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4 Dimir Aqueduct
9 Island
10 Swamp

Sky Swallower v3.

Description of deck by its author (quoted):
I was looking through all of the cards available in Standard (and don't worry, I'll be playing other formats eventually!), and I wanted to find as many cards as possible that didn't care if they changed owner. After a long search, I finally hit upon Zur's Weirding. I say a long search, because alphabetically speaking it's dead last, give or take Zybleiweiss's Intuition (coming in Coldsnap!).

You see, there are three huge problems with building a deck around Sky Swallower:

• Once you cast Sky Swallower, you have virtually no way of protecting it from being killed/bounced/neutralized. The last thing I wanted to do was to cast Sky Swallower, only to have it hit by Pillory of the Sleepless.
• Once you cast Sky Swallower, you've probably doubled your opponent's mana. This means they can pull off all sorts of nasty things such as, say, Blaze for 20.
• Once you cast Sky Swallower, your opponent gets everything on your side of the board - so if you've got creatures you were beating down with, suddenly you're being beat down.

Zur's Weirding solved all two of these problems at once. With a Weirding on the board, I could see when it was safe to drop a Swallower, and make sure that it stayed safe. It didn't matter that my opponent gets the Weirding once the Swallower comes into play – it works equally well on either side of the board. An active Weirding also prevents my opponent for drawing any action spells for the rest of the game (or until I run out of life, but with a Sky Swallower on the board, I tend to win that race).

Once I decided that the deck would be built around Sky Swallower/Zur's Weirding, it was time to find support cards. Zur's Weirding works both ways, so your opponent can prevent you from drawing action spells. However, Zur's Weirding does not strictly stop you from getting new cards into your hand through alternate means – an important fact to keep in mind. There were three cards that went into the initial build above that abuse this. They are Dimir House Guard, Brainspoil, and Stinkweed Imp. Brainspoil allows me to tutor up a Sky Swallower under a Weirding, and Stinkweed Imp can dredge back to my hand in lieu of a Weirding-draw step. Dimir House Guard served two purposes – it would let me tutor up one of several spells, or it would serve as an outlet to sacrifice all of my creatures right before I cast a Swallower – which solves problem #3 above.

I also added Time Ebb and Vedalken Dismisser due to their interaction with Zur's Weirding. Both set my opponent back a draw, buying me time to get the pieces of my deck in place. With a Weirding on the table, both of those cards double as removal – Time Ebbing a Loxodon Hierarch with Zur's favorite enchantment in play is akin to paying and two life to deny your opponent board position and their next draw.

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by Ben Bleiweiss @ www.wizards.com

S.C.S.: Sky Swallorer