From the Magic Online Competitive League 5-0 postings on  we are seeing still another downward trend on the total number of decks published.  Down to 40, a 5% change from last week, and with only 22 of the 40 decks repping Planeswalkers (another downward trend in terms of total meta percentage), this sounds to me like the “correct builds” of these decks are being figured out rather than a shift away from the powerful game-altering Mages.  This is evidenced by the fact that 6 of the top-8 decks at the Star City Games Classic had a main-deck ‘Walker.

Looking at the breakdown of Planeswalkers, there is a DRASTIC dropoff in the number of Vivien Reid being played.  Falling off by 64% from last week, down to only 6 main deck copies across 4 decks and 4 main deck archetypes from last week’s 13 copies main across 7 decks in 6 archetypes.  Is our newly crowned Queen of GRN Standard already losing hold of her empire?  Considering that Teferi, Hero of Dominaria has remained a stalwart of Mythic proportions (yes, MYTHIC…) with a consistent 26 copies across 7 decks and representing 5 separate archetypes in each of the first 3 weeks, I would say that he gives a much wider array of options to suit your deck building styles.  Of the Teferi archetypes, I still assert that the Jeskai Control decks have the best chance at crafting a strategy to win through an unknown field.  The deck might not have blistering starts or a powerful top-end creature package, but the answers seem to line up just right.  I really like YUANJI’s list that leans in a little heavier on the white splash for powerful spot removal effects in Justice Strike and Deafening Clarion and the utility sweeper Cleansing Nova.  Against the grindy midrange decks like Golgari, you definitely want your cards to be giving you 3- and 4-for-1 potential in order to out-value their constant stream of 2-for-1’s.

As good as this Jeskai list is, GOBERN’s Esper Control lists look like a picturesque representation of a control deck in its purest form.  Tons of permission and removal followed up by a singular unanswerable threat (well, a singular CREATURE threat that is…let us not forget about Teferi).  Chromium, the Mutable gives this deck a clock to close out the late games unlike any other deck.  With 7 toughness it’s hard for the red based decks to damage out.  And even if they could, all you have to do is give it hexproof in response.  It has Flash so allows you to play the counter-based control magic that this archetype is known for; flashing it in on the opponent’s end-step means you are able to stay right on plan without missing a beat.  And it can’t be countered, so in the control mirror, it is absolutely unstoppable.

Looking to the Star City Games Classic at Dallas tournament results for a clearer picture on how tournament Magic settles the “which deck is the best” question, you can see that Maxwell Jones’ winning Golgari list shows just how tough it can be to beat out a constant barrage of 2-for-1 effects that present BOTH removal AND threats at the same time.  Ravenous Chupacabra is a real card, especially in a field full of big, dumb, slow creatures.  Gone are the days of curving hasty red 1- through 4-drops (may you rest in peace, Hazoret the Fervent).  And with 3 copies of Vivien Reid main in this dining list, you might understand the title of this article a little better.  Even with a substantial dip in market share of total cards played AND number of decks represented, this 5-mana Swiss Army Knife was able to take down the whole thing, beating out a very tuned Mono-Red Experimental Frenzy list, complete with 2 copies of their own Planeswalker value engine Sarkhan, Fireblood.  While not as versatile and here mostly for flood insurance, Sarkhan can also provide a massive start on the dream scenario of curving him into a kicked Verix Bladewing on turn 4.  But in the end, it was Vivien and her compatriot Vraska, Relic Seeker and their Golgari Swarm that won it all and took 3 of the top-8 spots at this tournament, cementing it as the deck to beat and keeping Vivien Reid in possession of the title “Queen of GRN Standard” for one more week at least.

You can see the acknowledgment of the community that Planeswalkers are the predominant strategy this Standard season by the fact that The Immortal Sun has started popping up in the 5-0 lists.  Golgari is the clear front runner for Tier 1 deck, so it makes sense to attempt to next level the competition by starting with the regular Golgari main deck value engine plan except eschewing the main deck ‘Walkers in favor of shutting off a major component of your competition’s plan with The Immortal Sun.

Considering the unequivocal advantage you get from an unanswered Planeswalker, I’m not so sure I would make the wholesale change to avoid playing them main.  I think it just leaves you too vulnerable and without answer to some of the better Tier 1.5 and Tier 2 decks that you will inevitable run into during the course of an 8- or 15-round tournament. But including a copy or two in the side and bringing them in to combat the mirror does sound like a very solid plan.

Scouring the rest of the 5-0 lists for spice, something stood out in a major way. Nexus of Fate is back, baby! The boogeyman that “ruined” the last standard season, Turbo Fog, has popped back into the 5-0 conversation for the first time this season. In a world full of slow grindy slog-fests, a control deck that takes all the turns seems like a really good place to be. It took a little longer for this deck to figure out the right mix of answers, stall tactics, and progressing its own game plan than I had originally anticipated, but now that it is showing up on the winner’s roll, I fully expect another wave of players to adopt the archetype (and the subsequent “why isn’t this card available in packs?!?!?” outcry).  The question is whether it can remain a viable strategy now that the rest of the meta has a chance to plan for it.

As week 3 presents us with solidified deck lists for the top tier creature based strategies, I expect the control decks to start rising to the top with the correct answers. The insurmountable advantage that an unanswered Teferi brings cannot be denied. However the Golgari decks are allowed to tune to beat a control meta too. As we look ahead to Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, there are two weeks of results left before the Pro’s get a chance to introduce the kind of technology the community doesn’t see. Is there room to iterate, or do the tier 1 decks require the amount of synergy currently present? I have a feeling that we are going to see a rogue brew pop up, but the real story is that we aren’t playing enough Doom Whisperer.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

With no major tournaments to report on this weekend, thanks to a flood in Philadelphia causing Star City Games to completely cancel the Open Weekend, we must rely on the Magic Online Competitive Standard 5-0 decklist dumps in order to navigate our way through this new Standard meta. With only 41 decks in the Thursday, October 11th posting and 42 decklists in the Monday, October 15th results, we are seeing about a 20% drop off from last week and are well on our way to establishing the major players in this early meta. There were 27 decks with Planeswalkers in the main-60 for both the decklist postings, up 5% over the initial results published on Monday October 8th.  But, identifying the most influential of the space-time warping mages can be tricky.

On Thursday, Vraska, Relic Seeker shows up in the most number of individual decks at 9, but there are only 18 total copies of the Stone Cold Queen Gorgon being played where Teferi, Hero of Dominaria on the other hand represents the 2nd most individual decks at 7, but far outpaced the competition with 26 total copies of the card being sleeved up.  Moving into the Monday results, we see something shifting. Vraska, Relic Seeker is still found in the most main decks with 9 lists running her. The total copies are up to 21 now, but she still hasn’t toppled Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for most total copies (still sitting staunch at 26 copies across 7 decks). The big shift is the fact that Vivien Reid has come up to challenge for a spot as top ‘walker in town.  Repping 13 copies main across 7 decks doesn’t sound that overwhelming, however if you account for the ADDITIONAL 14 copies in sideboards across 12 total decks, she represents only 1 fewer copy than Teferi but a much more significant share of the meta (28.57% vs 19.05%).  I am here to declare Vivien Reid as the true Queen of GRN standard (I just won’t look Vraska in the eyes while I’m saying it). Here are what I would consider the best builds of the 9 different archetypes that Vivien brings to the table:

I really like the last of these decks.  Having a straight up Golgari build of the grindy value engine deck means that you can streamline your mana and your threats in order to continue the value grind and beat down plan.

As the 1b option and absolute engine of control builds in this GRN Standard format (and, really, let’s be honest, ALL formats), Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is probably the real MVP here, but he doesn’t give the versatility of archetype options as Vivien, representing only 3.  The best version of a Teferi deck, and probably the BEST deck in Standard right now is the following Jeskai list by Twizzlers33:

Wrapping up week 2, the Standard meta is shaping up to be a midrange, 2-for-1, value engine format. It’s not good enough to just be strong and fast. Your cards have to not only have an immediate impact on the game, but you need to be able to get a second or third use out of them to win the long game.  Guilds of Ravnica Standard will inevitably be known as the attrition format. A test of who can stick the last threat and generate the most value out of each spell cast.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

One of the glaring standouts from the previous meta that should be able to perform very well at FNM’s, and probably even into the late rounds of GP or SCG Open-level tournaments, is the Green-Red Monsters archetype.  The deck did lose quite a bit of late game reach with Rhonas the Indomitable and Glorybringer rotating out. However, I would expect the addition of Nullhide Ferox and leaning heavier into Vine Mare, to mean that this deck can get big, fast.  The mana is a bit rough because we don’t get Stomping Ground until Ravnica Allegiance gives us the Gruul Clan in January, so I expect the deck will have to rely on enchantment-based color fixing/ramp effects in Gift of Paradise and Song of Freyalise until then.  And just as a teaser to my RAL predictions article, you may have noticed I mentioned the Gruul a second ago…Well, big beefy monsters is what they do, so this might be a good place to be in preparation for Standard in 2019.  This is my initial take on the archetype:

Another good deck from last season that is also missing its shockland in the mana base is White-Black Knights.  History of Benalia is definitely still a real card and should be played if you plan on playing a white-based deck.  I don’t expect the Orzhov deck to remain a Knights deck come next year, due to their inherent nature of being non-aggressive and winning through life-total manipulation.  What I DO fully expect out of White-Black Knights is for the deck to make its mana better by splashing green for access to Temple Garden and Overgrown Tomb as well as the addition of Assassin’s Trophy and Knight of Autumn.  Here is a first take on the deck:

Grixis Dragons was a deck that popped up from time to time in the Magic Online 5-0 lists.  It is a similar to the Grixis Control list that I published in my “winners” article, except there are dragons to close out the game instead of stifling, claustrophobic and insufferable inevitability.  This deck leans on the immense power that a dragon should bring to the table, being ramped out a few turn early thanks to Sarkhan, Fireblood‘s SECOND plus ability.  Some games will be won by Niv-Mizzet and a ton of card draw. Some games will be won thanks to a flashy Nicol Bolas  Some games will be won by ramping out a couple fatties a few turns early.  And some games will be won by simply hard casting a couple regular run-of-the-mill flying, fire-breathing lizards.  The point is: GAMES WILL BE WON!

This next deck falls directly in the “but didn’t you say…” category.  I know, I know.  It’s Mono-Black.  There are a couple things to be said about the recursive nature of Zombies and let us not forget that Guilds of Ravnica brings us one of the best creatures, on rate, ever printed in Doom Whisperer.  A 6/6 flyer WITH trample AND upside in a mana-less ability to manipulate the top of your deck and/or fill your graveyard at instant speed (whatever your goal may be).  Sign. Me. Up.  Sprinkle in the best removal suite available and you’ve got yourself a very powerful synergy based deck.

Preview season is always a fun time to watch the excitement of our great community rally around the new hotness coming out, or a new piece to an old puzzle now unlocked.  I know I’m looking forward to getting out there and seeing where this format ends up.  Are we doomed to watch our opponents play magic solitaire, or will the meta balance itself out to allow one of these Tier 2 options shine on any given weekend?  One thing I do know for sure is I will be slinging spells at my LGS, fondly recalling my first FNM 6 years ago at RtR release weekend.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

Starting with a returning mechanic, The Selesnya Conclave is bringing us Convoke.  Convoke allows you to use your creatures to get a mana discount on the spells you are casting.  Cheating on mana leads to some of the more broken things you can do in competitive Magic, and in this installment it looks like Wizard’s R&D took that seriously by not printing a single interesting card with Convoke, aside from the mythic. And no, I don’t mean the buy-a-box promo Impervious Greatwurm, I’m talking about the set mythic March of the Multitudes.

The Boros Legion brings us a new mechanic very much in line with the all-out offensive that we are accustomed to seeing from this aggro-slanted color pair.  Mentor allows one attacking creature to PERMANENTLY buff another attacking creature with lesser power by placing a +1/+1 counter on it. At first blush, Mentor looks to be one of those “great in Limited” mechanics that just can’t quite make it in the big leagues. But I have a sneaking suspicion that cards like Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice and Tajic, Legion’s Edge will form the core of the “new red aggro deck” in this format.

In line with the shadows and mystery surrounding The House Dimir and the mind-games they are known for playing, the new mechanic Surveil this guild brings us allows players to look at the top card of their library and either put it back, or pitch it into the graveyard. This is basically Scry with an upside, if you build your deck to use it. I believe that Surveil will provide the utility cards that power both grindy midrange as well as hardcore control archetypes. Mission Briefing is a “fixed” Snapcaster Mage and Notion Rain will be a multi-deck all-star in this format.

Also true to form, the Undergrowth mechanic for The Golgari Swarm makes your spells better according to the number of creature cards in your graveyard. The grindy graveyard strategies typically come out of the gates slow to develop, but by the end of their respective formats prove to be powerhouses of inevitability. Think Ishkanah, Grafwidow of recent Shadows Over Innistrad Standard. Necrotic Wound is going to be the de-facto removal spell for its entire life in Standard and Mausoleum Secrets is going to feel like Demonic Tutor every time you play it. Get your copies of each now, cuz you’re gonna want them.

And finally, with the winner of the “this mechanic name belongs on another Plane” category, The Izzet League has the new ability Jump-Start, which allows the spell to be cast from the graveyard through the action of discarding a card from your hand in addition to paying its other costs.  This can be thought of as another form of Flashback, however I would argue that it is significantly worse simply for no other reason than it costs you a full card from your hand.  Most of the Jump-Start spells are over-costed because they allow you to cast them twice, plus tack onto that the situations where you simply cannot Jump-Start the spell thanks to holding your silver bullet sideboard card as the last card in your hand or simply being Hellbent (having no cards in hand for those of us that weren’t around for the first trip through Ravnica) and you have yourself a recipe for unplayable cards. Aside from the occasional one-of Sonic Assault, Quasiduplicate, or Maximize Velocity, you won’t be playing these spells in Standard.

Thanks to the influx of all the new cards and mechanics from Guilds of Ravnica, there will be some clear winners from the established decks leading up to rotation.  Of the tier 1 decks, I think the strongest archetype sticking around in the new meta will be from one of the Guilds that’s not even showing up until the next set!

UW Control featuring Teferi, Hero of Dominaria will be the premier “Tier 0” deck of this format. Teferi is the The Question and The Answer like Iverson. The biggest hits this deck takes is losing the Cycling mechanic. Irrigated Farmland, Censor, Cast Out, and Hieroglyphic Illumination gave the deck the flexibility of having hard answers or access to drawing cards to find answers, but there are other cards from Dominaria and M19 waiting in the wings for their turn to shine, and a few new Surveil stars will give this deck what it needs to remain at the top of the heap.  Here is a first pass at how I will be building this deck:

Moving into existing players who are going to get a strong bump from their respective color-pair Guilds actually showing up, I think the most obvious deck to gain spells more powerful than it loses will be the Grixis Control deck. Leaning on the subtle yet undeniably powerful Dimir spells, while charging the deck up with the explosiveness of the Izzet, this archetype is poised to make a solid and lasting impact on #MtGGRN Standard.  The deck will easily slot its Watery Grave and Steam Vents to make up for the loss of Fetid Pools and Canyon Slough and the mana base will probably get stronger thanks to the power of early untapped duals.  Losing card selection from Champion of Wits and the long game recursion of The Scarab God will mean that the deck has to retool around some new lines of play, but access to the Surveil cards, the black Undergrowth cards, and some Izzet trickery will more than make up for the rest of the utility losses.  I am very excited to build this archetype and run it through its paces on Magic Arena.  Here is my initial plan for what looks to be the most powerful, but also the most skill testing and decision dependent deck for the meta:

Turbo Fog is one of the best decks from M19 Standard and it is not losing very many pieces.  And the pieces it is losing have near identical counterparts being printed in Guilds of Ravnica.  Please go look at the recent 5-0 list from the Magic Online Competitive League posting and tell me that you can spot all the differences in 30 seconds or less.  I’ll wait.  The list below will most likely place in the top 8 of both the Open and the Classic for SCG Columbus on October 6-7.

Next up, the Steel Leaf Stompy deck gets some great new tools, but will need to take a harder slant into Green-Black than the previous iterations that saw only a small Black splash for Scrapheap Scrounger.  The card Assassin’s Trophy will almost unequivocally require any Green deck to also run Black for its inclusion.  Stompy didn’t lose too many pieces so I suspect that some builds won’t even change, however I believe that not adopting the new best removal spell in all of Magic is incorrect.  If I were to take a Stompy deck to a tournament week 1, this is what my deck would look like:

It is common knowledge in competitive Magic that coming into any new format, red aggro wins the first few weekends until the midrange and control decks can get the balance of strategy, threats, and answers figured out.  While I do not think this archetype has a viable future through the entirety of Guilds of Ravnica Standard, it could be a way to steal some wins early while Blue-White and Grixis get their builds figured out.  I think that the base build of the Guilds of Ravnica Standard will be Boros based and look a lot like this:

Moving into new Archetypes that I believe will become known quantities throughout Guilds of Ravnica Standard, I think that the Golgari will give us a classic “Rock” style midrange deck that either ends up Abzan or Sultai.  I can see value-engine toolbox style deck borne from combining Selesnya with the base Golgari package. In reality, I fully expect Dimir’s Surveil spells to combine very nicely with Undergrowth to generate a synergy engine that cannot be stopped.  Here is another list that I am very excited to put together and take for a spin on Magic Arena:

Pre-Release is this weekend and I fully intend to play as much Golgari as I can get my hands on.  It does feel like I am betraying my roots, as I “came back” to the game when Return to Ravnica was released (really, I only played for 3 or 4 months back in 1995 where I bought like 2 Revised Starter Decks and 3 boosters of Ice Age) and the first Standard deck I ever built was Selesnya.  Then, for Gatecrash I discovered my love for House Dimir and happily played my Zombies into the face of Restoration Angels, Thragtusks, and Huntmaster of the Fells‘s.  But the potential of pulling a seeded Vraska, Golgari Queen or Assassin’s Trophy as my date-stamped foil promo present too much of a temptation for my gambling mind to pass up!  Whatever you choose to play, I hope your guild treats you well and your pulls are bountiful.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

Starting things off with a bang, I am going to go out on a limb and say that Red is dead!  Red based aggro decks have been a plague on Standard for two full years now.  Ever since Kaladesh brought us Bomat Courier and the Vehicles subtype, the top-8’s have been overrun by countless configurations  of Mardu Vehicles, RW Vehicles, RB Aggro, and Mono-Red Aggro decks.  They even banned two cards out of the archetype in Smuggler’s Copter and Rampaging Ferocidon but Red aggro strategies continued to dominate.  With rotation, however, Red is losing too many things to continue to be viable.  Red is losing its card advantage engine in Bomat Courier, it is losing its tempo pieces in both Earthshaker Khenra and Ahn-Crop Crasher, and its losing its top-end closers in Hazoret the Fervent, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, and Glorybringer.  Even if Wizards unbans Rampaging Ferocidon (as I expect), I do not think this shell has enough juice left in it to overcome the losses.  Even with access to two Lightning Bolts.

Jumping into the realm of the obvious, I will make the bold prediction that the name-sake decks will be completely dead after rotation.  Considering that the cards which give these decks their names are rotating, I have a feeling that Winding Constrictor, God-Pharaoh’s Gift, Approach of the Second Sun Combo, and Drake Haven/Cycling decks are going to drop off the map, HARD.  I know what you are thinking:  “Brave.”  It’s definitely a tough line to take, but it had to be said.

Another stalwart of the M19 meta that I believe loses too many pieces to remain viable is Pro Tour 25th Anniversary darling Blue-Black Midrange.  Scarab God is gone.  Fatal Push, gone.  Torrential Gearhulk, adios.  Champion of Wits and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, poof.  Everything this deck does well is rotating out and I don’t think that even the power of the Dimir can save this deck from settling into a Watery Grave.

Continuing in the vein of Tier 1.5 decks that I don’t foresee surviving rotation, I have serious doubt about the viability of any mono-colored strategy heading into a set that inherently focuses on strong two-color combinations.  This means that both the mono-Green version of Steel-Leaf Stompy and the mono-White version of Knights will struggle to get a foothold in the winner’s meta.  It may sound insane to bet against a 3-mana 5/4 with pseudo-evasion or a hard to interact with permanent (enchantments) that create a go-wide team AND have a built in anthem, and you’re right!  I think that the individual cards will be parts of other strategies, but the decks they currently power will not be able to compete with the added power brought with gaining access to a second or third color.

Two and three-color decks are bound to rule the Standard landscape in the very near future, fueled by the many powerful multi-colored spells that the Ravnica sets always bring us.  I am excited for part two of this article to break down the existing multi-color strategies that I think will get a boost from the guild mechanics that were revealed last week as well as the new strategies that GRN spoilers will bring to the table.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

Across the four major events taking place the weekend of August 18th (immediately following the Pro Tour), we were able to see 16 different archetypes represented in the 32 top 8 decks.  That means we would be able to fill TWO FULL tournament top-8’s without duplicating!  And we almost got there at TWO of the tournaments; both GP Los Angeles and the Star City Games Classic had 7 different archetypes represented in their top 8’s.  Breaking down the representation of the decks, the clear front runner is the ever present Red-Black Aggro; 8 copies placed, and the deck was present at all 4 tournaments.  The next two most represented decks with 4 copies each were Pro Tour darling Blue-Black Midrange; present at 3 of the tournaments. A surprising newcomer to the fold was Mono-Red Wizards; 3 copies of the archetype placed in the top 8 at GP Providence.

