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Main » Articles » Recapping VML Season 11 and the Standard RCQ Season

Recapping VML Season 11 and the Standard RCQ Season

Paige Smith
Posted on April 3, 2024
 Reddit

The last year or so of playing Magic has been a real trip for me. I think there's a lot of people who know me for primarily being a Pauper player, and there's some merit to that because I put a lot of focus on the format for years. What people don't always realize, though, is that I absolutely love getting to play other formats as well. The whole reason I picked up Pauper in the first place was due to a lack of ability to play those various formats circa 2016, but I had a lengthy history of playing formats like Standard, Modern, and even Legacy before that.

While I've certainly put in a decent amount of time with Pauper over the past year, I've also been spending a lot of time rebuilding my access to other formats as well. This started with Pioneer, as my then local shop - CoolStuffGames Maitland - had a pretty big showing for the format. When I moved back to New York in the summer, it turns out there weren't many shops doing anything with Pioneer, so I bought into Modern instead as well. Finally, with the upcoming RCQ season shifting into Standard, I decided to take the plunge into Standard.

Additionally during this time, VML was starting up once again for its 11th season. For those of you who don't know, the VML is an online league for people of marginalized genders. These leagues are split into divisions of 8 players with 7 round robin divisional rounds, followed by single elimination playoff brackets. They focus on Standard play, offer testing teams, and can even qualify you for a Regional Championship - all good things for competitive players able to participate.

With both the latest RCQ season and my VML season 11 run being over, I thought it'd be good to take a look back on my time with Standard over the last couple of months. I'll be reviewing a couple of my decklists, why I chose those lists, and how I felt they worked out. I won't be showing every list as it's too much to list in one article, but I'll be highlighting a couple here and using links to the VML website for the rest just for simplicity's sake.

Let's start from the top by saying that this doesn't start at the beginning of January but rather all the way back in late 2022. I participated in VML season 8 around then and actually devoted quite a bit of time to Esper Midrange, as well as Mono-Black and Grixis Midrange. Since then, only Esper remained of the bunch, and being both a top deck and one I had prior experience with, I knew that was the deck I wanted to go with. The only problem was that when it came to paper, I didn't have a lot by way of Standard cards, and that made the buy-in for Esper Midrange particularly daunting. The deck can run you easily $400-600 depending on your build, which isn't something that's easily obtainable with no prior Standard access.

Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity
Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire

Given this, I decided to meet it halfway and decided to invest in Azorius Soldiers as a halfway point to ease my way up to Esper Midrange. I talked about this a few months ago in my article titled "The Best Time to Buy into Standard is Now," but as I was buying into Pioneer I picked up Mono-White Humans. Because of that, I ended up with a number of cards playable in the Soldiers deck, such as Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity, Invasion of Gobakhan // Lightshield Array, and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire, which really lightened the initial cost of getting a Standard deck. This way, I'd have something to play early on and could expand on it later since it shared many cards with Esper such as the mana base, The Wandering Emperor, and Tishana's Tidebinder.

Here's the list I played in my first week of VML as well as the first two RCQs of the season prior to the release of Murders at Karlov Manor:

Azorius Soldiers | LCI Standard | Paige Smith

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If you read that aforementioned "The Best Time to Buy" article, you might recognize that I talked about this exact list in the article. MTGO player remf had won a Standard Challenge with the list and it seemed like the ideal list to take into a meta that I didn't really have a lot of experience with. For RCQs, it seemed like a solid entry point and in VML, aggro can be solid going into a blind meta where you don't have recent history of what your opponents are playing.

For VML, I played the deck for two weeks. During this time my matchups were Bant Toxic and Mono-Red Aggro. The week one Bant Toxic matchup (piloted by Piper) ended up being my only loss during the whole divisional play period and made sense at the time. Despite being an aggro deck, Soldiers can be a little durdly in the first couple turns, which Toxic takes advantage of and crushes you. For the second week, I debated a pivot for the week but instead opted to stay the course and change out the list a little.

