Much Abrew: Kona in Space (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! Kona, Rescue Beastie is undoubtedly a strong card, but it hasn't really found a home in Standard because finding a way to get it tapped to trigger its survival ability can be tricky. But in Edge of Eternities, we got the perfect Kona combo pieces in the mythic planet lands! Cards like Susur Secundi, Void Altar and Evendo, Waking Haven let us tap Kona to station, giving us an easy way to cheat something massive into play at the start of our second main phase. But it's even better than that! Once we cheat something like Ancient Adamantoise, Vaultborn Tyrant, or Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant into play, we can then tap them to station Susur Secundi, Void Altar fully, which then lets us sacrifice our massive creatures to draw an absurd amount of cards and, if the creature we sacrifice is Ancient Adamantoise, make a ton of Treasures too! While sacrificing our big Kona bombs might sound counterintuitive, we don't really care too much since we've also got a bunch of reanimation in the deck in Zombify and Seedship Broodtender, which not only let us cheat the big finisher back into play once we sacrifice them but also give us a solid backup plan if we can't stick a Kona, Rescue Beastie! Can the planet lands break Kona? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Kona in Space
Discussion
- Record-wise, we went 5-2 with the deck, although it is worth pointing out that this was right after the season reset, so we had been bumped back down to Gold on Magic Arena. But still, the record was solid!
- As I mentioned in the intro, the primary plan is to play a planet land over the first three turns of the game, drop Kona, Rescue Beastie on Turn 4, then tap it to station and drop something massive into play at the start of our second main phase, which we then can use to finish stationing the planet land to turn on Susur Secundi, Void Altar to draw a ton of cards or Evendo, Waking Haven to make extra mana.
- Speaking of the planet lands, always station Susur Secundi, Void Altar first if you have both on the battlefield. Honestly, we don't really care about stationing Evendo, Waking Haven (although it's fine if we have nothing better to do). It's basically in the deck just to give us more ways to tap Kona. On the other hand, Susur Secundi, Void Altar is absurd in the deck since Kona plus one of our big bombs can station it fully; then, sacrificing the big bomb will draw us a new hand, which is pretty insane!
- As far as our big finisher, the best, oddly, is Ancient Adamantoise. Some decks can't beat the damage-redirection ability, which makes the Turtle a weird Fog on a stick. (See: our hilarious matchup against landfall with the 14,000-power Mossborn Hydra.) Ancient Adamantoise is also one of our best creatures to sac to Susur Secundi, Void Altar because if we do, we'll not only draw eight cards but also make 10 tapped Treasures, which lets us hard-cast any big bombs in our hand the following turn. Backing up Ancient Adamantoise are [Vaultborn Tyrant]] for card draw and lifegain (which is also very good with Susur Secundi since we get a token copy if we sacrifice the original), Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant to dump the rest of the creatures from our hand, and one copy each of Summon: Bahamut and Valgavoth, Terror Eater to finish the game in the air.
- As a backup plan, we have a bunch of reanimation. Cards like Dredger's Insight and Town Greeter fill the graveyard, while Seedship Broodtender and Zombify let us cheat our big finishers into play. So if we don't happen to have Kona on Turn 4, we can usually get the job done with Zombify.
- One of the things I really like about the deck is the sideboard plan. Our opponent likely will bring in a bunch of graveyard hate, which we can counter by removing some of our graveyard stuff and bringing in more copies of Smuggler's Surprise to back up Kona. This gives us eight ways to cheat our big finishers into play without using the graveyard at all, which makes the deck pretty tricky to hate on. If you overload on removal to kill Kona, we just reanimate stuff. If you overload on graveyard hate, we go all in on Kona!
- The one issue with the deck is that we have a ton of tapped lands because of all the planets (and the lack of Overgrown Tomb in Standard). If you decide to try the deck, it's important to realize that Turn 4 is our big turn because that's when we can play Kona or Zombify to cheat something massive into play. As such, try to sequence your lands so you have an untapped land drop for Turn 4 (which is harder than it sounds because we only have six lands that enter untapped on Turn 4 or later). Finding a way to get more untapped lands into the deck without cutting planets or otherwise reducing consistency would be super helpful!
- So, should you play Kona in Space? I think the answer is yes! This is one of my favorite decks I've built since rotation. I find it incredibly fun to play, and it does some super-big, super-cool things! If you like big Timmy creatures, hilarious lines, and massive amounts of card draw, give Kona another shot! It's pretty insane with the planet lands!
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.