Rounding out the decks that were able to put multiple copies into the top tables are White-Blue Control, Grixis Midrange, and Turbo Fog.  A week later, the Star City Games Classic results from August 26th start to skew a little bit towards a homogeneous meta with the two main decks from the previous weekend dominating the top tables.  Emma Handy took it all down piloting one of the three copies of Blue-Black Midrange to make the top 8.  Rounding out the rest of the top tables was a Turbo Fog deck and four copies of Black-Red Aggro.  Yes, even though Star City lists the 8th place deck as “Mono-Red”, I say the fact that the mana base has 4 copies of Dragonskull Summit and somewhere to spend the black mana in Scrapheap Scrounger means that this is definitely a Black-Red deck in my eyes.  However, being that the Classics are typically smaller tournaments and that these are the only results from the weekend, you can’t really put too much weight on the uniformity of the results.

Even with the competitive events giving us 16 different viable decks to choose from, the Magic Online decklist dumps provide even more fuel for our brewer’s paradise.  Of course the known quantities are showing up, sometimes in multiple iterations (my guess is the clever players pick some wacky 1-of to include just so their username shows up in the deck archives :-P), but there are also some fun-looking lists here.

Voltron style magic is not a new concept; in fact this White-Blue Flyers deck is very reminiscent of the same archetype that was burning up the Magic Online results back in January just before Explorers of Ixalan came out.

With just over a month of competitive tournaments on the agenda before Fall rotation brings us Guilds of Ravnica, I get a feeling that the buzz surrounding a fun, balanced, and wide-open Standard environment coupled with yet another return to one of Magic’s most beloved planes, means we are in for another resurgence of popularity and an influx of new players.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

In the post-Pro Tour Magic Online decklist dumps from August 9th and August 13th, it seemed like the darlings of the night were continuing strong as several different configurations of both Red-x Aggro and Green-x Stompy appear throughout both postings.  We also see multiple configurations of the highly controversial Turbo Fog deck, featuring a full playset of everyone’s favorite new mechanic in Nexus of Fate (you know, the “can’t open it in packs” mechanic).  Based on these online results, I was expecting to see a full repeat of the Pro Tour meta at GP Orlando and GP Brussels.

GP Orlando did not disappoint, with 7 different archetypes represented in the top-8 (Nicky-B and Grixis Midrange being the only duplicate), and all but 1 of which were listed in the Pro Tour Day 1 Meta Game Breakdown.  Taking it all down was Gabriel Joglar with UW Approach.

Showing off the absolute power of Teferi, and the aggro breaking formula of “gain life, close your eyes, cross your fingers and pray” this deck has been a stalwart of the standard meta since the release of Amonkhet.  The one deck to make top-8 that wasn’t highlighted in the Pro Tour breakdown was quietly one of the favorites of the event.  Corey Burkhart’s 7th place Blue-Black Midrange deck eschews the red splash and access to Nicol Bolas, the Ravager for a leaner, more efficient mana base and leans on the power of The Scarab God and a host of removal.

Shifting gears and hopping across the pond, GP Brussels was also dominated by decks from the Pro Tour.  The variety however, was not quite on par.  There were three copies of Esper Control and two copies of Red-Black Aggro, leaving only 3 slots for other archetypes.  One of them being Thomas Mechin’s 3rd place Nexus of Fate-wielding Turbo Fog deck.  It seems that some people just can’t let the “Great Buy-a-Box Controversy of 2018” die.  But the two Sultai-based decks that did not show up at either the Pro Tour or GP Orlando.  Alexander Gordon-Brown’s 4th place Sultai Midrange is just another example of a deck leaning hard on the power of the inevitability that The Scarab God has been providing Planeswalkers for over a year.

Meanwhile in 6th place, Nils Gutierrez von Porat went the God-Pharaoh’s Gift route, leaning harder on over-powered artifacts from the Kaladesh block like Verdurous Gearhulk and Walking Ballista.  Both decks look like fun, but also feel like they could run into a string of bad draws or bad matchups ultimately keeping them from breaking out as “tier 1” strategies.

