Welcome to Gathering Magic's weekly quintet of decks you should be aware of this weekend, whether you're playing a major online event, going to a Grand Prix, or hitting Friday Night Magic. This week, it's a closer look at Oath of the Gatewatch Standard, with a peek at the new Pauper.

Oath of Metagame

Here's what went 3–1 or better at least twice in Dailies this week (Bold = won a Daily):

• Mardu: 8
• Abzan Aggro: 6 (won 3)
• Four-Color Rally: 4
• Mardu Green: 4
• Atarka Red: 3
• B/R Dragons: 3
• R/G Eldrazi Ramp: 3
• Bant Company: 2
• Dark Jeskai: 2

W/B Midrange won a Daily in its only 3–1 or better appearance.

Jadine Klomparens (whose theory pieces are among the most vital in current writing, if you ask me) has noted how little this particular Standard format will be played, given how soon Shadows over Innistrad comes out. That puts it in an unusual spot. And it's a spot that looked different for a while. Rally decks went five days with only one decent finish before winning the Magic Online Championship Series (MOCS) over the weekend, beating green Eldrazi Ramp in the finals and then doing well in Sunday's Daily. Was the five-day lull coincidence?

Mardu has several different directions right now, and this one might be part of the anti-Rally crowd. From Saturday:

Mardu ? Standard | tinkertailer

• Creatures (15)
• 2 Eldrazi Displacer
• 4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
• 1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 4 Soulfire Grand Master
• 4 Thought-Knot Seer

• Spells (19)
• 1 Chandra, Flamecaller
• 1 Duress
• 3 Read the Bones
• 1 Roast
• 2 Ruinous Path
• 4 Crackling Doom
• 3 Fiery Impulse
• 3 Kolaghan's Command
• 1 Murderous Cut

• Lands (26)
• 4 Battlefield Forge
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Caves of Koilos
• 2 Mountain
• 3 Needle Spires
• 1 Plains
• 3 Shambling Vent
• 2 Smoldering Marsh
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Unknown Shores

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 1 Read the Bones
• 2 Arashin Cleric
• 4 Hallowed Moonlight
• 1 Infinite Obliteration
• 1 Linvala, the Preserver
• 2 Radiant Flames
• 3 Transgress the Mind

Buy This Deck

Soulfire Grand Master's skill at grinding has been well-known to Standard for a while, but this deck takes value to another level with Eldrazi Displacer. The Mardu list I discussed last week had two Goblin Dark-Dwellers; with the blink subtheme, this week's list has the full four. Blinking Pia and Kiran Nalaar gets a heap of Thopters to fly over Rally decks; blinking Thought-Knot Seer gives the opponent a card and then opens up the hand for exile; blinking tokens kills them dead. Besides the spell flashback, Goblin Dark-Dwellers having menace forces decks like Rally to get through its supply of chump-blockers twice as quickly. As value-based as Abzan has been (and Jund before that historically), Eldrazi Displacer Mardu is the current mayor of Value Town.

And I say that even as there's an entire company vying for the office:

Bant Company ? Standard | FFFreak

• Creatures (28)
• 2 Bounding Krasis
• 4 Deathmist Raptor
• 3 Den Protector
• 4 Eldrazi Skyspawner
• 3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• 4 Reflector Mage
• 2 Stratus Dancer
• 4 Sylvan Advocate
• 2 Wingmate Roc

• Spells (7)
• 4 Collected Company
• 3 Dromoka's Command

• Lands (25)
• 2 Canopy Vista
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 2 Forest
• 1 Island
• 4 Lumbering Falls
• 3 Plains
• 2 Prairie Stream
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 2 Yavimaya Coast

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Stratus Dancer
• 2 Arashin Cleric
• 3 Disdainful Stroke
• 3 Dispel
• 1 Harbinger of the Tides
• 1 Hidden Dragonslayer
• 1 Silkwrap
• 1 Surge of Righteousness
• 2 Valorous Stance

Buy This Deck

Brad Nelson placed sixth in the MOCS with this version, which aims to go wider than the normal list by using Eldrazi Skyspawner and Wingmate Roc. Bounding Krasis has been gaining traction in these lists as an extra surprise off Collected Company; it's also one of the biggest creatures available off Collected Company. Given enough lands, Sylvan Advocate is truly the biggest creature available off Collected Company; with Lumbering Falls in the deck, Sylvan Advocate can bring a surprising late game.

The list that won Wednesday's Daily didn't go wide and didn't have Nelson's megamorph package, instead using Ojutai's Command to gain advantage and running a full set of Bounding Krasis (presumably to gain double use out of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy). I suspect going wider is better right now, but that might change with other metagame shifts.

Also worth noting: Outside Wingmate Roc and fetch lands, none of the main deck rotates out. These decks have felt like Khans of Tarkir decks for being three colors and having a form or morph, but this deck might survive nearly intact in rotation. What it might lose in mana-fixing, it might gain in 3-drops from Shadows over Innistrad.

