Are you looking for an absolutely brutal beatdown deck? Look no further. This deck's got synergy for days, and curves that'll destroy your marriage.

Let's get into it

We're all familiar with the 1 and 2-mana treasure package. It's great for ramping. But it also creates a punishing pillow fort that threatens to push you farther ahead if your opponents try to rush you.

What stands out in this deck is the removal of Skullport Merchant. Yes, he can get you to 5 mana on the next turn. Yes, he's a fantastic weenie blocker that, yes, can easily turn into a card advantage engine. No. You don't need him. This deck focuses more on creating a steady stream of threats. So we don't want to be over-reliant on treasures. But they do serve as a similar catch-up mechanic to Loyal Warhound with a lot more consistency when on the draw.

When the opponent isn't playing treasure, all it takes is one treasure to pull up to your opponent. While getting lots of treasures is great, every additional turn you spend ramping instead of impacting the board puts you behind. With this shell, you trade those extra treasures so that you can start swinging hard a turn earlier. Statistically, you will average pulling one or more of your eight treasure cards on the draw, allowing you to skirt ahead both on the draw and on the play. More than enough to begin snowballing faster than your opponent can handle.

Skullport Merchant can absolutely become a card draw machine later in the game. But not only must he stick, but the game state must provide enough for him to produce extra value. If he's your only creature, and you pull a land, you feel pretty bad. Perhaps he'd be better in a deck with more small creatures, but he doesn't quite do it here. This deck only has room for one three-drop slot. And we go with Soul Shatter because it provides much better utility for the rest of the deck.

Soul Shatter has to be hands-down one of the best cards to defeat Izzet tempo decks with. You cannot go without this card. Not only is it good for hosing the archetype, but as it turns out, it's extremely good at pushing through massive amounts of damage. When your opponent desperately depends on having exactly enough blockers, you'll be able to hit them for lethal amounts of damage. Often after they're trying to rebuild after your Blood on the Snow.

That does it for our 1-3 drops. Let's talk about our big creatures.

First and foremost, Vorinclex is an absolute powerhouse. But I really have to underscore this.

One of the big things hurting Blood on the Snow control decks is that the good targets are too few, and chump-blockers as a consolation prize is pretty terrible. In this deck, we're foregoing the usual planeswalker-heavy approach in favor of having loads of Blood on the Snow synergy. Through creatures that begin an avalanche of damage going at your opponent's face turn after turn.

We have Vorinclex and Professor Onyx here as a 2-card win the game combo. Blood on the Snow means there is constant pressure for your opponent to leave answers up. In our deck, Vorinclex staples 6 damage onto Blood on the Snow. Or you're stapling a board wipe into your Vorinclex. However you look at it, both of these cards give you some of the best value for 6 mana in Standard22. All three of these synergize like Alrund's Epiphany does with Goldspan Dragon. It's unfortunate that we only run 2 of him, but Professor Onyx cranks out so much value and we cannot overstuff our 6-drops lest the deck devolve into jank.

While we can't stuff more 'Clexes into the deck, Spirit of the Aldergard is our "Vorinclex at home." Thankfully the bear is also a massive value powerhouse. The 4 toughness means it's hard to remove. But what's better is that he gets stronger as he ramps. This thing pulls you farther and farther ahead as your mana base grows. It allows you to start your damage clock early, put your opponent on the back foot, and keep them there.

The bear is also one of the very few Faceless Haven tutors in the format. And this is where it shines. Every time the bear hits the battlefield, you've just gained another 4/3 that's waiting to beat down your opponent. By the time you reach eight lands, you're usually swinging with two Havens every turn. Remember that you can cast this as early as turn three with a treasure. When you do, you can assemble your haven combo more consistently by turn four. If you already have a Haven, you can be swinging with a 4/4 bear and a 4/3 haven as early as turn four.

Westgate Regent fills a very similar role. It's a 4/4 flier that doubles its power every time it hits your opponent. Coming off the Aldergard bear curve, this guy is deadly. Your opponent may already be trying to deal with your ramp-bear, and maybe also your Haven, and now they're on a two-turn clock thanks to the vampire. In order to answer him, your opponent has to discard a card. At worst, he's becoming an 8/8 flying wall between you and your opponent if he sticks around.

So let's say your opponent chooses to discard two cards that turn. You curve perfectly into Blood on the Snow the next turn. Now the vampire is back, and if he's removed again, they'll be down four cards and greatly constrained on options. If you curve Regent into Vorinclex, now the vamp becomes a 12/12 after damage instead of an 8/8. An opponent without an answer is dead the next turn. If you got Onyx, you can grab a Blood on the Snow and just snowball out of control. This is another card that you can cast as early as turn 3 if you manage double treasures. Also bear in mind that Westgate Regent lets you squeeze more out of Deadly Dispute in the late game. Respond to your opponent discarding to pay the ward cost and now they've discarded two cards just to have you draw two and create a treasure. A four-card, one-mana swing.

As you can see, just about any card you put next to these creatures puts immense pressure on your opponent. The deck constantly pumps out must-answer threats that cannot all be answered. Professor Onyx is yet another combo and value keystone in a deck filled with these keystones.

Let's talk about the other Planeswalkers first.