Keeping in tradition, I want to leave you with some really out-of-left-field decks that look like a blast to pilot!  First up is a White-Black control deck that features 2 copies of Vraska, Relic Seeker.  The ONLY green pip in the entire 75 is on Vraska herself!  Leveraging the stifling array of removal effects to stall out the format’s aggro decks, then relying on powerful Planeswalkers to close things out in the long game, this deck looks perfect for an FNM.

My favorite rogue list, which comes from the August 13 Magic Online Competitive post, is a take on God-Pharaoh’s Gift that I have yet to see.  I don’t know whether to be conservative like WotC and call this “Gearhulk Gift” or go with a more traditional deck name like “12-Hulk”, but either way this looks like a ton of fun to run.  Having 3 different methods for binning the high cost artifact creatures in Search for Azcanta, Cathartic Reunion, and Chart a Course allows you to filter your hand for the exact cards you need, and adding on top the ability to “oops” into a win con with Madcap Experiment, this deck gives its pilot a decision point with every turn.

Knowing that the two GP tournaments that occurred simultaneously on two different continents provided completely different results, yet have the same overarching them of “Pro Tour hangover” metas, I think that the coming weekend’s tournaments will give a more clear picture of where our M19 Standard format has settled.  In the mean time, dust off your Gearhulks and go “experiment” at FNM!

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

At least that’s what they wanted you to think.  Tuning in to coverage there were Brainstorms and Dazes and Forces, oh my!  On top of that we saw Vengevines and Bedlam Revelers and Humans galore!  Did I say that Standard was being played at this tournament?  Because THEY said that Standard would be played at this tournament…  From watching coverage, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought otherwise, because I definitely never saw a standard match on camera.

Wizards did do a pretty good job of talking about Standard on coverage however, and the highlight of it all was their post-day-1 metagame breakdown where Paul Cheon was able to give us the hot-take that removal is good.  We saw an overwhelming majority of the teams at #PT25A register Red-Black aggro as the deck du jour (mmm, that sounds good, I’ll have that…) for several reasons; it provides a fast start, it has the ability to be quite evasive, and removal is good.  Add the “Mono-Red” (we suck at naming things…this deck splashes Black for Scrapheap Scrounger) variant to the Goblin Chainwhirler archetype and you’re talking about over 44% of the field registering a red based aggro deck that has been dominating Standard for well over a year now, for the most Premier event that Magic has up it’s sleeve for all of 2018.  No wonder they decided to give the powerful cards of days past the limelight this weekend.

Now at this point you are probably thinking to yourself (or for some of you, screaming at your phone…), “Surely Red aggro can’t be the entire story.”  Fear not my friends, for we have another 55.8% of the field to talk about.  I’ll start with a walk through the Top-4 decks, even though as we’ve established in the past, at Team events the standings are made up and the results don’t matter.

Taking it all down with Blue-White Control, Gregory Orange piloted a masterful finals match against hall of famer Martin Juza.  Orange’s deck didn’t come with any extra spice and went all in on the control plan, leveraging the raw power of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria to remove all feeling of hope from opposing mages (as well as all of their permanents).  Tried and true, Blue-White Control has been a force in the meta since the release of Dominaria, and there is no reason to have expected otherwise here.

Coming in second place, veteran of the game and three-time Pro Tour Top-8 competitor Martin Juza took the consensus best deck in Red-Black Aggro.  Agreeing with 44.2% of his peers in thinking that Goblin Chainwhirler was the path to victory, Juza carved his way to the finals table but ran into an absolutely stifling wall in Teferi and friends (let’s be honest, it’s just Teferi…because that guy is a jerk and no one wants to be his friend).  After going down in game 1, Juza used the blistering speed of the Red aggro archetype to steal a win in game 2, but that was all that could be mustered and the day was not Juza’s to be had.

In 3rd and 4th place we have another Red-Black Aggro deck piloted by Carlos Romao and Thomas Van Der Paelt as one of two players to register the “what is old is new again” deck in Blue-White God-Pharaoh’s Gift.  But the talk of the tournament (or the LACK of mention is more like it…) was the Turbo Fog deck that 6 players decided to register.  Maybe more players WOULD HAVE registered the deck if they could get a hold of one of the key 4-of cards in it.  Which for some strange reason is not the namesake of the deck…hhmmmm…is Wizards maybe trying to suppress the popularity of a deck featuring a 4-of card that could have only been obtained by buying a box of M19 a month ago…not from packs, and not from some other continuous method of distribution.  Only. Available. One. Time. Over. A. Month. Ago.  Taking Turns is an archetype that players try to break in every format available.  We did it during Battle for Zendikar Standard when both Temporal Trespass and Part the Waterveil were legal together.  Nexus of Fate brings a new wrinkle to the archetype in that it is the first instant speed, unconditional extra turn spell ever printed.  Add to that, it completely breaks modern extra turns convention, and rather than exiling itself, it SHUFFLES BACK IN allowing the Planeswalker casting it the chance at taking, literal, infinite turns.  Expect there to be backlash from the community and expect Wizards to make a statement regarding Buy-a-Box Promo’s as exclusive printings going forward.

