One of my biggest disappointments so far in this Standard format is the lack of a dedicated madness deck. Blue-Green Madness was a big deal right around when I started paying attention to competitive Magic, so I’m nostalgic for the days of Wild Mongrels and Arrogant Wurms, and I was excited to see Ravenous Bloodseeker and Incorrigible Youths play that role in Standard. That may not have materialized for Shadows over Innistrad, but Eldritch Moon may have given us exactly the tools it took to make a Madness deck work out. It just may not look quite like what you’d expect:

Black-White Madness ? Eldrtich Moon Standard | Takumi Masuda

• Creatures (20)
• 4 Drana, Liberator of Malakir
• 4 Heir of Falkenrath
• 4 Olivia's Dragoon
• 4 Stromkirk Condemned
• 4 Voldaren Pariah

• Spells (16)
• 4 Duress
• 4 From Under the Floorboards
• 4 Grasp of Darkness
• 4 Secure the Wastes

• Lands (24)
• 16 Swamp
• 4 Caves of Koilos
• 4 Shambling Vent

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Distended Mindbender
• 2 Infinite Obliteration
• 2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 2 Liliana, the Last Hope
• 2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
• 2 Transgress the Mind
• 3 Ruinous Path

Buy This Deck

Zero Red cards in a Madness deck is shocking to me, but Takumi Masuda has decided that the likes of Tormenting Voice and Fiery Temper are just not necessary in this format. Instead, you need the giant haymakers and raw aggression that Black provides backed up by White enablers.

The backbone of this deck is the aggressive Vampires with discard abilities. Heir of Falkenrath and Olivia's Dragoon allow you to get your evasive aggro on, while Stromkirk Condemned can really amp up the pressure on your opponent once you’ve deployed some of your other fliers. Similarly, Drana, Liberator of Malakir makes an appearance here as another way to really force your opponent to deal with your early pressure. Once they do, it’s not hard to imagine Shambling Vents chipping in for the last few points of damage, especially with Secure the Wastes playing backup.

But that’s not the only thing that this deck is capable of. You’ve also got powerful Madness tricks to pull out in more midrangey matchups. For example, you can regularly cast From Under the Floorboards for its madness cost to break open midrange matchups or swing races. Madness allows you to cast the card for even more Zombies and life, but also allows you to surprise your opponent with it at instant speed. Not only that, but you can do a ton of cool tricks with Voldaren Pariah. This is a reasonably sized flier that you can flash in to block anything from Spell Queller to Shambling Vent. Not only that, but you can transform Voldaren Pariah at instant speed, potentially sacrificing miscellaneous Zombie and Warrior tokens, to absolutely decimate your opponent’s board position.

There are no copies of Circular Logic, and there are relatively few Madness creatures, but this might be exactly the aggressive Madness deck that I’ve been looking to see in this Standard format. Even better, it has the ability to play powerful, swingy haymakers in the midgame to blow out opponents and steal games out from under them. Just like players of old had to learn to play against instant-speed Arrogant Wurms, players are going to have to learn to deal with Voldaren Pariah.