Standard right now is a crazy place.

We're used to seeing powerful sideboard cards in Standard formats. Celestial Purge, Rending Volley, Gainsay, and so on are all classic cards that have been important players in not only Standard, but older formats as well. They're nice safety valves to have if a color gets a little too good in any given format. Well, it's not hard to say that Standard is pretty off the rails.

Our current Standard format is defined by Growth Spiral, Teferi, Time Raveler, and friends, which means that almost every deck contains Blue and either Green or Red, with Blue/Green decks being extremely common. It's gotten to the point where it isn't uncommon to see cards like Aether Gust and Mystical Dispute in maindecks, which sounds crazy but is a great way to get an easy edge in mirror matches.

And frankly, it's hard to dodge them!

With White being perhaps the worst color in the format, as well as some of the best threats being concentrated in Green and Red, it is difficult to build a deck that isn't affected by Aether Gust.

...but not impossible!

Time Stamps:

00:05:09 - Match 1

00:36:43 - Match 2

00:47:45 - Match 3

01:00:33 - Match 4

01:17:14 - Match 5

Metagame Black Aggro | M21 Standard | Jim Davis

• Creatures (26)
• 2 Rankle, Master of Pranks
• 4 Blacklance Paragon
• 4 Gutterbones
• 4 Knight of the Ebon Legion
• 4 Rotting Regisaur
• 4 Spawn of Mayhem
• 4 Stonecoil Serpent

• Instants (4)
• 2 Eliminate
• 2 Grasp of Darkness

• Sorceries (3)
• 3 Duress

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Demonic Embrace

• Lands (23)
• 18 Swamp
• 1 Mobilized District
• 4 Castle Locthwain

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Shadowspear
• 2 Sorcerous Spyglass
• 2 Disfigure
• 1 Duress
• 1 Eliminate
• 4 Noxious Grasp
• 2 Heartless Act
• 1 Drill Bit
• 1 Tymaret, Chosen from Death

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Amusingly we of course lost to a Temur Reclamation, which should be one of our best possible matchups, but it was an otherwise successful set of matches.

In a vacuum, this deck is a bit underpowered compared to the rest of the format. Our cards are good, but they aren't Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or Hydroid Krasis good. However, we find a very nice niche in that we are good against some of the best decks in the format as well as many of the most played answers in the format. There isn't a ton of spot removal floating around because it's so bad against ramp and Temur Reclamation, and because decks often play Aether Gust instead of spot removal they have a dead card when they need interaction the most.

But it's a classic deck as well; removal spells, fast beatdown, and a touch of disruption. So, if you like finding a niche where people aren't as well as playing some classic Magic, suit up some Demonic Embraces and let it ride!