves, we reveal cards from the top of our library until we reveal a creature and put it on the battlefield. Since we will produce creature tokes with noncreature spells, Agent of Treachery will be the only possible card to hit with this effect.
This strategy is already an established archetype in the Pioneer format where it is played in a Jeskai control shell. And while cards like The Wandering Emperor and The Birth of Meletis admittedly very good token producers for this plan, I decided to go Temur.
I waited long enough to play the Agent again. I’m not going to sit on removal and wait for the best moment to Transmogrify my Samurai token from The Wandering Emperor into an Agent after I stabilized the board. We’re going to for the fastest and most efficient way to cheat it onto the battlefield. And then we’re going to copy it repeatedly until our opponent succumbs the urge to scoop to the notoriously salt inducing, most banned card on Arena. Ok, “most banned” is a bit hard to define, but Agent of Treachery is one of the few cards on Arena that got banned in Standard, Historic and Historic Brawl. And it has never been his fault. It was always cards like Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast or Winota, Joiner of Forces, creating it onto the battlefield that broke it. So… let’s break it again!
Courier's Briefcase and Careful Cultivation (Channel) might not look like overly powerful cards, but they check three essential boxes for our nefarious gameplan:
- They create a creature
- The ramp to four mana on turn three
- They are not creature cards
If we cast or channel one of these cards on turn two, we untap with enough mana to target the created token with Transmogrify the next turn. We can even channel Careful Cultivation at the end of our opponent’s turn, making it hard to react to this for a lot of decks. If the opponent has no interaction, we get an Agent and steal their best permanent. And if they do… well, good for them. I’m not even going to sugarcoat it, if they have removal for the token we target with Transmogrify, our whole plan will fizzle, setting us back to square one. Luckily, the deck is loaded with cards that create tokens and Polymorph effects so we can usually go for it again in a few turns. Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast costs one more mana and is only a three-off but can be misused two turns in a row, reducing the blowout if our opponent can respond with removal.
But let’s fucus on the good things in life, the times where our opponent doesn’t come prepared for our evil plan, and we hit them with the early Agent. The earlier we cheat out the Agent, the more likely we are to just steal their lands first. Wait, lands? As in Multiple? That’s right, once we got an Agent on the battlefield, the real fun begins.
Phase two of our gameplan is to create copies of Agent of Treachery.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker creates a disposable token to turn into an Agent and later flips into Reflection of Kiki-Jiki which can create a temporary copy of it. Croaking Counterpart creates a 1/1 frog token that’s a copy of a non-frog creature. This can either be uses to create a token to Transmogrify or create a Frog of Treachery (Agent of Croakery?) once we already got an Agent on the battlefield.
These Agent of Treachery tokens can be copied when we attack with Esika's Chariot which also created disposable tokens when it entered the battlefield. And talking about cards that do double duty in this deck, Burn Down the House functions as a board wipe and token producer as well. This way we make sure to always have a token ready to target once we get the opportunity to pull off the Transmogrify.
Once we copied Agent of Treachery enough times to control three of our opponent’s permanents, we will start triggering its second ability, drawing us tons of cards at the end of every turn. Enjoy this while you can, this is usually the moment where the opponent scoops.
The last token creating card is Shark Typhoon. If the deck wasn’t so focused on pulling off the trick on turn three, we’d play a full playset of this. The flexibility of cycling it at instant speed to create a token or even ambush attackers would be powerful enough. But hard casting the card as an enchantment will quickly create a lethal board state in matches that dragged out for too long.
Our only interaction besides stealing threats or wiping the board with Burn Down the House is Prismari Command and Fire Prophecy. The Command smooths our draws, kills early threats and most importantly, deals with Grafdigger's Cage which would otherwise nullify our entire gameplan. Fire Prophecy is our way of putting an Agent from our hand back into our library. More often than not, we can use our incidental treasure production to hard cast the Agent from our hand pretty early, though. In the video, I play Growth Spiral instead of the Prophecy to speed up our own gameplan. The early removal and card filtration of Prophecy makes it a way better card in this deck. There really was no good reason to play Spiral here… just wanted to mention it in case you wondered while watching the video. Wait? You didn’t watch it? You should as least watch the first match, it’s most likely the most evil thing I ever did on Arena. The deck works surprisingly good in Best of One matches, which brings us to the last section of this article.
The Best-of-Three Problem
I play Best-of-One for content reasons, but this deck really shines in game one. Once the opponent knows what’s up, they can shift their playstyle and side boarding to negate our gameplan very effectively. I would never argue that Best-of-Three isn’t the better way to play magic as it allows for adaptation and counterplay… the mortal enemy of today’s deck, so be warned.
Right now, the sideboard of this deck is Artifacts and Lesson cards in case we steal a Karn, the Great Creator or a Learn card like Eyetwitch. In case you are wondering: Yes, it feels absurdly big brained to steal an Eyetwitch, chump block with it, and get a Mascot Exhibition out of our sideboard.
But when it comes to using the Sideboard for Best-of-Three, it gets a bit tricky. We could load up on counters and removal for hate pieces, but a large upside of the deck is the surprise. We could include cards like Toxrill, the Corrosive in case we play against go-wide decks that don’t care about Agent of Treachery but I’d be more interested in a transformative sideboard here.
I’m not sure where to go with it yet, but decks like this may lead our opponent to do some drastic changes in game two. If we can exploit this with a completely different gameplan, we could get the element of surprise again in game two.
Do we transform into a midrange deck that uses Courier's Briefcase and Careful Cultivation to ramp out standalone threats like Chandra, Torch of Defiance? Do we become a control deck with Agent of Treachery as a finisher in game two? Let me know in the comments (I read all YouTube comments).
Wrap Up
This deck is actually strong in Best-of-One. In theory, the combo is easy to interact with. But if we create a creature on the opponent’s end step and transmogrify it the next turn, the window of interaction becomes very small. Especially on the play, you’ll absolutely crush some players hopes and dreams. Just be prepared to get blown out by removal from time to time. But as always: You can’t win them all, this is part of the game.
This has been one of the most fun decks I’ve built in quite a while. Stealing permanents is just the evilest thing to do in Magic and doing it on turn three is absolutely devastating for any opponent.
If you have questions or ideas for this or any other deck, you can reach me on Twitter @Brewers_Kitchen or at brewerskitchen@mtggoldfish.com.
