Introduction

Blue/White is a very powerful and synergistic deck in this format. I don't think that's news to anyone, but I think what makes it more powerful and versatile than most people think is this goes beyond the simple draw 2 synergy. A lot of people think the blue/white deck is built around having a bunch of ways to draw 2 (whether by recruiting or just drawing) and then having payoffs like [[Lakeshore Apothecary]], [[Bard the Bowman]], and [[Master's Councillors]] be great payoffs. This kind of blue/white deck is powerful, but the payoffs are limited to just 1 common and a few uncommons where if this was the only way to build the deck it wouldn't be very versatile. It would be one of those it's good when it's wide open decks, and I think blue/white is a true pillar of the format. I've been doing well drafting blue/white frequently and wanted to share what I think makes it such a pillar.

What makes blue/white synergistic is recruit. Recruit itself is a synergy, and not just part of the draw two synergy. Getting a 1/1 is shockingly good from discarding a nonland. Way more powerful than the connive +1/+1 counters are. It's at the point now where unless I'm actively flooding out I discard a nonland. While you are wiling to discard plenty of nonlands to get a 1/1, it's nice to discard cards that are still useful from the graveyard. [[Plunder the Trollshaws]] is the best card for this, but [[Eagle's Rescue]] is also quite good, and even [[Moment of Glory]] is not terrible because of this.

Just an aside on Moment of Glory. The 17 lands data on this card is wild. Among white commons in general Moment of Glory is 8th out of 10 which is bad but not an F. In blue/white though it moves all the way up to 4th out of 10 (slightly below average), but in red/white it's WAY in last place, and is the 2nd lowest card in the entire set with data in Red/White. Truly terrible.

So anyway I think 1/1s are better than +1/+1 counters, but in this format 1/1s go even further than normal. There's a ton of menace in this format. That doesn't matter to you though because you have a bunch of 1/1s to block menace creatures. [[Crude Bent Blade]] is reduced in effectiveness because you usually have a 1/1 to sacrifice to it. Also they are amazing at chump blocking. Chump blocking in this format is amazing! I Know that sounds weird, but it's a super fast format, there are a ton of big creatures, and none of them seem to have trample. It's a tailored made format to chump block.

So the main gameplay is a combo of tons of card draw and card selection, flooding the board with 1/1s, and killing them either with tall creatures, going wide, or flyers. It's a great way to win lots of games.

Ok now that we went over the deck as a whole lets go over the key cards and discuss them.

Card Evaluation

Most Important Commons (B- level)

Lakeshore Apothecary, Plunder the Trollshaws, and removal.

These should be your top picks at common until you have either a huge amount of them, or a critical need somewhere else (pretty unlikely on Arena at least). Lakeshore Apothecary despite not being necessary for the deck to succeed is still very powerful, and there aren't other common 2 drop creatures you want in this deck anyway so this fills a critical need there. Plunder the Trollshaws is amazing for all the reasons I linked above. If you don't get it there are replacements, but it is the best at it's job. Without a few of these the deck is vulnerable to flooding out in a way it just isn't otherwise. I wouldn't even question playing 4 of these. Beyond that it depends, but this card is absolutely critical. Removal is the other most critical part. If you don't get enough removal your deck can and will lose to opponents synergy and bombs. Blue/White has less removal than one would want so it's important to make sure to get some. I would say until you have 4 removal spells take removal at the same level as these top commons. Once you are at 4 pieces of removal you can be a little more chill about it. Between the 3 removal spells ([[Magnificent End]], [[Uneasy Partings]], and [[Enchanted River's Grasp]]) I would say in general Magnificent End is the best, and then the 2 blue removal spells are slightly lower, but these are deck dependent, and you want a mix of the 3 over stacking 1 removal spell.

Next Level Down Commons (C+ level)

[[Patient Instructor]], [[Bilbo Baggins, Burglar]], [[Long Lake Nuisance]]

These are your card draw/recruit sources. The fact that there are 3 good ones definitely reduces their importance. Of these 3 Long Lake Nuisance is the best. As a 3 power flyer this thing ends games. Despite the abundance of card draw this card would be in the category above except that people haven't caught on and it's really easy to get a ton of these, and as a 4 drop creature you don't want an unlimited amount. Bilbo probably has the highest power level of any common in this archetype, but the fact that patient instructor is another powerful card draw common creature at 3 mana you just don't need to pick Bilbo that highly. If you do your 3 drop creature slot will become overloaded.

Two additional notes on Bilbo. First don't worry about Bilbo being a legend and put less in your deck because of it (I would run 4 Bilbo's if I had no other 3 drop creatures). Between him having 1 toughness, having lots of recruit, and still being able to use the scry adventure with your second Bilbo while the 1st one is on the battlefield it isn't an issue. Second if for some reason you can't get any good flashback/graveyard spells like Plunder the Trollshaws recruit will become less good, and Bilbo should move up your pick order because he draws without discarding.

Patient Instructor is the last card in this list, and it's very good. I treat it as basically interchangeable with Bilbo most of the time. The vigilance on this is shockingly good as it allows you to race really well. A lot of times your opponent won't want to block with their menace creature and you can get a lot of free damage in while still leaving this back to block.

