In with the New

Posted on March 27, 2015

Last season, I managed to theory-craft a few brews that materialized into tiered decks, though the initial sketches were certainly rough. I had a reasonable grasp on the metagame considering how volatile it remained. The big issue I believe I had, for the first time, was that I was limiting myself to ideas that already existed within the context of the metagame. Normally, this is correct, as it is rare that something brand new can shake up the format as hard as the Manifest Mono-Green deck did.

I have always been a player to try to work out of the box—Séance from a few years back is probably my most recent “success” of sorts. Everything since then has been tweaks to known decks, as that is usually the most reasonable way to approach a metagame—ensuring you have a strong shell can save you weeks of testing. With the resurgence of creativity Standard has found, I may have better luck approaching the coming months much as I used to.

The major difference for me now in these past few years of playing, learning, and adapting to how Magic has changed is that I understand the guidelines to competitive play much more in depth. Years ago, the resources to learn how to draft or how to build a mana base were limited, and what did exist was spread through various mediums. Now that we have articles hubs, such as Gathering Magic, it is much easier to access the information, and you also have multiple opinions and approaches, allowing you to derive a method that works best for you.

Understanding not only your play style, but also what you are capable of piloting through the grueling rounds, can be key to doing well in a season. It is not always about a singular event, and if you do have a particular tournament you are preparing for, I suggest at least participating in a Friday Night Magic or making enough time to playtest. This sounds very rudimentary, but it is crucial at ironing out kinks in your mana base or figuring out the difficult mulligans. Even if a deck is tested and tier one, it does not mean you can allow yourself to slack in other areas. This has always been an issue for me, as I rarely have an enjoyable time with decks out of my comfort zone, and if you are not enjoying Magic for nine rounds, that can be a long day.

With that said, I am approaching this week from a Séance point of view and looking for the more unexplored strategies that people are not comfortable testing; given that I have a few weeks before the set comes to Magic Online, I will be able to run a bit of a gauntlet in paper before deciding on a deck to play. These ae the places I am starting though. Once results start rolling in, I may certainly change my stance. We know very little about the format moving forward, and outside of the fact that Abzan and Jeskai variants will probably be in full force next to some form of control and mono-green, it is almost all theory-crafting from here.

The first deck I want to look at this week is something I have been brewing since I opened a foil Thunderbreak Regent on Friday. I don’t know that Dragon tribal is viable in Standard, but I gave it a shot, and this is where I landed:

Dragon Tribal ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Ryan Bushard

This is a very basic place to start with the deck and has a bit of versatility with Atarka's Command and the horde of tokens you can create. In rare instances, you can also use the Command to ramp into a turn-three Thunderbreak Regent or Siege. This is certainly the roughest of the sketches I have been working with, as I have not found the best deck for this destructive Dragon. Perhaps he is not worthy of a spot at all in the metagame, but I am a huge fan of punishing effects, and having the chance to ’board into a deck with Eidolon of Countless Battles also seems appealing. I am sure there will be a variety of mono-red variants floating around—I just hope they find a way to make use of Draconic Roar as the premium removal it is.

Over the past few months, I have been toying with Warriors on and off as I am sure many of you have. The deck may finally have received all of the tools it was looking for and warrants another look this week. Of all of the decks I am looking outside of the box with, this one has me the most excited. I have wavered between a few builds of both Warriors and Heroic and attempting to find a comfortable strategy, and so far, this is where I have settled:

Warriors ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Ryan Bushard

I am not positive this can best the G/W devotion decks, but I feel fairly confident that, with a solid board, it will have game against the rest of the meta. This deck materialized when I began looking at Become Immense as an enabler for quick wins in Heroic during the Khans of Tarkir season. I could not justify the splash at that point, as green offered little else blue could not trump, so I shelved the idea.

I was also playing with Warriors last season and looking for alternatives to black, as I do not really care for what W/B is attempting to do—combining hand disruption and aggro strategies has worked in the past, but in this meta, I am not a fan.

When Warden of the First Tree was first announced, I was not enthused about his presence in Standard and expected him to do very little. This has pretty well been the case so far, with his play certainly not able to hold his presale price. I think that, moving forward, if a deck like this takes off, Warden may finally find that second home needed to see a boost.

The real push for Warriors this third go-round for me was Arashin Foremost. This card is incredibly powerful in a deck that can essentially repair soulbond every turn. Last season, I played with a variety of decks, from Affinity to R/G Aggro, that attempted to make use of Temur Battle Rage in conjunction with Become Immense. Some of the decks I had reasonable results with in some eight-mans, but shortly after, the G/W deck came to the scene, and I quickly dispatched that list.

Now that we have a very efficient enabler for double strike, Become Immense looks much more appealing, as it has utility on its own and can kill as early as turn four given almost any creature, and an Arashin Foremost, even with no assistance and left unchecked, is at least 16 damage. That’s real—or at least real enough for me to start brewing with.

Another card I have not heard too many people talking about is the new Surrak, the Hunt Caller. This guy has merit in both forms, and as most people dismiss this as a worse Polukranos, World Eater, it is important to realize he is a Warrior. Not only is he a Warrior, but he provides a Stormbreath Dragon–like effect that has not been available to G/W before. Haste is a powerful mechanic when you are looking to close out games, and lines that involved this guy in play and casting an Arashin Foremost to suddenly have three double strike attackers is another point of interest. With all of these neat lines, I am excited to begin work on this deck first. Gods Willing and Dromoka's Command are placeholders for now, but I really do like them in theory—numbers are likely to change.

If I can shift some cards around or cut a few 1-drops I would also like to find room for a few copies of Collected Company; if not in the main, I have to believe this card will be crucial against control and even relevant against midrange. I imagine that, between the seventy-five, there will be a full set, as it only misses one creature in the deck and allows for some extra prowess triggers; right now, Seeker of the Way seems a bit underwhelming.

I am already picking up the cards online for G/W Warriors, so I imagine that is where I will start out of the gate. I have a few other brews on the backburner, but to begin, I would like to stick to two color, and most of what I am working on needs some extreme mana-base crafting once the lists look reasonable. Over the coming weeks, I will be scouting to see what the early rumblings of the environment look like, and from there, I will continue working on one of these brews, but I will probably also pick up a proven deck—which will probably be of the midrange or aggro variant—and tweak that as well. With the Pro Tour Qualifier season finally concluded, I will be struggling to find tournaments I care enough to travel to when I am not working—but I hope at least a few Grand Prix or StarCityGames Opens will find me within the ranks.

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand