Table of Contents
With almost two weeks behind us since the release of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, competitive events featuring cards from the new set are starting to pick up. It’s a new format, and there’s a lot that can be learned from the results of these meta-shaping early tournaments.
Over the weekend, several of the events that took place on Arena offered qualifications for the upcoming Streets of New Capenna Set Championship, and hundreds of players brought their best to fight for their spot. Always on the lookout for interesting decklists and highlights, we found one deck in particular from among the Top 8s that stood out to us for both its success and its relative obscurity.
Decklist
Planeswalkers (14)
Creatures (1)
Instants (9)
Lands (28)
60 Cards
$468.18
Sideboard
15 Cards
$13.59
Deck Information
This deck was entered into the $5k Crokeyz Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Tournament on Saturday by Eliott_dragon, who managed to take the deck to an impressive third place finish with an 11-3 record. Esper Midrange and Control decks were fairly popular at the event, but most of them had more in common with the Orzhov Token/Orzhov Sacrifice decks with Wedding Announcement and friends. While those and other Midrange decks in the format usually run a handful of planeswalkers, Eliott_dragon’s deck was unique in that its entire gameplan revolves around them.
Niko Aris and the new Kaito Shizuki allow the planeswalkers to start coming down on turn three, and an assortment of four and five-drop planeswalkers keep the value coming through the mid and late game. Out of fourteen total ‘walkers in the maindeck, all but four of them are capable of generating one or more creature tokens the turn they come down – a particularly useful effect in a deck that can either use them as a clock or hold them back on defense to help keep the planeswalkers on the field.
Meanwhile, a suite of efficient removal spells partner with seven maindeck sweepers to keep aggro decks at bay, and cards like Negate and Duress can come in from the sideboard to battle other control and midrange strategies.
In the previous Standard format, a deck like this would have struggled against a meta where the dominant Alrund's Epiphany combo decks were capable of consistently going over the top of midrange, and the fast aggro decks built to stop them would make it difficult to keep any planeswalkers on the field. Now however, Epiphany is banned and Neon Dynasty has put midrange very much back on the menu – and these planeswalkers can grind.
Eliott_dragon’s third place deck has plenty of cards that are typical fare for Esper control at this point – Vanishing Verse is still a great removal spell, Doomskar and Lolth just make sense – but there are some unusual choices as well. The deck not only has four copies of March of Otherworldly Light, but also two March of Wretched Sorrow for a removal option that can gain some life at the same time.
There’s even a few spicy one-ofs in there, including a Kotose, the Silent Spider to use the opponent’s deck against them. I’m personally partial to the single Sunset Revelry, which can gain life and generate tokens to protect the planeswalkers or work with the plus abilities on Kaito and the Emperor.
This deck seems like it’s well positioned to take advantage of the Orzhov and other midrange decks that have been running wild since the Epiphany ban. In the grindier matchups, getting a planeswalker to stick around is sometimes key, and this deck is full of them while many comparable decks only run a few. It’s still early in the format, however, and it’s hard to say if this style of deck will remain viable.
The Jeskai deck built around Hinata, Dawn-Crowned for example, was the most popular archetype at the tournament and doesn’t seem like it would be a great matchup. Similarly, Hullbreaker Horror seems like like it might be a nightmare for the planeswalker deck to keep up with.
However, it’s certainly hard to argue with a third place result at a tournament with over 500 players, and I think Standard is probably in a pretty good place if a planeswalker deck like this can exist and compete in the meta.
Source
Elliot_dragon (who is also known as Hagera on MTG Arena) is consistently ranked in high Mythic on the ladder. He has recently reached as high as #45 Mythc, and he took this deck to a third place at the Crokeyz Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Tournament. Other players have also taken this list to flawless runs on the Standard Metagame Challenge!
Eliott_dragon also has a YouTube channel where he uploaded a video showing off the deck in a match with the eventual tournament winner Zan Syed. The video is in French, but non-speakers can still at least get the gist of what he’s saying thanks to YouTube’s auto-generated subtitle translations.
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