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Main » Articles » Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Five Decks You'll Play This Weekend

Brandon Isleib
Posted on February 10, 2016
 Reddit

Welcome to Gathering Magic's weekly quintet of decks you should be aware of this weekend, whether you're playing a major online event, going to a Grand Prix, or hitting Friday Night Magic. This week, with Oath of the Gatewatch Game Day, it's a first look at the new Standard, with a look at last week's other Modern event.

Big Game Day Hunter

Here's what went 3–1 or better at least twice in Dailies this week (Bold = won a Daily):

  • Mardu: 5 (won 3)

  • Abzan Aggro: 5

  • Four-Color Rally: 5

  • W/B Control: 4

  • Atarka Red: 3

  • Bant Company: 2

  • B/R Dragons: 2

  • Dark Bant: 2

  • Mardu Green: 2

As has been true in paper results, the new hotness is having ancestors:

Four-Color Rally ? Oath of the Gatewatch Standard | kaname

This list runs three of Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim; other Daily lists had one or zero Aylis. But everyone seems to be agreed on the massive tempo swing of Reflector Mage; three is the baseline, and some decks want four. The rest is surprisingly streamlined for a four-color deck, with the only variations coming in the sideboard. Arashin Cleric, Dispel, Duress, and Murderous Cut are agreed upon, with Fleshbag Marauder/Merciless Executioner and anti-mirror technology (Anafenza, the Foremost/Hallowed Moonlight) being other common inclusions. One list even had Infinite Obliteration, but given how this deck likes to develop its mana base, assembling one of each color before multiples of anything else, it's a tough sell for me. Regardless, the deck looks set to be the premier deck in the two months before its namesake card leaves Standard.

Half of Sunday's best Daily performers were Abzan; they're all on the aggressive side, though some are more clearly labeled aggro—like the winner:

Abzan Aggro ? Oath of the Gatewatch Standard | Mogged

A guy at my store's Fate Reforged Game Day running Abzan Aggro declared that, if he won the tournament, he'd run the exact seventy-five for the next Game Day. He won, made good on his pledge for Dragons of Tarkir Game Day, and . . . won again. So he did it again, his fortune finally running out for Magic Origins. That is pretty much the story of Abzan throughout its time in Standard: The initial core was so good that the rest has been tinkering at the margins. And just when it might have lost relevance as other strategies gained cards, Rally decks gained metagame share, increasing the importance of Anafenza, the Foremost. As boogeymen of a format go, Abzan hasn't been that pernicious, but it certainly has had plenty of time in the spotlight.

Multiple Mardu lists won Dailies, including this list from Friday:

Mardu ? Oath of the Gatewatch Standard | Arianne

Wednesday's winner was a little more spell-focused, with Soulfire Grand Master as its only creature and its inclusion of Secure the Wastes instead of Kolaghan's Command. Either way, this version of the deck is made possible by new cards. In this list, Goblin Dark-Dwellers allows even more reuse of spells; flashing back Kolaghan's Command to bring back a Soulfire Grand Master seems nasty, and flashing back Crackling Doom is great, too.

More than Goblin Dark-Dwellers, though, it's Needle Spires making this Mardu iteration work, joining Shambling Vent as a mana-sink and finisher. Like Lavaclaw Reaches in the original cycle of these lands (and Wandering Fumarole in the current cycle), Needle Spires is the hardest-hitting as long as the board is empty, and this deck clearly can keep the board empty. And while Sorin, Solemn Visitor's +1/+0 and lifelink is partly wasted on Shambling Vent, it's fantastic with Needle Spires, allowing for a 12-point life swing in one turn.

Arianne clearly respects Rally decks, with Hallowed Moonlight and a splashed Anafenza, the Foremost in the sideboard; Wednesday's winner had the easier-to-cast Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet in the Anafenza slot. With such great legends, Flaying Tendrils, normally a card we'd start to see when a Rally deck arises, doesn't even get a look in, although it is showing up in a few other control lists.

One Spicy Metaball

User all4non 5–0'd consecutive leagues with loads of new cards:

U/B Eldrazi ? Oath of the Gatewatch Standard | all4non

This list is the later of the two 5–0 lists; the one from the day before had Murderous Cuts and a few other tweaks instead of Ghostfire Blade. Either way, what impresses me most about this list is that the low-cost Eldrazi—Bearer of Silence, Dimensional Infiltrator, and Fathom Feeder—are all good enough to run in the current Standard rather than waiting for rotation. Ruins of Oran-Rief is a major reason for that, allowing 2/1 flyers and 1/1 deathtouchers to hit harder. The curve from Fathom Feeder into Wasteland Strangler seems particularly rough. If Fathom Feeder goes unblocked, it is able to fuel Wasteland Strangler's processing; if Fathom Feeder is blocked, the deathtouch will kill whatever Wasteland Strangler was going to.

With only Polluted Deltas and Ghostfire Blades rotating out, a list like this might see significantly more play in a couple months. It might be worth figuring it out now.

(Also, U/B Devoid is among the only descriptively named archetypes with a song of the same name. It came out in 2001, the same year that Machine Head, which shares its name with a Bush song, was sold as a World Championship theme deck. I don't know any songs named "W/U Control" or "Ad Nauseam Combo." Sorry.)

The Future of Modern

Magic Online had a Pro Tour Qualifier Saturday, enough time for everybody to have watched the Eldrazi breaking Modern in various flavors. Once everybody saw those lists, the Pro Tour Qualifier was deeply affected; twelve of the Top 32 decks ran Thought-Knot Seer and friends, although their decks differed at the margins by a few cards. The Top 8 had six Eldrazi decks, one Affinity deck, and this:

W/U Control ? Modern | manaflood

So how did this deck survive against a sea of absurdly competition? Part of it is running honest-to-goodness counterspells. Other than Chalice of the Void and Cavern of Souls, the ChannelFireball Eldrazi list had no interaction available, so even something as basic as Mana Leak would have caused serious problems. This control list appears to have been made with awareness of the Eldrazi menace, finding room for four Ghost Quarters and running three Vendilion Cliques (the original Thought-Knot Seer). It seems that if Vendilion Clique hits the battlefield before Thought-Knot Seer does, the control mage will be just fine from there, and with a long game, incorporating Sphinx's Revelation can beat even an Eye of Ugin–based long game. There are also four Spell Snares, which, among other things, can counter a Chalice of the Void when X is 1.

Spreading Seas in the sideboard give more mana disruption if necessary, but the standout item to me (apart from the two Hallowed Burials in a list with no Supreme Verdicts) is the quarter of Meddling Mages. Given the Eldrazi deck's mana base, it gives its game away quickly, and Meddling Mage can name a card for value without seeing the opponent's hand reasonably often.

An Esper control deck running black only for four Esper Charms took ninth place; it, too, maxed on Spell Snares. Although the Pro Tour didn't show it, it appears control already has an idea of where it should go in the new Modern.

Conclusion

It was rough writing about the end of the last Standard format, as the same few decks kept showing up. Thankfully, there's enough going on with new cards that should make Game Day pretty interesting. If I make it to mine, I'm likely to run a black Eldrazi midrange–control deck with Languish in the main deck. Are you running anything spicy for Game Day?

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TAGS articles, standard, metagame, constructed, magic online, analysis, modern, decklist, brandon isleib, 5 decks, five decks, five decks you'll play this weekend, oath of the gatewatch, ogw

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