The state of Standard
Today we are talking about Standard, the most varied format. Although Grixis is the deck to beat, it still allows players to have a great choice of decks to play. Let’s look at some possible choices.
Grixis Control
As mentioned before, this is the deck to beat. It’s a mixture of solidity and strong cards. The meta is full of midrange cards like Invoke Despair and Bankbuster. In a midrange mirror, what makes the difference is drawing cards and not running out of resources while limiting your opponent’s resources as much as possible. This deck manages to do it perfectly. Sheoldred is a perfect card in this meta, especially in games that last longer than usual.
Mono White Midrange
On the other hand, if you are looking for a deck that can play well against Grixis and you like to play this color, then Mono White Midrange might be a good choice. There’s good overall solidity and lots of cards that put the strongest deck in trouble.
Loran is one of them. It destroys Fable of the Mirror Breaker and blocks the token. Not too many decks can do this 2×1. The Wandering Emperor is another strong card because it can make the board and acts as an instant removal.
Wedding Announcement and Serra Paragon are two other important cards for this deck. Both of them make advantage in different ways. The enchantment allows you to create the board and draw cards, as well as make creatures stronger afterwards. Serra Paragon lets you, for example, revive a Loran after it has blocked or revive a Wedding Announcement or Ossification after they have been destroyed.
Mono Red Aggro
Mono Red is a different deck type and is currently the best aggro deck in the format.
It’s a very aggressive deck. There are eight one-mana drops without considering the various spells and Kumano. It has hard starts to face, especially for midrange decks that may cast their first spell around turn three.
Despite not being played in all decks, I feel Mechanized Warfare is very strong. It does extra damage to all cards in the opponent’s deck, significantly lowering the clock. Chandra is a strong planeswalker with versatility, card advantage, speed, and it’s a good ultimate. In short, it’s everything we need.
Mono Blue Tempo
This is a tempo deck that is well-positioned in the current meta. Aggro decks are its worst match-up, and there aren’t many aggro decks in the format.
Eight creatures are perfect for this deck. There’s the Delver that we already know well. The Djinn is probably the strongest card in the deck because it puts great pressure and reduces the cost of spells, so defending it is the biggest priority.
Flow of Knowledge is the card that most of all gave consistency to this deck. Without it the deck would lose a lot of resources. Counters, which are played a lot, can make a difference in a meta that is not too fast.
We have seen only some of the decks that can be played. Don’t forget that Jund, Soldiers, Esper, 5cMidrange or Poison are great choices as well.
It’s enjoyable to play the current Standard. There’s a lot of variety and with the next expansion coming in a month or so, there will probably be even more decks. The first of these that comes to mind is Abzan with Thalia and the Gitrog Monster, or maybe WB Control will return with Drana and Linvala. We just have to wait and see how the format will evolve!