For all of the glitz and glam surrounding this magical weekend, a celebration of 25 years of history and the game that we all love, Standard seemed to be kind of left in the shadows.  Maybe this was intentional on Wizard’s part after seeing 3 weeks worth of Magic Online results.  Maybe this was just a byproduct of putting on such a massive event, with so many interesting stories, and a chance to showcase fan favorite formats.  The Standard meta shaped up to be what we thought it was and we will continue forth at FNM knowing that Red Aggro is still good, Blue-White Control is still oppressive, our new overlord Nicol Bolas will still be there, and luckily not very many people will have a full playset of Nexus of Fate so the “Turbo Fog” deck probably won’t show up.  We can still run our Zombies and we can still run our Cats, and we can still have fun, because after all, it’s just a game.  and it’s OUR game.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious

Coming out of the weekend Grixis Midrange was looking like the established tier-0 archetype that all others would need to be tuned against to have any chance at the top tables of upcoming tournaments.  The online decklist postings only reaffirmed that as multiple decks featuring the God-Pharaoh appear.  And let us not forget about the impending “Combo Summer” I forewarned you all about in last week’s meta update.  Sai Storm (a much better naming convention than trying to force the Paradoxical narrative…) appears in multiples in both of the decklist updates as well.  So, as the Star City Games Classic unfolded this past Sunday, you would have expected a top-8 full of Ornithopters tapping for mana against flipping Nicol Boli (how DO you pluralize a Bolas…or I guess the real question is can the Multiverse HANDLE more than one Bolas?). It cannot – Editor

I guess this is why we actually play the games.  The winning deck?  Why, Mono-Black Zombies of course!  Death Baron and friends lumbered their way to two copies of the deck in the top-8 of this tournament, while Nicol Bolas, the Ravager shows up in only the 5th place (and incorrectly labeled) “U/B Midrange” deck.  Sai, Master Thopterist finds himself completely missing, even going down through the full top-16 decks.  The Zombie decks have only made a few small tweaks since first popping up 3 weeks ago, highlighted by upping the anti-Red Aggro hate with a full 4 copies of Gifted Aetherborn in the sideboard.

The real winner of this tournament has to be Heart of Kiran though, appearing in 5 of the top-8 decks and showing off just how powerful the Vehicle mechanic was when Wizards first introduced (and severely PUSHED) it.  Having access to a permanent that is only a creature when you want it to be (i.e. on your own turn) and considering that instant speed removal has been just about nerfed out of the game, means that aggressive strategies have an upper hand against the slower Combo and Control archetypes.

But that doesn’t mean that Combo and Control are dead.  No, far from it my friends. It just takes the right string of draws and matchups, and you get some spectacularly fun decks like Drake Haven Control, Mono-Black Desecrated Tomb Value-Town, Bant Turns featuring the much maligned Nexus of Fate or the wacky “8-Mare” list that combines the best of the anti-aggro lifegain strategy with Crested Sunmare for a long-game engine that is “neigh” impossible to beat!

So, with the Pro Tour next weekend promising to deliver us the “correct versions” of the decks we have been seeing at the top tables from the Star City events and in the Magic Online 5-0 decklist updates, the one thing that we need to keep in mind is that these decks will be highly tuned for a small and insular metagame, consisting of the top players the game has to offer, competing for one of the top prizes you can hope to earn.  Oh, and did I mention that it’s a team event, so the results are made up and the standings don’t matter? You should still be prepared for anything come Friday night.

Eric Wendorf

Eric has been an avid Magic fan and player since re-discovering the game in 2012. He is a Red mage at heart but likes to confuse himself with the varying decision trees presented by mid-range and control decks from time to time.
Eric plays mostly casually with his 9-year-old daughter, but manages to get out for every prerelease and a few FNM’s and GP’s every year.

Please reach out to me on twitter @edubious

Watch my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/edubious