While Rakdos Aggro eventually took down the Top 8 with an impressive 3-0 / 6-0, Izzet Cauldron made up more than half the Elimination Rounds:

Rakdos Aggro - One (Winner)

Izzet Cauldron - Five

Boros Mice - One

Simic Aggro - One

Rakdos Aggro

Rakdos Aggro | SPM Standard | AlexMacIsaac 1st Place Magic Spotlight: Spider-Man

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Kellan, Planar Trailblazer
• 4 Callous Sell-Sword // Burn Together
• 4 Emberheart Challenger
• 4 Hired Claw
• 4 Slickshot Show-Off
• 4 Stadium Headliner

• Instants (16)
• 1 Bulk Up
• 3 Dreadmaw's Ire
• 4 Full Bore
• 4 Might of the Meek
• 4 Turn Inside Out

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Leyline of Resonance

• Lands (19)
• 18 Mountain
• 1 Blazemire Verge

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Razorkin Needlehead
• 1 Sunspine Lynx
• 1 Poison Dart Frog
• 3 Fanatical Firebrand
• 1 Dreadmaw's Ire
• 1 Electro, Assaulting Battery
• 2 Screaming Nemesis
• 2 Ghost Vacuum

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There are quite a few things you can say about the winning "Rakdos" deck, one of which is that you might as well call it a Jund deck.

So, for anyone who has stressed, sweated out, and lost sleep over the fifteenth sideboard card... MacIsaac clearly didn't need it to run the final tables 3-0 / 6-0. Maybe Alex MacIsaac and his little Poison Dart Frog are just the heroes competitive Magic has always needed.

And if that weren't enough, for an event bearing the moniker Spider-Man, it's nice to see a card from the namesake set present somewhere in the winning deck list:

I'm not sure when you would actually want to side this card in; as its 3 toughness is close to the most notable thing about it, but hey: Poison Dart Frog, am I right?

So how "Rakdos" was the deck, if not Jund?

Technically, this deck can cast Callous Sell-Sword. There is all of one Blazemire Verge present. So clearly MacIsaac's success was not borne around the fringes. The core of this deck, its Plans A and B, were extremely potent for the tournament it was chosen for, and probably bear a refresher.

You might not recognize this style of Red Deck. It's gotten kind of a weird rap, because Leyline of Resonance is banned in Best-of-One Arena Standard for being too explosive and volatile... but never achieved nearly the same level of adoption in Best-of-Three digitally, or any kind of paper play.

If MacIsaac had this card in the opener, every pump spell starts looking that much more ferocious... and card drawing like Might of the Meek don't seem very "meek" at all.

This is obviously a very good Emberheart Challenger deck, with 16 main-deck pump spells (more in the sideboard), and some additional text from Burn Together. I was a little surprised at many of the rest of the creatures selected. Obviously the deck wants 1-drops (and the one it really wants is no longer available)... But Kellen, Planar Trailblazer and Stadium Headliner? Hired Claw is seen almost across the Red Deck spectrum, but there are a couple of Red 1-drops we might be used to seeing before Kellen and the Headliner.

What I would say as a takeaway is that (even though this isn't that kind of an article) if making stuff big and burly (and sometimes doubling up) is going to be the way of successful Red Decks, the upcoming Avatar set might have a little something for the archetype:

This isn't quite a "power crept" Monastery Swiftspear, either from the perspective of initial mana cost or when it can attack the first time, but I think we'll want to watch how well this card feeds itself (or perhaps friends) once it gets into the Red Zone.

