1. Kai Budde Wins the Pro Tour

I really wish there were written or video evidence to verify the following claims; but everything that was once good is apparently Lost in the Woods of the Internet past, so you'll just have to believe whatever I say next.

In The Big Easy of 2001, the Extended Pro Tour scene was abuzz with two hot new decks. Future Hall of Famers Darwin Kastle and Dave Humpherys had both made Top 8 with their Mono-Black Reanimator deck, with the third leg of the legendary Team YMG, Rob Daugherty not far behind. This deck was not only different than most decks that had been seen in any format at all prior to Pro Tour New Orleans... It was the most self-aware deck in the history of a Pro Tour that was then two decades younger. The Reanimator deck made great use of new cards like Entomb and Zombie Infestation for a heck of a Plan A... But in addition, Your Move Games realized other teams would be onto the newly minted graveyard incentives, and packed multiple points of preparation in their sideboards. Not only did they have Coffin Purge as a quasi-mirror spoiler, the YMG Reanimator deck could semi-transform into a Phyrexian Negator deck, allowing them to drop undercosted giants without having to first prep the old garbage can should opponents be similarly ready. By in large, they weren't.

Tomi Walamies eventually finished second at Pro Tour New Orleans with Operation Dumbo Drop, a Bant "Good Stuff" Control deck with an unexpected twist. The Walamies deck had many trappings of what would then have been expected Extended Bant cards... Counterspells and Force of Will from Blue; Swords to Plowshares and Wrath of God from White; Fact or Fiction, Brainstorm, and Intuition to keep it all moving.

Green was a popular finisher color for Blue-White because Gaea's Blessing was so good at recycling the "good" half of a control deck as the game went long... And its interactions with both Intuition and Fact or Fiction made for dizzying and sometimes surprising long games. But Green as a finisher had new meaning with Operation Dumbo Drop.

Walamies could Intuition for three copies of new sorcery Call of the Herd to initiate an avalanche of card advantage that might not even start for a few turns... But would prove inexorable in the more spell-centric Extended of twenty-two years ago.

Reanimator was new and hot and filled the Top 16 with legendary players.

Operation Dumbo Drop gave fans something they had never seen before.

But never, ever, should one bet against the German Juggernaut.

Kai Budde didn't do anything exciting. In fact, his deck was unexciting. Less exciting than last year's model, most would say. But all he did was win.

The banning of Necropotence and much of its regalia de-powered the Trix deck that so dominated the previous year's Extended PTQ season. Kai kept the two card combo...

... He just took out all the machinery that was no longer legal. I mean, he still had a two-card kill that managed to gain 20 life in the middle of the combo against beatdown decks. But he did nothing that was normatively exciting on the order of his competitors; or, again, of the previous year's take on the same combo.

Unless you count winning the Pro Tour as exciting.

What Kai did have, added actually, was Sapphire Medallion.

This card quietly jazzed his Intuition + Accumulated Knowledge engine. It took a whopping fifty percent off of the retail price of key filtering cards like Merchant Scroll and Impulse.

And, of course, he could combo completely on turn four. Turn two Sapphire Medallion; turn three Illusions of Grandeur (gaining 20 life); turn four pay 2 mana for Cumulative Upkeep, make a land drop, and tap out for the Donate. Your go, opponent.

What Kai did to spectacular success was to draw his Sapphire Medallions early and often, accelerating his ability to interact at speed. He also did have one of the most famous top decks in Pro Tour history; but again there is no written or video evidence corroborating, so you'll just have to believe me.

In Standard, one of the best three casting cost cards is a Sapphire Medallion that also happens to be one of the best tap-out threats in Blue flyer history.

I think that no one talks enough about Haughty Djinn. It's kinda sorta in one archetype that seems to have performed pretty well but everyone kinda sorta sleeps on in big stretches. For one singular more mana than Kai's Pro Tour defining Medallion, Haughty Djinn does more to transform the complexion of any game it is in than maybe any other card in Standard.

There are four ways that Haughty Djinn can do this.

