The Standard format is getting solved remarkably quickly. Rotation always resets the format to zero, with the card pool vastly different from what it was just a few months ago. This usually allows the new set to have a massive impact on the format, and Bloomburrow is no exception. Thanks to a particularly degenerate squirrel, a new infinite combo is now available in the Standard format.
If you want to win your Standard games in style, it might be time to turn to Insidious Roots. This deck can now deal 20+ damage to your opponent as early as turn three, but you generally won’t be pulling off your antics until turn four or five at the earliest. The latest evolution of this deck comes courtesy of the new card Osteomancer Adept.
Insidious Roots and Osteomancer Adept
- Mana value: 1B
- Rarity: Rare
- Statistics: 2/2
- MTG Set: Bloomburrow
- Card Text: Deathtouch. (tap) Until end of turn, you may cast creature spells from your graveyard by searching them, in addition to paying their other costs. When you cast a spell this way, the creature enters the battlefield with a finality counter.
The combination of Insidious Roots, Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, and Osteomancer Adept can make for an infinite combo. Usually you need some kind of Surveil engine for this. For what you’re doing, Snarling Gorehound is by far the best.
This is how the endless combination works.
- Start with Insidious Roots and Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler in play. Use -2 effect to find Osteomancer Adept or Snarling Gorehound – whichever you don’t already have in play. This will create a Plant Token and monitor a certain number of cards.
- Tyvar lets your creatures activate their tapped abilities as if they had haste. Activate Osteomancer Adept.
- Start casting creature spells from your graveyard. Most notably, your Plant tokens will also gain mana thanks to Tyvar. Make sure to exile a creature for the cost of your spells. That way, Insidious Roots will trigger twice.
- This should create Plant tokens that will allow Snarling Gorehound to oversee. Throw everything into the graveyard so you can cast more spells. This way you can easily mill your entire deck and amass a huge board.
- Cast Voldaren Thrillseeker with your plants. Use his ability on your biggest plant and hurl it into your opponent’s face when it deals lethal damage. If you have too much mana, you can hurl both the plant and the Thrillseeker, recast the Thrillseeker, and hurl something else.
The rest of the deck is filled with tokens to make this process as easy as possible. You need a lot of things in the right place to get infinite, but you can also win the game by creating a huge board that your opponent can’t answer.
The deck and recommended changes
- Mana value: 2G
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Statistics: 3/2
- MTG Set: Lost Caverns of Ixalan
- Card Text: Descent 4 – When Coati Scavenger enters the battlefield, if there are four or more permanent cards in your graveyard, return target permanent card from your graveyard to your hand.
After playing with this deck a bit myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that while Honest Rutstein is a fantastic card, it’s not quite what this deck is looking for. Its most important pieces are non-creature permanents that Honest Rutstein can’t pick up. Coati Scavenger, on the other hand, can pick up those cards with no problem.
For this card to work, Descend 4 must be active, but that’s really easy to achieve. With Cache Grab, Snarling Gorehound, and Rubblebelt Maverick, achieving Descend 4 is a breeze. If you have a creature that can take Tyvar and Insidious Roots, you can get to your Infinite with just one Osteomancer Adept activation.
The combination of Osteomancer Adept and Cache Grab was what really unlocked this deck. Now you can find your pieces as you fill your graveyard and have a combo that is relatively resilient.
Bonecache Overseer is an interesting draw machine that can add some redundancy to your Osteomancer Adept, but I wonder if it’s better to use mill effects. Gnawing Vermin is another card you can consider in this slot.
With that in mind, I’ve found that Squirming Emergence is a good one-time tool, as it often allows you to revive the missing combo piece and instantly win the game.
Otherwise, I would replace the Cankerblooms with Haywire Mite. Cankerbloom does not trigger Snarling Gorehound, which is important in my experience.
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The importance of spell removal
- Mana value: 1WW
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Enchantment
- MTG Sets: Dominaria United
- Card Text: When Temporary Lockdown enters the battlefield, exile each nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less until Temporary Lockdown leaves the battlefield.
Temporary Lockdown is really good against your deck. This is why you need answers in the main deck to this card. Cankerbloom is the card of choice for the decklist shown above, but I’ve found it more useful to have Haywire Mite in the main deck instead of these cards.
In any case, when playing against a white deck, make sure you have enough mana left to respond to Temporary Lockdown at every opportunity. This generally means having a Haymire Mite activation ready at all times.
Graveyard hate isn’t very common in Standard, but it does make your deck obsolete. Fortunately, the most common elements of graveyard hate in the format are also artifacts and enchantments. Rest in Peace is clearly answered by Haywire Mite.
How good is this deck in Standard?
That’s a tough one. The deck does seem to have some good matchups against slower midrange decks and Domain. The deck is even capable of fielding a ton of blockers in faster matchups. However, the combo is harder to put together than it seems, which gives this deck some consistency issues. It’s not hard to draw a bad card that just doesn’t do anything.
This deck is definitely competitive at worst, but until dedicated players fix the problems, Insidious Roots may be a second-tier deck at best.
This deck certainly has the potential to be a frontrunner, as the engine is incredibly powerful and Standard players currently don’t have the equipment to interact with it.
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