Theros is here, and it looks awesome! There are all manner of new cards, interactions, and Commanders to explore, and I can't wait to get started. This week we've got a pair of Standard decks featuring Theros goodness, awesome decks from Modern and Legacy, and a Commander deck featuring the god of the dead himself. Let's get started:

There's nothing more fun than untapping with tons of Planeswalkers in play turn after turn. Fortunately, Brian Braun-Duin thinks that stratgey might be viable in Theros> Standard, and is packing a brew that features a full eleven Planeswakers. Let's take a look at his Grixis superfriends deck:

Grixis Superfriends - Standard | Brian Braun-Duin

• Lands (26)
• 3 Island
• 3 Mountain
• 2 Swamp
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 2 Izzet Guildgate
• 4 Steam Vents
• 4 Temple of Deceit
• 4 Watery Grave

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Frostburn Weird

• Spells (19)
• 2 Rakdos Keyrune
• 3 Far
• 2 Shock
• 3 Anger of the Gods
• 4 Dreadbore
• 2 Rakdos's Return
• 3 Read the Bones

• Planeswalkers (11)
• 4 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• 2 Chandra, Pyromaster
• 4 Jace, Architect of Thought
• 1 Ral Zarek

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Pithing Needle
• 3 Ratchet Bomb
• 3 Izzet Staticaster
• 3 Stormbreath Dragon
• 1 Rakdos's Return
• 3 Thoughtseize

Buy This Deck

In new formats, it's important for control decks to be able to interact on-curve with all of the aggressive and midrangey decks. I love that this deck is able to curve out with Shock into Frostburn Weird into Anger of the Gods and move straight on up into Planeswalkers and fused Far//Aways.

That doesn't mean that you're soft to control decks though. Rakdos's Return is absolutely incredible, and you have ten Planeswalkers that absolutely have to be answered. Chandra and Jace will bury opponents in card advantage, while Ashiok threatens to exile their hand and then beat them down with their own Aetherling.

You even get to play with Read the Bones, which is quietly one of the better cards in Theros. Divination has been Standard playable before, and this one digs two whole cards deeper and helps you sculpt your gameplan against any opponent.

Maybe you think control decks will dominate the first few weeks of Theros Standard. If so, Ali Aintrazi has the deck for you! During Pro Tour Dragon's Maze, swe saw several Maze's End decks narrowly miss the Top 8, despite being built to prey upon the myriad of Esper Control decks at the top tables. Ali thinks that the Maze's End shell might be perfect for Standard, and is sharing his take on the archetype:

[Cardlist Title= Maze's End - Standard | Ali Aintrazi]

• Lands (28)
• 3 Mountain
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Azorius Guildgate
• 2 Boros Guildgate
• 2 Dimir Guildgate
• 2 Golgari Guildgate
• 2 Gruul Guildgate
• 2 Izzet Guildgate
• 4 Maze's End
• 2 Orzhov Guildgate
• 2 Rakdos Guildgate
• 2 Selesnya Guildgate
• 2 Simic Guildgate

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Saruli Gatekeepers

• Spells (28)
• 1 Devour Flesh
• 2 Doom Blade
• 2 Far
• 2 Hero's Downfall
• 2 Magma Jet
• 2 Sphinx's Revelation
• 1 Steam Augury
• 3 Warleader's Helix
• 3 Anger of the Gods
• 1 Dreadbore
• 4 Mizzium Mortars
• 1 Planar Cleansing
• 4 Urban Evolution

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
• 3 Sin Collector
• 2 Crackling Perimeter
• 1 Wear
• 3 Mugging
• 2 Slaughter Games

Buy This Deck

The engine is pretty simple. The combination of 24 lands, 4 additional Maze's End, and 4 Urban Evolution lets you power out ten gets before most Control decks can cast a reasonable Sphinx's Revelation. Along the way, you'll cast some reasonable removal spells, card-drawing, and other disruptive elements to make sure you have enough time to get your eleven-Land combo into play.

As mentioned before, this deck is hard pressed to lose to control decks. You have a Thawing Glacier that lets you hit every land drop you need and acts as a win condition. What more do you want in the control matchup?

