With all these new cards around, it’s interesting to notice how oceansoul iteration is playing the full set of Ornithopter. With a 2nd place finish in an MTGO Challenge, it seems like playing 0-2 Ornithopters is not mandatory and going all in on the Moon-Circuit Hacker tempo play could be great. It helps Arclight Phoenix go into the graveyard and accelerates our more expensive spells, and its level 3 is also relevant. Besides being a great mana sink, it makes our removals like Lightning Axe hit bigger targets as Niv-Mizzet, Reborn or Ygra, Eater of All.
Learn how to play Selesnya Ramp in Alchemy, with a breakdown of the key cards and strategies the deck uses. Compare the statistics of every card in Standard and filter by specific archetypes to find the most impactful cards for your deck. I can say confidently that it hasn’t become a force around the top dogs because this color pair already has amazing iterations in Tier 1. You may ask yourself why you should dedicate time to mastering this Rakdos Tree of Perdition deck instead of playing Rakdos Prowess or Rakdos Midrange.
Five Decks to Play in the Explorer Metagame Challenge
If you’re looking for a strong deck with the best chance of winning matches, these might just be for you. Faerie Miscreant may not seem very playable in Pioneer, but Mockingbird from Bloomburrow gives the creature a massive buff. Since Mockingbird can essentially act as copies 5-8 of Faerie Miscreant, it’s very easy to draw cards off of the creature’s effect. Dimir Ninjas is a tempo strategy that utilizes a lot of unique synergies involving the Ninjutsu mechanic.
The deck utilizes a suite of hatebear creatures that are all tied together by the power of Collected Company and Enduring Innocence. Once you have enough mana, you can begin digging through your deck with Impulse and Dark Petition. Ideally, these cards will find Emergent Ultimatum which can guarantee you the win. Just name Omniscience, Fae of Wishes, and Lier, Disciple of the Drowned and you’ll always get a winning card. The only caveat to this deck’s success is that Parhelion needs to be in the graveyard first. Thankfully, this is rather easy to accomplish thanks to discard effects.
Dimir Oculus is perhaps the biggest winner of the B&R announcement as its core is not impacted at all by the changes. This makes it a solid choice for the mtg card current metagame especially with more permission, disruption, card draw, and removal coming out of the sideboard. With sets changing all the time and hundreds of cards available to use in Standard play, there are too many factors to try to calculate. When a new set releases, players immediately start working out the best strategies and finding out the weak links and the strongest cards. More often than not, an exploitable weakness in a card will lead to that card being banned but typically it takes some time before that happens.
Devotion to Green
This deck has an over 59% win rate, which is enough of a reason for you to try it. Cathar Commando is a nice answer to artifacts and enchantments, while Phyrexian Missionary offers some welcome recursion for your Leeches, etc. The deck also runs a lone copy of Anoint with Affliction, which is handy to have early game against the likes of Gruul Aggro. Up the Beanstalk is only as good as the five plus mana spells you pair with it, and Matsukasa10’s list has some crackers.
Raffine’s Informant, Bitter Triumph, Grisly Salvage, and Cache Grab each offer a reliable way to put Parhelion in the bin. From here, all you need to do is play Greasefang and the ball is rolling. Selesnya Angels is another classic Pioneer archetype that hasn’t been viable for quite some now. Thanks to the recent bans shaking up the metagame, however, this once-beloved archetype is back in vogue. More than just popping up as a fun niche choice, Selesnya Angels is proving to be a real metagame contender. Whether you’re looking to find the archetype that’s right for you or just scope out the competition, we’ve got you covered.
Stock Up: Lessons from an sleeper card that became a staple
Mucking around with +1/+1 counters lets him draw the entire deck, gain tons of life, and ping the opponent to death. Combo players had to make considerable changes to the deck with the loss of ltr-246-the-one-ring and to build around som-179-mox-opal’s Metalcraft requirements. The printing of mh3-199-psychic-frog has made Dimir the preferred colors for Modern mainstay pmh2-52p-murktide-regent, which itself has taken a backseat to the powerful dsk-42-abhorrent-oculus. Discarding it with the frog, the eye is one of the best targets for ha7-8-unearth, and makes it very hard to deal with when backed by counterspells.
This highlights the green version of the deck that has overall a very strong card quality, but can lack consistency. A new Izzet variant utilizing Artist’s Talent and Wish is now the preferred way to play the deck. While this version of Lotus Field is much more consistent, it has the downside of being much more difficult to pilot. When played alongside Spelunking or Escape to the Wilds these creatures ensure you have all the mana you’d ever need. This, in turn, allows you to play massive game-ending threats like Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Zacama, Primal Calamity.
Being in four colors is a challenge to be sure, but Caves like Captivating Cave and Forgotten Monument go a long way towards fixing that issue. This deck plays many of the now-bulk Cave synergy pieces from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, combined with the card draw engine that is Up the Beanstalk. The result is a colorful, chaotic list unlike anything else in Standard right now. If you want to wander off the beaten track for a budget price, you can’t do much better than this.
The card advantage this creature generates can go over the top thanks to Eldrazi Displacer, a creature that has been reclaiming its spots in this archetype decklist. Some lists include wot-40-blood-moon in the main deck, which it can rummage away with the pyromancer in case it’s a dead card, so make sure to fetch basics in Game 1. The core of the deck is much the same, with the combo of mh3-29-guide-of-souls and mh3-122-galvanic-discharge powering those explosive starts. Ultimately, while Rakdos Prowess is proving to be incredibly powerful, it’s not ineffable.
By pairing either Venerated Loxodon or Knight-Errant of Eos with cards that help you go wide with tokens, such as Gleeful Demolition. You can cast one of these Convoke Creatures as early as turn one, but generally your fast starts will happen on turn two. When it comes to getting value from lands, Lotus Cobra is a vital early card. The same is true for Nissa, Resurgent Animist since they both help with temporary ramp.
It forces your opponent to play at your speed – a game which you are built to win. A relentless amount of card advantage coupled with removal, hand disruption, and countermagic makes Dimir Ninjas feel like the tempo decks of old. Fans of the Dimir strategies in the Standard format will likely feel right at home with this deck. While Izzet Phoenix dominated the Pioneer format before the release of Wilds of Eldraine, the deck got a whole lot more powerful thanks to the set. Sleight of Hand and Picklock Prankster helped to innovate the deck, bringing it to the next level.