Red White aggro just barely won at the pro tour in the hands of Andrew Elenbogen and has recently become the deck to beat. With fast starts, and hard to kill creatures such as Adanto Vanguard, it can get underneath most decks and beat them to a pulp. Because of this, one of the most important cards in the meta right now would have to be Deafening Clarion. A 3 mana sweeper is vital in this meta in order to clear the swarm before it gets too oppressive.
The unique thing about Deafening Clarion is that it also has the secondary mode of giving all of your creatures lifelink. If you can play enough creatures with a toughness of 4 or higher you can not only blow up everything your opponent owns, but also gain enough life that they have no chance of coming back. Currently, the best deck that plays Deafening Clarion is Jeskai Drakes, with a solid control gameplan and 8 powerful creatures to close the game when they have the lead, Jeskai Drakes is a deck to watch out for.
Deafening Clarion can fit in more than one shell, however. Dealing damage to all of your creatures can even be an upside in certain situations. If your creatures have any abilities that trigger upon taking damage, dealing 3 damage to all of your creatures and giving them lifelink can actually be insane. Wiping your opponent’s board, drawing a card, and swinging in with a 4/5 lifelink is brutal and can usually close out most matches. Deafening Clarion fits in perfectly in a Naya Dinosaurs deck, and allows for some really busted turns.
One of the reasons I like this deck more than the Jeskai Drakes deck is having more creatures. Single target removal is not as good against a deck packed full of creatures, and you can still be aggressive when paired up against a control deck. This allows us to play a solid midrange deck, where our creatures and Clarions trump anything our aggro opponents may play, while we still have the beef to apply pressure to our opponents. The mana for Naya is also exceptionally good right now, with the only dual land the deck is missing being Stomping Grounds. RG dinosaurs have been seeing some amount of success recently, and I believe that splashing white for Deafening Clarion is the correct choice.
My version of the decklist is an attempt to make it slightly more budget-friendly, while still having a powerful deck. One of the first changes I made to the deck was to replace Carnage Tyrant with Trapjaw Tyrant. The difference between an $8 playset and a $140 playset is significant enough for me to accept the downgrade. Trapjaw Tyrant is still a powerful card, and works more based on synergy than raw power, and is still a powerful option in our deck. If you do have Carnage Tyrant, however, do play him. Another change I made to /u/TheFiremind88’s deck was choosing to play Gishath, Sun’s Avatar instead of Zacama, Primal Calamity. In a deck packed with dinosaurs, Gishath can instantly establish a board presence. The difference of 1 mana is also pretty significant and makes it much less likely for Gishath to get stuck in the hand. Otherwise, most of the deck is pretty similar to /u/TheFiremind88’s list and I agree with most of the points he makes in his post. (You can find that article here).
Deafening Clarion is clearly an important card in this Standard season, and I believe that expanding past its current shell in drakes just might take it to the next level. Playing a deck with a lot of beef, and mainboard sweepers seem like a good place to be in this metagame. I would again like to thank /u/TheFiremind88 for the inspiration for this deck, and I hope that using Deafening Clarion in this way can inspire more people. If you would like to see the deck in action, be sure to check out my stream twitch.tv/TuesdayTastic at noon on November 17th. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you have a great week and an amazing Tuesday!
Recently Tamiyo’s Journal made a video involving this deck, which you can find here. He made a few changes to the deck, but really enjoys it and played a few rounds of it on Arena so you should go check it out if you are interested!
Link to Decklist: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/1469941
