Flow of Ideas – Three (and a Half) New Standard Decks

The best deck I have ever played was at 2007 States.

Lorwyn was brand new, and people were working with the new cards. What was going on is fairly
standard with deck construction: people were porting over their old decks. You had the Teachings decks, and the White Weenie decks, and then you had
standbys like the Red deck. However, in a rare feat of States innovation, Jonathon Loucks created the Makeshift Mannequin deck.

For those who aren’t familiar, the deck used cards like Shriekmaw, Mulldrifter, Shadowmage
Infiltrator, and Venser, Shaper Savant alongside spells like Makeshift Mannequin, Grim Harvest, and Profane Command to generate an unending
string of card advantage while maintaining tempo. Those cards might all sound like obvious mainstays now – but at the time, not so much. The deck
was entirely rogue.

Jonathon, me, and a few others across the country whom we’d given our list to played the
Mannequin deck. While I lost two matches in a row to miss Top 8, it went on to perform marvelously elsewhere across the country. Our deck took down
two State champion titles despite the relatively few people we handed it to, including Virginia’s Kenny Mayer who had to play against someone
else with our deck in a 73-card mirror match final!

But that’s not where the string of innovation ended.

One of my favorite stories to tell is from the week before 2007 States. A handful of people were
over for a testing session, and Jon and his roommate Kellen were testing the Mannequin versus Mono-Blue Guile matchup. They were both rogue decks,
and everyone laughed at the two of them for wasting their time testing an irrelevant matchup. A matchup that would never be important.

Except that
the very next week
that same matchup was being played by Olivier Ruel and
Guillaume Wafo-Tapa in the quarterfinals of Grand Prix Krakow. (Mannequin also made Top 8 of that event in the hands of future Pro Tour Berlin finalist
Matej Zatlkaj, and would make Top 8 of Worlds later that year.)

Now, the Mannequin deck wasn’t
actually
the strongest deck I’ve ever
played. That award might go to something like Dredge. Nor was it the most perfectly built deck I’ve ever played. (We didn’t figure out Cryptic
Command – whoops.) Contextually, however, it was by far the best deck. The deck was just so far ahead of its time for that tournament. While
everybody else was busy evolving their old decks, we were already knee-deep into the realm of new decks.

Ever since then,
States – called the 2010’s this
year
– has been an icon of innovation for me. No longer was I merely going to cling onto the residue of old decks as my hands desperately scrabbled for something familiar. Instead,
I was going to plow ahead and forge the way for new strategies.

Good-bye, Alara! Hello Mirrodin!

This week, I delved into the world of Standard, looking for the threads to start new deck
design. To start developing new strategies this year, I began working with some of the linear themes, as well as retrofitting some older, yet untouched, ideas
into new framework. Instead of my usual deck analysis and deep breakdown, I have three and a half (you’ll see what I mean by a half at the end)
decklists in this article that I’ve been testing over the past five days and some basic synopses of each. They’re not perfectly refined,
but they’ve been performing well enough I feel confident putting them into your hands.

Next week, I’m going to take a single deck I’ve thoroughly tuned and break down the
ins and outs of it in time for the 2010’s. I have a deck in mind, and it isn’t one that’s featured in this article, but if you’d
like to see me take a deep look into any of the decks in this article, post on the forums, or send me an e-mail, and, if there’s enough clamor
for one or another, I’ll make sure to work hard on an updated list in the article for all of you

Alright! Onto the decklists.

The first place I started this year wasn’t actually with Scars of Mirrodin at all, but
with M11. After drawing a few hundred cards with Scroll Thief in M11, I was in love with the new Ophidian. I wanted to try tribal decks, and Merfolk was
the first on my list. It seemed insane, with a whopping four lords available in the format: Merfolk Sovereign, Coralhelm Commander, Grand
Architect, and the oft-forgotten Lullmage Mentor. Plus, you had the underplayed Sejiri Merfolk. Scars brought no new Merfolk to the table due to its
setting, but there were still some decent spells.

Unfortunately, the deck turned up just a couple of Merfolk short. Cards like Cosi’s
Trickster just don’t cut it in Standard, even with numerous lords to back them up.

Next!

With Merfolk down, I looked to Goblins for the next tribe. The deck has a lot of good components
and a strong lord, but really lacks big Goblins to put onto the battlefield with Warren Instigator. Overall, it just performed on par or worse than
Mono-Red in every matchup.

Next!

Finally, I turned to Elves. Now, this was a deck that clearly began working well. I started with
a more linear Elf deck, and noticed a few others had been trying similar strategies on Magic-League using Genesis Wave.

I tried out the Wave, but wasn’t impressed. Yes, it’s insane when you’re ahead
and have an active Elvish Archdruid, but the deck doesn’t need cards like that. You don’t want to have to play an embarrassing Wave
for one or two because your opponent had a Lightning Bolt ready to go. Instead of trying to ride the wave, I wanted to keep the deck fairly aggressive and
consistent. Here’s what I have been using:

This deck does exactly what you want out of a green beatdown deck. It’s fast, resilient,
and powerful.

A lot of the core, such as the Arbor and Llanowar Elves, Elvish Archdruids, Joraga Treespeakers,
Monuments, and so on, are fairly understandable. Some other additions are the Fauna Shamans and Vengevines. Simply put, controlling which creatures
you have in a deck like this is phenomenally powerful. Not only can you chain Vengevines, but you can search up Joraga Warcallers (who, by the way, is
insane with Oran-Rief) or a timely Ezuri, Renegade Leader.

Vengevine is just naturally good in this deck, coming back with ease and being resilient against
control. It ups the curve a little, but allows for some fast starts that are hard to deal with.

One of the most insane additions to this deck, however, is Ezuri. He’s alright in beatdown
matchups as a repeatable Overrun and the fact that he lets you throw your other Elves into combat without a worry. But against control, he’s a
complete game breaker.

For example, did you realize Day of Judgment allows for regeneration? With Ezuri on the
battlefield, the U/W player can’t wipe the board. They can’t even Jace him effectively because you can just respond by regenerating all of your
other elves.

Journey to Nowhere is a solution, but not if they want to Day of Judgment on that same turn.
Plus, most lists are only running a couple. There’s Into the Roil, but once again, they’re not likely to have more than two.

There are only three Ezuris maindeck because of his legendary status, but the fourth is in the
board against control.

As far as the rest of the maindeck, the two Sylvan Rangers are a new addition over a pair of
Nissa Revanes because I wanted to make sure I could hit my land drops. I’m still fine with the two Nissa’s Chosens maindeck to ease up on
sideboard slots.

Speaking of Nissa Revane and the sideboard, she’s very important against control and red.
She can quickly control the game and allows you to recover from a Day with ease, even if you don’t draw Ezuri.

I had Brittle Effigies for a little while, but the main creatures you want to kill are
Baneslayer Angel and Linvala, and Plummet hits both of those.

Tajuru Preserver is for the Eldrazi decks. He stops All Is Dust, a powerful weapon against you,
and he also allows you to take some hits from an Eldrazi if necessary.

Finally, the Jinxed Idols are all right at dealing the last few points of damage against U/W if
they manage to set up a situation to deal with Ezuri. Keep in mind they do have Ratchet Bomb, though.

The next area I explored was heavy artifact themes. I really wanted to make Argent Sphinx work,
so I started with a U/W Metalcraft deck. However, the curve quickly became lower and lower, and soon I didn’t want Sphinx, Jace, or even Trinket
Mage. I quickly ended up with something close to what many have called “Affinity.” Because this isn’t 2003, and because I’m
running more Smiths than most people, I’ve affectionately dubbed this deck “Smithy.”

 

Finally, I found one. An allied deck in Standard that actually doesn’t want four manlands.
The two Colonnades are actually fairly suspect and just used for breaking through late on occasion, and I could see cutting them.

I’d expect this deck and variants thereof to be very popular. In any case, this deck has
some insane nut draws. However, that is counterbalanced by most builds being inconsistent. This build has managed to remove a lot of that inconsistency.
While not
always
consistent, it certainly performs a lot better than many of the builds I’ve played.

Unlike most builds, you’ll notice I eschewed the Quest for the Holy Relic plus Argentum
Armor combo. I think this is one of the driving gimmicks behind this deck – and also one of its major sources of variance. If you’re playing
only one Armor, then your Quests are useless. If you have two Armors, then you’re more likely to draw one. If a Quest isn’t in your
opening hand, it just sits one counter away sometimes. And then, once you’ve used your Quest, a single Naturalize and all of your hard work is
instantly undone.

Rather than deal with what amounts to an
actual quest
to get your Quest online,
I’ve went for more consistent pieces instead. First of all, Riddlesmith is absolutely unreal. I find it incredible that there isn’t an activation
cost on this one. (Or Painsmith, for that matter.) In fact, I only added Myrsmith later on; Riddlesmith was in from the onset. The card ensures you
have gas, digs to your most important card (Tempered Steel) and also lets you play four Mox Opals.

While I wasn’t a Mox Opal believer before this deck, I certainly am now. The card is
ridiculous! Turn 1 Riddlesmith or Myrsmith is insane. I can’t see running less than four in this deck.

The weird cards in my build are Glint Hawk Idol and Chimeric Mass. First of all, this deck has a
real tough time against Day of Judgment. (Ratchet Bomb is particularly bad as well.) Both of these cards avoid Day while being fairly aggressive. The
Idol is almost always a 2/2 artifact flier for two, and the Mass is great both early and late. Don’t be afraid to set Chimeric Mass at one or even
zero. You just need to turn on your Smiths and Opals early on sometimes, and even a Mass at zero will be a 2/2 with Steel on the battlefield.

