With the complete Khans of Tarkir spoiler being release, we can now do a lot more than just wonder about what cards could ultimately be viable and instead pick up what will clearly go into decks.

I'm still not really sure exactly what manner of zany wedge or 4+ color decks players are looking to brew, but there are several decks that will definitely be surviving rotation.

The Holdovers

Rabble Red

Red beatdown decks are definitely losing a number of tools going into rotation. Burning-Tree Emissary will certainly be missed, and losing Mutavault will hurt all manners of aggressive strategies. That said, the current red deck of favor is maintaining its namesake, along with quite a few excellent options for supporting players.

Frenzied Goblin into Borderland Marauder into Rabblemaster is a very strong curve, and with Stoke the Flames at the top of that chain, red decks still have a lot of power.

Ultimately, the best build of suhk a deck is going to come down to just how far the rest of the field is stretching their mana and how popular the anti-red tools available become. I know that I wouldn't want to be playing Rabblemaster while my opponent is making these guys:

Of course, red mages could always push a strategy more synergy-driven, which could be crafted more decisively at this point. Eidolon of the Great Revel and Prophetic Flamespeaker still curve well into Fanatic of Mogis, but there is yet another direction we could go:

Three bodies for three mana is an interesting change of pace for red decks. These tokens would obviously make Rabblemaster hit harder, but more importantly they play very nicely with Hall of Triumph and Purphoros, God of the Forge-- those also not being slouches with Rabblemaster.

It is pretty unfortunate that Outburst doesn't help turn Purphoros into a creature, but perhaps the upside is high enough for this to not really matter. Either way, I fully expect people to try this, and it might be smart to trade for a few Purphoros, though I certainly wouldn't buy them at their current price, as there is just no way anybody is playing four copies of him and he is pretty niche.

Black Beatdown

While aggressive black decks have taken a backseat to their Pack Rat powered counterpart in RtR Standard, I find it extremely likely that people will be putting down their Gray Merchants and picking up Tormented Hero for Khans Standard.

This was already a reasonable block deck, and Bloadsoaked Champion is arguably the best black one drop ever printed. Minimally, he's an upgrade from Rakdos Cackler.

Grim Haruspex is another potential addition to such a deck, though it notably has significant downside over the other three-mana options that the deck has in addition to doing straight nothing against Anger of the Gods.

Master of the Feast could very well be the way to go if Anger is popular, though Haruspex is an option worth leaving open, and could be a good sideboard card at the very least.

Abstractly, Herald of Torment seems better than both options as a way to provide evasion as well as "haste" to three additional power. Not to mention that bestowing Herald onto Pain Seer is just fantastic.

In the dark, this is the maindeck I would run, with the least confidence in the three drops and the number of Sign in Blood that the deck should be playing.

No matter what is changed, Pain Seer is going to be a mainstay in this deck, which is very likely to be strong in a format of painlands and slow mana. It is only a regular rare, but there is no way that these stay under a dollar for long.

Golgari Self-Mill

There was a time when Conley Wood's "Dredge" deck was extremely popular on MTGO. It actually had a lot of favorable matchups and was very consistent for what it was. It was pretty weak to Burn, but since I didn't really play the deck, I can't really say what ultimately pushed nearly everybody off of it.

Perhaps it was weak to Black Devotion, but I couldn't say. Either way, the self-mill deck loses very few tools going into Khans Standard and even gains some interesting options going forward.

It remains to be seen whether Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is good enough for this type of strategy. If there were no blue mana symbols in Sidisi's cost, I believe the decision would be pretty easy, but it's possible that adding a third color isn't worth the cost in the deck.

Satyr Wayfinder certainly helps the mana, but the strength of the deck is that it makes Nemesis of Mortals and huge Nighthowlers quickly. The more taplands you play and the more damage your manabase does to you, the more inclined I would be to find a deck that plays a better game of ABC Magic.

It's more likely that I would be looking at Soul of Innistrad, Empty the Pits and Strength from the Fallen to add a bigger punch to the deck.

Soul of Innistrad strikes me as being a bit underpriced currently, and I like it as a spec. It's a core set mythic that is likely to bust any grindy matchup wide open, and with as many manafixing options available as there are, it could wind up in all manners of decks.

It's definitely slower and probably less good than Elspeth, Sun's Champion, but it's more resilient in addition to having a home in the self-mill deck where Elspeth just wouldn't make much sense.

New Stuff

I spent part of last week catching up with some old friends who were in town and playing the only event of Magic 2015-Ravnica-Theros Standard that I will ever play in the MOCS, so I haven't had a ton of time to brew. I've thought about a deck that plays Welkin Tern, Vaporkin and Master of Waves. I don't think it was very good.

That said, I do still fail to see how Mantis Rider won't be played and I still believe that Empty the Pits is underrated. Unfortunately I don't see how a regular rare could possibly be worth anything in a set with fetchlands.

There are a number of cards that I'm looking to acquire for my collection from Khans, but the only one that I believe is currently undervalued is Empty the Pits, but I don't expect it to go up by much because decks that want it are unlikely to want more than two copies.

I'm personally going to be waiting on everything from Khans that I'm not currently playing. Nothing looks like a sleeper, and outside of tracking down foils for Commander, I'm not looking to actively speculate on anything with any sense of immediacy.

I do plan to go nuts on fetchlands, particularly on MTGO, once the set is well-drafted and the market is nice and saturated. At that point it will be worth reassessing other cards in the set. There's still time for a number of Theros specks, like the aforementioned Pain Seer, and Nighthowler sounds like a solid pickup to me as well.

It's looking like Khans didn't deliver on my faith in Master of Waves, but I do believe that Master is only 1-2 cards off of being a Standard all star. It may even already be there in a way that I haven't been able to discover myself. Either way, I find it highly unlikely that we get two more sets in Standard without Master of Waves finding a solid home.

Either way, it shows up in Modern and it's still stock that I'm comfortable betting on.

I hope you did well at the pre-release and thanks for reading.

-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter