Mardu Aristocrats (Standard)

Aristrocrats gets some key additions with WAR, the obvious one being Cruel Celebrant. We've taken Grim Initiate over Footlight Fiend, since a 1/1 body is better in this deck than 1 damage, as well as Fireblade Artist over Pitiless Pontiff. Pontiff can have more activations overall, but Fireblade Artist speeds up our clock for less cost, and plays very well with amass and Dreadhorde Invasion.

In general, the strategy is to have as many Cruel Celebrant and/or Judith out while you repeatedly sacrifice Gutterbones, amass tokens and whatever else to Priest of Forgotten Gods. Priest is the most important piece here; you want opening hands to either have Priest or both a blood artist type card and a sac outlet (say, Judith and Fireblade Artist). Priest alone is more than good enough.

If you're playing in Arena, you'll want the option to reorder triggers on, so that you can always sac an amass token to Fireblade Artist before Dreadhorde Invasion pumps it.

For Unclaimed Territory, you can name human to cast Judith, Fireblade Artist, Priest of Forgotten Gods, Hero of Precinct One, and Teysa. You can also name warrior, vampire, or zombie depending on what you need; each covers 2-3 different cards.

Sideboard notes:

• for slower matchups, you'll want to sideboard out some 1-drops and bring in Seraph of the Scales and maybe Liliana depending on the speed of their deck.
• Against control, you'll want to sideboard out Priest and bring in Seraph and Duress.
• If you feel pressured by aggro, bring in Spark Harvest and Ajani's Welcome while taking out the higher end (Elenda, Teysa).
• In longer matches where you have issues with card draw, bring in Experimental Frenzy
• Duress covers any slower options like artifacts, control, some midrange, etc.