Welcome to my new article.

This time we talk about Standard more, so I want to discuss the deck I did not play at the Pro Tour Dominaria and take a look at Team Trios Standard decklists.

Mono Red Flame at the Pro Tour

I was playing Mono Red Flame at the PT with the following decklist:

We figured that there would be a lot more diversity at the PT. I faced 9 Red/Red-Black over the course of the event and our deck was not properly prepared for that.

The reason I picked the deck was that it had a good Match-up against Constrictor, Steel-Leaf-Stompy and UW Control, while being a little weak to the small RB Midrange. As I was running out of time, due to the fact I did not start preparing in time I did not play the deck I liked the most: UB Midrange.

UB Midrange for Team Trios

UB Midrange is the deck that gives you games in the field as you can adjust everything due to the absurd number of card selections in the deck. While it had been the best deck before Dominaria hit the shelf, it fell out of favors as you cannot really play cards from the new set.

Even during the PT I had the feeling that I picked the wrong deck and after the PT a lot of people were asking for decklists a lot, especially looking for the “third” deck besides UW and the red deck. So was my lifelong teammate David Reitbauer who was competing in the Team RPTQ in Bologna, and him alongside his team took the whole event down. He was trying to figure out all the green decks but did not really like any of them and then I suggested this deck to him:

Before we start discussing the decklist I want to mention that this was built for Team Trios and therefore there was no option to play 《Negate》. I would exchange a couple of 《Duress》 for 《Negate》 if I were to use it for a non-team tournament.

The best thing about this deck is that you have a lot of card selection in form of 3 《Chart a Course》 and 4 《Champion of Wits》, and therefore you can pitch cards you don’t need in specific Match-ups. You can also trick by discarding 《The Scarab God》 and reanimate it with 《Liliana》 to immediately make himself a Zombie, and by discarding a 《Chupacabra》 to have it in graveyard, being ready to punish 《Heart of Kiran》 activation with 《The Scarab God》.

The next great thing about the deck is the amount of interaction you have against your opponent’s hand. With 《Freebooter》 and 《Doomfall》 you can set up some nice turns, and in postboard games you have even more of those interaction.

One thing about this list, which is significantly different from all other lists is the absence of 《Glint-Sleeve Siphoner》 and 《Aether Hub》. I always hated 《Aether Hub》 in the deck as the deck is so mana-hungry and a 《Siphoner》 getting hit by a 《Chainwhirler》 is a blowout. It is not too bad if a 《Champion》 gets hit as it has already done the Job and come back from the Graveyard anyways. I think the fact that people were not moving away from 《Siphoner》 was the key of the reason why the deck did not succeed at any events prior.

We also have a few nice utility lands like 《Ifnir Deadlands》 and 《Memorial to Folly》, and the trump card of the format in form of 《The Scarab God》.

The main reason why I really suggest playing the deck in the upcoming team trios is the massive advantage the deck has against Green and Red decks. We also have a pretty solid Match-up against control, even though game one is bad, boarding in 13 cards certainly changes things.

Sideboard Plans

Talking about boarding here are the Sideboard plans David used at the RPTQ:

The Tournament

As far as I know he only lost one Match throughout the entire Tournament with 11 Rounds in a field of 130 teams. I went through the sideboard plans with him and we talked about it after the tournament and we would not make any changes to the Maindeck or the Sideboard-Plans.

As I was asked about the other decklists of the Team I do not want to withhold them from you. Here is the UW deck:

Their third deck was the exact 75 cards of Mono Red that won the Pro Tour, so nothing to fancy there.

With that I wish you best of luck for your upcoming PTQs and GPs. I will be in GP Barcelona 2018 next, so if you are there feel free to drop by and say hi!

Oliver Polak-Rottmann