In this second week, I ended up against Mono-Red Aggro, which I somewhat anticipated due to my opponent, AtomicAlchemical, being on it week one. Thanks to Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom and some key sideboard cards, it felt like I had a decent matchup. To help the matchup, I cut the copies of Tishana's Tidebinder, Werefox Bodyguard, and Invasion of Gobakhan // Lightshield Array to swap them for a playset of Valiant Veteran and a pair of Virtue of Loyalty. I felt like the removed cards played poorly against Mono-Red and these new ones improved things a little, while also being decent for other matchups as well. You can find this week two list here.

On the RCQ side of things, I played in only two events at a pair of local shops. The first event only had 9 players and had to cut to top 4. I ended up with a solid 3-2 record, but ended up bubbling out in 5th place. At the second event I again went 3-2 which did get me a top 8 finish, but I lost in the quarterfinals to Azorius Midrange, which plays similar to Soldiers in some ways but ends up going way stronger into the late game.

Now going into the third week of VML we get to the point where I pivoted into what I actually wanted to play: Esper Midrange.

Deep-Cavern Bat
Raffine, Scheming Seer
The Wandering Emperor

The big reason I wanted to play this deck was Raffine, Scheming Seer. There's nothing like playing a 2-drop creature and then following it up with Raffine on turn three. That's even more true when the 2-drops in question are Deep-Cavern Bats having stolen away one of your opponent's powerful cards. The deck also happens to have a ludicrous amount of customizability, which allows you to meaningfully tweak it to better fit your gameplay.

For weeks three, four, and five of VML, my list largely looked something like this:

Esper Midrange | MKM Standard | Paige Smith

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The lists for Esper Midrange were fairly volatile and hard to gauge. Some were moving more toward Faerie Masterminds and going leaner, others relied on cards like Subterranean Schooner and Preacher of the Schism. I ended up sticking with this list at first largely due to familiarity. It looked and felt closest to what I'd played with previously during VML season 8 so it gave me a good starting point that I could potentially adjust to later on.

For week three of VML, my opponent Catra had previously been on Domain and Rakdos Midrange and I felt like I had a much better shot here against those with Esper, which made the pivot seem solid. I ended up facing a mirror, which was beneficial since my opponent here expected an aggro matchup and prepped for it accordingly. For week four, my opponent - Skye - had run a Mono-Red Aggro list that was more heavily Prowess based. I changed just a few main deck cards, but loaded up heavily on cards like Knockout Blow in the sideboard to ensure things went well (you can find that list here).

In week five I ended up going back a lot closer to what I ran in week three. My opponent for this week - Talia Bael - was on a Boros Midrange deck utilizing the likes of Serra Paragon and Quintorius Kand. I hadn't run into anything quite like this and didn't entirely know best how to approach it and as such mostly just tweaked my sideboard and stuck to a more stock build with a little more removal to deal with the creatures I'd end up against. You can find that list here, but even better this was a VML feature match and you can watch the games here.

Going into week six, I changed things up a decent amount and my lists started looking a bit more like this:

Esper Midrange | MKM Standard | Paige Smith

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This list was actually suggested by my good friend Dalia Morin, a staple of the competitive scene in Canada who I've known for a number of years now. You may have seen her around on Twitter here and there. She's top 8'd several sizable events including Regional Championships and played in Pro Tour Phyrexia last year as well. She's been on Esper Midrange for a while and helped talk me through a lot of nuances to play and determine sideboard strategies, and I definitely wouldn't have gotten through a lot of this season without those discussions.

On a similar note while I'm talking about support throughout the season, I also wouldn't have gotten through it without the VML testing team I was a part of. The team was also a big help in not only talking through the matchups, but also planning for them and figuring out what to expect and how to beat it. It was an extremely collaborative effort and I have to shout out the whole team (Gabi, Tem, Noah, Maria, Ivy, Quinn, and Silver) for all their help. That was only the second time ever I'd had a testing team experience and it was great to work with such an awesome team of people - a tremendous boon of the VML experience.

