Hey all, the next Arena Qualifier Play-In on June 8th will be Explorer Bo1 followed by Explorer Bo3 the following week on June 14th, culminating in the Qualifier Weekend on June 15th-16th. So I’ve decided to return to the format to explore (pun intended) what kind of slightly off-meta strategies we can employ to find success in the format. So this week, I’ll cover a fun Bo1 deck I’ve found decent success with and I’ll return next week with a Bo3 deck for those of you preferring the Bo3 Play-in. With all that said let’s dive in.
The top of the Explorer Bo1 meta is mostly aggressive decks and creature based combo decks, so the goal of this deck is to disrupt our opponent’s strategy with hand disruption and removal, while pressuring them with our own aggressive and efficient creatures. I’ve titled the deck as Orzhov Hatebears because all of our creatures are good at disrupting the opponent and giving us time to whittle down their life total.
Starting with the two drops, Deep-Cavern Bat takes important cards from the opponent’s hand and gives us a steady supply of life points thanks to lifelink, while Sungold Sentinel helps us attack opponent’s graveyards, key when fighting against Greasefang, Okiba Boss decks and Arclight Phoenix decks, and Coven is very achievable in this deck giving us the ability to protect it and attack through certain boards later in the game.
Silverquill Silencer is a solid early threat that can create really awkward situations for the opponent. While the best case scenarios are a turn one Thoughtseize into a turn two Silencer naming your opponents only two drop or only removal spell, it can also be played on a later turn after seeing their hand thanks to Deep-Cavern Bat or Anointed Peacekeeper. What often happens though is you cast it without knowing your opponent’s hand and just have to make an educated guess based off of what they have shown you so far.
This card really rewards you for knowing the format and knowing what possible decks your opponent could be on based off of just one or two lands and a spell. In general, you can try to name removal spells that the opponent may have. If they play a black source and pass the turn, name Fatal Push. If they play a red source, perhaps name Play with Fire, etc. I recommend playing a lot of games and reviewing our metagame breakdown before taking this card into the play-in, but once you are familiar and comfortable with the format, you shouldn’t have any problems frustrating your opponent.
Our three drops are more disruptive creatures that help us pressure the opponents key spells. Anointed Peacekeeper is great as a vigilance 3/3 that gives us a peek at the opponent’s hand and lets us make a card, or a card’s activated abilities if they already have one in play, cost two more, which can help us close out the game before they can execute their own gameplan.
This is another card that rewards format knowledge, as sometimes your opponent is empty handed or has no relevant spells in hand so you need to know what is the most impactful spell that your opponent could draw that you could make uncastable or at least very awkward to cast.
Aven Interrupter gives us another flash threat that can delay an opponent’s spell for a turn. The nice thing is that the casting from exile or graveyard effect stacks, so if you have multiple in play their plotted spells become very difficult to cast.
Our last three drop is actually a Planeswalker, Kaya, Orzhov Usurper, a long forgotten player from Standards past, I’ve found her to play quite well in the current format. There are a lot of graveyard decks that are very frustrated by her ticking up to exile cards, and gaining life along the way can help us stabilize against aggressive decks. There are also a ton of one drops in the format making her minus ability live against most opponents. The ultimate is reached quite quickly, and can usually get our opponent for an extra 6 or more points to close out a game.
Our spells are quite simple, Fatal Push and Go for the Throat help us break up creature combo decks and slow down aggressive decks, while Thoughtseize is the great glue that holds our deck together, helping us delay the opponent and giving us valuable information.
We also have one Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, to occasionally show up and close out a game after our opponents have used all of their removal on our cheaper threats. In our lands we have Hive of the Eye Tyrant and Restless Fortress for a couple extra threats, Field of Ruin to answer opposing creature lands and utility lands, and one Cavern of Souls to help against counterspell decks. The most common creature type in the deck is Human, but it isn’t out of the question to name one of the other creature types if you need it to resolve that turn, or have multiple copies in hand.
In general, our pathway should be played on the Brightclimb Pathway side, as our only double colored spells are Aven Interrupter and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and we have four of the Aven and want to cast it earlier. But, if you don’t have any other black source feel free to play it on the Grimclimb Pathway side. Takenuma, Abandoned Mire and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire round out our land base as utility lands that can help us out when we are flooding a bit.
This deck is quite flexible in the cards it can play, so I recommend experimenting a bit and seeing what you like. I think the copies of Kaya, Orzhov Usurper and the copy of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse are the first cards I would change out to try other options, but for now I think they have earned a spot in the deck. It is possible that we could just want more instant speed removal, so that could be worth trying in that spot as well.
Wrapping Up
I hope this deck guide was interesting and can show off the possibilities that a format like Explorer has to try new things. While the meta decks are the top decks for a reason, that doesn’t mean that the format is solved or that there isn’t room to try new things from time to time! So give this deck a try and if you don’t like it, try something else, or change some cards around and see how it feels. If you decide to play in the Bo1 Qualifier Play-In, I wish you best of luck, and I will be back next week with another new deck for the Bo3 Qualifier Play-In as well.
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