The next set on the horizon is Magic 2011, and, like Magic 2010, it contains some brand new cards as well as some old favorites. Approximately half the set has been (unofficially) spoiled by our friends at MTGSalvation.com, and a few other cards have been rumored to exist with varying degrees of credibility. For the purposes of this article, I will assume the rumors are true, though I would caution readers that unless a card has been officially spoiled by WOTC, there is a chance it is a hoax.
In this article, I will talk about three decks in particular that I believe will be contenders during the three upcoming periods of Standard. The first deck I believe will flourish as soon as M11 becomes legal and will continue to flourish for all periods of Standard thereafter. The second deck I believe will flourish after Alara Block rotates out. The third deck is uniquely situated for the three-month period when Alara Block and M10 are still legal alongside M11. So if you’re looking to get a jumpstart on future Standard, or to gain a glimpse of what sort of impact M11 will have on the format, read on.
I may be jumping the gun a little, but I find it nearly irresistible to start brainstorming decks whenever a new set begins getting spoiled. This is especially true when the set contains some very unique cards. Out of the 120 or so cards that have been unofficially spoiled so far, there are a handful of cards that have gotten me pretty excited.
Jace’s Ingenuity
3UU
Instant
Uncommon
Draw 3 cards.
This card is simple enough, and yet it accomplishes something that Standard has not had in a while. Sure, the obvious comparison is Mysteries of the Deep, but most people don’t realize just how close Mysteries of the Deep is to being playable in Standard. From a deck builder’s perspective, believe me, the landfall requirement on Mysteries makes all the difference in a lot of decks. It means that out of all the times where you want to cast it at instant speed and draw 3 cards, some relevant percentage of those times you will be unable to do so (usually about 50% from my testing in various decks, which is quite a lot!). Making those times 0% drastically increases the desirability of the mechanic since reliably drawing three cards at instant speed is so much better than drawing, on average, 2.5 cards, particularly when it involves committing ourselves to a five-mana spell that does not affect the board.
One of the biggest hindrances to this card’s viability is the lack of good counter-magic in Standard, as Patrick Chapin pointed out in his article earlier this week. While this is mostly true, there are other reasons to want to draw cards at instant speed. Consider the current Standard gauntlet: Mythic, Jund, and U/W Control, followed by NLB, Naya, and Mono Red. Against every single one of these decks, instant speed removal is far better than sorcery speed removal. Versus Mythic you die to Sovereigns of Lost Alara without it, against Naya and NLB you need it to stop their Vengevines from getting a free swing, and against Mono Red life is your most sacred commodity and all their creatures have haste (except Kargan Dragonlord, but instant speed removal is obviously better against him too, since you kill it after they spend their turn leveling him up). Any deck that tries to control the game benefits by leaving mana open on the opponent’s turn, and the biggest barrier in Standard right now to a non-tap out control strategy from flourishing is that all the best and most reliable card drawing engines are sorcery speed (Mind Spring and both Jace variants).
Jace’s Ingenuity basically gives the control player options and doesn’t require you to put down your defenses for a whole turn and let the opponent have free reign to do as he pleases on his ensuing turn. It also allows you to replenish your hand and punish opponents for not playing a threat that needs immediately dealt with on their turn. Condemn, another card rumored to be in M11, punishes the opponent in a number of complimentary ways. First, if they play a haste creature such as Vengevine or Bloodbraid Elf pre-combat, Condemn can get rid of it. And if they play a Planeswalker, then you either counter it with one of the eight counters in the deck or just let it resolve, draw three cards with the Ingenuity, and then untap and Oblivion Ring it. Or if they do nothing relevant, you can just draw 3 cards from Jace’s Ingenuity (or if it is Gideon Jura, just ignore it and let it attack into Condemn or Path to Exile). Furthermore, Path to Exile and Condemn are so cheap that once you hit six mana you can remove an attacker and still draw three cards in the same turn. The same goes for countering a spell and drawing three cards once you hit seven mana. Giving an opponent a free Rampant Growth with Path to Exile doesn’t feel so bad when you are following it up with an Ancestral Recall during their end step. I believe this card might mark the return of traditional control-style Magic in Standard where Planeswalkers are no longer the dominant card advantage engines. It would be really nice if there were a better flash creature in the format than Affa Guard Hound, something like Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, but I guess Draw-Go mages can’t get everything they want. Consider the following deck list:
Blue-White Draw-Go Control
4 Jace’s Ingenuity
4 Wall of Omens
3 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
3 Day of Judgment
2 Condemn
4 Path to Exile
4 Deprive
4 Negate
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Everflowing Chalice
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Tectonic Edge
2 Arid Mesa
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Sejiri Refuge
5 Islands
5 Plains
The sideboard would be heavily dependent on what decks you expect to face, but would almost certainly include the fourth Day of Judgment, the fourth Oblivion Ring, Kor Firewalkers for Red decks, along with some amount of Jund hate, whether in the form of Spreading Seas, Celestial Purge, or Flashfreeze, likely in addition to a second Sphinx of Jwar Isle, and probably the other two Condemns.. You would also want some versatile anti-control cards so that you can side out your Day of Judgments against them. Jace Beleren might be the card for that spot.