Benji Leaf went with a very different creature (and mana) base to support a Red Aggro deck paid off on pump spells:

Boros Mice | SPM Standard | Benji Leaf, Top 8 Magic Spotlight: Spider-Man

• Creatures (22)
• 2 Valley Questcaller
• 4 Cheeky House-Mouse // Squeak By
• 4 Emberheart Challenger
• 4 Flowerfoot Swordmaster
• 4 Manifold Mouse
• 4 Screaming Nemesis

• Instants (10)
• 2 Dreadmaw's Ire
• 4 Burst Lightning
• 4 Lightning Helix

• Enchantments (6)
• 2 Shardmage's Rescue
• 4 Sheltered by Ghosts

• Lands (22)
• 2 Mountain
• 3 Plains
• 2 Restless Bivouac
• 3 Rockface Village
• 4 Inspiring Vantage
• 4 Sacred Foundry
• 4 Sunbillow Verge

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Agatha's Soul Cauldron
• 2 Abrade
• 2 Get Lost
• 2 Boros Charm
• 2 Magebane Lizard
• 3 Case of the Crimson Pulse
• 2 Fire Magic

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I think there are three things to take away here:

1. Specifically when the format is very predictable, and the incentive to any kind of a Red Aggro deck is going to be racing, Red-White is arguably the best pairing. It doesn't hurt that has one of the best mana bases in Standard thanks to the presence of both Inspiring Vantage and Sacred Foundry to back Sunbillow Verge.
2. Red-White gets both Lightning Helix and Sheltered by Ghosts as main deck-able cards. Either spell is potentially backbreaking in a race situation, and there are lots of places Sheltered by Ghosts ends up looking unbeatable.
3. Like MacIsaac, Leaf played Dreadmaw's Ire as a pump spell. There are a lot of random and arguably mediocre pump spells that aren't quite Monstrous Rage, but Dreadmaw's Ire has some extra text. It can't save a creature from point removal but it can grant trample... and of course squish an unlucky Agatha's Soul Cauldron.

Arguably the most inventive deck of the Top 8 - playing a self-proclaimed Genius card main deck in fact - was Kellen Pastore's Simic Aggro:

Simic Aggro | SPM Standard | Kellen Pastore, Top 8 Magic Spotlight: Spider-Man

• Creatures (34)
• 1 Quantum Riddler
• 1 Tishana's Tidebinder
• 2 Azure Beastbinder
• 2 Tyvar, the Pummeler
• 3 Floodpits Drowner
• 3 Jackal, Genius Geneticist
• 3 Keen-Eyed Curator
• 3 Pawpatch Recruit
• 4 Gene Pollinator
• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 4 Ouroboroid
• 4 Spyglass Siren

• Instants (1)
• 1 Snakeskin Veil

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Innkeeper's Talent

• Lands (21)
• 5 Forest
• 1 Soulstone Sanctuary
• 3 Multiversal Passage
• 4 Botanical Sanctum
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Willowrush Verge

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Floodpits Drowner
• 2 Tishana's Tidebinder
• 4 Repulsive Mutation
• 2 Unable to Scream
• 3 Dragon Sniper
• 2 Insidious Fungus
• 1 Quantum Riddler

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This deck has some of the DNA of previously successful Dimir "tempo" decks, but exploits the generally better creature quality of Green to end games in overwhelming fashion.

The deck is more than half creatures, many of which don't look too offensively frightening on their faces...

So, by design, the implication is that the deck is going wide. But the trick here is that it can go wide or tall, or both wide and tall simultaneously.

Spider-Villain Jackal is a seemingly inoffensive 1/1 for two mana, but in a context of 30+ creatures, this is one that can kind of get big by itself (tall) and its copying ability creates width.

The "real" payoff though is Ouroboroid. Even an unenhanced Ouroboroid is going to give everyone +1 the first time around and threatens to get bigger itself (which snowballs everyone getting bigger) turn after turn. Again a combination of height and width that make the Simic deck difficult to contain unless you have big sweepers like Ultima or Day of Judgment. At some point Fire Magic just isn't going to cut it because there is simply too much toughness on the Simic side.

Again, the successful color pairing here is contingent on Standard's currently weird mana distribution. Simic has access to both Botanical Sanctum and Breeding Pool in addition to Willowrush Verge, so the deck is almost all high quality dual lands. Pastore still played Multiversal Passage!

I do want to point out that one of the best cards in this deck is in the sideboard. Repulsive Mutation gives the Simic deck another layer of strategic complexity... It can be kind of a CounterSliver deck instead of just a StOmPy one after sideboarding. But notably because the "Counterspell" here is also a +1/+1 Counter buff card, it's synergistic with Innkeeper's Talent, all the rest of the size mattering main deck themes, and really, just putting power on the battlefield to kill the opponent more quickly. That Pastore could do that while sniping maybe a key sweeper is just Insult // Injury if you grok.

Of course, more than half of the Top 8 was Izzet Cauldron decks. This makes sense because more than half of Day 2 was also Izzet Cauldron decks.

And you might be asking yourself, "Why after all this time, MichaelJ, have you decided to write anything at all about Izzet Cauldron decks?"

The answer of course is that the best performing Izzet Cauldron pilot - First out of the Swiss in fact - was none other than my "grandson" Etai Kurtzman!

If you've been reading my articles here on CoolStuffInc for some time, you've probably seen Etai's name. It might have been a local report for a weekday Standard tournament. I was particularly proud of him when he came in second at the North American Premodern Championships; which I think was Etai's first ever Premodern tournament! He's still the highest-placing New Yorker ever (and the rest of us really really try every year). Of course Etai was also one of my play-test partners in Finding the Three Gears, easily the best article I've ever written for this site. I'm overjoyed that he's going to be playing in his first Pro Tour... Even if he got there with the boring-est Deck to Beat.

Which we should probably address on the merits.

Izzet Cauldron | SPM Standard | Etai Kurtzman, Top 8 Magic Spotlight: Spider-Man

• Creatures (18)
• 3 Quantum Riddler
• 3 Steamcore Scholar
• 4 Fear of Missing Out
• 4 Marauding Mako
• 4 Vivi Ornitier

• Instants (8)
• 2 Abrade
• 2 Torch the Tower
• 4 Into the Flood Maw

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Winternight Stories

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Proft's Eidetic Memory

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Agatha's Soul Cauldron

• Lands (22)
• 6 Island
• 3 Mountain
• 1 Soulstone Sanctuary
• 4 Multiversal Passage
• 4 Riverpyre Verge
• 4 Spirebluff Canal

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Disdainful Stroke
• 1 Essence Scatter
• 2 Torch the Tower
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 2 Obliterating Bolt
• 2 Unable to Scream
• 2 Annul
• 1 Pyroclasm
• 1 Quantum Riddler
• 1 Broadside Barrage

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Largely the dominant deck in Standard since the most recent broad bans, Izzet Cauldron is a masterwork in synergy. It puts together lots of cards that discard cards, or benefit from discarding cards, and glues them together with Agatha's Soul Cauldron.

Did you just discard Vivi Ornitier? Wow your Fear of Missing Out might suddenly be a lot more potent than your usual 2/3 for two. Cards like FOMO and Steamcore Scholar help you dig through your deck, while Proft's Eidetic Memory can supplement making things big. Spreading around +1/+1 counters simultaneously increases the number of creatures who get to pretend they are Vivi Ornitier, and FOMO itself can mean that Proft's Eidetic Memory even gets to trigger more than once per turn. It is not uncommon for this deck to generate 10 or 20 extra mana in a turn... Which wouldn't be so bad except it also can "do something" with all that mana. Winternight Stories and Quantum Riddler keep the cards flowing.

And you can't really expect to live very long against someone who just generated 10 or 20 extra mana and gets multiple attack phases per turn, now can you?

Izzet Cauldron is a heck of a Deck Zero for the Standard format. The main things you can say about it are that it is difficult to actually play perfectly because there are so many things going on / so many things to keep track of; and that it is quite target-able by various Red Decks. As we've seen further up the page, the current crop are all playing Dreadmaw's Ire to simultaneously race Izzet before it gets its machinery going... and to smash some of that machinery when opportune.

It goes without saying that if you're going to be playing Standard, you have to know Izzet, play it yourself, or at least have a plan to beat it.

And on that note, if you want to find novel plans to beat expected things, who better to help you out than a Pro Tour Champion / Hall of Famer / and my longtime (and once again!) podcast partner Patrick Chapin?

After almost half a decade dark, Patrick and I have gotten the band back together for Top Level Podcast. The first episode back went live last week. If you didn't see the social posts, I just wanted to plug that here. Hope you love it.

LOVE

MIKE