TagStandard

When a card like Savannah Lions – an icon from times past! – is bought back from the wilderness, I always wonder: Is it any good these days? If Mogg Fanatic came back, would we play it (of course – it’s a goblin)? If Serra Angel came back, would we play her? Oh, hang on. She is back… And she doesn’t see much airtime. So is White Weenie any good right now? I took my new White Weenie deck through three iterations, constantly trying to find a way to beat Wake…

1) Psychatog is finally dead in Standard. It will be up to 8th Edition to revive him; otherwise, we can kiss Dr. Teeth goodbye until Extended season. And there was much rejoicing…
2) Mind’s Desire is still note quite ready for Prime Time. Olivier Ruel went 6-1 with it, but Kai went 2-5. However, their versions were radically different, and as of right now I haven’t completed the overall numbers for the decks.

This deck was the real surprise to come out of the Championships, and is actually a lot more powerful than I initially felt it was. It feels very similar to Wake, with you tapping out for insanely powerful effects like Decree of Justice and Decree of Pain… But considering the deck’s eight Wrath effects punish you for playing creatures, encouraging you to hold them right in your hand where you can Therapy them out, it works really well together.

As you can see only half of the top eight went 5-0 or better in Standard, something you might expect in a tournament based on two formats. Depressingly for those of us who like to see a little innovation, R/G Beats is by far the most consistent deck, even taking into account the huge number of people who chose to play it. Slide and Wake did very well given the lower, but still high, numbers that started playing them on day one.
Surprisingly only one player managed to win all six rounds with his Standard deck and it was one of the new breed of decks: Zombies.

I remember watching the finals of Nationals in 1995. The guy who beat me with the netdeck is playing it out versus some godawful Shivan Dragon special. He is losing anyway, as a sideboard with loads of Glooms and Flashfires is quite good against white weenie. I look at the winner’s expression, and wonder what he feels like. Would it be like the best thing ever, or more like a nice warm feeling in the stomach? I would like to be a National Champion myself. Maybe someday I will.

Since the first day the Legions spoiler hit the web, there has been a scramble to build a good deck that includes Withered Wretch and/or Graveborn Muse. Both cards offer very powerful effects, but each had trouble finding the right team to go with them. After some initial practice with Stephane Damizet’s winning zombie deck, I have to say that I’m quite impressed.

I’ve already seen people howling about the loss of Counterspell as a sign that Wizards is still hell-bent on making blue the worst color in Magic. I don’t think blue is in that bad shape. It’s just not the blue you’re used to, and that’s a good thing.

With Scourge looming ever closer, there has been a real crimp in deck analysis for the current Standard format – and judging by my inbox, I’m not the only one wishing there were a few more articles for today’s format. Fortunately, we’ve had some significant events in the last few weeks to give us an intriguing look at how this dizzying environment continues to shape up. Amazingly, the format looks to have become even more diverse.

I was working on tweaking U/G to my satisfaction for Regionals, and Brad put together this rogue-ish deck built around the Unholy Triumvirate of Cabal Archon, Rotlung Reanimator, and Withered Wretch. I chuckled at his efforts – after all, didn’t he know about Compost? Compost destroys mono-black decks. I decided to humor him by hauling out U/G against his horribly untuned deck… And got my clock cleaned. Hmm. Maybe this deck has some potential after all.

What began with a heartwarming welcome and a fast start ended with a rude smack in the face. Such is my tale from Regionals ’03 – and it has pictures!

When Onslaught first came out, we were tantalized with the prospect of powered-up theme decks that were actually competitive. There haven’t been a lot of those in the history of the game – Slivers, Merfolk, and Rebels have been pretty much it. Randy Buehler called Clerics, Soldiers, Birds, Wizards, Zombies, Goblins, Beasts, and Elves the”tribes that matter” in the Onslaught block – so I’m going to take a look at how each theme panned out over the course of the block.

After nearly two months of solid testing and experience with this deck, I feel it is unquestionably one of the Tier 1 decks of the current field, if not the outright best deck of the field. With reasonable to good matchups against almost everything out there and a very real fighting chance in most of its bad matchups, Wake has what is almost surely the best set of matchups in today’s Standard. In the right hands, it wields awesome power and can completely dismantle many of the decks out there… And so let me show you how to play this powerhouse.

The environment for this year’s Regionals and Nationals events has likely been the single most diverse Standard season the game has ever seen. In such a spread-out field it was difficult to cover all your bases, but the one thing we all seemed to be able to agree on was that the Tier 1 was pretty clearly composed of three decks: R/G, U/G, and ‘Tog. That, ladies and gentlemen, has come to an abrupt end. Both Wake and MBC have risen to dramatically shake up the old guard, and I’ll show you why Wake has joined the top tier by giving you a guided inside tour of what may be the single best deck in Standard today.

“So you finally lost.”
“Yeah, it was a good run. First match loss in the eighth round is not a bad day. I mean, five, oh, and two is great after seven rounds. That’s top eight in a seven-round PTQ, right?”
“That’s true, man. But you suck. No lies; you really suck at this game, and yet you managed to be in contention for seven rounds. That’s pretty cool.”

Regionals was an uncomfortable car ride followed by a big disappointment diced up to lay amidst small flares of occasional fun, the meetings with friends and MODO clan members that were like little pepper granules of merriment amidst the undercooked, salmonella-inducing hamburger patty of defeat. This whole putrid meal was served up with a side order of uncomfortable accommodations and a large Pepsi. No, I didn’t have fun at Regionals, where I saw two weeks of intense study and preparation go down the tubes – but mark my words, I’ll have fun writing about it, or die trying.