Against the aggro decks, you have all-stars like Saruli Gatekeeper, Anger of the Gods, and Warleader's Helix to buy you enough time to turn the tide and get your Maze's End going. One of my only issues with this iteration of the deck is the lack of one casting cost removal. All but four of your lands come into play tapped, and I don't know that you can afford to wait until turn three to start casting removal spells.

Enjoy playing this deck before everyone learns they've got to start packing Encroaching Wastes!

Everyone knows that Birthing Pod is a thing in Modern. We've seen KikiPod and Melira Pod and every variant in between. The only thing new and exciting or Pod decks are the techy singletons that you get to add for value, right? What if I told you that someone had managed to jam every possible sweet combo into a fully five-color Pod deck? That's exactly what naka_zangyo_kirai has done, and I can't wait to take a look at it:

Birthing Pod - Modern | naka_zangyo_kirai, 3-1 Modern Daily Event

• Lands (23)
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 2 Forest
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Overgrown Tomb
• 2 Stomping Ground
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 4 Verdant Catacombs

• Creatures (31)
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 2 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1 Murderous Redcap
• 1 Noble Hierarch
• 1 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Phyrexian Obliterator
• 1 Reveillark
• 1 Spellskite
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Thragtusk
• 1 Tuktuk the Explorer
• 1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
• 1 Wall of Omens
• 2 Wall of Roots
• 1 Wood Elves
• 1 Zealous Conscripts

• Spells (6)
• 4 Birthing Pod
• 1 Domri Rade
• 1 Garruk Relentless

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Combust
• 1 Ethersworn Canonist
• 1 Harmonic Sliver
• 1 Illness in the Ranks
• 1 Kataki, War's Wage
• 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 2 Obstinate Baloth
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Skylasher
• 1 Sowing Salt
• 2 Spreading Seas

Buy This Deck

Who needs to combo? Naka is just going to value you to death by podding his Thragtusk into Sun Titan and starting the chain all over again. This deck drastically cuts back on the Pod deck's ability to combo off, but trades that for a number of awesome singletons that give you better game against decks with tons of removal. You'll get fewer free wins, but more flexibility and reach as games go late.

And really, who doesn't want to Birthing Pod into Phyrexian Obliterator, especially with a Domri Rade on board? It's not even completely out of the question that Naka will be able to just cast his Obliterator. Most of his lands produce Black mana of some sort and he has eight mana creatures that can help him get there as well. You've got Kitchen Finks, Huntmaster of the Fells, Thragtusk and clones as backup against aggro decks, and Glen Elendra Archmage, Reveillark, and Sun Titan to grind against control and midrange.

Speaking of Reveillark, this is one of the few mechanisms you have to combo off in this deck. If you have a clone copying Reveillark, you can sacrifice that clone to Varolz to get the clone back and any two-power creature. Sacrifice your two-power guy and newly-cloned Reveillark and repeat! You can also use Mikaeus, Varolz, and Kitchen Finks or Murderous Redcap. That's not to say that these are the only combos you can fit into here. You could easily try to find space for Restoration Angel and Kiki-Jiki or Spike Feeder and Archangel of Thune!

If you've followed Legacy for any amount of time, you've seen your fair share of Ancient Tomb decks. Faerie Stompy used these in combination with Sea Drake and Cloud of Faeries; Dragon Stompy used Blood Moon and Rakdos Pit Dragon; MUD uses Lodestone Golem and Metalworker. No matter how many Ancient Tomb into Chalice of the Void decks you've seen, I promise you've never seen one like this:

[Cardlist Title= Werewolf Stompy - Legacy | Optimis344, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event]

• Lands (20)
• 4 Ancient Tomb
• 4 Cavern of Souls
• 4 City of Traitors
• 8 Mountain

• Creatures (22)
• 4 Hanweir Watchkeep
• 4 Instigator Gang
• 4 Magus of the Moon
• 3 Phyrexian Revoker
• 3 Rakka Mar
• 4 Simian Spirit Guide

• Spells (18)
• 4 Blood Moon
• 4 Chalice of the Void
• 3 Chrome Mox
• 2 Mizzium Mortars
• 4 Trinisphere
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Anarchy
• 3 Angel of Despair
• 2 Dismember
• 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
• 3 Leyline of the Void
• 1 Ricochet Trap
• 3 Shattering Pulse

Buy This Deck

This deck has a ton of awesome things going on! You've got the traditional plan of Chalice of the Void backed by Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon, and Trinisphere. These cards single-handedly shut down the zero-basics Delver of Secrets decks that have been doing so well recently. To back those disruptive elements up, you have a team of Werewolves straight out of Innistrad.

Hanweir Watchkeep and Instigator Gang have taken over for Gathan Raiders and Rakdos Pit Dragon as the beatdown enablers of choice, and I have to say that I like the change. If you don't have an explosive hand, none of these cards are going to do very much. 1/5 Defenders and 3/3's aren't very good in Legacy. But if things go right, you can have enormous threats in play without having to worry about throwing away cards to empty your hand.

Just imagine a turn one Magus of the Moon followed up by Instigator Gang. Your opponent is going to be all but dead on your third turn and locked under a Blood Moon! That seems like a pretty good place to be. Even if you don't think this is the best Ancient Tomb deck, there's certainly something to be said for playing Cavern of Souls naming Werewolf in Legacy.

Last week we took a look at Purphoros, God of the Forge. This week we're taking a look at the other obvious Commander super star, Erebos, God of the Dead. There are a ton of different takes on Mono-Black Control in Commander, but all of them relied on cards like Maga, Traitor to Mortals or Geth, Lord of the Vault. We've never had a Black Commander that can produce raw card advantage for a small investment of mana and life; conveniently the two resources Black is best at generating. Let's take a look at an early take on this awesome new Commander by ChimericPisces:

Erebos Control - Commander | ChimericPisces

• Commander (1)
• 1 Erebos, God of the Dead

• Lands (39)
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 High Market
• 1 Inkmoth Nexus
• 1 Lake of the Dead
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Strip Mine
• 25 Swamp
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Vesuva

• Creatures (7)
• 1 Bloodghast
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Nirkana Revenant
• 1 Reassembling Skeleton
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

• Instants and Sorceries (11)
• 1 All Is Dust
• 1 Ashes to Ashes
• 1 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Death Cloud
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Exsanguinate
• 1 Hero's Downfall
• 1 Snuff Out
• 1 Vampiric Tutor

• Artifacts, Enchantments, and Planeswalkers (42)
• 1 Basalt Monolith
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Clock of Omens
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Jet Medallion
• 1 Lashwrithe
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Static Orb
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Tormod's Crypt
• 1 Torpor Orb
• 1 Trading Post
• 1 Winter Orb
• 1 Worn Powerstone
• 1 Bitterblossom
• 1 Black Market
• 1 Contamination
• 1 Descent into Madness
• 1 Exquisite Blood
• 1 Gate to Phyrexia
• 1 Gibbering Descent
• 1 Infernal Darkness
• 1 Necrogen Mists
• 1 Necropotence
• 1 Oppression
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Phyrexian Etchings
• 1 Sanguine Bond
• 1 Underworld Connections
• 1 Underworld Dreams
• 1 Karn Liberated
• 1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
• 1 Liliana of the Veil
• 1 Liliana Vess
• 1 Sorin Markov

Buy This Deck

This deck is going for a very specific strategy of locking opponents out with combinations of cards like Descent into Madness and Contamination. You can sit back under Winter Orb and cast spells off of your Black Market, while the Green and Bue decks flounder around trying to cast fatties and countermagic. Seems pretty sweet to me.

One of the cards I'm most excited about in this style of deck is Torpor Orb. There are so many Primordials, Titans, and other "Enters the Battlefield" nonsense running around that Black's removal has started to seem awfully weak. Torpor Orb single handedly solves that problem, and puts all of those creatures back in their place.

The thing that confuses me the most about this deck is how many slots are dedicated to incremental card advantage and how few are dedicated to spot removal. Erebos is a perfectly reasonable engine to build your deck around, and I'm not sure that you need Phyrexian Etchings, Phyrexian Arena, Underworld Connections, and more to back him up. Sword of Feast and Famine would be an interesting choice, since it doubles as card drawing with Erebos, but also lets you double up on prison effects.

One of the coolest interactions in this deck is the one between Death Cloud effects, Bloodghast and Erebos. You can wipe away all of your opponent's creatures and lands, rebuy Bloodghast with a land, and turn Erebos back on if you have enough devotion. From there it should be pretty easy to take out one or more players before they can scrape their boards back together!