With a weekend full of Game Days and no competitive play being covered across the internet I’ll be taking a break from the Weekend Review and taking a look at the Standard deck that I’ve been playing since OGW released. As you can probably tell from the title there is still plenty of Rhino left in this tale.

This year has seen several series of events start across the UK, a few weeks ago the FiveistheNewSeven ‐ the Race to Platinum series started with a 100 player modern event, and this past weekend saw the start of the Pro Series qualifiers. The tournament was the first major tournament in the UK following the release of Oath of the Gatewatch and would was offering a combination of series points and cash prizes to the best performing players. Naturally my fellow writers and I bundled in to my car at 6pm on a Friday evening and made the 6 hour drive to the North to take up our places in the main event.

Standard is in a bit of a weird situation at this point in time, whilst we have just had a new set release, the main focus for Pro players of late has been the Modern Pro Tour. So we were left to find our data from StarCityGames Open events and the results of the Super Series finals, where there were four rounds of Standard action. The story coming from these events was that Rally the Ancestors had positioned itself as best deck in the format, thanks to a small Mage who enjoys timewalking his opponents.

From this we have seen many decks warp themselves to compete with the Rally decks, whilst also trying to deal with the other ‘big’ deck in G/R Eldrazi Ramp. Jeskai Black, Abzan and Atarka Red have all seen, small, downward trends in popularity. So the question that I was left with, similar to the recent Pro Tour, join them? Or try and beat them?

When I was initially testing for Standard in the first weeks of the OGW I started with the following lists:

Creatures:

4 Warden of the FirstTree

4 Hangarback Walker

3 Den Protector

4 Deathmist Raptor

4 Avatar of the Resolute

2 Wingmate Roc

Spells:

1 Secure the Wastes

3 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

3 Dromoka’s Command

4 Hardened Scales

Lands:

4 Flooded Strand

4 Windswept Heath

3 Canopy Vista

1 Prairie Stream

3 Forest

2 Plains

1 Island

4 Yavimaya Coast

2 Seagate Wreckage

I’ll be honest, this deck was a rough sketch that I submitted to a group chat late at night, having had a moment of ‘brilliance’ and wanting to work out a Bant Scales deck. The principle idea was to abuse Hardened Scales and make big creatures for a low cost and attack for the win over a couple of turns.

I missed a few key creatures, like Managorger Hydra and Knight of the White Orchid, and maybe spells like Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Secure the wastes were too cute. I hadn’t figured the sideboard out but it would have contained counter spells and enchantment‐based white removal.

Having been persuaded away from the idea I put together the following list:

Blue Abzan

Creatures:

4 Warden of the First Tree

4 Heir of the Wilds

4 Anafenza, the Foremost

4 Siege Rhino

2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer

2 Den Protector

Spells:

3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

4 Abzan Charm

3 Dromoka’s Command

3 Stubborn Denial

Lands:

4 Windswept Heath

4 Polluted Delta

4 Flooded Strand

2 Canopy Vista

1 Prairie Stream

1 Sunken Hollow

3 Forest

2 Plains

1 Swamp

3 Shambling Vents

Sideboard:

2 Disdainful Stroke

1 Dispel

1 Dromoka’s Command

3 Silk Wrap

2 Surge of Righteousness

1 Ob Nixilis, Reignited

2 Wingmate Roc

3 Duress

I felt like a traitor, going behind the big guys back and trying to leave him behind, but I knew that my true calling for Standard would be to cast Siege Rhino in some form of deck. After all the dude has been top‐deck winning me plenty of matches and trampling all over my opponents face since he was printed.

