Kenrith, the Returned King is a very powerful card. And yet he's really only seen play as a discount Cavalier of Flame in Jeskai fires. But he can be so much more.

His last ability is an instant speed reanimation effect. In a Fires of Invention deck, not only does this give us an extra play every turn, it also lets us interact on our opponents turn with ETB creatures like Frilled Mystic. That's right, this is a Fires deck with counterspells. Be very afraid.

In total this deck runs 9 reanimation targets, 3 each of Agent of Treachery, Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, and, Frilled Mystic. Together they provide strong options to handle anything our opponent throws at us. Frilled Mystic is of course an all-purpose counter spell. Agent of Treachery is the best possible answer to our opponents big threats, while Drakuseth, Maw of Flames can clear a board of small threats while also just being super scary in his own right, especially considering that Kenrith, the Returned King can give him haste. We also run Lumbering Battlement in the sideboard to save us from board wipes while also synergising very well with Agent of Treachery.

The Manabase

We're primarily in Red, Blue and Black, but we obviously need a splash of White for Kenrith. Now, upon hearing this, a reasonable person might point out that the only colors we really need here are red for Fires of Invention, white for Kenrith, and black for Kenrith's reanimation effect. So why are we in blue? And the answer is that it gives us some very necessary tools to make this deck function.

• Drawn from Dreams is an perhaps the most efficient way to sort through your deck in standard right now. And since we're essentially a combo deck, we need a good way to grab both of our key pieces in Fires of Invention and Kenrith, the Returned King. It also helps us collect the exact reanimation target we want in a given situation allowing us diversify and run 3 each of 3 creatures rather than 4 each of 2.
• Thought Erasure gives us knowledge of our opponents hand and lets us clear the way for our main strategy. The surveil effect is also nice for us both in the way that deck efficiency is always nice, and because we sometimes get lucky and end up able to mill a reanimation target.
• Tyrant's Scorn is a really strong early removal option for the sideboard. And it looks especially good in current standard given that the next best 2 mana removal we could include, Lava Coil, doesn't cut it against over-statted threats like Rotting Regisaur and Lovestruck Beast.

So if we're committed to 4 colors, how do we make the mana work out? Well, Kenrith is our only white card (discounting Lumbering Battlement which we'll mostly be reanimating), so we barely need white mana.

In addition, we're playing Fires of Invention, and most of the time we'll want to wait to play Kenrith until we can cast him with Fires, so that our mana stays untapped and we can use his abilities immediately. This means we don't even necessarily need white mana to cast him at all.

All in all, this means that 4 Fabled Passage and a single plains is more than enough white mana for us to consistently cast every spell in our deck.

Finally, since we're already planning to run a bunch of early looting effects in order to discard our reanimation targets, we can get away with a slightly lower land count than our curve would normally require. Be aware of this construction when considering your opening hand though. You don't typically want to keep a two lander if you don't also have a Thrill of Possibility.

Tips & Tricks

Don't discard lands to Thrill of Possibility if there's any chance it will prevent you from curving out. We're running a reduced land count, so it's not guaranteed you'll draw more.

Our ETB effect creatures, like Frilled Mystic, are often more useful to us in the graveyard than on the battlefield. For this reason, it's often worth it to kill them off with Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, or sacrifice them to Rankle, Master of Pranks even if your opponent has no creatures, or even target them with our own removal spells.

If you have one Kenrith, the Returned King in your graveyard and one on the battlefield, you can reanimate the one in your graveyard in response to your opponent trying to kill the one on the battlefield. You then sacrifice the one your opponent is targeting to the legend rule, and voila, your opponent's spell fizzles and you still have a Kenrith on the board.

It's almost never correct to play Kenrith without 5 mana available to reanimate a creature and protect him. We rely heavily on him for our deck to function, so make sure you keep him alive.

Once you've got a reanimation target or two in the graveyard, it's usually better to start keeping duplicates in your hand. Having two Drakuseth in your graveyard is no better than having one, but that second one in your hand is a strong threat if the game goes late and you don't have a Kenrith.

Sideboard

1 extra Drakuseth, Maw of Flames comes in against aggro decks. Basically, if your opponent is playing creatures that Drakuseth's ability can clear, and is lacking a scary top end better responded to with Frilled Mystic or Agent of Treachery, then Drakuseth is far and away the best reanimation target we have. Getting off one attack with him is usually enough to win the game on the spot against low curve decks, so we need to be able to get him online as quickly and consistently in these matchups.

2 Lumbering Battlement provides a reanimation target that can save Kenrith from board wipes. Frilled Mystic does this job to some extent, but we've only got 3 of those, so it's nice to have extra options.

1 extra Cry of the Carnarium. This is a good answer to Cauldron Familiar as well as any deck that likes to run a large number of small creatures.

3 Plaguecrafter will do well against any deck that isn't running disposable creatures. It's very efficient at answering one threat at a time, and puts itself immediately back in the graveyard for re-use. And if your opponent has no threats on the board, it becomes repeatable instant-speed discard.

4 Mystical Dispute to give us a fighting chance against flash decks. It has some application against slower decks in general, but we'll only really bring in all 4 of these against flash decks.

4 Tyrant's Scorn give us a really solid option for dealing with early creatures. And as stated previously, it's a pretty good answer to a lot of strong threats in current standard.

When considering what to cut, never go for Thrill of Possibility. This early draw effect is the main way we can justify running only 23 land in the deck, so if you cut too many you won't be able to make land drops consistently anymore.

Frilled Mystic isn't really worth it unless your opponent is running a scary top end. It's in the mainboard for now because current standard has a lot of very late game decks, but there's a case for moving it into the side depending on what decks you're facing.

Known Issues

Flash decks are very tough for us. If we can stick Kenrith on the board with mana up, we'll usually win from that point, but it's almost impossible to do that against a competent flash player.

If an opponent can cast more than one removal spell per turn, they can clear our Kenrith, and at that point we can just run out of steam. It might be worth running Bond of Revival as backup reanimation, but I couldn't find space for it.

Graveyard hate is really bad for us, and it's depressingly common in standard right now because of Cauldron Familiar. Plus, Nature's Claim is in the sideboard for almost all green decks right now, and happens to shut down our reanimation on top of killing Fires of Invention. There aren't very many good options to fight back, so your best bet is to start keeping your big threats in hand and hope to work up to just casting them. It's a lot slower and more fragile, but dropping both Kenrith and Drakuseth on the turn 7 and giving them haste can still be enough sometimes.

Final Thoughts

This deck has some real highs and lows. If you've got Kenrith on the board and 5 mana ready, the deck feels really powerful. You've got tonnes of very strong options available at instant speed, and none of your creatures really stay dead.

But if you can't find Kenrith, or your opponent manages to answer him permanently, then the deck feels pretty aimless.

Still, it does feel good to finally have a deck that uses Kenrith to his full potential.