This weekend the Standard season kicked off in full force. There were several PTQs, the StarCityGames.com Atlanta Standard Open, a large tournament in Boston, and the Midwest Masters Series in Des Moines. It seems so unusual to me to have such a well-defined format before U.S. Nationals Qualifiers, but that’s the way things are now. If you’re trying to qualify for U.S. Nationals, or win any other upcoming Standard tournament, it won’t just be about creativity and good internal testing, as there are a huge number of results to consider. Grand Prix: Washington DC will be played with a very well developed format. This is good news for me, both because I prefer well developed formats in general, and because I still haven’t had a lot of time to devote to Standard because I’ve been prioritizing preparation for San Juan (learning from my mistakes in Honolulu last year). As a result, I have to give fair warning that any assumptions I make about matchups are based on how Standard played before Rise, tournament results, guesswork, and what I’ve heard from other people. Still, I imagine I should be able to come up with fairly accurate results based on those things.
I’m not sure why I’m starting here, but Allies, which seemed to be fairly heavily played at the last Standard tournament I attended, was nowhere to be seen from the results I can find, which is not surprising given that it didn’t gain any new cards. White Weenie is another deck that doesn’t really seem to be around anymore, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given how good Wall of Omens is against it. Vampires, a deck that seems to come in short waves, is another deck that didn’t do much this weekend. Really though, decks that are doing well are much more interesting than decks that aren’t.
U/W Control is in a very interesting place right now. It’s doing its best to steal Jund’s title as the single deck to beat, as I’m sure you’re aware, having dominated the end of the Pre-Rise of Eldrazi season in the online PTQs. Rise gives the deck far too many new tools. This isn’t a real problem, of course, but it means it takes a lot of work to find the new optimal configuration. I loved U/W Tap Out Control when I played it in Kuala Lumpur, but it’s gotten much worse since then, even with Rise. The problem, of course, is changes in the metagame. Specifically, in Kuala Lumpur, very few people were playing U/W, so the deck could be all about beating Green and Red decks. Since then, UW has steadily gotten increasingly popular, and new U/W decks look to have an edge on the old U/W decks. The problem is that opposite cards are good against the mirror and against Jund, Naya, and Mythic, and the more the deck has to fight against itself, the more it loses to those decks. The tools are available at this point to have an excellent matchup against whatever deck you’re trying to beat, but every U/W decklist I’ve seen has an obvious severe weakness somewhere.
I’m honestly surprised that it was the Tap Out builds of U/W that did better in this first weekend than Deprive-inspired counter-based versions, given how much easier it is for them to have an edge in the mirror. I think that’s because the Deprive versions are harder to build more than because they’re actually worse; I’d bet that as this format develops, UW will move toward playing counters again. I think that will pull it away from Everflowing Chalice and expensive spells, and it will become more about protecting Jace, but all of this is extremely hard to do while beating Jund, which is why I’m not all that comfortable with U/W right now.
The other option is to play Laskin and Stark’s Planeswalker deck, which looks very good to me. It has enough Planeswalkers to make things hard on other control decks, but doesn’t have to worry about leaving mana up so it can keep its momentum going to keep up with aggro decks. The card quality is extremely high, and the mana makes sense in the deck. This is the natural direction to go once you’re forced to move away from Everflowing Chalice by having too many good two-drops. I think this deck is for real. The only thing that could cause a serious problem for it is if its own popularity causes Pithing Needle to become an extremely popular sideboard card, as this deck has no particularly good answer to Needles, which can get a ton of mileage here. At this point, now specifically, after a 1st and 3rd place finish at the most major event of the weekend, and a 2nd place at a Boston PTQ, I would be looking pretty seriously at putting some Needles into the sideboard of whatever I was going to play, and expecting others to do that means I might think twice about playing this deck. Still, if that’s the only thing stopping me, it’s not like the deck can’t beat a Needle, and there’d be a strong temptation to just take the hit and try this anyway. The deck has so much going for it. (I wish I could just play some Blue fliers with flash and some Cryptic Commands to punish greedy decks like this, but given that the format has nothing that comes even close to punish Planeswalkers in that way, building to them makes a lot of sense.)
Mythic did very well elsewhere this weekend. I believe I’ve heard of three PTQs Mythic won this weekend, two with the Eldrazi Conscription package and one without. First, the more traditional build that Lauren Lee won with in Boston:
Creatures (28)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Rafiq of the Many
- 3 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 2 Thornling
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Dauntless Escort
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 4 Lotus Cobra
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (27)
Spells (2)
Sideboard
This is a familiar looking deck, and I like this maindeck list a lot. All of the changes from the original build of this deck make sense for the current metagame (specifically for adapting to the popularity of U/W at the moment). I’d probably still play the second Sunpetal Grove over the second Sejiri Steppe, but that call has always been close. As for the sideboard, I don’t really like the Vapor Snares over the Mind Controls, because I think this deck wants to keep lands in play to activate manlands more than it wants to reload lands, but at least this is consistent with the maindeck – Vapor Snare is definitely helped by the second Sejiri Steppe, making it more likely that you’ll be able to replay that every turn. Considering that the curve on this deck has been (very slightly) lowered from the original version, the Vapor Snares are actually very reasonable in context.
This is a conservative build, in that it changes very little from the old build, but I like that I can see the logic behind all the changes, and it was clearly well made for what it’s doing.
The other approach is to include Sovereigns of Lost Alara to find Eldrazi Conscription, as Eric Twarog did in this deck that won a Salt Lake City PTQ:
Creatures (30)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Rafiq of the Many
- 3 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Thornling
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Sovereigns of Lost Alara
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 1 Sphinx of Magosi
Lands (26)
Spells (4)
Or this list with which Matt Sperling won a PTQ:
Creatures (28)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Sovereigns of Lost Alara
- 4 Dauntless Escort
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 4 Lotus Cobra
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (25)
Spells (2)
Sideboard
This approach was proven to be viable in its success in a National’s Qualifier in Germany, but these two lists go in slightly different directions from there. The first list moves away from the huge planeswalker package that was added to the original Conscription deck and moves much closer to a traditional Mythic deck that just slots in the Sovereigns combo. I don’t really understand cutting land while adding 6 and 8 mana spells, as these decks do, nor to I understand trying to fit Sphinx of Magosi into the deck while adding a full playset of other six-drops and cutting a Rhox War Monk. Personally, if I were to try to slot the Sovereigns combo into Mythic (which I would), I’d want to cut the high end. I also don’t like the sideboard much here. I’m not really sure when you want Bojuka Bog, and the Admonition Angel doesn’t play well with this deck’s curve.
As for Sperling’s deck, again, the land count seems a little low to me, and he’s had to give up a lot of turn 1 Green sources, which is unfortunate. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about so many Jaces in this deck yet, but I do like that he manages to get Dauntless Escort into the deck to protect against Day and protect whatever creature he tries to Conscript while still putting himself in a good position in the mirror, where that card is a little less impressive, because of the power of planeswalkers and the Conscriptions there. He has to give up a bit of ground against WW style aggro decks that basically don’t exist anymore in losing Rhox War Monk, and a bit of ground against Mono Red, but he more than makes up for that by devoting slots to it in his sideboard, which looks very good. He’s willing to give up on Mind Controls entirely because he’s just planning to power through any creature on the back of Eldrazi Conscription, which is a pretty reasonable plan. Mind Controls are less exciting against him, because he’s hoping that none of his creatures really matter until the game is over, and if this is the game that Mythic decks are playing against each other, Mind Control is a lot worse in general.
This deck feels slightly more robust to me than the planeswalker deck because there isn’t an obvious foil, like Pithing Needle. I guess the best things to do if this becomes the deck to beat are to move back to the Cunning Sparkmage/Basilisk Collar combo that chased me away from Mythic in the first place, particularly now that they all seem to have given up on Bant Charm (although, in fairness, they’ve just replaced it with Qasali Pridemage, but I’d probably often rather kill the Sparkmage), or just to get more Path to Exiles into whatever you were playing to combat Eldrazi Conscription protected by Dauntless Escort.
