Now that the prereleases are behind us, the next big question on everybody’s minds is what to play in the new standard format. There are plenty of exciting new cards to brew with, but I think that if you want stable results, you should pick a deck that doesn’t lose very much from rotation.

With that said, my pick for week 1 of standard would be Mono-red Eldrazi.

This deck has been putting up consistent results on Magic Online and at paper tournaments, and I think that it’s a fantastic choice for the early days of SOI standard. The deck merges the raw power of Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher with the value offered by Magic Origins’ thopter producing creatures. Because all of those thopters are colourless creatures, you can also make the most of Vile Aggregate—a 3-drop that’s usually a 4/5 when it attacks.

The curve is topped with a full playset of Chandra, Flamecaller, providing late-game card filtering, and a resilient threat that can easily close games on its own if it’s not answered.

This all comes together to form an exceptionally strong midrange deck that also gets to play the best colourless lands as it is a mono-coloured deck. Sea Gate Wreckage gives you free card draw, and Ruins of Oran-Rief can make your colourless threats even more significant when you have some spare mana.

Changes with SOI

The beauty of this deck is that it doesn’t really need to change with Shadows over Innistrad. The only card that rotates out is Tomb of the Spirit Dragon, which was great at gaining huge chunks of life for very little investment. It’s a big loss for the deck, but I think there’s another life-gaining land that’s perfectly at home in this deck.

Westvale Abbey has been a widely-discussed card in the run up to Shadows over Innistrad, but people are still quite unsure where it fits in standard. I think this list is the perfect answer. Westvale Abbey is the perfect land to sit on in the late game when you’ve got a board full of creatures. There’s no need to sacrifice your thopters proactively, you can just keep on attacking with them when your opponent tries to sweep them off the board, just feed them to the abbey in response, leaving up another gigantic threat.

Although, if you were interested in activating the abbey aggressively, this deck is also perfectly capable of doing that. Thopters are easily sacrificed, as are creatures like Hangarback Walker—but the real star is Chandra. Chandra’s tokens are sacrificed at the end of your turn anyway, so why not just sacrifice them to this and effectively reduce it’s cost a bit?

The power of resiliency

This deck’s real strength is in how diverse its threats are. It goes wide with thopters, goes big with eldrazi, and goes resilient with Chandra. Your opponent has to come up with ways to effectively answer all three, while you just sit back and beat their face.

Keep your eyes peeled for more decklists this week in the run up to Shadows over Innistrad standard, and get more ideas for great decks to take to your FNM on week 1.