Welcome back to Arcavios! Magic returns to the home plane of Strixhaven, School of Mages this April, and I'm very excited for this world. The story is compelling and engaging, so much so that I've read all the web stories and bought the new book as soon as I could. I'm very interested in what this set brings to Standard - admittedly, mostly because I have an RC to prep and buy cards for. Since I want to maximize my chances of qualifying for the Pro Tour at this RC, I'm looking to get an edge on the Standard metagame with either a new brew, or breathing some sweet tech into an existing one. Let's take a look at Standard right now, what Secrets of Strixhaven can bring, and what I'm looking to play as soon as I can.
Standard before SOS had some notable metagame churn, but in the past two months has largely been defined by the existence of Izzet Prowess. This was a powerful deck a year ago that disappeared from the metagame with the banning of Cori-Steel Cutter
. The deck has returned thanks to the powerful synergy that exists between Boomerang Basics
and Stormchaser's Talent
. Thanks to both the explosive energy of Slickshot Show-Off
and the late game potential of Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser's Talent, the deck attacks the format from a variety of angles that is hard to topple going into SOS.
There are other Izzet decks that exist currently, most of them either leveraging the power of Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser's Talent or using the other powerful red and blue spells to make cards like Eddymurk Crab
cheaper, which makes Sunderflock
cheaper. All of these decks combined make up a sizeable portion of the metagame, and all of them rely on cheap instants and sorceries to power up their gameplan.
For those particularly fond of big mana and big creatures, theres a variety of Badgermole Cub
strategies that exist. The most popular Cub strategy is Mono Green Landfall, which mainly focuses on putting a bunch of lands into play to kill your opponent with Mightform Harmonizer
, Mossborn Hydra
, or Sazh's Chocobo
. It accrues a lot of value from both Icetill Explorer
and Ba Sing Se
, and is simiilarly a hard deck to play against since it has a variety of angles of attack avaialble.
The other Cub decks include a variety of decks looking to leverage the big mana potential of Badgermole Cub to get Ouroboroid
or Craterhoof Behemoth
into play. There are several two to four color variations that have all seen success in this standard format at some point or another. The most popular at current is Selesnya Cub, which uses Seam Rip
as a key interactive piece for Cub mirrors and Prowess while leaning on Brightglass Gearhulk
and Ouroboroid to close out the game.
Finally, there are a few Dimir mages still gaming it out in Standard. The most popular Dimir strategy is a reanimator strategy that plays a somewhat fair interactive game before copying a powerful creature with Superior Spider-Man
. The ideal draw involves interacting on one and two, then playing something like Winternight Stories
to draw and discard something like Deceit
or Doomsday Excruciator
. On turn four, you often play a Superior Spider-Man for UUBB, which will let you copy Deceit with the appropriate colored abilities or use Doomsday Excruciator to remove most of your opponent's deck, then finish the job with a Restless Reef
attack.
Despite all it's been through, there is still Dimir Midrange kicking around. It's not particularly good against anything, but the gameplan is very consistent. It depends on tooling your deck with appropriate interaction for what you plan on seeing for a given tournament, and keeping a powerful core of cards like Kaito, Bane of Nightmares
and Enduring Curiosity
. It's been a metagame player since Kaito, Bane of Nightmares was printed, and will continue to be an expected presence in any major Standard tournament going forward.
The entire Emeritus cycle from SOS looks like it can be very powerful. I think the most reasonable one to play is Emeritus of Ideation // Ancestral Recall
, but that's only because it enters prepared. Prepared is a new mechanic that comes paired with a creature and a spell. Once a creature becomes prepared, its controller can cast a copy of the spell. The creature isn't something that's too crazy to look at, but Ancestral Recall is one of the Power 9 and is one of the most unbalanced cards in all of Magic history. If certain metagame factors allow, Emeritus of Conflict // Lightning Bolt
, Emeritus of Truce // Swords to Plowshares
, and Grave Researcher // Reanimate
all stand to be powerful prepared creatures that can either birth new strategies or power up existing ones.
