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Zendikar Constructed Event Guide and Decklists

This weekend’s event is Zendikar Constructed, where you can only use cards from Zendikar Rising! This is an opportunity to try out more of the new cards on a level playing field and give some of the underplayed cards a chance to shine alongside their more busted brethren. Come win some Individual Card Rewards (ICRs) for a modest entry fee!

Read on for all the event info you can mull over, some tips to help you brew up your own wacky wonders, and of course a selection of sample decklists to get your mitts into!

Event Information

Zendikar Constructed Event

Bring a deck and play games using cards only from Zendikar Rising. You’ll receive rewards based on how many games you win.

  • Duration: October 3 2020 at 8:00 AM PST – October 6 at 8:00 AM PST
  • Format: Zendikar Constructed
  • Entry Fee: 100 Gems or 500 Gold
  • Ends After: 4 wins or 2 losses (whichever comes first)
  • Match Structure: Best-of-one matches (BO1)

Event Rewards

# of WinsGoldUncommon ICRsRare ICRs
003
11503
23003
34503
460021

Zendikar Constructed Decklists

Brewing around one set is usually an exercise in checking out the set’s mechanics and gold cards to look for powerful and synergistic payoffs, checking if the mechanic has enough support to really take off the ground, and then jamming all the good cards in if it does!

Some of the lists you’ll find below are based on Constructed variants, but they’ll be very different, since the format has so much smaller a pool of cards that every deck requires weaker replacements. That’s the joy in this sort of brewing though, and I highly encourage you to give it a try! Some of the cards I put into these lists shocked even me, the guy who does this every week, because I wouldn’t have thought of them as nearly good enough, but necessity breeds creativity!

The decks below have tended to be quite expensive, since unfortunately most of Zendikar Rising’s great cards are at rare and mythic, but feel free to sub stuff you don’t have out or experiment with things; the card pool is small enough that it’ll be obvious if there are replacements, and you’ll get to grow your deckbuilding prowess in the process.

Scroll down for deck descriptions!

Azorius Party by MoxReuby - Zendikar Constructed
Azorius Party by MoxReuby – Zendikar Constructed
Nahiri, Heir of the Ancients Art by Anna Steinbauer
Boros Warriors – Zendikar Constructed
Dimir Rogues - Zendikar Constructed
Dimir Rogues – Zendikar Constructed
znr-232-omnath-locus-of-creation
Four-Color Omnath – Zendikar Constructed
Gruul Landfall - Zendikar Constructed
Gruul Landfall – Zendikar Constructed
Mono Red Aggro - Zendikar Constructed
Mono Red Aggro – Zendikar Constructed
znr-203-scute-swarm
Naya Landfall – Zendikar Constructed
Orzhov Clerics - Zendikar Constructed
Orzhov Clerics – Zendikar Constructed
Selesnya Landfall - Zendikar Constructed (Budget)
Selesnya Landfall – Zendikar Constructed (Budget)
Simic Kicker - Zendikar Constructed
Simic Kicker – Zendikar Constructed

Boros Warriors

  • Maul of the Skyclaves
  • znr-230-nahiri-heir-of-the-ancients

Here’s a deck I’m really excited about, because Maul of the Skyclaves is a messed up card and the curve of Kor Blademaster -> Maul will crush some decks by itself! Maximising the power of your planeswalker, Nahiri, in a format where they aren’t going to be well-prepared for her at all strikes me as a great mode of attack. You do want to kill the slower decks asap, but ones like Omnath are not usually great at dealing with fliers, and Nahiri is pretty good at blasting that annoying card right off the battlefield!

Dimir Rogues

  • Soaring Thought-Thief
  • Bloodchief's Thirst

Rogues loses a lot here, since it no longer has good countermagic or its best 1 drop in Thieves' Guild Enforcer, but the core remains mostly intact otherwise. The plan is still to evasion them down while using efficient removal to stop them in their tracks, and it’s a pretty good plan in a format that’s just as powered down.

Landfall Decks (Naya / Gruul / Budget Selesnya)

  • Felidar Retreat

There are a full three decks here, with all of them being on the aggressive side – Selesnya and Gruul are going to be great at blitzing people down with all their aggressively-slanted cards, while the third and most interesting one in Naya goes way over the top with the Scute Swarm + Felidar Retreat package alongside the more explosive plan, in Scute Swarm + Felidar Retreat. Selesnya is a mostly budget deck (you can replace the Pathways with basics, but the Mammoth is pretty hard to let go of…) in quite an expensive format, so do check that out if your wildcard stocks are a bit depleted!

Mono Red Aggro

  • Shatterskull Minotaur
  • Ardent Electromancer
  • znr-153-relic-robber

The card pool is small enough that this is a pretty disjointed deck, unable to fully commit to the Party synergies since you don’t have access to some of them in Red, and missing some of its best cards. Still, it’s capable of some glass-cannony explosive starts with 1 drop -> 2 drop that doesn’t share a type with the 1 -> Ardent Electromancer + Shatterskull Minotaur, so I expect it to steal plenty of games even if it isn’t quite as cohesive or powerful as some of the other decks. Relic Robber + Sneaking Guide is a powerful synergy that has the potential to break board stalls and run away with longer games.

I think a Rakdos build of this is possible, but I was very hesitant with no Pathway…

Orzhov Clerics

  • Orah, Skyclave Hierophant
  • Cleric of Life's Bond

All of the Clerics are mainly in Zendikar Rising anyway, so this is one of the decks that loses the least. Taborax remains an incredibly powerful card, there are lifegain synergies aplenty as one would expect, and Orah, Skyclave Hierophant makes all of your creatures resist removal, even himself!

Simic Kicker

  • Jace, Mirror Mage
  • Sea Gate Stromcaller

The Kicker deck should be adept at going way over the top of this format, since Roost of Drakes is a messed up card with all this ramp, and you should mostly just drop it turn 1, unlike in Draft. This is enough removal that Sea Gate Stormcaller should be really powerful, and that one time you copy a kicked Inscription of Abundance will be quite the fond memory to treasure! Verazol allows you to go really exponential, and I don’t expect even the Omnath decks to be able to overcome this amount of late game easily. This is probably the deck I’m most excited to play, as a lover of durdly nonsense, but be warned that it doesn’t come cheap!

Wrapping Up

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter for regular updates or find all my other articles over at mtgazone.com/Drifter.

Our site provides decks for almost every Arena event, so just check back whenever you need them – here’s the event schedule.

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