This deck plays out more the way a traditional control deck is supposed to play out: by responding on the opponent’s turn to whatever the opponent does, always keeping its options open and ‘controlling’ the game. Back in the day, the only time a control deck would tap out was for Wrath of God. The vast majority of the time, the control player’s turn would take five seconds, where he draws his card, plays a land, and says ‘Go’. The deck contains Sphinx of Jwar Isle over Baneslayer Angel mainly because the only targets for opposing creature removal spells are Wall of Omens, so whenever the Angel comes down the opponent will likely have a removal spell ready in hand for it. Sphinx just dodges that whole interaction. I’m sure this list is not perfect, and it obviously depends on what other cards are printed in M11, but it’s a great place to start and to get a feel for what Standard can be once M11 becomes legal (assuming the spoiled cards are accurate).
Here is a very different card I would like to talk about:
Aether Adept
1UU
Creature- Human Wizard
Common
When Aether Adept enters the battlefield, return target creature to owner’s hand.
2/2
Man-O’-War was one of my favorite cards when Visions first came out, back when people thought Snake Basket was the best thing since Grinning Totem and Jester’s Cap. Man-O’-War played an important role in Standard, bouncing Empyrial Armored Soltari Priests or removing a Nettletooth Djinn or Balduvian Horde from a frosty Winter Orb locked board, all while providing the extra body to power up Tradewind Rider. Visions was the classic 187 set (police code for homicide that became part of the Magic lingo at the time) where creatures entered the battlefield and provided more than just a power and toughness or a tap ability. Man-O-War was one of the primary cards that taught people, myself included, what exactly tempo is worth. Nekrataal and Uktabi Orangutan clearly provided card advantage, but Man-O’-War was just as good, despite it only providing tempo. The context of Standard is much different now, but I believe the return of Man-O-War will have a strong impact on the format and teach the new generation of players a similar lesson of tempo that my generation of Magic players learned from Man-O’-War a decade ago.
Consider the following deck list:
Blue-Green Tempo
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Into the Roil
4 Unified Will
2 Deprive
2 Wolfbriar Elemental
2 Sphinx of Lost Truths
4 Vengevine
4 Aether Adept
4 Nest Invader
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Khalni Garden
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Scalding Tarn
5 Island
6 Forest
Sideboard:
4 River Boa
4 Flashfreeze
4 Narcolepsy
2 Into the Roil
1 Unsummon
This type of deck probably will not be viable until Alara Block rotates out since tempo decks typically do not fair fell against attrition decks, and Jund is about as attrition-based as it gets. The idea behind tempo-style decks is to advance your own board while temporarily setting them behind and then winning the game via your advanced board position before the opponent is able to recover. This deck is able to accomplish this feat by playing out early mana acceleration and cheap threats and then bouncing the opposing threats via Aether Adept; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; and Into the Roil. It can then counter the threats as they are replayed, if need be, via Deprive and Unified Will. The counter-magic also helps fight board sweepers such as Day of Judgment and All is Dust. I’m not sure bounce strategies can compete with Bloodbraid Elf into Terminate, but it can certainly fair well against just about anything else. There seem to be a lot of decks waiting in the wings for the day Alara Block and the Jund Menace leave Standard.
One last card I would like to talk about is the new version of Ponder:
Preordain
U
Sorcery
Common
Scry 2, then draw a card.
It’s probably more fitting to say this is the new version of Serum Visions, but it is the card in M11 that is rumored to replace Ponder. There will, however, be a three month period in which both Ponder and Preordain will be legal, and that is the time period in which the following deck will be well-positioned.
Dark Polymorph
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 See Beyond
4 Spreading Seas
3 Awakening Zone
4 Duress
2 Pithing Needle
2 Into the Roil
4 Rampant Growth
4 Polymorph
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Khalni Garden
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
6 Island
Sideboard:
2 Pithing Needle
2 Into the Roil
4 Smother
1 Unsummon
2 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Negate
The most striking feature of this list is the absence of Jace, the Mind Sculptor. In general, when your plan is to combo with Polymorph, the four-mana Planeswalker is very slow, and when facing pressure, it usually does not do more than soak up some points of damage and either Unsummon or Brainstorm. It’s excellent at combating opposing Jace, the Mind Sculptors, unless the opponent is accelerating into them with Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarchs, and Lotus Cobras. Too many times, however, it just feels like a glorified Captured Sunlight, given the lack of ways to protect it in this archetype. So basically I decided to speed up the deck by aggressively disrupting opposing hate via Duress and Pithing Needle instead of passively trying to set up a turn where I can Polymorph with counter-backup and hope they do not have multiple answers to the combo. Playing the full complement of See Beyonds , Ponders, and Preordains allows the deck to find whatever card it is looking for more consistently, whether that card be a land, a Polymorph, a token generator, or an answer to opposing hate. The mana may be a bit clunky, but that could probably be worked out with some additional testing. Once Alara Block rotates out, the time may be right again for Jace, the Mind Sculptor in Polymorph since the format will be slower and there won’t be any Sovereigns of Lost Alara coming down on turn 3, but without Ponder I’m not sure the deck will have enough card access anyway. Regardless, for approximately three months this deck will have its Ponders and its Preordains, and will look to take advantage of that window for the short time it stays open.
These three decks should give you an idea of what will be possible in Standard once M11 is released, assuming the rumor mill is accurate on the few cards I’ve talked about. I’m looking forward to Standard undergoing a series of changes in the coming months and offering a wide open format once Alara Block rotates out. I have suggested a control deck, an aggressive deck, and a combo deck, each of which seems to have the tools to compete in its respective format. So whatever archetype is your flavor, rest assured you will be able to play a deck that suits you. Hopefully some of the rares and mythics from M11 will start to get spoiled so we can gain a clearer picture of what the major changes to the format will look like.