What a phenomenal weekend for Standard. Magic looked so good this past weekend. Let me count the ways:

• Mono-Red dueled blue control, a time-honored matchup.
• Jeskai Ascendancy combo didn't T8, saving us from boring combo rounds.
• Old legends and new players emerged into the T8. I don't know whether Adrian Sullivan's first T8 is more exciting than a 19 year old getting his first shot at glory.
• Elder Dragons! Plural!
• Decks that embraced in-set synergies (like Dragons Matter) vs. piles of good stuff Abzan that we've seen before.

Normally I write about the emergent decks in sections devoted to the deck, but this week I'll break it down to the cards a little more specifically. Let's get started.

Mono-Red Continues to Wreck

I think Devotion will move cards more than UB Control with a win, because a significant number of people want to crush UB Control in their own metagames because they hate it. Having said that, I am incredible at jinxing myself so I reckon that means Mono-Red will just sweep the show.

-me, yesterday

What is Mono-Red good at? Punishing slow starts and mulligans.

That's exactly what happened in the T8. Let's be frank--Dang had some very easy games, and that's because his list is oriented toward maximizing damage in the early game. This was in the face of decks packing quad Bile Blight to knock out Hordeling Outburst, for instance. Would Dang perform as well if we re-ran this T8 without forced sideboarding mulligans from his opponents? It's quite possible, since he's on the most aggressive deck around.

I expect even more people to play this deck in the next few weeks. If you've followed my coverage of past events, I've been a broken record about how cheap decks pick up easy fans. This is a very cheap deck, even given the manabase. One could cut Atarka's Commands to loosen the manabase and save $120 before heading to FNM to give it a spin. There's a clear line of how to invest in the deck and upgrade it later.

That said, have you looked at his list? Did you see how many M15 cards are in there? They will rotate in October along with the Theros block cards. Granted, there's only a handful of Theros, but this deck gets positively gutted by the loss of Goblin Rabblemaster, Stoke the Flames, Lightning Strike and even the lowly Foundry Street Denizen.

I don't expect we'll see such good burn and cheap red dudes going into fall, so this is not a deck to invest in for the long haul.

Actions: Zurgo is still a good pickup. He Dashed four times against Adrian Sulllivan, who could only look on his sorcery-speed removal and weep. I still like Roast and Hall of Triumph is currently pretty darned cheap.

On the other hand, Mana Confluence is a steep buy-in. The prime question is whether Atarka's Command will continue to climb. I was bearish on this card last week--it's $4.75 now and I think it can see a few dollars more.

Why? Well, cheap(ish) decks have this problem where they don't stay cheap for long. Even something packed with uncommons will end up going up in price. The Command isn't particularly thrilling; it seems to do about 6 damage on average, but in the boring form of "bolt you, overrun."

I realize how entitled it sounds to say that 6 damage for RG is unspectacular, by the way.

Early Hype Rarely Pans Out

In the early hours of the Standard portion on Friday, we saw a Chromanticore deck with Soulflayer.

Yes, the dream was realized several times on camera. The deck looked really fun to play, for starters. On the QS Chatroom, we discussed why we were staying away from it. The deck really needed to pan out more before most Insiders felt comfortable buying in. Several rounds later, the Manticores were no longer flying around.

What happened here? Well, Magic finance has gotten popular enough that people have hair triggers on buying into cards. They don't want to miss the next big spike or secret breakout. Thus, just seeing a card on camera is enough to get people's envy machines working, making them terrified of losing out on yet another run-up.

Part of what we try to do at QS is counsel people when to hold back and save money, and this was a clear time to wait. The end result is that neither card has gone up by more than about ten cents. A dud.

On another topic, we saw Den Protector and Deathmist Raptor doing a lot of work on camera. The hype train got right back on the rails when people saw Den Protector recursion for infinite blockers.

The thing that many forgot was that the player doing that recursion still lost their game. This format has too incredible of a top end to reward burdling and durdling when there are dragons to be cast. A similar thing for Deathmist Raptor--being a Mythic made it look tempting, but the card was already expensive going into the weekend.

It's best to consider how much you want to make, either in percentage profit or sheer dollars, before moving on a card. Making $4 on each Raptor is great until that profit gets swallowed up in transactional fees. Neither Raptor nor Den Protector made a T8 showing and I feel confident that they'll both drop in price soon.

Actions: Give a hyped card time to prove itself, even if that just takes a few hours. If you've got Den Protectors or Raptors, this is a good time to sell them.

Take your pick of UB Control

Fully half of the T8 was playing Polluted Deltas.

That's a marked change from Standard of years past, where we'd have UB or Esper show up on the fringes for a few weeks and then melt away again. You can go two ways with the deck.

Adrian Sullivan's list skips creatures entirely for a Planeswalker-centric approach. They gain a lot of incremental advantage over uncontested turns, and UB is the deck to do that with. He also plays a trio of Perilous Vault, which give him removal against Silumgar, the Drifting Death. He faced an unlucky turn of events vs. Mono-Red that put him away, but his deck looks oriented to stopping that strategy well.

