Welcome back! This is the weekend of the Dragon's Maze Prerelease, and that means this is the first week where we've got the whole set to look at. People are starting to explore which cards they think will make an impact on their favorite constructed formats, and we're going to get some awesome decks out of it. Let's start off in Standard:

This deck is a RUG aggro deck built around the interaction between undyhing, Rapid Hybridization and Experiment One. THere have been a number of BUG and Bant decks that have cropped up trying to push these interactions. The number of deckbuilders trying to break these interactions may just be indicative of the strength of cards like Young Wolf. Let's take a look at the list Cincinnatus used to 3-1 a Standard Daily Event:

[Cardlist Title=RUG Aggro - Standard | Cincinnatus, 3-1 Standard Daily Event]

• Lands (22)
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 1 Forest
• 4 Hinterland Harbor
• 4 Rootbound Crag
• 4 Steam Vents
• 4 Stomping Ground
• 1 Sulfur Falls

• Creatures (25)
• 2 Cloudfin Raptor
• 4 Experiment One
• 4 Flinthoof Boar
• 3 Ghor-Clan Rampager
• 2 Snapcaster Mage
• 4 Strangleroot Geist
• 2 Vexing Devil
• 4 Young Wolf

• Spells (13)
• 1 Pillar of Flame
• 3 Rancor
• 3 Rapid Hybridization
• 2 Searing Spear
• 1 Simic Charm
• 3 Spell Rupture

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Clone
• 2 Electrickery
• 2 Mark of Mutiny
• 1 Mizzium Mortars
• 2 Negate
• 2 Pillar of Flame
• 2 Searing Spear
• 1 Wolfir Avenger
• 1 Zameck Guildmage

Buy This Deck

This deck wants to lead off with Cloudfin Raptor or Experiment One and then follow it up with Young Wolf or Strangleroot Geist and Rapid Hybridization into undying shenanigans.

This deck is capable of some incredibly aggressive draws, and is certainly capable of matching some of the Burning-Tree Emissary draws from decks like RG aggro or Naya Blitz. The real upside is that your undying creatures and [card]Snapcaster Mages give you a more reasonable chance of winning the long game than some of the all-in aggro variants.

The real question seems to be which color combination is the most effective. You can go BUG for Tragic Slip, Abrupt Decay, and Duskmantle Seer. Going Bant gives you Geist of Saint Traft; the Angel token is great for evolving your guys and is an awesome Rapid Hybridization target. Or you can try RUG for Searing Spear and Flinthoof Boar.

Which of these builds is best? Only time will tell, but I'm certainly excited to see this synergistic aggro shell taking off.

Next let's head over to Modern where we've got a pair of awesome decks. First is a new take on the Life from the Loam variant that won Grand Prix Lincoln when Modern was in its infancy. This is Jaberwocki's take on the deck from a Modern Premier Event:

[Cardlist Title=Four-Color Loam - Modern | Jaberwocki, 7th Place Modern Premier Event]

• Lands (28)
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Copperline Gorge
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Graven Cairns
• 1 Lavaclaw Reaches
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Watery Grave

• Spells (32)
• 3 Desperate Ravings
• 4 Faithless Looting
• 2 Flame Jab
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 4 Life from the Loam
• 2 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Liliana of the Veil
• 2 Pyroclasm
• 3 Raven's Crime
• 3 Seismic Assault
• 4 Smallpox

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Batterskull
• 2 Dragon's Claw
• 1 Flame Jab
• 2 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Relic of Progenitus
• 2 Thoughtseize

Buy This Deck

There are two really exciting developments here. First and foremost, Jaberwocki isn't messing around with creatures. No Bloodghasts, no Tarmogoyfs, no Dark Confidants. That frees us up to play Smallpox and mean it. Your opponent's removal is going to be dead, and that's all there is to it. You're going to kill your opponent by pieces with your two manlands and Seismic Assault, and that's just how it's going to be.

The second exciting development is that Jaberwocki is playing Desperate Ravings. This is a card that's never really seen the play it deserves, but this is the perfect shell for it. With Life from the Loam as your engine, you're going to have more cards than your opponent. The trouble is that Modern doesn't have as many spell-lands as Legacy, so you have trouble converting your Lands into cards.

Enter Desperate Ravings. If you have five lands in your hand, you don't really care which ones you're discarding to Desperate Ravings. Even if you pitch an important one, you can just Loam it back.

The real trouble with this deck is that Deathrite Shaman has taken over the format, but the engine is still very powerful. You will win long games where you get to set up your Life from the Loam engine, and you will the important cards in your deck. You just have to make sure you can utilize them from the graveyard.

Our second Modern deck is another sweet brew from none other than Travis Woo. Travis is excited about the new Glimpse of Nature from Dragon's Maze: Beck // Call. Plenty o people are already touting this as the return of combo Elves, but Travis headed in a different direction in his article:

[Cardlist Title=Combo Robots - Modern | Travis Woo]

• Lands (15)
• 3 Forbidden Orchard
• 4 Gemstone Mine
• 4 Glimmervoid
• 4 Darksteel Citadel

• Creatures (0)

• Spellls (23)
• 4 Beck // Call
• 4 Genesis Chamber
• 3 Kuldotha Rebirth
• 4 Simian Spirit Guide
• 4 Springleaf Drum
• 4 Mox Opal

Buy This Deck

This deck aims to cast Beck // Call and cast a ton of 0 casting cost creatures like Ornithopter into Kuldotha Rebirths and Glint Hawks. You just want to cycle through your deck and eventually find a Disciple of the Vault and Arcbound Ravager to finish your opponent off.

Even if you don't just kill them, you're still capable of some of the more aggressive Affinity draws that other decks just can't beat anyway. It's possible that instead of rebuilding the deck, we just want to slot Beck // Call into the Affinity shell complete with Cranial Plating and Steel Overseer.

Alternatively, maybe we want to go even deeper. Erayo, Soratami Ascendant is still a card in this format. That can be our second card that takes advantage of multiple free spells. We also might want to fit in Retract and Repeal as an additional way to draw cards and cast more spells.

One thing is for sure: Beck // Call is going to shake up Modern, we just have to find out how.

Our last deck is a Legacy deck that takes two known quantities and combines them for fun and profit. Let's look at bocci's Shardless Aluren deck from a Legacy Daily Event:

[Cardlist Title=Shardless Aluren - Legacy| bocci, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event]

• Lands (22)
• 2 Bayou
• 1 Forest
• 1 Island
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 1 Swamp
• 3 Tropical Island
• 2 Underground Sea
• 4 Verdant Catacombs

• Creatures (15)
• 3 Baleful Strix
• 2 Cavern Harpy
• 3 Coiling Oracle
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 3 Shardless Agent

• Spells (23)
• 4 Aluren
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Cabal Therapy
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 3 Living Wish

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Abrupt Decay
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Bone Shredder
• 1 Cavern Harpy
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Faerie Macabre
• 1 Karakas
• 1 Living Wish
• 1 Parasitic Strix
• 1 Shardless Agent
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1 Viridian Shaman

Buy This Deck

This deck is a combination of elements from Shardless BUG Control decks and Aluren decks, but I'm not sure that it's better than either. It seems like the deck is a little slow to race aggro and combo decks, but lacks the interactive elements to really force through your combo against control.

What is interesting about this deck is how redundant your combo is. Aluren makes your Shardless Agent free, which is awesome on its own. This interaction gets downright degenerate with Cavern Harpy, and lets you just win the game on the spot if you cascade into a Living Wish. For those unfamiliar, you'll wish for Parasitic Strix and drain your opponent out by alternatively casting Cavern Harpy and Parasitic Strix with Aluren.

The real question for this deck is whether the card advantage pieces of the Shardless BUG deck are really better than additional combo or disruptive elements in Aluren. Alternatively, we can ask if the combo elements of Aluren are necessary in the Shardless BUG Control deck.

