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Main » Articles » Approaching the New Format

Approaching the New Format

Rudy Briksza
Posted on January 22, 2018
 Reddit

While this article will come after this weekend's events, it will be nice to look back and see how close I was.

I was randomly looking up flights for the Dallas Open on what started off as a whim. I saw a couple friends of mine were looking for a team and wondered if it was feasible for me to go. Once I started asking around, I found out Kevin Jones was considering going and looking for a team. I reached out to him; and, within a couple days, we had pulled Kazu Negri in and were set to go. Despite Kevin performing very well during the last Modern Open, he really wanted to play new Standard. Since Dallas is a team open and Modern and Legacy haven't shifted much, we've been trying to focus on Standard.

At this point during writing, I'm trying to convince Kevin NOT to play a deck. Was I successful? I guess we'll find out.

Izzet Celebrant Combo -- Rivals Standard | Rudy Briksza

The idea behind the deck is to try and Exert Celebrants to take a lot of combat steps and keep reusing God-Pharaoh's Gift to keep nabbing more and more creatures. While to me it's just cute, Kevin has really enjoyed playing around with the deck. The games where your deck functions, it looks passable. Overall, I think it's too easily disrupted and the hate for the deck is massive. This is, at its core, a combo deck, and your sideboard plan doesn't feel functional with how the deck is built.

The deck Kevin is much more likely to play is an Energy based deck.

Grixis Energy -- Rivals Standard | Rudy Briksza

While the core of the Energy decks have been neutered, there's still a lot of play to be found. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner was almost a centerpiece of the Sultai variants of Energy, burying the opponent in additional cards and even undoing a mulligan. Menace makes for some interesting combat math here, and since Whirler Virtuoso won't be played as much, we're more likely to connect with Siphoner in the current meta. Otherwise, we can leverage the massive removal present in the deck to force through some early Energy gain. More or less, the deck is Jund: Just a bunch of good stuff cards that kind of work well together. My major concern with this kind of deck is, while there are some great cards, it feels really easy to go over the top or way under. With lots of tapped lands in the list, it's possible being on the draw sets you back a step for one too many turns. I expect Mono-Red to still be a deck, and the prospect of being on the draw in a deck full of do-nothings and tapped lands frightens me.

The deck I'm most interested in trying out in the near future is Esper Approach. The deck started to pick up toward the end of last Standard's life cycle, but struggled to compete with Temur Energy. With the boogeyman out of the format, it's likely the strategy gains some new legs.

Esper Approach -- Rivals Standard | Rudy Briksza

Control is starting to line up in a good spot. The counterspells aren't the worst thing we've ever seen and the removal just keeps getting better. Drawing cards gives a lot of options to pick and choose what you need, and Approach is an inevitable win condition that works quickly. The seven life is often more than enough of a buffer to give you plenty of time. Esper's mana can be a little wonky, and it's likely the straight uw mana base might be a bit better. Cast Out is comparable to Vraska's Contempt but certainly suffers from the downside of being able to be removed. The cleaner mana base might be worth it, though, since trying to fit in a smattering of powerful cards is worse than trying to just play the best cards in that lane. No reason not to just play the best options when available, but the allure of the splash is very strong.

An overlooked card I've seen is Huatli, Radiant Champion. It's certainly not a standalone card; we have to build around in. The best shell I can even begin to think about it Abzan Tokens. Following up a few tokens with Huatli, Radiant Champion can boost this card to its Emblem by the next turn. Once you're able to Emblem, every Token you create is now a new card to draw. It's easy to pull away with any game where you're going to be drawing at least one extra card every turn.

Abzan Tokens -- Rivals Standard | Rudy Briksza

Last season, I really liked Tokens a lot. It was a great way to fight through every deck but suffered from sometimes not having enough tools to survive the early game. An Anointed Procession in play or a Hidden Stockpile was vital. With Huatli, Radiant Champion and Tendershoot Dryad, there's a little more play to the deck and alternate ways to build an advantage. While Huatli can do nothing if you're behind, at parity or ahead it's going to let you take over the game. It's possible we want a flying creature or something unblockable to take advantage of the -1 ability, but we can simply use that in combat to make a huge creature that can kill a control player in one swing or force a chump block every turn from an opponent slowly falling farther and farther behind. I think Tokens is likely to be a deck that won't catch on at first but I expect to see it out in force in the next couple of weeks.

As for my part of the team tournament, I'll be playing Legacy, and I'm going just a tiny bit deep. I hope Eric Landon is right about this one.

Grixis Delver -- Legacy | Rudy Briksza

Rivals of Ixalan is Now Available!

TAGS articles, metagame, constructed, analysis, standard, legacy, decklist, #mtgrix, rudy briksza, rivals of ixalan, rivals standard, 01222018

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