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By: neckfire, Eddie Davenport
Aug 04 2017 12:00pm
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 Pro Tour Hour of Devastation is officially in the books. Big congrats go out to Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (PV). The break out deck of the Pro Tour to nobody’s surprise was Mono-Red Aggro. In fact, Mono-Red was so dominating that out of the 139 deck’s that had 6 wins or more 39 of them were a Mono-Red Aggro variant. An even more dominating statistic is the top card breakdowns.

Top Creatures.

 

CARD

COPIES

DECKS

1

Earthshaker Khenra

192

33.80%

2

Falkenrath Gorger

184

32.39%

3

Bomat Courier

184

32.39%

4

Ahn-Crop Crasher

176

30.99%

5

Glorybringer

143

39.44%

6

Walking Ballista

142

27.46%

7

Hazoret the Fervent

134

31.69%

8

Kari Zev, Skyship Raider

120

32.39%

9

Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet

110

36.62%

10

Dread Wanderer

107

19.72%

Top Spells

 

CARD

COPIES

DECKS

1

Abrade:hou

304

60.56%

2

Fatal Push

202

40.14%

3

Chandra, Torch of Defiance

189

47.89%

4

Grasp of Darkness

189

38.73%

5

Magma Spray

178

42.96%

6

Shock

157

31.69%

7

Incendiary Flow

153

28.17%

8

Transgress the Mind

116

31.69%

9

Liliana, the Last Hope

106

34.51%

10

Dark Salvation

103

18.31%

Mono-Red Aggro was already a popular deck in the Magic Online Leagues and after the dominating performance at the Pro Tour, one can only think that it will continue to gain popularity. So, what does this mean for us as players? You will face the Red deck and you need to be ready for it no matter what you are playing.

 


This version of Mono-Red Aggro is scary. Unlike Red aggro decks of formats past this deck does not rely on just fast creatures or cheap burn. In fact, even drawing lands in the late game can lead to victory thanks to Ramunap Ruins. To beat this version of Mono-Red Aggro you need to do more than just gain life or counter spells. Even having blockers like Thing in the Ice which is usually good against cheap creatures is not enough thanks to the Red deck's ability to make creatures not be able to block. No, to beat the red deck you need to do all these things and do it well. Luckily the Pro Tour gave us some technology to do just that even if it is old technology. 


Calcano was able to play this deck to a very successful 9-1 Standard record at the Pro tour and two lists similar to this took both first and second in the Magic Online Standard PTQ over the weekend. Zombies is not a new deck and there have been plenty of things said about it in the past but what it does do is flood the board and grow them very fast. Zombies is a perfect example of how to beat the Red deck. You have cheap creatures to get out there and can block early on and you back it up with cheap efficient removal. If your goal is to beat the Red deck and not join them then this is your baseline deck going forward. 

This is to not say that Zombies is the only deck that did well against Mono-Red Aggro, in fact, multiple Black Green Energy and Constrictor decks did very well and have a good game against Zombies.

If going low and fast isn’t your forte, then try out Green Red Ramp. Magic the Gathering pro Willy Edel has had a lot of success with this architype posting a 17-3 record in leagues.


The real difference between this version and some of the other versions that came out of the Pro Tour was the reliance on the Desert lands. With (Hour of Promise:hou) you are no longer tapping out to ramp and going shields down. You are able to create yourself a pair of blockers and use the same technology that Mono-Red Aggro uses to close out games thanks to (Ramunap Ruins:hou). Edel even manages to sneak in some disruption into his mana base thanks to (Scavenger Grounds:hou). Edel isn’t the only player having success with Green Red Ramp, as StarcityGames own Todd Anderson top 8’d the Magic Online PTQ with a version of Green Red Ramp. He chose to forgo the Desert inclusions and went with more basics.

The good news though is that with the rise of Zombies and Green Black Energy it means that another old favorite is ripe to take the Standard world by storm again.

 


While not many people played Temur Energy at the Pro Tour the conversion numbers on those who did are high 11 players out of the 17 who played Temur Energy made day 2. Of those 11 players, all of them ended up with at least 18 points in standard making for a fairly high conversion rate. The good news about this is not only does Temur Energy have a good game against Mono-Red Aggro but just like the Pre-Hour of Devastation meta game Temur Energy has a good matchup against both Zombies and Black Green Energy decks. For more information on the Temur Energy deck and to get to know it a little better check out my previous article here

To wrap everything up, Standard is in a very aggressive state. That is not to say there is no room for brewing and innovation but Mono-Red Aggro is the fun police for the format going forward.

That’s all I have for you this week.
Thanks for reading.
Eddie Davenport.
Neckfiremtg on twitter
Neckfire on Magic Online. 

5 Comments

Huh looks like something by Paul Leicht at Sat, 08/05/2017 - 16:33
Paul Leicht's picture

Huh looks like something broke the auto card script.

Yeah, me and Josh both had an by neckfire at Sat, 08/05/2017 - 17:17
neckfire's picture

Yeah, me and Josh both had an issue with that. In the end we decided to run it as is.

yes, I messed up pasting the by JXClaytor at Sat, 08/05/2017 - 19:29
JXClaytor's picture

yes, I messed up pasting the deck builder code somewhere and worked 4 hours trying to find it.

In an effort to not further break the article and ruin the rest of Eddie's work, I asked him to look at it and see if that was acceptable to him.

Added a little character to the piece, and my apologies.

Honestly this isn't so much by Paul Leicht at Sun, 08/06/2017 - 03:44
Paul Leicht's picture

Honestly this isn't so much your fault as a fault of the site not being well set up for editing. Seems like it sucks a great deal of your time and effort to keep it running smoothly and you do a great job!

You need to delete this line by stsung at Mon, 08/07/2017 - 04:40
stsung's picture

You need to delete this line from the Ramunap Red decklist (including the tags)

div class="mtgodeck" style="border-right: black 1px solid; border-top: black 1px solid; border-left: black 1px solid; width: 800px; border-bottom: black 1px solid; position: relative; background-color: rgb(204,204,204)"

and delete the closing DIV to this at the end of the article.

(the styles that are used for the hover should be there just once at the top of the 'document', but it's not breaking it, so you keep it there)