The Top Tier
Display Deck StatisticsAt Pro Tour Paris earlier this year, Valakut was destined to dominate. Or so it seemed, until Sword of Feast and Famine proved to be too much for the Molten Pinnacle to handle. Though Valakut has seen a fair amount of success during the reign of Caw-Blade, it now has the opportunity to jump back into the spotlight. Four key cards have been released since Valakut was last truly considered to be a competitor. New Phyrexia brought us the alternative to Summoning Trap in Green Sun’s Zenith, acting as a far more reliable Primeval Titan 5-8 as necessary, whilst Urabrask the Hidden allows swift one turn kills with Primeval Titan. With these additions boosting the deck’s ability to kill, M12 has brought tools to improve reliability in the form of Rampant Growth and Solemn Simulacrum.
Valakut is undoubtedly at its prime right now, and has a solid assortment of sideboard options available to it. Pyroclasm and Slagstorm are very powerful sweepers at the moment in Standard, with Act of Aggression and Combust providing solid outs to specific threats such as Splinter Twin. As for creatures, green provides a wonderful selection of useful beasts to work with. Thrun is a powerful option with control currently depending heavily on their spot removal, and similarly Gaea’s Revenge is proving to be an efficient win condition now that Sword of Feast and Famine and Baneslayer Angel are a rare sight. Obstinate Baloth rounds up the sideboard options, and will likely be a necessity with the inevitable rise of red aggro this format.
The Deceiver Exarch + Splinter Twin combo is so powerful in Standard that it made a strong impact on the format during the reign of Caw-Blade, and even spawned a hybrid deck with Caw-Blade itself in its final weeks. Starting with that in mind, it isn’t difficult to see Splinter Twin as the benchmark by which all Standard decks for the remainder of the season will be judged. With the reprint of Ponder, Splinter Twin gains even greater reliability, threatening Valakut for the position of best combo, if not best deck, in the format!
Splinter Twin amazingly has main deck space to work with when planning for specific metagames. In the build above, I opted to include the flexible and powerful Treasure Mage package introduced by Patrick Chapin at Pro Tour Paris, only to be forgotten in the Stoneforge driven era. Mindslaver is a brutal win condition against combo right now, particularly with the widespread use of Spellskite. Wurmcoil Engine gives the deck the time it desperately needs against aggro, whilst providing a backup beatstick to threaten opponents who are dead set on stopping the your combo.
In terms of a sideboard, the generic options available are very solid in both blue and red. Combust answers opposing Exarchs, Pyroclasm slaughters aggro, Spreading Seas can be used to back up the Tectonic Edges and there’s always Dismember for everything, obviously. The sideboard is very open to tinker with, allowing for added win conditions such as Titans, or even complete transformations into control or unexpected combo’s such as Shape Anew. Transformation into a wildly different combo proved relatively successful for Pyromancer’s Ascension decks last summer when they sided into Polymorph, and with no Mind Sculptor the idea of Shape Anew into Blightsteel Colossus is quite tempting. The card that will definitely see an increased presence in sideboards, and possibly even main decked, is Mental Misstep. Discard and red present plenty of one cost spells that you would definitely want to counter, and so just like Spell Snare before it I certainly expect Mental Misstep to see play this summer, and Splinter Twin looks to be the best home for it (at least intially).
After total domination at Worlds last year, UB Control vanished completely at the dawn of Caw-Blade. At GP Singapore the control legend Shouta Yasooka successfully top 8’d with a control list utilizing Torpor Orb to beat Stoneforge Mystic, but the shell of the deck was very traditional. As soon as the bans came into force, UB Control leapt to the top of the Magic Online Daily events, proving the popularity of blue based control above anything else. With a selection of the most powerful win conditions to work with, UB is capable of reliably disrupting combo and controlling the board with efficient removal.
