Five-Color Dawn: Standard Sunbird Ojutai

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

The Lost Caverns of Ixalan brought us a fun multicolor deck component in Sunbird Standard: the more colors you craft with, the stronger it gets. Standard also happens to have a White-Green-based five-color Domain deck, so what chemistry happens when you put the two together? And what does Zurgo and Ojutai, shown in the header image, have to do with this deck? Read on and find out!

Sunbird’s Invocation: Card Analysis

{T}: Add one mana of any color.
Craft with one or more {5} ({5}, Exile this artifact, Exile the rest from among other permanents you control and/or cards from your graveyard: Return this card transformed under its owner’s control. Craft only as a sorcery.)
//
Flying, vigilance, haste
Sunbird Effigy’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of colors among exiled cards used to craft it.
{T}: For each color among exiled cards used to craft Sunbird Effigy, add one mana of that color.

The front of Sunbird Standard is a traditional three-mana artifact ramp piece. In current Domain decks it takes the slot of Topiary Stomper. The upside is that it never gets color-screwed and produces mana right away; the downside is that it doesn’t gain any resources, and the prerequisites for transforming it are fairly demanding. But once it becomes Sunbird Effigy it has flying, haste and vigilance, and as an artifact creature it naturally dodges Go for the Throat and The Wandering Emperor, and it can tap for mana immediately, which is full of potential. To craft efficiently, though, you need support from five-color cards. There are currently six five-color cards in Standard: Invasion of Alara//Awaken the Maelstrom, Jodah, the Unifier, Meeting of the Five, Niv-Mizzet, Supreme, Omnath, Locus of All, and The Kami War//O-Kagachi Made Manifest. Of these, Jodah, Meeting of the Five and Niv-Mizzet don’t fit the theme well, and Omnath is too passive, so I chose to build around Invasion of Alara together with The Kami War.

The decklist is as follows:

Decklist link

As you can see, the base is a Domain deck. The core pieces, Leyline Binding, Herd Migration, Up the Beanstalk, Invasion of Zendikar//Awakened Skyclave and Archangel of Wrath, are of course all here. For sweepers, considering that Invasion of Alara is effectively discover 4, the main force is the four-mana Depopulate, supplemented by a small number of Depart the Realm.

Because this version is built around battles, Atraxa, Grand Unifier, which has no haste and so can’t immediately break a battle, is clearly not such a good fit. Instead I use Zurgo and Ojutai, which has haste and hexproof and gets an extra effect when attacking battles, as the other main source of damage.

Flying, haste
Zurgo and Ojutai has hexproof as long as it entered this turn.
Whenever one or more Dragons you control deal combat damage to a player or battle, look at the top three cards of your library. Put one into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. You may return one of those Dragons to its owner’s hand.

Back when Dragons of Tarkir was still in Standard, Dragonlord Ojutai, with built-in hexproof and foresight, combined with the Dragon-specific counterspell Silumgar’s Scorn to establish the White-Blue Ojutai control deck that lasted until the rotation. Zurgo and Ojutai, released in March of the Machine, blends in the flavor of the Kolaghan clan: it can ambush for one punch, draw some cards and run. It not only interacts well with Up the Beanstalk, but with the support of Cavern of Souls it can almost only be removed by instant-speed tricks, making it a very stable source of damage. And since it is itself a three-color card, adding just one more green card is enough to craft a four-color Sunbird, so even if it does eat that removal, it still has a use.

Tromp the Domains: Gameplay Demo

Play is the same as a regular Domain deck: ramp up and slam Invasion of Alara to gain resources. Although it can’t reliably produce a big finisher like the Bramble Familiar version, it still draws two cards and casts one of them for free, which is passable from a card-resource standpoint. And as the video shows, if you can’t take Invasion of Alara down, you can simply use it as craft material and catch your opponent off guard. Compared with the Domain lists of the meta, this version has weaker board control, but thanks to the hasty Sunbird Effigy and the Cavern of Souls-boosted Zurgo and Ojutai, the main deck can deal damage and gain resources effectively against more controlling decks.

Conclusion

Because a White-Green-based five-color Domain deck has few color constraints, the only truly indispensable cards are the tri-lands and Leyline Binding. With the Standard card pool expanding, the room for variation in deckbuilding is actually surprisingly ample and well worth exploring. This article is just a variant example to spark ideas among readers, and perhaps your own ingenious idea can lead to a deck stronger and more stable than the lists currently seen in tournaments. This year happens to be the Year of the Dragon, so I offer this five-color dragon-and-phoenix deck as a lucky omen for the new year. May everyone turn the tables like a dragon and sing to the morning sun like a phoenix in the year ahead.