It’s another weekend, and we’ve got five more awesome decks for you to take a look at. This week we’ve got decks running the gamut from Pauper to Standard and Commander – decks that try to race their format and decks that go so far over the top that you don’t know if they’ll ever come back down.

No matter what you’re looking for, you’ll find something sweet here!

A pretty clear place to start is the deck that took Grand Prix Atlantic City by storm. Let’s take a look at Jon Stern’s Bant Auras:

[Cardlist title=Bant Auras - Jon Stern | Standard, 1st GP Atlantic City]

• Lands (23)
• 3 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Forest
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Hallowed Fountain
• 4 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Island
• 2 Sunpetal Grove
• 4 Temple Garden

• Creatures (15)
• 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 4 Geist of Saint Traft
• 4 Invisible Stalker
• 3 Silverblade Paladin

• Spells (22)
• 4 Abundant Growth
• 4 Ethereal Armor
• 2 Increasing Savagery
• 4 Rancor
• 4 Selesnya Charm
• 4 Spectral Flight

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Angelic Overseer
• 2 Feeling of Dread
• 2 Loxodon Smiter
• 3 Nearheath Pilgrim
• 1 Negate
• 2 Nevermore
• 3 Rest in Peace
• 1 Rootborn Defenses

Buy This Deck

In a format that's been spiraling upward into Thragtusk and Sphinx's Revelation battles, this deck does exactly what you want. You sneak in under everyone else, you’re difficult to interact with, and you apply a lot of pressure very quickly. Against the Thragtusk decks you expect to face all day, you’re incredibly well-positioned because they either have Supreme Verdict, a card they’ve been skimping on, or they die.

To me, the most impressive piece of this deck is its ability to leverage Feeling of Dread in the creature mirrors. You already have the matchup advantage against control decks, but Feeling of Dread is basically just a double Time Walk against the other midrange creature decks.

If you’re interested in hearing more about the deck, check out this interview with Jon Stern, the Grand Prix Atlantic City Champion, on Inside the Deck!

The next deck is new twist on a classic. Elves have shown up in every format at some point or another, whether they are the Glimpse of Nature decks that show up in older formats or the Elvish Archdruid decks that show up in Standard and Modern. Still, without any Lords, Heritage Druids or cheap draw engines, they haven’t seen much success in Pauper:

[Cardlist Title=Elves! - Pauper| danabeast7, 4-0 Pauper Daily Event]

• Lands (12)
• 12 Forest

• Creatures (41)
• 4 Arbor Elf
• 2 Copperhorn Scout
• 2 Elvish Branchbender
• 4 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 4 Kavu Primarch
• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Multani's Acolyte
• 4 Nettle Sentinel
• 4 Quirion Ranger
• 4 Timberwatch Elf
• 4 Wellwisher

• Spells (7)
• 4 Land Grant
• 3 Spidersilk Armor

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Essence Warden
• 2 Mold Shambler
• 3 Moment's Peace
• 1 Spidersilk Armor
• 4 Thermokarst
• 2 Viridian Longbow

Buy This Deck

This deck seems sweet. It abandons the "traditional" blue splash for Distant Melody, but gets to be much more aggressive. Elvish Branchbender serves as extra copies of Timberwatch Elf, with Elvish Visionary and Multani's Acolyte to help you flood the board with bodies early on.

Realistically, this deck can’t beat Electrickery decks and has a tough time against hard removal like Journey to Nowhere and Doom Blade. But with those cards on the decline and various Blue and Green aggro decks on the rise with Storm using more Grapeshots and fewer Empty the Warrenss, Wellwisher’s stock is pretty high.

The sweetest part of this deck isn’t new tech, but it’s absolutely devastating in the popular matchups right now: Viridian Longbow. Particularly in conjunction with Nettle Sentinel and your other untap effects, this lets you machine gun down the X/1 creatures in some of the most popular decks right now: Delver and Mono-Green Stompy.

When a format is spiraling upwards into bigger and bigger bombs, you have two options. The first is to go underneath, much like Jon Stern’s Bant Aura deck featured above. Your second option is to go even bigger. Until now, the biggest deck in the format was the Omniscience/Door to Nothingness deck that’s seen a reasonable amount of play.

Dr_Jeebus managed to 4-0 a Standard Daily Event with a similar deck, but instead of Sphinx's Revelation, he went a little bigger with Primal Surge:

[Cardlist Title=Primal Surge - Standard|Dr_Jeebus, 4-0 Standard Daily Event]

• Lands (23)
• 9 Forest
• 2 Hinterland Harbor
• 4 Overgrown Tomb
• 2 Rootbound Crag
• 2 Sunpetal Grove
• 4 Temple Garden

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Angel of Serenity
• 4 Arbor Elf
• 1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1 Drogskol Reaver
• 1 Griselbrand
• 1 Palisade Giant
• 4 Thragtusk
• 1 Worldspine Wurm

• Spells (19)
• 3 Abundant Growth
• 1 Akroma's Memorial
• 4 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 4 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
• 3 Primal Surge
• 1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
• 1 Vraska the Unseen

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Acidic Slime
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Drogskol Reaver
• 2 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 1 Palisade Giant
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
• 2 Tree of Redemption
• 2 Witchbane Orb
• 2 Zealous Conscripts

Buy This Deck

Let’s be honest, this is just awesome. Primal Surge into multiple planeswalkers, the giant fatties like Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Griselbrand, and even Worldspine Wurm. Oh, by the way, this Akroma's Memorial means you’re dead.

The biggest problem that I see for a deck like this is that Primal Surge limits your ability to interact with control decks. You can’t play counterspells of your own and you can’t play Farseek or Ranger's Path; all you can really do is jam as many bombs as you can and hope to overwhelm them.