1. You can tap out for Haughty Djinn on turn three. Usually your Djinn will not be very big in this spot, so you'll not generally want to expose it willy-nilly unless you have a good reason. Being way behind on the battlefield is a good one. Deciding the opponent definitely can't kill it this turn is another. Maybe they're manascrewed; maybe they're not in the right colors; probably you won't block.
2. You can tap three for Haughty Djinn on turn four; leaving up for Negate, Make Disappear, Slip Out the Back, or (barf) Fading Hope. This play is a profound show of strength when it resolves. Haughty Djinn is almost always the best permanent in play, when it is in play. Part of that is because it is so good and so big; and part of that is because Mono-Blue is so good at keeping cards like Atraxa, Grand Unifier, Cityscape Leveler, or Portal of Phyrexia off the battlefield. A turn four Djinn is often the first domino to fall in a sequence that starts the very next turn.
3. You get your Haughty Djinn is in play at some point... And you've accumulated a number of cards that have only a single Blue pip. Every Make Disappear, Negate, Esssence Scatter, and so on are great with any amount of mana open. But what really allows a Haughty Djinn in play to go full Kai Budde is the card filtering. Impulse, Consider, and Thirst for Discovery - the last one especially with multiple Djinns in play - allow you to profoundly change the clock by lacing together five or six spells in a single turn cycle. A player who untaps with Haughty Djinn on the battlefield will often be able to win the game in two swings. A lone mid-game Djinn attacking for double digits is not something that should surprise you.
4. Haughty Djinn enables Flow of Knowledge.

The real breaker for Mono-Blue in the current Standard is Flow of Knowlege. I started to see this card in lists and wasn't sure how I felt about it until I had played a lot of Mono-Blue. You might recall from previous explorations in the archetype that I often thought about the deck as a Delver of Secrets racer deck, but the mere existence of Flow changes how the deck operates. For one thing, a third turn Haughty Djinn simply sets up a fourth turn Flow of Knowledge with a land drop. Any long game Flow of Knowledge will tend to be backbreaking so long as you haven't already lost the duel. It's not so much that drawing four, or five, or nine cards is so good (though that is obviously the case). It's that the sheer volume of material that Haughty Djinn + Flow of Knowledge puts together will often assemble a Haughty Djinn one-shot kill.

When you try this yourself, make sure you're seeing lines like "Fading Hope my own Haughty Djinn; Make Disappear the Fading Hope" in your range of plays. I've found Mono-Blue to be surprisingly tactical for a Blue counterspell deck.

2. Risk, Reward, and Return: It's Kinda Sorta a Red Sheoldred

In 1993 Magic's rules of engagement were set in ways that persist, as we will see, thirty years later.

Lightning Bolt is a heck of card! But it was never banned or restricted in big formats like Black analogue Dark Ritual.

Fireball and Disintegrate were both printed at in Alpha... Alongside Black's version, Drain Life. For one more mana (albeit a concentrated color of that mana), Drain Life was twice as powerful as the Red versions. But Red persisted with weaker baseline material, as it always has.

In Standard today, arguably the most important creature to destroy is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. For four mana, Sheoldred drains for two every turn cycle, and is also insane in combat. Five toughness, deathtouch... No one wants to tussle with her.

Now Red has their analogue to Sheoldred. One mana less, for a lot less... But Red persists with weaker baseline material, as it always has.

I have to say I've been overall impressed by playing with Furnace Punisher. As a Red Sheoldred... It's no Sheoldred. In fact, I'm still loathe to ever face off against any deck with Sheoldred with basic Mountain in front of me... But Furnace Punisher has been a bright spot in generally non-Sheoldred matchups.

First of all, its two damage is basically the equivalent of Blaze to Drain Life. Not only does it not drain, only Shock... It doesn't even work all the time. Worse, sometimes you draw multiple copies of Mishra's Foundry or the one Sokenzan... And you're punching yourself. But when it works? It works the opponent over. I've especially been impressed by Furnace Punisher's ability to put Soldiers on a clock where it is often annoying for them to attack back into a 3/3 creature.

Furnace Punisher is also an All-Star against the many complicated mana bases we've talked about recently, that are low on basic lands but produce powerful effects like Atraxa, Grand Unifier quickly. One upside to Furnace Punisher is that with Menace, it can often attack through Atraxa or Sheoldred, sometimes even ahead of life gain, to win close ones for the good guys. "Good guys" in this context being the Red Deck, so you know where we're coming from.

Which is not to say that Furnace Punisher is not a card itself fraught with risk. I mean sometimes you draw two and the opponent just takes four a turn while not attacking and it's just great! Other times you're up against probably your worst matchup - Mono-Black - and it's even worse because you're paying three mana for a Trained Armodon against a deck with Sheoldred and Invoke Despair. Humiliatingly, sometimes you're up against a winnable version like Rakdos, but they just happen to draw both Swamps or the one Mountain, and you lose a close one instead of Punisher-ing them for six like would happen in any reasonable universe. The only reasonable response to that being complaint. But bad beat stories are a dollar.

