Sometimes you just have to give in and play the best deck.
Over the last week I have received several questions about what deck I would recommend in Standard right now. Invariably, I responded with “G/W Tokens, and it’s not remotely close.” For the last several years the question has been much more complicated than that. Metagames shifted rapidly and it seemed like no deck stayed on top for more than two weeks, if even that. You had to stay on top of the metagame and keep evolving in order to put up consistent results. Even a format like Return to Ravnica–Theros Standard let you pick between three top-tier decks in U/W Control, Mono-Blue Devotion, and Mono-Black Devotion.
But right now, I honestly think playing something other than G/W Tokens is a mistake. It has an unparalleled combination of power, versatility, and malleability that the other decks simply lack. Fearing that I may be biased by my recent positive experiences with the deck along with its current Grand Prix win streak (three in a row!), I went digging through the coverage archives for hard data, and this is what I found.
There have been six Standard Grand Prix since Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad: Toronto, Tokyo, New York, Manchester, Minneapolis, and Costa Rica. In the coverage archive, which you can find here, the Top 32 decklists from each event were posted with the exception of Grand Prix Tokyo, which only published the Top 16. The following table shows the performance of G/W Tokens.
*Note that I included any Naya variant that splashed Chandra, Flamecaller and/or Arlinn Kord, but not the Naya Nahiri decks, which I believe are a significant enough deviation to be classified as a separate archetype.
|
Tournament |
Number of Top 8s |
Number of Top 32s |
|
Grand Prix Toronto |
2 |
7 |
|
Grand Prix Tokyo |
2 |
2* |
|
Grand Prix New York |
3 |
6 |
|
Grand Prix Manchester |
3 |
4 |
|
Grand Prix Minneapolis |
2 |
7 |
|
Grand Prix Costa Rica |
5 |
5 |
*Only 9th – 16th place lists available for Grand Prix Tokyo
This means that G/W Tokens earned a total of seventeen Top 8s out of a possible 48 (35.4%), and 31 Top 32s out of a possible 176 (17.6%). Over this same time period, the other contenders in Standard have not fared nearly as well:
|
Archetype |
Number of Top 8s |
Number of Top 32s |
|
W/B Control |
5 |
8 |
|
Cryptolith Rite Decks* |
5 |
20 |
|
Bant Humans |
4 |
6 |
|
Bant Company |
3 |
15 |
|
W/X Humans |
4 |
9 |
|
Grixis Control |
5 |
12 |
*Includes G/B Aristocrats, Four-Color Rite, Bant Rite
No other archetype in Standard had more than five top 8s in this span of Grand Prix, but G/W Tokens managed to accomplish that in the span of a single event. You need to take the next four best-performing archetypes combined to top its total of Top 8s. No single archetype is within half of its total of Top 32s if you break up the Cryptolith Rite decks. Nothing else is close.
Granted, Bant Humans is a relatively recent addition to the metagame, and it has been gaining in popularity and putting up strong results as of late, so it’s possible that deck can challenge G/W Tokens in the near future, but the far safer play is to pick up what has been the best performing deck in the format since the Pro Tour…which it also won, by the way.
There are also data available from the SCG Tour®, though not as much, since several of the Opens in the last six weeks were Modern. At the Classics in Indianapolis and Milwaukee, G/W Tokens put up solid but not dominating performances with four Top 8s and three Top 16s. These results are notably more diverse than the Grand Prix and show better results for Humans and G/R Ramp. G/W Tokens is clearly the best-performing deck in these events, but not by much.
The Open at #SCGATL has similar;u diverse results with seven different archetypes represented in the Top 8. Bant Humans even surpassed G/W Tokens in this regard as the only repeat deck in the elimination rounds. However, when you go deeper into the results, G/W Tokens once again emerges as the clear best deck. There are a whopping eight copies in the Top 32, the next most-represented archetype being W/B Control with three. Bant Humans slots an additional two in this section, which is a solid finish, but it still lags significantly behind.
After going through the data, there is no doubt in my mind that G/W Tokens is in a tier by itself right now. I can’t recommend playing anything else unless something drastic changes to the format.
Is This Cause For a Ban?
Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: Banning a card is a last resort and we haven’t reached that point just yet. G/W Tokens is great, no doubt, but it is not dominant in the way Caw-Blade and Affinity were. Other decks have a real chance of winning, and the games are interesting. People aren’t fleeing Standard in droves in order to escape Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. We just have a format with a clearly defined best deck and a hive mind that has not responded appropriately yet.
In the coming weeks, I expect G/W Tokens to become very popular, perhaps comprising up to 30% of the metagame. At that point, the metagame becomes predictable enough to readily exploit. Players who refuse to give in and play the G/W rare and mythic theme deck will try all manner of ways to find a deck that can beat G/W, perhaps one that was not viable earlier in the format since it sacrifices so much in other matchups.
The results of these attempts will inform us as to whether G/W Tokens is merely a best deck or a truly great, potentially oppressive deck. When a deck enters the territory where even the collective effort of the contrarian part of the hive mind cannot overcome it, then we can talk about a potential ban.
Now, the reality is that it’s unlikely we have enough data to even have that conversation before the release of Eldritch Moon, at which point any talk of bans needs to wait until the effects of a new set are fully understood, so the odds of a ban are essentially zero. This is, however, the closest thing we have seen to an oppressive deck in Standard in quite a while.
What Makes G/W Tokens So Strong?