The Dawning Archaic
is both a key player in the SOS story and a potentially free 7/7. With how many Izzet Spells decks there are in Standard, I wouldn't be surprised to see this show up in some Izzet list. Along with the new Prismari Charm
to help fuel the graveyard, this might be a powerful synergy that proves hard to deal with, since it can get bigger than even what the green decks can push out on rate.
Flow State
seems innocuous on the tin, but I assure you a two mana draw two is extremely powerful. The first Strixhaven brought us Expressive Iteration
, which was conditional on being able to play the card from exile. This card will let you just draw two to use at any time, instead of right away. It's a little more conditional than a Sign in Blood
, but there are many decks that are interested in playing both intstants and sorceries and would like to play this over Stock Up
. Full disclosure, I did already buy my playset for Standard.
Decorum Dissertation
is, at the very least, interesting. It uses the new mechanic paradigm, which will let you cast a copy of the spell from exile at the beginning of each of your main phases for the rest of the game. There are 5 total paradigm cards from the set, most of which are too expensive to be considered playable in Standard. This is on the cheaper side, and it lets you draw two more cards per turn for the rest of the game. If you pair that with something to offset the life loss, you can very easily outgrind almost any opponent. Plus, you don't even have to cast it if you don't want to, mitigating both the life loss and the possibility of early decking.
Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer
is another card that's at least interesting. It's a planewalker that will let you surveil for the rest of the game, which can either fuel a card like Abhorrent Oculus
or help you cheat it into play with his -2 or something like Grave Researcher // Reanimate. Outside of being an enabler, Ral is a fine card on rate for planewalkers nowadays, if not particularly helpful at managing the board.
Fix What's Broken
is a possible mass reanimate effect. Anything that lets you put multiple pieces of cardboard into play with only one card has the chance to be extremely powerful in traditionally lower power formats like Standard. While I'm not particularly excited to brew with this card, I'm sure someone will use it to rebuild their board of 2 mana sac outlets after a control opponent casts Day of Judgment
.
Witherbloom, the Balancer
really looks like a commander card on its front. It has affinity for creatures and gives all your other instant and sorcery cards affinity for creatures. I honestly wouldn't mention this if there wasn't already a deck using Nature's Rhythm
and Badgermole Cub, where I think this card kind of makes some sense. I currently think the best card to cheat out with this is Valgavoth, Terror Eater
, and I hope someone gets to live that dream.
Here's what I'm looking to jam when the set becomes rentable on Magic Online!
While I'm not super excited about a control shell in Standard at current, I am super excited about trading cards with your opponent, then casting Emeritus of Ideation // Ancestral Recall. I think a 5 mana flying 5/5 with Ward 2 is a pretty reasonable control threat, and having Ancestral Recall stapled to it is all upside.
I think Prowess with Flow State is probably the level 0 of the format. Having a cheaper Stock Up is sort of what this deck wanted, and all the good cards are still good.
Alright, I admit this is a weird one. Leyline of Resonance
was the talk of the town not too long ago, but the deck sort of died out with the rotation of Cacophony Scamp
and the banning of Heartfire Hero
. However, I think the deck has some legs again thanks to Ancestral Anger. When I was playing the Gruul version of the deck, I remember really wanting Ancrestral Anger to push the deck over the top. Now with Ancestral Anger
and several creatures that are somewhat resilient to removal, I think the deck has a shot.
This is essentially The Boulder's Spellementals list, but with The Dawning Archaic. I don't expect this to be better than the Spellementals deck, but rather a choice if the metagame goes a certain way.
Like the UW control list, this is something I'm not super excited with. I'm treating this list as a way to test Emeritus of Conflict // Lightning Bolt and Molten-Core Maestro
. I think both have their use cases, just not in this current Standard format.