That said, this deck is very, very powerful, and there aren’t very many bigger things to be doing in this format. I’d like to see a few Alchemist's Refuges in the mix somewhere, just to make it a little easier to fight against counterspells.

Last, we’ve got another deck that tries to sneak underneath the rest of its format. In Modern, Jund is king; it’s the best midrange deck, made of the best midrange cards, and it’s constantly evolving to try to beat itself and any other decks that try to out-midrange it.

When that starts to happen, it’s usually best to just ignore what they’re doing and kill them instead.

[Cardlist Title=Dredge - Modern| Alexander Shearer, Suggested Deck]

• Lands (18)
• 2 Blood Crypt
• 1 Dakmor Salvage
• 4 Gemstone Mine
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 4 Marsh Flats
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Swamp
• 4 Verdant Catacombs

• Creatures (28)
• 4 Gravecrawler
• 4 Bloodghast
• 4 Golgari Thug
• 4 Tidehollow Sculler
• 4 Shambling Shell
• 4 Stinkweed Imp
• 4 Vengevine

• Spells (14)
• 4 Faithless Looting
• 3 Raven's Crime
• 4 Dangerous Wager
• 3 Life from the Loam

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Path to Exile
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 3 Ancient Grudge
• 3 Ray of Revelation
• 2 Crime // Punishment

Buy This Deck

This deck is doing a lot of my favorite things, so I’ll admit to being more than a little biased. I love a Raven's Crime/Life from the Loam deck more than just about anything in Magic, and Vengevine is one of my favorite creatures in recent memory.

Alexander Shearer has managed to combine all of these things into a shell that has enough disruption to keep up with the combo decks, enough aggressive creatures and recursion to clock the control decks, and enough explosive card advantage and cheap spells to smash Jund before they can start Junding you to death.

Admittedly, one of the biggest weaknesses of the deck is Deathrite Shaman. You can fight through it, since they only get one activation per turn cycle, but it does make your life significantly more difficult.

There are only two things that I’d really be looking to change on the surface of this deck. The first is that there’s no reason not to have one Darkblast somewhere in the maindeck. Having the ability to kill all of Affinity’s manlands, Pod’s manadorks and random Pestermites is not to be overlooked! The second change is to make space for some number of Dismembers and Lightning Axes to help fight Deathrite Shaman, Tarmogoyf, and Deceiver Exarch/Restoration Angel.

I hope you’re ready for adventures on the high seas! Our last list for the week comes from a totally different angle, but it’s still absolutely awesome, and one that I’m very excited to talk about. Check out Jon Richmond (better known as @Norbert88) and his take on Ramirez DePietro in Commander:

[Cardlist Title=Pirates! - Commander| Norbert88, Twitter Deck]

• Commander (1)
• 1 Ramirez DePietro

• Lands (38)
• 1 Bad River
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Coral Atoll
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Darkslick Shores
• 1 Darkwater Catacombs
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Dreadship Reef
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Frost Marsh
• 1 Halimar Depths
• 13 Island
• 1 Jwar Isle Refuge
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1 Nephalia Drownyard
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Remote Isle
• 1 Salt Marsh
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Tainted Isle
• 1 Tolaria West
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Watery Grave

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Armored Galleon
• 1 Dimir Cutpurse
• 1 Dominating Licid
• 1 Drowned
• 1 Ghost Ship
• 1 Giant Shark
• 1 Inkwell Leviathan
• 1 Kederekt Leviathan
• 1 Kukemssa Pirates
• 1 Pirate Ship
• 1 Reef Pirates
• 1 Rishadan Brigand
• 1 Rishadan Cutpurse
• 1 Rishadan Footpad
• 1 Rootwater Thief
• 1 Sea Monster
• 1 Sea Serpent
• 1 Skeleton Ship
• 1 Steam Frigate
• 1 Stormtide Leviathan
• 1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
• 1 Talas Researcher
• 1 Talas Warrior
• 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
• 1 Thieving Magpie
• 1 Tidal Kraken
• 1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep

• Spells (34)
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Mask of Riddles
• 1 Mystic Compass
• 1 Skull of Orm
• 1 Star Compass
• 1 Venser's Journal
• 1 War Barge
• 1 Coastal Piracy
• 1 Confiscate
• 1 Customs Depot
• 1 Dire Undercurrents
• 1 Larceny
• 1 Persuasion
• 1 Spreading Seas
• 1 Steal Artifact
• 1 Sunken City
• 1 Take Possession
• 1 Trade Routes
• 1 Treachery
• 1 Treasure Trove
• 1 Underworld Connections
• 1 War Tax
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Commandeer
• 1 Memory Plunder
• 1 Opportunity
• 1 Acquire
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Bribery
• 1 Distorting Wake
• 1 Inundate
• 1 Stolen Goods
• 1 Treasure Hunt

Buy This Deck

The flavor in this deck is absolutely insane. Your creatures are pirates, ships and sea monsters. Your spells are crimes of theft and violence. You even have Maps and Compasses as artifacts! It’s clear that Jon put a ton of time into picking the right cards to get his flavor across, but even then, the deck is certainly functional.

This deck is a perfectly reasonable UB Tempo deck. You play some guys, play some cards like Coastal Piracy and Larceny, and use your extra cards to put your opponents further behind on board and in cards.

Decks like this are a great reminder of just how much depth this game really has. It’s not just about building powerful decks or Tribal decks. Sometimes you’re trying to create an experience, and I certainly think that this deck makes games feel more like a Pirate adventure.

That’s all we have for this week. Once again, be sure to let us know what you think. Do you like what we’re doing? Wish we were covered a particular format more? Let us know what kind of decks you’d like to see more of by leaving a comment or tweeting @GatheringMagic on Twitter.