This means it’s still one of the most competitive, and surprisingly resilient, decks out there. On paper, where Best-of-Three play is pretty much all there is, this ban doesn’t even really matter. Once easily considered the best deck in Standard, Gruul Aggro just had one of its best cards banned… sort of.
Players may receive bonus gifts and rewards that consist of cards only from the new Standard format, to kick-start their post-rotation collection. Since there are a bunch of little nuances that come with deck building, we took a look at some of the most viable ones out there to help make your designing process a little smoother. Here’s everything you need to know about your color choices when building your next Elf Kindred deck. Once our big bad is in the graveyard, we can use Rite of the Moth to bring it back. Beseech the Mirror is good if we have the great door or Splitskin Doll in play, as we can bargain them away to find and cast our Rite of the Moth.
Turn three we have Squee, Dubious Monarch or Goddric, Cloaked Reveler to round out our creature curve. Turn three gives us Hop to It or Sanguine Evangelist to grow our board, and can be followed up on by Knight-Errant of Eos to keep the pressure coming. If you have a land you can’t play on the top of your library, you can use Urza’s ability.
Any time a creature does come into play under your control, you get to either add three green mana, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control, or scry two and then draw a card. You also get access to quite a few pieces of removal thanks to white’s proclivity towards board wipes and targeted removal that green normally can’t compete with on its own. While mass removal is a bit counterintuitive to your game plan, it’s always nice to have one in the back pocket when the game isn’t going your way. Cards like Elven Ambush double your creature count, while Lys Alana Huntmaster makes your Elf creature spells a two-for-one, giving you an Elf token every time you cast an Elf card. Even if you don’t resolve the spell, the Huntmaster still gives you the token. This deck is trying to get Valgavoth, Terror Eater or Overlord of the Mistmoors into play on turn four, using Rite of the Moth.
Best Magic: The Gathering Standard decks for MTG Arena, and tabletop
On the one hand, it has flying and lifelink putting it much higher in the creature quality department. On the other, it exiles the card that will get returned when Bat leaves the battlefield. It can be bitter sweet when it just dies but then again – the opponent had to spend a removal on this Bat so that’s a win in my book.
Insatiable Avarice helps us find missing pieces of our two card combo, but is also fine in some matchups as just a draw three. This is a midrange deck looking to disrupt the opponent’s game plan early, and then win with the one-two punch of Unstoppable Slasher and Bloodletter of Aclazotz. Kutzil’s Flanker actually gives some graveyard hate against Azorius Hand decks, and Season of the Burrow can help remove problematic permanents or flood the board with tokens to end the game. Once you have both in play, the forge will make a token each turn, which will trigger the talent to draw you a card. This gives you good card advantage and a strong clock to finish out the game. Steel Overseer is the card that turns all your weak artifacts into massive threats.
Standard Metagame
This signals that Standard is currently defined by the most efficient one-mana creatures and interactive spells, where the game begins in earnest on turn one, and falling behind is not an option. Koma, World-Eater, meanwhile, stands out as a formidable new reanimation target. With ward 4, a reanimated Koma on turn four is practically untouchable, as opponents are unlikely to be able to pay the cost for even the cheapest removal spells. By the time they can, Koma will have already summoned an overwhelming army of Serpent tokens, turning the tide decisively in your favor. With these powerful tools, Rakdos Reanimator has evolved into a Standard contender that demands respect. The reprinted Zombify provides a powerful way to reanimate massive threats earlier than before in Standard.
Since blue struggles with ramp, this is especially useful in ensuring you can always cast spells off the top of your library. Ranking in the top 100 of the Mythic Rank on MTG Arena is Mono-Red Aggro, using low-cost creatures with Haste in addition to an arsenal of burn spells. This version, piloted by SteveTheMighty, plays four copies of Mechanized Warfare, along with four Play with Fire and Lightning Strike burn spells.
In the three-drop slot, Laughing Jasper Flint and Thought-Stalker Warlock give the deck a bit of staying power. While Laughing Jasper Flint might seem like a usual addition, this deck is almost entirely comprised of Outlaws, so it can steal quite a lot. Regardless of what deck you’re playing against, depriving an opponent of resources while using them yourself is always effective.
We have a lot of cheap removal to slow down the most aggressive decks in the format, with Cut Down, Go for combos edh the Throat, and Sheoldred’s Edict to help us survive. Gix’s Command can help put games away, taking out our opponent’s small creatures and buffing up one of ours with lifelink to help us stabilize. Meanwhile, Thought-Stalker Warlock can nab problematic board wipes like Sunfall to ensure you can cross the finish line, Rakdos Lizards has a lot going for it. Having aggressive creatures supported by powerful removal spells is a deadly combination that’s putting up good results. Right now, Rakdos Lizards looks like one of the best aggro decks in Standard.
Orzhov Midrange
Given how prevalent midrange decks and Temporary Lockdown strategies are in current Standard, though, it’s tough to put mono-red aggro much higher on the list. This deck is much slower than Leyline of Resonance builds, but still curves out and can kill by turn four or five, making it quite formidable. Every threat is scary, taxing opponent’s removal spells, and the amount of direct burn makes it easy to close out games. This deck has had less competitive results than the leyline builds but has put up results every weekend so far.
A couple of copies of Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim also do good work to help drain the opponent out. Thanks to multiple new cards, it has much better top-end with both Adeline, Resplendent Cathar and Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon that are must-answer threats. It puts a really strain on removal, as you want to cast it very early to preserve your life total but then you also always have to have it later to deal with the oncoming flurry of Adelines and Anim Pakals. Five-Color Ramp might be the biggest loser after the first wave of results, much to my huge surprise. I would have anticipated that ramp will dominate thanks to the new payoffs, ramp spells, and Cavern of Souls.
There are a ton of different ways to build and upgrade it, though the best is a combat-focused deck that utilizes ways to take extra turns. Like Grixis Midrange, the new Jund Midrange decks are taking advantage of ONE card like Glissa Sunslayer, Lukka, Bound to Ruin, Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting, Sheoldred’s Edict, and Thrun, Breaker of Silence. Piloted by Hank Moody, this Jund Midrange deck showcases how the new cards are being used in the main deck and the sideboard. Esper Legends is an existing Standard meta deck rising up the ranks of the meta thanks to Skrelv, Defector Mite, and the dual-land Seachrome Coast. Piloted by Nakajima Chikara at a store qualifier in Japan, the Esper Legends deck shuts down a variety of strategies in the Standard meta through powerful legendary creatures. New versions of the Selesnya Toxic build contain more creatures to combat Aggro decks like Mono-Red and Soldiers while including new MTG cards like Staff of Compleation and Skrelv, Defector Mite.