Standard after Dragon's Maze

Posted on May 22, 2013

It’s been a while since I’ve paid any attention to Standard, mostly because I’ve been preoccupied by school, work, and my Full Ravnica Cube project—also, Heart of the Swarm and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. But whenever a new set comes out, it’s always interesting to see how the Standard format evolves. Plus, with another round of World Magic Cup Qualifiers and Pro Tour Qualifiers coming up, both of which are Standard, I’m sure some of you will find this information useful. I won’t be attending them, but there are still a few Standard tournaments I’ll be playing in this summer.

As usual, I typically look at Premier Events on Magic Online to get a feel for what a metagame looks like. The Standard metagame with Dragon’s Maze is fairly similar to what it was before: The most dominant decks are Junk Rites and Jund. The former hasn’t really changed much, the only new card typically played being Sin Collector. The latter, however, has changed quite a bit. Jund decks online have almost universally adopted Sire of Insanity and Putrefy. Putrefy isn’t surprising, as it’s pretty much a strict upgrade to Murder. It turns out that if you attach Mind Twist to Craw Wurm, you end up with a really good card.

Let’s see what the overall metagame looks like, using data from Standard Premier Events from May 12 to May 18:

The usual caveat about decks making Top 8s not necessarily being representative of the format as a whole applies. As you can see, a bit more than half of the metagame is Jund, Junk Rites, and R/g aggro. It’s clear that based on this data, these three decks are the pillars of the format and that the bulk of your play-testing time should be spent preparing against them. Let’s look at some examples.

"Jund by teasdale"

Planeswalkers (3)
3 Garruk, Primal Hunter

Sire of Insanity is such an incredible beating against any deck planning on winning with Sphinx's Revelation, and I suspect it is a reason those decks are largely absent from these Top 8s. Putrefy is a godsend for this deck, as Murder is probably near the top of my list of “awful cards I’m forced to play because there really isn’t anything better.” Even though it still costs 3 mana, the additional utility you get from being able to kill artifacts as well as regenerating creatures (such as Experiment One and Lotleth Troll) more than makes up for it. Between Putrefy, Abrupt Decay, and Dreadbore, Boros Reckoner shouldn’t be a problem for this deck. What does continue to be a problem, however, is Junk Rites, the reason for this list playing a full four copies of Ground Seal between the main deck and sideboard.

Speaking of Junk Rites, let’s see what that deck looks like now.

"Junk Rites by Cantstoped"

This list is capable of beating down a bit more with the full four Loxodon Smiters, and as such, it is less reliant on Unburial Rites. With Somberwald Sages in the sideboard, however, it can easily transition into a faster combo deck. I’ve seen some versions of this deck playing Sin Collector, though with this list not playing Restoration Angel, I can see why Cantsoped chose not to run it.

Lastly, let’s look at R/g aggro:

"R/g Aggro by Wuggalix"

This is basically a mono-red deck that splashes green for Flinthoof Boar and Ghor-Clan Rampager. At first, I was puzzled by the lone Temple Garden until I realized it’s just a Forest that can cast Boros Reckoner. If attacking is your style, this is definitely the deck for you. Naya Blitz seems to have fallen off the radar, and this seems to be a much better choice to me. This deck is capable of doing a disgusting amount of damage extremely quickly, so make sure you’re not caught unprepared for this type of assault.

The last thing I’m going to look at is how these decks performed against each other. Again, I only have Top 8 data to look at, but I think it still gives a general idea of what each decks good and bad matchups are.

	Jund	Junk Rites	R/g Aggro	The Aristocrats	Bant Auras	Prime Speaker Bant	W/B/R Midrange	Overall
Jund		0.75	0.5	1	1			0.8125
Junk Rites	0.25		0.5		0	1		0.4375
R/g Aggro	0.5	0.5				1		0.67
The Aristocrats	0					0	1	0.33
Bant Auras	0	1						0.5
Prime Speaker Bant		0	0	1				0.33
W/B/R Midrange				0				0

The biggest surprise to me was how well the new Jund deck performed against Junk Rites—what was previously a terrible matchup. Due to the small sample size, I wouldn’t take these numbers as gospel, but it is a sign that Jund may become the new deck to beat. The only thing holding it back before was the abysmal Junk Rites matchup, and if that problem has indeed been solved, I know what I’ll be battling with in Standard over the summer. That isn’t to say that the other two major decks I’ve talked about aren’t good choices. Junk Rites performed poorly in this sample mostly because it kept losing to Jund; however, it still very consistently makes Top 8. I always recommend that you play the deck you’re most comfortable with.

I’ll close with my list of Top 8 Dragon’s Maze cards for Standard. While researching this article, I kept a tally of which cards from the new set were being played, and these are the Top 8 by number of copies.

1. Sire of Insanity

This one isn’t surprising for the reasons I talked about above. Meet the new boss.

2. Sin Collector

Many of the Junk Rites decks were playing this card. It’s pretty gross with Restoration Angel, and is a great value creature.

3. Putrefy

This is another card I covered above. It’s a premier removal spell that is only outclassed by cheaper, more specific answers.

4. Unflinching Courage

This is the main reason there’s a been a slight uptick in the number of Bant Aura decks. It turns out it’s pretty hard to race a giant lifelinking hexproof creature.

5. Voice of Resurgence

I expect this card to go gangbusters once Innistrad block rotates out. It had a great showing at Pro Tour: Dragon’s Maze, and it can only go up from there.

6. Deadbridge Chant

This typically sees play in the sideboard of Jund decks and is an awesome late-game engine.

7. Warleader's Helix

Lightning Helix this is not, but it should still see some fringe play. Paying 4 mana is simply too much for this to see any widespread use.

8. Aetherling

This card would be much higher were it not for the fact that blue decks have it pretty rough these days. If there is a good blue-based control deck in the near future, Aetherling will be the go-to finisher.