Path to Exile is overrated.
There, I said it. Obviously it’s still playable, but it certainly isn’t an automatic four-of in every deck that has White mana. Giving your opponent a land can be devastating in Standard, as most decks have powerful stuff like Reveillark and planeswalkers. I would rather err on the side of caution (as I’m sure you have all noticed by now), so I can’t understand how someone could run Path instead of Terror in decks like Five-Color Control and WB Tokens.
There are certain things that can’t get Terrored, such as Demigod of Revenge, although I predict Red decks are going to be more likely to play Siege-Gang Commanders instead of Demigods in the future. The highest finishing Red decks at Worlds made this change, and for good reason. Demigod just isn’t that good anymore, as most people have answers or are playing decks where Demigod is poor. The hype behind Path to Exile should make Demigod even worse.
In my WB Token deck from Worlds, I played the full amount of Terrors, but ended up wanting a little something extra against Faeries, as I wanted to kill every Scion, Mistbind, and Sower that they played. Murderous Redcap ended up being a fine solution, if only because Unmake was the only other alternative. While it kills Mistbind Clique, the damage from their Mana Short effect is already done.
I could see playing a couple of Paths in the sideboard of WB to play that role, but there is no way I would play Path instead of Terror. However, pairing Path with Knight of the White Orchid is something to consider, as it allows you to keep parity. Still, that isn’t all that impressive, but it is definitely worth noting that both of those mediocre cards work well together.
Noble Hierarch is another card that people seem to get excited about, but only because it’s new. Decks that could cast turn 2 Doran have been around for a while now, and Hierarch (and to some extent Ancient Ziggurat) probably won’t be able to bring those decks back.
I predict that these decks will be played, but not because of their overwhelming power. Most likely, they will be played by those people who want a change. Eventually, the better decks (White midrange, Faeries, Five-Color Control, and RDW) will hate the nearly all creature decks out of the format.
Patrick, if Noble Hierarch is the only card keeping you from playing Cryptic Command in Kyoto, I would advise you to sleeve up the Commands right now.
Knight of the Reliquary is getting a lot of press as well, although more so in Extended than Standard. Most people see it as a Terravore, with some different abilities, but that isn’t exactly true. While being able to Crop Rotation is kind of cute, playing with the Knight is probably wrong for a couple reasons.
First of all, the lands you can tutor for aren’t very impressive. While thinning your deck and searching your deck for specific things is “good,” wouldn’t it just be better to be attacking with your giant animal (assuming your deck is designed to make it giant, of course)? Again, we run into a problem as the Knight doesn’t have any form of evasion like Terravore does, so it can even be a mediocre attacker. It just ends up being mediocre in races, as decks like Zoo or Affinity can usually just chump and attack you back.
Obviously, comparing the Knight to a card that isn’t legal isn’t exactly fair, but that comparison is the reason I see for most people playing with it. Even if the Knight didn’t force you to splash a color, I wouldn’t play with it.
I hate to be overly negative here, but it’s not like me to stand idly by while people get overly excited by mediocre cards.
One Conflux card that I don’t see getting as much attention as he deserves is Cliffrunner Behemoth. If a Noble Hierarch deck does hit the prime time, it will probably feature that animal. He is so much more impressive than the wave of fat a UGWb build would have, as there are plenty of dudes you can play just for being fat. He does something different than the rest of them, which allows him to stand out from the pack.
The Behemoth’s only pitfall is requiring a Red permanent to be good, which means you might have to cut back on one of the other non-Green colors, all of which have their merits. I believe that for such a deck to survive, it will need to pack some form of disruption, like Negate, Tidehollow Sculler, or Gaddock Teeg, mostly to fight off things like Wrath of God. While not an extremely popular maindeck card, you can bet that most if not all of the midrange White decks will be packing it in their sideboard.
Realm Razer/Bloom Tender was a rogue deck before Conflux, and could maybe be a contender with an extra splash, or just by playing more control hate.
