New Standard evolves heading into SCG Philadelphia!

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Newsletter
Thursday, January 25th

Mardu Vehicles. Humans. Lands.

Those are the three decks that allowed Julian John, Jonathan Rosum, and Kevin King to hoist their trophies at #SCGDFW last weekend. But will those three decks allow another team to get the job done in Philadelphia this weekend? That's a difficult question to answer. It stands to reason that Mardu Vehicles will be very popular in The City of Brotherly Love, but it's also a deck that's easy to prey upon if players want to. And the exact same thing can be said about Humans in Modern and Lands in Legacy. Perhaps we'll begin to see that shift this weekend?

Chas Andres thinks that for Standard, the answer is "Yes!" Standard's diversity is a real selling point and our resident financial analyst believes that there are many great decks to play and tons of reasons to play them. Jim Davis has also turned his eye toward Standard this week with an innovative Bant Approach deck that'll be sure to turn heads. His team may not have gotten it done in Dallas last weekend but you can expect big things from DJ JD this weekend in Philly. As for Merfolk Branchwalker enthusiast Brad Nelson? Not only does he think the 2/1 Merfolk is unplayable, but the best Standard player in the world shares all his thoughts on how to get a leg up at Philly in his format de jour.

So are Chas, Jim, and Brad right about their thoughts on Standard? We'll find out this weekend as Matthias Hunt, Ryan Overturf, Nick Miller, and the rest of the SCG Tour crew prepare for the Philadelphia Open. With 15 rounds of Team Constructed at #SCGPHILLY, not only will we have a good idea of where Standard is going, but we'll also learn more about #SCGCON—the can't miss event of 2018! Come join the fun all weekend long starting Saturday at 10:30am ET at twitch.tv/scgtour!

— Cedric Phillips, Content Coordinator

February 17-18
Modern

March 3-4
Legacy

March 10-11
Modern

Standard Finance
For New Standard
By Chas Andres  

Let's take a look at where Standard finance is heading over the next couple of weeks.

I usually talk about analyzing Standard's week one results with a grain of salt (it's only one tournament, after all), but this week we're going to have to use, like, a whole dump-truck full of salt. The SCG Dallas Open was Team Constructed, so the Modern and Legacy matches carried exactly as much weight as the Standard games did. I was happy that the SCG coverage folks decided to feature a lot of the Standard games, which gave me a lot of time to see the new cards in action, but I still don't have a great handle on which of the format's newest strategies are rising to the top and which are still just hopefuls.

Since running down the Top 8 decks seems misleading this time around, I'm just going to highlight most of the different Standard archetypes that were floating around the SCG Dallas Open as well as on MTGO over the last couple of days. This will give me an excuse to highlight cards that look like they might start seeing more play in our new post-ban Standard environment.

Dallas Open Weekend Winners

King, Rosum, and John claim first trophies in Dallas!

Tristen Loob
Standard Classic

Tristan Jones
Modern Classic

Chris Dunn
Legacy Classic

Don't Win...Just Don't Lose!
By Jim Davis  

The white mass removal package of Settle the Wreckage and Fumigate should be very familiar to anyone who's played Standard recently, but Spires of Orazca adds a completely new dimension to the pair. Magic players have been trained to play around Wrath of God effects for years and are likely to pace their threats as to not see it all blown up in one shot. Settle the Wreckage is theoretically even easier to play around, as whenever your opponent is presenting the mana to cast it you can pick and choose your attackers with great care.

Spires of Orazca, and to a lesser extent an Approach of the Second Sun looming on the horizon, throws a total wrench in either of those plans.

With one or more active Spires of Orazca on the battlefield, your opponent now has to commit even more resources onto the battlefield and into the combat step than they would like to actually make headway on your life total. Spires of Orazca defends you nicely until things get out of hand, at which time you can fire off one of your sweepers. Spires of Orazca also does a fantastic job and protecting you from hasty follow ups the turn after you Fumigate, keeping tough ones like Hazoret the Fervent and Glorybringer at bay.

Tuning New Standard's Top Tier
By Brad Nelson  

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Week one of Rivals of Ixalan is in the books, and this golden rule of life couldn't be any truer. I was excited to sift through the slew of events that went on this past weekend, but to my surprise the format looked almost exactly the same as it did prior. Of course it wasn't completely the same on the surface, but the core functions of the format were still intact. Hyper aggressive decks with resilient threats, midrange strategies chock full of two-for-ones, and control decks leaning on Search for Azcanta, Approach of the Second Sun, and Torrential Gearhulk. I guess it's also true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

What this tells me is that we may very well be close to what this format is going to look like as almost all of the "best" cards are already seeing play. Glorybringer and The Scarab God jumped from Temur Energy right into the embracing arms of Grixis Energy, Ramunap Red went back to its more haste-based shell, and Mardu Vehicles, well, it Mardu'd once more. For me, this was a good enough sign that it's time to stop brewing and start tuning as we may very well already know what the best decks are going to be.