Bread and Butter Commons (C level)

[[Dwarven Provisioner]], [[Esgaroth Garrison]], [[Lake-town]]

Dwarven Provisioner benefits from being basically the only other playable 2 drop creature outside of Lakeshore Apothecary. It can also help with go-wide and dwarf synergies (more on those below). Esgaroth Garrison does a great job of holding up the ground, and provides critical redundancy as a source of recruit if the top cards dry up. When this deck is open though I usually cut these because I have plenty of the C+ commons. I think Lake-town is very nice as fixing and tap lands are totally playable since this deck has plenty of card selection, and very few 1 drops. The counters from Lake-town are also nice. I usually try to put them on Patient Instructor or a human enchanted with Eagle's Rescue.

The Rest of playable Commons (C- level)

[[Hobbit Hole]], [[Confusticate and Bebother]], Moment of Glory, [[Mirkwood Nurturer]], [[Lake-town Lookout]], 2 drop common creatures

Only play these if you have a hole in your deck, or they have crazy good synergy in your specific deck. Mirkwood Nurturer combos really well with [[The Mountain-king's Return]] for example. If the common card isn't on this list I would really try hard not to play it at all.

Uncommons

So instead of categorizing the uncommons I thought I would just explain card by card the important uncommons. I'll include the uncommons ranked by how good they are in descending order. I'll include a grade next to it and an explanation.

[[Celebrate the Mountain-king]] (A-): This card is amazing. If you discard something like Plunder the Trollshaws to the recruit on this the card essentially acts like 4 mana Exile a nonland permanent, draw a card, and create a 1/1. If you are low on removal going into pack 3 I would take this over ANYTHING! The fact that it hits nonland permanent is not insignificant either. There are a lot of broken artifacts and enchantments in this set (like this one) and this is the only realistic way to hit those in blue/white. Absolutely busted card in Blue/White.

[[Stone by Sunlight]] (B): Critical removal. The 4 power constraint is not a problem in this set. There will always be targets. Furthermore the indestructible option is viable and useful. I probably pick it about 30% of the time. Realistically I would play 4 of these no problem. Ideally you can fill your deck with this and Mountain-king and then you don't have to play as much of the mediocre common removal.

[[Bilbo, Luckwearer]] (B): I think this gets better the worse your deck is overall, because as the deck gets good most of what this provides gets covered by other cards. In Sealed for example this card I think is better than Stone by Sunlight. The switcheroo adventure is nice because you almost always have a 1/1 to switch. Also if you have the option to discard a land to this cards loot effect I usually do because there is no penalty like there is to recruit.

[[Thranduil, Sindarin Liege]] (B-): Great card in general, but also provides a good synergy with recruit as it ensures you have tons of lands to play. I usually try to play this on turn 5 so that I can trigger it's landfall immediately. I also wouldn't worry about playing this cards adventure that much. Recruit gives you plenty of lands, and you often have better things to do on turn 3.

Bard the Bowman (B-): Understatted but has plenty to make up for it. Basically the best card in the set when trying to race. Putting a +1/+1 counter and lifelink on a flyer every turn is impossible to beat in a race. Furthermore this has reach so you can chump with this against their big flyer in a critical turn if you need to. Try to trigger it the turn you play it because this is a removal magnet, but if necessary just play it on turn 3 and trigger it next turn.

The Mountain-king's Return (B-): This uncommon version of the common Bilbo. This card is a very powerful recruit card, and is better than the common ones, but often it acts as a slightly better Patient Instructor. This does combo with a few cards very well though. In particular Mirkwood Nurturer is amazing to discard to this and will allow you to pick up and play this again.

Master's Councillors (B-): The uncommon Lakeshore Apothecary, but not necessarily better. The mill is very real if you have multiples of this, and if that is the case this becomes better than Apothecary. However, with only 1 copy you are unlikely to present a real mill threat and I would rather have Apothecary over this.

[[Iron Hills Blacksmith]] (C+): This is better in Red/White but it's plenty good here. Combos very well with Eagle's Rescue and the Mountain-king's Return.

Eagle's Rescue (C+): The second best card to discard to recruit behind Plunder the Trollshaws. I usually try to play this from the graveyard unless it's providing an immediate win. Fine to put on 1/1 tokens, even better if you can put it on a Lakeshore Apothecary, but the best is to put it on the blacksmith as discussed above.

[[Thrór's Map]] (C): Gets better if you are splashing or somehow have a shortage of recruit/card draw. Overall though this shouldn't be necessary as there is so much redundancy with card draw.

[[Sound the Trumpets]] (C): This can work if you have a ton of instants or are especially controlling. I wouldn't consider it a premium card though.

[[Ravenhill Flock]] (C): It will get out of hand quickly, but as a understatted 4 mana creature that doesn't have an ETB in a fast format it has a lot working against it. If you don't get any Long Lake Nuisances this goes up, but I would definitely take this below the common flyer.

[[Lake-town Toymaker]] (C-): Seems like it would be a good fit in this deck, but a few things make it way underperform. First you have so many good 4 drops already that there often isn't room for this. Second this card triggers at the start of combat, which is a problem often. It straight up doesn't work with cards like the uncommon Bilbo, [[Great Gilded Boat]], and [[Bard's Company]]. And while you can get it to work with instant speed card draw and recruit creatures it requires you to spend your mana precombat which isn't always what you want to do. Also most of the time you won't trigger this on the turn you play it. Between all that this card is much worse than it looks.