Until recently, it appeared Abzan definitely was rotating out, but this build that won Sunday's Daily not only mostly survives rotation, but it adds a "color":

Abzan Aggro ? Standard | kukeke

• Creatures (22)
• 4 Anafenza, the Foremost
• 2 Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
• 2 Den Protector
• 3 Reality Smasher
• 4 Siege Rhino
• 4 Sylvan Advocate
• 3 Thought-Knot Seer

• Spells (11)
• 2 Transgress the Mind
• 4 Abzan Charm
• 2 Dromoka's Command
• 3 Spatial Contortion

• Lands (27)
• 4 Caves of Koilos
• 2 Crumbling Vestige
• 2 Forest
• 4 Hissing Quagmire
• 4 Llanowar Wastes
• 2 Plains
• 1 Sandsteppe Citadel
• 4 Shambling Vent
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Thought-Knot Seer
• 3 Arashin Cleric
• 2 Flaying Tendrils
• 1 Foul Renewal
• 1 Infinite Obliteration
• 2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 2 Wall of Resurgence
• 3 Wingmate Roc

Buy This Deck

Only a minority of this deck rotates in April. Siege Rhino, Anafenza, the Foremost, and Abzan Charm have been great, of course, and Windswept Heath has allowed the deck to be ambitious with its mana, but that's all that leaves. Building with Magic Origins pain lands allows colorless spells like Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher, and Spatial Contortion to add to the value package, while building with Shambling Vent and Hissing Quagmire lets Sylvan Advocate take center stage. Sylvan Advocate is the biggest reason this iteration of Abzan's up to twenty-seven lands; I would expect that to be the norm moving forward.

So what replaces the actual Abzan spells when the time comes? As all the surviving dual lands make black mana, I expect the deck will go black at its core, using Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet in Anafenza's slot. I could even see Mindwrack Demon, previewed yesterday in a Duel Decks article, as a two-of; replacing some Windswept Heaths with Evolving Wilds would make it easy enough to put a land in the graveyard, and with cards like Transgress the Mind, Abzan is positioned to hit delirium (four or more card types in your graveyard) fairly reliably. Just when we assumed Abzan was a goner when the block spawning it rotated, lists like this indicate we have another half-year of it . . . at least.

One Spicy Metaball

Aaron Forsythe is gushing about this deck, placing well in the MOCS and then going 3–1 in a Daily (this is the Daily version):

User all4non 5–0'd consecutive leagues with a load of new cards:

U/B Pact ? Standard | Tulio_Jaudy

• Spells (26)
• 2 Crush of Tentacles
• 2 Dark Petition
• 4 Duress
• 1 Flaying Tendrils
• 1 Languish
• 1 Ruinous Path
• 2 Transgress the Mind
• 2 Dig Through Time
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Disperse
• 1 Empty the Pits
• 4 Grasp of Darkness
• 2 Silumgar's Command

• Lands (34)
• 4 Demonic Pact
• 4 Oath of Jace
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Island
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 3 Sunken Hollow
• 7 Swamp

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Dispel
• 1 Flaying Tendrils
• 1 Languish
• 2 Transgress the Mind
• 3 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Infinite Obliteration
• 2 Murderous Cut
• 1 Shifting Loyalties
• 1 Virulent Plague

Buy This Deck

As a Demonic Pact deck, there are several idiosyncratic card choices centered around bouncing one's own permanents. Disperse and Silumgar's Command have inhabited this deck shell before, but Crush of Tentacles gives a new option and an occasional win condition, as Aaron alluded to. Dark Petition's extra mana can pay for most of Crush of Tentacles's surge cost, making the dream more realistic than it looks on paper.

I hope the single Shifting Loyalties in the sideboard has at some point exchanged a Demonic Pact that was about to kill its owner. Not since Illusions of Grandeur has that strategy been viable in a tournament.

Cloudless Pauper

Now that Cloud of Faeries is banned, what does Pauper look like? Oath of the Gatewatch does not seem to have affected the format yet, but an old archetype has had success in several leagues recently:

U/B Teachings Control ? Pauper | nightwind79

• Spells (36)
• 3 Chainer's Edict
• 2 Evincar's Justice
• 1 Agony Warp
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Condescend
• 4 Counterspell
• 1 Crypt Incursion
• 2 Deprive
• 1 Devour Flesh
• 2 Disfigure
• 1 Doom Blade
• 1 Echoing Decay
• 1 Exclude
• 4 Mystical Teachings
• 1 Prohibit
• 1 Recoil
• 1 Remove Soul
• 1 Rewind
• 4 Think Twice
• 2 Pristine Talisman
• 1 Curse of the Bloody Tome

• Lands (24)
• 4 Dimir Aqueduct
• 2 Dimir Guildgate
• 4 Dismal Backwater
• 7 Island
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 3 Radiant Fountain
• 3 Swamp

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Chainer's Edict
• 1 Curse of the Bloody Tome
• 1 Exclude
• 1 Dispel
• 3 Duress
• 4 Mulldrifter
• 3 Sea Gate Oracle
• 1 Wail of the Nim

Buy This Deck

If you've ever felt that your common-filled Draft deck had too few win conditions, how about a deck with exactly three? Curse of the Bloody Tome is the more obvious win condition, its milling a slow inevitability. The other two win conditions are the copies of Evincar's Justice, normally a symmetrical damage source that is broken in this deck by Pristine Talisman, Crypt Incursion, Dismal Backwater, and Radiant Fountain. The rest is permission, destruction, and bounce, held together by the tutoring of Mystical Teachings. If you don't like playing many games of Magic in an hour, if creatures are anathema to you, or if you just want a flavor of old-school control, try this deck out.

Conclusion

The kings of the format are still on top, held together by great mana and all sorts of value plays. Will Atarka Red smash through the value and beat the durdly decks before they can blink? Will Eldrazi Ramp decks make all the finicky midrange plays look puny? Will a new archetype emerge to shake up the metagame? I have no idea, but I'm interested in finding out.