Travelling back from the RPTQ this last weekend, I had time to reflect. I reflected on how close I’d come to qualifying for the PT once again, and how close I had come to the right decklist for the weekend.

I didn’t have a lot of time to test for this tournament – having a full time job the last month put a serious dampener on my once unmatchable volumes of standard grinding. I did, however, spend a lot of time at my desk studying the PTQ/GP/MOCS results on MTG Goldfish and working out what they meant; where things were going and how far the paper meta would be behind the online one. On the Monday prior to the event, after doing approximately zero work for eight hours and deliberating hard on what to play next weekend, I felt I had come up with the answer.

I had been playing Zombies for two weeks now, and although it had just put up some very serious results in the MOCS, it wasn’t the only story of the weekend. The PTQ was swept by four Temur Energy decks either going 9-0 or 8-1. Temur won the MOCs Quarterly the prior weekend in the hands of Imannuel Gerschenson, and Brian Braun-Duin brought it to top four of an SCG classic. When the World Champion plays a deck, it’s time to pay attention!

Temur Energy – Brian Braun Duin, Top 4 in an SCG Classic

This was my starting point. I decided that I was going to be on Temur as it had a favourable matchup against both Zombies and BG Constrictor, which I expected to be the biggest decks at the RPTQ. It was also not that unfavoured against Red, which I also thought would be a big player.

As it turned out, I was wrong. Numerous players came to the same conclusions I did, and they had gone one step further. They knew Temur was a great pick, and they realised that The Scarab God is basically unbeatable in the mirror. Three of the four qualifiers for the Pro Tour played Temur Black. I could only sit and watch on the back of my 9th place finish as the more prepared players battled for their place in the Pro Tour. That said, my list with Skysovereign, Consul Flagship was not a bad choice – just not quite right.

Temur Energy – Matt Foulkes, 9th at RPTQ London

So where does the format go from here? What’s the next step? I think for a lot of people, the next step is to move towards the bigger decks. In my experience, Standard formats tend to become a bit of an arms race; every week the decks go slightly bigger, while trying not to overstep too far and falling prey to the aggro decks.

So what does that mean in this format? BBD wrote an amazing piece on format levelling last week that basically explains this ‘arms race’ concept, using levels 1, 2 and 3. Level 2 beats level 1, level 3 beats level 2, and level 1 circles back around and beats level 3. Our current Standard format applied to this principle follows:

Level 1: Ramunap Red
Level 2: Zombies, BG Constrictor
Level 3: Temur Energy, God-Pharoahs Gift
Level 3.5: U/W Approach, U/X Control, Ramp

Last weekend we reached level 3. The next major Standard tournament is GP Turin this weekend, where I expect to see a large uptick of the slower control decks and a smaller uptick in the level 1 decks. I would expect the most played decks in Turin to be in descending order:

Temur

U/X Control

Ramunap Red

Zombies

The best place to be in this metagame will be Ramunap Red, as the deck is the natural predator to Control decks with its resilient threats and incredibly quick, consistent sources of damage. I would want to have a sideboard plan for the mirror, as I’d expect to face it in the later stages of the tournament, and to have tools for God Pharoah’s Gift.

Ramunap Red – Matt Foulkes, Sample Decklist

This list is based on Sam Pardee’s from GP Denver, adjusted for the meta I expect to face. By cutting a copy of Hazoret and a couple of Shocks, two Chandra and a fourth Village Messenger make it into the main deck. This gives a better chance of the explosive starts Red is infamous for and reduces the number of dead spells in the Control matchups. The sideboard also gets some new toys with Crook of Condemnation and Warping Wail, which give huge edge in the match ups against God-Pharoah’s Gift and Control respectively.

And there you have it. Whether you are playing Standard this weekend online, playing at GP Turin, or just looking to crush your local FNM, the consistent unforgiving brutality of Ramunap Red will give you a good chance in any field. Against the metagame I expect, both I and it will be well positioned to crush in the upcoming weeks.