With regards to the list in question, though, Dalia had recommended this for week five, but I stuck with what I knew for that week. Going into week six, though, my opponent (keyo) had been on Azorius Control for a few weeks and I didn't really think that would change. I figured that jumping onto this tighter build focusing on lower-end cards like Faerie Mastermind would go a long way by providing better pressure ahead of any board wipes. No More Lies also works well as an improved option over Make Disappear which was especially nice. This paid off and I was able to get the win, which made me a lock for the playoffs. In week seven, I went up against Emmara (Goddessofblunder) on a Mono-Red list and so I just ran back my old week four list to try getting the win (which I did).

Around this time I also participated in a few more local Standard events. We had a bit of a dearth in them for a few weeks due to the Murders at Karlov Manor prerelease and release events, but they finally came back. I played in some Store Championships and an RCQ, where I topped all of them and managed to get there in one of the Store Champs for a Dauthi Voidwalker. All of these were rocking the same above list, substituting a small number of sideboard slots to improve my matchups against the local meta.

After this came the first week of playoffs, where I found myself against Axe Thembro on Four-Color Slogurk Legends. I was expecting either this list, which Axe had been on most of the season, or Esper Midrange which they had been piloting the previous week. I felt like I probably had a decent enough match in either case, as my Esper list seemed a bit more favored to the one they'd been piloting, but the Slogurk matchup made me really nervous. I hadn't had many opportunities to play the matchup and was woefully ill-prepared, but managed to get there all the same. This match was also recorded and can be watched on the VML Youtube channel.

Finally, I want to bring up one last list:

Esper Midrange | MKM Standard | Paige Smith, 2nd Place 2-Slot RCQ Millennium Games

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This was basically a slightly tweaked and retooled list from above to help fight back against the local meta that I took to the last possible RCQ of the season in my area. Before, I more or less just ran the list Dalia had suggested to me. Here, I made some adjustments after I saw a number of players rocking the Temur Ramp Control list featuring Aftermath Analyst, adding in a singleton Lazav, Wearer of Faces to the main deck and a pair of Unlicensed Hearses in the sideboard. And guess what? I got there!

The event was a two-slotter and my opponent in the finals and I ended up splitting for the prize, putting me in 2nd place for the final result (they didn't want the pin set, which is why I have it in the picture). The swiss was rocky, but solid enough for the top four placing after a friend I was up against in the final round scooped to me in our Game 3. This qualifies me for Dallas and felt like a huge win after a season full of so many close calls. Oh, and if you're in the Rochester, NY area, definitely check out Millennium Games. That was where I played and the store was absolutely massive.

For my final week of VML I ended up against Sam Bogue, a well known MTGO grinder. Sam had been on Mono-Red Aggro and Temur Ramp Control throughout the season, and I expected they would likely go with either of them so I mostly ran the same list as the aforementioned RCQ. The only real changes were again sideboard choices and swapping the main deck Destroy Evil for a copy of Lord Skitter, Sewer King to help improve the Game 1 matchup vs. Temur. In the end, I didn't get there, but I still ended up cashing the event - the first in a long time for me where it was actually cashing and not just winning store credit, packs, or MTGO prizes which felt great.

It's been a long and extremely fun season that's got me more fired up to play some serious Magic than I've been in some time. I'm looking forward to the RC in Dallas, the upcoming Pioneer RCQ season, and of course the next season of VML once that goes around. Seriously, if you're someone of a marginalized gender looking to up your game, I can't recommend checking them out highly enough. Who knows, maybe you'll see me on the Pro Tour soon enough!

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal

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TAGS articles, standard, constructed, analysis, tournament report, decklist, vml, paige smith, mkm standard, rcq, 04032024

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