This week we'll talk about two fairly archetypical decks I've been playing, one Standard and one Pioneer; and the small but meaningful changes that cost little but produce outsized returns in win expectation.

First, Standard:

Best of One Grixis | DMU Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (11)
• 3 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 4 Corpse Harvester
• 4 Bloodtithe Harvester

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Liliana of the Veil
• 2 Reckoner Bankbuster

• Instants (12)
• 2 Abrade
• 2 Cut Down
• 2 Siphon Insight
• 3 Make Disappear
• 3 Infernal Grasp

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Invoke Despair

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki

• Lands (26)
• 5 Swamp
• 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 4 Shipwreck Marsh
• 4 Shivan Reef
• 4 Haunted Ridge
• 4 Sulfurous Springs
• 4 Xander's Lounge

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Yes, this deck is pretty similar to Nathan Steuer's World Championship-winning Grixis list... But adjusted for Best of One on Magic: The Gathering Arena.

What changed?

I went down to one copy of Takenuma, Abandoned Mire (Nathan played two) just to shave off a little downside risk. Drawing multiple copies of Takenuma early in the faster Best of One format can either cost you on the spot or force a mulligan that you just didn't need to expose yourself to. The upshot of Takenuma is pretty low (I think I use its Channel ability something like one out of ten games) so playing a second copy - again in Best of One - seems to me more "gambling" than "calculated" if you take my meaning.

Nathan's original deck, which included Duress in the main, succeeded in a grinding traditional / Best of Three context that could not only slow down the opponent's proactive plan with disruption... But might at some point buy back Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Corpse Appraiser with that extra time.

Duress, of course, has been replaced by Siphon Insight here.

Siphon Insight does three unique things in the Steuer shell; all of them strategic and powerful.

1. It gives you a "third" hand... and for that matter, the second one. Many Blue decks have played a "second hand" via the graveyard thanks to flashback spells like Memory Deluge. That second hand not only allows them to run a potentially big spell into open Blue mana with impunity, but it lets them stow card advantage away from a possible Duress in the future. Siphon Insight lets you get in a little sip of that sweet, sweet Memory Deluge juice, and via Exile, play a completely different hand that is invulnerable to opponent interplay like Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton. While it doesn't come up all that often, having so many cards you have to discard is part of the range. Siphon Insight lets you stow a future land drop (or better yet, Counterspell) in a zone that isn't limited to the traditional seven.
2. It breaks the symmetry of the only cards that matter in mirrors and quasi-mirrors. Everybody knows that basically the only creature that matters is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (and everything else is just details). By the same token the biggest leverage spell-spell heads up is Invoke Despair. It's not just that Siphon Insight gives you access to more copies of these two super key spells, it simultaneously deprives the opponent from the opportunity to draw them. That is an asymmetrical effect that has an impact on strategy and planning so significant it is almost impossible to exaggerate. This is especially true as no one seems to play all four copies of Sheoldred, and many don't play four copies of Invoke Despair, even in Mono-Black.
3. You get a brand new proactive "Draw-Go" style of game plan, especially when going second. Often you will be in this weird place on the draw. It sucks to be on the draw, especially in Best of One. But sometimes the opponent doesn't do anything on turn two. Now it's turn three and you can play your Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki. But the opponent just didn't do anything! Surely your Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is going to eat a Make Disappear and then they are going to follow up by resolving Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and you're going to be lucky to give up half your next turn before it buries you. But Siphon Insight gives you another option. Do not nothing but next to nothing. Just "draw a card" (only it's stowed over in Exile). You can ensure land drops or squirrel away an opposing Counterspell for later. Or, of course, you can steal Sheoldred or Invoke Despair for much, much later. To wit:

Here the opponent not only didn't make a turn two play, they didn't make a turn three play. They could have tapped for Raffine, Scheming Seer (and probably would have, if I had led with Bloodtithe Harvester) but correctly wanted to avoid running it into Make Disappear. Here Siphon Insight lets me use my mana while ensuring my next two if not three land drops.

And yes, I did, in fact, catch The Wandering Emperor with Make Disappear a few turns down the line.

Ultimately, I'm very happy with the Best of One take on Steuer Grixis. I picked up seven wins (and the all-important Play-In Point) with my first at-bat, and at the time of this writing, have not yet failed to exceed the breakeven point of five wins.

Second, Pioneer:

esmyth-style Burn | Pioneer | Michael Flores

• Creatures (20)
• 4 Bonecrusher Giant
• 4 Ghitu Lavarunner
• 4 Monastery Swiftspear
• 4 Soul-Scar Mage
• 4 Viashino Pyromancer

• Instants (9)
• 1 Spikefield Hazard // Spikefield Cave
• 4 Play with Fire
• 4 Wizard's Lightning

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Light Up the Stage
• 4 Skewer the Critics

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Kumano Faces Kakkazan

• Lands (19)
• 13 Mountain
• 1 Den of the Bugbear
• 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 4 Ramunap Ruins

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Hazoret the Fervent
• 1 Roiling Vortex
• 1 Burning Hands
• 4 Lava Coil
• 1 Roast
• 1 Experimental Frenzy
• 4 Rending Volley
• 1 Redcap Melee
• 1 Jegantha, the Wellspring

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So, it turns out that there was going to be a Pioneer RCQ one subway stop from me last weekend. Could I make a deck? As it happens, I could make at least two or three decks, but as I hadn't been planning to play serious Pioneer some of them would be missing a couple of the relatively recent innovations. Could I play Azorius Control without Temporary Lockdown? As it happens my first round RCQ opponent was Gruul Aggro, and had I lost to that with Azorius I would have been salty for the lack of Temporary Lockdown. Somehow, I own neither Old-Growth Troll nor The Chain Veil. That might not be the best way to return to Mono-Green waters, am I right?

Luckily, I owned almost the entirety of esmyth's Mono-Red deck.

Esmyth had finished 5-0 in two different Pioneer League events in the preceding week. Also did I mention I owned 74/75 of that particular list? Really the first point was more important than the second, but given my timetable the second was pretty important. I ended up having to open five (with Flores) packs of Throne of Eldraine before finding the one Redcap Melee I was missing; but what am I supposed to do with old FNM booty if not complete current deck lists?

Structurally, esmyth's deck was very resonant with the Modern decks I was playing back in 2019, before Modern Horizons II so radically changed that format. It was almost all [effectively] one mana spells. While it didn't have the eight copies of Fiery Islet and Sunbaked Canyon I used to switch plans in the old Modern mid-game, it transformed land drops into action in a similar way via Ramunap Ruins.

I watched some Todd Anderson videos and wondered if I shouldn't find a way to fit Obosh, the Preypiercer in the list. The only card that Obosh didn't get along with was Viashino Pyromancer.

Viashino Pyromancer, though, is a pretty underrated Magic: the Gathering card. Compare it to an Uktabi Orangutan. A Shock and an Oxidize cost the same; but the Pyromancer - still with 2 power, who cares about toughness - slides in at a full mana cheaper than the perennially performing Sex Monkey. It doesn't just save you a mana compared to another 187 spell! Because you wouldn't play it at three, even if it would get along with Obosh then. People literally pay two mana to do two damage all the time. Magma Jet has been played in Extended! With Viashino Pyromancer, you get a body that can deal another two next turn to boot.

But the body itself is of course so central to esmyth's build.

Together the Wizard sub-theme collectively discounts Wizard's Lightning. Remember paying two to deal two? One to deal three is the "special something" that makes this deck tick. It's almost like we get Lightning Bolt!

So, what are the changes?

In the main I added one Den of the Bugbear in place of a basic Mountain.

I can understand, with such tight mana specifications, why esmyth would play all Mountains. But a single Den of the Bugbear is basically a miracle in this deck. The most likely time you would draw a singleton is in your opening hand. That is the time when - again, only a single - Den of the Bugbear has literally no downside. It's bad later only in weird spots like needing five to play Jegantha (a card that esmyth didn't play).

My friend and Hot Dog State University teammate Etai Kurtzman suggested adding Jegantha when I said I was thinking about Obosh. Except Obosh is really powerful whereas Jegantha kind of sucks. "No it doesn't," Etai countered. "It's like a fifth Ramunap Ruins in this deck."

That sold me. These Zoomers! They're so intuitive about things that are hella not obvious to some of us who have been playing for more than twenty years!

I just had to deal with Goblin Chainwhirler and Chandra, Torch of Defiance. Well, Goblin Chainwhirler became Jegantha and Chandra, Torch of Defiance became Experimental Frenzy. Experimental Frenzy is somehow less flexible but more resilient than Chandra. I think that it's arguably more powerful in a deck with as much burn as esmyth's.

"I think that card is too slow," said my Gruul aggro opponent.

"Yeah probably," I responded. "Untap; upkeep Spikefield Hazard // Spikefield Cave your Phoenix Chick."

While I didn't get there this time, there is another Pioneer RCQ in New York coming up in two weeks. I plan to run it back 75/75. I lost only to Mono-Blue Spirits (a good matchup according also to my Mono-Blue Spirits opponents) and Mono-Green Devotion (a deck I also beat). The Devotion match was super annoying because I kept 1-drop, one land / Light Up the Stage in Game 3... And died with one Mountain in play. It was one of those games where a second land would have unlocked all the Lava Coils and Burning Hands in the world, and instead I got beat up by some Elves or whatever.

There was maybe one play that I wish I could have re-run. I have no idea what would have happened in the alternate (but nearby) universe, but if other-me hadn't lost specifically that game, he would have been Top 8.

Here's the situation:

I have a (2/2) Ghitu Lavarunner and a Soul-Scar Mage. I don't have a third land drop and my opponent is tapped out for Cerulean Drake. He has a tapped, Curious, 1/1 but the game ends up many turns later being about damage, not a little card advantage.

So, I swing with both creatures and he blocks the Lavarunner with the Cerulean Drake, which presumably will kill no one. I then Stomp him with Bonecrusher Giant.

This play will not only give my Soul-Scar Mage an additional damage via Prowess trigger, but Stomp will kill the Drake. Only he just sacrifices the Drake, which does a bunch of terrible things to our hero.

First of all, he gets the clean block on the Lavarunner. Many, many go-wide turns later I leave him close to (but not completely) dead and his last card ends up being enough of a doozy that I lose on the crack-back. Secondly, the Stomp is countered, meaning I don't have access to Bonecrusher Giant later. Another body on that go-wide probably would have been enough to win.

You see, I wasn't sure if my opponent knew the interaction between Stomp and Cerulean Drake. A cleaner play would have been to just Stomp him pre-combat. He might have still countered, but if he did, I would have at least done a vital two additional damage. Almost every other aspect of the game would have been better for Our Hero.

And yes, I bought a TON of Jegantha on the day. The Companion ended up being a loyal addition.

LOVE

MIKE