Hi! My name is Vertyx and I will go over the top finishes of the Magic Online Standard Challengs that took place on the weekend: September 30th and October 1st 2023!
First challenge after the World Championship that took place on the previous weekend. Lets go take a look if it has already impacted the standard metagame!
1st and 7th place were taken down with Azorius Soldiers, a deck that tries to take an advantage by playing a bunch of soldier cards that work well together, to create a synergistic deck that wants to finish the games quickly!
2nd and 6th place were taken down with Esper Midrange, which is a deck that combines premium Esper threats with premium Esper interaction and a great manabase to create a deck that is able to slice through the metagame with a lot of powerful effects.
3rd place was taken down with Esper Control which is a deck that combines the best interaction and boardwipes in the Esper colors to create a control deck that is able to deal with anything that the opponent might oppose you with.
4th place was taken down with Boros Tokens which is a deck that combines a lot of enablers that create a bunch of tokens with payoffs that take a full advantage of them either by putting on a lot of pressure or using them to cast other spells with convoke.
5th place was taken down with Esper Faeries which is a deck that is very close to Esper Midrange, but shifts its threats and spells closer to the faerie tribal with some synergistic spells and threats.
And 8th place was taken down with Domain Ramp which is a deck that ramps hard in the early game together with a few boardwipes and removal spells to survive and then hardcasts its payoffs to take over the game with value that is really hard to deal with.
1st (by ThaisM) and 7th (by MLGezusus) place were taken down with Azorius Soldiers!
Azorius Soldiers is a deck that uses a lot of cheap threats that work well together to create a powerful and synergistic deck. The threats include cheap threats like Recruitment Officer or Resolute Reinforcements but also some enablers like Harbin, Vanguard Aviator which makes your creatures bigger when you swing out or Knight-Errant of Eos which can get you more threats to cast on top of providing a big body!
These threats are also supported with 4 copies of Make Disappear which is great against decks that play boardwipes or a lot of removal, and also 4 copies of Wedding Announcement which slots well into this deck by either drawing you cards or putting tokens onto the battlefield and providing a strong anthem effect in the later turns.
As for the specific decklists, the 1st place one plays 3 copies of Werefox Bodyguard which is a powerful removal card that also lets you connect in for damage. And the 7th place list instead plays Regal Bunnicorn as a strong threat on a board full of soldiers and a single copy of Valiant Veteran which can grow your whole board. Aside from those the lists look quite similar.
This threat package is also supported with Wedding Announcement as a very powerful anthem effect and Virtue of Loyalty which makes your threats larger every single turn!
3rd place was taken down with Esper Control by Glacier7!
Esper control is a deck that combines some of the greatest interaction that the format has to offer to create a very powerful deck. This deck includes some cheap counterspells like Make Disappear or Dissipate, removal like Cut Down, Go for the Throat or The Wandering Emperor which can also serve as a finisher in the late game!
Of course you also need boardwipes like Sunfall or Farewell when you need to deal with a bunch of creatures with a single spell and you also need some card advantage like Memory Deluge or Quick Study to refuel your hand with new cards!
4th place was taken down with Boros Tokens by Sapoa!
This deck combines a bunch of cheap token enablers and aggro cards with strong payoffs that take advantage of them either by making them bigger or providing them as fodder for convoke spells! Those enablers include cards like Resolute Reinforcements or Gleeful Demolition which are able to create a lot of tokens for you. As for the other aggro cards you got something like Charming Scoundrel as a versatile threat and Raging Battle Mouse which lets you cast more spells in a turn with some other benefits.
As for the payoffs this deck plays cards like Regal Bunnicorn which can get really big, Imodane's Recruiter which can grow your team for a big attack and Knight-Errant of Eos which can get you more cards while being easy to cast with your enablers!
5th place was taken down with Esper Faeries by _Falcon_!
This deck is similar to Esper Midrange, but replaces some of its threats and interaction with faerie cards. The threats still have Raffine, Scheming Seer but they also have faeries like Sleep-Cursed Faerie or Faerie Dreamthief as both of them are cheap and also make some of your spells better. And those spells are Spell Stutter and Faerie Fencing where both of them become better when you have faeries on the battlefield!
And as with most Esper Midrange decks, this one also has 4 copies of Wedding Announcement as a powerful effect in creature decks and the same goes for Virtue of Loyalty!
And 8th place was taken down with Domain Ramp by _Shatun_!
One of the best standard decks that propably doesn’t need a lot of explanation! The early game consists of surviving with removal like Leyline Binding and Virtue of Persistence or boardwipes like Sunfall and most importantly developing your board with ramp like Topiary Stomper or Invasion of Zendikar so you can get to your finishers!
Those finishers include cards like Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Herd Migration that should take over the game! And on top of this powerful gameplan you also got Up the Beanstalk so you never run out of cards to cast!
And that is it for the first Challenge, lets go take a look at the one that took place on Sunday, October 1st 2023.
October 1st, Top 8 Decks
Second challenge of the weekend with some expected but also some unexpected decks!
