Counterburn is one of the most tried and true strategies for older formats. We’ve seen the power of decks like U/R Delver in Modern and Legacy, as well as a dearth of other decks that pair Snapcaster Mage, Lightning Bolt, and a suite of cheap countermagic. This strategy is powerful because of its efficient answers and ability to play largely at instant speed. But can it work in Standard, where the spells are more expensive and the creatures are more powerful relative to the answers? FMNM seems to think so:

Counterburn ? Shadows over Innistrad Standard | FMNM, 5-0 Standard League

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Dimensional Infiltrator
• 4 Goldnight Castigator
• 4 Rattlechains
• 4 Stratus Dancer

• Spells (20)
• 4 Clash of Wills
• 4 Fiery Impulse
• 4 Twin Bolt
• 4 Exquisite Firecraft
• 4 Fevered Visions

• Lands (24)
• 10 Mountain
• 6 Island
• 4 Shivan Reef
• 4 Wandering Fumarole

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
• 4 Kozilek's Return
• 4 Negate
• 4 Spell Shrivel

Buy This Deck

This deck is exciting because it combines all of the most efficient burn spells in the format with a ragtag suite of Flash creatures to create a strategy which lets you effectively play an aggro-control strategy. A huge part of the power of this deck is its ability to effectively fight over the Planeswalkers currently defining the Standard format. Cards like Nahiri, the Harbinger and Jace, Telepath Unbound in particular are much more threatened by creatures with Flash and Haste than those without.

While all of the cheap interaction is what gives this deck reasonable game against aggressive decks, what interests me more is its power against control decks. Flash creatures are difficult for control decks to effectively fight over, since it forces them to commit mana on their turn. Either they counter it or kill it and have limited mana to fight on your turn, or they let it resolve and risk you getting in a free hit and declining to cast a spell into their open mana. And what happens if they do just deal with your threat on their turn? You get to untap and resolve a Goldnight Castigator or even a Fevered Visions. Fevered Visions in particular is nigh impossible for a control deck to realistically race due to how expensive their cards are on average.

This deck doesn’t have any flashy synergies and doesn’t match the outright power of many of the other decks in the format. What it does have going for it is raw efficiency of interaction and flexibility in the role that it plays on any given turn in any game. You can spend a few turns killing creatures, then flash in a pair of threats, follow up with some Exquisite Firecrafts and just end a game. You can also just sit back on counterspells and burn spells with Fevered Visions serving to keep you flush with spells to play. That kind of flexibility is a quietly powerful advantage which may make this style of deck a very reasonable choice in the current Standard format.