Key MTG Cards to Know for Dominaria United Standard

Dominaria United Standard is fresh, fun and highly competitive. Here at CFB Pro, our job is to keep you on the cutting edge, so you can be one step ahead of the competition. Your best resource will be our library of Deck Guides, which we’re churning out as quickly as we can and updating regularly. But today, I’ll look at things from a different angle.

What are the individual cards you’re going to see a lot? How can you use them well? And how can you best dismantle them when your opponents try to turn them against you?

First, you might want to check out my Standard Power Rankings. Also, CFB’s own Frank Karsten has a new column for the Wizards of the Coast website which has been incredible so far.

To quote Frank: “In the early days of Dominaria United Standard, black is king.” In both Frank’s metagame analysis and my own, eight out of the top 10 archetypes are black midrange decks! If a card is good in, or good against these decks, you can expect to see it a lot!

Reckoner Bankbuster, Tenacious Underdog and Graveyard Trespasser are bread and butter midrange threats. They’ve been available to any black deck since before the release of Dominaria United. You’ll typically see them all represented in some numbers, in either the main deck or the sideboard.

Reckoner Bankbuster can be a value engine or simply beat down (notice how it’s two best friends here are three-toughness creatures?). As such, it works well in many different types of games, and is therefore a midrange player’s dream. My experience is that I really want to draw one Bankbuster, but not necessarily multiple copies too early on. For that reason, I like to have one in the main deck with two more in the sideboard, or two in the main deck with one more in the sideboard.