A Fresh Meta

Posted on April 3, 2015

The first few weeks of a new format are usually some of the few points of Standard I enjoy usually. This year has continued to amaze, as Standard has held my interest since week one of Khans of Tarkir coming onto the scene, and I hope, moving forward with Dragons of Tarkir, that trend continues. We finally have some results heading into the Pro Tour next weekend; this week, I will be taking a look at the early peek at what Dragons of Tarkir has to offer.

Before I break down the entirety of what showed up at the top tables of StarCityGames Richmond, I first want to give a nod to the evolution of Heroic. It may have been just a good metagame choice for the weekend, but I hope to see this deck continue to progress moving forward.

Jeskai Heroic ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Joe Lossett, StarCityGames Richmond, First Place

Temur Battle Rage is a card I have been trying to break since it showed up last season, and I am happy to see one of my favorite archetypes adopting the card. I am not sure the splash will continue to prove necessary moving forward, but Center Soul alone makes me want to look at this archetype again. For now, I am still going to focus on G/W Warriors, but as I still have my seventy-five sleeved for Heroic from the first season, I may dust that back off to at least update the gauntlet.

The advantage of Heroic for me when I first built the deck was price, and that, for the most part, still proves true outside of the mana base. With the cheap price overall, we see the ability of certain key cards to spike, as people will pay more for the few cards that are hard to find since the rest fills out with commons and uncommons. Also due to how cheap these types of decks are, it is likely local shops will be sold out of cards such as Hero of Iroas. Both players looking to branch out or that are new to the game will usually settle on decks like this to get their feet in the door, and that can make certain cards much more difficult to obtain locally.

I don’t know that I want to be moving in on too many Theros cards right now, as the Modern Masters hype may see Standard fall out of favor a little quicker this year than last. On that note, I do think there is some room to trade into Mana Confluence and possibly even Hero of Iroas again. This deck, like Mono-Green and Abzan, has shown consistent enough results since the first season to justify its place in the meta moving forward. This means the deck will probably stay at the very least tier two through the remainder of Theros’s legality in the format, updated enough to stay relevant and on the radar. This will usually keep the price of the few staples that do have value through the end of the format, and in this case, they may even have upside.

When people are looking to begin brewing for the upcoming format and can justify selling their more expensive Standard cards, from my experience, they will many times turn to cheaper decks if possible to mitigate loss while still being able to play locally. This will keep the value up on these two cards if they continue seeing play, and they may even initiate a small bump somewhere in the middle of the summer. Knowing what cards will not plummet quite as quickly can allow you to store some of your Standard value, preventing you from having to fire-sale months in advance.

Now that I have managed to spend a large chunk of time on one of my pet decks, it is time to move on to the rest of the top contenders; luckily, he won the event, so it seems justified.

R/G Aggro ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Dan Jessup, StarCityGames Richmond, Third/Fourth Place

When I first saw the name of this deck, I was not expecting to see many new cards, but Dan really went all out in attempts to adapt some Dragon love in Standard. I may have been too blinded by a 2-mana counter to instead focus on a deck that can take advantage of the Dragon subtheme but that is not a slave to it. Personal bias for Heroic aside, this has to be my favorite list to come from the Open—the numbers may need some tweaking, but combining the new Surrak, the Hunt Caller with Stormbreath Dragon can certainly apply a great deal of pressure and ensure some damage even though Wrath decks.

Surrak is an interesting card financially—I want to love this card and say pick them up, as this deck just seems like the beginning of playability for this guy, but he already sits just below $5, is legendary, and of course, is a rare. I do not believe he will take quite as deep of a dive after the presale jitters have worn off and cards settle, but I still just don't think there is time to move in on him now. I would be watching for this card to approach $2 to $3 in the future, though, as he is likely to be a factor through Standard and even more so when the main competition, Polukranos, World Eater, is gone in the fall.

This card may never see the traction needed this late into its life in the format, but Boon Satyr is exceptionally cheap for as many shells as I have seen him popping up in since Dragons of Tarkir was announced. It seems most decks I see have a full set, and at just above bulk, this card seems to have a great deal of upside. The downside is minimal since it will probably never be true bulk. Crater's Claws seems to be a similar case to Boon Satyr, showing up even more last season, stretching into the Mono-Green decks as well. Of course, we get an extra season out of the Claws, but with the loss of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, this card’s future may be uncertain as well. Either way, I would be snagging both of these cards when you can—if nothing pans out in a few months, move them after Modern Masters, as neither card can probably go any lower.

Finishing out the Top 8, we do have a few decks looking to take advantage of new cards—though none as aggressively as the two copies of R/G Aggro that took third and fourth. Jeskai Aggro and Jeskai Tokens both made a showing, with little outside of Anticipation from the new set, and Abzan Aggro made some room for a pair of Dromoka's Commands. I’m not sure how well that did over the day, but it seems to be a relevant card in most matches, even if underwhelming in some.

Another version of R/G Aggro slid in the Top 8 as well, though this is certainly more Sligh-based than the other two. Zurgo Bellstriker makes an appearance, as expected, next to a plethora of token-producers and direct damage.

R/G Aggro ? Dragons of Tarkir Standard | Ryan Bushard

I may have been getting a little too cute with the Dragons last week, but with this list, I instead decided to throw a few other small creatures into the mix. As much as I do not like Atarka's Command in midrange strategies, I love it in these token-based decks. Everything seems to synergize quite well this season for Mono-Red, and I am happy to have seen the development team expand beyond just pointing spells at your opponent and playing cards with haste. The token subtheme gives a bit of depth to the strategy, allowing decision trees that red normally would not have, such as blocking.

So this is where we are so far. Aggro seems to be dominant in the first week, as is fairly common, so I am interested to see how control responds before the Pro Tour. The tools are certainly there to create a very interesting metagame, so it’s time to put the thinking caps back on for the week and figure out how to slow this format down a touch. Next week, I will be talking about my deck selection moving forward and what I expect the Pro Tour to have in store.

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand