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Main » Articles » Five Decks You'll Play This Week

Five Decks You'll Play This Week

Brandon Isleib
Posted on May 4, 2016
 Reddit

We've had a Pro Tour. We've had Grand Prix Toronto. Now it's time for more Standard in Tokyo and New York City. Can the Magic Online metagame of the last two weeks reveal any insight on it? If I thought otherwise, would I be asking this rhetorical question? Or the previous one?

Not New Junk City . . . 

Last Standard, there was a load of Junk, or Abzan as it's now known. Nowadays, the junk is mostly in things like playing basic Plains or weak-looking cards like Gryff's Boon, even if we know better now.

The Standards before and after the Pro Tour looks very different, though it feels very much like a case of mass net-decking. Here's the breakdown of Magic Online League decklists since the last article, splitting April 19–23 from April 24 forward—between Saturday and Sunday of the Pro Tour:

Archetype Pre-PT (50) Post-PT (90) Total
Bant Company 14 9 23
G/W Tokens 0 19 19
B/G Aristocrats 2 10 12
R/G Goggles Ramp 0 12 12
White Humans 3 9 11
W/U Humans 4 4 8
R/G Eldrazi Ramp 3 3 6
W/B Midrange 2 3 5
W/B Control 2 2 4
B/G Control 0 4 4
U/R Control 0 4 4
Esper Control 1 2 3
Grixis Control 1 2 3
Naya Planeswalkers 1 2 3
The Rest 11 12 23

It couldn't be much clearer what happened. The format as a whole was having trouble developing diverse decks, the pros delivered that diversity, and their decks became the diversity (except for Seth Manfield's Esper Control—Toronto coverage labels it "unforgiving of the novice player" but was equally surprised as to its whereabouts). Last weekend's online Pro Tour Qualifier only had three decks in the Top 32 that weren't one of the archetypes listed above, and mono-red, Esper Dragons, and Demonic Pact control aren't exactly unknowns.

Did the pros figure out everything in one go? Are people just not wanting to brew much, content with what was handed down from Madrid? This weekend's events should give some insight into how solved players think the format is.

Tokyo Train Style, Hip It to the Crew

Bant Company is among the few decks that's been played to high finishes both before and after the Pro Tour. The numbers are down, but it's still a major part of the metagame. As noted last article, there isn't a load of flexibility in the shell despite three colors, simply because there aren't that many amazing Collected Company targets that the deck isn't already playing. Recent lists have seen Hanweir Militia Captain in some sideboards, and Den Protector's still an option. The main variation is whether Eldrazi Displacer makes the deck. This version from Friday goes in on it and another variation or two:

Bant Company ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Dazai

What are the reasons for running Eldrazi Displacer in the main deck? Within the deck, blinking Reflector Mage is good; another recent Displacer list ran a couple Void Grafters, which seems great. In a long game, putting Duskwatch Recruiter back on its day side at the end step has its uses. But the main thing is that the Displacer exiles tokens. Bant Company goes pretty wide, but Secure the Wastes decks can go even wider, and Eldrazi Displacer is an easy way to deal with them without having to gerrymander a board state around Tragic Arrogance (which doesn't even do much if the opponent casts an end-step Secure the Wastes right after). Resetting Thing in the Ice before it transforms is also useful, but Reflector Mage deals with that well enough; it's tokens that give Eldrazi Displacer its spot in Bant Company right now.

Dazai also made room for Ojutai's Command, which is fairly spicy given that the deck often telegraphs 4 mana for Collected Company. Its most typical recursion target in its Standard lifetime has been Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, but Duskwatch Recruiter isn't bad either, and Sylvan Advocate can threaten a ton of damage.

Speaking of tokens, it wasn't a known deck until Steve Rubin won the Pro Tour with it. Now it's everywhere; five of Friday's ten listed decks were of the archetype. At the moment, there's little variation in how it's constructed—three-ofs versus four-ofs and a couple sideboard slots are mostly what's up for debate (I've also seen a 5–0 League list with Deathcap Cultivator instead of Thraben Instigator). Nobody's arguing about the deck shell:

G/W Tokens ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Hulkbot

Running none of the engine cards that inspire multiple decks right now, such as Collected Company and Pyromancer's Goggles, its tokens theme is spread out over different types of cards—creatures, Planeswalkers, and instants—that reading the list doesn't have an aha! moment as to why it's good. But it is the best deck for three very different cards: Hangarback Walker, Westvale Abbey, and Oath of Nissa. Hangarback Walker's power is well-known; it's not as good in a Declaration in Stone world, but it offers plenty of value all the same. Westvale Abbey is building a name for itself in Constructed right now (building Constructed Abbey? Get it? Ah well . . . ); the mere threat of it changes how the game is played. But it's Oath of Nissa that makes the deck run. It fixes mana for Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar (which in turn allows the three copies of Westvale Abbey), it can find any of the business spells other than Secure the Wastes, and it can find land if it needs to. It's relevant card selection at every stage of the game, and it's less restrictive than Collected Company on deck-building choices. As this deck is constructed, a first-turn Oath of Nissa has about a ninety-nine percent chance of hitting something. It's a major reason this deck has enough juice to keep a spot in the metagame.

Besides the Collected Company decks (Bant and B/G Sacrifice), white Humans decks, and G/W Tokens, there are Pyromancer's Goggles/Fall of the Titans decks. U/R has had a control build succeed, but Brad Nelson's ramp has been more popular while also being the most popular R/G ramp deck among itself, Eldrazi, and neither:

R/G Goggles Ramp ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Goodnewseveryone

Not only do the U/R and R/G decks share Pyromancer's Goggles and Fall of the Titans, they also share some of the engine to get to the midgame in Magmatic Insight, Tormenting Voice, and Drownyard Temple. Thing in the Ice is a great reward for going blue, but World Breaker and Dragonlord Atarka are great reasons to go green. Critically, Traverse the Ulvenwald can tutor for either of them when the game goes long; the deck's also built to hit delirium fairly reliably through self-discard and the sacrifice of Hedron Archive. It's about as straightforward as a deck built around some Goggles might be, but it's interesting and unusual how much its core has in common with U/R control.

Pyromancer's Goggles didn't place anybody in the Top 8 of Grand Prix Toronto, but U/R control did with Oliver Tiu's Grixis deck. But I want to highlight a more streamlined version that did similarly—one that was so quietly streamlined, even Wizards missed that it was:

B/R Control ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | Corey Burkhart, 24th Place, Grand Prix Toronto

Seeing the deck shell, Wizards is calling this Grixis Control—except there's no blue anywhere. While that denies access to Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Dragonlord Silumgar, it means there aren't hard choices on the removal spells, and it means the mana works much better—which is important when you need to kill something early, especially with Grasp of Darkness. Corey also ran a two-and-two split on Duress between the main deck and sideboard; given how many Planeswalkers are in the creature-heavy decks, this seems to be a good call. Both Tiu and Burkhart stuck to two copies of Transgress the Mind; Josh Buitenhuis's three in W/B control was a liability in the Top 8, in large part because Secure the Wastes is a finisher that makes hands worth keeping but has a converted mana cost of 1. A Duress/Transgress the Mind split in the main deck gives overlapping coverage without sacrificing much. If you want to play a control deck like Tiu's but don't have Jace money, Burkhart's does a lot of the same stuff with an easier mana base.

One Spicy Metaball

This has a bunch of good cards we've seen in many a feature match of late. It also has Thunderclap Wyvern:

W/U Skies ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | nsw1074

Twenty-one of the deck's thirty-four spells are instants or have flash, and nineteen of the deck's twenty-one creatures have flying. The instant-speed nature increases the efficacy of the counterspells, while all the flying makes the deck far more likely to deal reliable damage than most decks. Outside Archangel Avacyn and Hangarback Walker's Thopter tokens, there's little flying—there are just a lot of slugfests on the ground. As weird as the deck looks, having enough early flying to pressure Planeswalkers is a big deal. The flash creatures also lessen the tempo hit from opposing Reflector Mages since they can be cast on an opponent's turn (the "your next turn" in the Mage's rules text) rather than having to wait as long as everybody else.

I think this deck is an intelligent read of the metagame. That might not be enough to compensate for several individually weak cards, but it's worth brewing further with.

Conclusion

The metagame went from diverse to rigid pretty quickly, at least online. Toronto hints that it can reopen, but Tokyo and New York City will be better tests of that. Is the rest of this season a knockout fight among the existing decks? Will the U/B control decks put up more results? Is something else out there? We'll have to wait and see—but only for a couple days.

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TAGS articles, pro tour, standard, metagame, constructed, magic online, analysis, decklist, brandon isleib, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you'll play this weekend, shadows over innistrad, #mtgsoi, #ptsoi

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