Everyone's playing these cards. Or most people, at least, are playing at least some of them. That's not the point... This isn't a list of the ten best cards in Standard (one of the two main contenders for Number One isn't even on the list). It's about how the cards are played. What are the hidden routes to value? The traps you can lure your opponents into (or, by extension, avoid yourself)?

These ten elevensies cards reward preparation and identifying that elusive sweet spot. They might look stock: But they make you feel like genius when you play them just right.

Or, in the case of our first one, play them at all!

10. Boltwave

Boltwave changes "the math".

It changes "the math" in two different ways.

If you look back to the first time I wrote about Izzet Cutter, I posted an archetype deck from 1337Waffles (but said I'd been playing a Boltwave version myself).

In the past week or so (despite absolutely cruising with Control) I've gone back to a lot of Cori-Steel Cutting. In particular, a version with Boltwave and Shock over Opt and Spell Pierce.

First of all, Boltwave is proactive. Unlike a Spell Pierce, it can help get the Monk party started on your own turn. Second, it does three damage instead of two. Odd damage might be secretly valuable; and 50% more damage than an un-kicked Burst Lightning for the same mana is valuable.

In fact, I find myself grabbing Boltwave with Stormchaser's Talent Level 2 a surprising amount of the time! Especially for a deck with Stock Up and Into the Flood Maw.

But what Boltwave really does is allow you to bias your mana.

Instead of 4 Island and 4 Mountain like in this build...

Blue-Red Cutter | TDM Standard | 1337Waffles

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Monastery Swiftspear
• 4 Slickshot Show-Off

• Instants (20)
• 2 Into the Flood Maw
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 4 Burst Lightning
• 4 Monstrous Rage
• 4 Opt
• 4 Stock Up

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Sleight of Hand

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Stormchaser's Talent

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Cori-Steel Cutter

• Lands (20)
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Riverpyre Verge
• 4 Shivan Reef
• 4 Spirebluff Canal

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Ghost Vacuum
• 1 Into the Flood Maw
• 1 Lithomantic Barrage
• 2 Pyroclasm
• 2 Screaming Nemesis
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 2 Sunspine Lynx
• 3 Torch the Tower

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... You get to play 7 Mountains and only 1 Island. This is super effective for getting your game online faster and more consistently (proactively). Especially for a deck where the worst card is - wait for it - Shivan Reef.

9. Mistrise Village

Why?

Simple:

This card lets you resolve your Jace, the Perfected Mind.

Notably in the deck we discussed in The Opportunity for Ketchup Mechanics...

Azorius Control | TDM Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (3)
• 3 Beza, the Bounding Spring

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Jace, the Perfected Mind

• Instants (13)
• 2 Negate
• 3 No More Lies
• 4 Get Lost
• 4 Ride's End

• Sorceries (7)
• 3 Day of Judgment
• 4 Stock Up

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Temporary Lockdown

• Artifacts (3)
• 3 Soul-Guide Lantern

• Lands (26)
• 4 Plains
• 2 Island
• 1 Blast Zone
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Fountainport
• 1 Mistrise Village
• 4 Floodfarm Verge
• 4 Meticulous Archive
• 4 Restless Anchorage
• 4 Seachrome Coast

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Change the Equation
• 2 Mazemind Tome
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 4 Wilt-Leaff Liege
• 2 Boon-Bringer Valkyrie

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... Mistrise Village was the only new card whatsoever from Tarkir: Dragonstorm!

Standard is a funny place right now. The defining deck might be Cori-Steel Cutter; and the Challengers of Mono-Red Mice will still be among your more frequent opponents. But even given all that, many games go long. And that deck doesn't just include four Jaces, it actually wants to cast all four in some games! Mistrise Village helps to make sure they all stick.

8. Jeskai Revelation

I know I spent multiple articles talking about why I didn't like this card; but there's one thing I can say about it: It can "counter" a Jace, the Perfected Mind through a Mistrise Village.

7. Fountainport

Everybody knows about Fountainport, right? It's been a powerful alternate win condition for Control decks as long as it's been legal in Standard. But that's not why it's on this list. That's not why playing it can make you feel ingenious.

The nature of Standard is such that you don't typically see Control decks decked out with four Three Steps Ahead and extra Spellgyres as much any more. What you will see are a few too many Get Losts. Get Lost is good (but not great) at defending you from a Heartfire Hero; and has surprising relevance against a 10-mana enchantment, whether it's a 1/1 creature or not.

That means that there will often be Map tokens all over the place, maybe on both sides of the battlefield. Fountainport's ability to eat a Map to draw a card is increasingly useful, not just because you might have a Map you didn't even make for yourself, but because you might desperately be trying to find one of your few Counterspells with a must-stop on the stack.

6. Demolition Field

Fabled Passage works for this purpose as well, technically.

Stock Up is possibly the best card in Standard. It does have a kind of disadvantage that it puts cards on the bottom of your library... Including cards you might want. In many decks you only have a single copy of, say, Mistrise Village, Jeskai Revelation, Fountainport, or Demolition Field itself!

So, if you want to get to a card you need, but put on the bottom earlier in the game, you'll need a method of shuffling. Demolition Field will take out a Cavern of Souls, Cori Mountain Monastery, or Mirrex along the way (which maybe you would have needed to accomplish to keep playing). But the Next Level effect is just shuffling up from the bottom.

5. Stock Up

Like I said, it might be the best card in the format.

What's so special though?

It can set up the other major contender for best card in the format: Cori-Steel Cutter! A Stock Up is generally worth two cards. And you know what Cutter does with two cards.

4. Opt

SAME DEAL.

Stock Up actually puts two cards in your hand. If you have a fourth land you can grab a 1 mana spell. In some sticky situations, you can get your next land and a one-mana spell.

Opt is Stock Up's freewheeling little brother. 1 mana... More often than not, two spells. With an added bonus that you can sometimes use Opt to set up a Monk trigger on your opponent's turn.

3. Get Lost

The galaxy brain play here is very specific: To destroy Temporary Lockdown.

But not just any Temporary Lockdown.

What comes up quite often with Azorius Control versus Omniscience Combo is that Azorius will play Soul-Guide Lantern... Sometimes even snagging namesake Omniscience. Then the combo deck has to find an answer to the Lantern or probably be unable to win.

Luckily for them, Omniscience tends to play both Blast Zone and Temporary Lockdown. In the case of Blast Zone you're better off sacrificing your Lantern for a card. But against Lockdown? Let it resolve.

Later in the game when they try to go off with Abuelo's Awakening you can Get Lost the opposing Lockdown. When the enchantment leaves play the Lantern will return to the battlefield, and can snag the Omniscience they were shooting for. Then, if they keep playing, they still need to deal with the Lantern in play!

2. Temporary Lockdown

Just because it kills the Demon from Ritual Chamber.

1. Sunpearl Kirin

I mostly like this because it can pick up Temporary Lockdown at instant speed. I mean picking up anything (including a teammate creature when the opponent's removal spell is on the stack)... But picking up Temporary Lockdown is special.

Temporary Lockdown is one of the two or three most important cards in Standard primarily because of how effective it is against specifically Cori-Steel Cutter. It can exile a Cutter (or heck, more than one Cutter) but also lots of the Cutter's friends. Cori-Steel Cutter is always surrounded by Monastery Swiftspear, Slick-Shot Showoff, and Stormchaser's Talent. You are generally exiling a Cutter, a Monk or two, and maybe some 1/1 and 1/2 creatures.

But in Blink, Temporary Lockdown has bonus text: It exiles your own permanents! Sometimes it even exiles Nourishing Pixies and other Sunpearl Kirins. Which means that when you pick up your Temporary Lockdown you can get a ton of new triggers. Momentum Breaker, Nowhere to Run, and Hopeless Nightmare all go for a second time around. If you have a bounce creature, the same black enchantment might get a third bite at the apple.

I've just written three paragraphs about this but you kind of have to see it to believe it. It can look like chaos but imagine the poor beatdown player, coming in with a Screaming Nemesis only to be greeted by the Kirin bringing "everything" back. First Nowhere to Run kills the hasty 3/3. Then the Pixie that was with it under the Lockdown picks that Nowhere to Run back up. Sure, they get back however many Mice and Lizards had been previously Locked Down... But it's not even your turn. They'll all be exiled again before they get the chance to attack. But you'll fly over for 4 before any of that takes place.

Trust me, you'll feel like an absolute genius.

0. Magebane Lizard

I had worked the skeleton of this article out before the results of last weekend's Regional Championship. I had to note this uncommon from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. It's a - pardon my French - real game changer.

I play Standard almost every day on MTGA, and let me tell you: I haven't seen even a single Omniscience mage across the digital table since Hartford.

LOVE

MIKE