By now, everyone has had a chance to think about what the June bannings will do to Standard. I want to take it a step further and examine how M12 will shake up the format. As many others have pointed out, the two most obvious decks with Jace and Stoneforge Mystic gone are Splinter Twin and Valakut. Any deck you plan on playing has to be able to interact with or race these two strategies. Let’s examine both these decks, starting with Splinter Twin.

There are a few different versions of this combo deck, some of them straight U/R, some of them splashing Black for discard, some of them playing the combo in a R/U/G shell, and some even crazy enough to mash it together with Caw-Blade. You can’t just throw four Dismembers in your deck and call it a day. Whatever plan you have against this deck has to be able to survive a discard spell or two, and fight through Spellskite. Without Jace, these decks won’t be nearly as consistent, so you’ll have more time than before, but sometimes they will just combo you on turn four. So how does one interact with this deck? Ideally, with a creature-removal spell that dodges Spellskite, namely, Go for the Throat. However, non-Black decks will have to settle for having to use a kill spell on the Spellskite, or hope that the Splinter Twin player doesn’t draw one. Otherwise, you can play enchantment removal. Options that are cheap, instant, and don’t get redirected to Spellskite are Back to Nature and Demystify. Narrow cards, to be sure, but sometimes you need a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. One card I’ve been meaning to try out is Act of Aggression, since if you can manage to resolve it in response to a Splinter Twin, you win the game. Just make sure you wait until the end of turn to make a zillion tokens, and for the love of the FSM, make sure you give it back tapped! This assumes that you can leave at least 3 mana up during your opponent’s turn, and it doesn’t get countered or picked off by a discard spell. This is otherwise known as Magical Christmasland.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have a former boogeyman returning in the form of Valakut. PV stated in his article that Summoning Trap should be eschewed in favor of Green Sun’s Zenith, and I couldn’t agree more. With M12, Valakut will have access to Rampant Growth again, making the deck that much more consistent. The prospect of facing a turn-four Primeval Titan pushes any sort of midrange aggro deck out of the format, as it forces you to either to interact with it, or to just win faster. Everything that was true about Valakut before PT: Paris still holds true today. The bottom line is that you can’t let Primeval Titan enter the battlefield. It’s that simple. Counter it, make your opponent discard it, stop him from hitting 6 mana, kill him before he plays it, or even Memoricide it.

So what does one play if one doesn’t want to play Splinter Twin or Valakut? I’d like to present a couple different approaches. First, U/B control:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Grave Titan

2 Consecrated Sphinx

2 Sea Gate Oracle

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

3 Jace Beleren

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

1 Consume the Meek

2 Dismember

2 Go for the Throat

4 Mana Leak

1 Black Sun's Zenith

4 Despise

4 Inquisition of Kozilek

4 Preordain

4 Spreading Seas

[/Spells]

[Lands]

4 Swamp

6 Island

4 Creeping Tar Pit

4 Darkslick Shores

4 Drowned Catacomb

4 Tectonic Edge

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

2 Wurmcoil Engine

1 Consume the Meek

2 Negate

4 Flashfreeze

1 Black Sun's Zenith

2 Monomania

3 Memoricide

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

I took inspiration for this deck from Carlos Romao’s winning list from the MTGO World Championship last year, as well as Shouta Yasooka’s Tezzeret deck from GP: Singapore. So far, this deck doesn’t gain much from M12, but I have included the mirror-breaker Monomania, as I suspect it will be quite good in control mirrors. Against Splinter Twin, this deck can aggressively play Spreading Seas on the opposing player’s Mountains, making it difficult for him to cast its namesake card. The deck has the triple threat of removal, discard, and counterspells to fight the good fight. As for Valakut, U/B control has always been well-positioned against it, and has some very effective sideboard cards such as Memoricide and Flashfreeze.

I made this list before I saw the new Jace, and while everyone is pooh-poohing the card, I think it’s actually quite good for control mirrors. It’s clearly no Mind Sculptor, but really, if you compare any card to that, you’re going to be disappointed. Memory Adept is worth trying out, at the very least.

For those of you with a beatdown inclination, I have the following:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Goblin Guide

4 Grim Lavamancer

4 Hero of Bladehold

4 Plated Geopede

4 Steppe Lynx

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

4 Koth of the Hammer

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

2 Dismember

4 Incinerate

4 Lightning Bolt

[/Spells]

[Lands]

6 Mountain

6 Plains

2 Terramorphic Expanse

4 Arid Mesa

4 Marsh Flats

4 Scalding Tarn

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Kor Firewalker

2 Gideon Jura

1 Dismember

3 Act of Aggression

3 Arc Trail

2 Teetering Peaks

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

I started with Chikara Nakajima’s deck from the Top 8 of GP: Singapore, and fudged some of the numbers. I’m speculating on Hero of Bladehold, because with Jace gone, it has the potential to be the bee’s knees. Some number of them could be replaced with Hero of Oxid Ridge. Other than that, I cut the Squadron Hawks because they are a lot less exciting without equipment. This deck benefits a lot from M12, since there are some pretty spicy Red cards to play with. Grim Lavamancer has always been a good man, and the brief period between the release of M12 and Innistrad will be the best time for him since he will reap the benefits of the Zendikar fetch lands. As I said before, I want to try out Act of Aggression, as it’s live against both Splinter Twin and Valakut. Against the former, I admit it’s a bit loose since it costs 3 and they have Dispels and whatnot, but against the latter, stealing a Primeval Titan and getting a couple of Teetering Peaks is a big game. It’s not much different than Act of Treason in that regard, but having the option to cast it at instant speed is nice, giving you some flexibility to side it in for other matchups.

While it remains to be seen if Caw-Blade’s dominance in Standard is only going to be replaced by shared dominance in Splinter Twin and Valakut, I for one am excited by the new possibilities the June bannings and M12 bring. It’s going to be a brave new world of Standard, and I hope Nationals season will be a blast.

Until next time,

Nassim Ketita