This past weekend, instead of heading out to battle my way through the new Standard format, instead, I was stuck sick in bed. Although I didn’t get to try out any of my sweet deck ideas from last week’s article, I did get a chance to see what everyone else was up to through the Star City DC coverage. There was a common theme throughout the coverage of the event that Standard is awesome right now.

The reason the commentators and I feel this way is because of the level of diversity in the format right now. As time progresses, we may see the format fall into only a couple best decks, but that does not seem to be the case. The powerful cards in the format are spread out into a large variety of archetypes which in turn makes many decks viable options.

A great thing about the new Star City tournament two-day system is that at the end of the event, you know that the decks that were successful had to wade through lots of rounds of competition. The reason players trust GP Top 8 deck results more is based on this same reasoning. So, now that we have mini GP’s for Star City events, we should be able to trust these results a bit more than we used to.

Day 2 Numbers

• R/W Aggro 14
• Abzan Aggro 13
• Jeskai Tokens 13
• Mardu Midrange 9
• Sultai 8
• Abzan Midrange 8
• Jeskai Aggro 7
• G/B Constellation 6
• Heroic 6
• U/B Control 4

Then there were a number of decks with only a couple copies that qualified for the second day of play. Here is that list. Abzan Reanimator, U/W Control, Mono-Green Devotion (similar to the G/B Constellation decks), G/R Devotion, Mono-Red Aggro, Temur Monsters, G/R Aggro, Bant Control, and Temur Ascendency.

As you can see, all of the decks I recommended last week were some of the most successful archetypes at this event. There were definitely some surprises from this event though. The first was that R/W Aggro made a huge showing at the event. These decks are sort of like the deck I was working on earlier in the season combined with a Jeskai Aggro deck. Take a look at the most successful version of the deck.

If you break down this deck, what you should notice is its extreme similarity to that of Jeskai Tokens. The decks overlap an enormous amount. Instead of Jeskai Ascendancy and Treasure Cruise though, you get a slightly better mana curve as well as a couple extra burn spells. I prefer the blue mana in the deck but there is certainly merit to just trying to burn out your opponent.

The one card that sticks out in this list is Outpost Siege. Previously this spot would have been taken by Chandra, Pyromaster, but instead this enchantment fills the spot. There are pros and cons to this switch. Siege is an enchantment so it is a bit harder to remove but Chandra does provide more options as well. If we start seeing maindeck enchantment removal becoming more prominent then I would definitely switch back to Chandra or split the spot between the two cards.

Next up we have one of the versions of Sultai utilizing some new Fate cards as well.

While I would be utilizing more copies of Torrent Elemental, than this version did, I do like the look of this list. It seems consistent and powerful. I would expect this deck to pick up some steam in the coming weeks as players tweak their versions. The diversity in the metagame often leads to a more midrange battle and in that metagame, this deck has so many plans for the late game that it can almost always go over top of whatever the other deck was trying to do.

There’s one card that I originally discredited that found success in multiple decks and that is Tasigur, the Golden Fang. I can admit when I’m wrong and it appears that I was pretty far off on my initial analysis of this legend. So often, I saw him being cast for a single black mana, clogging up the board until all the threats could be dealt with, and then attacking for lots of damage.

One aspect I did not consider was that with his delve ability, you can clear out your graveyard of cards you don’t want to get back with his activated ability. That way, when you pay your four mana, you are getting the exact card or one of a couple cards that will all be good for you. Now that I’ve seen him in play, that seems like an obvious line, but rather than thinking through how he would play out in a game, I dismissed him too quickly.

Finally, I know this is obvious since it’s printed on the card, but you can only get back nonland cards with his ability. I’ve talked to players who didn’t realize that was the case so I wanted to mention it here. That means that his ability is four mana, draw a spell. Now that we’ve established using our delve ability to rid our graveyard of underpowered cards, like Satyr Wayfinder for instance, we are left with impactful plays that our opponent will be forced to give us one of.

With that being said, I firmly believe this is a trade-away-immediately type of card. He may be double digits for now, but that won’t last long. With all the best cards being mythics, players will be opening tons of packs and that will hinder Tasigur’s price trajectory. Trade them away now for ten bucks and pick them back up for half that in a couple weeks to a month.

Standard right now is all about options, and this next deck is exactly that…more options for a deck you might already be playing.

Instead of U/W Heroic, some players opted to pair red with their white cards. While you are certainly more vulnerable to removal spells with the red version, it also kills roughly a turn quicker than the original. With spells like Titan's Strength combined with Temur Battle Rage, it’s easy to see where all the fast damage comes from.

Because this deck is more of a glass cannon than its predecessor, I would opt for the more resilient U/W version, but this is definitely an option that multiple players decided to go with this past weekend. Options are always good and this is another way to build the deck.

Since we have had both red and blue paired with white, I’m wondering what it would look like to add black or green instead. Has anyone seen a build with either of those colors? If so, post it in the comments for us to discuss.

We all know tokens is a powerful way to play the game in Standard, but I’m guessing you haven’t tried it this way.

While there were multiple versions of Mardu that cracked the Day 2 barrier, this was the most interesting to me. Myself as well as many other players have thought the meta to be developed well past Mardu, but it has definitely resurged in the Fate meta.

This version is yet another tokens deck, but this one aims to include black cards as pump spells instead of blue ones. The main question I have about this deck is if Monastery Mentor would be better than Goblin Rabblemaster. My thinking is that it would be lots better, but it would need testing.

One of the major pros to this list are that Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury seems sweet and powerful. If you happened to play against him at the prerelease, most likely you lost to him because he is that good. I was fortunate to defeat him multiple times but every time I saw him it was an extremely close game.

Another positive aspect of this deck is its ability to cast Crackling Doom, which seems extremely potent in this metagame. Not only are you playing all powerful cards, but this particular combination seems very good. I prefer the card drawing power of blue but the removal of black is a perfect fit as well.

There has been a lot of chatter about Frontier Siege lately and this deck is a great example of why. The wording on this card allows you to gain the bonus mana twice per turn essentially making your original investment two mana and then giving you four extra mana per turn as long as you can break it up into multiple spells. I think this is a genius way to hand out mana because if you don’t have two spells, or an ability, you will not be utilizing this effect to its full potential.

The reason this is so potent is because you can churn out a turn four Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and force your opponent to deal with a late game threat earlier than they are prepared for. Additionally, Siege is an enchantment and that synergizes well with this deck based around the card type. Essentially we have an already solid deck that was able to integrate a powerful line of play with new Fate Reforged cards. It’s the same deck, just better. I would be gunning for this one in the weeks to come, it’s a powerful new avenue to explore in the meta.

And now for the grand finale!

This deck may look quite innocent and rather lackluster, but if you saw it being played this weekend or you can look past the seemingly poor card choices, what you have is a Standard combo deck that utilizes the mostly slow nature of the format in order to assemble the most unlikely of tools.

To start off with, we have some of the usual suspects for green decks. You can use your normal green cards like Polukranos and Courser of Kruphix to win some games. Most of these parts individually won’t help you win the game though, because they are part of an interesting sequence to your combo.

Here’s the goal. Start the game like every other green deck in Standard, then play Karametra's Acolyte. Your goal is to do this when the Acolyte taps for seven mana. Use two mana for the ability of Temur Sabertooth to return the Acolyte to your hand and four to replay it. As long as you do this with a Temur Ascendancy in play, you can generate an extra mana each time which will generate you infinite mana.

The great part about this is that then you can chain through your deck by making giant Genesis Hydras or drawing more cards to play with Eidolon of Blossoms. Because all of your creatures have haste, and hopefully trample thanks to Nylea, God of the Hunt, you can defeat your opponent in one giant strike.

There were a number of Temur decks that made it into the Top 64 of this event and although this was not one of them, you can easily add Karametra's Acolyte to the build so you have your infinite combo in the deck. You can accomplish this line of play with Singing Bell Strike also, but that seems less resilient than with Temur Sabertooth.

The planeswalkers in the sideboard are great against decks with a lot of removal that you are unlikely to combo against too. Overall this deck is a solid midrange deck that also happens to be able to combo off sometimes. It seems like a blast to play. Do you see a way to improve this deck? Have you tried it out yet? Let me know in the comments.

Whatever you like to play, there are lots of options in Standard right now. The format will keep evolving as the weeks pass. I’m excited to play the format again with these sweet new cards that Fate Reforged has given us. Modern is changing as well and hopefully I’ll be able to talk about those changes as well in the next couple of weeks.

Until Next Time,

Unleash the Force on Standard!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com