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Main » Articles » 5 Decks You'll Play this Weekend

5 Decks You'll Play this Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on August 3, 2016
 Reddit

It's Pro Tour Eldritch Moon this weekend. Judging by recent Standard tournaments, it's a pretty important Pro Tour for setting the tone of the format until Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins rotate out on September 30 (Kaladesh's release date). And that's because one major question needs answering: can Bant Company get any company?

From Baltimore to Sydney

53 of the 125 players who made it to the second day of the StarCityGames Baltimore Open this weekend were on Bant Company: 42 percent. And the bare majority of the top 32, 53 percent (17 decks), was Bant Company decks. If anyone can find the decks that beat it, it's the Pro Tour brewers. If they don't find anything to beat it, then all but the most seasoned, inveterate, brewiest brewers will stop trying.

Let's get the best-performing Bant Company deck out of the way:

Bant Company ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Zachary Plott, 2nd, StarCityGames Open, July 31, 2016

This list is only a couple cards different from the list featured last week. It trims a Selfless Spirit and Thalia, Heretic Cathar for two Eldrazi Displacers and reconfigures the mana accordingly. Eldrazi Displacer has been in Bant Company to varying degrees of success before, but Spell Queller's ubiquity gives the Displacer its greatest value to date, largely in blinking opposing Spell Quellers and getting the spell out from under it (long rules story short, blinking with Eldrazi Displacer means Spell Queller's new exile trigger has to have a target when it goes on the stack, and that point its previously exiled spell isn't on the stack to exile). And Eldrazi Displacer is as good as ever with Reflector Mage and Archangel Avacyn, so it's not without value the rest of the time. In a grindy game, Eldrazi Displacer does work, and it does enough work in the mirror that I like it, even at the slight strain on the mana base.

The first seed going into the Baltimore top eight hadn't been on anyone's radar, but the deck's a doozy:

U/G Crush ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Cory Dissinger, 5th, StarCityGames Open, July 31, 2016

We've seen Delirium-based decks perform well the last two weekends, but the decklists are difficult to unpack because the focus on card type diversity leads to some unusual choices. Like many decks of this strain, however, a look at the four-ofs helps out. Here, Cory built around Noose Constrictor, Den Protector, and Crush of Tentacles. Den Protector can recur off Crush of Tentacles, slowly but surely since Crush of Tentacles will bounce Den Protector to let it get Crush of Tentacles back. Den Protector also makes up for the cost of playing with Noose Constrictor.

They intersect at several other mechanics. As with Wild Mongrel, Noose Constrictor's free discard can fuel graveyard shenanigans (Delirium in this case, since Madness isn't prominent in U/G this time around. Plus, Noose Constrictor's reach looks increasingly relevant in a Spell Queller universe. Standard has been so ground-oriented the last few months that Spirits can steal games from the unprepared just from its air attack. Noose Constrictor and the singleton Ishkanah, Grafwidow give the deck built-in protection from dying solely to a flying army (Aerial Volley in the sideboard helps too).

Crush of Tentacles's surge cost can be fueled by loads of cheap spells, from Noose Constrictor and Den Protector to Oath of Nissa, Traverse the Ulvenwald, and even a zero-cost Hangarback Walker. Besides the surge Octopus, Cory can win definitively with Emrakul, the Promised End. Much like Ali Aintrazi's Sultai deck from the previous week, there are control elements that lead naturally to Delirium and Emrakul. Is this deck better for having more consistent mana and a sweeper that isn't in Spell Queller range (unlike Ali's copies of Languish)? Or is having access to Black and its actual kill spells worth more? I'm sure at least some Pro Tour brewers are working on these questions.

Surprisingly, neither deck, the heavily represented Bant Company nor the Swiss-destroying U/G Crush, won the tournament. That honor went to the previous boogeything of the format:

G/W Tokens ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Osyp Lebedowicz, 1st, StarCityGames Open, July 31, 2016

Like Cory, Osyp has some extra nods to flyers in the sideboard Aerial Volley and Clip Wings. But everything else is the status quo; he took cards you've seen time and again in this deck and won with them. Unlike Bant Company or various builds of Spirits, there isn't a synergy in G/W Tokens that makes a deck-building restriction; this deck is completely tweakable. Sure, the Planeswalkers, Sylvan Advocate, and Dromoka's Command are likely to be four-ofs in any build, but the customization means it's an ideal deck for the pros who are great at tweaking and want to stay away from the known enemy of Bant Company.

Archangel Avacyn with Evolutionary Leap seems well positioned against Bant Company, and I expect Osyp's quantities to be agreed upon by almost everyone. But we could see a very different version this weekend that's still recognizably G/W Tokens.

Two Spicy Metaballs

I don't think anyone other than Michael Lehman thought of Eldritch Moon as providing an upgrade to this deck, but it definitely did:

Esper Starfield ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Michael Lehman, 18th, StarCityGames Open, July 31, 2016

As has been seen and discussed several times already, the best known approach to beating Spell Queller is playing decks that can survive until a 5-mana haymaker. Starfield of Nyx fits the criteria, creating an ostensibly creatureless deck (at least for the early game, when Reflector Mage is devastating tempo) until the board suddenly becomes loads of creatures. Playing typical control cards until Starfield of Nyx, the deck also benefits from being relatively immune to Dromoka's Command. Sacrificing an enchantment doesn't do much against a deck with 17 enchantments, and that allows Michael to be one of the only players who can safely run Silkwrap and Stasis Snare, cards that everybody agrees would be great in the format if Dromoka's Command didn't exist.

But what makes this deck truly spicy is the inclusion of Lunar Force, a card so amazing that Reid Duke skipped right past it in his Constructed analysis. In fairness, a 3-mana enchantment that counters the opponent's next spell looks like terrible value, and 99 times out of 100 it is. But a Starfield of Nyx deck can recur it, turning it into Erayo’s Essence (which is even a flavor win, since moonfolk Tamiyo is in the Lunar Force art), and that's nasty in any format. You rarely get an upside that big in 2016 Magic, and many successful players have built worse control shells than this to harness potent combos. It's also the type of deck that, if it experiences even a little success in the early rounds of the Pro Tour, it will get on camera, because Randy Buehler and Brian David-Marshall would love to run commentary for it.

Leaving the StarCityGames circuit for this column's normal setting of Magic Online Leagues, admittedly weakened by it still being the digital Eldritch Moon prerelease, a deck championed by many pros last season got an upgrade that might make it worth revisiting:

U/B Prison ? Eldritch Moon Standard | Adva

The core principles of the deck are landing a Jace's Sanctum, casting loads of tempo spells, including the devastating bouncing of Engulf the Shore, refilling the hand with Day's Undoing, and winning with an awakened Part the Waterveil. Adva's main deck runs Thing in the Ice as additional bounce; it's not that different from Crush of Tentacles in terms of how it can affect the board.

The deck underperformed in part because some of its answer cards were weak. Enter Unsubstantiate, one of the most talked about, price-spiked, think-pieced cards in spoiler season. Is it the next Remand like everybody wanted it to be? Not at all. But it is a cheap instant tempo response to any deck, something the deck didn't have before and that allows it to shave copies of less useful cards like Prism Ring and Nagging Thoughts (contrast Adva's list with Martin Muller's from Grand Prix Manchester). Unsubstantiate isn't the greatest answer to anything, but it's a good answer to everything, and in a deck that's looking for as much time as it can buy, Unsubstantiate is fantastic.

As with the Esper Starfield soft lock, this deck's high-level popularity last season means it might get more attention this weekend than it ordinarily would. Unsubstantiate glues together a deck that previously had to draw too many things in the right order to work, and that might be enough to give it a good metagame angle this weekend.

Conclusion

Everybody knows Bant Company is showing up this weekend. But will it be tuned against a large field, or will it be tuned for the mirror? And will the mirror tuning allow other decks to beat it more frequently? Everything right now has to be framed in terms of Bant Company. But after the Pro Tour, after the best deck-building minds have done everything they could, it might be a different story.

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

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