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Main » Articles » Settling into Standard

Settling into Standard

Ben Friedman
Posted on October 28, 2016
 Reddit

Longtusk Cub
Wow. After three weeks on the road, it’s great to be back home . . . for two days! To be sure, Grand Prixs in Atlanta and Providence were fun, but when it comes to thrilling times and memorable experiences, nothing beats Hawaii. I’m already counting the days until the Pro Tour returns to Honolulu (Fall 2018, cough, cough) and you should make every effort to qualify when the opportunity next presents itself.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Before we can think about hypothetical Pro Tours two years from now, we should probably stop and look at the competitive Magic formats as they currently stand. Both Standard and Modern have seen some extreme shake-ups in recent weeks, and as you’re reading this, I’m probably playing in the Legacy Championships, trying to show the world why my four-color Delver list is the best! Even Limited is awesome right now, with Kaladesh providing tools for archetypes as disparate as B/W Inspired Charge aggro and Temur Energy midrange. Let me tell you, curving a Longtusk Cub into a Fabrication Module on the play is about as fun as it sounds!

So where to begin? Let’s start with the most popular format, and the one that was recently showcased at both the Pro Tour and Grand Prix: Providence. Where is Standard right now, and where is it going? The picture has finally become clear after a few opening salvos, and we have a firm top tier of decks to choose from (and to metagame against, if that’s your thing!)

Toolcraft Exemplar
Standard started with an aggressive bent in Kaladesh, as it traditionally does. W/R Vehicles won the first Open of the format, putting a clock on the format with a turn-four kill of Toolcraft Exemplar into Smuggler's Copter into Depala into . . . well, anything really. A single extra creature to crew the Copter would mean 21 damage by turn four. That’s generally par for the course when it comes to Standard, but there were certainly reasons to suspect that the Pro Tour might go in a different direction. Just under the radar at that first Open were some interesting decks revolving around a certain four-mana artifact (and no, I’m not talking about Aetherflux Reservoir!)

Aetherworks Marvel took the Pro Tour and squeezed the format in a different direction. With Aether Meltdowns, Kozilek's Returns, maindeck lifegain in Woodweaver's Puzzleknot, and turn-four Eldrazi Titans, Marvel decks crushed the folks who brought fair non-Blue decks to the table. I personally played against two G/B Delirium opponents who lamented this “unwinnable” matchup, and beat up on two Vehicles decks down the final stretch, to boot. Marvel decks have a field day when no one is playing Spell Queller, so what happened? All four 9-1 Standard decks were U/W Spell Queller archetypes, and the Top 8 was littered with Ceremonious Rejections, Negates, Torrential Gearhulks, and Spell Quellers. Those decks got huge amounts of free wins from the quantity of Marvel in the field, showing how sometimes Level Two is exactly where you want to be in a metagame where everyone brings Marvel (Level One) to combat Vehicles (Level Zero). Marvel kept down Delirium, and Blue tempo and control decks benefitted from Delirium’s bad performance to dominate on Day 2 of the tournament.

Aetherworks Marvel
So in the denouement from the Pro Tour, Standard saw Aetherworks Marvel become yesterday’s news, even as it was the hottest card in competitive Magic on Friday afternoon. “From up-and-comer to has-been” should not be Aetherworks’ final epitaph, but come Grand Prix: Providence, it seemed like no one was willing to bring Marvel to a Spell Queller fight. But if no one was willing to bring Aetherworks Marvel, what does that mean for a tournament? Well, if the Top 8 was any indication, it meant that Vehicles and B/G Delirium were free to run wild at the top tables again! Not that this was unknown information; everyone was talking about how unplayable Marvel was in the wake of the PT, so it was pretty obvious that the best choices were decks that couldn’t interact with Marvel, but beat up on U/W decks that were likely to be popular. I waffled between Delirium and Vehicles for a long time before Joe Demestrio sent me his well-tuned Mardu Vehicles list at the last minute, which I will include here for posterity (and to shout out my friends for a well-tuned aggressive list!)

