Hi everyone. There were some bans today.
Omnath, Escape to the Wilds and Lucky Clover (*single tear*) were banned from standard. With these powerful midrange strategies gone from the format, it seems that aggressive decks are poised to make a comeback. Creature based strategies should at least become more reasonable, if not the best strategies. Here are last week’s power rankings with my opinion on each deck after the bannings.
Omnath Adventures – Gone.
Omnath Ramp – Gone.
Dimir Rogues – This deck figures to remain a contender in current standard. With a prospective rise in aggressive strategies, look for the lists to reduce the number of maindeck counterspells; especially Mystical Dispute, and potentially increase the amount of main deck creature removal.
Mono-Green Aggro – I think this deck was great before, and maybe never even got to reach its full potential in dealing with Omnath. That being said, I’d expect this deck to still be good. Four copies of Gemrazer might be too much at this point, with Lucky Clover gone.
Dimir Control – This deck is heavily metagamed for Omnath and Clover. Lucky Clover specifically was very hard for this kind of deck to beat, so that being gone is a big plus. Black offers a lot of removal spells to choose from, and those are very strong in an aggressive, creature based format. Look for Dimir control to add a couple more high impact permanents, probably planeswalkers or creatures, to be able to better close out aggressive decks, as well as increasing the number of black removal spells.
Mono-Red – I think this has the mantle of unofficial deck to beat right now. Embercleave is all the rage, and some are wondering if maybe it should have been banned as well. (Before you ask; no, I don’t think it should have). I love Embercleave decks, always have, so I’m looking forward to playing some Mono-Red.
Gruul Aggro – Autumn Burchett and Emma Handy did a great job with Gruul this past weekend in the Grand Finals. Their deck was definitely built for an Omnath metagame, but Gruul Aggro or Gruul Adventures are another great way to play with Embercleave. Edgewall Innkeeper is still very powerful, even without Lucky Clover, and Bonecrusher Giant will likely be one of the best cards in standard, as it already was, and the metagame seems to be shifting favorably for it.
Rakdos Midrange – This deck looks poised to be pretty good to me. It has the aforementioned Bonecrusher Giant, as well as cheap creatures, interaction, and some incidental lifegain, albeit a small amount. The modal double faced cards are also pretty good against aggro in this deck, as mostly they can trade for opponent’s early creatures.
Esper Doom – Esper Doom is one of the few decks on this list that has access to high quality sweeepers. That alone may be enough to make it more of a contender.
Grixis – Previously I felt like this was a Dimir Control deck splashing some Bonecrusher Giants and Kroxas. I didn’t find that too attractive before, but it sounds pretty decent now, to be honest. Kroxa will also be decent if other people are playing controllish strategies to give some late game punch in the mirror.
What new decks are people excited for? What decks that weren’t on last week’s rankings do you think are clearly top decks now?
Discussion