When it comes to Throne of Eldraine, there are a few things we can notice looking over the first wave of decks in the format. Synergy is clearly important, and two colors looks the stronger base for most decks. One of the things I'm most excited about looking into is the glut of cards that care about drawing an extra card and the new cards we got that draw extra cards!
I'm definitely easily swayed by neat looking cards in a color combination involving Blue. The card in question for me is Improbable Alliance. Being able to continuously pump out tokens on either turn can bury an opponent quickly as long as your deck is built to take advantage of it. That's doesn't even take into consideration the potential of a bomb card for the strategy, Irencrag Pyromancer. Let's take a look at where I'm at with Izzet Draw 2.
Izzet Draw 2 | Eldraine Standard | Rudy Briksza
- Creatures (11)
- 3 Crackling Drake
- 4 Faerie Vandal
- 4 Irencrag Pyromancer
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 4 The Royal Scions
- Instants (15)
- 1 Chemister's Insight
- 3 Radical Idea
- 3 Thrill of Possibility
- 4 Opt
- 4 Shock
- Sorceries (3)
- 3 Lava Coil
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Improbable Alliance
- Lands (23)
- 6 Mountain
- 7 Island
- 2 Castle Embereth
- 4 Steam Vents
- 4 Temple of Epiphany
- Sideboard (15)
- 1 Stolen by the Fae
- 3 Frogify
- 4 Mystical Dispute
- 1 Lava Coil
- 3 Disdainful Stroke
- 3 Scorching Dragonfire
There's a lot going on with this deck and Sideboard, but mostly your game plan is simple. Find one of your payoffs (hopefully multiple) and churn through your deck. Once you start going it should be trivial to take over a game. One of the issues with decks of this nature in the past is having no real payoff for blowing through your deck. Now that we have SEVERAL payoffs I'm really excited about what you can do.
Faerie Vandal is the card that initially stood out to me the most when I looked over the set. Costing two mana is important if the format is going to speed up and this kind of card gets out of control quickly, and Flash really sells this thing for me. Despite being the first line of text, Flash was easy for me to overlook and makes the card that much better. With Tormenting Voice getting a stark upgrade to instant speed, you can have turns where you can sit back and react to your opponent if you're not being aggressive. Flying gives you an excellent resource to attack pesky planeswalkers and when you start growing out of control even Oko will have to respect it.
Since Vandal is great at attacking planeswalkers and growing we need a solid way to survive into the mid game. Improbable Alliance gives us a way to turn our cycling into threats and blockers. Having access to Castle Embereth means it's easier to turn our cheap creatures into a big problem. Alliance has been impressive even on its own since it can trigger itself, keeping your game plan up despite flooding.
The Royal Scions have been particularly impressive as a high loyalty Planeswalker that filters your draws and offers something we haven't seen in a Planeswalker in what feels like forever; an ultimate. While you're churning through your deck and ticking down your opponent's life total, The Royal Scions can Fireball them out of the game. The upside of ensuring your Crackling Drake is able to attack through anything is a nice bonus, as well. Drake is often stonewalled, so having the option to one-shot your opponent is a dream given we're essentially playing a chip shot game most of the time anyway.
One of the benefits to playing Blue is definitely in the sideboard. Having access to Mystical Dispute is incredibly important. Oko, Thief of Crowns and Teferi, Time Raveler are two of the more problematic cards in the format and will define the space they exist in during their time in Standard. Having access to a one-mana "answer" to both will prove exceptional in the coming weeks. Even the default mode of overcosted Mana Leak will still likely be acceptable as the format starts to correct itself.
If you're in the market to be more aggressive, this next deck I found on Twitter from user @straydogrenji satisfies that itch. It turns out there are plenty of ways to draw extra cards in Rakdos and they took full advantage of it.
Rakdos Draw 2 | Eldraine Standard | straydogrenji
- Creatures (35)
- 2 Foulmire Knight
- 3 Irencrag Pyromancer
- 3 Midnight Reaper
- 3 Rankle, Master of Pranks
- 4 Bonecrusher Giant
- 4 Dreadhorde Butcher
- 4 Knight of the Ebon Legion
- 4 Murderous Rider
- 4 Rix Maadi Reveler
- 4 Stormfist Crusader
- Instants (2)
- 2 Shock
- Lands (23)
- 8 Mountain
- 8 Swamp
- 1 Castle Embereth
- 2 Castle Locthwain
- 4 Blood Crypt
Here your main focus is playing an aggressive creature deck with a back up plan of being able to burn your opponent out by drawing extra cards. The downside to the Izzet deck is you have a lot of wheels to spin that can sometimes leave you high and dry looking for something to do. With this deck you get to push the pedal down and you don't need to let up. The beginning of formats often sees players bringing decks soft to aggro. There are plenty of midrange and slow decks out of the gate while players are experimenting, but too often we have seen Red decks dominate the first tournament. Sometimes those decks exist past week one but often they peter out.
A deck like this with the potential to grind opponents out could possibly go deeper in the format. Built-in card advantage stapled to creatures is going to overperform. Additionally, we get to play Castles which help boost combat and keep gas flowing.
While the deck didn't come with a sideboard, I'd look into playing Chandra, Fire Artisan, Experimental Frenzy, Legion's End, Drill Bit, and Lava Coil. These cards will help grind controlling decks into the dust while also beating other creature decks.
Upon further review, it's possible Shock is not good enough when faced with some bigger creatures and you'll want Lava Coil instead. Relegate those Shocks to the sideboard or replace them with Disfigure (although I'm less sold on Disfigure when you want to kill Teferi and the like).
That being said, I'm pretty excited about being able to Draw two and get a ton of value. No matter which direction you head, I think these are both excellent decks to start with and don't require that big of an investment into new cards. When you're looking into building decks make sure to keep aggro in mind. Even someone like me who is in love with every random midrange deck has been bitten too many times by aggro decks that crush out the gate. If you're looking for something to try week 1 and not interested in shelling out for 4 Oko or for 4 Goose, then I'd start here.