At the moment, I think it’s still “safe” to play Mythic without particular fear of Cunning Sparkmage, because I think Naya and other Red/White decks have pretty bad matchups against the kinds of Blue/White decks that people are playing now. As those decks get warped further to competing with each other, and less prepared to deal with Bloodbraid Elf, at some point the format could easily be right for Naya to come back, particularly preying on this style of Mythic deck.
Polymorph is the new deck that everyone’s obligated to mention at the moment. It won a PTQ in Montreal, and I believe Kenji took third place in a PTQ with it (the Japanese coverage lists him as third, but I heard reports that he won. It wouldn’t surprise me if he conceded in the semis, but I don’t know what actually happened). Kenji played:
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (30)
- 1 Time Warp
- 4 Rampant Growth
- 4 Polymorph
- 4 Ponder
- 4 Negate
- 1 Into the Roil
- 4 Spreading Seas
- 4 Explore
- 4 Awakening Zone
Sideboard
In Montreal, Vincent Thibeault played:
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
Unfortunately, this is the deck I know the least about, having not played with Rise in Standard. Deprive makes sense to me over Negate, to reload Khalni Gardens, but splitting Iona and Emrakul main seems a little weird to me. You have little enough control over which you hit that I’m guessing you have to take some responsibility and choose which on is better against most opponents, though sideboarding the other seems right. Telemin Performance almost seems sick enough against this deck to put a natural cap on how popular it can get before getting hated out by that, although it is at least a five-mana sorcery that this deck should be in position to deal with unless they tap out for a planeswalker, and then they’re still fine if it’s Jace, as long as it resolves, and Garruk, if he resolves, can give them mana back to have a counter up. Between Vines and Performance, Vincent seems much better set up for the mirror. From what I’ve heard, and from what I can imagine based on looking at lists, this deck has a hard time with Mythic, which should keep it in check for the moment, and would be enough to keep me away from this deck, at least right now, when I’d expect more people to be looking at Mythic, now that Conscription has worked more than once (which could just be a fluke).
Finally, I can’t actually write about Standard without mentioning Jund, which Josh Herr used to win in Boston, to keep it from getting shut out on the weekend. He played:
Creatures (19)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (27)
Spells (13)
Sideboard
This list doesn’t play a single card from Rise of the Eldrazi, though I still have some hope for Sarkhan the Mad making an appearance at some point. I don’t like the Jund Charms in this sideboard over the last two Duresses, but really, I don’t think this is the time to go into how to build Jund. What’s more interesting is figuring out the space that it occupies in the current metagame. It’s certainly still the deck to beat, as it did pull over 30% of the Top 16 in Atlanta along with numerous Top 8 slots across the board, but it’s no longer coming out of top of every, or even most, tournaments, so I think we can realistically expect its numbers to fall somewhat over the coming weeks. Fewer players playing it will give it fewer high finishes, just through sheer numbers, and that should lead to even fewer people playing it. While it’s still “the deck,” I believe it has officially lost its stranglehold on the format. I believe at this point that Mythic is the best deck to play to beat Jund, because I think U/W is forced to exist in a space where it’s matchup isn’t as good against Jund as you want in order to compete with the rest of the field, but there’s a chance that I’m underestimating exactly how good Wall of Omens is against Jund, and U/W might be substantially favored against them as well. If that’s the case, this seems like a horrible time to be a Jund player.
All in all, I’d say Rise of the Eldrazi has given Standard exactly what it needed to get some development and metagame shifts going, although it may have given a bit more help to U/W than will ultimately be healthy. Until someone finds the correct list of U/W though, I think the format appears pretty good. For the next week, based on the results I’ve seen, I’d probably recommend Mythic, probably with Conscription, possibly with Pithing Needle in the sideboard, but I think there are several other very respectable choices (unlike some formats; there are times when I think there are only 1 or 2 reasonable decks to play).
Thanks for reading…
Sam