Still, Furnace Punisher is a card that I've been happy to play recently, and something you should keep an eye out for when preparing for Mono-Red. I like it better than Squee, Dubious Monarch main deck particularly for the Soldiers matchup, and because it can create more blowouts unaided than almost any other card available to the Red Deck.

3. Absolutely, Positively, the Best Spell in Standard

If you were expecting yet another diatribe on Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki here, I have to disappoint you. Fable is great, but Fable is not only a card that is not producing any edge in Standard, its role has changed a lot with the coming of this ONE most recent set.

Previously, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker was a card that was good because it created a material advantage for mid-range decks. The opponent would have to deal with your first 2/2, and if they didn't deal with your second 2/2 they were bound to lose if you had anything (Bloodtithe Harvester being the most common pairing, but who hasn't doubled up a Titan of Industry?)

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, unlike in bigger formats where it is generally a technically "non-creature spell" creature for combo setups, was mostly a drag on the opponent's resources that sometimes had a ton of upside. Don't get me wrong! It packed a lot of value into three mana. It could single-handedly turn on Roadside Reliquary or Soul Transfer. It was great! It's still great!

Today, somehow, it hasn't lost any of that - and in fact has added a functionality - but has stepped down a tier from best card in a deck to enabling the best card in a deck. Today, the primary function of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is to get Atraxa into play, often ahead of schedule. Previously it was all about sometimes getting in with that Chapter 1 Goblin, or the dream of glowing up with Chapter 3. Now you can't wait to discard The Grand Unifier to Chapter 2 and send the Goblin to its death on turn four for a single, minor, bump in mana.

Great?

Yes. In fact, maybe even better than before. But assist man. No one is mistaking Fable for the centerpiece of any Atraxa deck.

So, what three casting cost spell is the best in Standard?

Would you believe...

Oldie but goodie. Oldie, but somehow better than ever!

I can't tell you how impressive this card has not only been recently, but become recently, as a result of movement elsewhere in the metagame. Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton was always good, but there are three changes that I think put it at the top of a heck of a competitive mountain.

1. It validates Mono-Black. Mono-Black is a deck that has newfound life in Standard in part because of the popularity of Soldiers and Mono-Red. Simply, Mono-Black is good against those while Rakdos is Medium and Grixis is actively bad against them. Graveyard Trespasser not only creates obvious incentives against decks that put up creatures that are smaller than a 3/3 or certainly 4/4 Ward and are vulnerable to small packets of life gain... Its mid game performance is better than that of Corpse Appraiser in Grixis, which was not the case around, say, the time of the World Championships.
2. It breaks serve. Standard can be insanely tempo oriented, especially in the first few turns. Graveyard Trespasser is one of the best cards at reversing the tempo of going first, even against itself. Imagine the opponent plays a third turn Graveyard Trespasser on an empty board (and empty graveyards). You can use new tool Sheoldred's Edict to destroy their mighty Trespasser (putting it into the graveyard) and then untap and play your own! You are now up a Drain and the opponent is tapped out on the back foot against the best Ward protection in the format. Xerox this play pattern for any number of small creature decks that are vulnerable to fast removal and can't afford too many small Drains... Sounds pretty good, right?
3. It blunts the other best cards in Standard.

There is simply no better card at containing the awesome force of Haughty Djinn than Graveyard Trespasser. The why should be obvious. Dropping this successfully on the play is one of the best ways that any Black deck can contend with the tough matchup of Mono-Blue. Contextually, you can sometimes make a Djinn small enough to Cut Down! Cut Down is terrible against Mono-Blue, but most Black decks play it. Giving a terrible card not only text, but relevance against the best card in an opposing bad matchup can be bonkers.

Removing Atraxa is not actually that tough for most Black decks. It's just the seven cards the opponent drew that are probably going to beat you even if you execute on your plan. Graveyard Trespasser is one of the best cards at keeping Atraxa off the battlefield, ever. If the opponent got jumpy and dumped Atraxa early, that's Werewolf meat! The profound clock this card can put a competing reanimator deck - or Black reanimator deck - on is another great incentive. You have to kill 'em quick, or they're going to draw seven and lifelink you for seven and it's going to be a big mess.

Graveyard Trespasser is so good it's making its way into big spell decks like Rakdos Reanimator, not only to contend proactively with the mirror... But for additional percentage against decks like Mono-Red and Soldiers.

Why do I think Graveyard Trespasser is the best now, instead of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, which has been so good for so long and now even has a new and important job? Fable is everywhere. Fable is the baseline. Despite a long and decorated career, Graveyard Trespasser is not only better than ever, when added to some new decks, it's the true edge: The difference that makes the difference.

LOVE

MIKE