Initially, I was high on Banefire, but have since gotten over it. Demonfire was once a 20 ticket card on Magic Online, but there are a few reasons why Demonfire was much better than Banefire. There wasn’t a great aggro control deck around at the time. Sure, there were UGR Sea Stompy decks, but they weren’t quite the menace that Faeries is. Mistbind Clique is probably the main problem, as it’s Time Walk with a huge body. A midrange deck that might have been able to close a race with Banefire probably won’t be able to if they are forced to skip a turn or two.
Secondly, karoos like Azorius Chancery were all the rage when Demonfire was around. They allowed you to constantly be casting Demonfires for five or more, all without really being mana flooded. Signets were also widely played, but it was the karoos that did most of the dirty work. Banefire doesn’t come attached with any assurance that you will have six mana lying around every game.
Banefire might be as insane as Demonfire if there were any good card drawing around to keep the land drops coming, but these days the card advantage is all creature-oriented. Whether you are casting Siege-Gang Commander, Reveillarking back some Mogg Fanatics, or Ranger of Eos-ing up some Figures of Destiny, none of those play extremely well with Banefire.
Mulldrifter is about the best pure card advantage we have access to, but decks with Mulldrifter don’t end up being very aggressive. Banefiring Faeries for the last five points after they stabilized can’t really happen when you failed to deal them fifteen damage to begin with.
Banefire is great, and will probably be the second biggest card out of Conflux, but it won’t nearly be the “Demonfire you for nine” games of the past.
You might be thinking, “So what exactly is good in Standard, since you seem to think everything sucks?”
Both WR “Boat Brew” and WB Tokens are my favorite decks in the format. They are great against straight beatdown decks like RDW and Kithkin, while also being aggressive enough to put Faeries on the defensive.
I’m not sure why anyone would want to play Kithkin at this point, with two similar White decks available to them, both having more depth and capable of playing different roles. I don’t expect WW to do very well at Pro Tour: Kyoto.
Since Worlds, there has been a decent amount of debate on the WR deck, namely which removal spell to run. I’ve seen lists with Magma Spray, Incinerate, Flame Javelin, and now Path to Exile. As I said earlier, Path is solid with Knight of the White Orchid, but I personally prefer Flame Javelin.
While not typically the type of spell you would expect to see in a deck like this, as it aims to control the board rather than burn out their opponent, Javelin is a clever addition. While playing something like Unmake might seem like a better choice, as the deck is slightly more White than Red, getting RRR is fairly easy with Rugged Prairie, and Javelin kills almost everything that Unmake could while also playing the role of finisher while facing an opposing Bitterblossom.
Magma Spray is an acceptable option, as it is a tempo-oriented removal spell for Scion of Oona or Sower of Temptation, but I would much rather be able to kill a Mistbind Clique than not, as it is probably the most troublesome card.
Incinerate makes virtually no sense, as Spray is better at killing little stuff and Incinerate is nearly useless against Mistbind. There aren’t really any x/3s worth killing, so it seems like you should pick the cheap spell or the one that kills Mistbinds. There isn’t really anything that would make me want to play Incinerate instead of Spray.
Obviously, you could almost have the best of both worlds with Path to Exile, but if I can find a way to accomplish what I want (killing Faeries’ problematic creatures) without giving them a land, I’ll play the card that doesn’t give them a land. Javelin even has the added bonus of playing tag team with Banefire and killing opposing Goblin Outlanders. While Stillmoon Cavalier shouldn’t give you any problems due to your near endless access to Mogg Fanatics thanks to Ranger of Eos and Reveillark, Javelin also dispatches of him quite nicely.
I’ve seen some WR lists adopt Fulminator Mages as a way to get rid of opposing Windbrisk Heights and to help against Five-Color Control. While Fulminators are probably a good idea overall, I wouldn’t recommend running Path to Exile and Stone Rain in the same deck.
