Calm after the Storm

Posted on November 20, 2015

After a grueling few weeks, I have finally hit the home stretch of travel and work for the year, and I am ready to relax and get as much Magic Online in as I can while snowed in over the next few months. The Standard format now seems nearly “solved,” and while there are certainly still a complex series of choices both in play and deck-building, we have probably seen almost every viable archetype until Oath of the Gatewatch.

While this does make brewing slightly less exciting, it comes well timed for those of us looking to move out of Standard cards that will be rotating in the spring if they are seeing little to no play. I am still keeping Temur together online just because I enjoy the way the deck plays, but even I have conformed to a generally accepted strategy in the form of Rally the Ancestors. While this may be a sudden and surprising move, it was a deck I identified early on in the season as a contender and had been brewing with since. Now that the format is favorable to the deck, I am willing to go back.

I wrote about a very different strategy before the set was fully spoiled, trying to take advantage of Collected Company, found here. While this is a skeleton of what the Rally deck has become, I really enjoyed the interaction of Liliana, Heretical Healer and Collected Company, which is what brings me back to this shell to begin with. I am not ready to give up on her.

This past weekend, Four-Color Rally displayed a great deal of presence, showing up for Top 8 in force. Though the deck did not win the event, it does seem to have an overall favorable match against the field, and many circumstances within the Top 8 played into the deck losing, including mulligans and land-heavy hands. This is one of the lists from that event—as you will notice, there are no Lilianas, and instead, blue has been added primarily for Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.

Four-Color Rally ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Magnus Lantto, Top 8 Contender at Grand Prix Brussels

While clearly Jace is a much better card than almost anyone gave it credit for, I feel that this deck can easily stick to three colors. Jace, while a powerhouse, does not feel needed to compete, so this week, I am going into full test mode with a similar build using Liliana to grind out the control matches and add additional blockers and potentially lifelink for some of the aggro matches. I am sure the four-colored version of this deck is optimal in given fields, but if we can achieve same results without sinking a rent payment into Jace, we may come out quite a ways ahead before we ever enter a tournament.

Liliana Rally ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | Ryan Bushard

I love the way this deck plays, and though I have only just played a few dozen games so far, I love all of the synergy with Liliana. Even just the ability to recur Zulaport Cutthroat many times makes her an MVP against midrange. Control is forced to waste a removal spell on her most of the time to have her transform and deal with her again, and even aggro cannot ignore the lifelink and potential army of blockers she can summon. I have also found myself making use of her discard ability against Atarka Red to remove parts of the combo when the opponent begins to run low on cards.

I really expected this deck to be a worse version of the four-colored deck given how powerful Jace is, but Liliana even interacts better with the namesake card by allowing you to gain a ’Walker and a Zombie if you have two in the grave, and that’s not all that uncommon in a deck toting so many four-ofs. The consistency of this deck is what really drove home this choice for me—though at first look, we lack draw, we have a few creatures that can either draw us cards or scry in the early game, and when you begin to chain Rallies or Collected Companies, it is not hard to find yourself refueling to a full seven.

Fleshbag Marauder has overperformed for me outside of the Atarka match, where it is an easy cut for more aggressive answers such as Arashin Cleric and Murderous Cut. I would like to find a third through the seventy-five, but without more testing, I am not sure what can be cut down—part of the consistency relies on all the four-ofs, and disturbing that may not be the right answer. Fleshbag Marauder and Abzan Charm give you main-decked removal the other version lacked, allowing you to swing past Siege Rhinos and Dragonlord Ojutais, whereas Sidisi's Faithful may not have been as ideal.

So, of course, I have a few cards I really like in this deck for short-term pick-ups, as they are all dirt cheap right now. Rally the Ancestors is seeing a great deal of play for how cheap the card has fallen back to, so I would be snagging those as well as Abzan Ascendancy when you can. The Ascendancy may not make you much money, but it will make for easy trades as people begin to piece these different shells together. Grim Haruspex has also remained fairly bulk even though it tends to be a four-of in most of these builds, and that means you have a chance to trade these out in quantity when you find someone looking to move in.

So what else in Standard is moving right now? How about Modern? This weekend, I had the opportunity to buy in Atlanta, and as swamped as we were, I was keeping an eye on what cards people seemed to hesitate to sell and what people were looking to move out of immediately. Though this does not reveal everything, it does give you an idea of what people expect to be playing in the coming months.

The first thing I will say is that tango lands are on the way down—I had almost no one refuse to sell the extras they had, and the more aggressive ones, such as Smoldering Marsh, are suffering the most. Leveling out around where Temples were in aggressive colors is probably what we will see from these lands as well. Expeditions have soaked up enough of the value to keep these from needing to be anywhere near there again, and even with Modern playability, these should plateau at a few dollars each.

On the topic of Expeditions, they seem here to stay. Prices have certainly stabilized to that happy number where people are willing to sell them when they open them in pools, and collectors are diving in to acquire as many as they can. We must have moved through nearly a hundred this weekend, with both parties seemingly happy with the prices. If you want these, now is the time to start moving in if you have not already, and if you open them, just trade around to find full value fairly easily. They make Standard a little less rough to afford for those lucky enough to bust a few.

Modern seems to be completely forgotten, as has been the trend this time of year. If you are looking to grind Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifiers next season, I would encourage picking up your shock lands now while people are so willing to move off them; last year, there was still such a flux of them from their recent printing that the prices did not move much, but now we are seeing some pull ahead—such as Steam Vents—and typically, when that happens, it means supply has dried up enough for these to finally pick up, and that will only continue to prove true the further into next year we head. This can be said about a lot of Modern staples, but as we all know, picking up the mana bases is among the most important pieces in breaking into a format, so snag them while they are still cheap.

With the speculation of a sixth land type, there is a great deal of inquiry as to what cards become better now; obviously, domain gets a leg up. Luckily, nothing playable has such a short print as to drive the price up dramatically, but keep an eye out for any cards that mention basic land types; even if they don't quite get there as far as playability, expect enough people to show interest for them to rise in the short term.

Well, for me, it is back to the Magic Online grind with Rally; I hope by next week I will have enough games to get some updates out there. I will probably keep blue out if for nothing more than the cost barrier of Jace, but so far, I have been very impressed with the current shell, and I hope to get enough games in to form an idea of what matchups need some work. Tune in next week for more Standard breakdowns and market information.

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand