The Battle for Zendikar release weekend is finally here which means it’s time to find out what Magic’s newest set can do in Constructed. This week we’ll spend most of our time in Standard, featuring four awesome brews that prominently feature some of the most exciting cards from Battle for Zendikar: Part the Waterveil, Undergrowth Champion, and Bring to Light. The fifth deck is a first pass on the most recent addition to Legacy: Black Vise. The release of a new set is among the most exciting times of the Magic year— time to find out what the new face of Standard will look like.

In recent Standard formats, all ramp decks have been Green-based, and largely focused on using mana creatures to ramp into giant monsters. Whether you’re curving Elvish Mystic into Whisperwood Elemental or Rampant Growth into Primeval Titan, the overarching strategy and construction of your deck largely follows the same formula. Michael Majors has a few exciting brews for Battle for Zendikar Standard, and his mono-Blue big mana deck looks like a blast:

Mono-Blue Eldrazi ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Michael Majors

• Creatures (6)
• 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 4 Hangarback Walker

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

• Spells (23)
• 2 Anticipate
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Horribly Awry
• 3 Dig Through Time
• 4 Clash of Wills
• 2 Part the Waterveil
• 1 Tightening Coils
• 3 Encase in Ice
• 4 Hedron Archive

• Lands (27)
• 14 Island
• 1 Blighted Cataract
• 4 Mage-Ring Network
• 4 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
• 4 Skyline Cascade

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There are a lot of things I love about this deck but the thing I love most is the possibility it presents. The shell here is Mage-Ring Network, Hedron Archive, Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, and giant colorless bombs like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. The deck even features Hangarback Walker as a colorless curve-filler that plays well against both aggro and control matchups.

Michael has chosen to fill in the gaps with a plethora of awesome Blue cards, ranging from powerful card-drawing spells to efficient tempo cards. This combination allows you to stall your opponent out with Encase in Ice and Clash of Wills while you charge you Mage-Ring Networks and hit your land drops. Then you overwhelm your opponent with Dig Through Time helping to find Part the Waterveil, Ugin, and Ulamog to close out the game.

We haven’t seen a non-Green deck try to use a colorless mana engine to overwhelm opponents with the raw power of its cards since Urza's Tower and company were in Standard; but, with this shell, I’m optimistic we could see a non-traditional big mana deck in Battle for Zendikar Standard. Michael may have chosen Blue for his version, but you could just as easily build a White version with Silkwrap, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and Planar Outburst. You could even go so far as to sideboard Tomb of the Spirit Dragon to go with colorless creatures like Hangarback Walker and Pilgrim's Eye to provide life gain against more aggressive decks.

The next deck I’m excited to look at is another of Michael Majors’s brews, but this time it’s a twist on Abzan midrange. Forget trying to eke out value with Siege Rhino and Ob Nixilis Reignited. Michael has decided that he wants to go much bigger, bigger even than Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. You can keep your Ruinous Paths, Michael wants to cast The Great Aurora:

Abzan Aurora ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Michael Majors

• Creatures (6)
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
• 3 Den Protector

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

• Spells (27)
• 1 Murderous Cut
• 4 Abzan Charm
• 2 Crux of Fate
• 2 Dark Petition
• 2 Nissa's Pilgrimage
• 4 Explosive Vegetation
• 4 The Great Aurora
• 4 Demonic Pact
• 4 Retreat to Kazandu

• Lands (25)
• 1 Plains
• 5 Swamp
• 6 Forest
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Smoldering Marsh
• 2 Blighted Woodland
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (14)
• 2 Orbs of Warding
• 3 Gaea's Revenge
• 2 From Beyond
• 1 Dragonlord Dromoka
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 2 Duress
• 3 Languish

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At its core, this is a ramp deck that wants to put as many permanents on the battlefield as possible before casting The Great Aurora so you can generate an overwhelming advantage once the Aurora resolves. This is accomplished by using Nissa's Pilgrimage and Nissa, Vastwood Seer herself, as well as Explosive Vegetation and Blighted Woodland to surge ahead on lands while Retreat to Kazandu keeps your life total high.

In the midgame, this deck intends to grind out small advantages with Den Protector, Crux of Fate, and versatile removal spells like Abzan Charm. These advantages afford the opportunity to start putting Demonic Pacts into play. These are the cards that really let you begin to stabilize the board and bury your opponent in resources. Of course, all Demonic Pact decks need ways to remove their Pacts before being forced to put the “lose the game” trigger on the stack. In Michael’s deck, The Great Aurora pulls triple duty as a pseudo-win condition, a card advantage engine, and a way to remove Demonic Pact from the board and put it back into your deck for additional uses.

It’s important to note the lands you put into play off The Great Aurora enter the battlefield untapped. This means it is not unlikely for you to be able to reset your opponent’s board and generate a giant pile of mana while drawing into something awesome to do with it. When you draw that many cards, it is likely you will find some combination of Retreat to Kazandu and Demonic Pact to keep the board stable, or alternatively Ulamog or Ugin to start proactively ending the game.

The viability of this deck is enormously dependent on how fast the new Standard environment is. If people are trying to play Monastery Swiftspears, it seems unlikely a deck which needs to resolve ten drops is where you want to be. However, if everyone is trying to cast Oblivion Sowers and Ulamogs, this is a deck that can realistically go over the top of almost anything.

One of the most exciting mechanics to make its return in Battle for Zendikar is landfall. In Zendikar Standard, Lotus Cobra, Steppe Lynx, and Plated Geopede were defining aspects of the more aggressive decks, particularly in conjunction with the fetchlands. This time around, we have new dual lands in addition to fetches, and a whole new suite of awesome Landfall creatures to explore. Check out Seth Manfield’s Red-Green take on the new landfall creatures:

Red-Green Landfall ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Seth Manfield

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Tunneling Geopede
• 3 Zurgo Bellstriker
• 4 Abbot of Keral Keep
• 4 Makindi Sliderunner
• 4 Scythe Leopard
• 4 Snapping Gnarlid
• 4 Undergrowth Champion

• Spells (12)
• 4 Atarka's Command
• 4 Wild Slash
• 2 Exquisite Firecraft
• 2 Outpost Siege

• Lands (24)
• 2 Forest
• 2 Mountain
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Cinder Glade
• 4 Evolving Wilds
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 4 Wooded Foothills

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At its heart, this deck wants to curve out and turn creatures sideways. That said, it’s very easy to underestimate the damage output of this style of deck. Sure, the aggressive landfall creatures like Scythe Leopard, Makindi Sliderunner, and Snapping Gnarlid only pump +1/+1 for each land this time around; but, each fetchland is a potential pseudo-Overrun, and in stalled-out games it’s not hard to stock up on fetches until you can represent +4/+4 or more on a critical turn.

That’s not even touching on Undergrowth Champion. This new card promises to define aggressive takes on Green for the foreseeable future. This is the kind of threat that can absolutely dominate a board if your opponent doesn’t have hard removal right away. It’s not difficult to imagine this becoming a 6/6 by turn four or five, and it can’t be trumped in combat as long as you can keep the lands coming. This is the kind of card whose resiliency as both an attacker and blocker will give Green decks a lot of flexibility, and make such decks a strong choice for a volatile or unknown metagame.

That said, there are options to go even deeper. You could try to run Avatar of the Resolute or Hardened Scales alongside Hangarback Walkers and Undergrowth Champions. You could play Become Immense alongside the full sixteen fetchlands in this deck. There are a lot of possibilities for Green-Based aggressive decks featuring landfall and Undergrowth Champion, and Seth’s take seems like a fantastic place to start.

One of the strangest cards to come out of Battle for Zendikar is Bring to Light. This card provides near infinite flexibility, but at a cost. It also raised a lot of questions for players about the value of a five-mana tutor effect. Is the additional flexibility worth the cost of playing so many colors? Will you be happy paying five mana to tutor up and cast a three-mana removal spell? Ali Aintrazi has never been afraid of playing too many colors, and has decided to take the Bring to Light challenge head on:

Five-Color Bring to Light ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Ali Aintrazi

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Anafenza, the Foremost
• 1 Dragonlord Ojutai
• 1 Gilt-Leaf Winnower
• 1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
• 1 Whisperwood Elemental
• 2 Den Protector
• 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• 4 Siege Rhino

• Spells (19)
• 1 Sultai Charm
• 2 Dig Through Time
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 4 Abzan Charm
• 1 Crux of Fate
• 1 Languish
• 2 Despise
• 2 Ruinous Path
• 4 Bring to Light

