Necropotence. Academy. [card]Psychatog[/card]. Affinity. Faeries. Cawblade.

Remember these decks? If you played Standard back in the day, you know these legendary decks. They are some of the most famous of all time. As the years pass and old decks rotate out and new decks rotate in, the question inevitably arises: Which deck is the best of all time? Would Affinity beat Necropotence? Could Faeries keep up with Academy? Is there a different deck that’s even better, that never got the respect it deserves? Many have debated these questions, but few have actually played out the matches. Until now.

I collected the commemorative World Championship decks until they were discontinued in 2005. I used to battle them against each other. Sure, decks from different years weren’t metagamed for each other-the sideboards were often full of irrelevant cards-but, man, it was FUN! Decks from different eras have a different feel to them, and each matchup is a completely untried contest with (usually) an uncertain outcome.

So why is the title of this article about the third best deck? Because the top two decks are so far above the rest, it’s not even close. Let me begin at the beginning, and I’ll explain how we feel confident declaring the top two Standard decks of all time. After that, we can debate what’s third best, because THAT is a contentious matter, and has not yet been settled.

Many years ago, before I had fully researched the entire history of Standard decks, I used to play out little single-elimination tournaments with my friends. These tournaments didn’t include the strongest decks, I would later discover, but they did help me start eliminating decks. If some decks couldn’t survive even these relatively weak gauntlets I had assembled, they didn’t even deserve mention!

My very first tournament, which I called the World Cup of Magic, started in 2005, and Ghazi-Glare won it all, beating [card]Psychatog[/card] in a dramatic semifinal. ([card]Pithing Needle[/card] hoses that deck.)

My second tournament (World Cup II) started in 2009, and the quick, reliable combo deck from Mirrodin, [card]Krark-Clan Ironworks[/card], took first place after navigating the bracket without playing a single deck with counterspells.

Meanwhile, I found postings about historical Standard tournaments on the internet from players who had a much broader knowledge of the early history of Magic. Peter Jahn ran a tournament he never finished, but I played out the last few matches and Jund beat Affinity in the final. Chingsung Chang posted an “Ultimate Standard” tournament where Academy beat Mythic Conscription in the final.

Academy! Oh yeah, I forgot about that deck. That deck was Standard-legal and could win games on TURN ONE! That’s when I started to get SERIOUS about this.

Using the Wizards archive, I collected all the top-eight decklists I could find from major tournaments and read all the articles I could find about the beginnings of the Standard format. I also reached out to Wizards and the greater magic community for suggestions.

In 2013 I got together with hall-of-famer Randy Buehler, Wizards of the Coast employees Aaron Forsythe and Mike Turian, pro player Sam Pardee, and several other players at PAX Prime in Seattle to pilot all these famous decks. This time we had 1997 [card]Necropotence[/card], and 1998 Academy, and 1999 [card]Memory Jar[/card].

Academy took first place AGAIN. It wasn’t even close.

It should have been a final with Academy vs. [card]Memory Jar[/card], but [card]Memory Jar[/card] had an unlucky moment when it tried to combo and fizzled instead, giving Mythic a discarded-into-play [card]Obstinate Baloth[/card]. There was also a game where a sideboarded [card]Bojuka Bog[/card] ruined Memory Jar’s hope of using [card]Yawgmoth’s Will[/card] to get cards back from the graveyard to go off again.

Academy was so dominant that it was going to be unfair to keep including it in tournaments. Any good deck that was paired against it would just lose, so we retired it for all-time as The Best Standard Deck in History. It reigns at first place. Here’s the decklist we used:

The Best Standard Deck of All Time: 1998 Academy

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Tolarian Academy
12 Island
3 Wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
[/Lands]
[Other Spells]
4 Mana Vault
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mox Diamond
4 Voltaic Key
3 Scroll Rack
3 Mind Over Matter
3 Intuition
4 Time Spiral
4 Windfall
4 Stroke of Genius
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Capsize
3 Chill
4 Counterspell
2 Turnabout
2 City of Traitors
1 Wasteland
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The way the deck works to play lots of artifact mana accelerators plus [card]Tolarian Academy[/card] (which is only improved by the new Legendary rule) to get an expensive [card]Mind Over Matter[/card] into play, potentially with the help of [card]Intuition[/card] to find it. Once [card]Mind Over Matter[/card] is in play, continually untapping Academy creates mana, and [card]Stroke of Genius[/card], [card]Time Spiral[/card], and Windfall draw lots of cards. Usually you don’t wait to complete the combo, you just play these card drawing spells and draw into the rest of the elements you need. This combo continues until you have so much mana that you can target your opponent with a [card]Stroke of Genius[/card] that mills their entire deck for the win. It usually wins by turn three, and CAN win on turn one with a perfect hand.

Having retired Academy, I continued to run tournaments without it. With Academy gone, these tournaments were easily dominated by [card]Memory Jar[/card].

[card]Memory Jar[/card] won “World Cup III.”

And [card]Memory Jar[/card] won “World Cup IV.”

So we retired [card]Memory Jar[/card].

Which deck is really the best? It doesn’t really matter; those two combo decks are clearly the two best Standard decks in history. They both often win on turn two, and they are about 50/50 versus each other, the most important factor being who won the die roll. [card]Memory Jar[/card] seems to fizzle out a little more often, so it may be a little less consistent in getting the combo.

Second-Best All-Time: 1999 Memory Jar

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Brass
4 City of Traitors
4 Underground River
7 Swamp
[/Lands]
[Other Spells]
4 Memory Jar
4 Mana Vault
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mox Diamond
4 Necropotence
3 Megrim
4 Tinker
4 Dark Ritual
4 Yawgmoth’s Will
2 Intuition
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Defense Grid
3 Duress
3 Wasteland
3 Disenchant
2 Pyroblast
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The story I heard is that when Urza’s Legacy came out, people were in a touchy place because Academy decks had dominated the previous season, now called “Combo Winter.” Playing in tournaments where your opponent could win before you even played a card was not very fun. There weren’t a lot of tournaments back then, and the game was not as fueled by the internet as it is now, so the power of [card]Memory Jar[/card] was not fully understood right away, but at the first major tournament where it was legal, GP Vienna in mid-March 1999, an extended tournament, Erik Lauer and Randy Buehler brought a not-even-honed version of the deck and Erik Lauer made top four. That the main parts of the combo were even Standard legal was especially scary. The card was preemptively added to the banned list to prevent a community outcry, since people were tired of super fast combo decks ruining the metagame.

How does it work? Each [card]Memory Jar[/card] makes both players draw seven cards, then eventually discard them. Megrim makes your opponent take two damage for each discarded card. If you can get two [card]Memory Jar[/card]s + one Megrim, or two Megrim + one [card]Memory Jar[/card], that’s 28 damage. The rest of the deck just helps you achieve that, with Tinker getting a cheaper [card]Memory Jar[/card], and [card]Necropotence[/card] letting you draw lots of cards the turn before you think you will go off. Often, you will just go for the combo and draw into what you need, thanks to [card]Lotus Petal[/card]s, [card]Mox Diamond[/card]s, and [card]Dark Ritual[/card]s. If [card]Necropotence[/card] is not in play, you can use [card]Yawgmoth’s Will[/card] to replay cards from your graveyard.

Given the strong likelihood that the best two decks in Standard history are already known, we come to the unanswered question that is the title of this article:

What’s the third best Standard deck of all time?

Here’s what I’ve proposed. We’ll continue playing out tournaments, with losers going into a losers’ bracket to fight for second place, just so we know who deserves invites in subsequent years. The next deck that wins the whole thing TWICE gets retired as the Third Best Standard Deck in History. In all likelihood, this won’t be as “fair” a declaration as it was with Academy and [card]Memory Jar[/card], because a couple lucky draws and lucky matchups might be enough to seal the deal. Here are the results from the tournament we ran recently at Eternal Weekend 2014 in Philly:

1st place: 2012 Delver
2nd place: 2011 Shrine Red
3rd place: 2009 Swans
4th place: 2008 Faeries
(losers’ bracket not shown)

So the verdict is still out on which deck is the third best All-time, because no other deck has won twice. Yet.

I know, I know, you are looking at the decks in my tournaments and thinking, “How in the world could you not include X deck? That deck was awesome.”

Look, decisions had to be made. We only had room for so many slots! There have been hundreds of fantastic and powerful Standard decks over the years. Next time, we’ll bring in some new contenders. Actually, I hear that Randy Buehler is going to set up a round-robin tournament, World Cup soccer style, so every deck gets at least three matches. That should be sweet. Feel free to run your own tournaments, and let me know the results!

But here are the contenders for Third Best Deck, their accomplishments so far, and their decklists:

2012 Delver

First Place, 2014 Eternal Weekend Ultimate Standard

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Glacial Fortress
9 Island
3 Moorland Haunt
1 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Invisible Stalker
4 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
1 Runechanter’s Pike
2 Sword of War and Peace
1 Batterskull
1 Dismember
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Gut Shot
4 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
2 Thought Scour
4 Vapor Snag
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Batterskull
2 Celestial Purge
2 Corrosive Gale
2 Dissipate
1 Divine Offering
1 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Negate
2 Phantasmal Image
1 Revoke Existence
2 Timely Reinforcements
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: Dark Ascension, February 2012

After [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card], and [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] were banned effective July 2011, the Standard metagame opened up. Players continued to play blue-white decks even without those two cards, but when the “Caw” in “CawBlade” ([card]Squadron Hawk[/card]) rotated out, players started searching for new cards to continue the blue-white strategy. Innistrad brought [card]Delver of Secrets[/card], [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] into the card pool. In December, Alex Bertoncini won a Star City Games tournament with those three cards; Jon Finkel made it to the semis of Pro Tour Dark Ascension in February with Delver and Snapcaster in his Spirits deck; and by March, Delver was the deck to beat, winning many Grands Prix and SCG tournaments until Return to Ravnica was released in the fall. Yuuya Watanabe won two separate GPs with the deck. When [card]Restoration Angel[/card] was released, the deck made room for it, and after RTR came out, [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card], [card]Augur of Bolas[/card], and [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] became cornerstones of a new deck for blue-white (which eventually splashed red) that players called Flash.

I chose Shahar Shenhar’s Grand Prix Salt Lake City winning decklist from April 2012 because it still included Runechanter’s Pike-a key card for the early versions of Delver-and didn’t yet include [card]Restoration Angel[/card], the card that started tipping the deck more into the Flash category. Splitting hairs, perhaps, but I wanted a classic Delver build.

2011 Shrine Red

Second Place, 2014 Eternal Weekend Ultimate Standard
Third Place, World Cup III

[deck]
[Lands]
11 Mountain
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Teetering Peaks
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Chandra’s Phoenix
4 Goblin Guide
4 Grim Lavamancer
2 Hero of Oxid Ridge
3 Kargan Dragonlord
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
3 Staggershock
2 Arc Trail
3 Forked Bolt
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Manic Vandal
3 Vulshok Refugee
3 Act of Aggression
3 Combust
2 Dismember
1 Arc Trail
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: M12, February 2011

The deck that was designed to beat Cawblade is probably the best mono-red build in Standard history thanks to [card]Goblin Guide[/card], recurring Chandra’s Phoenixes, and the inevitability of the [card]Shrine of Burning Rage[/card]. The mono-red archetype is always strongest before a new set comes out, for that is when the cardpool is largest and crucial mana slots in the deck can be filled. (Similarly, 2008 Demigod Red and 1998 Deadguy Red are strong builds of the mono-red archetype.) The recent card [card]Ash Zealot[/card] is one of the best two-drops in mono-red history, but Shrine Red was been the red deck that most consistently punished decks that stumbled for a turn.

This build is the one that Michael Tabler won SCG Atlanta with in September 2011. It has beaten both versions of Affinity, Kithkin, Demigod Red, [card]Dragonstorm[/card], Faeries, and Swans.

2009 Cascade Swans

Third Place, 2014 Eternal Weekend Ultimate Standard

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Battlefield Forge
2 Cascade Bluffs
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Ghitu Encampment
4 Graven Cairns
1 Mountain
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Spinerock Knoll
4 Treetop Village
4 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
4 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
4 Vivid Meadow
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
2 Ad Nauseam
2 Bituminous Blast
2 Captured Sunlight
1 Primal Command
4 Seismic Assault
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Aura of Silence
4 Countryside Crusher
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Primal Command
2 Vexing Shusher
2 Wickerbough Elder
2 Wrath of God
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: Conflux, February 2009

Swans is a surprisingly resilient combo deck. With 37 lands, it rarely misses land drops; it topdecks well if the game goes long; and it gets turn-four wins often enough to be able to compete with aggro decks.

This build is the one Joel Calafell won GP Barcelona with in 2009.

2004 Skullclamp Affinity

Semifinalist, Chingsung Chang’s Ultimate Standard

[deck]
[Lands]
3 Seat of the Synod
3 Vault of Whispers
4 Great Furnace
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
3 Glimmervoid
3 Darksteel Citadel
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Disciple of the Vault
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Welding Jar
4 Skullclamp
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Thoughtcast
2 Electrostatic Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Furnace Dragon
3 Seething Song
3 Genesis Chamber
2 Mana Leak
4 Pyroclasm
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: Fifth Dawn, June 2004

When Mirrodin came out, Affinity became the deck to beat. Having cards with affinity for artifacts combined with artifact lands made this deck explosively fast. Sacrificing artifacts to [card]Arcbound Ravager[/card] with [card]Disciple of the Vault[/card] in play could do serious damage to your opponent, all while creating a huge Ravager. [card]Skullclamp[/card] plus Disciple turned dead guys into two new cards plus damage to your opponent. The deck was all about doing the math and deciding when to start sacrificing artifacts. Cards in this deck were banned twice! First, [card]Skullclamp[/card] was banned, not specifically to hurt Affinity, but because the card was being included in almost every Standard deck of the day. (Goblins and Elf and Nail were the other notable contenders then.)

Affinity decks survived the banning thanks to [card]Cranial Plating[/card] being a suitable replacement, and Affinity continued to be the deck to beat. You either played Affinity or something designed to beat Affinity. There were many, many mirror matches. After being the deck to beat for almost an entire year, it still ended up in the finals of Worlds 2004 (losing to an [card]Astral Slide[/card] deck designed to beat it). After Worlds there wasn’t a Standard Grand Prix for many months, and the deck continued to be Standard legal until 20 March 2005, when the DCI banned all the artifact lands, [card]Arcbound Ravager[/card], and [card]Disciple of the Vault[/card]. By then, most players were sick of the deck and glad to see it go.

We chose Shuhei Nakamura’s “Go Anan” build from 2004 Japanese Nationals. The list included [card]Blinkmoth Nexus[/card]. It was a decklist that still got results even in a field of anti-Affinity decks, and it was just shortly after this that [card]Skullclamp[/card] was banned.

2011 Caw-Blade

Second Place: 2013 Eternal Weekend (World Cup IV)
First Place: m-league 8man BringYourOwnStandard

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Celestial Colonnade
3 Glacial Fortress
2 Inkmoth Nexus
5 Island
4 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Tectonic Edge
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
1 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Stoneforge Mystic
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of War and Peace
3 Dismember
1 Divine Offering
2 Into the Roil
4 Mana Leak
4 Preordain
3 Spell Pierce
1 Jace Beleren
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Batterskull
1 Celestial Purge
2 Condemn
1 Day of Judgment
1 Deprive
1 Dismember
2 Divine Offering
2 Flashfreeze
3 Oust
1 Sun Titan
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: New Phyrexia, May 2011

This deck looms large in our recent memory, and the classic Batterskull-Mystic team is still a strong force in Legacy decks. Featuring [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card], and [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card], which both eventually received bans, the deck had a lot of options for winning games. It all started when Brian Kibler demonstrated the strength of his “Caw-Go” deck at Worlds 2010. (“Caw-Go” is a pun on “Draw-Go.”) UW Control had been a strong archetype throughout much of 2010, but with the possibility of [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] (putting the “Blade” in “Caw-Blade”) on turn two, the deck became more of a tempo deck, especially in mirror-matches. Whoever got out their good cards first would be way ahead.

What was most remarkable about the deck, though, is how resilient the deck was despite the attention it received. The decklists kept evolving and changing, keeping the deck at the top despite anti-Caw-Blade strategies. It was the clear dominant deck for four months straight until a banning ended the deck on 1 July. The deck rewarded player skill, which is why some top-level players felt it was a great moment for Magic, despite the deck’s dominance. Player attendance at tournaments, however, dipped during this time. The exorbitant cost of Jace was probably one of the factors.

We chose Paolo Vitor Damo da Rosa’s build from GP Singapore, post New Phyrexia, featuring two different Swords and [card]Batterskull[/card].

2008 Faeries

Fourth Place, 2014 Eternal Weekend Ultimate Standard
2 wins in eight-man BringYourOwnStandard events on m-league

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Faerie Conclave
4 Island
4 Mutavault
2 Pendelhaven
3 River of Tears
4 Secluded Glen
2 Sunken Ruins
4 Underground River
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion of Oona
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Bitterblossom
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Cryptic Command
4 Rune Snag
4 Terror
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Bottle Gnomes
3 Damnation
2 Murderous Redcap
3 Razormane Masticore
4 Thoughtseize
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: Shadowmoor, May 2008

Faeries was a counterspell deck that also ran you over with creatures. A turn-two [card]Bitterblossom[/card] was almost a guaranteed win, and once you had automatic creature creation in effect, you could keep your mana open for counterspells and play additional creatures on your opponent’s endstep. One of the hardest decisions was how aggressively to mulligan for a [card]Bitterblossom[/card] in your opening hand. Tricky to play because you do a fair amount of damage to yourself, the deck could even come back from slow starts and win at one life with a well-timed [card]Mistbind Clique[/card], or [card]Cryptic Command[/card], cards which essentially gave you an extra turn.

Like Affinity, the deck also ported nicely into Extended for many years, with many of the same cards as the Standard build. After [card]Ancestral Vision[/card] rotated out, the deck continued to be strong for the rest of Lorwyn’s time in rotation. Antti Malin won with Faeries at Worlds 2008 in December of 2008, without even including [card]Scion of Oona[/card] in his decklist. New cards like [card]Volcanic Fallout[/card] and [card]Great Sable Stag[/card] would get printed that seemed to be specifically designed to weaken Faeries, so other decks could join the party.

We chose PVR’s list from PT Hollywood, in May 2008, before [card]Ancestral Vision[/card] rotated out.

1996 Necropotence

Semifinalist: PAX 2013
Third Place: 2013 Eternal Weekend (World Cup IV)

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Strip Mine
16 Swamp
4 Mishra’s Factory
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Hypnotic Specter
2 Knight of Stromgald
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Dark Ritual
4 Drain Life
4 Necropotence
3 Demonic Consultation
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
2 Contagion
1 Zuran Orb
1 Ivory Tower
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Serrated Arrows
3 Gloom
1 Nevinyrral’s Disk
3 Dystopia
2 Contagion
3 Terror
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: Alliances, Summer 1996

When Ice Age came out, players were excited about many cards, but [card]Necropotence[/card] was not one of them. Losing life to draw cards seemed like a terrible downside to many players. How wrong they were! The power of [card]Necropotence[/card] as a card engine was demonstrated in February 1996 at Pro Tour New York, the very first Pro Tour (and one with a strange deckbuilding requirement: you had to have at least five cards each from 4th Edition, Chronicles, Ice Age, Homelands [yech!], and Fallen Empires). Decklists weren’t posted on the internet the way they are now, and it took a while to catch on, but soon [card]Necropotence[/card] had become such a popular deck that the summer of 1996 is remembered as “Necro Summer.”

The deck had many different iterations and resurgences after that summer, in Standard, Extended, and Vintage, often splashing red for burn spells. Back then Standard was called Type II; it was a relatively new format, and it had a restricted list that included [card]Zuran Orb[/card] and [card]Ivory Tower[/card]. In September 1996, [card]Strip Mine[/card] and [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card] were restricted, and in December the formerly restricted cards were outright banned and the restricted list was discontinued.

We went with a mono-black build featuring the yet un-restricted [card]Strip Mine[/card] and [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card], that were evocative of the early Necro Summer decklists. We honed it a bit, based on later builds, for example adding [card]Demonic Consultation[/card], which took a little longer to catch on. The deck wins by discarding away the opponent’s hand, destroying their lands, wiping any threats with [card]Nevinyrral’s Disk[/card], gaining life with [card]Zuran Orb[/card] and [card]Ivory Tower[/card], and drawing lots and lots of cards with [card]Necropotence[/card]. Once the opponent was paralyzed by the loss of cards and lands, a few small pump creatures could finish the opponent off.

2010 Jund

First Place: Peter Jahn’s tournament

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Dragonskull Summit
4 Forest
2 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Mountain
4 Raging Ravine
1 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Broodmate Dragon
4 Putrid Leech
3 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Sprouting Thrinax
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Blightning
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Rampant Growth
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Deathmark
4 Great Sable Stag
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Pithing Needle
2 Terminate
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: Worldwake, February 2010

At the very end of April 2009, [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] became a legal card, but the metagame was still dominated by Faeries. Soon, Swans, 5-Color Blood, and Jund decks started showing up in top-eight lists. After Faeries rotated out, however, Jund decks really started to shine. Three Jund decks placed in the top eight of the 2009 World Championship, and Jund took its place as the deck to beat in Standard for more than half a year. If you count the major tournaments from December 2009 to August 2010 in San Diego, Kuala Lumpur, Brussels, Washington D.C., Sendai, and Manila, as well as Japanese Nationals and German Nationals, you get more than thirty top-eight decklists featuring [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card], most of them Jund.

We chose Simon Goertzen’s build from Pro Tour San Diego. Goertzen figured out that the deck seemed to lose only when it had mana problems, so he went up to 27 lands and just focused on droppping multiple threats with one spell, with cards like [card]Sprouting Thrinax[/card], [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card], [card]Siege-Gang Commander[/card], and [card]Broodmate Dragon[/card].

2000 Angry Hermit

Semifinals: Chingsung Chang’s tournament

[deck]
[Lands]
11 Forest
2 Gaea’s Cradle
4 Karplusan Forest
2 Mountain
4 Rishadan Port
2 Treetop Village
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Avalanche Riders
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Deranged Hermit
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Masticore
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
3 Skyshroud Poacher
3 Yavimaya Elder
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Arc Lightning
4 Plow Under
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Ancient Hydra
4 Blastoderm
2 Boil
1 Masticore
1 Splinter
3 Thran Foundry
2 Uktabi Orangutan
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

With explosive mana acceleration into land destruction and Rishadan Ports, Angry Hermit can keep you stuck at few or no lands while facing down a horde of squirrels. With every successive Hermit that joins the battlefield, those squirrels get bigger and more plentiful. You might lose to 12 3/3 squirrels, or perhaps Masticore can steal a win all by himself.

2010 Mythic Conscription

Second Place: Chingsung Chang’s tournament
Second Place: PAX2013
Semifinalist: Peter Jahn’s tournament

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Celestial Colonnade
5 Forest
2 Island
1 Marsh Flats
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Plains
1 Sejiri Steppe
3 Stirring Wildwood
3 Verdant Catacombs
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Sovereigns of Lost Alara
2 Eldrazi Conscription
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
2 Explore
4 Mana Leak
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Celestial Purge
2 Jace’s Ingenuity
4 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
2 Obstinate Baloth
2 Spell Pierce
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Most recent legal set: M11, July 2010

The deck that Josh Utter-Leyton used to win U.S. Nationals in 2010, Mythic Conscription has it all: quick mana ramping thanks to Lotus Cobra; aggressive creatures like [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card] + fetch lands; counterspells; and the game-winning combo of [card]Sovereigns of Lost Alara[/card] into [card]Eldrazi Conscription[/card].

Once you attack with Sovereigns in play, you get to fetch the Conscription and attach it to your attacker. If you like attacking with a 10/11 Bird of Paradise (and who wouldn’t?), you’d enjoy piloting this deck. It even has [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]. The deck wasn’t played very long, as it lost [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card] when Conflux rotated out, but our previous testing has showed that this deck is very strong. It made it to the finals of Chingsung Chang’s Ultimate Standard, the semifinals of Peter Jahn’s bracket, and the finals of the tournament I ran with Randy Buehler, actually knocking out [card]Memory Jar[/card] with some wicked good luck.

Those are some of the contenders for 3rd best, based on my experience running these tournaments. Apologies to the following decks, but I just haven’t had much luck with them in this context:

Vice Age
Green Stompy
Tradewind Geddon
Counter Post
Prosperous Bloom
Recurring Survival
Shadow White Weenie
Covetous Wildfire
Sabre Bargain
Tinker
Chimera (Ashnod’s Altar)
Replenish
Mirari’s Wake
Elf and Nail
Goblin Bidding
Heartbeat Combo
Astral Slide
Solar Flare
Counterbalance
Captain America
Demigod Red
5-Color Control
Heezy St. Gruul
Elves
Doran 2.0
Boss Naya
Kithkin
Twin Blade
UB Control
Wolf-Run Ramp

Brandon Patton plays bass for MC Frontalot and designs medicine-themed card games for NerdcoreMedical.com
Contact at myinitials – AT – brandonpatton.com (change myinitials to my actual initials, two letters)