Insane 38-Creature Deck Wrecks Recent Tournaments

Last updated on November 21, 2025

Badgermole | Illustration by Matteo Bassini

Why use many card type when few do trick?

MTGO players NEB12R and DB_CLAUDIOH demonstrated this wisdom with creature-only decks that 5-0'd Standard Leagues on November 19th and 20th. These aggressive decks took trophies thanks to Avatar: the Last Airbender‘s (TLA) new ally cards.

5-Color Allies in Standard 2025

Deck credit: NEB12R | Source: mtgo.com

TLA introduced creatures with the ally subtype into Standard, which became the core of this all-creature, five-color deck. Mechanically, allies care about other allies, either to become stronger themselves or to make other allies more powerful. This deck's three key cards exemplify this: Earthen Ally, Earth King's Lieutenant, and Wartime Protestors.

Aggro decks need to hit early and often, which Earthen Ally excels at. 70% of this deck's spells are white, so you can almost always count on it being a 1-mana 2/2 to apply pressure from turn 1. If that wasn't enough, the earthbend 5 ability means it isn't completely dead when drawn later in the game.

Earth King's Lieutenant follows in the footsteps of Thalia's Lieutenant as an ugly threat: You can play this on turn 2 for a gradually growing monster, or drop it turn 6 to rally your allies with the moral (and power) boost needed for victory.

Wartime Protestors provides the deck with necessary top-end that finishes the game. A 4-mana 4/4 with haste poses a serious threat on its own, but the Protestors making your other allies hit harder and faster elevates this creature a must-kill threat.

While this trifecta are the core, important elements of the deck, other cards have important roles to play.

Aang, Swift Savior, Appa, Steadfast Guardian, and Earth Kingdom Protectors provide essential protection against board wipes and spot removal. The best answer to aggro decks are removal spells, so synergistic answers to them give the deck a leg up. Airbending is a particularly potent form of protection since it gets around all sweepers, including those that reduce creatures' toughness or exile them.

Aang, at the Crossroads and South Pole Voyager give the deck card advantage. Between the Aang, Swift Savor and Appa, the deck can easily transform Aang, at the Crossroads, and the Voyagers provide steady lifegain to help race other aggro decks.

Invasion Reinforcements work with virtually all the cards in the deck: It's two bodies for Earth King's Lieutenant and Aang, Swift Savior‘s waterbend cost, it's a great card to airbend, it's a great follow up to Wartime Protesters since it adds four hasty power to the board.

Five-Color Fixing in Standard 2025

Cavern of Souls | Illustration by Alayna Danner

Five-color decks have a huge advantage in Magic: They can play all the best cards in a given format, an advantage balanced by the struggles of fixing for five colors of mana. Luckily for this deck, Standard has excellent fixing for five-color typal strategies.

Avatar: the Last Airbender introduced two vital pieces of fixing for five-color allies: Great Divide Guide, which practically gives you perfect mana, and Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop, a land tailor-made for ally decks with five colors of fixing and a mana sink. But many of the deck's fixing tools already existed in Standard.

Starting Town and Multiversal Passage offer general fixing to five-color decks, with a few drawbacks like losing life and potentially entering tapped. Even if you need to gamble life away, these are excellent fixing cards.

Standard's fixing tools also include dedicated typal support. Secluded Courtyard provides typal decks in numerous formats excellent mana fixing, and you can't ignore Cavern of Souls—one of the best five-color fixers and typal support lands in the game.

Critically, most of these lands have nothing to do with allies themselves. With cards like Starting Town, Cavern of Souls, and Secluded Courtyard, other typal decks could be waiting for proper support to break out and reshape Standard themselves.