Hey all. Standard gets the spotlight this time of year as rotation shakes up the format and opens the door to fresh new brews. However, we cannot forget the other rotating format on MTG Arena, which has kept to a two year rotation, Alchemy. Alchemy after rotation is what Standard used to be: just 5 sets.
While there are an additional 120 Alchemy cards in the format, for the first time since Alchemy’s inception the summer Arena set was not added to the format. This rotation is going to really set Alchemy apart from Standard, as its much smaller card pool will lead to much different game play.
While we have a lot of Standard decklists coming up, I wanted to give some love to the Alchemy players (there are dozens of us!) with 10 decklists that I am going to be trying on the ladder post-rotation. So let’s dive right in!
The long awaited Alchemy and Standard rotation happens on July 30, 2024 to MTG Arena! Learn all about Bloomburrow and find all our related articles in our hub.
I think we all expect that Heist, which didn’t lose much from rotation, to still be the most popular deck on the ladder. I do think it is powered down a bit, so we’ll have to see if it continues to be oppressive or if it just becomes another part of the metagame. I haven’t brewed up a Heist deck, because I’ve never liked playing “the best deck” (which is also why I never won a PTQ, but that is a tale for another time).
Most of my decks nowadays have shifted away from generic midrange value into more synergistic or aggressive decks to try to give less value to Heist decks stealing my cards. While we lost Reprieve as a strong answer to heist cards, in my white decks I almost always have Parting Gust in the main or sideboard, as it is a good way to get your heisted creatures back onto your side of the board.
A variant of the Three Blind Mice and Dedicated Dollmaker Combo, this is an aggressive deck trying to both execute that combo and quickly end the game by buffing up our tokens so they are lethal in one or two swings.
New cards include Valley Questcaller, to buff up all of our mice tokens and help us scry through our deck, Caretaker’s Talent, to help us draw cards and eventually buff up our tokens, and Finneas, Ace Archer to also draw cards and buff up our team.
There is a good chance that we don’t need to build around the Dollmaker combo, since it will eventually end the game by itself, but I just wanted to try an aggressive version to see if it felt worth it, especially against Heist decks that should have a harder time versus aggressive decks compared to midrange decks.
Okay, I also wanted to give the classic Dollmaker combo a try. This version is much more midrange, which makes me worried against Heist decks, but against other decks there is so much value. We’ve got lots of enters effects to make use of with our Dedicated Dollmaker for the games we don’t have the Three Blind Mice, and Caretaker’s Talent to give us some value regardless if we are going off or just have one copy of the saga.
I’m excited to try Beza, the Bounding Spring in this deck as a way to catch up against aggro decks, which are also likely to be popular early on in the format.
I was not a Golgari Insidious Roots player before rotation, and I’m sure the roots players are brewing up new versions of this, but I wanted to give it a shot. The deck lost Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler which kills off the infinite combo part of the deck, but we did get new cards that can make the deck into a grindy deck that clogs up the board until we overwhelm the opponent.
Those new cards make use of the Forage mechanic, which asks you to either exile three cards from your graveyard or sacrifice a food to pay a cost. This will trigger our roots. Osteomancer Adept will help us trigger our roots several times in one turn, by letting us recast creatures and forage, giving us two triggers from our roots.
Feed the Cycle gives us a great cheap removal spell that also lets us forage and trigger roots, and Cache Grab fills up our graveyard, and let’s get something back which can trigger our roots if it was a creature.
I’m not sure if this is the right build of roots, but this is where I’ll be starting.
If they kill or we mill our Zoraline, we have Helping Hand to get it back, and if we have two extra mana then we can pay for her trigger getting back another permanent from our graveyard at the same time.
My only concern with this deck is that it may lack the oomph to close out games, but I’m excited to try it out!
Albiorix, Goose Tyrant is a very scary bird! Similar to the standard deck of the same name, this is an aggressive deck that tries to put a lot of artifact tokens into play, especially map tokens, and then sacrifice them while Albiorix is in play or exile to make a huge flying, trample, finisher.
We can also just beat down with cards like Zoetic Glyph and Bristlebud Farmer, giving us a nice back up plan for when we don’t draw Albiorix or if it is removed.
I wrote about this deck last week in my article going over the previews for Bloomburrow and I am excited to try it out and play with the numbers. While not the most aggressive build, the card quality is quite high, and once the deck gets going it should go off quickly and end the game in just one or two attacks.
There is a chance that we should focus less on Otters and play cards like Slickshot Show-Off and just be an Izzet prowess deck, but I couldn’t resist trying to make Otter tribal.
Overcooked stood out as an Alchemy exclusive card to build around. I thought the deck would get more from Bloomburrow, since food was a theme, but I decided to keep it more simple and just put in a lot of cards that create an artifact when they enter for the purpose of triggering Celebration and having plenty of artifacts to shoot at our opponent.
We also have some good card advantage engines with A Golden Opportunity, Bristlebud Farmer, and Questing Druid, giving us good resources to dig through our deck to find our copies of Overcooked and keep us competitive in grindy matchups.
Okay, I know I said no midrange but there are just so many good Boros Alchemy exclusive cards like Jewel Mine Overseer, Tajic, Legion’s Valor, and Scalesoul Gnome. This deck has a bit of a burn sub-theme with Lightning Helix and the adventure of Heartflame Duelist giving us plenty of reach later into the game.
I know I also said no heist, but Impetuous Lootmonger is just too good to not play. We also have Beza, the Bounding Spring in this deck to help us in all kinds of matchups. Aven Interrupter helps us against heist decks, both making any heisted cards cost 2 more to cast since they are cast from exile, but if we use it on a spell they stole from us, it will go to our exile, letting us cast it for free the next turn.
Tan Jolom, the Worldwalkerand Glarb, Calamity’s Augur give us ways to make sure that we are always making our land drops, so we have a lot of mana to work with to cast our big spells and activate all of our creature lands to finish off the games.
I saved the weirdest for last. Since Murders at Karlov Manor if you have two Forensic Researcher and a Deeproot Pilgrimage in play you can make infinite merfolk tokens. The deck has never really come together, but I think this list has a shot.
The main goal of the deck is to find our combo pieces and we have a few ways to help us get there. Herald’s Reveille is a cantrip but it seeks a merfolk if we explored this turn. Forensic Researcher is our only merfolk, so if we’ve explored, like using a map token from Spyglass Siren or Landlore Navigator, or by attacking with Subterranean Schooner, we will seek our first combo piece.
We do need two of the merfolk to combo off, so we have two ways to copy it. First is Mockingbird, which is great even when we don’t have our combo going as it can copy even our opponent’s creatures in a pinch. Second is Three Steps Ahead which is a counterspell or card filter early, and creates a copy of our merfolk when we are ready to go off. The token itself won’t trigger the pilgrimage, but it still lets us go off and make infinite tokens when we tap our non-token copy.
We don’t have a great way to find the pilgrimage itself, but all of our map tokens and card filtering should hopefully help us find it.
This is a whacky deck, and it might be too cute to come together, but I cannot wait to try and tinker with it and make it work.
Wrapping Up
I know Alchemy isn’t super popular, and it may be dominated by Heist right now, but I am super excited for rotation in this format as well as in Standard. I hope these decks provide some fun matches for you. Also check out our Standard decklist dump for those of you who are looking for new decks in that format as well. As always, best of luck on the ladder and I’ll see you next time!
