For those of you who don’t know, I won PPTQ about a month ago. If you have not read it yet, check out my report on the event. The tournament was a thrilling endeavor. I am very excited to be qualified for the first Regional PTQ in our new system and I plan on preparing thoroughly for the event. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be spending a lot of time in preparation.

You, the community, should benefit from my experience also, so I will be detailing the experience here in my articles. Most likely, I will cover multiple topics, but I will also have updates from my testing for the event.

To get things started, we need to figure out what is going to happen in the metagame with the release of Dragons of Tarkir. Normally, at this time of year, I would not typically be anticipating much change in Standard, but with Dragons being a large set, there are many more factors at play than there would normally be. That leaves us with a lot of work to do.

Luckily though there will be tons of data available to us from a variety of events that will happen between now and then. You can be sure I will be keeping up to date on what happens with any new innovation and sharing it here in my article.

Before we have any results to work with, there are some archetypes to explore brought to us from the fine new cards in Dragons. First up is the deck recently released from hibernation, Mono-Blue Devotion. One of the reasons this game is so great is because when one new card is printed, it can spawn a new deck or revitalize a previous archetype. That brilliance in card design is an amazing thing to experience.

For this deck the card that brought Mono-Blue back from the dead is obviously Shorecrasher Elemental. I spent most of spoiler season thinking this water elemental was a 4/4, so maybe I should get my eyes checked. Even at his actual stats of 3/3, he is still quite good and definitely is enough to make the deck playable again. I am not looking for a playable deck for the RPTQ though, I am looking for the deck that will give me the best shot to qualify for the Pro Tour. Here is my initial list for this deck.

There are a lot of great qualities about this deck and it is consistently potent in its ability to attack the opponent. We have a two-mana 4/1 and lots of evasive creatures, not to mention the always sick Master of Waves.

Something has been bothering me about this deck though, which took me a while to figure out. The problem is the two-cost creatures, which are all-in on being aggressive. One of the reasons Mono-Blue was great a while ago was in its ability to change roles easily. With Frostburn Weird and Tidebinder Mage, you were able to keep attacking with your one mana flyers while holding the ground and setting up for the midgame devotion plan.

This Standard environment does not have the card pool to support that type of strategy. We do have Omenspeaker, and it might be necessary to play it in this deck but there are no cards that will allow you to switch roles. Most matchups you will be the aggressive player, and in those games, this deck is well suited to carry you to victory. When you need to be defensive though, there are not many tools available.

It’s possible that the combination of Frost Walker and Omenspeaker, the one word brothers as I like to call them, would be good enough together to form this team of sometimes aggressive, sometimes defensive, but it would not be nearly as consistent. So, as for now, I’m putting Mono-Blue on the back burner. If you have any innovations that have been proving successful, please share them in the comments.

Next up is a strategy that I am really excited to try out. One of the major creature types that is supported in Khans block is warriors. Previously, if you wanted to play warriors, you were resigned to playing a watered down version of White Weenie which obviously didn’t win any events. Now that we have the full block legal to play with, I think we have reached a critical mass of this creature type so that we can make a competitive deck. Here is my initial take on the strategy.

Every creature in this deck is a Warrior, which means hopefully we can get Obelisk of Urd into play quickly to bring that giant boost to our team. The new additions from Dragons of Tarkir really boost the deck up in power level a lot. Dragon Hunter is great because it gives us yet another one-mana 2/1 to start the game off with.

The real lynch pin is Secure the Wastes. Last week, I included this card in my top 10 list and I think it’s going to be one of the most potent weapons in many strategies. In this deck it is particularly great because it’s nearly unbeatable in combination with Obelisk of Urd or Brutal Hordechief. It’s also not half bad with Chief of the Edge too.

Craig Wescoe is advocating for Sorin, Solemn Visitor in place of Obelisk of Urd so if the artifact ends up being too awkward, I will make that switch as well, but the payoff is too high to not utilize the +2/+2 team boost.

One weakness I immediately took note of is that this deck stops dead in its tracks to Hordeling Outburst. That card is basically a mini Hornet Queen against this deck the majority of the time. If this deck is going to succeed, there will need to be some serious sideboard slots devoted to beating red decks with that card.

There are other ideas I have for the deck like Spirit Bonds or Mastery of the Unseen. Both of those cards allow you to utilize excess mana, but I’m not sure either of them really fit in this deck. One card that may find its way to the sideboard is Return to the Ranks. With how many cheap creatures we have in this deck, returning them all back to play once they’ve been dealt with seems like a great way to close the game against control decks.

My plan is to start testing this archetype to see if it’s good enough for the big stage. I will probably take this deck to a local tournament this weekend and see how it fairs. I wish this deck were more like The Aristocrats and less like White Weenie, but at the moment it seems like a hybrid of the two concepts so that may be sufficient.

The last deck on my radar currently is Abzan Aggro. This deck is the one I won the PPTQ with and took 25th place at the TCG Player 5k with so I have a ton of big event experience with it and I know the matchups. Here is my current build with a couple Dragons cards.

As you can see, not much has changed. Dragons of Tarkir gave us some other options, but there are only a couple that I am interested in.

The first one is Dromoka's Command. For now, it seems like an upgrade to Reclamation Sage, but to be honest, they are very similar cards. They both give you two things. Dromoka's Command has four options and Reclamation Sage only has three options. The Sage allows you to choose which enchantment to destroy, which artifact to destroy, and then you get a 2/1 creature.

It’s possible that the command won’t prove as good because they will be able to choose which enchantment to get rid of instead of the one you want to remove. Giving your opponent the choice is never a good plan but the other modes on the card are solid too.

I’m wondering how often the other modes will come up though. How often will your opponent have an enchantment to sacrifice and a different creature for you to fight? You can always choose the +1/+1 counter, and while it’s helpful for breaking through similar size creatures, it’s not game breaking or anything.

The other card that I put in the sideboard was Dragonlord Dromoka herself. Originally I was not too high on any of the dragonlords. After thinking about them more and playing against Dromoka specifically, I think they are better than I initially gave them credit for.

For example, when you cast Dromoka, you basically time walk your opponent. What I mean is that since she cannot be countered, once you cast her, your opponent can no longer play spells on your turn. That forces them to deal with him on their turn and anything they were going to do on your turn is likely left undone. That is a powerful sequence. I doubt I want multiple six-cost spells in this deck, but it seems like a great card to bring in from the sideboard.

What cards have I overlooked? Are there more cards I should have considered for these three decks? Please let me know in the comments. I will be doing some testing with these decks as well as trying to figure out the metagame in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for all the action.

Until next time,
Unleash the Force!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com