Mardu Vehicles ? Kaladesh Standard| Joe Demestrio

After a very auspicious 10-1-1 start, I crashed and burned the last three rounds, losing to Seth Manfield in the feature match before losing two extremely close (and quite frustrating) games against R/W Vehicles. I’m not sure that I played optimally, but losing those matches was disheartening, to say the least. Regardless, I am confident that some variation of Mardu Vehicles remains a superb option for upcoming Standard tournaments, although there may need to be some adjustments for improving the matchups against U/W Flash, R/W Vehicles, and G/B Delirium. Alongside various control decks revolving around Torrential Gearhulk, I personally saw those three major archetypes (lumping in Mardu Vehicles with R/W Vehicles) succeed at the Grand Prix, and that should be setting the stage for the developing Standard format. If you can beat those major decks, you are definitely favored to do well at any Standard tournament you enter in the near future.

Here’s where I’m at for Mardu Cars (Cardu?), tuned for mirror matches, U/W, and (optimistically) B/G Delirium:

Cardu ? Kaladesh Standard | Ben Friedman

Chandra, Flamecaller
What am I thinking? Chandra, Flamecaller? Bear with me. In the G/B Delirium matchup, you’re going to sideboard out all your x/1 creatures in order to mitigate the impact of opposing Liliana, the Last Hope. You’re going to try to strand your opponent’s Grasp of Darknesses, Flaying Tendrils, and Essence Extractions by not exposing your creatures to those spells, while disrupting the opponent with Transgress the Mind. You’re going to keep in the full complement of Declaration in Stone and Unlicensed Disintegration, in order to keep Kalitas, Ishkanah, and Grim Flayer off your back. A possible board plan boils down to:

+4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, +2 Chandra, Flamecaller, +1 Unlicensed Disintegration, +1 Declaration in Stone, +3 Transgress the Mind, -4 Veteran Motorist, -4 Toolcraft Exemplar, -3 Harnessed Lightning.

If you were so inclined, you could even keep in a pair of Harnessed Lightning and board out Archangel Avacyn. It’s pretty crappy against opposing Ishkanahs, Grasp of Darkness, and the like. You could also keep in a pair of Veteran Motorists, as the scrying is awesome, even if the card does bite it to Liliana. Depending on your expectation of your opponent’s quantity of cheap Naturalize effects, I’d start looking at boarding the Always Watchings as well. More Anthems is never a bad thing!

An alternative board plan would look like:

+4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, +2 Chandra, Flamecaller, +1 Unlicensed Disintegration, +1 Declaration in Stone, +3 Transgress the Mind, +2 Always Watching, -2 Archangel Avacyn, -4 Veteran Motorist, -4 Toolcraft Exemplar, -3 Harnessed Lightning

This would also accommodate cutting to one sideboard Chandra in order to fit in a third Fragmentize. You’d simply keep in a single Motorist, and it wouldn’t be so bad.

One other idea I’ve been knocking around in the last few days is to have a single Needle Spires in the sideboard for when you shift into this bigger board control plan. Consider a 23rd land to help mitigate the likelihood of mana screw, and enjoy the threat of a monster double-striking land after a few Gideon Emblems hit the table!

But let’s say that you don’t want to be aggressive. You want to make something Marvelous happen in Standard. Fear not! There will come a time when U/W Flash gets beaten back to a reasonable 5-10% of the Standard metagame, and you’ll be able to take advantage of a uniquely vulnerable format. What would that Ramp-Marvel deck look like? Well, it might look something like this:

R/G Aetherworks Marvel? Kaladesh Standard| Ben Friedman

Spell Queller
With this deck, you retain your ability to go over the top of fair midrange decks, with haymakers like Chandra, Ishkanah, and hard cast Emrakul making Spell Queller look foolish. A sideboard package of Tireless Tracker and countermagic gives you a great game plan against unaware control opponents. My biggest reservation with offering up this list is the general difficulty of actually assembling enough energy to consistently go off with Aetherworks Marvel. You can really end up spinning your wheels and failing to rev up the Marvel, which makes a deck like this supremely disappointing. One more good energy enabler would push this deck into the realm of respectability, but even if this isn’t the list we’ll be using to maximize Marvel in the end, you need only to bide your time for Marvel to creep back into the metagame as Spell Queller starts to get hated out of the format.

