#standard deck

Happy to report than my pet Arena deck remains operative in the new standard environment. Biogenic Ooze and Sharktocrab still do a lot of the heavy lifting, and Simic Ascendancy remains an underestimated powerhouse in the deck. I’ve won more than one game that I should have lost because my opponent forgot about the win condition on the card.

Sad to have to cut Arcane Adaptation, as it really helped Biogenic Ooze go nuts, but that’s Standard rotation for you, and the deck functions fine without it. It takes a bit longer to hit the Simic Ascendancy win, but with Eldraine and food tokens around, it seems games run a bit longer anyway.

SPeaking of Eldraine, I’ve added The Great Henge, which seems like a good way to get counters and should be cheaper under most circumstances and help with its incidental life gain, and Castle Garenbrig for the added ramp value.

Suggestions/constructive commentary welcome; full decklist below:

Hey all! “Hi disappointment!” E-yup. Yeah, I’m behind on them Commander Challenge articles, that’s my bad. But hey, got a standard brew for you all~

“Uh-huh...”

Yeah, and it’s budget and not a typical Standard deck!

“Trying to steal that lime light from Dev from SBMTG and Wedge from TheManaSource~” Yeah...yeah...Did you know... You know what, just going to just talk about the deck now.

So what we have here is Blue/ Green Aggro. Originally this was going to be a Tempo deck...but I like to hit things with big creatures.

Oh, before we continue, 90% of our cards are costed under two mana, with only 2 cards costing six mana (for late game).

Onto our Creatures.

Our main dude

We’re running 4X of this dude. With many of our spells being pump spells (more on that later).  On Turn three we can have a Deeproot at 9 power. Which many decks just can’t deal with. 

With four of these guys, and one of our many one-drops. Speaker just fills that void of being a Kird-Ape. A total of 2 power on turn 2 isn’t terrible. As mentioned before with a total of 9 damage...make that 11?

Another early game beater, with the upside of being getting through  those pesky creatures. We can do some similar plays; like Deeproot Champion. Even late game, we can drop one or two Speakers to have this buddy go through for three damage. We’re running four of these to get these out early.

As with the above, we’re running 4. Slither Blade is being played as an extra “8″ copies of River Sneak..or maybe the other way around.

Again, we got four. One of our few ways of protecting our creatures. Also, Turn two we can have Siren deal 5 damage. That’s a quarter of your opponents life!

Pump Spells!

So many of these are self explanatory. They’re meant to just help us end the game early. 

We’re running 3 Blossoming Defense, which acts as a neat trick. In Standard we are going to see a lot of Red decks, and a bunch of targeted removal. We always want to cast this in response to something. Especially since we have squishy creatures.

So I’m just going to give these both the same spot.  We run 3 Gift of Strength, and 2 copies of Shed Weakness. This is just good early turn damage. Cast both of these on turn 3 on a Deeproot Champion for an 8/8 creature. 

Man, this would have been great as an Instant. We are running 4 of these just to make sure we get it on turn 3. This is a rather slow pump spell, but in many regards, that added Trample makes it worth it. Again 9/9 with trample on turn 3? Seems good.

3 copies of this, with 12 total Merfolk, seems good. Now, we only have one un-blockable Merfolk. Early game this can get our one drops into late game threats. With Deeproot Champion it can make him a 4/4. Not bad if we need a late game body. 

We’re playing 2 copies of Heroic Intervention. A great combat trick when we need to have blockers, and want to alpha-strike next turn. This also allows us to withstand some of the best removal in Standard.

Late game plays

We’re an aggro deck. We can run out of steam. We’re running 2 copies of Pull from Tomorrow in order to prevent that. That instant speed, so good. Also we’re only running 2, because we don’t want them to clog our hand. Also running 19 lands is a killer. So at mos we might be able to tap 6 to draw 4? It’s ok.

So, a slower Cyclonic Rift. We’re only running 2 copies, like Rift we don’t want this in our early game. Also this kind of deals with a few of those giant Dinosaurs...if they haven’t killed us yet. This is great too, when we just can’t reliably swing in with a Champion, or a Siren. We’re only running 19 lands. 4x Botanical Sanctum, 8 Forest, and 7 Island. This can be changed to your liking, and based on your local FNM meta. 

We’re going to delve into the side-board. We become this pseudo-tempo deck, if needed.

We’re running three Unsummon, the Ace-card for old-school Tempo decks. This can reset their late game plays...like a particular Mono-red Dragon, or bounce an annoying blocker, so Deeproot Champion can get through. 

This card really depends on your meta, but with Reigasaur Alpha, Vraska, and  some other big Standard cards. This might be needed. At the worst, it’s a 3/1 flyer with flash. We’re only playing 2, because we really don’t want to draw too many of these.

We’re going to side in all 3 of these hungry dudes. Manly because Standard is going to have a good amount of Graveyard strategy decks still. Against aggro, we can just gain life, and against control, a large creature.

3 copies for Control. It helps out race them in draw, and when they get a board, we can spend mana to make it another unblockable creature. 

We’re running 4 Rebuff’s because we want that “Tempo” plan against faster creature decks and against control, they won’t expect it.

Our entire strategy is to hit fast and hard, then switch it up to be a more “control-ish” deck. 

Are we faster than Mono-red, Ramunap-red, etc? No, we aren’t. We can race them in damage on turn three, but we’re going to be trading blow-for-blow. Against control and mid-range strategies, we can actually win early enough, before they get a board. When game two hits with those decks, we switch it up ourselves and tempo with them. Again, we play mostly low drops, so we’re putting our eggs in one basket to win on turn 4 the latest.  Oh, yeah, budget. for both A full 60 card deck and a 15 card side-board. Well, $57 in total. Oh, and this using only cards from Kaladesh block and forward. Not that bad, considering that’s 4-5 weeks of drafts. Here’s the whole deck.