• Lands (26)
• 1 Island
• 1 Plains
• 2 Forest
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Shambling Vent
• 1 Smoldering Marsh
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 2 Lumbering Falls
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Disdainful Stroke
• 3 Duress
• 1 Ojutai's Command
• 4 Radiant Flames
• 2 Radiant Purge
• 1 Silumgar's Command
• 1 Tragic Arrogance
• 1 Ugin's Insight
• 1 Wingmate Roc

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This deck puts the flexibility of a card like Bring to Light on full display. Many people look at Bring to Light and see only extra copies of Languish, Ob Nixilis Reignited, or a card-drawing spell. This is, at its core, a five-color midrange deck that utilizes Bring to Light as both a versatile answer and a means of applying serious pressure. It’s difficult to stress just how exciting it is to be able to tutor for powerful threats as well as answers.

Are you behind on board? You can tutor up Languish or Crux of Fate. You can find Ruinous Path to answer opposing Planeswalkers. More importantly, you have eight copies of Siege Rhino you can topdeck to start applying pressure to your opponent instead of just four. You also have five copies of Whisperwood Elemental to generate an advantage on stalled boards, or Gilt-Leaf Winnower to break open Siege Rhino stalemates. This in conjunction with the ability to use Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Dig Through Time to sculpt your draws allows you to quickly hit a point where you cast the best card in your deck every turn until your opponent dies. Additionally, you have the ability to find your sideboard cards, even singleton copies, much more consistently than your opponent. This means that high impact sideboard cards will show up much more often and swing post-board games in your favor.

However, this deck is only as good as it’s one- and two-ofs. If you’re playing Languish over Planar Outburst and your opponents are casting Ulamog instead of Monastery Swiftspear, you’re going to have trouble. You can’t tutor up the correct answers and threats if you aren’t playing them in the first place. If you can accurately predict what the metagame is going to look like and assemble a robust suite of cards that swing those matchups, this could be the best deck for the weekend. However, if your predictions are off, you might be in a world of trouble.

Our last deck is a fresh look at a card that has been banned in Legacy for many years. In the Battle for Zendikar Banned and Restricted List announcement, Black Vise was unbanned in Legacy. This is a card people have long said is no longer overpowered in the format. While some decks like Miracles may struggle against Black Vise, more proactive decks like Show and Tell can easily win the game before Black Vise can deal lethal damage, and decks like Elves will have an empty hand before the damage really matters. That’s not the end of the story, though, because some players, like phazonmutant, have set out to see if they can strand all of your cards in your hand.

Owling Brown ? Legacy | phazonmutant

• Creatures (6)
• 2 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 4 Lodestone Golem

• Spells (32)
• 2 Crucible of Worlds
• 2 Winter Orb
• 4 Black Vise
• 4 Ebony Owl Netsuke
• 4 Mox Diamond
• 4 Sphere of Resistance
• 4 Tangle Wire
• 4 Thorn of Amethyst
• 4 Trinisphere

• Lands (22)
• 2 Mutavault
• 4 Ancient Tomb
• 4 City of Traitors
• 4 Mishra's Factory
• 4 Rishadan Port
• 4 Wasteland

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At its core, this is very similar to MUD lists we’ve seen before, except that there are very few actual threats. Forget Karn Liberated and Spine of Ish Sah; we don’t need Metalworker in this deck. Instead, phazonmutant has opted to stay as low to the ground as possible and play the maximum number of Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, and Tangle Wire. This deck comes out of the gates quickly with City of Traitors, Ancient Tomb, or Mox Diamond and starts locking you out of casting your spells with Chalice of the Void, Sphere of Resistance, and Trinisphere.

Along the way, phazonmutant will start destroying lands with Wasteland and locking down your basics with Rishadan Port. These two lands are particularly brutal in conjunction with Crucible of Worlds and Winter Orb respectively, essentially locking opposing players out of the game.

The exciting part about this deck is its end game. For the longest time, this weakness of this type of deck is the amount of time you give opponents to draw a way out of the lock. You are no longer reliant on grinding out long games by attacking with Mishra's Factory or reducing your opponent to zero permanents with Smokestack, only to lose if they topdeck Energy Flux or something similar. Instead, you can just sneak a Black Vise or Ebony Owl Netsuke into play early in the game and let it eat away at your opponent’s life total while you focus on denying the ability to make land drops and cast spells.

If you want to find out if Black Vise is still as good as it used to be, or are interested in making sure that you’re the only one playing Magic, this may be a great deck to try out in the coming weeks.