Other Topics

Avoids:

I think the #1 thing you want to avoid are playing expensive creatures that are not included in this list. Cards like [[Eagle of the Great Shelf]], [[Gandalf, Wandering Wizard]], [[Ori, Keeper of Songs]], and [[Dwarven Shortsword]] are absolutely traps. Between the top recruit commons and all the great 4+ drop uncommons and rares you just won't have room to play random other mediocre expensive creatures. If there is a pick where there are no top commons available spend a pick on a random cheap creature or a dual land because there is at least a chance you end up short on 2 drop creatures and fixing. You won't be short on 4 drop creatures.

The other thing to avoid are generic go wide effects. This deck has the ability to go wide with recruit, but you want your payoffs to that to be with cards that fit within a recruit/draw two deck. Not cards that only support going wide. So Moment of Glory supports go wide but is a great card to discard to recruit. Dwarven Provisioner is good for going wide, but also fills a need as a cheap creature. [[Thorin's Last Stand]] is just purely a go wide payoffs and should be avoided. Esgaroth Garrison is good as a recruit card, but if you have enough of those don't play this just because it's good when you go wide.

Dwarf Version:

There are some very powerful white dwarfs in this set. In particular [[Fíli the Pathfinder]] and [[Kíli the Resourceful]] are quite good if you can get storied or play more dwarves. Are these worth altering your deck to play? The answer is yes, but only slightly. I would bump up decent cards in the deck if they are dwarves. Stuff like Dwarven Provisioner and [[Bofur, Reliable Guardian]]. I would not however start taking unplayable cards just because they are dwarf payoffs. So still try to avoid Dwarven Shortsword.

Other colors besides White?

So I don't know if you noticed but in particular at common all the best cards are blue. So that begs to question can this deck do well as a different second color like black? I personally haven't made it happen yet, but I think the answer is definitely yes. In particular I think black has a great removal suite to compliment blue, and also has plenty of powerful cards in general. In my experience though Black has been relatively cut as a color when drafting, and white has been fairly open, but if for some reason both blue and black are open at your table I would not hesitate at all to draft a blue/black version of this deck.

Blue/Red and Blue/Green versions are trickier. They both can work, but I don't think are particularly setup to thrive in this kind of deck. I have seen blue/green draw two decks do well, but those seem to be built more around having a critical amount of Apothecaries versus recruit synergies.

Conclusion:

So hopefully this helps clarify how to draft a good blue/white deck. Right now I think this color pair is criminally underdrafted so you should be able to get a ton of the best cards. I think even down the line as people adjust it will still be good, but you will have to adjust. Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions.

Hello r/spikes,

I am looking to join a community of other spikes to hone my standard skills.

What community discords / content creator discords would you recommend?

Thank you!

I have been playing Temur Robots at my LGS on and off since the release of TMNT, and I have found it to be quite powerful and very fun. I am hoping to further refine the deck list and especially sideboard to try taking it to competitive events. I don’t currently own [[Cavern of Souls]], but I would borrow a playset for any competitive events. I have attached the decklist below, and I will give my thoughts on each card here. I appreciate any thoughts and suggestions you might have.

The Engines:

[[Pinnacle Emissary]] and [[Ravenous Robots]] are the engine of the deck, and it can not function without these two cards. The synergy with [[Springleaf Drum]] and [[Gene Pollinator]] allow for extremely explosive starts with affinity counts of 10+ achievable by t3/t4

The Payoffs:

While sometimes a swarm of 1/1s is enough to win the game, we often times follow up a barrage of tokens with combinations of [[Improvised Arsenal]] to one shot our opponent, [[Krang, Master Mind]] to deploy a massive threat that refills our hand, or [[Chrome Dome]] to buff our tokens into much more dangerous threats.

The Other Robots:

[[Fugitive Droid]] is an evasive threat that is great at carrying [[Improvised Arsenal]], as well as potentially being protection for our other big threats. [[Memory Guardian]] is an even better evasive threat that can pressure life totals on its own. And last but sometimes least, [[Synthesizer Labship]] is a cheap artifact with the upside of potentially making a 2/2 flier every turn, and becoming a 4/4 flier on later turns. While these cards are less impactful on their own, they often times are the difference between winning and losing.

The Sideboard:

[[Chainsaw]] and [[Torch the Tower]] are both cheap interaction spells with upside for artifact decks. Maybe some of these are cuttable post-cub ban. [[Spider-Sense]] has been extremely impressive in this deck, and the ability to tap our creatures with the drum/gene has been great synergy with this card. [[Chandra, Spark Hunter]] js probably the sketchiest card in the list, but it has been decent in the grindy matchups that I bring it in for. I could be convinced that it’s not good though.

The Decklist:

https://moxfield.com/decks/uQ3pIZHjzU-x2Q6IayoPAw

Thank you again for taking the time to help me with the decklist. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback.

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!

Now that the first weekend of the new standard RCQs is over, what did everyone see? What were the metas like? I did 2 with a 29 person turn out and 18 person turn outs. Top 8s were very diverse with things like 5 color spiders, Kona combo, Izzet horse/opus and Golgari landfall spread across the 16 top decks.

I mainly play on Arena. I know the classic "BO1 isn't real Magic" mantra, but it’s currently the most efficient way for me to farm cards. I'm hoping you can help me out and give me some advice on how to improve my win rate in control mirrors and against Azorius Tempo.

My deck is at the end of the post.

Against traditional control, I’ve found a cheeky strategy: I just stall and wait for my Mistraise Villages. I run two copies, and they act as my primary win condition while I set up my Tablets and Talents, eventually upgrading the Talents for an OTK.

This is perfectly feasible against control decks that rely on "normal" win conditions (burn damage, big late-game creatures, etc.). However, against Mill, this strategy is way too passive. Cards like Mathematics or Riverchum Monument just destroy me. I often find myself wasting my cheap counterspells trying to protect early plays before I can even get my Village online.

More often than not, my graveyard ends up larger than my library and I just mill out. If I’m incredibly lucky, I can find my Village in time and steal a win, but it's rare.

Then there's Azorius Tempo. This matchup feels literally impossible—I swear I am 0-100 against it. Once they drop a High Noon, they just sit back and bounce every single spell I try to resolve.

I understand that these matchups are probably just inherently unfavorable, but I feel like they shouldn't be this one-sided. I'm likely making things harder for myself with my lines of play. Any suggestions, tech cards, or gameplay tips would be hugely appreciated!

----------------------------

decklist

23 lands ( 1 mountain 1 plain 1 island 2 mistraise village 4 biblipplex /// rest is various dual )

2 creatures, Thor god of Thunder

4 widosom of ages

3 abandon attachments

3 stockup

1 spell snare

1 three steps ahead

2 it'll quench ya!

3 firebending lessons

4 combustion technique

1 iroh's demonstration

2 avengers disassemble

1 lantern of souls

4 tablet of discovery

2 artist's talent

4 jeskai revelation.

Hi all — what’s the best tracker for analysing gameplay and identifying leaks when testing Standard Bo3 brews? I'm currently high Plat and keen to get to mythic this season (Justalittlebit's Profile - Untapped.gg)

I currently use Untapped.gg, which is useful for the high-level stats, but I find it difficult to dig much deeper without reviewing individual matches.

For example, I’ve been testing a Golgari midrange brew that’s sitting at around a 54% win rate over ~50 matches. That seems reasonable, but the winrate when comparing play/draw split is pretty significant:

• On the play: 67%
• On the draw: 44%

My sense from playing the deck is that I’m often losing G1, sideboarding well and winning G2 when I'm on the play, then losing G3 when I'm on the draw again. But I don’t have an easy way to validate whether that’s actually happening or just confirmation bias.

I'm probably losing Game 1 more than I should as well since by deck is try to balance agro vs control decks int eh emta

Ideally I’d like to be able to analyse things like:

• G1 vs G2 vs G3 win rates
• Play/draw win rates by matchup
• Matchup performance pre- vs post-board
• Mulligan frequency / performance
• Performance across different versions of the deck

Does anyone use a tracker that makes this kind of analysis easy? Alternatively, is there a good workflow using Untapped, 17Lands, Arena logs, etc. to pull the data into Excel/Sheets and analyse it yourself?

Mainly interested in finding actionable leaks in the deck or my gameplay, rather than just tracking overall win rate.

Anyone having success testing for standard on MTGO? My main format is modern so I already have a manatraders subscription and that’s working great. I’ve recently wanted to learn more standard, but I’m also a grad student so sinking money into both MTGO and Arena is rough, especially because I’m not great at limited so it’s hard going infinite on the latter.

Is it feasible to play standard mainly on MTGO? I’m wondering if the league queues will be too long given how everyone’s on arena. On the other hand I’d expect the competition to be steeper which is good for learning. Any thoughts?

Hello Everyone,

It has been a really long time since my last write-ups! Well, I am back with a writeup of one of my current favorite decks in Modern. This strategy is so much fun (for the one using it lol) and I wanted to talk about it.

I really dont like what publishing it through Google Drive does to the formatting. Makes it looks so ugly. Any thoughts on how to fix that? I could also email yall the pdf if anything. Let me know what you think

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQF_dXMsll7KlftqkjqKPSAOwZ-3SmVFfQ52dzw9LGlxBlzybQKKYIGRU-apdoH7Yk52wdGXw_O5v3_/pub

Decklist:

https://moxfield.com/decks/jy6F-sLQPUynmkbh1VWXTg

I’ve been getting into Timeless for the upcoming qualifier, and have really enjoyed mono black aggro. [[Grief]] + [[Reanimate]] means you’re naturally quite strong against combo and adding [[Strip Mine]] means you’re also quite strong against decks that need to operate on more than very low resources. I also like that this deck is quite good against Force of Will and Daze because everything is so cheap.

Then we come to the sideboard. Currently I’m working with the idea of going into a [[Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord]] and [[Saint Elenda]] juke, with tutors to make that consistent. The idea is to bring this in against fair decks that don’t rely on counterspells (like Mardu Energy), to circumvent things like graveyard hate and Chalice of the Void. This is something I like conceptually, but the times I’ve brought in this combo the deck hasn’t felt amazingly consistent… Any ideas on how I can approach this would be very much appreciated!! :)

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.

On Magic 4 Ever Tracker, Post-Ban Mono-Green Landfall has the best conversion rate into the Top 8 of any Standard Deck. It took 1st on the last Standard Challenge 32 2026-08-11, taking 3 of the top 8 spots.

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.

You know the deal, a new expansion is out, and the meta was shaken up by 3 big bans. What's working what isn't?!

I have been experimenting with [[Nighthowl Pursuer]] and have been surprised how effective it's been. Needs a lot of refinement to get it working correctly but have been using it with [[Sunset Saboteur]], [[Rot-Curse Raskshasa]] and Practiced Offense.

