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By: BlastodermMan, Carl E Wilt
Jan 14 2016 1:00pm
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We are at that time of year again. The full set in the ever changing Magic landscape has been spoiled, and everyone it preparing for a weekend of slinging spells and playing with the new cards. Even those of us that don't normally play Sealed events will probably jump in and play because, well, new cards. Not being much of a limited player at all, while I play in these events, I rarely draft, and generally look at each new release in the context of what I want to play in constructed formats. 

I fully admit that I have not been enjoying Standard much lately. In fact, I haven't really even played it much at all since rotation. There just hasn't been a deck that appealed to me. Sure, I kinda liked the R/G Landfall deck, but I never felt that it was that good, or fit my play style well. Atarka Red was a possibility as well, and I have nothing against that deck either, but there was just something that I can't quite put my finger on that led me away from playing it. Lately, I've been playing a pretty poor wannabe landfall deck, rocking both Abbot of Keral Keep and Ire Shaman as my "card advantage" engines of choice. It doesn't always, or usually, work, but it's what I'm on right now, possibly further displaying my lack of caring for the format.

What I should do, though, is consider making something that can maybe even win a match or two.  SCG: Columbus, a Standard event, is on 30-31 January, giving me a week post release, and just over two weeks from today, to come up with a deck to play, and maybe try to get in some testing. This is also the first 3-hour-distance event that I will be traveling to the night before and sleeping locally, which will cause me to miss FNM and possibly that one additional all important testing session. Having pretty much ignored most of the current competitive Standard, I'm at a little bit of a loss as to whether or not it's even feasible to hope for success. 

So, I looked over the spoiler, and looked at some random decks to see if anything clicked. Obviously, I was drawn to decks that I would possibly consider playing, even if I had not actually played them. For me, that meant generally looking at creature based decks, and generally looking at decks of two colors. Here are some of the decks I've looked at and my thoughts: 

This was a deck that Michael Majors took to second place in the first post-rotation SCG Open event once Battle for Zendikar was released. There is really nothing to dislike about beefy creatures and resilience to mass removal. Decks similar to this, although possibly in different colors, exist in every format. Long live the basic midrange creature deck.

    

When I look at decks like this, I consider not only where we are now, but where we will be in 3-4 months. Unlike what we've had before, when the next block hits in a few months, the first of our 6-month rotations happens, meaning we lose many cards from this deck as is. As such, I kinda want to mash some of the stuff we do here with some of the new cards coming out, keeping the deck essentially midrange, but giving it a new twist or two. For this particular deck, I zeroed in on the cards above, with the thought that a toolbox of random off-color planeswalkers could be added to tutor for and cast with Oath of Nissa in play. This gives you the same midrange creature deck with a Super Friends backup/alternative plan. While it may or may not be the best thing out there, this would be an avenue I would like to explore going forward. 

The other option is to try to abuse the new Support ability, while adding in creatures that can take advantage of the +1/+1 counters, like Baloth Pup. For the time being, that also plays well with the Khans of Tarkir Outlast ability. I could see going either way. With the dearth of enchantment removal actually seeing play, the Oath plan may have an advantage the first couple weeks of the new format.

For starters, while I know I said before I preferred decks with no more than two colors, I made an exception for this Elves list. This list came from the Serbian team for the Standard Unified Constructed part of the World Magic Cup. It splashes white into the usual BG Elves build to take advantage of some sideboard cards. I kinda liked the idea. I had heard on a podcast that the original version was Jund, and used Atarka's Command in the main. This idea intrigued me, and with some of the cards we'll get our hands on, it got me thinking.

  

Why can't we just make this full-on Jund and see what happens. I know we lose out tri-land in Sandsteppe Citadel, but we have eight full fetchable dual lands that actually share fetching colors, and we could easily cast Tajuru Stalwart for full value, even if it is a non-bo with Collected Company, as well as having access to the aforementioned Atarka's Command. The downside is that other than Joraga Invocation  (not really a playable card) there is no mass pump spell that is playable to take full advantage of the ability of Mina and Denn, Wildborn. It may actually make more sense, if I like the elven duo so much (and I do), to slam it into the RG landfall deck, and not just push it into an elf deck and try to make it fit. 

The Eldrazi Ramp strategies spiked really hard back near the end of October through the beginning of November. It has somewhat fallen out of favor of late, with not a single copy making Top 32 of GP Oakland. Part of the reason for this is that the deck is pretty susceptible to Atarka Red, and Atarka Tokens strategies. The deck itself spends a lot of time setting up, and sometimes just never gets a payoff card. 

    

I think there are two ways to go here. You can keep it R/G and take advantage of the new sweeper, Kozilek's Return. It seems like that could be a reasonable way to help shore up the bad matchups against the various Atarka decks, while giving you a little splash damage against some of the Jeskai decks as well. It may not match up extremely well with Abzan Aggro decks, but it's possible that cards like Crumble to Dust can break up their mana base enough to give you a decent fighting chance. 

But, I wonder if maybe a switch to G/W would be better. Sure, you lose Dragonlord Atarka, but you do gain Dragonlord Dromoka, it also give you the option of playing a different suite of early/random dudes to block if needed as well, like Sylvan Advocate. Obviously, this will need some testing prior to taking it to an event, but I like the theory of the idea. If only there wasn't such a delay between paper release and online release. 

In the end, who knows what I will end up with. It's completely possible I'll just shuffle up a R/G version of Kibler's 20th place deck from GP: Oakland, and just call it good. What's not to like about a bunch of Dragons, a Scaleguard Sentinels or four, and some burn. Regardless, I plan on having a good time, and we'll just let the chips fall where they may.

Peace,
Carl Wilt