Standard Deck Guide: Gilgamesh Combo Equipments

Hello, everyone!

We're in the first week with Final Fantasy valid in all sanctioned formats in Magic: the Gathering! Of course, with the Pro Tour coming up, which will be on June 20-23, much of the attention is on the Standard format.

It's a bit early to assess the impact of the set, but what we saw in the first few days were many experiments with lots of different strategies - if you like to brew and build decks, it's like an early Christmas!

Today, I'm bringing you a deck that has been a lot of fun for me on Magic Arena in these first few days, a combo centered on a Final Fantasy card: Gilgamesh, Master-at-Arms! Let's go!

First things first, let's take a minut to explain how the FF card connects to the franchise. Gilgamesh is a character that shows up in several games from the Final Fantasy series. His role in the games varies greatly - he can be an ally, an enemy, and even a boss. The referenced game on his Magic card is Final Fantasy V, which was the first game in which he appeared.

Regardless of his alignment in the games, Gilgamesh is always pictured as a powerful and skilled swordsman, with a taste for collecting famous swords. Hence his card in Magic is directly linked to artifacts with the Equipment type - a 10/10 flavor score for the character.

Gilgamesh is a 6/6 that costs , and, when it enters the battlefield or attacks, you look at the top six cards of your deck and put any Equipment cards directly into play, for free. The remaining cards go to the bottom of the deck, in random order. Also, after putting any number of Equipment on the field, you can choose one of them and attach it, also for free, to a Samurai you control - like Gilgamesh himself.

So, we know that our Gilgamesh-focused deck will use red , and will also have Equipment to abuse Gilgamesh's enter-the-battlefield ability. Let's present the list and explain our card choices!

As mentioned, the deck has Gilgamesh, Master-at-Arms as its main win condition. We want to find Gilgamesh, get to six mana, and cast him as soon as possible, so we can then abuse his etb ability and bring several equipments to the battlefield for free.

An important interaction must be made clear about Gilgamesh's effect: although the wall of text on the card is just one ability, in fact, the part that allows you to attach an equipment for free to a Samurai is a delayed-triggered ability, that is, it will go to the stack separately.

This means that if we find equipments with enter-the-battlefield abilities - like For Mirrodin! or Job Select -, we can order the abilities on the stack so that first the tokens are created and equipped, and then we can attach the equipment to Gilgamesh!

In other words, equipment that grants haste, such as Samurai’s Katana or Dragonwing Glider, will create their tokens and we can still move the equipment to our gigantic Samurai - and attack with it, triggering the ability again, bringing more and more equipment to our board!

To make a rather bold comparison, it's similar to Muxus, Goblin Grandee in Goblin decks - you want to hit six mana, cast Muxus, and basically tip the scales in your favor.

Equipments

We have a total of twenty-four equipments, or 40% of our deck. This gives us an average of 2 to 3 equipments in the top 6 cards. The ones we chose have different effects, as we will see below.

Knife may seem innocuous, but it actually helps with consistency, since in addition to being an equipment, it is also a Clue, and can be sacrificed to draw a card. Also, there are situations in which the First Strike can be very needed in combat.

Chainsaw is a removal disguised as equipment, and helps both in the early turns, to keep you safe, and also to remove blockers on the turn you cast Gilgamesh.

Gold Pan is a ramp spell, allowing you to reach the required six mana earlier, and it is also a way to generate extra mana if you find it from the top of the deck.

And finally, our combat-focused equipment: Cori-Steel Cutter, Dragonwing Glider and Samurai’s Katana grant haste, so you can immediately attack with Gilgamesh and activate the ability to search for more equipments. Dissection Tools helps granting Lifelink, if you are under a lot of pressure from an aggressive deck. Thanks to the tokens, you can equip it, attack, and then equip it to another creature to be a blocker on the opponent's turn.

Of course, all of these equipment also generate creatures on their own, so they are our Plan B if we can't find a Gilgamesh, Master-at-Arms. Yes, you read that right: Cori-Steel Cutter is our plan B! Please excuse my Blasphemous Act...

Ramp and Interaction

We've already talked about Gold Pan, which combines equipment + ramp, and as a redundancy we also have Grabby Giant, another ramp card. The creature side isn't so bad, and eventually in a long game you might even end up drawing some cards with it.

Similarly, the land The Gold Saucer will help you ramp, if the coin is in your favor. Of course, it's inconsistent, but it's another option to keep in mind.

Rounding out the deck, we have Torch the Tower to remove early creatures, really efficient against Heartfire Hero, since it exiles the creature, preventing when-it-dies effects. And we also have Cavern of Souls to prevent counters from the opponent - so even if Gilgamesh eats a removal spell, you're guaranteed at least one etb ability, giving you some value bringing equipments to the board.

Sideboard

Post-side you want to adjust your deck according to how fast the opponent's deck is - remember, our goal is to reach six mana safe and sound!

While we do use Cori-Steel Cutter, we certainly don't abuse it, so we can't ignore the decks that do. Magebane punishes multi-spells, and Witchstalker is another removal option to help us get to six mana with a good life cushion.

Here we have a specific blue-white hate spell, and also some grave hate to help against graveyard-abusing strategies, like the Abuelo-Omniscience deck.

These 3 1-ofs are actually extra copies of cards that we already use in the maindeck, and depending on the matchup you'll want more of them. Typically, another Cutter will come in against decks with a lot of removal for Gilgamesh, while the extra copy of Dissection is interesting when on the play against aggressive decks. The fourth Torch the Tower is another removal option along with Witchstalker Frenzy.

We featured a MonoRed list, since it's the one I've been testing on Magic Arena, but we can certainly find more options if we bring another color to the deck.

Blue can help with consistency to find Gilgamesh, and also bring cantrips that play well with Cori-Steel Cutter. My concern here would be to maintain the combo identity of the deck, and not just turn it into a worse version of the existing UR Cutter.

Green would have an interesting contribution with Fierce Empath, which basically tutors Gilgamesh from the deck to our hand. It also opens up some ramp options, such as Invasion of Ergamon, or Glimpse the Core and the like.

White has a lot of synergistic cards with equipment, and would also bring Machinist’s Arsenal, with the potential to turn Gilgamesh’s first attack into a lethal one - this would be an interesting highroll potential.

Black would bring other tutor options, such as Diabolic Intent, as well as removals, and discards like Duress, to ensure Gilgamesh stays on the board. This is another interesting option, but be careful not to dilute the deck too much and lose Gilgamesh’s explosive potential.

The idea behind today's deck was to combine the Final Fantasy theme and bring something fun to the Standard format, which has been gaining everyone's attention due to the Pro Tour next week.

I hope you enjoyed it!

Don't forget to share your feedback, especially if, like me, you also enjoy different decks!

Cheers and see you next time!