Now That Field Of The Dead Is Banned...

So, what’s next?

Everybody sort of knew what was up when they announced a “soft” emergency ban (for “scheduling” reasons).

Credit: AtrociKitty on Reddit

The banning of Field of the Dead was already a forgone conclusion by the time this past weekend’s Mythic Championship rolled around. The online data was too conclusive. Field of the Dead decks represented 42% of the metagame, still posting above-average numbers despite an entire format warped around combatting the strategy (on what few axes of interaction are available). Game length has also been markedly increased, which is not surprising.

I want to be clear that the outcome of Mythic Championship V did not affect this B&R decision. – WotC Designer, Ian Duke

Folks thinking this weekend was going to make or break the strategy might point to the Top 8 containing more diversity than you might expect from such a warped field, but part of the problem is that Bant Golos, Golos Fires, Simic Food, and Bant Ramp are not actually all that different of strategies under the hood.

Archetype	MC V Metagame	Top 8 Metagame
Bant Golos	33.8%	12.5%
Simic Food	16.2%	25.0%
Golgari Adventures	8.8%	0.0%
Bant Ramp	7.4%	25.0%
Golos Fires	7.4%	0.0%
Gruul Aggro	5.9%	12.5%
Selesnya Adventures	4.7%	0.0%
Mardu Knights	4.7%	12.5%
Miscellaneous	11.7%	12.5%

If you were to just look at the Top 8 results, you might be able to talk yourself into a narrative where Field of the Dead isn’t really a problem (and, I guess, Adventures decks weren’t that good). One thing I can tell you for sure is that stuff in the space of Simic Food and Bant Ramp (which is really more of Bant Food, all things considered) are kind of the new defining decks, the starting point for the new format.

The elephant in the room is that Throne of Eldraine’s premier new planeswalker is pretty busted, and kind of just brutal towards anything with a text box. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to give Oko a chance to shine, and who knows? Maybe with Field of the Dead out of the way, more possible responses to Oko will pop up that wouldn’t have been able to compete with Field of the Dead originally. Regardless, I think Oko is definitely a defining pillar of the new format.

Two other cards that could easily have been banned, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Hydroid Krasis form an advantage-generating core, with use in the mid-game for building resources and in the late-game for just completely taking over.

Gilded Goose is a good fast accelerator in a format otherwise lacking. Once Upon a Time stacks with the London mulligan rule to create an extremely consistent (and repetitive) sequencing of early-game plays.

So long as folks can use these five cards, Simic-based strategies are going to be a dominant force in Throne of Eldraine Standard and should certainly be one of the places we start to build our understanding of the post-Field of the Dead world.

Simic Food

William Jensen

7th Place at Mythic Championship on 10-18-2019

Standard

Creatures (20)

Planeswalkers (8)

Lands (24)

Spells (8)

Sideboard

William “Huey” Jensen and Gabriel Nassif Top 8’ed with a mostly straightforward version of this concept, making use of Wicked Wolf and Questing Beast for fast and powerful mid-game advantage, going under the Golos decks (and quite successfully).

I think Questing Beast is just awesome, but its stock may drop a little with the removal of Field of the Dead, as making Zombie tokens unable to block was one of its strong suits. Still, I think the card is excellent and will continue to be a staple, just perhaps less of a draw and less ubiquitous.

Wicked Wolf’s stock may actually rise, depending on if we see aggro continue to climb. A surge of control doesn’t actually spell bad things for the Wolf, as it happens to match up quite nicely against Murderous Rider and Fae of Wishes. That said, it really is perfect for matching up against Elk, so it’s kind of perfect for matching up against everything.

Completely a metagame call for Field of the Dead, and a brilliant one at that. I would imagine we’re very likely to want a lot less of this, at least maindeck.

Another metagame card for combating Golos decks. Maybe there’s a future where Golos decks reemerge and prey on people not metagaming against them so hard, but for now, I would assume we don’t really want this one anymore.

Great couple of blockers. Nice sideboard against fast aggro.

With Field of the Dead out of the way, we may see a rise in actual permission. It’s still not at its best or anything, but Veil of Summer is such an incredible anti-permission card, any permission we do see should be met with Veils to stifle them.

With Field of the Dead out of the picture, I think there’s a solid chance we’re going to want to move some of these to the maindeck. It’s a great mana sink and a great way to beat up on other creature decks.

One main difference between Simic Food and Bant Food is Teferi, Time Raveler, of course, a card that should rise in stock a little with the banning of Field of the Dead and a possible increase in permission. Generally speaking, Teferi and Oko are so powerful of planeswalkers on Turn 3, they kind of set the pace for how you’ve got to expect games to open up.