With M12, UB Control faces the threat of increased reliability from combo and pace from red. Without the flexibility of white’s red hate, UB will have to carefully tailor its anti-aggro package. Flashfreeze is an obvious inclusion, hitting almost every key spell in the format. Batterskull and Disfigure present some of the most effective answers to aggro, but the inclusion of alternative kill such as Doom Blade may become increasingly relevant with the rise of Tempered Steel decks. Further discard with Duress backed by Surgical Extraction could prove to be an effective package in combating the inevitable mirror, but diversity in win conditions between the main and side is definitely necessary. Calcite Snapper and Vampire Nighthawk have both seen varied success in the past out of UB Control sideboards, both in holding off aggro and tactically providing the opportunity to transform into a more tempo-oriented deck. Unsurprisingly, control will have to handle several main deck slots and the majority of the sideboard based on the evolution of the format. Either way, expect Flashfreeze and Mental Misstep to become a regular sight.
Even prior to the July 1st Ban List update, Vampires were making a name for themselves. Even the mighty Caw-Blade struggled to stand up to the raw aggression of Vampires, with the deck claiming the win at both the Denver and Indianapolis SCG Opens in June. With a powerful set of removal spells and burn to supplement the weenie rush, Vampires utilize Bloodghast and Highborn to continue to build momentum in the face of removal. Though little is gained by the deck in M12, the fall of Caw-Blade has resulted in a sharp drop in the presence of Sword of Feast and Famine, making Vampires a better choice than ever.
Though it has to compete with many other fast decks right now, black provides Vampires with a couple of major advantages in sideboarding. Discard spells like Duress allow Vampires to handle combo and control, and a wide variety of spot removal spells for aggro of all flavours. Act of Aggression and Dark Tutelage are solid options to maintain control of the game as it progresses, and the ability to drop an early Demon of Death’s Gate could yet again allow the deck to race combo decks like Valakut whilst they sit back playing solitaire.
With M12 it should come as no surprise that Red is firmly back in the top tier. Following the surge of powerful burn spells in Zendikar, the addition of Shrine and Lavamancer helps the deck get there by providing an inevitability. This rough list follows a more traditional RDW route, but be prepared for a wide variety of powerful threats from players tapping Mountains. Koth is still an incredibly powerful Planeswalker (arguably the most powerful since the departure of Jace, the Mind Sculptor) but really requires 23-25 lands to be played, eating into some of the space occupied by burn at present. Chandra’s Phoenix is another powerful beast that would likely be best suited to a more reliable mana base, resulting in a list similar to Katsuhiro Mori’s winning list at Japan Nationals last year.
Red also has a wealth of powerful sideboard cards at the moment. Dismember is a vital tool for answering previously unanswerable threats such as Kor Firewalker. Combust is the perfect answer for Deceiver Exarch in that it cannot be redirected by Spellskite, and Act of Aggression adds a new dimension to the traditional use of Threaten in being able to seize control at instant speed, preventing Primeval Titan wins and more. In hating control decks, red has access to Manic Vandal to disrupt the various Spellskites and Batterskulls, whilst Manabarbs thrives in a format lacking in answers to enchantments aside from Oblivion Ring.
Following Pro Tour Nagoya it should come as no real surprise that Tempered Steel aggro would make its way over to Standard at some stage, but the sheer popularity of the deck recently on Magic Online certainly does surprise! The last time a deck made such a dramatic transfer was during the Lorwyn Block PTQ season when Kithkin first started to use Windbrisk Heights to hideaway everything from Thistledown Liege to Mirrorweave. Following dramatic success in Block, Standard saw a sudden surge in popularity for the deck, eventually resulting in the major success of such decks as BW Tokens.
Tempered Steel plays very much like an Affinity deck, being able to drop very cheap creatures that result in a critical mass of damage a couple of turns down the line. Interestingly, Inkmoth Nexus presents a truly terrifying alternate dimension to the deck, in that it can threaten to kill even if you manage to bring your life total under control. It is worth noting here that the ability to include Spellskites in the main prevents the deck from falling victim to combo when they fail to interact. Add to that the fact that Dispatch, in this deck, is scarily superior to Swords to Plowshares, and we have a fearsome deck to be reckoned with.
As with any deck in Standard, Dismember is always a solid sideboard option for any threats to be feared, but white also provides plenty of solution cards such as Celestial Purge and Revoke Existence. Phyrexian Revoker and Hex Parasite provide strong tools to wield against the still Planeswalker dependent control decks, and Etched Champion serves to imitate Paladin en-Vec.
To Be Continued...
I'll follow up shortly with the decks competing to enter the top tier. Any suggestions or recommendations for the article are welcome, and feedback will be much appreciated!
