Hi again! The new Standard format just started and today I will give you a brief idea what happened within the last two weeks.

We lost a lot of high impact cards with the last rotation like 《Gideon, Ally of Zendikar》 or 《Archangel Avacyn》 while a few All-Format-Allstars came back in the mix. 《Lightning Strike》, 《Opt》, 《Duress》 and 《Spell Pierce》 are very cheap and interactive cards and were truely missed in my opinion. Alongside that we received all the dinosaurs and one might assume that this organically should be strong enough to be an own archetype. Apparantly it seems that this is not the case and dinosaurs were nowhere to be seen. It is just the start, but as things stand I don’t think they are strong enough to enter the Standard arena before the next set.

When the old season ended word was that Temur Energy is the best deck in the format with UB-Control and Ramunap Red right behind. There were fringe strategies like 《God-Pharaoh's Gift》, Mardu and Ramp but that was about it.

While we can safely assume that Ramp is gone for a while, as there is no trump card like 《Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger》, we also know that the first three strageties hardly lose anything and everybody figured out that those are the decks to beat.

Mardu took a huge hit with the loss of 《Gideon, Ally of Zendikar》, 《Archangel Avacyn》 and most importantly 《Thraben Inspector》. While the 《Thraben Inspector》 looks innocent it was the glue that held the deck together. Right now the deck looks more like a Ramunap Red with weaker mana base, so not exactly the place you want to be.

《God-Pharaoh's Gift》 lost 《Insolent Neonate》 and that fulfilled a similar role as 《Thraben Inspector》 did for Mardu. I assume we will see this strategy again in the future, the time is just not now.

Besides those successful strategies from last season there was GB-Constrictor which also almost lost nothing and was my pick for beeing one of the top contenders going in the first two weeks. As Petr also wrote about Standard in his last article I will not discuss the same decks he decided to present to you.

So what actually happened on Magic Online, the SCG circuit and the World Championship?

The first SCG was won by Sultai Energy:

While looking at the decklist I realized that it has a few neat things, but also did not capitalize from the benefits of Temur Energy nor BG Constrictor. 《Blossoming Defense》 felt odd and running 《Winding Constrictor》 without 《Verdurous Gearhulk》 also seems wrong to me. You either want the full grind or aggro your opponent out. With this list we are somewhere in between and you happen to draw the wrong part of your deck way to often. It was the first deck to make 《Hostage Taker》 shine and the Sideboard was truely stacked with new cards.

On the same weekend a tournament was won by Zac Elsik, who is known for his extravagant brews:

I liked the looks of this deck, as I always was a big fan of Tezzeret but it showed true weakness against control while it has tools to beat the rest of the field. With those kind of decks you always have an outside shot because your opponent usually does not know what is happening to them.

Besides those two decks the known stragies took their fair share of the metagame with a few Approach Decks in the mix. Then it was rather quiet during the week as everybody was waiting for Worlds weekend.

Everybody was excited for the new decks to shine, but in this regard Worlds Weekend was a total bummer as there basically where only three decks being played.

10 Ramunap Red, 9 Energy Decks and 5 UB Control decks.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that this always is some sort of inbrew metagame as only 24 players compete and they are usually testing in groups of 3-5 players so it is not too surprising, even though we could have hoped for at least one new deck. In a field this small you can not hedge to not face a deck like Ramunap red as every win is worth so much and therefore decks that might have been good against a wider field were not played. It makes perfect sense to me, it is just a little boring to see the old Standard decks on top again.

To give you an example of the decks here are three of the Top4 Decklists and all of them went 6-2 in the Standard portion of the event:

While all this lists seem pretty standard I do really like the innovation of the Peach Garden Oath Sideboard for Temur Energy. As you have a pretty bad game 1 against control they decided to board into 《Torrential Gearhulk》 Control themselves and this is pretty spicy. While I am writing this Day 2 is in the books and the Top4 still have to play, but here is what I took away from the tournament:

This little chart gives you an impression how the matches in the swissrounds played out. While it might seem that Control is the deck to play going forward, it actually is Temur Energy as you have a better percentage against this field. As we all know how fast Standard changes this statement might be wrong at US Nationals the upcoming week. What I take from this is that Red could get pushed a little bit back and therefore opening space for a new deck that might have a decent gameplan against both Control and Energy but is weaker against Ramunap Red. While the coverage of Worlds is truely awesome I am already looking forward to see what will happen at US Nationals and if someone already found a different way to success.

Thanks for reading and until next time!

Oliver