On the surface this deck is eminently fair. It’s firmly in the middle of the aggro-control spectrum, although with certain choices in build you can shift it closer to either end, and it’s a pile of the kinds of cards Wizards of the Coast has been trying to promote for the last decade: creatures, removal spells, and planeswalkers. None of these cards are at risk of being banned in older formats like Stoneforge Mystic; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Skullclamp; or artifact lands. There isn’t a broken mana engine in the deck that puts you insurmountably far ahead of your opponent in the early stages of the game. G/W Tokens is actually quite boring.
In a way, this dullness is what makes G/W Tokens so potent. It’s a deck that fills every slot with a card that has a great rate but doesn’t do anything too flashy, with the possible exception of Archangel Avacyn, and the result is a deck that doesn’t have any obvious weaknesses. No matter what you are doing, G/W Tokens has a solid plan that you cannot ignore.
Its creatures are formidable threats, but a single Languish is easy to play through because of planeswalkers. The combination of a conservative two-color manabase and Oath of Nissa means the deck curves out consistently, so going underneath it is difficult, and if you fall behind, the combination of Archangel Avacyn and Hangarback Walker can win a game on the spot.
The combination of Hangarback Walker, Den Protector, and planeswalkers provides the deck plenty of card advantage against opposing control decks, and having access to the best removal spells in the format in Dromoka’s Command and Declaration in Stone mean that the deck is rarely stymied by a trump card like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Westvale Abbey, Secure the Wastes, and Evolutionary Leap ensure that there is always something to do with your mana, which means you can afford to play 25-26 lands in order to prevent missing early land drops.
Contrast this with a deck like Bant Humans. The power of Thalia’s Lieutenant can put together some very explosive draws, but as a three-color aggressive deck, it is prone to stumbling on its mana, either by missing a color or having too many lands enter the battlefield tapped. Tireless Tracker and Duskwatch Recruiter give you some much-needed card advantage, but unlike planeswalkers, they get swept up in Languish all the same, so you cannot sequence as aggressively as you can with Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.
Bant Humans does not have the same capabilities to play a controlling game against aggressive decks, especially given how removal-light it is. It must instead rely on the power of Collected Company and Reflector Mage to let it turn the corner and close the game out quickly before their window of control closes. Nor does it have any threat of a combo finish the way G/W Tokens has with Secure the Wastes and Westvale Abbey. Bant Humans trades stability for power and while that means the deck earns more free wins than GW, it comes out behind on the balance.
G/W Tokens is both powerful and versatile, but that is true of a lot of historical top decks in Standard. Abzan Midrange, Mono-Black Devotion, and Jeskai Aggro all had the potential to play multiple roles, but they were not as successful as G/W Tokens has been relative to the rest of the field. What is remarkable about G/W is that it can play multiple roles at the same time. It’s one thing to be the better offensive deck than your opponent or the better defensive deck. It’s quite another to beat them at both, but G/W can do that
Sylvan Advocate protects your planeswalkers while pressuring your opponents, and Archangel Avacyn even more so. The stats on these creatures are high, while vigilance allows them to pull double duty. Nissa, Voice of Zendikar can ramp toward an ultimate while clogging the battlefield or it can press your advantage with its -2. Gideon has similar dual functionality by either pumping out tokens or bashing for five at a clip. Just by playing your normal cards on-curve, you can put your opponent in a position where no matter which role they try to take, they will fail. This is the ultimate achievement in Magic and was last seen during the Caw-Blade era.
And much like Caw-Blade, G/W Tokens can be tuned week-to-week to adjust for how the metagame will attack you. An influx of W/X Humans can be met with Lambholt Pacifist or Thraben Inspector, while a surge of Languish-based control decks can be met with Secure the Wastes and Evolutionary Leap. You have plenty of removal options beyond Dromoka’s Command and Declaration in Stone, including Clip Wings, Angelic Purge, Tragic Arrogance, Planar Outburst, and Quarantine Field. The primary challenge for G/W players will be to stay on top of the metagame and bring a list tuned for that week, but in reality you can’t go too wrong as long as you keep the core of the deck intact.
The challenge for all the naysayers and players that can never seem to bring themselves to play the best deck is to find an angle of attack that the deck will not be prepared for. You are very unlikely to find something that works once it’s a known quantity, since G/W Tokens is so malleable, but on any given week you may be able to catch the metagame by surprise and ride that to a solid finish. One card that has certainly impressed me in that regard is Eldrazi Displacer.
Eldrazi Displacer is effective because it combats G/W’s versatility with its own. You can use it to clear blockers and pressure a planeswalker or your opponent’s life total. You can keep their many tokens in check and mitigate the power of Secure the Wastes in a long game. And you can grind value in combination with Reflector Mage or Thraben Inspector. Brad Nelson and Brian Braun-Duin both put in good finishes at Grand< Prix Costa Rica with a Bant Company deck featuring Eldrazi Displacer, and in our testing the previous week, it was a must-kill for G/W Tokens.
Whether Bant Company is the best shell for the card remains to be seen, but it is a shell with a proven history in the format, so you know you aren’t sacrificing much in other matchups. But it’s ultimately something that G/W Tokens players have seen and prepared against, even if Eldrazi Displacer adds a significant wrinkle. There is a lot of effort and a high risk of failure in trying to defeat a deck as impressive as G/W Tokens, and I do not see enough upside over picking up the bogeyman and mastering it over the coming weeks.
I fully expect Eldritch Moon to shift the balance of Standard away from green and white, but for now it’s time to give in and join the dark side.