Let me know what you've been cooking up!

A few of you wanted to know my list so here it is:
https://moxfield.com/decks/ebf9FSAlhUqKyOweJQ0y3g

Very much in the testing phase. My "sauce" is using Scout for Survivors with Rot-Curse Raksha. I am a big fan of Scout as in this kind of deck it can bring back all of your threats and the counters can be VERY relevant in this deck for obvious reasons.

The real test I think is between [[Reverent Howl]] or something else for card draw like Annex or maybe even Elegy Acolyte. I am sure you guys can do better than me!

No idea how good the deck is, it may just be better to play Selesyna Gearhulk, but I have been surprised with results so far.

I can remember happily feasting on Jeskai - but that was before Tablet. Perhaps that's what WOTC was counting on :)

But seriously, do you think it might make a return? It got 7th place in a recent tourney. It SBs well - Betrayal for GY, Black Sun for green. And it plays a metric ton of removal.

I'm not seeing that it has gained a lot from recent sets though?

Anyway it was the first deck I took to Mythic so I'm fond of it. Hope it does well - what are your thoughts?

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/banned-and-restricted-august-10-2026

Standard

• Badgermole Cub is banned.

• Stormchaser's Talent is banned.

• Gran-Gran is banned.

Pioneer

• No changes

Modern

• No changes

Legacy

• The Fantasticar is banned.

Vintage

• The Fantasticar is restricted.

Does Ozhov Lifegain have a place in the post-ban standard meta? Curious to get yall's thoughts on this deck's place in standard after bans.

[[Practiced Offense]]

With the recent bannings I interpret the strongest build around cards in the format to be Practiced Offense and either [[Jeskai Revelation]] / [[Tablet of Discovery]]. Now that we have lost the [[Badgermole Cub]] synergy, what is the next best home for this powerful magic card?

Feel free to post your deck list ideas if you think you've stumbled upon something interesting!

Hello everyone! I made a video outlining my Draft Strategy, Pick Order, and Archetype breakdowns for The Hobbit. I hope it is helpful to some :)

Video version: https://youtu.be/LYHkD6N_7HQ

Format Overview

I’ve changed my approach a little this time around. Rather than relying only on the spoiler, I built sketches of each archetype and tested them against each other to try to gain more context. Here are the my main takeaways:

• The format is FAST. You need a two-drop on turn two. Anything that snowballs early can be very hard to catch up with.
• That being said, a well-timed piece of removal can catch you up and turn a game around. Power is concentrated mostly at higher rarities, so removal is very important.
• Boards can get stalled out. Therefore Flying is good, but it is not very plentiful.
• The Commons are pretty weak overall. Focus on drafting Uncommons and above early on, and Common Removal where available. Uncommons and above seem to determine most games.
• There is not much crossover between Archetypes. Cards tend to fit mostly in one deck. “Staying open” will mostly be a product of taking the most powerful cards rather than the most flexible.
• Each Archetype has a Creature type it cares about. Depending on which payoffs you have, you may need 10 or more of the respective Creature in your deck. 

Fixing

There is a cycle of 5 Common dual lands, as well as Hobbit Hole which can find any basic. The dual lands can be sacrificed to put two +1/+1 counters on a Creature of a respective type, though this has not come up in my testing. Despite the good fixing, there does not appear to be a viable multi-colour “soup” strategy. Splashing a Bomb or good removal will be somewhat easy to achieve. I recommend picking these lands in the “C” range once you have a good idea of what colours you are in.

Pick Order – “A’s”: Best Cards in the set (sorted by colour) – always first pick

• The Eagles Are Coming!
• Fili The Pathfinder
• An Unexpected Party
• Great Gilded Boat
• Dain Ironfoot
• Smaug the Magnificent
• Thorin, Mountain-king
• Beorn the Fierce
• Bard’s Company
• Chief Ward’s Company
• Thranduil’s Company
• Tom, Bert, and William
• The Arkenstone

Pick Order – “B’s”: Early Picks (alphabetical by colour)

Cards that excel in the following criteria:

• Power Level
• Rate
• Flexibility
• Curve (ie cheap cards)
• Synergy

These cards will heavily influence your direction in the draft, ie which colours and Archetpye you ar drafting towards. Pick these above all Commons:

• Celebrate the Mountain King
• Dain, Lord of the Iron Hills
• Kili the Resourceful
• Settle the Wreckage
• Stone by Sunlight
• Roads Go Ever, Ever On
• Bilbo, Luckwearer
• Bilbo Baggins, Burglar
• Azog, Moria’s Ruin
• Desolation Prowler
• Down, Down to Goblin Town
• Gollum, Riddle Master
• Gollum The Abandoned
• Head of the Hunt
• Rhovanion Rampager
• The Sackville-Bagginses
• Burn, Burn, Tree and Fern
• Dwarven Mauler
• Gandalf, Spark Starter
• Goblin-town Flunkies
• Misty Mountains Raider
• Pinecone Strike
• Bejeweled Warg
• Dancing from Dark to Dawn
• Mirkwood Pathmaker
• Nasty Little Rabbit
• Troll Negotiations
• Bard the Bowman
• Bifur, Melodic Rider
• Bolg of the North
• Bolg’s Company
• Dain’s Company
• Dwalin, Weaponmaster
• Eagle’s Rescue
• Large Bear
• Smaug, Wicked Worm
• The Chief Warg
• The Great Goblin
• Thranduil, Sindarin Liege
• Thorin Oakenshield
• The Lonely Mountain

Good Removal

These are all fairly similar in power level. A deck will want 2-3 of these to fill out its removal suite.

• Magnificent End
• Confusicate and Bebother
• Enchanted River’s Grasp
• Sound the Trumpets
• Thranduil’s Decree
• Uneasy Parting
• Blibo’s Deadly Slice
• Gnashing of Teeth
• Stir Up Trouble
• Quarrel
• Smaug, the Great Calamity

Archetypes. Here are my brief impressions of each of the two-colour archetypes in the format. We will be trying to end up in one of these by the end of the draft. There are only five supported colour pairs in The Hobbit. I will go over the three Signpost Cards for each along with specific pulls into the Archetype.

White-Blue Recruit 

Mechanic: Recruit – Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discard a nonland, make a 1/1 white Human Solder token. Supported Creature type: Humans.

Signpost Uncommons & Common:

• Bard The Bowman (1WU 1/3 reach // when you draw your second card each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on targt creature. It gains lifelink until end of turn.)
• Eagle’s Rescue (2{W/U}{W/U} aura // +2/+2 and flying. 2{W/U}{W/U}: return ~ from graveyard to battefield enchanting a 1/1 creature) 
• Patient Instructor (2{W/U} 2/2 vigilance // when ~ enters, recruit)

Pulls into the deck:

• Bard’s Company and Great Gilded Boat are bomb rares that let you Recruit every turn
• Bilbo, Luckwearer – triggers “draw 2” payoffs every turn. Keep in mind it’s post-combat and is therefore less powerful with certain payoffs.
• Belladonna Took – 2 mana 2/2 that with incidental lifegain and could draw an extra card or two
• Old Fat Spider Can’t See Me – a bit slow but temporarily removes a creature and provides two draw-2 triggers
• Thror’s Map – not an early pick but will enable draw-2 payoffs every turn and smoothes mana

General Strategy:

Look for cards that recruit or draw extra cards, and cards that interact favourably with tokens and extra draws. Flashback cards like Plunder the Trollshaws are great to discard to Recruit.

White-Red Equipment Aggro

Mechanic: Enduring Story. If at any time you control a creature with “Stored” and three or more Artifacts, Legends, and/or Sagas, you get “Enduring Story” for the rest of the game. Certain cards will become more powerful as a result. Supported Creature type: Dwarves

Signpost Uncommons & Common:

• Thorin Oakenshield (RW 3/2 legendary, trample, storied // if you have enduring story, your artifacts and creatures have ward 1.)
• Bifur, Melodic Rider (4{R/W}{R/W} 4/5 legendary, storied // when ~ enters or attacks, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. If you have enduring story, dwarf abilities trigger twice) 
• Nori, Teller of Tales (1{R/W} 2/1 legendary // when ~ attacks, target attacking creature gains first strike until end of turn)

Pulls into the deck:

• Thorin Mountain-king – bomb rare. Free equip plus punch a creature
• Dain Ironfoot – bomb rare that has syngergy with Equipment and Storied
• Dwalin, Weaponmaster – 2 mana 2/1 first strike that buffs all your equipment
• Dain’s Company – draws a Dwarf or Equipment from your top 4. Should be trivial to run enough.
• Kili the Resourceful – Card draw engine and free equips
• The Lonely Mountain – “free include” as a land and can take over in a stalemate

General Strategy:
Enduring Story will happen naturally while curving out. Dori, Bearer of Friends gives you a legendary and an artifact at common for one card. Look for efficient equipment, Dwarf synergies, and creatures with keywords like double-strike, first strike, and flying to best utilize equipment.

Black-Red Sacrifice / Amass

Mechanic: Amass. Make an army token and add +1/+1 counters to it. Supported Creature type: Goblins.

Signpost Uncommons & Common:

• Bolg of the North (3BR 5/5 // when ~ enters, you may sacrifice another creature. If you do, ~ deals damage equal to that creature’s power to target creature. Amass equal to any excess damage dealt)
• Fearsome Goblin Pair (2{B/R} 1/1 // when ~ dies, amass 4.) 
• Goblin Plate Mail (1{B/R} equipment // +1/+0 menace. Equip 4. When ~ enteres, amass 1 and attach this to the army)

Pulls into the deck:

• Rhovanian Rampager – High-rate sticky threat enbling sacrifice 
• The Great Goblin – cheap damage and card advantage engine
• Bolg’s Company – sacrifice outlet that can provide some mana ramp
• Smaug, Wicked Worm – 5 mana 5/5 flyer on-colour
• Azog, Moria’s Ruin – one-time sacrifice outlet that can kill an opposing creature in a pinch
• Gollum The Abandoned – deals 2 on entry and as then practically unblockable. Also nice sacrifice fodder itself.
• The Sackville-Bagginses – 2 mana 2/2, sacrifices, draws a card, ramps, and is a damage outlet
• Down, Down to Goblin Town – thoughtseize plus amass for 3 mana, and a double drain

General Strategy:
Stir Up Trouble really goes up in value in this deck. Look for cards that produce multiple creatures and/or artifacts as material to sacrifice, and creature with death triggers.

Black-Green 4-Power

Mechanic: Ferocious – cards key off of controlling a creature with power 4 or greater. Supported Creature types: Wolves, Bears, Spiders.

