The first major Standard event since Hour of Devastation is in the books. Thanks to #SCGCIN we have plenty of decklists, and if it is was any indication, then Standard is looking great.
Even for a first-week event, Standard was incredibly diverse, with many different archetypes being represented and plenty of interesting matchups and skill-testing decks. If there’s some strategy you prefer playing in Magic, chances are you can run it successfully in Standard right now.
Today I’ll rank what I think are the top decks in Standard right now, focusing on decklists and interesting card choices. This is just my opinion and I expect this will change with the upcoming #SCGATL and Pro Tour Hour of Devastation. Let’s begin!
#8 – Zombies
Creatures (24)
- 1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- 4 Relentless Dead
- 4 Diregraf Colossus
- 4 Cryptbreaker
- 3 Metallic Mimic
- 4 Lord of the Accursed
- 4 Dread Wanderer
Lands (24)
- 22 Swamp
- 2 Westvale Abbey
Spells (12)
Creatures (24)
- 4 Diregraf Colossus
- 4 Cryptbreaker
- 4 Lord of the Accursed
- 4 Dread Wanderer
- 4 Wayward Servant
- 4 Mummy Paramount
Lands (26)
Spells (12)
Zombies still seems like a solid choice, despite an uptick in sweepers thanks to Hour of Devastation from Hour of Devastation, even though it didn’t have an especially dominating showing this weekend.
Adam Bowman demonstrated that Zombies still has legs (and braaains) and even made Top 8 without a single card from Hour of Devastation. Alexander Conn had a good run with a white splash in Zombies and got to show off some interesting tech as well.
Ifnir Deadlands is the standout to me and seems like a great inclusion. It has a low opportunity cost to run in a two-colored deck that doesn’t care about basics, let alone a mono-colored deck, so I would expect more and more Zombies decks to be running at least a few copies. You might take a point of damage casting Relentless Dead or if you draw multiple copies, but other than that it’s mostly free for a decent effect later in the game.
Mummy Paramount is an inclusion that beats down hard. Relentless Dead seems better in grindy games but is harder to cast when you’re running a bunch of Plains, whereas Mummy Paramount can hit much harder if you drop it on turn 2 and it isn’t immediately answered.
Wayward Servant is still amazing and also stitches together the aggression theme alongside Mummy Paramount.
Doomfall is a nice sideboard addition that I also expect we’ll be seeing more and more of in black decks, since it can attack your opponent’s hand and make sure they don’t have any sweepers, exile pesky eternalize creatures, occasionally deal with a Bristling Hydra, or make sure Thing in the Ice and Glorybringer aren’t catching you by surprise from control decks.
#7 – G/R Ramp
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (19)
Creatures (11)
Lands (25)
Spells (24)
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger’s appetite was not quelled by the banning of Aetherworks Marvel. Now World Breaker is even joining in on the fun.
The basic strategy here is simple. Ramp, ideally with Hour of Promise. Stay alive with red removal like Kozilek’s Return, Hour of Devastation, and Abrade. Cast your Eldrazi.
The tricky part is drawing the right mix of cards at the right time. You don’t want to see Ulamog in the early-game or too much ramp in the late-game.
Hour of Promise is excellent and makes the deck viable, and by running a bunch of copies of Hashep Oasis and Ramunap Ruins, even though you aren’t that interested in their abilities, you’ll often be able to search up multiple copies of Shrine of the Forsaken Gods and still get a couple of Zombies for free.
It seems like a major flavor fail that Beneath the Sands, the Desert set ramp card, can’t search up Deserts. I guess you’re searching for the basic lands hidden under the Deserts?
