One interesting thing about competitive Magic compared to seasonal sports competition is that not all event weeks are created equal. There are peaks and troughs to the schedule – and this last fortnight has been quite an intense peak!
The release of Secrets of Strixhaven has added a ton of significant cards to the Constructed card pool, opening up new strategies and forcing deckbuilders to reconsider existing ones.
Then before the dust had even settled, this nascent new metagame was put on display for the world to see at Pro Tour Las Vegas. 325 of the world’s best players mixing it up for big prizes – a perfect opportunity to examine how Secrets of Strixhaven cards are shaking up Standard play.
ON THE E-RODE TO VICTORY
Standard is in an interesting place right now thanks to its gigantic card pool: 4,430 unique cards are legal at time of writing.
Let’s say the top 5% of cards are competitively playable, but only 1% of cards (about 3 per set) are in the real “S-tier”. These are the cards which winning decks are built around: spells like Badgermole Cub, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, Nature’s Rhythm or Voice of Victory.
Players will always try and play as many S-tier cards as possible within the constraints of their colors, curve and gameplan. As more S-tiers are printed, they raise the power level of top decks higher and higher, until the chance of a new, unheralded deck suddenly displacing them is almost nil.
However, over time the slow trickle of new S-tier cards can still reshape the metagame; each individual addition changes the math on which colors are fastest, which threats the most reliable, and what sideboard cards you need.
Eventually, even decks that feel like granite pillars of the metagame can be worn down and washed away! Fittingly, the perfect example of this change in Secrets of Strixhaven is the card Erode, and the way to reshaped the established Landfall archetype for both PT Vegas finalists.
Mono-Green Landfall is the premier shell for Standard’s premier card (Badgermole Cub), serving as one of those granite pillars of the format alongside the various blue-red spellslinger decks. As a snowballing deck with tons of one-drops, complicating the Landfall deck with extra colors is a risky call. Mono-Green builds were 19.1% of the field in Vegas, (making it the second-most-popular archetype) compared to GW variants at 3.4%.
But four of eleven GW pilots finished with Top 32 records for Standard, and two of them ended up playing a mirror in the finals. Christoffer Larsen and eventual champion Nathan Steuer were splashing white primarily for a playset of Erode, along with a 2-of Dyadrine, Synthesis Amalgam and some sideboard cards.
That they found such success adding a second color for (essentially) one removal spell speaks to the supreme position of Erode in this metagame. A one-mana instant which can unconditionally destroy even the largest creature is massive when you’re fighting against Mightform Harmonizer. But the fact it also synergizes with your own Harmonizer combo by targeting your spare creatures to generate extra Landfall triggers pushes it – and this GW build – way over the top.
If you’re still not convinced, we also saw Matt Nass finish third overall with three Erodes in the sideboard of his GW Ouroboroid list! So long as these white decks are lethal enough to finish the opponent before the downside of ramping them kicks in, Erode will be a defining answer for many events to come.
NOT SO IMPRACTICAL AFTER ALL, IZZET?
While Badgermole Cub triumphed at the top table, Pro Tour Vegas proved that Izzet is still THE dominant force in Standard overall. Depending on who you ask, there were many as five different high-tempo, instant-and-sorcery-heavy UR archetypes registered, making up more than 48% of the PT metagame.
Even zooming out to look at the last month of tournament play, that number is still a whopping 40% – and UR may have gotten the biggest haul of new toys out of SoS, so don’t expect it to slow down, even if the sub-categories continue to diversify.
Impractical Joke slotted right into Izzet’s already stacked removal suite, offering unmatched damage-for-mana with no additional costs and further underscoring the importance of one-mana answers in this format.
Flow State is an obviously powerful cantrip and lived up to that promise in this first big outing, appearing in 19% of decks with an average 3.8 copies. But the surprise was seeing it joined by a breakout debut from Prismari Charm, appearing in 16% of decks as another card-selection instant which can pinch-hit as interaction.
The gap in cantrip power between the two is less noticeable when the surveil from Charm is powering up graveyard payoffs like Eddymurk Crab or Accumulated Wisdom – not to mention Flow State itself.
Another new blue card burning graveyards for fuel is Emeritus of Ideation, which found a home in Standards most graveyard-centric archetype: Superior Spider-Man Reanimator. Rick Hup Beng Lee made this deck look unstoppable, posting a 9-1 record for the weekend with three Emeritus mainboard.
Lee made space for the wizards by shaving copies of his other heavy hitters: Oildeep Gearhulk, Harvester of Misery, even namesake win condition Doomsday Excruciator. When you can reliably access large chunks of your library through the graveyard, it makes sense to invest those slots in a jack-of-all-trades like Emeritus and leave more specialized cards as one- or two-offs.
My hunch is that the strongest selling point for Emeritus here is its high floor; sometimes your best reanimation target is just whatever won’t instantly lose to removal, and this is a beefy flyer with Ward 2. But even its ceiling is elevated by the “combo” of Doomsday Excruciator + Ancestral Recall (not that anyone was sweating how to benefit from Magic’s best instant).
There’s a similar cute synergy between Excruciator and Lee’s other Secrets of Strixhaven tech choice: a sideboard copy of Decorum Dissertation, the black Paradigm spell.
The free copies you get from paradigm each turn can be targeted however you choose in the moment. That’s important in a deck which might be pivoting between card advantage, flying beatdown and mill combo for its wincon based on the current gamestate!
ALL-INCLUSIVE CURRICULUM
Looking beyond the biggest decks of Standard, the PT also showcased the wide variety of “Tier 2” archetypes; another consequence of having a massive card pool to build with. These decks have absolutely real potential to place well under the right conditions, and some of them may be beginning a rise to power if these new Secrets of Strixhaven cards pay off.
For me, the most interesting deck in a Top 32 full of fast aggro was Nick Deriu’s 4c control list, which managed an excellent 8 wins. Jeskai decks splashing black for Inevitable Defeat has been a fairly common sight in the meta, but Nick pushed this color-greedy approach further by adding Great Hall of Biblioplex and Resonating Lute.
He also registered copies of Traumatic Critique and Flashback, and added a handful of the re-introduced “slowlands” to complete his delicate manabase.
Slightly lower in the overall standings were a number of pure Jeskai control decks which also adopted some of this tech. Derrick Davis scored 7 wins by swapping out the Lute for another SoS artifact, Tablet of Discovery!
Another player performing uniquely well with their archetype was Zevin Faust, who made Top 8 with UW Tempo. Though heavy on flyers, this is NOT a variant of the “Momo White” shell, nor is it playing Air Nomad Legacy to buff its airforce. Zevin’s list evokes a more patient, controlling style, flashing in creatures to shut down opposing plays and gradually pressure their life total.
It’s an ideal setup for a playset of Skycoach Conductor: not only does the prepared spell counter spot removal, but it can counter a lot of other things by flickering Aven Interrupter, Floodpits Drowner or Aang, Swift Savior. Quantum Riddler and Beza also make for sweet targets in situations where you just need resources.
It won’t happen often, but if you get Airbender Ascension online, you’ll be able to flicker the Conductor to re-prepare All Aboard each turn. I’ll also note that Zevin was one of many players across different archetypes who registered some number of Petrified Hamlet for the PT; presumably to disarm the threat of Escape Tunnel from the Landfall decks.
Lastly, we saw two 7-win records achieved with a new evolution of the RB Discard deck. Chris Kral and Patricio Roman were rewarded for their decision to add white mana to the deck, supporting full sets of Hardened Academic and Practiced Offense.
These Secrets of Strixhaven additions (which also include three copies of Erode) appear to have supplanted Bloodthorn Flail and Monument of Endurance from the RB list.
Replacing those “do-nothing” permanents with a hasty flier in Hardened Academic looks like the best kind of upgrade. You get to keep your explosive combo potential while adding bullets to your clip for removal-heavy matchups.
So long as you can build a three-color manabase in Standard without a single land entering tapped on turn one, why would you turn that down?
STANDARDIZED TESTING
Despite my fears for the future of Big Standard, it seems like new sets are still successfully injecting entropy and wonder into the tournament metagame. Complex puzzles are harder to solve, I suppose, and Standard has so many pieces to play with now that it seems bold to assume all the best decks are known even when we aren’t in the immediate afterglow of a set release.
There’s a pretty clear consensus that UR is too prevalent, but not necessarily on what the solution should be. The only spells that are always 4-ofs across every type of Izzet list are Opt and Sleight of Hand – the combo of Boomerang Basics and Stormchaser’s Talent are the next-most-popular playsets, so maybe the B&R review should start there.
But I’d rather not pretend like Standard is a two-horse race. After all, stats show the average Prowess deck is registering at least three copies of Colorstorm Stallion, sometimes four!
Enjoy your brewing and grinding this week, everybody.
Tom’s fate was sealed in 7th grade when his friend lent him a pile of commons to play Magic. He quickly picked up Boros and Orzhov decks in Ravnica block and has remained a staunch white magician ever since. A fan of all Constructed formats, he enjoys studying the history of the tournament meta. He specializes in midrange decks, especially Death & Taxes and Martyr Proc. One day, he swears he will win an MCQ with Evershrike. Ask him how at @AWanderingBard, or watch him stream Magic at twitch.tv/TheWanderingBard.