On the other end, we've got decks packing Silumgar's Scorn and a handful of dragons. These decks look like where the real power of the format lies. When Shota picks up creatures, we should pay attention. Turning the Scorn into a raw Counterspell was amazing all weekend. On top of that, the Dragon decks have Dragonlord's Prerogative postboard to rip off uncounterable card draw in the mirror.

I expect a lot of UB Control in the next few weeks and the attendant counter-strategies to try to beat it. That means more Mono-Red and more Devotion.

Actions: Silumgar's Scorn looks cheap at $0.50 right now. Ugin is also going to hold his price for a long time, due to his presence across many archetypes. Icefall Regent saw a modest bump on MTGO and shows up in half the UB decks. I see this going from $1.30 to $2.50, or even up to $4, but it's risky because it also really looks like a bad draft leftover.

Dragonlord Silumgar will remain a solid role-player in the deck for weeks to come. He jumped about a dollar yesterday to $7.15 and I think this dragon has $10 on him soon. It's just such a versatile creature, especially because it can answer devastating Planeswalkers from opponents. That's something that UB Control has had a devil of a time doing, so this opens up an entirely new method of solving that problem.

Atarka and the Unbearable Enormity of Being

Dragonlord Atarka romped across the T8, showing up in both Devotion decks.

Strasky angled to make See the Unwritten hit the Dragonlord, while Hendriks was content to play Genesis Hydras alongside the giant dragon. A Bogardan Hellkite this is not, but geez--it's an 8/8 flying trampler, so there's a lot still going on here. We saw it pick off plenty of monsters over the course of this weekend, even getting Whipped out.

Atarka has climbed from $11 to $17 and is probably going to go up to $21 before it stabilizes. I justify this reasoning because Devotion is a go-to deck to fight UB Control. It gets huge and has a bunch of threats that laugh at Bile Blight. Atarka is going to be a premiere part of the list, especially because it'll knock out a monster or two from Abzan along the way. It's not good against UB Control, but it shores up all the other matchups.

Actions: The ship has sailed on picking up Dragonlord Atarka, but don't forget the rest of the deck. Whisperwood Elemental is $14 right now and is another solid $20 card. It feels like it's worth paying money for the way Elspeth, Sun's Champion did. It feels like a mythic that should command a good price because of its effect on the board.

People also seem to have forgotten about Polukranos, who sits at $5. That hydra briefly hit $15 and can double up again when people remember how insane it is with a Nykthos on the board. Xenagos is also about $6.50, having dropped from $18. When you sit down and look at these RG Devotion decks, they have an awful lot of orange rarity symbols.

I May Have Been Too Harsh On Courser of Kruphix

Last week, I lamented his demise. This week, twelve show up in the T8 to demonstrate my folly. It was everywhere this weekend, causing "failure to reveal draw" game losses along the way. Courser is still a monster of a card, and it looks more important in an emerging era of ramping. It'll stop Mono-Red and it's potent in all ways against UB Control. So, horseman, I am sorry.

Actions: Know that the pro circuit favors Abzan control more heartily than the SCG circuit does. Also, Strasky's deck has a playset of these, Rattleclaw Mystic and Sylvan Caryatid. That man never wants to run out of mana ramp.

Siege Rhinos Still Abound

Marco Ccaammiilluuzzii's Abzan Control deck looks tantalizing, yes? He gets to brawl with Siege Rhinos and Tasigur, he's got Fleecemane Lion on the board, and he can also turn into a three color Planeswalker list. I love that maindeck Ugin, for example.

Eight mana is a distinct possibility in Standard right now. He can cut right and go for Fleecemanes against fast aggro. He can switch left toboard in problematic Planeswalkers against control. In any case, he's using Elspeth to spam tokens.

Abzan is going to remain a popular strategy and this is a big divergence from what we've seen. He's put aside the Rakshasa Deathdealers. There's no Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Whip of Erebos around. In their place, just efficient Planeswalkers, spells and creatures.

Actions: Elspeth is $11 right now and I like her going forward. I'd hold off on buying them up until we see next week's results. Widespread adoption is the only way this out-of-print 'Walker sees a price boost.

Quick Hits Before I Sign Off

• Jason Chung's R/G list is really cool but I also beat that topic to death last week, so I wanted to spare you a rehashing when there was so much else to talk about.
• Still no Mono-Blue Devotion--I am not going to bother tracking this any more...
• Nykthos has quietly doubled in price since March, to $6. Strong candidate for a $10 card again.
• Does anyone else feel like the mana bases we've got right now are so good that we're spoiled? UB Control gets  a full twelve U/B lands.
• Pearl Lake Ancient punches through a bunch of the UB Control elements, but probably still loses to an Ugin.
• Two copies of Dragonlord Ojutai in Andrew Ohlschwager's otherwise-UB Control deck. Ojutai never seemed great in the mirror but cleans up on Abzan. I'm not confident about it going forward, though.

As always, let me know what you think. If it happens next week, we'll be here to talk about it.

-Doug