Powerful Swans of Bryn Argoll Deck for MTG Standard/Type 2
February 24, 2009
If you’ve been reading my blog for some time or you read my about page, you probably know that I like rogue decklists. Here is a cool Swans deck that placed in the top four of a 60 person MTG standard tournament in Japan.
This interesting red/blue decklist hearkens back to the counter burn decklists of old. In the past, Magic The Gathering’s standard format occasionally had tier one red/blue control decklists. Time will tell if this new red/blue decklist is also tier one.
| Swans | |||||||||||
Creatures (4) Spells (29) | Lands (27) Sideboard (15) |
| |||||||||
With many players playing red these days, Swans of Bryn Argoll is a great creature since it doesn’t die to direct damage. Your opponent can draw a bunch of cards by targeting Swans but you can keep up with their card drawing. You have your own burn spells, two Seismic Assault, two Tidings and four Jace Beleren.
I like this decklist because it has so many cheap spells. It has 16 cards that can be played on turn two. These cheap cards definitely help against aggro.
The decklist has a cheap mana curve as a whole. The most expensive spells cost five mana. It has only three cards on the five casting cost (5cc) slot and eight cards in the 4cc slot. With 27 land, it shouldn’t get mana screwed often.
Still, with a low mana curve, it seems weird to have 27 land. However, upon closer inspection, we see that all those lands serve a purpose. Four of them can attack (Mutavault) and the rest of them enable the Swans of Bryn Argoll + Seismic Assault combo.
Once you have all the land you need, you can discard the extra land to Seismic Assault targeting Swans. Keep doing this until you draw a lot of land and then you can send the land to your opponent’s face 
Update (2/25/09): I did some quick playtesting and found that the above tactic doesn’t actually work. I forgot this version of Swans doesn’t have 45 land like other versions.
If you discard a land, the odds are you’ll get a land and a spell since the decklist is approximately half land and half spells. Therefore, you don’t actually get ahead on lands.
Still, if you have the combo out, each land is an uncounterable free spell that draws you two cards. Of course, if your opponent is at low life, you can just burn him out instead of drawing cards.
Source: magicdailynews.com
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[...] won the second game with double Burrenton Forge-Tender. That card is so good against the Swans decklist. It stops their board sweepers as well as keeping them from drawing cards off of Swans of Bryn [...]