MTGO Standard Challenge – July 15, 2023 – Top 8 Decklists

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: July 15, 2023. Lets go take a look at all of the interesting decks people chose to register this weekend!

Top 8 Decks

After the Standard bans (especially the banning of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker), the format has been slowly moving away from being dominated by the Black and Red color combination since Red lost its best card and there is not a big incentive to play it now. Naturally the format had to evolve and it did not change a lot! Black is still he best color and is seen as the core of most decks in the format sometimes even the only color! When Black isn’t enough it is mostly supported by Blue and White as both of those can provide strong interaction spells that some decks are lacking.

This top 8 exactly proves how the format has evolved and we can see 0 decks with Red and 7 out of these 8 decks play Black! Black still has the strongest threats and premium removal which creates a strong shell that a lot of decks struggle to keep up with. The whole top 4 is all Mono-Black decks that do exactly that, they have the strongest black threats, premium removal and strong disruption which puts pressure on the opponent to swiftly interact or they lose.

5th place deck is Esper Control. Recently a very popular archetype that uses the strongest control cards this rotation has to create a potent control deck which has all the answers it needs including cheap counterspells, instant speed removal and premium board wipes.

6th place deck was Mono-White Aggro. A straightforward Mono-White deck that goes all in onto the aggro gameplan. It does that with cheap white creatures that have strong synergies together to gain additional benefits from your threats like anthem effects or disruption to make it harder for the opponent!

7th and 8th place decks were Dimir Midrange. When only black isn’t enough for you and you want another angle of interaction you can add Blue to your Black threats to create this deck! Blue adds a nice way of interaction by adding counterspells which can deal with some annoying spells that could possibly be devastating if you only played black in your deck!

Overall the top 8 has: 4 copies of Mono-Black Midrange, 1 copy of Esper Control, 1 copy of Mono-White Aggro and 2 copies of Dimir Midrange.

The whole top 4 was dominated with Mono-Black Midrange by FerMTG (1st), bernardocssa (2nd), duke12 (3rd) and Patxi (4th)!

This deck together with Esper Control and Dimir Midrange has been getting really popular recently and has been proving that with strong results like this challenge! Black is single-handedly the best color in the format since its the core of almost every deck. The combination of strong threats that can 2 for 1 opponents and premium removal makes this color shine in almost every deck and this one proves that its enough even on its own without a support of a different color!

As mentioned above this deck uses all of the strong black threats like Graveyard Trespasser, Tenacious Underdog or Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and combines them with premium removal like Go for the Throat and Cut Down to create a consistent shell that can gain a lot of advantage with its threats and disruption (Liliana of the Veil) which some decks have a really hard time interacting with!

Mono-Black is one of the strongest decks if not the strongest in the format so if you are preparing for a standard tournament I recommend giving this deck a try!

5th place was taken down with Esper Control by Lennny!

Another very popular deck making itself one of the core tier decks in the format together with Mono-Black Midrange and Dimir Midrange!

This deck takes an advantage of all the strong control cards this rotation has to offer. Those include cheap counterspells (Make Disappear), instant speed removal (Void Rend, The Wandering Emperor), premium boardwipes (Sunfall, Farewell) and card advantage (Memory Deluge). The combination of these cards creates a strong control deck that is able to keep up with the format! The combination of premium removal, counterspells and card advantage has always been creating strong control decks and I am glad that this rotation has finally been blessed by it! Standard did not have a proper control deck for a while so I am happy that we get to experience one right now! If you are a fan of control this deck is exactly for you!

6th place was taken down with Mono-White Aggro by kasa!

This deck goes all in on aggro! It accomplishes that with white creatures with powerful abilities that give you additional advantages either by developing your board or making it harder for the opponent! Most of the threats in this deck cost less than 3 mana making the curve of the deck really low to the ground so it can put a lot of pressure on the board as soon as possible!

For example the threats that can accomplish that are Coppercoat Vanguard, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Adeline, Resplendent Cathar which all of those have really strong abilities that further develop your gameplan! This deck can curve out really well so if you don’t have cheap removal against it I have bad news for you, because you are most likely loosing that game. If you are a big fan of aggro but want to try something else than Mono-Red I recommend giving this one a try.

7th and 8th place were taken down with Dimir Midrange by musasabi and MJ_23!

This deck takes the core of Mono-Black Midrange which consists of a shell containing powerful Black threats (for example Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Graveyard Trespasser) and premium black removal and disruption (for example Go for the Throat or Liliana of the Veil) and adds a few Blue cards to the deck!

Those spells include Make disappear or Ertai Resurrected which both of these can improve some of your matchups where countering threats is important! The combination of Black threats and counterspells is a strong strategy in this rotation, if you are a fan of midrange and want to have everything under control I would recommend giving this deck a try!

Looks like the meta has settled into a Black-oriented format again but with slightly different support colors and archetypes! That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed the article and see you soon!