Perhaps additional discard over the Gitaxian Probes will buy you enough time to stitch together a combo. Or maybe Legacy has slowed own enough that this is enough. One thing is for sure, I can't wait to see someone Show and Tell in an Aluren and kill their opponent at instant speed.

With Dragon's Maze about to hit, it's time to start taking a look at what the ten new Guild champions can do in Commander. Most of the champions are very powerful, and open up all kinds of powerful interactions to build around. Let's start with Andrew Wilson's spell-slinging take on Melek, Izzet Paragon:

Izzet Library - Commander | Andrew Wilson

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (7)
• 1 Djinn Illuminatus
• 1 Enclave Cryptologist
• 1 Guttersnipe
• 1 Magus of the Bazaar
• 1 Survivor of the Unseen
• 1 Trinket Mage
• 1 Talrand, Sky Summoner

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Chandra Ablaze
• 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Ral Zarek

• Spells (55)
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Catalog
• 1 Desperate Ritual
• 1 Frantic Search
• 1 Fire // Ice
• 1 Glamerdye
• 1 High Tide
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Pyretic Ritual
• 1 Radiate
• 1 Reality Spasm
• 1 Seething Song
• 1 Snap
• 1 Steady Progress
• 1 Thirst for Knowledge
• 1 Thoughtflare
• 1 Turnabout
• 1 Twitch
• 1 Breakthrough
• 1 Compulsive Research
• 1 Energy Tap
• 1 Epic Experiment
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 1 Fiery Gambit
• 1 Ghastly Discovery
• 1 Inner Fire
• 1 Laquatus's Creativity
• 1 Mana Geyser
• 1 Mana Severance
• 1 Mind's Desire
• 1 Mystic Retrieval
• 1 Omen
• 1 Ponder
• 1 Preordain
• 1 Seismic Spike
• 1 Serum Visions
• 1 Sleight of Hand
• 1 Squee's Revenge
• 1 Stitch in Time
• 1 Tezzeret's Gambit
• 1 Time Spiral
• 1 Ancestral Knowledge
• 1 Arcane Melee
• 1 Inexorable Tide
• 1 Druidic Satchel
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Gemstone Array
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Isochron Scepter
• 1 Library of Leng
• 1 Scroll Rack
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sphinx-Bone Wand
• 1 Krark's Thumb

• Lands (34)
• 15 Island
• 15 Mountain
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Vivid Crag
• 1 Vivid Creek

Buy This Deck

There are so many awesome interactions here that it's hard to pick a place to start. For a more thorough rundown of how the deck is built to function, head over to Andrew's article on the deck. The interaction here that gets me the most excited is all of the manipulation Andrew has for the top of his library. Melek loves cantrips so that you can set up chains of double-spells off the top of your library to end games. Ponder, Brainstorm, and Serum Visions are especially powerful, since they'll let you stack the top two cards of your deck instead of one. Scroll Rack is obviously the absolute nuts for setting up the top of your deck, but may be out of budget for some.

The single card that is the most exciting to me is Sphinx-Bone Wand. My biggest issue with spell-based decks is that your only real option to end the game is to dig into some Reiterate or Time Stretch combo. Sphinx-Bone Wand is a "fair" way to win the game without having to resort to playing Creatures in your Instant and Sorcery deck. Guttersnipe is another copy of this kind of effect, which is less powerful, but has more potential for abuse with Clone effects. Two other cards that jump out at me as potential options are Diviner's Wand and Leering Emblem. Just chaina few cantrips and one-shot people in combat; Diviner's Wand even lets you manipulate the top of your deck.

Really though, this is exactly the kind of excuse I've been looking for to try out some spell-based, coin-flipping shenanigans in Commander, and I'll almost certainly be using some of Andrew's ideas as a base. Melek has the potential yo be very fun and powerful, and I can't wait to see what people do with Izzet Paragon.