One of the most common place formats that many players get into in Magic: the Gathering is Standard. It has a more limited card pool, which makes learning the game and format a lot easier. But because of that limited card pool, the format has times where it becomes stale with between 1-3 decks really being the top of the format.
Well, we’re more than a month into the release of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and about a month out from the release of Streets of New Capenna, and right now, the Standard format is the best it has been in a while!
The Standard Meta
Over the past weekend, I had the opportunity to help run a Standard tournament, Stream League 10, and it had a lot of very good players in it. To my surprise, the metagame of the tournament was incredibly diverse and very fun! The Top 8 had 7 different archetypes and overall, there was a lot of interesting diversity. Today we’ll talk about a few of the different decks in the top 8 that were interesting.
Esper Midrange
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The first deck that we have is Esper Midrange, from Nicolas Prieto. Nicolas took 2nd in the event after a very strong showing through the top 8. This deck is a very interesting mix of typical control elements, and creatures. There’s a healthy amount of planeswalkers here, including
Kaito Shizuki
Kaito Shizuki
At the beginning of your end step, if Kaito entered this turn, he phases out.
+1: Draw a card. Then discard a card unless you attacked this turn.
−2: Create a 1/1 blue Ninja creature token with "This token can't be blocked."
−7: You get an emblem with "Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, search your library for a blue or black creature card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle."
,
The Wandering Emperor
The Wandering Emperor
Flash
As long as The Wandering Emperor entered this turn, you may activate her loyalty abilities any time you could cast an instant.
+1: Put a +1/+1 counter on up to one target creature. It gains first strike until end of turn.
−1: Create a 2/2 white Samurai creature token with vigilance.
−2: Exile target tapped creature. You gain 2 life.
, and probably the card of the event,
Lolth, Spider Queen
Lolth, Spider Queen
Whenever a creature you control dies, put a loyalty counter on Lolth.
0: You draw a card and you lose 1 life.
−3: Create two 2/1 black Spider creature tokens with reach and menace.
−8: You get an emblem with "Whenever an opponent is dealt combat damage by one or more creatures you control, if that player lost less than 8 life this turn, they lose life equal to the difference."
.
The creatures in the deck are ones that are going to be beneficial to our planeswalker’s abilities to create tokens. Additionally we do have some counter magic and removal to deal with a wide variety of threats.
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Selesnya Tokens
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The next deck is Selesnya Tokens, which comes to us from Arne Huschenbeth, who ended up winning the whole tournament. This deck aims to go wide with a large amount of token generation.
Some key cards for this strat include
Esika’s Chariot
Esika’s Chariot
When Esika's Chariot enters, create two 2/2 green Cat creature tokens.
Whenever Esika's Chariot attacks, create a token that's a copy of target token you control.
Crew 4
,
Wedding Announcement
Wedding Announcement
At the beginning of your end step, put an invitation counter on this enchantment. If you attacked with two or more creatures this turn, draw a card. Otherwise, create a 1/1 white Human creature token. Then if this enchantment has three or more invitation counters on it, transform it.
and Starheim Unleashed. The deck has some great advantage engines as well in
Welcoming Vampire
Welcoming Vampire
Flying
Whenever one or more other creatures you control with power 2 or less enter, draw a card. This ability triggers only once each turn.
and
Wrenn and Seven
Wrenn and Seven
+1: Reveal the top four cards of your library. Put all land cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
0: Put any number of land cards from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.
−3: Create a green Treefolk creature token with reach and "This token's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control."
−8: Return all permanent cards from your graveyard to your hand. You get an emblem with "You have no maximum hand size."
.
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Rakdos Vampires
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The last deck and arguably the spiciest deck of the event comes to us from Eliott_Dragon, pilotting Rakdos Vampires! He took 3rd in the event, but he had one of the coolest decks of the day. The deck is an aggro deck through and through, with a blood token subtheme. Where the deck gets cool is that it has a potential “combo” finish.
The “combo” involves us having a couple vampires in play, which is pretty easy enough to do. Next we want to get a Mirror of the Fable Breaker in play and transform it into
Reflection of Kiki-Jiki
Reflection of Kiki-Jiki
(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter.)
I — Create a 2/2 red Goblin Shaman creature token with "Whenever this token attacks, create a Treasure token."
II — You may discard up to two cards. If you do, draw that many cards.
III — Exile this Saga, then return it to the battlefield transformed under your control.
. Then, we play a
Dominating Vampire
Dominating Vampire
When this creature enters, gain control of target creature with mana value less than or equal to the number of Vampires you control until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn.
, targeting our Kiki-Jiki. For as much mana as we have available, we can use Kiki-Jiki to “
Splinter Twin
Splinter Twin
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature has "{T}: Create a token that's a copy of this creature, except it has haste. Exile that token at the beginning of the next end step."
combo, making a bunch of Dominating Vampires to kill our opponent.
If you’re not familiar with Kiki-Jiki tricks, if you activate this combo at the end of your opponent’s turn, you keep those copies until your end step. Then you can repeat the combo with full mana available to make more copies of Dominating Vampire, and we should be able to win off that.
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Overall, I’d highly recommend giving one of these decks a try. Standard is in a great place, and that’s a rarity for me to say. I haven’t been a fan of Standard for a few years because the meta ends up very stale very quickly. But considering how long we’ve been in this Standard and things are still this diverse, I think it’s safe to say that it’s great right now.