Right around the time of Pro Tour Amonkhet, there was buzz about a new combo deck in Standard featuring New Perspectives as an engine. Unfortunately, the presence of Aetherworks Marvel pushed that deck out of the format, as did the existence of the various flavors of decks trying to race or out-control the Marvel deck. Now that the format is centering more around midrange strategies, perhaps it’s time to revisit New Perspectives, particularly with another set full of cycling cards on the horizon:

New Perspectives ? Amonkhet Standard | Andreas_Qri, 5-0 Standard League

• Creatures (9)
• 1 Sphinx of the Final Word
• 4 Shefet Monitor
• 4 Vizier of Tumbling Sands

• Instants (12)
• 4 Haze of Pollen
• 4 Renewed Faith
• 4 Shadow of the Grave

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Approach of the Second Sun
• 4 Traverse the Ulvenwald

• Enchantments (11)
• 3 Gift of Paradise
• 4 Cast Out
• 4 New Perspectives

• Lands (23)
• 1 Fetid Pools
• 5 Forest
• 1 Island
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Fortified Village
• 4 Irrigated Farmland
• 4 Scattered Groves
• 4 Sheltered Thicket

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Angel of Sanctions
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Dissenter's Deliverance
• 4 Drake Haven
• 2 Fumigate
• 3 Negate

Buy This Deck

Once you’ve expended all your cyclers and netting as much mana as you can, you want to start expending Shadow of the Grave to do it all over again. Depending on how your draw plays out, there is a certain amount of finesse to timing your Shefet Monitors so that you haven’t drawn all of your basics, and to leaving enough cards in your deck that you can use all of your cyclers that generate mana for maximum value.

Once you’ve churned through your deck and maximized your mana, the goal is to cast Approach of the Second Sun, resolve enough cyclers to draw it again, and then cast it for a second time in the same turn.

This is a deck that’s certainly soft to counterspells, leading to the sideboard plan of boarding in Drake Havens to overload opposing removal and countermagic. This is a linear deck that’s a little slow in an Aetherworks Marvel format, but might be reasonable now that the format is a little slower and Negates and Disallows are less common. If you’re looking to play a combo deck in Standard, this is one of the better ways to do it that we’ve seen in the last couple of years.