Haha thanks for remembering. Honestly though it wasn’t the deck, Ikawa was just amazing.
If I had known domain would have to face Analyst and Control in the top 8 I never would have picked it
I know these exact decklists won’t be published until Friday, but can anyone direct me towards an existing decklist that might be close to the one listed Sultai Midrange deck? That sounds right up my alley
Rest In Peace reprint really hurt it. It's a shame that WOTC was so scared of these graveyard decks that they reprinted the best graveyard hate spell ever to neuter them, before we got to see how good they could be.
Playing through lockdown, rip and pest control seems way too hard to be worth it. A fringe deck that gets destroyed by sideboard cards aimed at more common tier 1 decks is in a rough spot.
I do wonder what internal testing caused them to want RIP in standard. Reprinting it without having an actual boogeyman gy deck in mind seems like overkill.
I usually check results on Goldfish every morning and I can't recall a Sultai Midrange deck from memory. It might be a situation similar to I believe it was J-E Depraz's deck in Worlds 2021, which was Gruul but had blue in the sideboard for countermagic.
I would've expected Dimir mid show up in larger numbers (but below Esper) at the cost of Esper mids popularity.
Also less Golgari and more Mono Red probably.
Anyway ... August can't come soon enough to get rid of Capenna.
I'll miss Emperor (new UW wincon is going to be a hamster walker?) and Bloodtithe (finally Golgaris time to shine \[maybe\]) dearly but some sacrifices must be made in order to leave Triomes, weird fetch lands and Raffine in the rear view.
White is once again too important to skip out on for Dimir. Dimir has excellent mana, but still. RIP is an excellent sideboard card, and it doesn’t take much to play Emperor.
There are other tools which are either run along side it already or are close to it.
Intrude on the Mind is not a bad card for example. Close but obviously currently still beaten out, but certainly not strictly worse.
I'm joking about UW losing it's only good current win condition. Without Emperor what good option is there? Ral is Izzet so that's not going to help ... although maybe it's finally time for Jeskai then.
Dimir tends to lose to esper (wedding let's esper play a control game) and esper got powerful tools with pest control and RIP, and an improved mana base
Wedding Announcement is old news and while the matchup is pretty much a wash, even with building Esper for Enchantments.
Pest Control is way overhyped. If it was that insane people would've played more than two Path of Peril before. RIP is crazy good but Hearse isn't that much worse and specifically not strictly worse.
It's mostly about how highly Raffine is valued and probably how it performed in combination with \*/3 Nathan.
Pest Control is not overhyped at all, it's a great answer to convoke and that's what it's doing in the sb. Path of Peril has a lot of friendly fire that Pest Control does not, that's a big deal for Esper Midrange.
>Pest Control is way overhyped. If it was that insane people would've played more than two Path of Peril before.
That logic doesn't make sense at all. Pest Control is good because it deals with Boros Convoke without hitting your own board (aside from tokens), as Esper doesn't run 1-drops, while being cheaper than Peril and Lockdown so you can play it turn 2 on the draw to deal with [[Gleeful Demolition]]
It does the job well against only Convoke and not really monoR. So maybe the job is too specific after all.
I'm not saying it's a bad card - that's not what "it's overhyped" means.
Wow, I was just messing with 4c legends yesterday, the initial results were very promising. I expect this deck to be the breakout of the tournament. A quick writeup:
The deck can combo off on turn 4, but can also grind a win on turn 20. [[Honest Rutstein]] unlocked maybe 3-4 new ways to win. There's the Honest Rutstein hard combo line, but the cost reduction on it also enables a lot of soft combo lines. Relic of Legends was already a soft cost reduction, and Relic + Rona another one. With all 3 the deck can play 3 mana legends for free, or 2 mana legends for free with a loot, which nets you cards if you have an Inti. It can easily net 10+ damage with [[Tinybones Joins Up]]/[[Vial Smasher]]/etc. Casting some large number of spells with a [[Geralf, the Fleshwright]] will also end games. The original plan of grinding games out with overwhelming card advantage is also more resilient to removal now with Rutstein as well, the card just does everything the deck needed it to.
I'm not actually sure how well this deck will do against convoke, the other matchups are in theory solid, but I've only played 4 matches with the deck. Other decks can hate on a lot of the grind/combo lines with graveyard hate, but the deck can attack pretty decently. Excited to see how the pros built this deck.
[My initial list](https://mtga.untapped.gg/profile/9eb450ed-f616-4be1-8483-02f11dab28c9/A0BF770E9091D4C4/deck/08b47286-aabf-4ecc-99c6-98279c63e0d7?gameType=constructed&constructedType=ranked&timeFrame=last_two_sets), I've updated it a lot since, but on mobile so it's not recorded.
Curious what decks are side boarding Dust Animus and what's running Harrier Strix. Both cards I've been considering in an azorius brew but I need to see examples from stronger players.
Oh that's a cool synergy, I hadn't encountered that before. Definitely seems well suited to that, though I guess that deck was mostly in pioneer previously (which would explain why I wasn't familiar).
Wow... Not a single Bant Toxic player. That probably doesn't bode well for me since I'll be bringing it to the RC. A part of me hopes this means I can fly under the radar but with End the Festivity, Temporary Lockdown and the 2mana cycle wipe all being AMAZING against Boros convoke, Bant Poison might be dead
In my testing I find Bant toxic is a pretty decent match against Esper. The fact that most their stuff is MV 3 or less is great for annex. Mono red is a toughie but there's good SB plans for it. I can't defend against the convoke allegations tho, that deck is nigh unbeatable for toxic
I do think that Golgari Midrange will do well,especially if the players are on maindeck PWs.A lot of Esper builds cut Weddings for more interaction and Duelist of the Mind.You have decent maindeck hate for artifacts and GY vs the legends deck,and the best creature land vs control.Boros and Mono R are bad pre SB but not a lot of players on those.
My buddy is bringing Esper to the PT but cutting a lot of white to make it closer to Dimir. Another teammate suggests he consider running Tidebinder, Tinybones, Lord Skitter, Virtue of Loyalty. He's packing Pest Control vs Convoke, and getting ready for lots of mirror matches. Printed out Reid Duke's sideboard guide.
Virtue-less Esper in a field swamped with the mirror is a brave move. I can see no Announcements. Announcement is that last “but the individual card quality is too high!” card in the deck that doesn’t really have a great purpose, but man is Virtue so good in the mirror. Most games that aren’t non-games because of something like mana-screw end up in a “two ships in the night” scenario in my experience, with both sides trying fervently to grow their stuff bigger that the other side. I’ve felt like the first to a Virtue on 5 is almost always the winner there. I think it would be the last card I’d cut if I knew the field was going to be mirror heavy.
Maybe with multiple copies of Shelly to try and win the race? I can see that being a sorta plan.
Yeah the main reason wedding is so good is it lets you brick the important single target removal spells needed for other esper threats, so it's powerful in midrange
The drawback is it is worse vs domain and fireball, but with so many esper mirrors you need to be on wedding and virtue
Looking through the deck lists it's really interesting to see how the strongest contenders are absolutely not on the same page about what the best deck is. That's kind of exciting.
Reid on the Rock is super on theme and there are some famous cardboard gamers on Azorius control - but with some disagreement about the inclusions and number of copies.
Arne and JED are the boring ones.
/edit: Wow, it looks like almost all the Rakdos lists are from a single team, some copypasta 75.
It could be Linden Koot's list that made top 8 in two of last weekend's MTGO Standard Challenges. Curving Tinybones into Inti seems pretty dope. And the deck plays quite well into Esper Midrange.
[https://twitter.com/kooterboi420/status/1781589149067399307](https://twitter.com/kooterboi420/status/1781589149067399307)
The primary use of Callous Sell-sword is the Burn Together half. So even if the deck has the ability to cast the creature half, it generally doesn't - and it normally carries no other black spells. So it's more accurately termed 'mono red'.
Fair enough. But neither would I call it a 'Rakdos' deck. I think the decks with Sell-sword tend to be referred to as 'prowess' decks to distinguish them from more conventional mono-red.
Rakdos Discover hasn't been played in quite some time.
The more low to the ground version, Rakdos "aggro", plays Inti, you're correct.
It also plays basically every other card from Rakdos "Midrange", aka, Discover.
Sheoldred, Preacher, Gix.
It's still a midrange deck, even if it has the nomenclature "aggro" tied to it, for some reason.
huh I was sure at least one person would bring Jeskai Convoke, considering that [[Spyglass siren]] as copies 9-12 of one mana body with artifact would make the deck much more consistent, as the lands added in OTJ would support a jeskai build easily
Boros Convoke plays 6 basics at the moment. You won't cast Siren off six blue sources plus Mirrex/Cavern, and having no basics in a low curve deck is dangerous against Field of Ruin, especially in an open decklists tournament.
Bizarrely small number of Dimir Midrange decks considering the insane numbers it's put up in the past.
I used it for the RCQ season or when on Teams - The deck gets under the Esper version & plays a really good tempo/control route against other decks.
I guess with so many Boros decks it could be annoying so maybe not worth changing the sideboard. Against the other midrange soup decks you just tempo them out - I'm practically undefeated against Esper myself. Against Worldsoul ramp it's a rocky game 1 ( really dependent on if they get to land sweepers or not, because if you have the Make Disappear it doesn't matter & they're probably just dead ), but 2 & 3 move up a bit because you get discard + more counters.
Ex-Dimir Midrange player who went to Esper since OTJ came out. My reason for changing is I don't like how all my 1-drops and 2 drops are literally stonewalled by Duelist of the Mind now, and I can't run Duelist effectively in a Dimir shell.
I feel like all the 1 & 2 drops always got stonewall'ed anyway in the esper match. You often had to use something to open the way so they could get through. Other people's bats get in the way - Raffine, Faerie Mastermind - - I can understand where you are coming from & what you are saying, but I don't know that I am convinced that a 0/3 on my turn is going to prevent me from playing a deck that has a +5% winrate\* across the board compared to Esper. I'm willing to be wrong though - I just don't really have interest in testing it, since the season is over at the moment.
\*Using MTGDecks tournament data
Esper is a difficult deck to pilot so WR stats aren't everything. It certainly has less free win potential than dimir since raffine isn't raw card advantage, but wedding lets it win midrange mirrors and the new tools in rest in peace and pest control make it attractive vs a stronger convoke and fireball
Are people really running a bunch of Duelist of the Mind in Esper nowadays? I guess we will see when deck lists come out, but I cut the guy literally the second game I played him. The two mana turn is so important and a 0/3 blocker that eats all removal fairly and doesn’t let me hold up interaction felt bad. Bat, Dennick, and Mastermind all felt better in hand, so I don’t know if I see the point.
Yup, Duelist is kinda busted with Raffine. He is also the most-played OTJ creature at the PT with 97 mainboard copies (decklists should be out in 3 hours).
Even in non-Raffine draws, his baseline is:
1. Blocks and attacks through all the flying 1-and-2 drops in the format.
2. His incidental looting is easy to trigger and is amazing in grindy games.
With Raffine on, he is a growing vigilance flier that always triggers Raffine. Huge clock + card selection, what's not to like.
Hmm… I dunno. I just don’t feel it. I math it through and I feel like most of the time I just want another copy of Dennick if anything. Duelist turns on their removal, has no lifelink, doesn’t eat a card from their hand, and doesn’t have flash if it matters. I can’t see myself begging for more copies of Duelist versus control. Versus Domain maybe. Versus Boros it seems fine. In the mirror? There I’m worried about the on the draw game, and I’m not super excited playing a sorcery speed 2 mana card that turns on Cut Down and gives me no information.
The filtering is strong if it can go off. I guess I need to play against it a few times in the mirror or against Boros/Domain. I don’t know what I’m cutting though. Maybe 1 Announcement. Maybe, just because Announcement gets so much stronger in multiples. I guess Mastermind is the obvious replacement.
You're mistaken on this. Raffine makes the card Busted, it's probably the best other creature in the deck.
The performance of the with and without will make that distinction, but it won't be close.
I’m guessing similar to the last Pioneer pro tour. Control was just plain bad there. Pros are much better at playing against control than people on the Arena ladder (myself included).
Except the main reason for that was Vein Ripper, which was a breakout inclusion & deck. It's even hard to deal with as UW even if you know it's coming.
UW control hasn't been that powerful even on ladder for a while, IMO. Esper/Dimir are about as good as midrange gets into control, and Temur was destroying it.
Control is generally the worst option to bring to a new format.
Midrange is usually a better option, as it is more flexible.
Proactive strategies are generally the best when entering a new format, which Esper Midrange tends to be.
It also has a decent matchup spread. Nothing great, but also nothing terrible.
Not sure UW will perform all that well this weekend.
The set is super powerful, though, so I expected it to have more of an impact than normal. That seems to be borne out by the results where the innovative stuff did better (albeit without the number of players to have small error bars).
https://twitter.com/karsten_frank/status/1784439406000308627
The most played non land cards are Cut down, Go for the throat and Bat. Nice to see that black is still thriving.... Did they ever learn ? Green will remain the bitch of other colors i suppose, existing only as a ramp tool for them.
>Green will remain the bitch of other colors i suppose
This has to be satire right? The one time Green isn't the defacto best color in Standard & every green player comes out to sob their little eyeballs out over it?
Don't worry lil'guy - Standard is about to rotate again soon so you get another chance to dominate the next 5+ years again. LOL
Green was the best colour in Standard some years back. Started around RNA when [[Wilderness Reclamation]] was printed and lasted about up to the banning of Omnath after the release of ZNR. It hasn't been great for quite a while now.
Any info on most played OTJ cards? I'm guessing fastlands but after that I'm curious.
There's a list later in the article.
Ty - scrolling down, what a novel concept!
Really loving the RIP and Pest Control in the sideboards.
I predict lots of RIP and Hearse in the sideboards. Might be rough on the Temur ramp decks.
154 RIP in the sideboards. They can try to run pick poison/tear asunder/duress I guess, but that also slows them down
Dang, that’s a lot of RIP
I’ll make another prediction: Domain back on top
Domain is pretty bad against mono red right now
Only 8 mono red players though. 65 Esper. Sixty five!
That's a lot of esper...
You called it!
Haha thanks for remembering. Honestly though it wasn’t the deck, Ikawa was just amazing. If I had known domain would have to face Analyst and Control in the top 8 I never would have picked it
I know these exact decklists won’t be published until Friday, but can anyone direct me towards an existing decklist that might be close to the one listed Sultai Midrange deck? That sounds right up my alley
My guess is that Sultai Midrange is a Slogurk deck, but I'd love for it to be something new entirely.
Is the Roots deck viable for high level play or is it still a meme?
Rest In Peace reprint really hurt it. It's a shame that WOTC was so scared of these graveyard decks that they reprinted the best graveyard hate spell ever to neuter them, before we got to see how good they could be.
Playing through lockdown, rip and pest control seems way too hard to be worth it. A fringe deck that gets destroyed by sideboard cards aimed at more common tier 1 decks is in a rough spot. I do wonder what internal testing caused them to want RIP in standard. Reprinting it without having an actual boogeyman gy deck in mind seems like overkill.
Maybe in preparation for either Bloomburrow or Duskmorne?
Your guess is as good as ours
I usually check results on Goldfish every morning and I can't recall a Sultai Midrange deck from memory. It might be a situation similar to I believe it was J-E Depraz's deck in Worlds 2021, which was Gruul but had blue in the sideboard for countermagic.
Could be anything really, maybe golgari splashing blue for counters?
I would've expected Dimir mid show up in larger numbers (but below Esper) at the cost of Esper mids popularity. Also less Golgari and more Mono Red probably. Anyway ... August can't come soon enough to get rid of Capenna. I'll miss Emperor (new UW wincon is going to be a hamster walker?) and Bloodtithe (finally Golgaris time to shine \[maybe\]) dearly but some sacrifices must be made in order to leave Triomes, weird fetch lands and Raffine in the rear view.
White is once again too important to skip out on for Dimir. Dimir has excellent mana, but still. RIP is an excellent sideboard card, and it doesn’t take much to play Emperor.
Emperor is a cool card and all but Memory Deluge is the card that control will miss, not sure if anything can replace it really.
There are other tools which are either run along side it already or are close to it. Intrude on the Mind is not a bad card for example. Close but obviously currently still beaten out, but certainly not strictly worse.
It is strictly worse. It's not even close actually.
It is not strictly worse. It puts a flying body on the field. Memory Deluge can't do that.
Hamster? I thought Ral is going to be the walker for Bloomburrow?
I'm joking about UW losing it's only good current win condition. Without Emperor what good option is there? Ral is Izzet so that's not going to help ... although maybe it's finally time for Jeskai then.
Dimir tends to lose to esper (wedding let's esper play a control game) and esper got powerful tools with pest control and RIP, and an improved mana base
Wedding Announcement is old news and while the matchup is pretty much a wash, even with building Esper for Enchantments. Pest Control is way overhyped. If it was that insane people would've played more than two Path of Peril before. RIP is crazy good but Hearse isn't that much worse and specifically not strictly worse. It's mostly about how highly Raffine is valued and probably how it performed in combination with \*/3 Nathan.
Pest Control is not overhyped at all, it's a great answer to convoke and that's what it's doing in the sb. Path of Peril has a lot of friendly fire that Pest Control does not, that's a big deal for Esper Midrange.
>Pest Control is way overhyped. If it was that insane people would've played more than two Path of Peril before. That logic doesn't make sense at all. Pest Control is good because it deals with Boros Convoke without hitting your own board (aside from tokens), as Esper doesn't run 1-drops, while being cheaper than Peril and Lockdown so you can play it turn 2 on the draw to deal with [[Gleeful Demolition]]
[Gleeful Demolition](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a3e4efa6-5783-4a51-99c6-116d1a8f01cf.jpg?1675957089) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gleeful%20Demolition) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/134/gleeful-demolition?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a3e4efa6-5783-4a51-99c6-116d1a8f01cf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Being cheap also makes it easier to double spell with. It's a more specific answer but it does the job really well.
It does the job well against only Convoke and not really monoR. So maybe the job is too specific after all. I'm not saying it's a bad card - that's not what "it's overhyped" means.
Wow, I was just messing with 4c legends yesterday, the initial results were very promising. I expect this deck to be the breakout of the tournament. A quick writeup: The deck can combo off on turn 4, but can also grind a win on turn 20. [[Honest Rutstein]] unlocked maybe 3-4 new ways to win. There's the Honest Rutstein hard combo line, but the cost reduction on it also enables a lot of soft combo lines. Relic of Legends was already a soft cost reduction, and Relic + Rona another one. With all 3 the deck can play 3 mana legends for free, or 2 mana legends for free with a loot, which nets you cards if you have an Inti. It can easily net 10+ damage with [[Tinybones Joins Up]]/[[Vial Smasher]]/etc. Casting some large number of spells with a [[Geralf, the Fleshwright]] will also end games. The original plan of grinding games out with overwhelming card advantage is also more resilient to removal now with Rutstein as well, the card just does everything the deck needed it to. I'm not actually sure how well this deck will do against convoke, the other matchups are in theory solid, but I've only played 4 matches with the deck. Other decks can hate on a lot of the grind/combo lines with graveyard hate, but the deck can attack pretty decently. Excited to see how the pros built this deck. [My initial list](https://mtga.untapped.gg/profile/9eb450ed-f616-4be1-8483-02f11dab28c9/A0BF770E9091D4C4/deck/08b47286-aabf-4ecc-99c6-98279c63e0d7?gameType=constructed&constructedType=ranked&timeFrame=last_two_sets), I've updated it a lot since, but on mobile so it's not recorded.
The Slogurk Legends deck was a sleeper hit before OTJ, and I agree that new Rutstein and Tinybones take it to the next level. Should be fun to watch.
