Much Abrew: An Expensive Random Encounter (Standard)

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! A couple of months ago now, we played a $20 budget version of Random Encounter for Budget Magic, and the deck was super fun! One thing people have asked for is some non-budget version of Budget Magic decks. So today, we're going to bring back Random Encounter, but this time it costs $350 rather than $20! While the deck's primary plan is the same—ramp into Random Encounter, pray hard to the Magic gods, and hope for the best—the bigger budget allows for a ton of massive upgrades to the deck! If you have the $20 budget build, this version will give you something to build toward. And if you just want to wreck some fools on Magic Arena, the deck is also oddly strong! What does a Random Encounter deck look like if it costs $350 rather than $20? Let's get to the video and find out!

Much Abrew: An Expensive Random Encounter

Discussion

• Record-wise, we went 5-2 with the non-budget build of Random Encounter, and I think the deck might actually be pretty good, as weird as that sounds. Normally, random effects like Random Encounter aren't top-tier competitive cards. But the power of being able to drop multiple creatures into play with haste and the fact that, if things go wrong, you can always flash back Random Encounter a couple of turns later make the six-mana sorcery a surprisingly good way to win games of Standard. 
• As I mentioned before, the deck's plan is exactly the same as the $20 budget build's: ramp into Random Encounter, spin it to win it, and hope that the creatures Random Encounter offers win the game. But compared to the $20 budget build, the deck is more powerful in just about every way.
• First, our ramp gets upgraded, with cards like Bloomvine Regent, Overlord of the Hauntwoods, and Roxanne, Starfall Savant joining Summon: Fenrir and Llanowar Elves. Our finishers also get an upgrade in Vaultborn Tyrant to draw cards and gain life, and especially Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant. One of the problems with the $20 build of the deck is that we'd occasionally cast a Random Encounter and still lose because if we don't get lethal damage, we have to bounce all of the creatures Random Encounter put into play back to our hand at the end of turn. Ghalta solves this problem. If we hit it with Random Encounter, we can use it to dump all of the creatures in our hand on the battlefield. And these creatures stick around, unlike our Random Encounter threats. 
• The one card I'm not sold on in the non-budget build of the deck is Esper Origins. I keep going back and forth on whether the card should be a four-of or not played at all, which leaves us splitting down the middle with two copies in the main. The downside of Esper Origins is that since it's not a creature, we can't hit it off of Random Encounter, and we really want as few whiffs as possible in the deck. On the other hand, being able to surveil four (if we cast it twice) is really helpful in digging to find Random Encounter, which the deck is otherwise pretty bad at. I guess two copies is fine for now, but in the future, I could see going up to four or cutting it altogether.
• So, should you play An Expensive Random Encounter? I think the answer is yes! The deck is unique, super random, fun to play, and oddly competitive! If you're looking for something different to play in Standard that can still keep up with the top tier of the format, give Random Encounter a shot! It sounds like a meme, but in my experience, it's actually a really solid deck!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.