Hey all, Strickles here. The Standard Qualifier is coming up next weekend, the 23rd-24th, with the Qualifier Play-In taking place tomorrow, the 16th, for Bo1, and on Friday the 22nd for Bo3. To help anyone competing prepare, I’ll be going over three decks that I think are well positioned in the meta, meaning they are decks you should consider playing or at least be prepared for.

As Foundations just released a few days ago on Magic Arena, the Bo1 meta doesn’t have a ton of data including new cards. However, a lot of the top decks from before Foundations are still very good, and if you don’t have time to test new cards, these decks will do just fine.

Best of One is usually dominated by aggro decks, and I don’t think that has changed. So today I’m going to go over the Top 2 aggro decks in the format, and then go over a midrange deck for those of you who want to slow things down.

With all of that said, let’s dive in!

Boros Auras

Boros Auras is a cool aggro deck, looking to use the mice of Bloomburrow, in combination with the best auras in Standard, to quickly run down the opponent in just a few turns. 

The reason these strategies work together, is that our main mice, Heartfire Hero and Emberheart Challenger, have the keyword Valiant, which triggers when you target it with a spell or ability, such as an aura. So it is very easy to buff our creature and get our valiant triggers.

Our other creatures include Manifold Mouse, to also give us free valiant triggers and help us force through damage with double strike or trample, and Optimistic Scavenger, which can buff up our creatures whenever an enchantment enters.

This set of creatures gives us a suite of powerful one and two drops to start our curve and put the pressure on early. They all work well together to keep the pressure up, and you should mulligan if you do not have a starting hand that includes at least one or two creatures.

The rest of our deck are auras to buff up our creatures and quickly end the game. Some of them grant evasion, such as Feather of Flight to grant flying, Monstrous Rage to grant trample, and Demonic Ruckus to grant menace.

These will all help us get through or around blockers that may be in our way, and allow us to get in damage early and often. Feather of Flight and Demonic Ruckus also draw cards, the former on the way in and the latter on the way out, which can help us keep up if we are playing against a deck with a lot of removal.

Our other auras include Shardmage’s Rescue to protect our threats, Ethereal Armor to buff up a creature based on the number of auras we control, and Etali’s Favor for some more value and to grant trample to help get through damage.

Tying the deck together, and making it competitive, is Sheltered by Ghosts. In a format dominated by aggro, Sheltered by Ghosts does several important things. One, it removes an opposing threat, two, it grants lifelink to help you win the race, and three, it grants ward 2, which can protect your creature from removal.

Sheltered by Ghosts holds this deck together, letting it compete against decks that are faster than it or bigger than it. Sheltered by Ghosts is our only removal spell in this deck, so use it wisely. It should be used if you can turn the race in your favor, remove a key blocker to keep the pressure on, or just need to survive.

In general, this deck starts a bit slower than other aggro decks in the format, and you need to be patient. The problem with auras is that it opens you up to getting blown out by removal. For example, you cast Feather of Flight on your Optimistic Scavenger and your opponent responds with Cut Down. You just lost two cards for their one card. 

So be patient. If you think that your opponent has removal, focus on deploying more creatures to the board, and then pick a window when they are tapped out to deploy your auras. Or wait until you have Shardmage’s Rescue to protect your creature. Of course, in some games you won’t have the luxury, but just try to read your opponent and do your best to not get blown out!

Mono-Red Aggro

Mono-Red Aggro seems to always be one of the best decks in Bo1, and that hasn’t changed much. This deck used to be playing the Leyline of Resonance strategy, but that card was banned a few weeks ago, so the deck has shifted to a more heavy creature strategy, running the opponent out of removal and using burn spells to finish off the opponent or remove blockers.

The deck gets started on turn one, with Monastery Swiftspear for some haste damage and with prowess to get in for even more damage on later turns. Hired Claw gets in damage when it attacks and can grow if you have extra mana to add counters to it. Heartfire Hero isn’t as great in this deck as it was in the leyline builds of old, but it works great with Rockface Village to keep growing to become a lethal threat.

On turn two, Emberheart Challenger gets in more haste damage, and is also a great target for Rockface Village, exiling the top card of our library and letting us cast it whenever we trigger valiant. Our other two drop, Manifold Mouse, is our other way of reliably triggering valiant, as it will give one of our mice double strike or trample at the beginning of combat.

Our creature curve tops out at Screaming Nemesis, another powerful haste threat that puts our opponent in difficult positions, where they can’t afford to not block it, but they also can’t afford to block it because they will still take damage.

The powerful part of Screaming Nemesis is that if you damage an opponent with its trigger, they can’t gain life for the rest of the game. Against life gain decks or a life gain spell, you can cast a Burst Lightning or Shock on your own Screaming Nemesis, redirect that damage to your opponent, and give them that can’t gain life debuff.

Our spells are pretty straight forward. Monstrous Rage helps force through our creatures, and triggers valiant on our mice. Burst Lightning and Shock are good at finishing the opponent off or picking off their small creatures, which is very relevant in Bo1.

Lightning Strike and Witchstalker Frenzy can take out slightly bigger creatures, and Lightning Strike also can go at our opponent, giving us more reach later in the game.

I mentioned it earlier, but Rockface Village is very powerful in this deck. Most of our creatures are mice and Hired Claw is a lizard, meaning that when we have Rockface Village and extra mana in play, all of our creatures have haste. This gives us possible pressure later in the game even after our opponent thinks they have stabilized the board.

This deck plays a lot faster than the Boros Auras deck discussed above. While you can still be patient and wait to pick your spots, in general you should deploy your creatures, use burn spells to clear out blockers, and try to run the opponent down. This deck has a lot of creatures, so you shouldn’t be too concerned when one dies. Just replace it with another and keep the pressure on.

Mono-Black Demons

Our last deck is a midrange deck that is making use of both Demon synergies with Unholy Annex, and the one-hit combo kill of Unstoppable Slasher and Bloodletter of Aclazotz.

For those unaware, Unstoppable Slasher says that when it damages an opponent they lose half of their life, and Bloodletter of Aclazotz says when an opponent loses life on your turn they lose twice that life instead. Half their life, doubled, is their whole life, making this a powerful three-four curve that can end the game if the opponent is not prepared.

Archfiend of the Dross is a powerful threat because it is hard for red decks to remove and ends the game quickly. Archfiend and Bloodletter are both demons, making them a perfect follow up to Unholy Annex, turning that life loss into life drain. Unholy Annex helps to keep the cards flowing, which is important because we will need to keep removing our aggressive opponent’s threats, while applying our own pressure.

Deep-Cavern Bat rounds out our creature base, disrupting the opponent’s gameplan and getting in for a few points of lifelink damage to help us stay alive for longer.

We also attack the opponent’s gameplan with Duress, taking out obnoxious burn spells or problematic cards like Monstrous Rage, and Liliana of the Veil to attack our opponent’s hand or serve as removal in a pinch.

The rest of our deck is removal to help us stay alive, and we really have a wide suite here. Cut Down, Go for the Throat, Anoint with Affliction, and Sheoldred’s Edict are all good at killing stuff. Outside of the four copies of Cut Down, the rest of the numbers can be flexed around, so if you have time, play some games and see what you like best.

The last removal spell is Nowhere to Run, which I think is totally fine, but I do like it if you are expecting a lot of copies of Sheltered by Ghosts, as Nowhere to Run makes it so you don’t have to pay that pesky ward 2 cost.

This deck has a lot of great tools to both slow down aggressive opponents and quickly turn the corner and end the game, which is necessary if you want to succeed in Bo1, where a ton of aggro decks are just trying to ignore you and will top deck enough pressure if you don’t end the game quickly.

In some cases you may want to play a turn behind with deploying your threats if you feel that you need to keep up removal like Cut Down. At the same time, if you have the Unstoppable Slasher into Bloodletter of Aclazotz curve, most red decks aren’t going to take the time to interact with you, meaning you are likely going to be able to punk them out.

If you want to slow things down, but still pack a punch, this deck is worth giving a try.

Wrapping Up

I think that all three of these decks have a good shot at carrying you through the Play-In tomorrow, as they have solid gameplans and cards that are well positioned in the meta. If you don’t want to play any of these decks, make sure you are familiar with them, as you will likely run into them during the event.

Foundations will likely make more of an impact on Bo1, but since the set just released three days ago, it is hard to tell what that impact will be. For now, if you are short on testing time, stick to these well known and well tuned strategies to try to carry you across the line.

I hope this article was helpful for those of you preparing to take on the Play-In. I’ll be back next week to go over the best choices for the Bo3 Play-In, so keep an eye out for that.

Until then, best of luck in all of your matches and in the Bo1 Play-In!