When a new magic set is realised, too often we all scramble to build brand new decks that include as many cards as possible from the latest release. This is completely understandable, as who doesn’t want to play with all the nice new toys when they come out? But sometimes it can be worth looking at older archetypes that have fallen out of favour to see if the new influx of cards has revitalised these once heavily played decks. That is what I aim to do with today’s brew, which I am lovingly calling: Uro Gates.

If you go back a few months you will see that I was a massive fan of the Gate Control archetype. Not only was I using it to grind through the MTG Arena ladder, but I had also built the deck in real life and was having a blast ramping up to ludicrous levels of mana and sweeping away all threats with a Gates Ablaze or two.

However, as the meta evolved, the deck started to lose its appeal with decks like U/G Flash and Mono Red having favourable match-ups against it. But I’m not ready to say goodbye to this deck just yet, and I believe that a few cards from Theros Beyond Death might just give us the tools we need to fight our way back into the meta.

The version of the deck I’ll be working from is the Temur Reclamation build, as this was one of the versions I had the most success with. We’ll start with some of the mainstays of the deck in the form of Growth Spiral and Circuitous Route. Both of these cards can put us ahead on mana quickly and help us fix our colours. Next we have a full playset of Guild Summit. For three mana this enchantment allows us to dig through our deck with surprising speed. With a single copy on the table both Growth Spiral and Circuitous Route draw us two cards deeper into our deck. This is doubled up when we have a second copy or when copying them with Expansion // Explosion, not to mention just drawing a card off playing any of our lands, quickly giving us some sizeable card advantage.

Our main win condition is still the combination of Wilderness Reclamation and Expansion // Explosion, as well as Electrodominance to add to our suite of fireball effects. With enough mana we can easily destroy our opponent’s life total in our end step, which is still one of the most satisfying ways to win a game on Arena in my humble opinion. The last non-land card that we are carrying over from the previous iteration of the deck is of course a playset of Gates Ablaze in order to keep the board clear of threats.

So that’s what’s old, but what about the new? Well first off, we are running a playset of Omen of the Sea. Not only does this card give us more card draw and some card filtering, but, since it has flash, we are able to make use of it at instant speed with our untapped lands thanks to Wilderness Reclamation. But the main new addition to the deck is of course the devastatingly good Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath.

This card does so much for such little cost. First of all, when we cast it for only three mana, we gain three life, draw a card, and get to ramp by playing a land from our hand. Sure, it then goes to the graveyard, but it has already done so much to help us out. Then of course when we have enough cards in our graveyard (which shouldn’t take too long with all the copies of Growth Spiral and Circuitous Route we are playing) we get to Escape it as a secondary win con, at which point our opponent will be hard pressed to stop us.

Our mana base is pretty stacked as you would imagine. Four copies each of Izzet Guildgate, Simic Guildgate, and Gruul Guildgate as well as two copies each of Boros Guildgate, Azorius Guildgate, and Selesnya Guildgate cover most of our bases. To help with fixing we also run a playset of Plaza of Harmony as well as a single Gateway Plaza, rounded off with a single Island, Mountain, and Forest.

For our sideboard we are sticking to the transformative strategy. Gatebreaker Ram and Gate Colossus are great payoffs considering our mana base, and Archway Angel can make sure we don’t get run over by aggro decks. And, finally, we run three copies of Banishing Light and a couple of Deafening Clarion.

What do you think of the deck? Have you been trying out something similar at your local FNM? Why not tell us in the comments below. And while you’re there, you could like and subscribe to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics.

We also have a Patreon, so if you want to support future content for the site, consider becoming one of our Patrons. Just $1 a month would do so much to help us create more of the content you enjoy. If you have any ideas for new and exciting decks you want me to look at, you can contact me directly @MTGTengu over on Twitter. But until next time, remember: no matter the game you play or where you play it, good luck and have fun.

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