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

Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on May 6, 2015
 Reddit

Welcome to Gathering Magic's weekly quintet of Magic Online 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. In an era of big data, Magic Online provides some of the biggest data, so even a quick-and-dirty snapshot of recent activity gets you ahead of the competition. This week, preparing for Grand Prix Paris, we'll post everything in French look at Standard, with a long-overdue peek at Modern.

Pre-Prix in Gay Paree

Here are the archetypes that showed up at least twice in this week's Dailies (Bold = won a Daily):

  • Red Aggro 12 (won twice)

  • Esper Dragons 9

  • Abzan Midrange 5

  • Abzan Aggro 5

  • Red-Green Dragons 4

  • Green Devotion with White 3

  • Bant Megamorph 2

  • Temur Midrange 2

  • Green Devotion won a Daily in its only 4-0 appearance.

So—shocker!—Esper Dragons isn't a fly-by-night deck (unless that's when you're playing it, of course). It won Grand Prix Sao Paulo while Abzan Midrange won Grand Prix Toronto; both featured heavily in the past week's Dailies. Instead of showing you a near carbon copy of last week's Esper Dragons, I chose one that explored a bit:

Esper Dragons ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Tremor416

Narset Transcendent doesn't have the obvious finisher power of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but she has advantages. Her +1 more obviously helps the deck function in the abstract than Ashiok's creature sideshow. Her -2 allows the host of removal spells (seemingly configured for maximum synergy with Narset) to gain card advantage that's hard to play around (if the first Utter End deals with your lone creature, are you playing another next turn? Oh, you're not?) or is just a double Dig Through Time. And should her -9 happen, Dragonlord Ojutai is even more invincible than normal.

Risen Executioner in the sideboard is pretty fascinating; it's not much more than a Rot Farm Skeleton here, but that's enough. The one thing Esper Dragons normally gives opponents is setup time, and a 4/3 on turn four shortens that time—time opponents were relying on while making sideboard choices.

Abzan Aggro didn't show up for several days, letting its bigger sibling have the fun:

Abzan Aggro ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Brandon Isleib

Wingmate Roc is back! Maybe that's not exciting to anyone but Abzan players. What is exciting is the full return of Abzan Charms, which pairs with Dromoka's Command to give a good answer to most board states. And if you need a different mode, Den Protector and possibly Tasigur, the Golden Fang let you spin it round again. It's hard to appeal more to B/G midrange players than giving them creatures to recur their modal spells.

I've been wanting to cover this next deck for a couple weeks now, and an otherwise fairly predictable metagame gives me a chance to highlight it.

Temur Midrange ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | DragonKlaive

Sarkhan Unbroken
Sarkhan Unbroken's general reputation is that his honorific also describes his playability. I’m not that saying "the specimen appears to be unbroken" is a very Deep Analysis of the card, but anyway . . . Sarkhan's good enough to be a finisher for the Courser of Kruphix/Sylvan Caryatid half-shell that's brought joy and board stalls to so many. Sarkhan Unbroken has the card-draw side of Kiora, the Crashing Wave and the token-making side of Xenagos, the Reveler, and as Xenagos has made a living against control decks for a while, Sarkhan is a souped-up version of him. Critically, he makes Dragons, which blunts Crux of Fate's impact against a near-Dragonless deck. The Dragons being 4/4 also trade with Dragonlord Ojutai and turn on ferocious for Stubborn Denial.

Most of the rest of the deck has been in Temur builds of some sort recently. Seismic Rupture is a key card in the sideboard as a board wipe that both is splashable and doesn't kill Sylvan Caryatid. It's no Anger of the Gods, but in this case, that's good.

I'm interested in whether Sarkhan Unbroken will find a general home in Temur builds or whether there's only this deck to put him in. Either way, for a card that's mostly gone down since prerelease, it's nice to see it on the upswing.

One Spicy Metaball

It took me awhile to find something sufficiently spicy for you, the spice-loving reader, but this 3–1 deck meshed agro–combo into control and went somewhere with it:

W/U Control ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | IndigoLake

Perilous Vault
At first, it looks like a control deck missing a few win conditions and playing a Last Breath. But Ensoul Artifact is the key because, while the deck has only eight artifacts, four of them are Perilous Vault, which normally is too many due to lack of synergy with the rest of the deck. The possibility of making Perilous Vault into a 5/5, however, gives you more reason to run it. And if you Ensoul Artifact Darksteel Citadel instead, Elspeth, Sun's Champion won't blow it up, so there's synergy on that side as well.

The sideboard is heavy in color hosers, with Glare of Heresy, Encase in Ice, and Surge of Righteousness taking up seven slots. (It's a shame Gainsay isn't here just to have something against every color.) Sometimes, it's right to do just that: run the blunt tools for all they're worth. Perilous Vault is a blunt tool as a board wipe and as a 5/5; it's fun to me either way. If you like control but can't find a Dragonlord Ojutai or four, this deck might be for you.

I Don't Want You to Kolaghan

Grixis Delver and Tron decks have been prevalent of late in Modern Dailies, and Boros burn decks are starting to splash green for Atarka's Command for its high upside. When Kolaghan's Command came out, it was considered a good Modern card with no particular Standard application. It took a while for the prophecy to come true, but Thursday's Daily was won by Jund with two Kolaghan's Commands (and two Outpost Sieges in the Chandra, Pyromaster role), and Wednesday's second-place deck took the Jund removal suite into a different archetype:

Jund Scapeshift ? Modern | madchild

It's easy to see where the blue counterspells used to be, replaced by removal (often the right call in a heavily proactive metagame). Kolaghan's Command is an analog for Electrolyze in terms of its spot on the curve and what it's good against. Ruining combo with Thoughtseize is always nice when you can manage it, and with Duress and Slaughter Games in the sideboard, there's as much hand disruption as you'd ever want. Plus, since this deck isn't running blue, it has Boil and Choke (and has Boseiju, Who Shelters All) in the sideboard, which, given the prevalence of Grixis Delver and Merfolk, is great.

If you'd told me four years ago that a winning Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle deck would have Grave Titan but not Primeval Titan, I wouldn't have believed you. And yet, here it is. Go, Grave Titan.

Conclusion

Things seem to be going the way of Abzan Midrange, not as a deck, but as a philosophy; don't go all-in on any strategy and have something to do against everybody. There was a 4–0 red aggro deck in Sunday's Daily that splashed green for Atarka's Command and blue for . . . Treasure Cruise. That's the kind of thing I mean. It's unusual, but it's clearly working for several players. What cards do you like mixing right now?

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TAGS articles, standard, metagame, magic online, constructed, analysis, mtgo, modern, decklist, brandon isleib, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you'll play this weekend

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