Five Color Souls

This deck is a small pet project of mine. I woke up one day (or else couldn't fall asleep) and thought "The Souls should have some great purpose in Standard. They can't be completely useless..." and I feel that with this deck, they actually work out pretty well, but I'm still experimenting...

So here we go, a five color deck in Standard!

Five Color Souls

Creatures x4 Elvish Mystic x4 Generator Servant x4 Rattleclaw Mystic x4 Sylvan Caryatid x2 Hornet Nest x2 Soul of Innistrad x2 Soul of New Phyrexia x2 Soul of Ravnica x2 Soul of Shandalar x2 Soul of Theros x2 Soul of Zendikar Other Spells x2 End Hostilities x2 In Garruk's Wake

Land x3 Temple of Abandon x1 Temple of Enlightenment x1 Temple of Silence x1 Temple of Deceit x4 Mana Confluence x2 Wooded Foothills x2 Evolving Wilds x2 Plains x2 Island x2 Swamp x3 Mountain x3 Forest

The Lands

    

Honestly, I would have loved having shocklands or checklands available to me, but we work with what we're given, right?

For starters, this is a five color deck. This means Mana Confluence is an automatic inclusion. On top of that, our mana dorks are red and green, but more n the green side, so we must have our red and green. So three Temple of Abandon, and two Wooded Foothills coupled with three Mountains and three Forests. Keeping up with the requirement of White, Blue, and Black, I included two of each basic, on Temple of Enlightenment, one Temple of Silence, and one Temple of Deceit to cover my bases. I also threw in a couple Evolving Wilds as a catch-all for the basics. It's the "poor man's" fetch land, placing it in tapped, but still useful.

In the efforts of cutting down your costs, replace two Wooded Foothills with another Mountain and Forest. You can always go with more basics, but to make this stable, Mana Confleunce is a must. Without one Mana Confluence and one Sylvan Caryatid on the field, casting any non-red and non-green Soul will be hard. Sure you could get your basics, but a land that makes anything can't be beat in a deck like this.

Mana Dorks and Stalling

    

  

Elvish Mystic, Sylvan Caryatid, and Rattleclaw Mystic are relatively obvious, but Generator Servant and Hornet Nest might not be. Let me help with that.

Generator Servant is what puts your six mana Souls on the field on turn 4. Ideally, you play a Forest and an Elvish Mystic turn one. Turn two is a Mountain plus a Generator Servant. So far so good. Turn three is another land (maybe) and a morphed Rattleclaw Mystic. On Turn 4, pay three mana, flip Rattleclaw Mystic face up, and sacrifice your Generator Servant. You now have a hasty Soul available, hopefully of the Zendikar, Ravnica, Shandalar, or New Phyrexia variety based on your mana base, but you could possibly have accomplished getting Innistrad or Theros on the field. Either way, a 6/6 with haste on Turn 4 is awesome.

Hornet Nest is included because there needs to be something difficult to get rid of without giving you tons of dangerous tokens. Black seems to be the only color able to take care of Hornet Nest without giving you tokens, so it's not a bad card to throw in. If you don't have any, Sigiled Starfish isn't a bad choice either.

The Souls

    

    

I picked this cycle because what else would you do with five colors? Play Chromanticore? (Side Note: You could throw a couple in here, just replace the Hornet Nests or something.)

Anyway, these are big and require mana dorks to get them out fast, which that's pretty much what this deck is. Boosting an army of creatures with +2/+2, first strike, and lifelink, drawing five cards, returning your army to your hand from the graveyard, killing your opponent's creatures and punching them, dropping out a ton of tokens, and ensuring everything on your battlefield can't die is great, espcially when you have a ton of mana remaining after you've cast all of these. Soul of Ravnica give you card draw options, Soul of Theros boosts all of your Souls for a major strike, Soul of Innistrad, gives you your Souls again, Soul of Shandalar takes care of threats an opponent has, Soul of New Phyrexia protects your creatures when you board wipe (we'll get to that), and Soul of Zendikar is actually pretty useless compared to what the rest of them do for you, but tokens can't hurt and it is the easiest to get on the field based on all green being thrown around in the deck...

It winds up being a pretty powerful deck when it fires correctly, but we're not done yet!

Board Wipes

  

Soul of Innistrad or Soul of New Phyrexia are important for the use of End Hostilities. You either need to bring your Souls back with Soul of Innistrad, or prevent them from being destroyed by activating New Phyrexia's ability first. Gets rid of enemy threats AND leaves you your creatures. Seems good.

In Garruk's Wake costs 9 mana, yes, but with sixteen mana dorks and twenty-two lands that produce mana, casting it shouldn't be a problem. It's just what we want to do with End Hostilities essentially, except we don't have to protect ourselves with Soul of New Phyrexia.

I included two of each because the Souls should do enough of the work anyway with some brute force attacks, and four End Hostilities (Hornet Nest was an after thought. I just like it and find it useful) is excessive, especially when double white and double black is hard enough to achieve...

So, here is a fun, five-color, standard legal deck to test out. Could be more casual (if playing casually, drop in Cavern of Souls. That way you can name the deck Cavern of Souls because the library is like a cavern you pull the souls from, then you cast them with it, ah... I took that joke too far), but it's standard legal, and Souls are actually pretty cheap, so why not try it out?