GP Verona, GP Rio, and SCG Indianapolis

Last weekend was a big one for Standard, with three tournaments happening around the world. Normally, we’re used to seeing only one or two major Magic the Gathering Standard events per week, but with this large of a sample size, it leaves us with a nice snapshot of where Standard is currently.

It seems that more than a few people took Brad Nelson’s advice from his article last week and played a variation of his Junk Reanimator list. At least one person in each of the three events made top eight with the deck, the big winner being Mike Krasnitski at GP Verona.

[deck title=”Junk Reanimator by Mike Krasnitski”]
[Creatures]
3 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
4 Centaur Healer
4 Restoration Angel
4 Thragtusk
3 Angel of Serenity
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
[/creatures]
[Spells]
4 Grisly Salvage
3 Mulch
2 Lingering Souls
4 Unburial Rites
[/spells]
[Lands]
4 Temple Garden
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Woodland Cemetery
2 Cavern of Souls
3 Forest
1 Vault of the Archangel
[/lands]
[Sideboard]
2 Deathrite Shaman
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Rhox Faithmender
1 Sever the Bloodline
4 Acidic Slime
2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

Junk can produce an almost endless stream of lifegain and bodies to halt any aggression, thanks to [card]Centaur Healer[/card] and [card]Thragtusk[/card] combined with [card]Restoration Angel[/card], [card]Unburial Rites[/card], and [card]Angel of Serenity[/card]. Craterhoof can usually end the game on the spot. This strategy is simple, yet effective and streamlined. The full sets of [card]Abrupt Decay[/card]s and [card]Acidic Slime[/card]s in the sideboard are able to deal with hateful permanents like [card]Rest in Peace[/card], [card]Ground Seal[/card], and [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card]. And the deck can still function reasonably well through such hate!

Moving on to a different type of [card]Unburial Rites[/card] deck, Human Reanimator combo made the top eight of both Grand Prix.

[deck title=”Human Reanimator by Toni Ramis Pascual”]
[Creatures]
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Fiend Hunter
4 Undercity Informer
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Angel of Glory’s Rise
[/creatures]
[Spells]
4 Faithless Looting
3 Farseek
3 Grisly Salvage
4 Mulch
4 Unburial Rites
[/spells]
[Lands]
4 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
1 Blood Crypt
1 Godless Shrine
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Woodland Cemetery
3 Sunpetal Grove
1 Clifftop Retreat
4 Cavern of Souls
[/lands]
[Sideboard]
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Rolling Temblor
2 Slaughter Games
3 Thragtusk
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
1 Serra Avatar
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

This list from GP Verona features a nice bit of tech for the mirror: [card]Serra Avatar[/card]. It also has access to the full amount of [card]Rolling Temblor[/card] to fight Naya Humans. The weakness of this deck is that it’s actually crippled by graveyard hate, which should be rampant in the coming weeks.

Jund Midrange appeared more frequently than any other archetype in the three top eights combined. Here’s a deck that’s really only gained [card]Stomping Ground[/card] since the beginning of Return to Ravnica, but it continues to put up solid numbers. The lists all looked fairly similar, but the most interesting differences between them are the sideboard choices. Jund has enough good options to fill three sideboards but has to pick and choose which matchups it wants to improve. Having a mix of solid graveyard hate seems good right now, and that hate could include [card]Rakdos Charm[/card], [card]Ground Seal[/card], [card]Cremate[/card], or [card]Tormod’s Crypt[/card], in conjunction with [card]Slaughter Games[/card].

There were a few major differences in deck representation that could be attributed to regional tendencies. Two Aristocrats decks appeared in the top eight of GP Rio de Janeiro, two UWR decks made the top eight of GP Verona, and three Bant decks were in the top eight in Indianapolis.

[deck title=”Prime Speaker Bant by John Mytinger”]
[Creatures]
3 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Restoration Angel
4 Thragtusk
3 Prime Speaker Zegana
3 Angel of Serenity
[/creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
3 Garruk, Primal Hunter
[/planeswalkers]
[Spells]
4 Farseek
3 Selesnya Charm
[/spells]
[Lands]
4 Temple Garden
4 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Sunpetal Grove
3 Hinterland Harbor
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Forest
3 Gavony Township
[/lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Pithing Needle
2 Syncopate
2 Feeling of Dread
3 Rest in Peace
2 Detention Sphere
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Silklash Spider
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

Two of the Bant decks were highlighted by the inclusion of [card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/card], who had a breakout week on the SCG circuit. I particularly like Mytinger’s list with [card]Selesnya Charm[/card], which can serve as a “draw two” with [card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/card]’s trigger, allow one of your giant threats to trample over for lethal, or deal with normally hard-to-answer creatures such as a large [card]Olivia Voldaren[/card] or [card]Obzedat, Ghost Council[/card].

The top eights were rounded out by a single Esper Control deck and various aggro decks, including Naya Blitz, a more traditional Naya Humans list, RG, Jund Aggro, and even BR Zombies. None of these archetypes stood out as doing particularly well on the weekend, but aggro still has its place in the metagame thanks to the blazing fast draws that [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card] can drive.

A Few Brews

[deck title=”Gyro Jund by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Experiment One
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Flinthoof Boar
4 Gyre Sage
2 Dreg Mangler
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
4 Ghor-Clan Rampager
3 Wolfir Silverheart
[/creatures]
[Spells]
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Searing Spear
3 Increasing Savagery
[/spells]
[Lands]
4 Blood Crypt
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Woodland Cemetery
2 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Kessig Wolf Run
[/lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Kessig Wolf Run
3 Ranger’s Guile
2 Golgari Charm
1 Ground Seal
2 Gruul Charm
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Domri Rade
2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Zealous Conscripts
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

I shared this decklist in my last article, but I want to talk a little bit more about it. On the surface, the deck looks much like a less aggressive Jund Aggro deck. [card]Gyre Sage[/card] gives the deck another evolve creature to grow and provides explosiveness in the mid- to late-game with [card]Wolfir Silverheart[/card] and [card]Increasing Savagery[/card]. A typical play is casting [card]Increasing Savagery[/card] on [card]Gyre Sage[/card], tapping [card]Gyre Sage[/card] to play [card]Wolfir Silverheart[/card], and then flashing back the Savagery next turn. Add in a trample effect or a [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card], and you’re usually able to present lethal damage through most types of resistance.

Most decks are concerned with killing small creatures nowadays, and the number of single- target spells that can hit a Silverheart, such as [card]Ultimate Price[/card] and [card]Selesnya Charm[/card], is at a low point. [card]Azorius Charm[/card] can be annoying, but you can play around it by building up a [card]Gyre Sage[/card] and not attacking with it, while just sending in your haste creatures. Plus, [card]Ranger’s Guile[/card] is a nice sideboard trick that tends to catch people by surprise.

The most attractive part of this deck is how easily it can beat a [card]Boros Reckoner[/card]. Most aggro decks are forced to two-for-one themselves to get an opposing Reckoner off the table. This deck can trample over with [card]Ghor-Clan Rampager[/card] or [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card] and allow you to assign just three damage to the blocking Reckoner, thus reducing the damage of the trigger. The second solution is to simply fly over with an eight- or nine-power [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card].

[card]Gyre Sage[/card] Jund has a lot more play to it than your typical aggro deck, remains fairly resistant to sweepers like [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], and can easily go over the top of other aggro and even midrange decks. I’m still tweaking the list – in particular, trying to figure out if Domri belongs in the maindeck – and the sideboard still needs work. But so far, it’s been one of the more fun decks I’ve played.

[deck title=”BUG Midrange by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Gloom Surgeon
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Duskmantle Seer
[/creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Garruk Relentless
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
[/planeswalkers]
[Spells]
1 Syncopate
4 Thought Scour
2 Tragic Slip
1 Unsummon
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Dimir Charm
1 Ultimate Price
2 Psychic Strike
1 Tribute to Hunger
[/spells]
[Lands]
4 Watery Grave
3 Breeding Pool
3 Overgrown Tomb
4 Drowned Catacomb
3 Hinterland Harbor
3 Woodland Cemetery
1 Island
1 Swamp
[/lands]
[sideboard]
2 Dead Weight
1 Dispel
3 Duress
1 Pithing Needle
1 Rapid Hybridization
1 Negate
2 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Psychic Spiral
2 Thragtusk
1 Vraska the Unseen
[/sideboard]
[/deck]

I just started playing this deck last week and was surprised by how well it performed for being a largely untested pile of cards. [card]Duskmantle Seer[/card] comes with a lot of deckbuilding restrictions right from the start: you have to at least be blue and black, you want your mana curve to be on the low side, and you want to attempt to make [card]Duskmantle Seer[/card]’s ability less symmetrical.

The best part about [card]Duskmantle Seer[/card] is often the 4/4 flying body. Against your average deck, he will be dealing four damage plus an extra two to three damage off of triggers per turn. You break the symmetry of the [card]Howling Mine[/card] effect by either killing the opponent before they get a chance to cast the extra spells you give them or just countering the ones that matter.

One challenge right now is surviving to cast your four-drop and then not dying to it. Thankfully, aggro decks like Naya Blitz are heavily creature-based rather than burn-based, and you can stall the board with [card]Gloom Surgeon[/card] and [card]Vampire Nighthawk[/card] while trying to stay at a high enough life total with [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], Nighthawk, and [card]Tribute to Hunger[/card].

I chose [card]Gloom Surgeon[/card] over [card]Augur of Bolas[/card] for a few reasons: the instant and sorcery count is low; we don’t have [card]Restoration Angel[/card] to get more instances of Augur’s trigger; it can repeatedly block larger creatures; and it threatens to kill x/2’s. And don’t overlook the fact that it can attack for two! It’s possible that Augur might become better in the future, or the deck could be changed to include more instants and sorceries to make Augur better, but for now, I like [card]Gloom Surgeon[/card].

The power of this deck comes from its inherently powerful, Legacy-playable spells like [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card], and [card]Abrupt Decay[/card]. Although these spells are leagues worse in the Standard environment, they can still provide enough incremental advantage to eke out wins if you play tight. I tried a few copies of different planeswalkers as relatively cheap sources of card advantage and eventual win conditions. [card]Jace, Architect of Thought[/card], was certainly the worst of them, but they were all decent at providing a couple turns of use while [card]Duskmantle Seer[/card] and [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] served as the real win conditions.

I also used this deck to test [card]Dimir Charm[/card] for the first time. It’s probably slightly worse than [card]Izzet Charm[/card] is, but it did enough by countering spells like [card]Planar Cleansing[/card], [card]Mizzium Mortars[/card], and [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card]. I found myself wanting [card]Golgari Charm[/card] for the -1/-1 effect, though that would fit better if I had Augurs instead of [card]Gloom Surgeon[/card]s. [card]Rapid Hybridization[/card] was a nice catch-all spell that could easily be in the maindeck to answer [card]Hellrider[/card]s, Obzedats, and whatever other giant creatures your opponents might cast.

One problem that I overlooked was when I went to side in multiple five-drops without extra lands to bring in. With only 22 lands in the deck, [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] and [card]Thought Scour[/card] can help get you to your fourth mana, but the fifth can be a challenge. It might not be the perfect environment for a deck like this, but overall, I liked how it played out and will probably come back to it again.

[deck title=”Esper Spirits by Alex Bianchi”]
[Creatures]
4 Gloom Surgeon
4 Drogskol Captain
4 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Dungeon Geists
3 Obzedat, Ghost Council
[/creatures]
[Spells]
3 Tragic Slip
4 Azorius Charm
1 Blind Obedience
1 Dimir Charm
1 Ultimate Price
4 Lingering Souls
1 Midnight Haunting
1 Detention Sphere
[/spells]
[Lands]
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Godless Shrine
3 Watery Grave
4 Glacial Fortress
3 Isolated Chapel
2 Drowned Catacomb
3 Cavern of Souls
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Vault of the Archangel
[/lands]
[/deck]

[card]Gloom Surgeon[/card] impressed me so much in the BUG deck that it inspired me to take another look at tribal Spirits. This is just a rough draft, but I can imagine this deck becoming good again if we see a shift in the format or if an insane Spirit is printed in Dragon’s Maze.

There aren’t any more Standard Grand Prix for a while, but the SCG circuit visits Washington D.C. this weekend, and a long Standard PTQ season is nearly upon us. I’ll be setting aside constructed for a bit in order to practice limited for GP Pittsburgh, but stay tuned for a lot more Standard analysis and innovation after that. Thanks for reading!

Alex Bianchi
Gemmanite on Twitter and MTGO