Lolth feels good. You pay 5, can intercept and kill dragons, and as long as she doesn't get pinged, she's a card value engine. Unfortunately, she doesn't really do what we want from this deck. When you pull out a Regent, the game is over if it's not removed, and Ward - Discard empties your opponent's hands of their threats and answers. No matter what they do on turn 5, the Regent makes your next 6-drop hurt.

Lolth just doesn't hold a candle to this. She's incredibly difficult to keep alive, her passive isn't going to matter enough without loads of creatures, and Vorinclex's counter doubling doesn't really feel great on her ETB. Her ultimate has more hoops to jump through for the payoff, and endlessly blocking two creatures doesn't work well if your opponent isn't letting you chump block with them until after they've used their removal. Regent slots in here and threatens to take over the game by himself. Lolth requires an ultimate via Vorinclex in conjunction with other creatures staying alive to ping the opponent. Three cards where the Regent is all-in-one. After a swing, Westgate Regent becomes a much better blocker than the spiders. I just don't think Lolth can fill those roles in this deck.

Kaya is an interesting choice. You can play her pretty comfortably with minimal white splash thanks to the treasures. Unfortunately, like Lolth, she suffers greatly from being easy to remove while giving you little value. Kaya's ultimate is great when it gets going, but even when you do pull it off, it takes at least two turns of recursion before you really start feeling the value add pressure. The creature recursion is nice, but often your chump blockers are gone by this point, and it only takes removal in response to make her +1 fizzle. She works great when she works, but she often just doesn't work here.

Professor Onyx checks off a lot of boxes and fills a lot of roles. Her ultimate will usually win you the game outright. So the payoff with Vorinclex is strong. More importantly, you may find a much larger incentive on ETB to +1 her rather than doing -3 for creature spot removal and leaving her vulnerable. This is because when her +1 finds your Blood on the Snow, you can kill all of the creatures next turn and +1 her again. And when it's not finding Blood, it's finding more bombs. This synergy will put you very far ahead very fast.

Now for the lands.

Lands, we go 100% snow. As much as I love the Hive, we cannot under any circumstance risk not being able to reanimate Vorinclex or Onyx on turn 6 after you played him on turn 5 thanks to your treasure. After playing this deck, I'm prepared to say that the Blood on the Snow + Vorinclex/Onyx combo is so important that any deck running any number of non-snow lands is making a huge mistake.

Usually, this kind of deck carries a pretty significant weakness to control and tempo decks like Izzet. The Havens are always the key here. But usually, all your opponent needs is a couple of burn spells or spot removal to dry them up. Usually, that's how this plays out. Thanks to the Spirit of Aldergard, you can continually restock on Havens. All the while exhausting their answers and forcing trades with your other large creatures. Remember that starting at six lands, when you attack with your Haven, you can tap it and 1B to Soul Shatter a blocker. At five lands you can safely hold up Deadly Dispute.

The Learnboard:

Always two Environmental Sciences. Aside from early mana fixing, they turn your learn cards into the cheapest drain available with Professor Onyx. Hunt for Specimens becomes "3B: Target opponent loses 4 life, you gain 6 life, create a 1/1 chump blocker that saves you even more life, and grab something to give your bears +1/+0." You cannot pass that up.

We run one Intro to Prophecy partly because we want a 3 drop to give us a good curve after Hunt to match Eyetwitch curving into Sciences. Don't underestimate the scry 2 draw. If you're not worried about life, it pulls more weight than a turn three Sciences with the same floor. Just over 1 of 3 cards are likely to be lands in any given 3-card pile. Meaning you'll often be able to pick the land out while setting up your next draw. If there's no land in the top two, usually it'll be the third. In the late game where you're not Science-draining with Onyx, but perhaps you know a Mascot Exhibition is out of the question. You can use the scry 2 to dig for another threat (also about 1/3 of the deck are major threats.) Or towards something that wins you the game in conjunction with another card in your hand.

Speaking of Mascot Exhibition, the question might be why we are only running two? The answer is because of all of the other treasure decks going around. Most of them tend to come prepared with their own board wipes and their own Exhibitions. Since we have more 6-drop threats, we're able to comfortably cut down the Exhibitions while comfortably curving into those we take earlier. Our giant creatures mean that we can sometimes smash through an opponent's Mascots without having to wipe the board.

In place of the extra Exhibitions, we run two Confront the Pasts to give us a total of six cards that bring back our Professor. Since Onyx chains into more threats, we like having a few more ways to bring her back. Admittedly they work better with turn five Kaya into turn six Kaya, but Onyx benefits as well. As long as you keep bringing back the Professor, there's no stopping the pain train.

Final thoughts

The deck has been performing amazingly in Platinum where I've gone 7-0 so far. Previously I ran 3x Onyx and 1x Nissa before I discovered the Regents. Nissa can help you cheat out Vorinclex but she has a lot of trouble staying alive since the animated lands can't block for her. Froghemoth was also considered for this slot as another "Vorinclex at home", and could be pretty strong as it can exile all of the opponent's creatures killed with Blood on the Snow for +1/+1 counters and perhaps some life gain. But Westgate Regent has evasion, doesn't rely on creatures dying to grow, and can repeatedly punish opponents for answering it. Froghemoth also only grows after the damage has been dealt. It does get 4 damage in easily, but it also might not grow at all. So I'm not sold on it.

I hope you enjoy this deck as much as I am!