Tax Day Came Early This Year

This week on Adam Plays Magic, we're sleeving up some good ol' fashioned Standard. After some time playing in Arena's digital-only formats, boy, does it feel good to play Luminarch Aspirant the way Richard Garfield intended.

The Mono-White Aggro deck has been a mainstay in Standard for the last year or so. Along the way, it's picked up key upgrades like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and most recently, The Wandering Emperor. The addition of Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire was also incredibly helpful. It functions as both a land and a spell in the deck, giving you ways to mitigate mana flood.

Notably, Faceless Haven was a four-of in the deck but recently received a ban alongside Alrund's Epiphany and Divide By Zero. Despite the nerf, Mono-White (MonoW) walked away ahead, simply replacing Haven with Cave of the Frost Dragon and Crawling Barrens. Meanwhile, blue-based decks had their engines wiped from the format.

As Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty cards have worked their way into Standard and the metagame has coalesced, more specific, targeted hate-pieces can better be utilized in MonoW. Specifically, Archon of Emeria stops the Runes deck (which we played an Alchemy version of last week) dead in its tracks. The front side of Reidane, God of the Worthy // Valkmira, Protector's Shield is brutal against the Blood on the Snow-based black decks, while the back is a beating against Oni-Cult Anvil aristocrats decks.

All in all, MonoW is very well positioned and continues to appear at the top of the Magic Online Standard Challenges. Without further ado, let's get to the deck.

The Deck

End Step

Don't forget to drop a like on the video and subscribe to the Quiet Speculation YouTube channel. Every little bit helps us grow and lets us do more content like this more often. As always, if you have any questions, reach out to me on Twitter at @AdamECohen. I'll catch you all next week.