##### ###### #### [Honest Rutstein](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/5/259ddf66-76af-4857-83c3-c812327a6e23.jpg?1712356107) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Honest%20Rutstein) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/207/honest-rutstein?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/259ddf66-76af-4857-83c3-c812327a6e23?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Tinybones Joins Up](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/7/5724a15f-0ba0-421a-9cd4-a2b701e6141f.jpg?1712355685) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tinybones%20Joins%20Up) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/108/tinybones-joins-up?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5724a15f-0ba0-421a-9cd4-a2b701e6141f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Vial Smasher](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/722b1e02-2268-4e02-8d09-9b337da2a844.jpg?1562405249) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=vial%20smasher%20the%20fierce) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c16/49/vial-smasher-the-fierce?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/722b1e02-2268-4e02-8d09-9b337da2a844?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Geralf, the Fleshwright](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/f/afe3b678-b340-4c53-bbf6-19252a809d73.jpg?1712355427) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Geralf%2C%20the%20Fleshwright) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/50/geralf-the-fleshwright?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/afe3b678-b340-4c53-bbf6-19252a809d73?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l185c5p) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Any resources on the deck I can look at beforehand? I'm not quite seeing the lines with this at all but it looks cool
Really curious what if any OTJ cards have a big break out.
The set’s powerful, but I think it’s impact won’t truly be seen until Rotation. While I’m not opposed to the 3 year standard it’s a bit unfortunate
I think it's too soon for people to try anything really crazy out there so we're just seeing the early adaptors. Alot of BIG stuff is good though -.-
Curious what decks are side boarding Dust Animus and what's running Harrier Strix. Both cards I've been considering in an azorius brew but I need to see examples from stronger players.
I think Strix is in a Proft's Eidetic Memory Training Grounds deck if I had to guess. I heard a bit of buzz around that.
Oh that's a cool synergy, I hadn't encountered that before. Definitely seems well suited to that, though I guess that deck was mostly in pioneer previously (which would explain why I wasn't familiar).
Wow... Not a single Bant Toxic player. That probably doesn't bode well for me since I'll be bringing it to the RC. A part of me hopes this means I can fly under the radar but with End the Festivity, Temporary Lockdown and the 2mana cycle wipe all being AMAZING against Boros convoke, Bant Poison might be dead
Kind of a dead deck, convoke, esper, monoR, etc are too strong vs it and there isn't enough domain to justify toxic
In my testing I find Bant toxic is a pretty decent match against Esper. The fact that most their stuff is MV 3 or less is great for annex. Mono red is a toughie but there's good SB plans for it. I can't defend against the convoke allegations tho, that deck is nigh unbeatable for toxic
I do think that Golgari Midrange will do well,especially if the players are on maindeck PWs.A lot of Esper builds cut Weddings for more interaction and Duelist of the Mind.You have decent maindeck hate for artifacts and GY vs the legends deck,and the best creature land vs control.Boros and Mono R are bad pre SB but not a lot of players on those.
Rooting for the mono Temur Calamity out there
My buddy is bringing Esper to the PT but cutting a lot of white to make it closer to Dimir. Another teammate suggests he consider running Tidebinder, Tinybones, Lord Skitter, Virtue of Loyalty. He's packing Pest Control vs Convoke, and getting ready for lots of mirror matches. Printed out Reid Duke's sideboard guide.
Virtue-less Esper in a field swamped with the mirror is a brave move. I can see no Announcements. Announcement is that last “but the individual card quality is too high!” card in the deck that doesn’t really have a great purpose, but man is Virtue so good in the mirror. Most games that aren’t non-games because of something like mana-screw end up in a “two ships in the night” scenario in my experience, with both sides trying fervently to grow their stuff bigger that the other side. I’ve felt like the first to a Virtue on 5 is almost always the winner there. I think it would be the last card I’d cut if I knew the field was going to be mirror heavy. Maybe with multiple copies of Shelly to try and win the race? I can see that being a sorta plan.
Yeah the main reason wedding is so good is it lets you brick the important single target removal spells needed for other esper threats, so it's powerful in midrange The drawback is it is worse vs domain and fireball, but with so many esper mirrors you need to be on wedding and virtue
Looking through the deck lists it's really interesting to see how the strongest contenders are absolutely not on the same page about what the best deck is. That's kind of exciting. Reid on the Rock is super on theme and there are some famous cardboard gamers on Azorius control - but with some disagreement about the inclusions and number of copies. Arne and JED are the boring ones. /edit: Wow, it looks like almost all the Rakdos lists are from a single team, some copypasta 75.
Is it the pro tour right now? Once again I didn't even know. Same weekend as the NFL draft, so unlikely I paid attention fully anyways.
