Cabaretti and Exponential Aggro

 First off:

I didn't play during Shards of Alara (I believe it came out my senior year of college, and thus I had moved onto WoW as my primary nerdy time-sink,) so getting used to the shorthand of Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya took me a while. I think I have even more trouble with the "wedges." (Let's see, taking the "enemy" color as the organizing principle, that's what: Mardu, Temur, Abzan, Jeskai, and Sultai, right?)

We get new "factions" with new sets. I got into Arena when Ikoria was a fairly recent set (it's when they made a Mac client) and so I had an easier time thinking of Savai, Ketria, Indatha, Raugrin, and Zagoth than the Tarkir ones. Similarly, we have new names for the "shards" with New Capenna thanks to the new factions of Brokers, Obscura, Maestros, Riveteers, and Cabaretti.

But hey, if we're going to stick with the first appearance of such a thing, I think that the "color and its two allies" should be named after some true legends: Elder Dragon Legends.

Thus, I think GWU should be "Sabboth," WUB should be "Chromium," UBR should be "Bolas," BRG should be "Asmadi," and RGW should be "Mors."

So I actually call this deck "Mors' Exponential Recursion."

It's not actually a full deck - I haven't burned the Wildcards to make it, so it exists in theory. What's the most powerful force in the universe? It's compound interest. So let's take a look at the three cards in here that, if they're allowed to go off, get freaking crazy.

Actually, before I get there, I have a story:

My maternal grandfather was a smoker (actually, both were, though my paternal one quit the moment the Surgeon General announced they were linked to lung cancer and never took another puff because he was a badass). His second wife asked him to quit, and he told her "I'll quit if you do the following for me. Take this chess board, and I want you to put a penny on the first square today. Tomorrow, put two pennies on the second square. Each day, I want you to put twice the number of pennies you put on the previous square on the next one. When you fill up the board, I'll quit."

My step-grandmother was not very mathematically-minded, and so she agreed.

On a 64-square chessboard, she would have needed 1.844 quintillion pennies, or 18.44 quadrillion dollars. To fill up the last square. She'd need practically as much as well to fill up the previous 63 squares.

Ok, so let's look at these cards:

The first is Devlish Valet. This is a 1/3 red devil warrior with trample and haste for 2R. It also has the ability word alliance - each time a creature enters the battlefield under your control, double Devilish Valet's power until end of turn.

Now, doubling its base power is not that scary - indeed, its trample ability isn't even meaningful until you do. However, if you have ways to put multiple creatures into play, this gets silly very fast. Five on one turn gets you to 32 power, and with trample, that's a big problem, because if your opponent can't just kill the valet or get over 12 toughness in front of that freight train, they're dead.

But five creatures into play in a single turn is tough, right?

Now we turn to the next piece in this madhouse: Scute Swarm.

Yes, Devilish Valet and Scute Swarm are on opposite ends of the Standard rotation, so this is the only period in which you can put both in a Standard deck (maybe I'm an old fogey, but Standard is still my default format). Scute Swarm is, of course, a 1/1 green insect for 2G. It has the Landfall ability keyword, so when a land enters the battlefield under your control, you create a 1/1 green insect token... unless you have six lands in play, in which case you instead create a copy of Scute Swarm.

Meaning that the next land you put out there, both will create a copy. And then the next time, all four will make copies - you see where we're going.

Scute Swarm is terrifying enough in a landfall-focused deck, as it goes wide very, very quickly. But if you put one of these into play, that's doubled our Valet's power once, then you play a land, and now you're doubling it again. Play something like Topiary Stomper on the same turn and now each of those is doubling and the Valet is up to 16 times its original power.

Basically, with these two out, there's an exponential growth on top of exponential growth. If one land gives us one copy and thus doubles the valet once, then a second (on that turn) means two more come into play, doubling the valet twice, so he's at 8. Does that mean we're basically cubing it? It has been a long time since high school algebra. No, I think it's more because a third land would be four new copies, and he's already at 8, so then we have 8 times two to the fourth power, which is 128, whereas 2 to the 4th power is just 16.

Yeah, don't remember how to layer exponents on exponents.

Finally, our third insane piece: Rabble Rousing, a white enchantment for 4W

This has hideaway 5, which is fine but not what we're really here for. Instead, its base effect is that when you attack, you create a 1/1 green and white citizen token for each creature that is attacking. Then, if you have ten or more creatures, you can cast the hideaway card without paying its mana cost.

So, let's imagine a scenario.

You've had Scute Swarm out and doubled it on a previous turn. Rabble Rousing is out, but you've avoided attacking because the opponent has things that can block. You have a Devilish Valet in hand and a land to drop.

So, you cast Devlish Valet. You then play the land. This triggers the two Scute Swarms, so the Valet's power is doubled twice to 4. Now, we attack with all three creatures. Rabble Rousing puts out three citizens. This means we double the Valet's power three more times - 8, 16, 32.

We can futz with this a bit to make it more effective.

Wedding Invitation gets more people on the board, but naturally its transformed state, giving all of our creatures +1/+1, is going to pay off tremendously when we double the Valet's power. With two of these active, the Valet starts at 3/5, and thus doubles to 6, 12, and then 24.

Felidar Retreat will let us either pack the board with more creatures or let us buff up the Valet (or our sizable horde of tokens).

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels of course rewards us significantly when we go wide, and given how quickly we can get a lot of creatures out there, getting his maximum bonus is not outside of the realm of possibility.

What I want to work on with this concept is seeing what spells support it the best - we're very vulnerable to board wipes - Farewell is particularly devastating, as it can take away things like Rabble Rousing or Felidar Retreat, which will allow us to rebuild after creature-specific ones like Meathook Massacre.

I think in play you also probably want to hold back the Devlish Valet until you can be sure to pump it up. If you let it sit on the board when the opponent gets a turn, they're going to probably blow it up ASAP. Thanks to its haste, you can wait for an opportune time to drop it in, though you'll also want to make sure you have all the other pieces in place to make sure you maximize the power.