#6 – Temur Energy
Creatures (26)
- 2 Tireless Tracker
- 4 Longtusk Cub
- 3 Bristling Hydra
- 1 Whirler Virtuoso
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
- 4 Rogue Refiner
- 4 Glorybringer
- 2 Rhonas the Indomitable
- 2 Champion of Wits
Lands (21)
Spells (13)
Creatures (23)
- 4 Woodland Wanderer
- 3 Altered Ego
- 2 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 2 Combustible Gearhulk
- 4 Servant of the Conduit
- 4 Rogue Refiner
- 2 Glorybringer
- 2 Champion of Wits
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (23)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
Temur Energy is probably your safest bet if you’re not interested in out-metagaming the field and just looking for a deck with consistency and a decent matchup against most of the other decks in Standard.
Champion of Wits is similar to Rogue Refiner and Tireless Tracker, a reasonable inclusion even without consideration of emerging Elder Deep-Fiend. It has a worse body in the early-game and doesn’t immediately provide card advantage, but it gets amazing in attrition wars when you’re able to eternalize it.
John Roberts shows there is room for innovation with the inclusion of Combustible Gearhulk. Which might as well be called Combustible Gas-Hulk because, as the kids say: it’s lit.
‘Tis literally lit.
Combustible Gearhulk is especially fire when your opponent chooses to mill your top three cards and you get a free Champion of Wits in your graveyard.
The Champion of Wits synergies don’t stop there, though, since Altered Ego can copy it and potentially draw you extra cards thanks to it entering the battlefield with extra +1/+1 counters.
#5 – Graveyard Emerge
Creatures (21)
- 4 Prized Amalgam
- 4 Elder Deep-Fiend
- 4 Haunted Dead
- 1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 4 Grim Flayer
- 4 Champion of Wits
Lands (22)
Spells (17)
Creatures (20)
Lands (23)
Spells (17)
Champion of Wits makes these decks contenders now.
Champion of Wits gives you regular access to nut draws where you threaten to reanimate multiple Prized Amalgams after discarding a Haunted Dead, Advanced Stitchwing, or Stitchwing Skaab.
Meanwhile, just casting any three drop, even a Prized Amalgam, means you’re threatening to emerge Elder Deep-Fiend the next turn. This leaves your opponent either trying to remove your creatures, hoping you don’t have it, or having to fight through Elder Deep-Fiend.
Being able to constantly recur Prized Amalgams gives opposing decks trying to win in the late-game fits, and you’ll have time to fill up your graveyard. The major issue with the deck is that it’s fairly dependent on actually seeing Prized Amalgam at some point, and against aggressive decks, you’ll probably need Kozilek’s Return in your graveyard as well. If you don’t find what you need, the deck is kind of underpowered, and there are a lot of moving parts.
#4 – Mono-Red
Creatures (28)
- 2 Eldrazi Obligator
- 2 Reality Smasher
- 3 Thought-Knot Seer
- 4 Falkenrath Gorger
- 2 Kari Zev, Skyship Raider
- 2 Glorybringer
- 1 Hazoret the Fervent
- 4 Ahn-Crop Crasher
- 4 Soul-Scar Mage
- 4 Earthshaker Khenra
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (6)
There weren’t a lot of copies, but I think it’s safe to say that Mono-Red is back. The strategy finally has some decent tools and is showing up a lot on Magic Online.
One of the major reasons the deck is viable is Ramunap Ruins, which is one of the most powerful cards printed in Hour of Devastation. Not only does it provide easy access to colorless mana for Eldrazi, it’s also one of the best burn cards in the deck. Having so much damage packed into the manabase for “free” is exactly what Mono-Red needed as reach to close out games.
A lot of decks in Standard don’t have access to any lifegain, which makes Ramunap Ruins an inevitable death given enough to time. Combined with Sunscorched Desert, you’ve got access to a makeshift Lava Spike without having to dedicate actual spell slots to it. Ramunap Ruins is especially good when the rest of your deck is trying to dump out your hand and push through early damage; you can afford to tap out later in the game when you have nothing else to do.
Earthshaker Khenra is the other major addition to the deck that’s amazing. It provides what you need in the early-game and helps push damage through early blockers while also hitting incredibly hard in the late-game thanks to eternalize. Your Mono-Red can thrive even when you get a little mana flooded, which wasn’t the case historically.
#3 – Mardu Vehicles
Creatures (20)
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
- 4 Scrapheap Scrounger
- 4 Toolcraft Exemplar
- 4 Veteran Motorist
- 2 Glorybringer
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (11)
Not much new to report on here except that Abrade and Doomfall seem like nice additions to Mardu.
Mardu Vehicles often struggles with swarm the battlefield strategies from Zombies or Oketra’s Monument, but Zombies appears to be falling on the back burner, and Abrade seems great for shoring up the W/U Monument matchup.
Since Mardu has access to three (or more) colors it’s customizable, especially post-sideboard, when it can morph into a Control deck to further help against swarm decks. Occasionally you’ll stumble on mana, but in theory Mardu Vehicles should be able to beat what you want it to beat while being one of the natural predators of control decks.
Mardu had a good weekend despite not cracking the Top 8, and I expect it to continue to see plenty of play.
#2 – Control
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (27)
Spells (26)
Creatures (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (30)
“Control is back!”
– Every hopeful control player, right before control decks are promptly pushed out of the format.
But control decks really are back, for real this time!
Control finally has enough tools to go from hovering around the edges of the metagame to right near the top of it.
For new control cards, the obvious standouts were Supreme Will and Abrade, which are both versatile and efficient answers, and Hour of Devastation, which against midrange can be downright, well, devastating.
I think a lot of the midrange decks that are punished by Hour of Devastation had to adjust for it or didn’t perform as well. New decks like Mono-Red are even entering the format and succeeding by speeding up and trying to get under Hour of Devastation and Control in general.
Despite there only being one copy of Control in the Top 8, Michael Hamilton won #SCGCIN outright with a unique Jeskai Control list splashing for Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh.
The list reminds me of Superfriends, and instead of finishing an opponent with a torrent of Torrential Gearhulks, it mainly wins through controlling the battlefield and getting incremental planeswalker advantage.
Even though Dovin Baan won’t be getting Dovin Banned anytime soon, the planeswalker theme worked because there aren’t many decks running a ways to outright kill planeswalkers at the moment, other than other control decks running Hour of Devastation, but there are plenty of Abrades kicking around to Shatter Torrential Gearhulk.
#1 – W/U Monument
Creatures (24)
- 4 Bygone Bishop
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Hanweir Militia Captain
- 4 Spell Queller
- 4 Selfless Spirit
- 4 Cloudblazer
Lands (25)
Spells (11)
I didn’t expect W/U Monument to perform as well as it did, and I can’t even say I fully understand it, but at this point it’s a real deck, and probably even the deck to beat.
Oketra’s Monument is a heck of a great engine, and even the influx of Abrade wasn’t enough to keep the deck in check. Dusk is another all-star card that other decks can’t really take advantage of that works wonders in W/U Monument, acting as a potential one-sided Wrath of God and then returning pretty much all your creatures that have died through the course of a game.
W/U Monument didn’t benefit much from Hour of Devastation, mostly just getting the efficient flier / Stifle that is Nimble Obstructionist, but the deck was already pretty tight anyway.
Moving Forward
As you can see, we have a diverse format, and that isn’t even covering all the viable decks in Standard, just the ones I think are well-positioned right now. All these decks listed are viable and I don’t think any are bad choices.
The thing is, there isn’t really a clear target to aim for right now.
When Temur Marvel was around, it was very clear what deck you were trying to beat. These top decks are all very close in power level.
You can succeed by picking up the deck of your choice, tuning it, and trying to have a good plan against the field.
I think W/U Monument was the top deck of the weekend, but I also think that will change. What do you think is in store for Standard? What decks will rise to the top for the Pro Tour? Am I crazy for leaving a deck off this list? Let me know in the comments.