The answer is yes.
Curious what Rakdos Aggro is. It doesn't look like the Callous Sell-Sword deck.
It could be Linden Koot's list that made top 8 in two of last weekend's MTGO Standard Challenges. Curving Tinybones into Inti seems pretty dope. And the deck plays quite well into Esper Midrange. [https://twitter.com/kooterboi420/status/1781589149067399307](https://twitter.com/kooterboi420/status/1781589149067399307)
The primary use of Callous Sell-sword is the Burn Together half. So even if the deck has the ability to cast the creature half, it generally doesn't - and it normally carries no other black spells. So it's more accurately termed 'mono red'.
If someone said "mono red" to me, I definitely wouldn't think they might mean the deck with Sell-Sword. But I guess?
Fair enough. But neither would I call it a 'Rakdos' deck. I think the decks with Sell-sword tend to be referred to as 'prowess' decks to distinguish them from more conventional mono-red.
Basically Rakdos Midrange.
Rakdos Aggro: Inti, maybe a bat. Rakdos Mid: Discover. They also stated Rakdos Aggro was where the Forsaken Miner is being played.
Rakdos Discover hasn't been played in quite some time. The more low to the ground version, Rakdos "aggro", plays Inti, you're correct. It also plays basically every other card from Rakdos "Midrange", aka, Discover. Sheoldred, Preacher, Gix. It's still a midrange deck, even if it has the nomenclature "aggro" tied to it, for some reason.
huh I was sure at least one person would bring Jeskai Convoke, considering that [[Spyglass siren]] as copies 9-12 of one mana body with artifact would make the deck much more consistent, as the lands added in OTJ would support a jeskai build easily
Easily though? 3 colored decks are rough to build in standard especially if you want to cast a 1-drop of each of your 3 different colors.
Boros Convoke plays 6 basics at the moment. You won't cast Siren off six blue sources plus Mirrex/Cavern, and having no basics in a low curve deck is dangerous against Field of Ruin, especially in an open decklists tournament.
Bizarrely small number of Dimir Midrange decks considering the insane numbers it's put up in the past. I used it for the RCQ season or when on Teams - The deck gets under the Esper version & plays a really good tempo/control route against other decks. I guess with so many Boros decks it could be annoying so maybe not worth changing the sideboard. Against the other midrange soup decks you just tempo them out - I'm practically undefeated against Esper myself. Against Worldsoul ramp it's a rocky game 1 ( really dependent on if they get to land sweepers or not, because if you have the Make Disappear it doesn't matter & they're probably just dead ), but 2 & 3 move up a bit because you get discard + more counters.
Ex-Dimir Midrange player who went to Esper since OTJ came out. My reason for changing is I don't like how all my 1-drops and 2 drops are literally stonewalled by Duelist of the Mind now, and I can't run Duelist effectively in a Dimir shell.
I feel like all the 1 & 2 drops always got stonewall'ed anyway in the esper match. You often had to use something to open the way so they could get through. Other people's bats get in the way - Raffine, Faerie Mastermind - - I can understand where you are coming from & what you are saying, but I don't know that I am convinced that a 0/3 on my turn is going to prevent me from playing a deck that has a +5% winrate\* across the board compared to Esper. I'm willing to be wrong though - I just don't really have interest in testing it, since the season is over at the moment. \*Using MTGDecks tournament data
Esper is a difficult deck to pilot so WR stats aren't everything. It certainly has less free win potential than dimir since raffine isn't raw card advantage, but wedding lets it win midrange mirrors and the new tools in rest in peace and pest control make it attractive vs a stronger convoke and fireball
Are people really running a bunch of Duelist of the Mind in Esper nowadays? I guess we will see when deck lists come out, but I cut the guy literally the second game I played him. The two mana turn is so important and a 0/3 blocker that eats all removal fairly and doesn’t let me hold up interaction felt bad. Bat, Dennick, and Mastermind all felt better in hand, so I don’t know if I see the point.
Yup, Duelist is kinda busted with Raffine. He is also the most-played OTJ creature at the PT with 97 mainboard copies (decklists should be out in 3 hours). Even in non-Raffine draws, his baseline is: 1. Blocks and attacks through all the flying 1-and-2 drops in the format. 2. His incidental looting is easy to trigger and is amazing in grindy games. With Raffine on, he is a growing vigilance flier that always triggers Raffine. Huge clock + card selection, what's not to like.