1st place was taken down with Azorius Soldiers which is a deck that creates a really powerful boardstate by using synergies between its creatures. Thanks to those synergies its able to present a lot of pressure on top of strong abilities that further enhance its gameplan.
2nd, 4th and 8th place were taken down with Esper Midrange which is a deck that seems to be the new “hotness” of the format. It consists of the best Esper threats, interaction and enchantments to create a deck that is able to grind and answer a lot of problematic cards well while still developing its board.
3rd and 5th place were taken down with Mono-Red Aggro which is one of the most iconic aggro decks off all time which consists of cheap haste creatures that can get in a few points of damage every turn and burn spells that are able to finish the game by getting in the last points of damage or making the board clear for the previously mentioned threats.
6th place was taken down with Dimir Tempo which is a deck that takes the shell of Mono-Blue Tempo full of cheap interaction, card advantage and evasive threats and enhances it with black interaction so its able to deal with some problematic threats that mono-blue can a very hard time interacting with.
And 7th place was taken down with Esper Control which is a deck that combines some of the strongest interaction spells and boardwipes to create a deck that is able to destroy most creature focused decks of the format!
Thats all for the overview, Lets go take a look a the decklists!
1st place was taken down with Azorius Soldiers by Hamuda!
This deck tries to swarm the board with cheap creatures that work well together to create a strong battlefield which should hopefully finish the game. The threats include cheap cards like Recruitment Officer or Zephyr Sentinel where both of them are great at attacking the life total but it also includes cards like Harbin, Vanguard Aviator which can pump your whole team, Werefox Bodyguard which is a great removal effect since it also puts more pressure on the opponent and Knight-Errant of Eos which is an easy to cast card in this deck while also providing some card advantage and a big body.
A lot of decks in the format play annoying boardwipes or big threats like Sunfall or Atraxa, Grand Unifier and for that you got 4 copies of Make Disappear which serves as a general catch all spells against those annoying decks. And the last card to point out is Wedding Announcement which is also a great addition into the deck since it can provide more threats or cards on top of being a great anthem effect in the later turns!
2nd (by Graciasportanto), 4th (by Garthoro) and 8th place (by MJ_23) were all taken down with Esper Midrange!
This deck has emerged just recently to the top spots while not being so popular for a long time. It consists of a lot of powerful and hard to deal with threats like Dennick, Pious Apprentice or Raffine, Scheming Seer, premium interaction like The Wandering Emperor which can also get in more damage when you need to or cards like Go for the Throat or Make Disappear as cheap but very impactful cards. Those previously mentioned threats are already quite powerful, but 4 copies of Wedding Announcement and Virtue of Loyalty can make them even scarier while also providing aditional value in the form of more threats!
As for the specific decklists, they look very similiar with only minor differencies that are mostly about the personal preferencies of the pilots
3rd (by ura_frst) and 5th place (by Danielpena397) were taken down with Mono-Red Aggro!
Mono-Red Aggro was propably the most popular aggro deck in a lot of timeframes over the liftime of the game and this rotation is not an exception! This deck uses a lot of fast and cheap threats like Monastery Swiftspear, Phoenix Chick or Kumano Faces Kakkazan but also some more expensive ones like Squee, Dubious Monarch or Goddric, Cloaked Reveler where they are able to provide some more complex abilities that also push in a lot of damage quickly!
As the turns progress it becomes harder to connect and for that you also got Play with Fire, Lightning Strike or Nahiri's Warcrafting to either aim straight at the face or clear the battlefield from problematic creatures!
6th place was taken down with Dimir Tempo by cftsoc3!
This deck combines the power of mono-blue tempo and black removal spells! The mono-blue tempo part of the deck includes threats like Haughty Djinn which makes your spells cheaper on top of being a very big evasive finisher. And the most important part of the mono-blue deck are its spells which include cheap counterspells like Syncopate or Make Disappear but also instant speed card advantage like Impulse, Thirst for Discovery or Flow of Knowledge which is a great way to refuel in this deck.
The reason this deck plays black are mostly the removal spells like Cut Down and Go for the throat which make this deck way better at dealing with already resolved creatures which mono-blue sometimes had problems with.
And the last 7th place was taken down with Esper Control by Ignotus97!
This deck uses some of the best interaction in the Esper colors so its able to interact with anything that the opponent presents! Lets start with the cheap removal which includes cards like Cut Down or Go for the throat and also cheap counterspells like Make Disappear or Negate so you are ready to interact as soon as turn 1!
You also got some more versatile removal spells like Void Rend or Sheoldred's Edict and when even those are not enough you can wipe the whole board with Sunfall or Farewell! As with most decks its easy to run out of cards and for that you got Quick Study and Memory Deluge to refuel your hand at instant speed!
And that’s it for the article! Not much has changed since the last weekend even that the World Championship took place on it, but its still very early to draw out any conclusions. Esper Midrange has started getting very popular in the recent weeks, lets wait and see how the format evolves!
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Hi! I am Vertyx, I am 18 years old and I am from the Czech Republic. Most people know me due to my results on MTGO. I have countless Challenge Top 8s and a handful of wins with a wide variety of decks. I manage data from Magic: The Gathering events on MTG Arena Zone and MTG Meta.