Speaking of a deck getting hated out of the format, let’s talk about a new boogeyman munching on Modern . . . Dredge. Cathartic Reunion is the new Tolarian Winds, and Narcomoebas everywhere are rejoicing. Seriously, though, Dredge, Infect, Affinity, and Burn are tearing Modern in half with their busted unfair starts. Throw in the fact that it’s impossible to hate out all of these powerful archetypes simultaneously, and it starts to make sense why Bant Eldrazi and Jund are on the decline. Even an excellent fair deck in Modern exists on the knife’s edge between death by Zombies, death by Robots, death by Poison, and death by fire. Throw in death by Ad Nauseam, Valakut, Bogles, or Death's Shadow, and a person could be forgiven for temporarily losing control of their bladder at the mere prospect of attending a Modern tournament.

(Incidentally, I heard the VIP registration package for GP Dallas includes luxury diapers, if you, like me, are scared of all those menacing linear powerhouses.)

But fear not! As a Bant Eldrazi evangelist, it’s my duty to share with you how you can cover all of these terrifying matchups while still maintaining a healthy proactive game plan. Big thanks to Frank Vanderwall for continuing to iterate and innovate as the Modern metagame starts to adjust to Kaladesh. The updated list that I’d run at a GP looks something like this:

Bant Eldrazi ? Modern| Ben Friedman

Matter Reshaper
Incidentally, it might be acceptable to cut the Matter Reshapers, considering how bad they are against Infect, Affinity, Dredge, and most combo decks. You’d be able to play the fourth Reality Smasher and either add the 24th land back into the deck, or slot the fourth Eldrazi Skyspawner in there. Unfortunately, with the introduction of this renewed, hyper-powerful Dredge archetype into Modern, our sideboard gets squeezed hard, and the cost is in neat mirror-match cards like Worship. Spellskite is back in the deck as an acceptable card for mirrors, as well as an awesome hate piece against Infect, Zooicide, and the new kid on the block, Blooicide.

Blooicide? Yes, Death's Shadow isn’t the only deck killing itself with kindness these days in Modern. MTGO user “Jinga” has been racking up 5-0s in Modern Leagues on MTGO with a super cool list that blends the best of Death's Shadow with U/R Delver, and ties the room together with Kiln Fiend. Let’s take a look at Jinga’s not-so-secret weapon you should get ready to lose to at GP: Dallas. Try not to wet yourself with fear (unless you’re a VIP, then you should be covered regardless!)

Blooicide ? Modern | Jinga

Bedlam Reveler
Ouch. The speed of Kiln Fiend + Mutagenic Growth + Temur Battle Rage, the grindy card advantage of Bedlam Reveler, the awesome tension you get with Thing in the Ice, and the hateful haymaker of sideboarded Blood Moon. This deck offers up a lot of appealing facets, acting on a similar axis as Death's Shadow aggro without hitting itself quite as hard as the Street Wraith deck, and gaining awesome sideboard juke-out options in Young Pyromancer and Blood Moon. The card selection is strong here, as is the sideboard counterspell package. The deck is even moderately resilient to Lightning Bolt, as Mutagenic Growth counters the ubiquitous removal spell for the low price of free-99!

I love free spells, I love sideboard jukes, and I love playing unfair but being able to grind out removal. Blood Moon and counterspells aren’t just for Blue Moon anymore! The only changes I’d look to make are to make the deck even more free, with Gut Shots somewhere in the 75. I’d also play at least three Grafdigger's Cages as hate for Dredge and any Chord/Company decks that show up, and I would also not mind either Ancient Grudge (and a main-deck Stomping Ground!) or sideboarded Shattering Spree. Twisted Image and Vapor Snag strike me as the cards that might have to go to get the room for various hate pieces, and I’d be comfortable shaving one sideboard Young Pyromancer. This is a list that I’m excited to test, because if I’m going to be wetting my pants out of fear at a Grand Prix, the least I can do is ensure that all my opponents feel the same fear.

Until next time, may you channel your inner Miles Davis and pee your pants at a Grand Prix!

(DISCLAIMER: don’t do that.) Feel free to reach out to me if you’re at Eternal Weekend, where the presence of Force of Will obviates the need for pre-match diaper breaks.

In all seriousness, good luck this weekend, whatever format you’re playing.

Ben

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TAGS articles, standard, strategy, metagame, constructed, analysis, modern, ben friedman

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