The sideboard is fairly self explanatory. I think Unified Will is better than Stoic Defiance
because of the UU requirement. Brittle Effigy can deal with cards like Baneslayer Angel, while also just sitting on the battlefield starting turn 1 and
adding to your artifact count.

Revoke Existence is key in the mirror, and I’ve also found some success with it against
U/W if they’re playing a version heavy on Journeys to Nowhere and Ratchet Bombs.

Finally, here’s the third deck I’m going to show you guys. This one scares me the
most, and I feel if it’s properly refined, it could very easily be a sleeper Tier 1 contender. Introducing: Turbo Poison.

It may seem cute on the surface, but it’s capable of some dangerously fast starts. If your
opponent doesn’t have a removal spell, you can kill them out of nowhere. Sometimes, they even have a removal spell, and you have Vines of
Vastwood to make it not matter. Although it seems like U/W Control should handily beat this, Turbo Poison was actually favored. The protection offered by
Vines plus the ability to just win anytime the control deck tapped out was a major issue.

For the most part, this deck is super straightforward. Play some infect creatures, make those
creatures big, and strike them down in a couple of attacks. The largest components of strategy just come from knowing when to use your pump spells.

Against creature decks, you have to be able to break through. Blight Mamba and Plague Stinger
are crucial for this, as well as carefully using your pump spells. After boarding, Marsh Casualties helps a lot. Nature’s Claim is cute against
the artifact deck because it essentially has no drawback when you’re playing a poison strategy.

The Clasps are good against control, allowing you to grind them out in the long game and to give
them the last few poison counters. If you’re playing against anything with a lot of X/1s, they can also come in.

And lastly on the deck front, there’s the half of a deck I mentioned earlier. Most of my
free thinking time has been trying to get this deck to work, but it’s not quite there yet. The thing is, I am
positive
there’s
some kind of combo deck here. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out the right combination of pieces to make it work.

That’s where you come in.

There are minds out there who would love to tweak something like this. It is a riddle in and of
itself.

Here are the pieces I’ve been trying to work with:

Ornithopter
Memnite
Grand Architect
Riddlesmith

Semblance Anvil
Chimeric Mass
Mox Opal
Prophetic Prism
Everflowing Chalice
Preordain
Time Reversal
Mindslaver
Eldrazi Monument
Voltaic Key
Khalni Gem

The deck is made to abuse Grand Architect. Theoretically, you can cast Architect or Semblance
Anvil, chain a ton of artifacts using Riddlesmith and/or restart with a Time Reversal, then use Architect/Anvil to cast Prisms/Gems/Keys to get colored
mana out of your artifact only mana. You then eventually get to a place where you can either Mindslaver them with an army in play or just cast
EldraziMonument and smash them. I’m just not sure how many of those pieces are necessary, whether Time Reversal is what this deck wants, and so on.

If you figure out how to make this work, please let me know either in the forums or via e-mail.
I’d love to see what you come up with. As of now, it’s nothing, but once again, I’m confident there’s something out there. Yes,
it’s likely vulnerable to a removal spell, but if we can figure out the right core build to goldfish then we can try and plug in slots for cards
like Turn Aside.

Finally, one more thing before I leave today.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to do a topical blend column. For those who aren’t
familiar with the idea, it means that you, the reader, will vote on two lists of topics: one Magic-related topic, and one non Magic-related topic. Then,
I’ll take the ones which receive the most votes, figure out where they intersect, and do some kind of crazy column that will certainly be an
experience.

Mark Rosewater did two a while back in his Magic column, and in the next few weeks after the
States craze settles, I, too, am going to write one of these articles. As someone who enjoys writing, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for
both of us. The voting will be up next week when I reappear in my normal Monday slot, and there’s a really awesome and unique twist that
you’ll find about then.

However, in the small window of time between this article going up and me writing my next one,
I’d love to hear your suggestions for both Magic and non-Magic topics that would make for a fun and crazy piece of writing in the forums, via e-
mail, or on Twitter. I already have a list of options I want to use, but if any great suggestions come up I’ll definitely use them and give credit
to the person who supplied that idea.

Sound fun? It’s going to be! I look forward to hearing what you have to suggest.

If you have comments or questions on the decks of this article or questions to ask, or just have
a good topic for my topical blend column, you can
reach me by either posting in the forums, e-mailing me at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com, or via
Twitter at GavinVerhey
. I’ll see you in just a few
days with some more on Standard and the polls for my topical blend. Until then, have fun testing for the 2010’s!

Gavin Verhey
Rabon on Magic Online, GavinVerhey on Twitter, Lesurgo everywhere else