Hello again, Premodern humans!  With Land Tax now seeing the Light of Day in Premodern, I’ve seen some folks experimenting with the old Tax-Rack White Weenie deck.  I don’t think I’ve seen anyone going into red though, which was common in the old Extended version of the archetype.  Essentially that’s what I have for you today, but with one very spicy twist!

Soltari Rites

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MAIN DECK | 60 cards

Lands: 19

3 City of Brass

3 Mountain

4 Battlefield Forge

6 Plains

3 Wasteland

Instants and Sorceries: 12

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Rites of Initiation

4 Swords to Plowshares

Creatures: 18

4 Jackal Pup

2 Soltari Visionary

4 Savannah Lions

4 Soltari Priest

4 Soltari Monk

Others: 11

3 Scroll Rack

4 Mox Diamond

4 Land Tax

SIDEBOARD | 15 cards

2 Armageddon

3 Disenchant

3 Firestorm

4 Pyroblast

3 Winter Orb

Deck downloaded from - http://premodernmagic.com ------------------------------------------------ Soltari Rites ------------------------------------------------ MAIN DECK (60) Lands: 19 3 City of Brass 3 Mountain 4 Battlefield Forge 6 Plains 3 Wasteland Instants and Sorceries: 12 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Rites of Initiation 4 Swords to Plowshares Creatures: 18 4 Jackal Pup 2 Soltari Visionary 4 Savannah Lions 4 Soltari Priest 4 Soltari Monk Others: 11 3 Scroll Rack 4 Mox Diamond 4 Land Tax SIDEBOARD (15) 2 Armageddon 3 Disenchant 3 Firestorm 4 Pyroblast 3 Winter Orb ------------------------------------------------ Deck downloaded from - http://premodernmagic.com

SIDEBOARD

http://premodernmagic.com

This is a solid, fast aggro deck with a grindy streak a mile wide.  The combo of Land Tax and Scroll Rack means that you can draw three extra cards a turn as long as you have fewer lands in play than your opponent, and that in turn means that you should be able to bury them in card advantage with nearly inexhaustible supplies of both threats and removal.

We hit the ground running with Jackal Pups, Savannah Lions and Soltari creatures, while Mox Diamond keeps our land count low in order to trigger Land Tax.  While Scroll Rack can use that artifical card advantage to draw real cards, we can also just kill our opponent out of nowhere with one of the deck’s namesake cards: Rites of Initiation.

Rites has the potential to be essentially a one-mana Hatred with the right board state, throwing massive amounts of damage at our opponent with just a small handful of unblocked creatures.  This is where our large number of shadow creatures come into play, which are unblockable in almost every matchup.  I actually considered going whole hog with Soltari Foot Soldiers and Soltari Troopers instead of the Pups and Lions, but the one-mana 2/1s just provide too much value in the control and combo matchups to pass up.

The deck is also quite good at removing blockers, with full playsets of Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares being one of the main draws to playing red/white.  Firestorm comes out of the side to blow out opposing creature decks, and we can also board into a pretty heavy mana denial package with Armageddon and Winter Orb.

So what do you think?  Does this deck have what it takes to compete with Sligh and Goblins in the aggro category?  As always, leave comments in the Premodern Facebook group, or hit me up on Instagram @mtgdojoera.