Two New Brews to Break Standard

Posted on October 26, 2018

It's Friday, so that means another Ali article! The past couple of weeks we've talked about my baby, Rainbow Lich. I've been streaming with the deck on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so if you want gameplay and updates to the deck, make sure to check out my twitch channel. Today we'll be talking about a four-color deck that is inspired by the Rainbow Lich deck. If you've played the Mirari deck I wrote about last Standard, then you'll enjoy this list. It's just a four-color Mirari deck instead of two. Unlike the Rainbow Lich deck, we are not trying to combo with Lich's Mastery and Chance for Glory. We just want value from The Mirari Conjecture and then eventually we kill them with a Banefire, since we no longer have access to Torment of Hailfire. The other deck I want to talk about is a Grixis Dragons deck I ran into while streaming. It played Nicol Bolas, the Ravager Connive // Concoct, and Expansion // Explosion. I was intrigued when playing against the deck and luckily my opponent posted the list in chat after our match.

With two sweet brews to cover, let's go ahead and dive in!

Four-Color Mirari | Guilds Standard | Ali Aintrazi

Artifacts (4)
4 Chromatic Lantern

Keep in mind this deck is still a work in progress, especially the mana base. I'm going try just Grixis Mirari next to make the mana base more stable. That way I'll be able to cut Chromatic Lantern completely. I'm just not sure how reliable Ritual of Soot is, and we'd be losing the best battlefield wipes in Deafening Clarion, Settle the Wreckage, and Cleansing Nova.

Anyway, that's for another time. The goal of this deck is to just live until you can start playing The Mirari Conjecture for value and then eventually to end the game when you are able to Mastermind's Acquisition for a Banefire and kill your opponent on the third chapter of The Mirari Conjecture. Just keep count of how many Mirari Conjectures you have left. In a scenario where you've lost or used all your Mirari Conjectures, you'll want to wish for Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Zacama, Primal Calamity or even Banefire if your opponent is low enough. The deck does have a main deck Expansion // Explosion which can be used to kill your opponent, much like Banefire. Explosion can be hard to cast mid game, but we only play a single copy and late game it should be easy to cast with the help of Chromatic Lantern or just having your enough lands / colored sources.

In the sideboard we have more ways to attack control decks since we already have a decent number of great cards for the aggressive / midrange decks. Duress, Thought Erasure, Negate, Niv-Mizzet, Parun, and Thief of Sanity are all fantastic tools to combat control, especially since they tend to Sideboard out most, if not all their removal against us which allows Thief of Sanity to steal all their juicy cards. Thief of Sanity costing three mana allows us to cast it on turn four while also casting Duress, or we can protect it on turn five with the help of Negate and Thought Erasure.

Profane Procession is the best way I found to deal with opposing big uncounterable creatures like Niv-Mizzet, Nezahal, and Chromium. It's also good against other midrange decks, except for Golgari since they tend to have a ton of planeswalkers that can destroy artifacts and enchantments. I've mostly liked it to just stop Niv-Mizzet since Profane Procession doesn't ever trigger Niv-Mizzet's ability.

Again, this list isn't complete and I'm still working on it. I need to do more testing to see if I can just shave the White. As is, I've still really enjoyed the deck and it is competitive. If you enjoyed Mirari or Rainbow Lich, this deck is like both of them, so give it a whirl.

Next up is a deck I ran into while streaming, the deck-builders name on Twitch was Jabdude. Here's his take on Grixis Dragons.

Grixis Dragon | Guilds Standard | Jabdude

What really caught my eye here was Connive // Concoct and Expansion // Explosion in the same deck. Both those cards are extremely powerful. I especially like just reanimating a Niv-Mizzet on turn five with Concoct; that's just lights out against most of the decks in the format. Being able to protect your spells with Thought Erasure and Ionize is another big draw here. I feel like both cards may end up being staples of the format. I also like the interaction with dragons and Spit Flame. You can return Spit Flame to your hand when you play a dragon. Then, if it's a dead card, you can discard it to Sarkhan, Fireblood for card advantage.

I ended up winning my match against this deck, but it was only because I was able to play Thief of Sanity on turn three and connect with it multiple times. Otherwise, it's a nightmare of a matchup with hand disruption and countermagic. Jamdude's main deck seems solid to me outside of questionable cards like Blink of an Eye and Golden Demise. I'd personally like to find room for one or two Vraska's Contempt and maybe one Notion Rain or a second Ral, Izzet Viceroy. Otherwise, the list looks solid.

The Sideboard on the other hand has some cards I wouldn't play, like Star of Extinction, Banefire, Unmoored Ego, and probably Deadeye Tracker. I don't think Unmoored Ego is good in Standard; I'd rather have Thief of Sanity for control. As for Deadeye Tracker, I think it's a fine card, but I'd rather play Phyrexian Scriptures in that slot to deal with Green decks playing big creatures like Carnage Tyrant and it also exiles your opponent's graveyard on the third chapter. This allows your sideboard card to be more impactful since you can bring it in more matches. I imagine Star of Extinction was meant to deal with resolved Carnage Tyrants but sometimes you don't have time to cast Star of Extinction. Deadeye Tracker is decent against control decks but now you'll have Thief of Sanity instead, which is much better against the midrange and control decks.

That about sums it up for today. I hope at least one of these lists gets your creative juices going. I'm going to keep working on the Mirari deck and the Rainbow Lich deck. You can watch my streams on Twitch for updates. When I have a solid list, I will update everyone again with an article. I still want to brew around Thousand-Year Storm too. That card is just too sweet to not have some sort of home. Standard is in a great spot right now, we have so many viable decks and I keep seeing new decks and ideas popping up every week. I love Ravnica and I can't get enough!

As always, thank you very much for reading!

Ali Aintrazi

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, analysis, ali aintrazi, decklist, brewing, brew, guilds standard, 10262018