Well hello there!

A new Standard meta has arrived, and as usual there has been a pre-PT meta, a PT meta and now the top decks are fighting for pole position in the post-PT meta.

In my opinion there are two major decks right now, then there are two meta decks and an up and coming deck.

The two major decks are:

Mardu Vehicles

This deck preys upon slow decks with raw power and a curve that is unmatched. Its weakness is to its own mana issues as well as not being able to catch up. As much as it beats the copy cat decks, it struggles against the black green menace. Not being able to catch up on the draw, and stop the snowball effect, that cards like 《Winding Constrictor》 and 《Rishkar, Peema Renegade》, makes the the deck weak pre-board against this specific matchup.

This is why 《Gideon, Ally of Zendikar》 is a key card in the deck. It makes the deck have a great mid/long game, and in the current meta, it is hard to fit in planeswalker removal, and still have the tempo advantage.

Post board the Mardu colors offers a lot of sideboard cards for artifact removal and utility cards – and by splashing blue, you can get some sweet countermagic interactions – these are all really good options to fight what you expect to be the meta in the upcoming tournament.

BG Constrictor

The black green deck can be in all sorts of shapes and sizes – but whether it is more energy based, purely counters based or vehicle based, they all have the same determiner, they snowball out of control real fast. Every card in the deck is mana efficient and under costed, and with 《Winding Constrictor》 and 《Rishkar, Peema Renegade》, you get cards, that make the rest of your deck even faster and more powerful.

This deck plows through most decks like a well-equipped 《Umezawa's Jitte》, but it can have a hard time against cards like 《Fumigate》 or other mass removal effects. The way the deck deals with these cards are through the black discard spells like 《Transgress the Mind》 , 《Lost Legacy》 and 《Gonti, Lord of Luxury》.

Being able to disrupt the Saheeli decks with these cards and with 《Walking Ballista》a being able to grind through tough mirrors and long control games this is probably the safest deck to play in an upcoming tournament. As long as you have a plan for the mirror, and start your tournament off prepared for some mass removal you are in for a good finish!

This probably isn’t news to you guys – but what might be is how to beat the GB menade!

UGR Control

To be honest I have played a lot of Standard on MTGO, and I haven’t found the holy grail yet – but what I can say is that if you play your deck really well – you get a huge advantage.

Even though the format seems quite draw dependent and focused around the tempo and removal part – it often comes down to 1 minor misplay/mistake , that eventually comes back to haunt you and makes you lose the game.

There are some really interesting combo/control mirrors that goes well into turn 20+, there are the classic midrange grind in BG mirrors and BG vs control – and then there are the tempo games, where mulligans, sideboarding and evaluation of your opponent’s opportunities are the keys to the success.

So underneath all the unhealthy noise about the Standard format being bad – there are some really good games. So how to beat it you say – well as I mentioned earlier; I Don’t know of any specific deck but…

Petr Souchurek showed me a list, that I had already encountered on MTGO a couple of times. Basically the new kid on the block.

Originally created by Shouta Yasooka, as far as I have heard, this deck has evolved from a Temur tower deck, to a merge of that deck and the grindy control decks. This deck is trying to fight the meta, by not having cards that the other decks prey upon. By negating the power of 《Unlicensed Disintegration》 and 《Fatal Push》 and having a recurring removal source in its 《Dynavolt Tower》 – it fits a spot where it fights BG, Vehicles and Copy Cat.

This is in my opinion the place you want to be right now. The deck still struggles in the Mardu matchup, especially on the draw, but overall this deck has way higher win% against the 2 boogiemen and the combo deck which makes this deck the most likely candidate that I will be playing in GP Utrecht.

This is it for now – I’m looking forward to the next time I get to write something. It will hopefully be a piece on how to prepare for a magic tournament in a non-magic way and also how you can try to cope with losses, and how I do this.

Until next time – keep your sevens and win some matches!

Michael Bonde

Michael Bonde
Top 4 at Grand Prix Strassbourg 2013 & Grand Prix Madrid 2015. Followed by a 5th place with the Bonde-Saito-Thiago Team at Grand Prix Sao Paolo 2016. A veteran of the magic pro scene aiming ever higher. His strengths lie in his ability to reach complicated game states where he is able to grind out a win.

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