One trend I’ve seen lately that absolutely has to stop is Rustic Clachan in WR. While usually fine in a Kithkin deck, as it is almost strictly better than a Plains, it is greedy and risky in WR. Most lists I’ve seen have eight or nine Kithkin, which means it will come into play tapped the majority of the time. If it provided a powerful effect like Windbrisk Heights I would be fine with it, but all that for the chance of using it for a measly +1/+1 counter? You would have to be out of mind or extremely greedy to play with them. At almost no point do you want to throw a land away, so what’s the point?
WB Tokens remains nearly unchanged through Conflux. With the exception of a couple of Paths to help against Faeries, I don’t foresee much that I would want to change. I have considered splashing Siege-Gang Commander instead of Cloudgoat Ranger, and then maybe playing stuff like Banefire or Vithian Stinger, but I’m not sure if that is necessary, or even good.
I said a while ago that Five-Color Control would need to adapt into a more aggressive role if it wanted to compete with Faeries. I tried things like Chameleon Colossus and failed, but Chapin and ManuB’s Broodmate Dragons seemed to accomplish what I couldn’t. Their version of Five-Color Control seems to have an edge against the White decks, which might make it a great deck for the Pro Tour.
The only thing I might consider changing (besides the Ultimatums of course) is adding some Treetop Villages. While Treetop is kind of loose with Ultimatum, you should design your deck with a higher Flooded Grove to Treetop ratio that it shouldn’t be an issue. From my experience, Treetop was awesome at providing a clock or adding to it, and it didn’t have a downside. Treetop might become kind of awkward if the deck shifts away from Green to focus on things like Volcanic Fallout, but as long as you want to keep playing Cloudthresher, having a couple of Treetops seems doable.
With Conflux not really shaking things up, Faeries is still the king. Nyxathid, as mentioned earlier on this site, is probably a solid sideboard option. Other than that, I don’t see Conflux adding much, as splashing in Faeries is usually a bad idea.
Volcanic Fallout, Scattershot Archers, and Banefire are the newest batch of Faerie hosers that don’t quite stack up. Archers only stops part of the problem and dies to any real removal spell. It’s cute that it’s a1/2 to specifically dodge Peppersmoke, but that doesn’t even matter that much since it isn’t very good in the first place.
Fallout is actually a solid card that I expect to see some play in Five-Color Control and RDW, although it is just another Pyroclasm, nothing earth shattering.
RDW gets a decent boost from Volcanic Fallout and Banefire, in addition to being able to play more Black for Goblin Outlander if they wanted. While I’m not sure if Tattermunge Maniac is the future, I believe that some form of RDW is extremely good in this format.
Blightning has been hit or miss for me, but Bitterblossom and Outlander are definitely amazing. I’m not sure if I would rather be the high-end Red deck with Siege-Gangs and consistent sources of damage like Bitterblossom, or a Sligh deck with Hellspark Elementals. With enough elementals, Flamekin Bladewhirl becomes an option.
GRx Ramp is a new-ish deck that might be good. While gunslinging at the NorCal Prerelease, a GRB Ramp deck crushed my WB Token deck under an avalanche of Broodmates, Cloudthreshers, and other sweepers. Banefire is a slight upgrade, and basically what I always wanted Resounding Thunder to be. In the end, this deck might be a bad Five-Color Control deck, but isn’t Five-Color Control just a GRB Ramp deck that splashes Mulldrifter and Cryptic Command? Maybe the best way to go about it is to not get too greedy and just stick to three colors and a solid manabase.
One deck that I’ve seen popping up is a Dramatic Entrance/Makeshift Mannequin reanimator type deck. Some lists use Progenitus, but that only combos with half of your engine, so you are probably better off using something that works with both, or just playing a ton of Zombifys and Looters. The Entrance strategy is much better against Faeries, as you have multiple instant threats instead of just Mannequins.
I’ve seen some lists that just splice the Quillspike/Devoted Druid combo into the list, but Quillspike seems pretty weak. Perhaps a multicolored list would work best, as Blue would allow you to play some better discard outlets, as Oona’s Prowler is pretty loose.
I don’t necessarily think that this type of deck is good, but it’s something worth thinking about, and it’s always good to be able to recognize what your opponent is trying to do.
GerryT