I tested the above list, with no OGW cards, for a couple of sessions and even managed a positive win rate against Rally the Ancestors. Then came another one of those late night moments of ‘brilliance’ and I added in some OGW cards to come up with this:

5 Colour Abzan ‐ Mathew Tonkin

Creatures:

4 Warden of the First Tree

4 Sylvan Advocate

2 Den Protector

3 Anafenza, the Foremost

2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet

4 Siege Rhino

2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Spells:

2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

4 Abzan Charm

2 Murderous Cut

3 Dromoka’s Command

3 Stubborn Denial

Lands:

4 Windswept Heath

3 Wooded Foothills

3 Flooded Strand

2 Canopy Vista

1 Smoldering Marsh

1 Cinder Glade

1 Prairie Stream

1 Sunken Hollow

3 Shambling Vents

2 Hissing Quagmire

2 Forest

1 Plains

1 Swamp

Sideboard:

2 Wingmate Rox

2 Kolaghan’s Command

1 Hallowed Moonlight

2 Infinite Obliteration

2 Radiant Flames

1 Dispel

2 Disdainful Stroke

1 Utter End

2 Transgress the Mind

Pretty early on I found out, as well as everyone else, that these guys are best buds;

Having these three cards in your deck can often give you the feeling of playing modern, all of the fetchlands and dual lands help too, but I have won my fair share of games by just activating creature lands with a Sylvan Advocate, or two, in play and attacking repeatedly.

Another card that was missing from my initial thoughts on OGW Abzan was the traitor himself, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet! Kalitas is fast turning in to another key answer against the Rally decks. They have the ability to bounce your Anafenza with a Reflector Mage and combo off on their next turn.

With Kalitas in our deck we can mitigate some of that tempo loss and try and regain some level of control, now it does not always work (because they have a habit of having multiple Reflector Mage’s at any one time) but it’s the best we can do with the cards available to us. You don’t really want more than 2 Kalitas in your deck, purely because we are so glutted on 4 drops already.

Stubborn Denial is another card that has one me a number of games over the last couple of weeks, initially opponents were not expecting it, but as the weeks passed and awareness grows it is still a crucial card in the deck! We have a number of ways to make a 4 power creature in our deck, even utilising Abzan Charm and Dromoka’s Command to put counters on a creature, to enable the Ferocious on the card.

The land‐base is sometimes complicated to figure out and familiarity with your remaining fetch targets is key. More often than not you’ll want to fetch basic forest and plains initially, this allows all of your battle lands to come in untapped. Other times it’s correct to play turn 1 Hissing Quagmire in to turn 2 Shambling Vents and fetching a basic on turn 3 to cast your Anafenza. The sequencing is often dependent on your hand and the matchup, and in what order you want to cast your spells. For the side‐boarded games you’ll often want to ‘hide’ the red land until needed and then catching them out of nowhere.

The sideboard is built out of the necessity to answer some of the big decks in the current metagame.

Infinite Obliteration and Hallowed Moonlight combine to make a gruesome twosome for Rally players and Eldrazi foe alike. Disdainful Stroke and Dispel can sometimes replace the Stubborn Denials in your main deck or, more usually, come in to complement the denials and give you multiple different answers. Wingmate Roc continues to be one of the best evasive creatures in the format, sure there are times when you’ll look at your hand and see a 5 drop and no way to enable Raid, but other times you’ll curve out and jam it Turn 5 and win in a couple of swings. Kolaghan’s Command allows you to re‐buy key creatures such as Den Potector, Anafenza or Siege Rhino, whilst also acting as a removal spell or additional discard. Transgress the Mind was chosen over Duress purely because I felt like I wanted a way to exile troublesome creatures like Goblin Dark‐dwellers, Worldbreaker and Ulamog, the Ceasless Hunger. Radiant Flames is the sweeper of choice and often acts as one‐sided board wipe. Utter End was chosen as my catch‐all answer and has never let me down.

I’ll be back with a look back at some of the tournaments I’ve played the deck in and look at sideboard guides and ways to take the deck forward. I highly recommend trying the deck and enjoying the satisfaction of remembering that Siege Rhino is still good!

As always comments are appreciated and the Weekend Review will return next week!