Bant Ramp

Stanislav Cifka

5th Place at Mythic Championship on 10-18-2019

Standard

Creatures (18)

Planeswalkers (10)

Lands (26)

Spells (6)

Sideboard

Cifka’s list is a great example of the Bant Food style, and with Field of the Dead banned, there is even more reason to consider moving Wicked Wolf to the maindeck.

Agent of Treachery is still a powerful card (particularly when you can bounce it), but in light of the banning, we might want to move it to the sideboard (or even consider a possible return to more of a Mass Manipulation focus?).

Generally speaking, I think Agent of Treachery is a stronger card, though Mass Manipulation does have a bigger payoff for Nissa.

Here’s a sleeper for you. I think Gadwick, the Wizened is going to have a big jump. Right now, it’s seeing little play, but I think a couple of levels deep, Gadwick is a potential powerhouse way for ramp decks to leverage their mana advantage to completely take over a game (and help make up for the lack of a Field of the Dead late-game). It’s also a reasonable way for a tap-out control deck to really generate a big advantage. It doesn’t have the whole “cast trigger” instead of “enters-the-battlefield trigger” thing going on, but it’s not like it’s really a worse Turn 4 play than Hydroid Krasis. And if you’ve got seven mana, Gadwick takes over the game much better than Hydroid Krasis.

One serious wildcard in the days to come is Fires of Invention. While the most popular way to use Fires of Invention was alongside Field of the Dead; there is one Fires of Invention strategy that emerged unscathed. Only one player piloted it in MC V, and it didn’t perform especially strongly for them; however, with Field of the Dead gone, they are likely to be hit with a lot less splash damage, and there may be an opening for a new tap-out deck that does big things.

Besides, anything that can’t be turned into an Elk should get a little extra consideration.

Jeskai Fires

Janne Mikkonen

46th Place at Mythic Championship on 10-18-2019

Standard

Creatures (6)

Planeswalkers (12)

Lands (27)

My biggest issues with this deck, at least going forward, are that I’d want to find a way to make it a bit better against red-based aggro, and I don’t think this deck, at least as currently imagined, actually lines up very well against Nissa, Who Shakes the World. That said, part of the appeal of a deck like this is how much you have access to every card in the format. Without needing to slant against Bant Golos so much, maybe we can find a different mix of mid-game cards that would be better suited for fighting Nissa and red-based aggro.

Speaking of red-based aggro…

Gruul Aggro

Javier Dominguez

1st Place at Mythic Championship on 10-18-2019

Standard

Creatures (28)

Lands (23)

Spells (9)

Sideboard

The champ is here! World Champion Javier Dominguez is on one. Talk about a monster!

This Gruul Aggro deck is definitely set up for a Field of the Dead world, so we’ll need to make some adjustments, but there’s a lot to like here.

Already a super-powerful card, Bonecrusher Giant stands to really gain from there being more space opened up for aggro decks. I could imagine this card being so popular and powerful that three toughness becomes the new gold standard in survivability for creatures.

Definitely an awesome card against decks short on removal or fast interaction, like Bant Golos and Simic Food; however, we’re going to want to be careful. The new format is likely to feature substantially more removal, not to mention cards like Teferi, Time Raveler having more room to breathe. Besides, at the end of the day, you can do all your fancy stuff and still end up just hanging out with an Elk.

Gilded Goose is a strong card and could easily take some of Field of the Dead’s market share in the days to come, so it’s worth paying extra mind to Javier’s Kraul Harpooners.

I could imagine some of the Simic Food decks evolving a little bit to incorporate more elements of Simic Flash, particularly given how good they are in the head-to-head. If things go that way, we might see an increase in Shifting Ceratops.

Caleb Durward actually went so far as to maindeck a Shifting Ceratops in his somewhat similar Jund Midrange deck (splashing black for Rotting Regisaur, a Legion’s End, and sideboard cards).

Definitely got a lot of its money from sweeping Zombie tokens. I expect this one’s stock to fall a little.

Talk about a fatty with a drawback that has overperformed! The one “concession” to Rotting Regisaur, if you can even call it a concession, is the use of Growth-Chamber Guardian, which can help fuel your hand and give you stuff to discard. I’m generally a little more inclined to stay Gruul, however, if you want to play this sort of a deck, as I could see the rise of spot removal boding poorly for the Regisaur. If it does go wrong, however, I don’t think it’ll be that bad. I do think it’s not necessarily at its best against some of the aggro decks either, though.

Jund Midrange

Caleb Durward

32nd Place at Mythic Championship on 10-18-2019

Standard