Post-AER Standard Brews Part I: Best Card and Some Blue Brews

I know that generally I start out talking about a set with Limited Analysis. I may try to do that at some point, but in this case, my time had me tied up after the full set info was released and before Pre-release, so I wasn't able to math it out then, and now... well, there aren't too many things I can think so much to look at there, and I'm far more interested in the constructed shake-up. So I'm going to start out with that - leading with my pick for the best card in the set (for Standard - Fatal Push has to be it for older formats):

Yeah, the land. And 'the' is right, because it's the only one, but it's very, very good. It provides decks that want to play Eldrazi more colorless sources that are actual dual lands. It provides multi-color fixing. And it lets artifact-featuring aggro decks have significantly better mana as well, without needing to play ETB tap lands. Let's start with a deck that's a riff on an old favorite, which Spire of Industry plays a prominent role in:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/548501#online

That's right, Mono U Eldrazi. Here, we have 11 cheap artifacts for the Spire, making it reasonably consistent as a blue source (though not stellar). It's one of a couple major improvements the deck received this set, along with Metallic Mimic and Heart of Kiran. The Mimic is big in e.g. turning your Skyspawners into 3/2 fliers that come with 2/2 scions, which is actually quite a good rate. The land is actually pretty darn important in getting the mana to work out ok - we can run 14 C sources plus 4 Hedron crawlers (and scions from Skyspawner), which should be good enough, I think; 10 islands would normally be light, but getting to supplement with 1-shots off Aether Hub and the Spire, we should be ok there, too. The hard part is definitely getting up to UU for emerging Elder Deep-Fiend, but I think that generally we should be ok.

The sideboard is very rough - you can play these cards, but there are lots of options. Might also note that Stoneforge Masterwork is one - but might be better at home in a deck with more scion-production. To fight the Saheeli Combo, this deck has Heart of Kiran, Thought-Knot Seer, generally having big things to attack, EDF to tap down, and counterspells (plus Warping Wail) to disrupt.


Another deck that Spire plays into (at least one version of) is possibly the one I'm most excited about for the new Standard - and the deck which, looking at the spoiler, looks like it gained the most from the new set:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/539340#online

We're storming off! Reverse Engineer seems like a huge boon for the deck. Renegade Map are nice split-cards between lands, mana rocks, findable by Glint-Nest Crane, fixing, returnable with Paradoxical Outcome... Ornithopter gives us more free artifacts, which contributes to Improvise as well as Outcome. Metallic Rebuke gives a good counterspell to protect things. Baral makes all your spells cheaper. Whir of Invention gives redundancy. Merchant's Dockhand gives long game. Hope of Ghirapur really protects the combo. Sram helps you draw cards... a lot.

Three Authority of the Consuls are primarily there for Copycat combo, but play against aggro also (and hey, the life is nice). This deck seems really strong to me, and I'm not sure what the mana base should be (mostly, how many lands do we need?), as improvise can make that tricky, and I haven't really sat down to math it out, or test it, so much. But I certainly expect this deck to be a very strong player.... though maybe not this version:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/539824#online

The mono U version has a more streamlined mana base, plays more counters and more Inventor's Fair. We also get to use our freed up slots for access to Padeem, and Foundry Inspector makes more of our artifacts free. The biggest plus is probably the ability to play Engulf the Shore, and that the white cards aren't all that plentiful or great anyway. Out of the board, this deck is sporting an alternative plan to have a huge creature which is cheap and protectable by counters. Not sure if/when these cards are the plan we want to go with, if ever, but want to highlight the possibility.



I'm excited about blue in the format, for the first time in quite a long time. I'll be back soon with more new Standard brews!

Why Copycat Won't Ruin Standard

The bane of Standard players everywhere.... or is it? If you're paying any attention to the discussion of the format, you'll know that this two-card combo has dominated all the talk. And  if you aren't, let me explain - Saheeli's -2 copies Felidar Guardian, which blinks Saheeli on ETB, making it a fresh permanent that hasn't used a loyalty ability yet this turn, which lets it make another hasty Cat Beast, ad infinitum.

I, however, don't think this combo will be the format-destroying scourge most others seem to. Let's dig into why.

1. Math

So, the first thing people said was, "This is a turn 4 format now!". First of all, I suggest that good aggro decks can kill on turn 4 in most formats without interaction, but I digress. This combo will yes, sometimes be able to kill you on turn 4, but it won't be consistent at all.

The chance of naturally drawing both combo pieces by turn 4, given that you have at least 4 lands which make all the right mana you need them to, and assuming you're running 4 of each combo piece, is only 12.1% on the play, 16% on the draw. Throw in that you actually need Saheeli on turn 3, and we're down to about 11.1% and 14.7%, respectively. Not all that hot. I should, of course, point out that Saheeli's plus give a scry, which helps find the cat, but this adds only about 3.6% (a tiny bit extra on the draw compared to on the play). Still looking at a pretty low percentage in any case.

But, people have also noted the whole thing can be played on turn 6, which also reduces the opportunities for the opponent to interact. The problem here, of course, is that for that to work, you need to have 6 lands. And so even if we're assuming that you have enough lands every time, those lands take up slots in your hand. So the chances of having everything by turn 6 aren't much better - 12.9% on the play, 17% on the draw.


But this has all been assuming you just have the lands you need, which is by no means a given. Even still ignoring the color requirements, or that the last 1-2 need to ETB untapped (both of which are going to be very dependent on the precise build you use - mana for the deck can be pretty good, but getting the last land ETB untapped might be a bit tough), just having enough is a serious concern. If we look at a typical Standard land count of 25 lands, then having enough by turn 4 is only a 67.5% proposition on the play, 76.6% on the draw. When you multiply those by the existing chances we had above, and we're taking a few percentage points further than before even.

For the turn 6 scenario, it's even worse (as you might expect): only a 36.8% chance of having 6 lands on turn 6 on the play, and 47.5% on the draw. Of course, you're less likely to be color-screwed by the time you're at 6 lands, but still more unlikely to have that 6th land ETB untapped.


There are, of course, ways to make things more consistent. There are a number of cantrips in these colors, though at 1 mana you'd need a creature (though Insolent Neonate can do some amount of work for you), so effectively we have... Anticipate, Cathartic Reunion, Tormenting Voice, Nagging Thoughts, and a number of no-selection draw-1s for 2 (best of which for the deck is probably Prophetic Prism). Best case here is Anticipate, and it really does help a good amount - it takes a card slot, but lets you see 3 deeper. Of course, you need it by turn 2, and it gives you less chance to hit your taplands, so it's not without cost. But if you can get it off, it adds... several percentage points to where you'd otherwise be.

The other thing which presumably helps you, and I'm not taking account of here, is mulligans. Particularly with the scry, your ability to toss back hands which are missing too much is going to help you out. I will note that it's still harder, even with the scry, to get it all on 6 than it is on 7, and that those bad 7s do sometimes get there. So the improvements won't be huge, but they're real.


All told, these improvements may get your chance of combo-ing out up to 20% or so, and while I haven't actually simulated finding an optimal goldfish list or percentage, I find it hard to imagine you can get that to much over 25 or 30%, especially on the play - certainly well below 50%. Goldfishing turn 6 is much more plausible to be able to optimize for, but on the other hand, that's not so impressive - even midrange decks can routinely goldfish at that rate. Heck, limited decks can. If anyone has done this kind of optimization, I'd love to hear about it. I suspect the optimal goldfish-turn-4 list is somewhere around this:

That leaves the question open, though - how long does it take, typically, to get the combo together? By 'typical', I'm going to say the point at which you can expect to have a greater than 50% chance to have the combo assembled (and not the average turn it's assembled on,which is almost surely worse/later). In an unoptimized list (i.e. 4 of each combo piece, a pile of lands, maybe some cards that don't help assemble at all), we're looking at somewhere around turn 10-11 (depending on play vs draw, exact manabase and composition of irrelevant cards, etc.). In an optimized version... well again, I don't know what optimal would be for minimizing time to goldfish, but my guess is that it's probably going to be turn 6 (though turn 5 wouldn't surprise me - getting an extra turn to deploy cantrips helps a LOT).


(Pre-Post Edit: Okay, I missed Contingency Plan, but come on, let's be serious - not THAT much better than Anticipate, and hard to see it actually, you know, making the deck).

2. Interaction

There are lots of ways to stop the combo in Standard - any way of killing a 1/4 at instant speed (Grasp of Darkness, Murder, Unlicensed Disintegration, Stasis Snare, revolted Fatal Push, Warping Wail, Harnessed Lightning + an energy), any way of killing a planeswalker at sorcery speed (Ruinous Path, 4+ damage from combat and burn), 1 damage to a planeswalker at instant speed (Implement of Combustion, Shock, Fiery Temper), Counterspells (Void Shatter, Disallow, Metallic Rebuke, etc. etc.) Misc (Thalia, Authority of the Consuls, Dampening Pulse, win faster).

Most of these cards are fairly commonly played already. Moreover, virtually every deck in the format plays at least some of these already, even in the maindeck - and most have more in the sideboard. And while it's certainly possible to have plans to deal with most or all of these... well, you need to have plans to do that. Which take up slots. And time. And make your deck less of a consistent quick combo. That's not to necessarily say they're bad, but it does bring us to

3. But what about Splinter Twin?/So where do we stand?

So the big comparison that gets made with the Copycat combo, of course, is Splinter Twin. Twin was so good, it even got banned in Modern. Everyone knows, of course, that this combo is worse, but Standard is also a weaker format than Modern, and is the combo really that much worse?

So, in terms of consistency at least, yes, it's quite a bit less consistent. This was especially the case when you could Preordain and Ponder - that many good cheap cantrips? You get quite a bit of consistency there. Even afterwards, though, Serum Visions is basically as good at digging as Anticipate, and it's a whole mana cheaper, which means you can use both turns 1 and 2. Furthermore, you got to play with more pieces than 4 of each - typically you played 6 Exarch/Pestermite, which is a 50% increase. That 50% doesn't translate to 'having it' 50% more of the time, of course, but it's not that far off. So this is really significant.

The bigger thing, though, is that Twin got to play a different kind of game. Turn 3 Exarch, tap down your land, untap kill you. It's only vulnerable to instant-speed interaction. It can kill out of nowhere. And realistically, represent doing other good things as well. Lots of flexibility. And lots of generally other good cards - the snapcaster/bolt/remand/cantrips Blue Moon kind of game. The deck was way more consistent, way more efficient, and played a really good game even when it wasn't comboing off.

At this point, I want to make a point about the other shell a lot of people have discussed for the combo, and that's using it as a finisher in a control deck. In some sense, I can see that - there's really not a reaosn it wouldn't work - but I am not terribly convinced by this, either, for one big reason: Torrential Gearhulk. Gearhulk already provides that deck with quite a quick clock to finish the game off, it takes fewer slots, it comes at instant speed, it helps support the control aspect of the deckmuch better. So it's a bit tough for me to think that such a deck is going to go for the combo over Gearhulk, or take up enough slots to go with both.


Having said allllllllll of that, I don't think the combo is just terrible. I could see it still being good. I wouldn't be entirely stunned if it was strong enough that a banning needs to happen (though I kind of doubt it). My main point is, you need a really good shell around it that plays to its strengths. You can't just throw it anywhere and have it be busted. It's not like pre-ban Eldrazi was in Modern where every flavor was effectively busted, and it was all about optimizing for the mirror. You need to build the right shell for it to be good, and my guess is that it will be good in that shell, but not busted.

What is that shell? I think a lot of people are reasonably close - you play Jeskai, you play a lot of good ETB creatures, with a mix of disruption and a bit of selection. Not too far from the Panharmonicon decks we started seeing last Standard.

MTG Standard - Drawing 4 for 3 mana

A week or two ago, I ran across a player on Magic Online who cast a maindeck Lost Legacy. I scofed a bit to myself - the card does not seem very main-deckable, plus I didn't have many good targets even if they knew my decklist (and as you might guess, I was on a brew, and being early in the game, they didn't know what I was about almost at all).

They targeted themself.

And named.... Eternal Scourge

This combination is incredibly sweet. As long as the Scourges aren't in play or exile, you effectively "draw" four cards, since you get to cast the Scourges from Exile. Note that this isn't even messed up by drawing Scourges, since you get to "cycle" them in that case, putting them into exile (where you can still use them) and drawing a replacement card.

I am very intrigued by this combination, and set out to build a deck around it. Naturally you need the 4 Scourges, and if it's good, I think you want a pretty high number of Lost Legacy as well. The problem is that the remaining Lost Legacy in your deck are pretty bad. Of course, even if you draw two, you're still at a 3 mana draw three, which isn't the worst ever, but you do need to dock that Eternal Scourge isn't exactly the epitome of Constructed Power-level. Well, I could call it "Modern GP winning Eternal Scourge", maybe that would make me feel better. Point is, you want to be able to do something with excess copies, ideally. Fortunately, standard is full of discard themes, so it was just a matter of finding the right one(s).

Furthermore, the biggest weakness of Scourge is generally that it just trades in combat, and ok, that's fine, but it would be nice if we could do more. (Really the biggest weakness is that if there's a way to repeatably target it, you effectively can bounce it over and over - but fortunately there aren't too many of those in Standard). The card that really pops up as doing well in terms of interacting from the Graveyard  is of course Scrapheap Scrounger, which with Eternal Scourge, not only returns itself, but gets you access to the 3/3 again as well.

This let to a couple additional directions. First, I wanted to use Vehicles. Lost Legacy for Scourge is a bit slow, Scrounger doesn't block, so you need to survive, and Vehicles let Scrounger let you do that. Plus all this stuff has three  power, so it can be used for Crew 3 vehicles. Second, we go towards a Zombie shell. That lets us have discard outlets, which work well to get rid of excess Legacies, as well as playing pretty nicely with the Scroungers.


And that's the basic ideas of the deck. Let's look at the list:

I would have loved to have more Skysovereign, but it does cost 5, I think Pariah is generally a bit more important, and you can only have so many 5s in a deck with this kind of curve. Also note that if we can have more of these 23 lands be discard fodder, that's pretty desirable. Mindbenders are genearlly good, but also provide a nice way of getting stuff from play to the 'yard.

Amalgams are the only blue in the deck, but we are playing the full 8 duals. Maybe you can cut a few here, but they're not all that expensive to run (mana base is quite good), and if you think about what we have to get it in play, there's 8 discard outlets plus those 8 blue sources. Yeah, it looks like 12 discard outlets, but while Copter and Cryptbreaker work fine, Haunted Dead only gets you there if it's in the 'yard itself, which happens far more from having one of those other outlets in play at some point first, rather than naturally getting cast and then dying.

I'd like to make a few notes on the sideboard. First, Liliana as a one of here is kind of a joke - that card should almost certainly have a bigger role in the deck. Second, Shamble Back is probably even cheekier. When you have a scourge in the 'yard, it's a 1 mana 2/2 gain 2 draw a Trained Armodon - we're talking Legacy levels of efficiency there. When there's just some random creature, that rate is ok against aggro decks. Plus it's a bit of a mise on Graveyard hate.



In general, there are two ways you can lose - people go under and murder you too fast, or people go over the top. This is about the grindiest possible deck I can think of in the format, so I don't think going over the top in that sense is plausible, but it's possible of course to go taller, most notably with Emrakul. Marvel could be an issue. Fortunately enough, though, we have four main deck Lost Legacy that can help us with that issue. And we get access to a bit more help in the board.

Probably we should be a bit more concerned than we are with the aggro matchpus then - WRx is probably too fast for the way we're configured currently at least. I think we can hang with UW, but would be concerned that their cheap spells are simply more powerful than ours. Anyway, the deck is untested, but it's just the kind of mad scientist idea that I think really ought to be worth a test.

More Standard Brews - with Panharmonicon

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/507851#online

The first brew I'd like to look at today was inspired originally by one Benjamin Weitz on the latest episode of the 2/3 fantastic Podcast Allied Strategies (https://alliedstrategiespodcast.wordpress.com/) The idea is, with a Panharmonicon out, Eldrazi Displacer plus Drowner of Hope (could be any card that makes multiple scions, but Drowner seems best) makes infinite Scions. Which also means infinite Mana, infinite taps, and, with Thought-Knot Seer, infinite milling. It was further devloped watching Kenji "Numot the Nummy" Egashira play a vaguely similar deck on his stream this week, though that one went into significantly more colors and was overall fancier I think, and a bit less focused on Eldrazi Displacer.

Given that I wanted to be Blue, White, and Colorless already, and with Eldrazi Displacer, I had to include my favorite Standard interaction, Eldrazi Displacer plus Spell Queller, which locks opponents out of casting cheap spells, once you have enough mana.

Speaking of mana, getting there is hard. Without painlands especially, fixing for this color combo is not great. Fortunately, Prophetic Prism helps us out. Plus Hedron Crawler is pretty nice in a deck that's looking to be pretty mana hungry anyway. I'm not sure that the current build is exactly where we need to be, but I think it's pretty close. We have a bit of an artifact theme built up, and so along with our ETB theme, Pilgrim's Eye made a lot of sense. with infinite mana, you can use the card to draw all the basics in your deck - along with Evolving Wilds, the Eye value makes you want to play a lot of basics, but I think it's worth it.

The deck is very raw and untuned. It likely doesn't have sufficient interaction right now, and the mix of creatures is probably not quite right. Crane Might also be not good enough to be a 4-of in the deck, though I think it's worth a try anyway.


The sideboard especially isn't very tuned. But it has some ideas, anyway.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/507862#online

The second deck I want to look at today is another Panharmonicon deck. This one is UR Colossus, which is reaosnably known. But my twist is to use Combustible Gearhulk for a bit more Oomph. It's another card with ETB triggers for Panharmonicon, a good emerge target for your EDF, your CMC are fairly high thanks to Colossus and EDF... this seems to be a pretty good deck for the card, and I'd like to see if we can make it work. Additionally, I'd like to note that the Sideboard plan goes in for big energy; some Whirler Virtuoso action, with the potential for infinite thopters - but even a lot of thopters is going to be nice. It's a nice way to diversify threats against control decks or Pick the Brain. There's a good chance you need more defense against the aggro decks, but I think this should be a fun starting point worth trying out.

MTG Standard: BR Control

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/507776#online

The card that received perhaps the most hype when spoilers for Kaladesh were first being released was Chandra, Torch of Defiance. And yet, that card has seen not much play. Now largely it was overhyped, but I still think the card is good. This deck started out as a way to try to maximize the card. To that end, you want a deck that can play for enough time to accrue advantage from the 'walker, and you want to have enough cards that are fine to good to play at sorcery speed (which means probably not a counterspell deck).

This led me to looking for lots of removal. And there's lots of removal in red and black, so here we are. Obviously there's some more nuance than that, but things aren't rocket science here.

There's plenty of removal here to be able to handle most of the aggressive decks, and they are of high enough quality to still be quite useful against the midrange decks. Control decks can be somewhat problematic, but your six main-deck planeswalkers do significant work here. Still, the biggest problems I find are with decks going 'over the top', since this deck doesn't really have a great way of locking up that endgame. Thus, the two biggest cards I've had problems with are things like Fevered Visions and Metallurgic Summonings. There's no way of dealing with these cards once they hit, and the deck doesn't have enough of a proactive gameplan to be great there.

I've tried a number of sideboard configurations, and I haven't found one I really feel is particularly great yet. 6 Mana Chandra has been a nice find, but of course you can run into a problem of too many Chandras. Liliana is good in some of the grindier matchups (like delirium) as well as decks with lots of X/1s, but you aren't running super many creatures, and you have ot think about how many you have post-board in those matchups. Gideon is a tough card for the deck to deal with, and that's what the Skysovereign is about, but I am not really convinced by it, especially in this deck. Incendiary Flow vs Harnessed Lightning is interesting - I've mostly given the nod to Flow because it's better against go over the top decks, Scrapheap Scrounger, Prized Amalgam, and planeswalkers, and you have a lot of instant speed removal anyway. But it's a real cost against vehicles and creatures lands (plus the increased flexibility of multiple HL).


The worst matchup for the deck is probably Aetherworks Marvel. It's just incredibly hard to win any time they find Marvel, which they usually will. If that deck gets popular again, this one needs to shift dramatically.

Finally, I'd like to note that the manabase isn't entirely clear - 18 black sources and 16 red is okay, but you have a reasonable number of tap-lands, you get no creature lands, and you could use a little more in terms of sources, and maybe even slightly more in terms of total land count.

Overall, I think the deck is pretty good and pretty well positioned, but it needs some tuning - slightly better proactive plan probably, and better plan against 'walkers like Gideon. Maybe some of the Unlicensed Disintegration should turn into Ruinous path? At which point maybe you switch some Flow back to Harnessed Lightning.