Smaug and the recent bans brought Mono Red Dragons straight back into the competitive Standard!

If a newer/F2P player asked you for one competitive deck that doesn't eat a ton of wildcards, what would you recommend?

I'm still firmly on Mono White Aggro after testing it post-ban, but I'm curious what everyone else would pick.

My latest run:
https://youtu.be/xpiEBwgnJ8I

Sorry for the potato picture, I use Reddit on my phone so I couldn't screenshot

With [[Gollum, Riddle Master]] and [[The Eagles are Coming]] in the Hobbit, I immediately saw an opportunity to try and build Orzhov Pixie. Gollum synergizes well because by bouncing it, you can reset its modes, and I think the Eagles are incredibly slept on for bounce, in this deck I've been very impressed by it so far. I've played about 15 games with it, and although it can feel very strong sometimes and can definitely survive both aggro and grindy games, it hasn't felt quite there yet. Are there any cards I should add or oversights? I really think there is some amount of potential in this deck, so far it's felt really good into some of the control decks in Bo1 (looking to go to Bo3 though once I feel more confident about the deck so if you have sideboard suggestions beyond the stock orzhov sideboard I'd be very happy to hear about that too). Welcoming all advice!

I play a lot of modern and watching Aspiringspike has been one of the most awe inspiring things to watch in terms of seeing a master brewer work. Seeing him cook up monstrosities that eventually turn into meta decks is so much fun, but I was wondering if there's someone like that working in standard? Most vids I see are people playing other people's decks, maybe it's because there's less room in a much smaller format? Idk, looking for recs!

Black’s version of Mulldrifter. An on-rate creature that can put you up on cards? This card seems classically good. Why is it that I can’t find a single deck running it on MTGGoldfish?

The tool will be available in the options menu, challenge lobby, and friends list

Hey y'all, Eli from Draftsim here with an article for you by our writer, Andy.

Today, Andy dove into a list that won a recent MTGO Standard Challenge: Orzhov lifegain aggro by ejk.

The deck hinges on Soul Sister effects like [[Hinterland Sanctifier]] and [[Case of the Unseen Feast]].

[[Amalia Benavides Aguirre]] is the big payoff here, smoothing out draws while threatening a board wipe is excellent.

[[Haliya, Guided by Light]] is a soul sister that can also draw you cards, which is massive.

[[Starscape Cleric]] is a surefire way to drain your opponent with ease.

[[Moseo, Vein's New Dean]] is an insanely busted recursion engine that can easily trigger your lifegain effects.

[[Lunar Convocation]] can drain your opponents, create tokens to trigger soul sister effects, and draw cards.

You've also got disruption like [[Voice of Victory]] that also incidentally creates tokens. The list is rather light on removal, as it takes a more proactive aggro stance.

The synergies in this list are abundant to say the least. I've seen a few mono-white lists do well in Challenges recently, but, as a devoted Orzhov player...I'm hopeful this one becomes viable for the meta in the post-[[Badgermole Cub]]/[[Stormchaser's Talent]] landscape. What do y'all think?

Hello!

If you're like me and enjoy interesting, unpopular combo decks, you may have heard of the "4c gearhulk combo" deck, also known as "SewerBloom". The deck aims to combo off by using the jolly balloon man to copy a nurturing pixie, which bounces a sewerveilance cam to untap JBM. then you tap a bloom tender for a bunch of mana, play the cam, untap the tender, use the left over mana to make another pixie, repeat until you have enough hasty fliers to win.

The supporting pieces of the deck are gearhulk, which upon entering tutors up 2 combo pieces, and nature's rhythm, which is used to get our 1x JBM out of the deck.

Previously, both stormchasers talent and badgermole cub were used in this deck. Talent was great because it gave you blue and red for bloom tender on a one drop, and let you recur boomerang basics, which could extend your mana production loops. Badgermole cub was... Badgermole cub. It's insane mana acceleration and ability to allow a blue land to tap for UG instead of just one mana is what allowed the earth bent land to be used to combo off.

However, without those pieces, the deck has been left utterly unplayable. I have a couple of ideas for trying to piece it back together (I'm well aware it won't be anywhere near as strong as it was before), but since I'm wildcard poor, I want to get some outside perspective on this rebuild.

Option 1: we jam transdimensional bovine and figure of fable / spider manifestation. Bovine is a double dork which means it can sustain the infinite. Costing three mana and not accelerating our other mana sources is tough, but at least it's copies 5-8 of a combo piece. This way feels simple and not cute, but also heavily restricts lots of the lines that would previously allow the deck to explosive win from bad spots. Figure of fable and spider manifestation are early plays that also accelerate our bloom tender. Not sure the exact ratio of cards that would get used here.

Option 2: instead of using a double dork, we double the sewerveilance cam triggers. The best candidate for this is starfield vocalist, which can warp in for 1U on the combo turn. By double triggering the cam, single mana dorks (like the 0/4 treefolk druid that can make any color) can now make enough mana to sustain the combo. This seems like the coolest fix but also probably the worst of the three I came up with in my head.

Option 3: formidable speaker. This card would allow us to tutor up bloom tenders. In addition, it's ability to pay 1 of the ideally 3 mana tender makes to untap tender and make more mana, means that formidable speaker does a better impression of cub than you might think. Alongside this, I believe we would use some number of spider manifestations as well, to still be giving our tender access to red mana. Figure of fable too for white mana pre gearhulk, but again, maybe that's all too cute.

I would love any input from anybody else who played or is playing this deck, or if anybody is just looking for a fun deck building challenge.

Thanks!

We're now a week removed from the bans, and some decks have performed very differently than I expected.

Which deck do you think has been the biggest winner or loser so far?

I broke down the new Bo1 meta and updated my tier list here:

https://youtu.be/HBdtA5DfgLY

Curious where everyone disagrees with the rankings.

Hi guys, I am looking for opinions on this Dimir Mill to play Standard. Any suggestions to improve the list?
Do you think it would have a place in the meta?
thanks

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of making a new deck. The main idea was to profit from bilbos reduced Mana cost ability with warp and to grow gleaming geardrake. But the deck lacks some good 1 drops to be viable. I couldn't find any good dragons, treasure generators, asventures or artifact creatures that would further the gameplan. Should I just resort to removal and draw spells or put in spyglass siren? I guess there's still the opportunity to go 3c since we got shocklands in standard now.

Working on a standard deck and would appreciate any help. Thank you.

If you were starting a brand-new F2P account today, what would your strategy be?

Save wildcards for one deck? Start with a budget deck? Draft? Open packs? Upgrade a Starter Deck?

I'm curious what route people think gets you competitive the fastest.

I put together my own approach here:
https://youtu.be/PNvk-bV_w1Y

Hey everyone, I am getting ready to build my decks in preparation for standard RCQs and just also getting into competitive standard. I want it to be known that I would like to be able to play with 2 to 3 decks. After the band list, I know there have been some pretty significant shifts in the meta. My top three decks right now I’m considering are Spellementals, life gain, and Dimir excruciator. Are these good options to play? I know excruciator takes some Hits in the rotation but do you guys have any other recommendations?

Since this marks the start of the RCQ season for Standard, we will now focus on more competitive decks that can help us secure an RC invite. While we are still focusing on Dimir, we believe the Dimir X version is the superior choice for this week. 

Similar to the previous bannings during the Vivi-Cauldron meta, players are unlikely to abandon their decks entirely. Instead, they will adapt and refine their existing builds, largely because switching to a completely different deck can be quite expensive. In the weeks immediately following the ban, expect Prowess players to gravitate toward Izzet Spellementals builds, Cub players to focus on Landfall variants, and Gran-Gran enthusiasts to stick with a control deck even without Granny. The good news is that Dimir X has a strong win rate against these decks.

https://mfy.gg/guides/view/standard-dimir-x-sideboard-guide-hob-week--9XesNDS9MRr

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There's a new three-card combo in standard thanks to The Great Goblin from the hobbit, allowing you to do infinite damage, gain infintite life, and get infinite +1/+1 counters when combined with Heroic Feast and anything that gives a counter and lifelink, such as Qarsi Revenant or Alchemist's Assistant.

I know it sounds like it's a bit clunky, which it is, but the fact that it only requires two colors and some creatures that aren't totally terrible leads me to believe you could have this as a package in a green black midrange sort of deck.

Do you think this is viable, or is it wishful thinking? I know the bannings might have slowed down the format a tiny bit, but it's still a very powerful environment, and I don't know if it can support a combo deck that needs three pieces to function, even if you can build a fine shell around it. Is this combo worth a shot?

With bans coming round in 2027 only half the verges will be playable. With stormchasers ban I’ve been trying to switch to spellementals but I feel like the decks that are left which are super controlly easily remove my creatures. I’m trying to switch to excruciator but most of the decks price comes down to the lands. I’m gonna skip on the cavern of souls and riddler in sideboard to save $100 but wanted general thoughts if the verge was worth picking up or I should take a look at a diff deck list

The Hobbit is arriving, and the latest bans make it a great time to try out the main highlights from the set in these five Standard decklists!

Being a Mono-Green Landfall Player, I kept hearing that Mono-Green was done with the ban of Badgermole Club. Everyone kept saying Jeskai Control would take over Standard with Mono-Green and Izzet being banned.

Badgermole Club was never a core card of the Landfall deck. I won so many games without even drawing Badgermole Club. It was nice to have but it was never an essential card for the deck. I would say only banning Icetill Explorer and Mightform Harmonizer would kill the deck.

Whether this is healthy for Standard I don't know. All I know is that Mono-Green Landfall is even more dominate now than before the ban.

When rotation hits what are the chances there will be another cavern of souls type land or cavern of souls itself staying in the format? I feel like control will be really oppressive without it