I love playing best-of-1 for fun, and I love playing Magic for fun. So I started exploring the format, and I found it fast, of course, but surprisingly, also more diverse. Mono-Red is the most played and the best deck, although there’s a lot of variety and way fewer Nissa–Krasis decks, so the games are indeed faster. Fae of Wishes is the most abusable card, as it’s a solid turn-2 play versus Red and Granted is much better in a format where the 15 cards in the sideboard are only situational 1-ofs to tutor for at the right time.
Jeskai Planeswalkers (Best-of-1 Standard)
Planeswalker (13)
Land (26)
The first list I started working on was inspired by the one Grzegorz Kowalski played in the Mythic Point Challenge.
While I do like the design of Fires of Invention, I’m not a fan of the card. I don’t find it very fun and I enjoy tapping my mana to play some planeswalkers more than casting some Mythic Cavaliers for free.
Jeskai is a combination of colors I’ve tried to make work in the past, and this felt like a good starting point.
Sarkhan the Masterless, and more importantly Chandra, Awakened Inferno, didn’t feel great. They were situational and often little impactful. Sarkhan is mostly dead against a Teferi, Time Raveler and the Chandra emblem just doesn’t do enough. Not being able to kill Nissa-animated lands with her -3 is a big deal.
So I decided to replace those expensive planeswalkers with some Dream Trawlers and more control cards, to have a control deck that wasn’t as bad as Esper against Mono-Red.
Jeskai Control (Best-of-1 Standard)
Land (26)
Deafening Clarion is just the best thing to do against Mono-Red, and that is why I think Jeskai is the superior control deck in best-of-1, over U/W and Esper.
Fae of Wishes is excellent in this deck because you often find yourself without win conditions in grindy matchups, and it is very nice to have three copies of a card that is both good vs. Red and good in the late game.
Finally, I started exploring some Lucky Clover decks which were abusing of Fae of Wishes. Temur Clover is one of the most popular decks in Standard right now, but rather than playing the stock version, I decided to give Kai Budde’s Simic version a try, and it was a blast!
Simic Adventures (Best-of-1 Standard)
Planeswalker (2)
Creature (28)
Artifact (4)
The first two games of this deck on Monday’s stream have been insane! This deck is a blast to play and having the option to go Fae of Wishes > Finale of Devastation > End-Raze Forerunners is something I’ve been missing, and it was a nice feeling to pick up the Boar again after Simic Ramp has been pushed out of the metagame.
This deck grinds with Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath which you can find by milling yourself with Merfolk Secretkeeper, which might also be a win con with some Lucky Clover out in a drawn out game (like it happened in the second one in that VOD).
I’ve been often asked the question if this deck is better than Temur, and the answer is probably not, since Bonecrusher Giant is still a super good card in a format where Mono-Red is the most popular deck, although it was a pleasure to never run out of fuel to cast Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath thanks to Venture Deeper milling our deck over and over, and to never take damage off of our lands since they were mostly basics.
In the next days I’ll explore some Historic, since I’m excited for the new additions from Historic Anthology, so make sure not to miss the next streams on twitch.tv/andreamengucci.