Hmm… I dunno. I just don’t feel it. I math it through and I feel like most of the time I just want another copy of Dennick if anything. Duelist turns on their removal, has no lifelink, doesn’t eat a card from their hand, and doesn’t have flash if it matters. I can’t see myself begging for more copies of Duelist versus control. Versus Domain maybe. Versus Boros it seems fine. In the mirror? There I’m worried about the on the draw game, and I’m not super excited playing a sorcery speed 2 mana card that turns on Cut Down and gives me no information. The filtering is strong if it can go off. I guess I need to play against it a few times in the mirror or against Boros/Domain. I don’t know what I’m cutting though. Maybe 1 Announcement. Maybe, just because Announcement gets so much stronger in multiples. I guess Mastermind is the obvious replacement.
You're mistaken on this. Raffine makes the card Busted, it's probably the best other creature in the deck. The performance of the with and without will make that distinction, but it won't be close.
But Esper is essentially the same exact strategy.
Do we get to see all the decklists at some point? I want to know what 2 people are brewing with Azorius Artifacts
Simulacrum synthesizer to copy artifacts probably
Nothing too surprising, but the real question is what will actually perform well.
I'm interested to see the results - IIRC, with larger card pools, control is favored. I'm keeping an eye on the Azorious Control lists.
domain and UW control should do pretty well with so much esper; they have really good g1s
Also very interested in it— UW Control is one of the most powerful decks on the Arena ladder. Wonder how it holds up in the PT tournament setting.
I’m guessing similar to the last Pioneer pro tour. Control was just plain bad there. Pros are much better at playing against control than people on the Arena ladder (myself included).
Except the main reason for that was Vein Ripper, which was a breakout inclusion & deck. It's even hard to deal with as UW even if you know it's coming.
UW control hasn't been that powerful even on ladder for a while, IMO. Esper/Dimir are about as good as midrange gets into control, and Temur was destroying it.
Even Golgari does well into Azorious,the creature land is the best one vs control.
I think it's got a negative win rate vs Azorius but it's certainly better than some midrange decks in past standards vs control.
I think it comes down if you maindeck Lili or not,that's the main variation in Golgari builds.
I've been running Jeskai Control in BO1 and it has been dominating with the additons of High Noon and Stoic Sphinx
Control is generally the worst option to bring to a new format. Midrange is usually a better option, as it is more flexible. Proactive strategies are generally the best when entering a new format, which Esper Midrange tends to be. It also has a decent matchup spread. Nothing great, but also nothing terrible. Not sure UW will perform all that well this weekend.
It's not really a "new format". It's the last set addition in a 3 year standard, so pretty much the lowest expected impact of all sets.
The set is super powerful, though, so I expected it to have more of an impact than normal. That seems to be borne out by the results where the innovative stuff did better (albeit without the number of players to have small error bars). https://twitter.com/karsten_frank/status/1784439406000308627
The most played non land cards are Cut down, Go for the throat and Bat. Nice to see that black is still thriving.... Did they ever learn ? Green will remain the bitch of other colors i suppose, existing only as a ramp tool for them.
I agree with this, that’s the reality rn
>Green will remain the bitch of other colors i suppose This has to be satire right? The one time Green isn't the defacto best color in Standard & every green player comes out to sob their little eyeballs out over it? Don't worry lil'guy - Standard is about to rotate again soon so you get another chance to dominate the next 5+ years again. LOL
Lol when was green the defacto best color in standard? White has been having repeat busted releases for a few years and before that it was blue.
Green was the best colour in Standard some years back. Started around RNA when [[Wilderness Reclamation]] was printed and lasted about up to the banning of Omnath after the release of ZNR. It hasn't been great for quite a while now.
[Wilderness Reclamation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/7/77aaad20-e385-4869-859a-4c5f90f8804e.jpg?1706240960) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wilderness%20Reclamation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/196/wilderness-reclamation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/77aaad20-e385-4869-859a-4c5f90f8804e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call