Grand Prix Houston proved to be an honest representation of the Oath of the Gatewatch Standard format: the decks were awesome!
While Four-Color Rally was ultimately the victor in the capable hands of Owen Turtenwald, there was a great deal of diversity. Whether you want to be playing creature combo, aggressive decks, various forms of control or even ramp, there’s something for you in Standard.
The past few weeks on Magic Online have notably seen an explosion of Hardened Scales decks and various flavors of Eldrazi.
There is a ton of design space that is still uncharted, and savvy deckbuilders are finding that there can be quite a bit of overlap between various archetypes if they get creative enough.
Cody Lingelbach is one of these deckbuilders and he was rewarded for his efforts with a fifth-place finish this past weekend at #GPHOU.
R/B Dragons has started to see a bit of a comeback due to the format-wide weakness to fliers. Eldrazi Blue is an aggressive deck that is able to leverage the powerful new colorless cards alongside various forms of evasion and Ghostfire Blade.
Eldrazi Skyspawner is quickly becoming a multi-format all-star!
This Grixis Dragons deck blends many of these elements, going so far as to include Bearer of Silence as another colorless threat that can wield a Ghostfire Blade. Its “kicker” trigger is more of an afterthought, but it can happen if you draw a Shivan Reef or Haven of the Spirit Dragon!
R/B Dragons oftentimes has difficulty getting their aggression off the ground early, typically resorting to simply playing defensive cards like Hangarback Walker or casting removal spells. Cody’s deck can start dealing damage much more quickly, with its best draw involving a Dashed Kolaghan, Storm’s Fury on turn four with the help of an Eldrazi Skyspawner!
Having access to blue mana lets Cody diversify his disruption suite a bit more than the usual Dragon decks. It can get incredibly difficult for Rally decks to fight through flying threats, Transgress the Mind, and Dispel in post-board scenarios.
Silumgar, the Drifting Death has mostly been forgotten at this stage in the Standard format, but it makes a lot of sense now that a lot of decks are interested in going wide. Hexproof is a very powerful ability in a world full of Reflector Mages.
I wouldn’t have expected Ghostfire Blade to ever be paired with Thunderbreak Regent, but Cody and many others are proving that the combinations are near-limitless in this fantastic Standard format.
Creatures (24)
- 4 Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury
- 4 Thunderbreak Regent
- 4 Hangarback Walker
- 4 Thopter Engineer
- 4 Eldrazi Skyspawner
- 4 Bearer of Silence
Lands (26)
Spells (10)
