Hi! My name is Vertyx and I will go over the top finishes of the Magic Online Standard Challenge that took place on the weekend: December 2nd and December 3rd 2023!
1st (by Arianne) and 7th place (by Slasher21) were taken down with Esper Midrange!
I covered this deck a bunch of times but lets take a look at it once again and separate it into 3 piles which are threats, interaction and other supportive permanents.
And the “other permanents” part includes Subterranean Schooner which provides a good “pay-off” for your cheaper creatures. And the rest is 2 playsets of enchantments which are Wedding Announcement and Virtue of Loyalty which help you to make your battlefield stronger by providing a few tokens and most importantly making your creatures bigger!
Of course the deck still has a few more expensive cards and they are Werefox Bodyguard which helps you in removing blockers and Knight-Errant of Eos so you can refuel your hand with threats!
As for the rest, the deck has Make Disappear to catch some unwanted spells and Wedding Announcement which provides a few tokens and most importantly an anthem effect!
6th place was taken down with Azorius Artifacts by 4b8!
This deck plays similarly to a control deck in a way that it wants to make sure that the opponent cannot eliminate you, so you can then use some of your artifacts to win the game with. For that reason the cheap cards in the deck are trying to slow the opponent down and they include cards like Market Gnome, Spring-Loaded Sawblades or Braided Net and some of them are also trying to ramp you like Thran Spider or Fabrication Foundry!
The gameplay is somewhat similar to control decks, but this deck operates mostly on sorcery speed and its threats/finishers also accomplish their goal in a slightly different way.
And that is it for the first Challenge, let’s go take a look at the one that took place on Sunday, December 3rd 2023!
December 3rd, Top 8 Decks
The second challenge had a more diverse top 8 compared to the first one!
It had a single copy of Mono-Red Aggro, Bant Control, Azorius Artifacts, Gruul Aggro, Esper Midrange, Azorius Midrange, Azorius Soldiers and Rakdos Breach!
And when you need to squeeze in the last points of damage you got removal for blockers in the form of Witchstalker Frenzy or burn spells that can go straight to the face like Play with Fire or Lightning Strike.
2nd place was taken down with Bant Control by Nameless_Thing!
This deck goes hard on its Azorius Control base by using some of the strongest control cards that the format has to offer! It includes a lot of cheap interaction like Get Lost, Lay Down Arms or Syncopate, but also some more expensive cards like Sunfall, The Wandering Emperor or Leyline Binding so it can have the battlefield under control at all times!
With those cards the deck is able to control the battlefield from a very early standpoint, and then green comes in with Up the Beanstalk so you can always have cards to cast!
3rd place was taken down with Azorius Artifacts by BERNASTORRES!
This deck was also already covered so lets just recapitulate what it tries to do! It plays similarly to a control deck but its basically just sorcery speed based and its win cons are also a bit different so lets go straight into it.
And the more expensive cards provide even stronger abilities like a boardwipe in the form of Unstable Glyphbridge, a token generator in the form of Thousand Moons Smithy or The Mightstone and Weakstone as a ramp card card that lets you choose from removing a creature or drawing cards when it enters the battlefield!
They include cads like Yavimaya Iconoclast or Picnic Ruiner that contribute into the aggressive creature gameplan of the deck, and they also include other cards like Questing Druid that supplies you with cards and Audacity that lets you power up some of your threats!
And the other permanents include Subterranean Schooner which works well with your cheap threats and 2 enchantments in the form of Wedding Announcement or Virtue of Loyalty that provide a few threats and make the rest of your battlefield stronger.
The rest includes interaction in the form of Make Disappear to catch unwanted spells and other permanents that help you with your gameplan like Subterranean Schooner (which works well with your cheaper soldiers) or Wedding Announcement and Virtue of Loyalty that provide an anthem effects for your battlefield.
Most of the deck is filled with interaction since the deck wants to control the battlefield and it includes cheap ones like Go for the throat or Brotherhood's End, but also some more expensive ones like Burn Down the House so you can take out the whole battlefield with a single card.
And that’s it for the article! If you want to read more, I suggest you to check out my Mythic decks of the week article where I cover the most interesting decks that people reached Mythic with every week!
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.
