SCG CON: Atlanta is in the books and I thoroughly enjoyed watching coverage all weekend long. The stream was fantastic, like we got to enjoy a traditional GP experience. It felt great to get up early on a Saturday morning and spend a few hours watching coverage again, like we'd rolled back time to the pre-Covid days. Standard continues to be the best format in Magic right now, and we saw a ton of interesting decks show up on camera.

Sometimes (often times?) the best deck for a tournament won't actually be the best deck in the format. There are times when a deck can pop up and attack the format from a very specific angle, run roughshod over a tournament, and then disappear as the Magic deckbuilding community at large realizes that there is a blind spot and adjusts. If you're old like me, you might remember Owling Mine doing just that at Pro Tour Honolulu in 2006.

I just realized this might have been before some of you were born and I fight the urge to start taking a daily Metamucil.

Right now, I think there's a good chance to similarly sneak by under the radar and attack the current standard format with a dedicated graveyard deck. That's why, if I were playing a RCQ this weekend, I would stroangly consider playing Ryan Normandin's 93^rd-place UW Omniscience/Azorius Reanimator deck.

Azorius Reanimator | Standard | Ryan Normandin

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Picklock Prankster
• 4 Fallaji Archaeologist

• Spells (24)
• 4 Invasion of Arcavios
• 4 Chart a Course
• 4 Moment of Truth
• 4 Confounding Riddle
• 4 Ephara's Dispersal
• 4 Abuelo's Awakening

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Omniscience

• Lands (24)
• 3 Adarkar Wastes
• 2 Blast Zone
• 1 Hidden Grotto
• 2 Fabled Passage
• 3 Floodfarm Verge
• 4 Island
• 4 Meticulous Archive
• 2 Plains
• 3 Seachrome Coast

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Temporary Lockdown
• 2 Kitsa, Otterball Elite
• 1 Negate
• 2 Exorcise
• 1 Get Lost
• 1 Unnerving Grasp
• 3 Grand Abolisher
• 1 Season of Weaving
• 1 Rona, Herald of Invasion

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At first glance, the obvious question is, "How the hell does this deck win?" It's not very intuitive (I had to have it explained to me too) so, follow along:

Ideally, the way the deck works is this: on turns 1-3 you try to get Omniscience into your graveyard. Chart a Course, Fallaji Archaeologist, Picklock Prankster, Moment of Truth, and Confounding Riddle are your enablers for this.

On turn 4 (or as soon after as possible), you cast Abuelo's Awakening targeting Omniscience and get a 1/1 flying Omniscience creature. This is the weakest point in the process, as Standard has a ton of ways to take down a 1/1 at the moment. Thankfully, you get priority first, so you can put any extra copies of Omniscience in your hand on the stack to make killing the creature irrelevant. If not, Confounding Riddle can work as a counterspell to protect the creature.

Once Omniscience is in play, the combo begins. You cast Invasion of Arcavios and choose to search your sideboard, finding Season of Weaving. You then cast Season of Weaving, using the two Paws and three Paws modes ("Choose an artifact or creature you control. Create a token that a copy of it" and "Return each nonland, nontoken permanent to it's owner's hand"). This leaves you with an Omniscience token in play and the Invasion of Arcavios in your hand.

Cast Invasion again and search your sideboard for Unnerving Grasp. Target the Invasion with Unnerving Grasp and return it to your hand, creating a 2/2 Manifest Dread token. Cast the Invasion again and choose to search your Graveyard instead of your sideboard this time, grabbing the previously cast Season of Weaving. Cast it again for the two Paws and three Paws mode, copying the Manifest Dread to make a token (the Omniscience is already a token, so it will remain in play) and returning the Invasion to your hand.

And there is your loop. Keep casting Invasion of Arcavios to get back Season of Weaving, repeatedly making 2/2 tokens and bouncing the Invasion until you have enough creatures to kill your opponent. Once you do, you can start looping the Season of Weaving with the three Paws mode and two of the one Paws mode selected, to bounce the Invasion and draw two cards. Keep drawing until you have all of your Confounding Riddles in your hand so you have counterspells in hand to stop any interaction you opponent might plan. Pass the turn, if your opponent hasn't already conceded, and then win on your next turn.

I know that's a lot, but you can see the deck in action here. It was a feature match in Round 7, as Ryan was paired against former World Champion Nathan Steuer. I watched Ryan win on turn 4 in both games, immediately built the deck on Arena, and put it through 10-20 games to see if it was as good as it looked on camera. The first thing I noticed is that the deck is a miserable experience to play on Arena, as you have to click through so many steps over-and-over again to win the game.

In a way, this works in the deck's favor. If it's a pain in the butt to play, most people will gravitate towards something else that's easier or more fun and the deck continues to slip by. When playing with the deck in paper this isn't a concern. You can present a loop and shortcut to the opponent conceding much faster.

After these games, I could tell that the deck is inherently powerful. Winning on turn 4 happened fairly often and many of my opponents weren't familiar with the deck and didn't know how to play against it. I did well in these initial games and learned a lot about how to play the deck. It wasn't all sunshine and roses though.

Most decks were not prepared to combat a pure graveyard deck. BUT, those decks that were prepared, made for miserable games. I said it a few months ago, when Rest in Peace was spoiled as part of Outlaws of Thunder Junction; the tools are in place so that a graveyard deck will not be the best deck in standard over the next two years. You can't fight through Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, Ghost Vacuum, and Scavenging Ooze round after round and expect to win a tournament. The answers are too varied and crippling to overcome when the format puts the bullseye on graveyard decks.

However, right now, for the next weekend or two, the format feels like it has gotten lax on graveyard hate. It feels like there is a window where you could take this to an unprepared tournament and have a sneaky good performance. It seems like the Gruul, mono-Red, and Dimir decks are getting all of the attention and plays are showing up with few graveyard hate cards in their sideboard. It might be the right time, to go hard with a reanimation strategy in Standard.

You can find more of my Magic musings on Twitter/X @travishall456 and on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/anakinsdad.bsky.social