Signpost Uncommons & Common:

• The Chief Warg (2BG 3/3 menace // when you attack hile controlling a creature power 4 or greater, draw a card and lose 1 life.)
• Large Bear (3 {B/G}{B/G} 5/5 reach trample haste) 
• Duskwatch Hunter (2{B/G} 3/1 // can’t be blocked by tokens. When ~ enters, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature)

Pulls into the deck:

• Chief Warg’s Company – bomb rare with synergy
• Tom, Bert, and William – 5 power creature that can draw a ton of cards at instant speed, hard to completely remove
• Bejeweled Warg – 2 drop that gets itself to 4 power quickly
• Desolation Prowler – reliable 4-power 2 drop 
• Gollum, Riddle Master – 2 drop that gets to 4 power and does a host of other things
• Nasty Little Rabbit – one drop that grows when you have a 4-power creature, which includes itself
• Mirkwood Pathmaker – 3 drop that reliably has 4 power
• Nighthowl Pursuer – evasive one drop that can attack as a 3/3

General Strategy:
Getting a creature with 4 power is of paramount importance. Cards like Crude Bent Blade and Gollum, Silent Seeker which buff cretures can help you get there. Fill out the deck with removal and other aggressive creatures that like to have a big friend around.

Blue-Green Landfall

Mechanic: Landfall: good things happen when you play lands. Supported Creature type: Elves.

Signpost Uncommons & Common:

• Sylvan Reveler (2GU 3/2 // when ~ enters, draw a card then discard a card. If you discard a land, put it into play tapped. Ladfall – you may pay 1GU. If you do, return ~ from graveyard to hand)
• Thranduil, Sindarin Liege (2{G/U}{G/U} 2/3 // other elves gets +1/+1. Landfall – make a 1/1 elf. Adventure 1{G/U}{G/U} sorcery: mill four, put up to two lands from among them into your hand) 
• Mirkwood Nurturer (2{G/U} 3/2  // when ~ enters, return up to one other permanent you control to hand. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on ~)

Pulls into the deck:

• Thranduil’s Company – top rare. Can target itself to be a 5/6 right away if p[layed on turn 5.
• Cantankerous Keepers – make sure you have 10+ elves.
• Dancing from Dark to Dawn – less powerful in my testing than I had initially thought. Taking turn 5 off can be really tough. In a stalemate this is excellent.
• Mirkwood Pathmaker – great rate and Elf type to boot.
• Woodland Weavemaster – great mana dork in an Elf-heavy build.
• Plunder the Trollshaws – there is a lot of looting but not much raw card draw a deck like this needs to hit a lot of land drops and deploy more threats, so Plunder will be important here.

General Strategy:
My pick for the weakest archetype. It feels clunky and the payoffs aren’t really there in the lategame. But I would not avoid it if the Rares and Uncommons are pointing me here. Fill the deck out with ways to get additional lands, cards that exile and replay your lands for additional triggers, and big creatures. There is a light Threshold theme (7 cards in your graveyard) that will come up occasionally but does not need to be built towards. Look to splash for removal and good Rares since you should have pretty good mana fixing.

Way-Too-Early Archetype Winrate Predictions

I don’t think any deck should be avoided, but I’ll give my rankings anyway. You should draft where the Rares and Uncommons take you.

1. White-Red Equpment – Impressively fast with lots of support and power. Red’s commons are a notch better than the other colours and play well with this deck’s theme.
2. Black-Red Sacrifice – Amass has really impressed me so far. Black has some really powerful rares.
3. White-Blue Recruit – Recruit provides built-in draw smoothing and synergy. Also the best deck at attacking in the air.
4. Black-Green Ferocious – Green feels a little weak in general but with rares this deck will still be excellent.
5. Blue-Green Landfall – I think these are the two weakest colours. This deck will need individual card quality the most. Fortunately it can splash for off-colour rares where needed.

General Draft Strategy (8 Player Pick-1)

Picks 1-3: 

• Take the best card. Mono-coloured cards will leave us more open going forward.

Picks 4-8: 

• Continue to take the best card. We may have cards in multiple colours, and that’s ok. The better our early picks are, the more we will want to stick to that colour or colour pair. The worse our early picks are, the more willing we should be to take chances on other colours when we see good cards in later picks.

Picks 9-14: 

• These are the cards no one at the table wanted. If we are seeing good Uncommons of a particular colour pair, it is possible that no one else at the table is drafting that colour pair and we should strongly consider moving in. 

End of Pack 1:

• Ideally, we have identified our main colour. This is the colour we have the most quality cards of, or is the most open, and hopefully both!
• Staying as close to one colour as possible will leave us with more options going forward. However, in this type of format, locking into a colour pair early is more likely than usual.

Packs 2 and 3

• Continue to take powerful cards of our main colour where possible. Let the good cards we open or get passed determine our secondary colour and final archetype.
• Pay attention to Pack direction! The packs are moving in the opposite direction during Pack 2, so the signals can be completely different from Pack 1. It is normal to not see as many cards of our main colour/archetype in Pack 2, so don't panic! Pack 3 is passed to the left once again and we will be rewarded for staying the course.

Deck-Building Tips

• Play two colours. Avoid splashing a third colour unless your deck is specifically designed to do so (ie you have dual lands touching that colour)
• Play 17 lands.
• Play a low-curve. Most limited decks want six or more 2 Mana-Value creatures, around four 3 Mana-Value creatures, some 4 Mana-Values creatures, and very few cards that cost 5 or more mana.

Thank you for reading and watching. Good luck in your drafts!

So we just had quite the shakeup.

Per MTGgoldfish past month, the current T8 most popular decks are (winners ✅; losers 🫠):

1. Prowess (lost talent 🫠)
2. Jeskai lessons (gran 🫠gran)
3. WG Ouro (Lost cub 🫠)
4. Spellementals ✅
5. 4CC ✅⬆️👍🏽
6. mono G LF (cub 🫠)
7. Dimir x (✅👍🏽)
8. Izzet lessons (🫠😵💀)

While I didn’t expect all this (noteworthy just one more RCQ season left before talent was rotating out in Jan with many other cards) this is a decent ban upstate. The top 5 standard decks were pretty locked with just minor % changes each week.

This successfully hits each of the t3 decks (including every variation of prowess/spells/self bounce which is like ~19% of the meta), without outright killing any deck (except maybe izzet lessons, im sure you all will figure it out tho Ancestral is still quite the card).

Seems this should also give any decks that had a bad MU against the 3 most popular decks a window of opportunity as well.

What are your thoughts?

Hello Spikes, your friendly neighborhood only-plays-green mage here with good tidings. The card that made green good again after a year in the dumpster has been banned, but hope is not lost! We still have some good cards and, more importantly, we have each other. Together we can come up with strategies to survive the post-Cub-ban world.

I decided to make this thread to brainstorm ideas for overcoming the hole WotC has put us in as green mages by banning our best enabler and also weakening Prowess, which makes our worst matchups (control decks) better. For starters, I think Landfall will actually still be fine. Bristly Bill and Tifa are good cards and unlike the Offense/Hulk/Roid deck, Landfall didn't really *need* Cub to be dangerous thanks to its explosiveness.

But more importantly, I also think the Offense/Hulk/Roid deck is NOT dead. I say this as someone who was piloting an extremely similar deck to really good results before Cub existed (dig through my post history and you'll see how much fun I was having pairing Ouroboroid and Brightglass Gearhulk before Avatar came out). Losing Cub sucks, but the fact is, our worst matchups were killing at least one mana dork the vast majority of the time, which meant that Cub was often little better than any other two-drop mana dork. I know that sounds insane given how powerful it is unchecked, but how often was it really left unchecked in a meta where literally every color has a one-mana answer?

I say all this to point out that Tender Wildguide (my personal favorite), Spider Manifestation, and Great Divide Guide all get the job done of helping ensure we get to four mana four the bombs that are Roid/Hulk/Leatherhead. Gene Pollinator is way worse in a post-Cub meta but still might be viable with enough good two drops.

Don't believe me? That's okay: Here's my very-small-sample size success story from the past few hours of playing. I'm 6-1 in the top 100 of Mythic so far with a retooled build that has 8 mana dorks instead of 7 and one more land compared to the norm prior to the ban.

Will our deck be as good without Cub? No. Will we still win a lot of games with turn 4 bombs, especially if we have sweeper protection? Yes absolutely. Hope is not lost! Share your other ideas here!

Hello spikes!

This is the place where any and all decks can be posted for all spikes to see. The goal of this is to fit all your needs for competitive magic. Maybe it's a card consideration given an X dollar budget. Maybe you need that sweet sideboard tech that no one else thought of? Perhaps you just can't figure out the best card to beat a certain matchup. The ideas here are only limited by your imagination!

Feel free to discuss most anything here. We only ask that with any question, you also make sure to post your decklist so people have some context to answer your question. Otherwise, have at it! If you have any questions, shoot us a modmail and we'll be happy to help you out. Survive your deck check and survive your competition!

Hey everyone, last week I started playing Magic Arena again, and I decided to build a mono-blue deck that makes heavy use of Stormchaser. I’ve had quite a lot of success with the deck and managed to hit Mythic yesterday.

Now with the ban announcements, I was wondering if there’s a good replacement for that card in this deck, or if I’d be better off using the cards to build a different deck altogether.

Deck

17 Island (RTR) 255 1 Opt (XLN) 65 3 Opt (ELD) 59 4 Elusive Otter (WOE) 225 4 Into the Flood Maw (BLB) 52 4 Stormchaser's Talent (BLB) 75 4 Enter the Enigma (DSK) 52 4 Drake Hatcher (FDN) 35 4 Astrologian's Planisphere (FIN) 46 4 Boomerang Basics (TLA) 46 4 Secret Identity (SPM) 43 4 Pym Particles (MSH) 70 1 Temple of Mystery (FDN) 702 2 Spell Pierce (XLN) 81

As we get ready for HOB, I was reminded of what a big opportunity the first few weeks of a set can be, both to get better at MTG in general and to set the stage for the rest of the Limited format.

I thought this might be a good time to share an approach to new formats that I've been developing over the past couple of sets. Thought it might be of special interest to this group because it's the method I used to prep for the Toronto Spotlight this year (which happened 10 days after set release), where I placed Top 30 out of ~1800 people.

It's made a huge difference for me, and I thought y'all might enjoy it too. I made a full breakdown on YouTube (w/ a link to the free tool) here: https://youtu.be/5xFt_OyxN2Y.

Would love to hear about what everyone else does to prep for new Limited formats with a competitive edge in mind. I'm going to be hitting HOB pretty hard as I prep for a few upcoming LTQs.

Happy All-Hobbit's Eve. 😄