Standard Power Rankings - 5/31/21

This weekend is the Strixhaven Set Championship, which will probably showcase tuned version of the top decks. We’ll see if anyone comes up with anything special. I hope someone does, but we’ll have to see. Let’s take a look at the Standard Power Rankings first though.

1. Sultai

Sultai is still the top deck in the Standard Power Rankings. We’ll see how it does this weekend in the Strixhaven Set Championship. The deck has a tremendous game plan with great answers, and Emergent Ultimatum usually wins the game when cast. I registered Sultai myself, so we’ll see if the deck fares as well as I think it will.

2. Gruul

Gruul and Red have been the aggressive decks of choice and Gruul has been rising in popularity as well as success. I’d expect this deck to be heavily represented this weekend. Embercleave makes most decks that play it into Tier 1 decks and Edgewall Innkeeper in combination with Adventure creatures, particularly Lovestruck Beast, continues to be one of the best strategies.

3. Mono-Red

The next best Embercleave deck, Mono-Red is a hyper aggressive creature deck. It has enough punch to run over some slower decks, and most decks have trouble when Mono-Red shows up with its best draw.

4. Rogues

Rogues still has a great game plan – cheap creatures and cheap interaction, as well as very powerful card advantage. The deck feels like playing against two different decks sometimes. When the deck plays three or four creatures in the first couple turns, you feel like you’re playing against an aggro deck, and when the deck plays only one creature and draws a lot of interaction and counters, it can feel more like a control deck.

5. Izzet Dragons

This deck has continued to evolve and is in a really good place. It’s decent in most matchups, thanks largely to the power of Goldspan Dragon. The deck has cheap interaction, good counters, good finishers and good card advantage – everything one looks for in this kind of deck.

6. Cycling

Cycling has a powerful game plan with strong, cheap creatures. Flourishing Fox is good against both red removal and Heartless Act, which does make up a large amount of the cheap removal played in the format.

7. Naya

This deck is powerful and its best draws are tough to beat. The deck can go wide very quickly and promptly refill with Showdown of the Skalds. Toski, Bearer of Secrets is another card that can overwhelm the opponent very quickly.

8. Temur

This deck isn’t very popular, and hasn’t had much success. Maybe it’s here as a relic from being one of the best decks previously, but the game plan of Edgewall Innkeeper and Adventure creatures is still very strong.