Top 10 Standard Brews With Wilds of Eldraine

Wilds of Eldraine is upon us and before we get MTGO Challenge results in, we thought that a nice last batch of brews is in order.

You may have seen some of them, you may be surprised at some but they are all a breath of fresh air.

Have fun brewing in the new Standard format and without further ado – let’s get into it.

Esper Poisoner

Esper is a very well known colour combination in Standard. It is played in two main variations – Control and Legends.

Here I want to present a slant on these strategies with a lifelink subtheme.

This Human Warlock is essentially a three mana 3/2 body with a removal attached. It works with the food it adventures into but also with additional copies.

If you attack with one Poisoner and gain 3 life, you can play another copy and kill something.

Crucially, it’s a -X/-X effect so you can play it to shrink a creature pre-combat to have better attacks. On top of that, you can kill something off after combat, since damage stays on the creature until the end of turn.

To bolster this card’s presence in the deck, we play a plethora of good creatures that have lifelink. Intrepid Adversary boosts the board, Phyrexian Missionary plays well in the long game, and Dennick, Pious Apprentice was played in UWx strategies, as it’s a powerful stand-alone card that happens to have lifelink.

Funnily enough, Raffine, Scheming Seer connive buff grows creatures, which translates into more lifelink damage, hence more life, making Poisoner even stronger.

Dimir Control

Control decks have been doing fine in Standard with a heavy emphasis on white, as it’s the best colour for sweepers and has The Wandering Emperor.

However, there is one card that I think slots perfectly into Dimir.

Four-mana instant speed exile removal on creatures and Planeswalkers is decent. Not only does it allow you to get rid of those annoying Planeswalkers that are otherwise tough to deal with, but it also exiles that makes recurring shenanigans impossible.

The real upside though is in the second part of that effect. We get a Surgical Extraction effect attached to our removal. Hitting Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and ridding the opponent of any copies gives you a much easier time long-term. And you are indeed interested in long-term, since you play a control deck.

It can be particularly powerful against strategies that don’t run many threats to begin with. If you The Endopposing The Wandering Emperor out of an Azorius deck, the number of their win conditions diminishes significantly.

I also think there is space for some adventure cards. I’m most drawn to Spellscorn Coven.

On the adventure side, it gives you unconditional Unsubstantiate which buys you more time. At your own leisure then, you can deploy the creature that blocks nicely in the air and has some enter-the-battlefield application.

Mono Black Wicked

Mono Black has already been a very playable deck but I want to explore one particular new angle – Wicked Roles.

If Spiteful Hexmage had no drawback, it would be very good. One-mana for a 3/2 threat would be game-warping, especially on the play. However, it’s not downside-less, as it enters with a Cursed Role, making it a 1/1.

If we could somehow remove the role from it with minimal effort, we could just turn it into a powerful creature.

If we curve Hexmage into Blessing, we can attach a Wicked Role to our one-drop. As per Magic rules, we can make the Cursed Role fall off and keep Wicked. The outcome is that we’re left with a 4/3 threat!

Blessing isn’t just a buff to Hexmage though. If the opponent doesn’t respond fast, we will have our own Phyrexian Arena to draw us into more threats.

Rakdos Anvil

It’s been a long time since we saw Oni-Cult Anvil in action but I reckon there is some potential to explore.

Food Fight is a new enchantment that grants all the artifacts the ability to shoot any target we want, which includes creatures, battles, Planeswalkers, and most importantly players.

It’s a strong inevitability tool, especially against decks that will try to play long against us.

Candy Trail is also a nice addition that doesn’t make any matchup significantly different but is a small utility tool that comes in handy sometimes. It smoothes out your early draws and later can be cashed in for a fresh card.

Rakdos Rats

With Eldraine being full of Rats, there had to be some attempts at making them work. This is a full-on Rats deck that’s basically a go-wide strategy.

What’s the reason to play Rats in addition to the wave of flavour? Karumonix. In this deck, it’s not impossible to draw 3-5 cards off it, and it will grind through every single point removal deck. The sheer mass of rats will overwhelm the opponent.

Karumonix’s trigger can find more copies of Karumonix, chaining them and allowing to see a ton of cards.

Another reason to play Rats is a certain Witch who was my own spoiler preview card. Giving every single rat a Wicked Role will make them substantially stronger. The fact that Wicked also pings the opponent when it leaves the battlefield insulates you from mass removal.

Mono Green Artifacts

I know I’ll enjoy a good Hardened Scales deck if I see one. Thankfully, we have Ozolith, the Shattered Spire in the format, so we can take full advantage of that.

This little biscuit works in this deck on two axes. One – it’s an artifact so it has synergies on that front.

Second, it happily takes any and all the +1/+1 counters one could give it and then smash with unblockability.

For ultimate cheekiness, Agatha's Soul Cauldroncan exile it and grant other creatures the unblockable ability!

Archivist is an unbelievably strong two-drop in this deck. It will grow by at least 2 counters every turn. And with Mirrex it will indeed be every turn, not only your own!

There are also some enchantments in the deck so Archivist might amount to a two-drop that grows to a wild size, all while drawing a card every turn.

Selesnya Tokens

When there aren’t many mass removal spells floating around, it’s the best time to sleeve up some tokens.

Three Blind Mice is a nice additional substitution to Wedding Announcement, combining into eight copies of super strong enchantments that generate more bodies. The opponent won’t be able to just hope you don’t have it.

Generating multiple bodies off the same card is also crucial since it makes you invulnerable to point removal.

When we saw Regal Bunnicorn, it immediately screamed ‘tokens’ and so it happened. Two-mana creature with double-digit size is something that I do want to be doing.

It also makes it super awkward for the opponent since point removal is awful against this deck but it’s necessary against Bunny specifically.

Temur Counters

This Otter has been assigned a role in Prowess decks where utter aggression is key. It can be utilised in other ways though! Its adventure part provides counters that fit into the overall deck’s plan.

It also makes Otter great early and late. On the first turn it can be deployed as a creature but when top-decked on turn 10, it will happily grow the board massively for one big attack.

Coincidentally, Questing Druid also gets counters. It, hence, works great with Bloated Contaminator and Thundering Raiju.

Its Adventure Seek the Beast provides the deck with staying power when faced with a wall of removal. A nice way to rebuild.

Sultai Food

Beseech the Mirroris one of the best cards to come out of the set and so we should at least try to find a home for it. Its biggest strength shines through when it’s bargain so that potential shell would have to allow for an easy bargain.

Enter Food tokens!

With so many tokens floating around, Beseeching will be as easy as ever.

There have been ideas to go for straight Golgari but The Goose Motheralone is a powerful argument to venture into blue. Not only is it a mass Food maker, but also a big body with evasion. If it stays on the battlefield, it can also convert Food into cards.

Crucially, if you deploy it early, you can eat Food produced by other creature still, drawing two cards every turn.

An otherwise interactive black deck with a Food subtheme seems to have proper legs (and geese feathers) in the format.

Golgari Fight

Fan favourite deck that gets an upgrade here and there with every set.

This deck loves four-mana over-statted creatures and Devouring Sugarmaw is exactly that. It brings up the density of huge threats high enough that you can easily expect to draw 1-2 every single game.

This mana dork allows you to play a four-drop like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse as soon as turn three. It’s particularly powerful on the play when the opponent hasn’t got off the ground properly yet.

I am also heavily interested in the adventure part. In the later stages of the game it can turn from a mere mana dork into a proper threat.

We also play Beseech the Mirrorhere to chain Fight Riggings and try to never run out of threats.