Spoilers were hard to stay in touch with for Rivals of Ixalan. The Holidays and spoiler season for Unstable meant we basically got the whole thing thrown at us in less than a week. When the first wave hit I was full of hope, lots of interesting, possibly powerful cards. There was one thing missing though, something day after day I was waiting to see, something that I was almost 100% certain would be printed in this set. That thing was tribal lands. I was expecting something similar to the ones we had seen in Lorwyn block. You see, a major problem with this standard isn’t the power level of Temur, in fact in the overall gauntlet of best decks in a format I would say that Temur energy is only slightly above average. The thing is the mana in the format is awful, it isn’t really reasonable to play a deck with more than one color or without Attune with Aether. So, this meant no amount of sweet merfolk or other synergy based tribal shenanigans mattered unless we could reliably cast them. Another huge issue is Temur can just play most cards, it can extend into a fourth color with relatively low downside, so a tribal set forcing you to play 14 plus of a certain creature type to function seems like the perfect way to make sure Temur can’t just steal all the cards. Now that we don’t have tribal lands though decks like Merfolk might look to Attune to sure up its mana, with Attune comes the chance to play another color like red for removal. At that stage we fall back into the “Why aren’t we just playing Temur?” pattern that current standard is stuck under. We are going to try and be positive and brew anyway, there might still be some hidden gems looking to overthrow the format’s Attuning overlords.

At the last Pro Tour there was a pleasant surprise in standard. A mono color deck that wasn’t rammunap red put in a very impressive performance. A mono white vampire deck sporting Oketra’s Monument helped Wilson Hunter to a top 25 finish.  

Main Deck

2 Duskborne Skymarcher
4 Aviary Mechanic
4 Adanto Vanguard
4 Metallic Mimic
4 Legion Conquistador
3 Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle
3 Angel of Invention
4 Oketra’s Monument
4 Legion’s Landing
1 Thopter Arrest
2 Cast Out
3 Ixalan’s Binding
4 Shefet Dunes
3 Scavenger Grounds
15 Plains

Sideboard

2 Thopter Arrest
2 Fragmentize
4 Glory-Bound Initiate
1 Aethersphere Harvester
4 Dusk // Dawn
1 Gideon’s Intervention
1 Angel of Sanctions

I played this deck with minor changes at GP Warsaw to a very medium finish. It’s good hands have a good Mono Red and Temur match up but in the end it wasn’t consistent enough and suffered from a slight uptick in main deck Abrades in the format. So, can Rivals fix any of these problems? This is the list I would try and run with some new blood sucking friends.  

Main Deck

2 Bishop of Binding
4 Aviary Mechanic
4 Legion Conquistador
3 Famished Paladin
4 Skymarcher Aspirant
4 Metallic Mimic
3 Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle
2 Angel of Invention
4 Oketra’s Monument
4 Legion’s Landing
2 Baffling End
2 Cast Out
4 Shefet Dunes
3 Scavenger Grounds
15 Plains

Sideboard

2 Aethersphere Harvester
2 Dusk // Dawn
4 Glory-Bound Initiate
2 Fragmentize
2 Gideon of the Trials
2 Restoration Specialist
1 Baffling End

The deck keeps the majority of its original structure but has some notable upgrades. Thopter Arrest used to be the cheapest piece of removal the deck had, this meant early aggressive starts with Longtusk Cub or Winding Constrictor could be really hard to stop. Baffling End is a solution to this and a perfect fit for this deck. It’s downside can be pretty severe for control decks but all we want to do here is buy time for us to set up our monument engine, we don’t really care if on turn 3-4 they spend time killing Baffling End to get just a 3/3. Skymarcher Aspirant doesn’t help us much with the monument plan, it’s just a super efficient creature that helps us lower our curve and give us more powerful normalized curves. Aspirant might even act like a sort of Delver of Secrets. It isn’t hard to gain the city’s blessing in this deck between monument and our removal even helping our permanent count. We also have quite a few anthem effects with Metallic Mimic, Angel of Invention and Sheffet Dunes so it isn’t unreasonable for this card to be a 3/2 flyer by turn 4-5.

Bishop of Binding is a nice little addition to the crew. It ticks all the boxes for this deck and helps break that tension between needing to have a high creature count and still needing some removal. It is vulnerable to removal but there are a few must kill creatures in this deck already and it has the upside of having great synergy with Aviary Mechanic.  The last new card might be a little controversial. Famished Paladin could be a plethora of different two drops including Adanto Vanguard and the new Paladin of Atonement but I think this hungry guy is a better fit. We don’t have the most ways to gain life but with Mavren Fein and Legion’s Landing we do have two strong recurring ways to produce lifelinkers. Famished Paladin is also an excellent early blocker, threatening to trade with a Longtusk Cub unless they have 4 energy, or stopping an Earthshaker Khenra from wrecking your blocks. I’ll be taking this out for a spin when the new set hits online, I was a big fan of the original deck and felt it was very close to being good enough.  

Abzan tokens was another three color deck that did well for a while on Magic Online that didn’t play attune or any energy cards. It was designed to beat both tier one decks in the format, Mono Red and Temur, but unfortunately we found out that it didn’t really end up with a positive win percentage against either. Much like the Mono White Vamps deck, that power level just wasn’t there consistently enough.

A natural fit for this deck is the new mechanic Ascend. The token deck is always trying to get ten plus permanents in play and if it can do that at any sort of consistent rate we have some very powerful effects that this deck could take advantage of.

Maindeck

4 Anointer Priest
4 Tendershoot Dryad
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
4 Renegade Map
4 Legion’s Landing
4 Hidden Stockpile
4 Anointed Procession
2 Twilight Prophet
2 Vona’s Hunger
2 Cast Out
4 Fatal Push
3 Start // Finish
4 Concealed Courtyard
4 Evolving Wilds
1 Plains
4 Forest
4 Swamp
2 Shefet Dunes
2 Blooming Marsh

Sideboard

1 Fumigate
2 Dusk // Dawn
3 Authority of the Consuls
1 Ixalan’s Binding
2 Fragmentize
4 Duress
2 Lost Legacy

As you can see here we haven’t done anything clever just added the most powerful looking Ascend cards. Tendershoot Dryad is the most important piece, giving the deck a more proactive plan instead of the reactive Fumigate plan. Tendershoot synergizes with the decks token theme, being amazing with Anointer Priest and Anointed Procession. It helps to achieve that coveted city’s blessing but most importantly it is a self-contained threat. This deck leans heavily on moving parts but Tendershoot left unchecked in play by itself will win the game. Twilight Prophet is a strong alternative win condition here, a card advantage engine that puts a lot of pressure on the opponent. It’s hard to know how many of these you can play, it might be powerful enough to warrant more but it doesn’t contribute to the tokens plan so it’s hard to justify. Both these creatures have also brought a bit of a change to our board plan, instead of having 3 Fumigate, now that we care about our creatures in play we have gone for some Dusk // Dawn. This sets up to wrath midrange decks’ boards while keeping our new powerful ascend creatures in play and it also lets us buy them back late game. With fumigate not in the main deck we have also gone for a couple of Vona’s Hunger. I’m not quite as sure about this card, some kind of targeted removal might just be better but Hunger can punish players for trying to go wider than your tokens.  

We are going to go over to the dark side for our last list of the day. Energy, if we like it or not, is here to stay, without bans the mechanic is too strong and the format around it facilitates it too much. I will not give in to Temur though and will choose the lesser of the Energy brothers: Sultai. This deck is very much centered around Winding Constrictor, it uses energy and counters to do powerful things with the help of our snake buddy. Originally being just a GB the deck branched out into blue for Rogue Refiner, Hostage Taker, The Scarab God and some counter spells in the board. The GB version was more aggressive then the Sultai build which was more of a traditional midrange deck. I think the deck will stay 3 colour but go back to its more beatdown roots.

Main Deck

4 Longtusk Cub
4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
4 Walking Ballista
4 Jadelight Ranger
3 Verdurous Gearhulk
3 Hostage Taker
4 Winding Constrictor
4 Attune with Aether
3 Blossoming Defense
3 Fatal Push
3 Hadana’s Climb
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Island
1 Fetid Pools

Sideboard

2 Die Young
4 Duress
3 Spell Pierce
1 Jace’s Defeat
2 Thrashing Brontodon
2 Golden Demise
1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship

Let’s look at the different modes of Jadelight Ranger when Winding Constrictor is in play. 2/1 draw 2 lands, 4/3 scry 1 draw 1 land, 6/5 scry 2. All of them seem pretty broken for 3 mana and on top of that at face value this card is probably better than Rouge Refiner for this deck. Unlike Temur, who uses Rouge Refiner’s energy boost all the time through its many energy sinks, we only need energy for Longtusk Cub and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner in this build. If the possibility of a 6/5 on turn 3 isn’t enough beef for you then we have our awesome new enchantment Hadana’s Climb. Hadan’s has taken Riskar’s place in my build. Doling out tokens combos extremely well with Winding Constrictor, Walking Ballista and Verdurous Gearhulk, it breaks board stalls wide open and gives the deck a real sense of urgency. In the sideboard we get some nice upgrades too. Thrashing Brontodon gives us a way to combat the likes of God-Pharaoh’s Gift and Anointed Procession while still letting us commit to the board and pressure our opponents, reminiscent of Qasali Pridemage. Golden Demise doesn’t really need much explanation. We aren’t looking to ascend with this card, just a good old fashioned infest effect.  

Overall, the Sultai archetype might be the one that gets the biggest boost and sadly our best chance of over throwing our energy overlords is by replacing them with… Well, other energy overlords, I’m sure there’s a political joke in there somewhere. That’s my take on the new format, hopefully I’m being a bit pessimistic and we get a bunch of new cool decks but it’s going to be hard with the current mana constraints we have. My next few weeks will be filled with thoughts of Limited as GP London approaches and my attempt to get my last pro point for Bronze. Hopefully I’ll be able to record a prerelease on MTGO and bring that to you for next week but until then thanks for reading!