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Main » Articles » Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Standard

Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Standard

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Posted on March 15, 2011
 Reddit

A good testing gauntlet is key when you are deck-building and preparing for a format. Not only do you need to have what you feel are the most important decks for the format, it also needs to have what the metagame is proving are the most popular decks in the format. On MTGO, this is pretty easy. We get tons of data daily from Daily and Premier events, and websites are out there devoted solely to categorizing that data into something easy to manage. For your local PTQ or a big cash event, you're going to have to make educated guesses on the local metagame based on the information you have available to you. Here's what I feel is a very good starting point to building your own gauntlet for Standard to prepare for National Qualifiers and the big cash tournaments happening across the country.

U/W Stoneforge Mystic Decks

At Pro Tour: Paris, Ben Stark and Brian Kibler brought forth an evolution on the Caw-Go deck Kibler debuted at Worlds 2010. Adding Stoneforge Mystic to the Squadron Hawk package allows the deck to easily find and play the most powerful equipment in the format, Sword of Feast and Famine.

"U/W Caw-Blade (by Ben Stark – 1st place, Pro Tour: Paris)"

After Paris, the deck's popularity grew, and versions evolved to gain an edge in the mirror. At the Star City Games Open series event in Washington, D.C., Gerry Thompson brought his take on the archetype to the trophy by adding Red mana.

"U/W/r Caw-Blade (by Gerry Thompson – 1st place, SCG Open: D.C.)"

Gerry's deck adds spot removal to punish opposing Stoneforge decks for spending mana to try and equip their Swords and leverages the Cunning Sparkmage/Basilisk Collar combo out of the board to deal with threats he can't Lightning Bolt away. You also see a glimpse at the next evolution of the deck in the sideboard as Sun Titan allows you to get back Swords that get destroyed by Divine Offering, Squadron Hawks that take one for the team, fetch lands, and Celestial Colonnades. This gives the deck incredible inevitability amidst Day of Judgment and permission fights. And in Memphis, Gerry evolved the deck further, this time choosing a Black splash.

"U/W/b Caw-Blade (by Gerry Thompson – 5th Place, SCG Open: Memphis)"

Adding Black to the deck gives you access to Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, spot removal, and Creeping Tar Pit in lieu of Celestial Colonnade. With all the potential directions of the deck, you're going to want to test against all three, figuring out what version will be most popular in your metagame based on prior results. This deck and its variants have been the most successful Standard deck of late in terms of results, with nearly half of the top sixteen slots from the last three Star City Standard Opens (twenty-two of forty-eight slots).

Boros Stoneforge

Paul Rietzl nearly took down Ben Stark and the PT: Paris trophy with his take on the Boros archetype, including his own Stoneforge package of Swords.

"Boros (by Paul Rietzl – 2nd place, Pro Tour: Paris)"

Take small Landfall creatures like Steppe Lynx and Plated Geopede, add fetch lands, and give yourself reach for the long game through Squadron Hawk and Stoneforge Mystic and equipment. Since Paris, the deck has evolved by adding Bonehoard and Mortarpod to the Stoneforge package. Bonehoard makes any creature you play an immediate must-answer threat, while Mortarpod gives the deck reach in the late game to push through those last couple points of damage.

"Boros (by Ume_Nao – 4-0 Standard Daily Event, 3/10/11)"

This version starts out with the powerful Basilisk Collar/Cunning Sparkmage combo and adds in Elspeth Tirel to give the deck reach against control. An Elspeth plus equipment is probably enough to get there, especially post-board with Mortarpod and Bonehoard. You'll also note Inferno Titan, who has gone up in power level dramatically with the influx of X/1 and X/2 creatures into the format. Manic Vandal is a more aggressive answer to Swords than Divine Offering and makes sense for the deck. What the deck lacks is a trump like Sun Titan to get back equipment in mirror matches and against U/W control, and the synergy between man lands and Sword of Feast and Famine. Lightning Bolt is very good right now, though, as Swords and Mirran Crusader are helpless against it. Unlike the Caw-Blade decks, though , Boros has not been putting up the results on paper of some of the other decks in the field, but on MTGO, it's still a huge part of the metagame.

R/G Valakut

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle has been a force in Standard since the printing of Primeval Titan. It's hard to stop a combo when all the pieces of it are lands.

"Valakut (by Joey Mispagel – 1st place, SCG Open: Memphis)"

The deck uses ramp spells to power out a Primeval Titan, which can then fetch up a pair of Valakuts. After that, every ramp spell is some number of Lightning Bolts. Lotus Cobra allows the deck to be even more explosive, and Inferno Titan is a new innovation in the deck to clean up opposing creatures and then opponents, replacing Pyroclasm and Slagstorm in the main deck as the sweeper of choice with a large number of X/1 creatures in the format. Koth of the Hammer can play either ramp or aggro, and the deck can shift gears from a "sit back and ramp up to a Valakut kill" role to a very aggressive role with ease. While Green Sun's Zenith was a big player in the deck at the start of the Besieged Standard season, the prevalence of U/W decks has brought Summoning Trap back into favor, and having a Terastodon available to the deck as well as the Titans makes countering a Lotus Cobra or even an innocuous Overgrown Battlement a dangerous proposition for the control player.

Mono-Red Aggro

Coming into Pro Tour: Paris, there was a lot of hype behind Kuldotha Red. The printing of Signal Pest and Contested War Zone brought Kuldotha Rebirth decks to the forefront.

"Kuldotha Red (by Christoffer Andersen – 4th place, SCG Open: Indianapolis)"

This version of the deck doesn't perform well against Caw-Blade, though. The cards you lose off hits from Sword of Feast and Famine are too much to overcome, and Squadron Hawks can block Signal Pest, leaving the rest of the creatures to just be boring 1/1s and 0/2s. Other players have toyed with Landfall-based lists and Goblin lists, but Patrick Sullivan won the SCG Open: Edison with a more traditional Red Deck Wins build.

"Red Deck Wins (by Patrick Sullivan – 1st place, SCG Open: Edison)"

Mono-Red is always going to be a popular choice. It's typically cheaper to build than the control decks (previously due to mana-base costs, now more so due to the price of Planeswalkers and cards like Primeval Titan), and while it takes a ton of skill from a player like Sullivan to take it to the top of a premier tournament, even an average player can have success with the deck with a lot of practice. Even in Red decks, though, Kuldotha Red and a more traditional list like Sullivan's have completely different games. Kuldotha Red feels and plays like an all-in deck, trying to apply as much pressure in the first couple of turns as it can to overwhelm the opponent, while a Red Deck Wins list has the reach to withstand disruption, even if it isn't as fast as Kuldotha Red.

R/U/G Control

Lotus Cobra-based acceleration has been helping control decks play large threats for quite a while. The threat of choice has fluctuated from Avenger of Zendikar to Frost Titan to the current bomb of choice, Inferno Titan.

"R/U/G Control (by Bobby Oleksy - 4th Place, SCG Open: Memphis)"

The deck has similarities to Valakut, running ramp in the form of Lotus Cobra and Explore. Unlike Valakut, though, the deck plays Blue for Jace, the Mind Sculptor and counter magic, both in the main deck and sideboard. Mana Leak, Spell Pierce, and Flashfreeze deal with threats from specific decks. Its threat package of Precursor Golem, Avenger of Zendikar, and Inferno Titan come out faster due to the ramp and Garruk Wildspeaker. This deck hasn't taken down any major events, but it's a strong contender that takes a lot of skill and practice to pilot well. I'd run this deck through the rest of the gauntlet a few times before practicing against it so you understand what good and bad hands are for this deck. It's easy to play against a decent opponent playing this deck cold, beat them a dozen times, and dismiss the deck.

These are the decks I feel you're most likely to see at the next big cash event, and where you should spend the bulk of your playtesting focus preparing for these events. Even with this as the core of your gauntlet, you should still pay some time and attention to other archetypes as well. R/B Vampires, Tezzeret Control, and W(/G) Quest should get some attention as well in your testing, but focus on the heavy hitters, and don't be afraid to move your focus as the metagame you're preparing for shifts. With the right preparation and deck, hopefully you can cash that next big check or your ticket to Nationals.

Update 2:07pm 3/15/2011: Correction to Ben Stark's list at the top of the article, Sword of Body and Mind was changed to Sword of Feast and Famine

TAGS articles, constructed, standard

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