This past weekend, the Standard with Vanguard Premiere Event was an IPA QT, and I am happy to say I was one of the lucky eight to qualify for IPA.  Going into the tournament, I expected a metagame consisting primarily of the decks I mentioned at the end of last week's article: Oni, Mirri, Chronatog, and Heartwood.  Given that, and my win the previous week, I again played the Dakkon UW Control deck I featured last week.  To my surprise (and delight), the metagame was much more diverse, showing a number of people put creativity into their decks.  The one deck in the swiss that caught my eye was a Bg discard deck using the Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni avatar, somewhat similar to the TarmoRack decks of Standard.  The Ink-Eyes avatar grants you two abilities: a free "Thoughtsieze" to start the game, and the ability to reanimate creatures from your opponents graveyard.  I had thought about building an Ink-Eyes deck when it gained a card during the avatar revisions in September, but realized that most decks don't play creatures I'd want to reanimate (e.g. Oni plays niche creatures like Sheltering Ancient while Mirri plays a lot of mana elves).  The pilot of the deck, Vindicate, often just used his avatar's ability to steal Martyr of Sands from his opponent's graveyards, which I'm sure was disappointing.

The other deck that caught my eye in the swiss was a Squee-based Enduring Renewal combo deck.  It generated an infinite amount of storm using recurring Wild Cantors, and then finished the game using a Grapeshot or Bitter Ordeal.  The Squee, Goblin Nabob avatar's +3 cards, and tutoring made assembling the combo fairly easy.  The deck, however, has two huge downsides.  First, it can take a long time to generate the necessary storm to kill an opponent, at least twenty for Grapeshot and more than forty for Bitter Ordeal, granting you plenty of opportunities to make mistakes.  Secondly, many people are prepared for storm-based combo decks using Hatching Plans.  Squee plans decks can play through the hate using Remand or other counter-spells, but the Enduring Renewal based combo has no blue protection.  Some form of Enduring Renewal combo may become popular after the rotation of Hatching Plans, but at the moment, I don't see much of a place for it.

Unlike last week, where a variety of avatars made top8, this week five of the eight slots were taken up by Dakkon avatars:

The Dakkon Dredge decks are modified ports from Standard, smashing together the best cards from blue and green decks like Llanowar Mentor and Magus of the Bazaar.  The Dakkon avatar's ability to play cards as land prevent the deck from being color screwed, and allow it to access the most powerful cards of each archetype.  I must admit I severely underestimated the Dredge decks, but the tournament results show their power.  Unfortunately, these decks revolve around dredge cards, and will be effectively dead when Ravnica rotates.

The Braids deck won the event, as it has a good matchup vs most Dakkon-based decks.  Reaper9889, the designer of the deck, graciously provided it:

Braids Fat by Reaper9889 Land (24): 3 Gemstone Caverns 1 Island 4 Izzet Boilerworks 2 Mountain 4 Rakdos Carnarium 2 Swamp 4 Terramorphic Expanse 4 Watery Grave Sorceries (8): 4x Pyroclasm 4x Damnation Artifacts(4): 4x Akroma's Memorial Creatures (24): 4x Angel of Despair 4x Blazing Archon 4x Bloodfire Colossus 4x Grozoth 2x Nicol Bolas 2x Nullstone Gargoyle 4x Simian Spirit Guide

In general, Braids decks include as many incredible creatures as possible to take advantage of the avatar's ability to cheaply put creatures into play cheaply.  Early Braids decks packed the usual suspects like Akroma, Angel of Wrath, and Bogardan Hellkite.  As you can see from the card choices, Reaper designed the deck to be especially disruptive towards creature decks.  Blazing Archon, Damnation, Pyroclasm, and Bloodfire Colossus will halt almost any creature assault.

Dakkon Swarm a deck by Mr Slippery 39 Land (4): 4x Gruul Turf Creatures (24): 4x Birds of Paradise 4x Uktabi Drake 4x Llanowar Elves 4x Mogg Fanatic 4x Greater Gargadon 4x Mogg War Marshal Instants and Sorceries (32): 4x Fists of Ironwood 4x Incinerate 4x Overrun 4x Scatter the Seeds 4x Gaea's Anthem 4x Haze of Rage 4x Sprout Swarm 4x Summoner's Pact

I played Mr Slippery twice during the tournament, losing both matches in three games.  While the deck requires attacking with creatures to win, it is extremely resilient to normal control strategies.  Whenever I would play Wrath of God, he was often left with tokens at the end of the turn from Mogg War Marshal or Scatter the Seeds.  Then he could simply untap and Overrun me with whatever tokens he had left.  If the tokens weren't enough, Greater Gargon is an extraordinary single threat that has proven itself in both Time Spiral Block Constructed and Standard.  As I've repeatedly said before, the Dakkon avatar prevents the deck from ever mana flooding, and lets the aggro strategy play through, rather than around, any creature control most decks have.

Mr Slippery also had a very aware sideboard including Split Second spells Sudden Shock and Sulfur Elemental to prevent Martyr of Sands mischief.  His sideboard also included Boom/Bust for control decks that may not be able to stabilize afterwards.  Following the Armageddon, he could simply play lands again, while the opponent may be mana-screwed.

Going into the last week of Standard with Vanguard featuring Ravnica block, I think any deck must be prepared to face a new metagame featuring Dakkon, Dredge, and of course Dakkon Dredge decks.  Dredge decks are fairly easy to design against by simply including graveyard hate.  Dakkon decks are more problematic, as they can be relentless, never being mana-screwed and never topdecking land.  All the Dakkon decks I've featured are not probably fast, and probably average a goldfish kill of more then five turns.  This leaves open the possibility of winning before they do, either by playing Oni Aggro, or perhaps trying out a burn deck, like the ones from the past featuring the Rumbling Slum avatar.  Another opportunity to exploit is that most of the decks in the top eight feature creatures, which Mirri feasts on.  Whatever you decide to play this weekend, I hope these metagame overviews have been helpful.  Next week I'll tackle the Ravnica rotation, and how it effects common archetypes.