MTGO Standard Challenge – July 29, 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 29, 2023. Lets go take a look at all of the interesting decks people chose to register this weekend!

Top 8 Decks

It may feel like you have already seen this top 8 since it is very similar to the one from last Sunday!

It was won with the same deck (Domain Ramp)! This deck is all about ramp, ramp and ramp! If things get scary you also got removal to keep you alive and when you get to enough mana it becomes easy to win since you get to hard cast Atraxa, Grand Unifier which is often enough to take over the game since it draws so many cards!

The other finalist and also the 5th place were taken down with a more aggro focused version of Dimir Midrange called Dimir Aggro! This deck plays more cheap threats compared to Dimir Midrange. Some of those also act as disruption (Faerie Mastermind) or card advantage (Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor)! Potent threats, interaction and card advantage is a really strong combination!

3rd place was taken down with Selesnya Enchantments! As you figured from the name this deck plays A LOT of enchantments! They are able to provide a lot of value since they are able to create a lot of synergies and even provide threats!

4th place was taken down with Mono-Black Midrange! Being solely black this deck has strong threats and great removal which black was historically great at doing. This deck is really powerful and proves how broken the color black is in this rotation!

6th place was taken down with Esper Control! A traditional control deck full of cheap counterspells, awesome removal and great board wipes which creates a really powerful combination!

7th place was taken down with Dimir Midrange! This deck combines the power of black threats and blue countermagic to create a dimir deck which is able to provide pressure with interaction to make the opponent feel miserable!

And the last 8th place was taken down with Esper Legends! A deck that has been existing for a while and consisting of mostly legendary creatures that have powerful abilities including disruption and card advantage!

Overall 1 copy of Domain Ramp, 3 copies of Dimir Midrange, 1 copy of Selesnya Enchantments, 1 copy of Mono-Black Midrange, 1 copy of Esper Control and 1 copy of Esper Legends!

The 1st place was taken down with Domain Ramp by ht991122!

Another showing of this deck again on the 1st place of the event! Some of you might know the deck well since it isn’t a new creation but to those who don’t know it I am going to explain it. Its gameplan is really simple actually, you want to ramp A TON early in the game. If you run out of ramp you also got removal so you can at least slow the board down. When you get enough mana that is where the fun starts! You hard cast Atraxa, Grand Unifier! That card is so strong that it should be enough to take over the game with cards and the raw power of the creature!

A really fun deck that should be respected!

2nd and 5th place were taken down with Dimir Aggro by ovmlcabrera and Salvatto!

This deck is similar to Dimir Midrange but the threats of it are a bit different and usually more low to the ground. The deck consists of black and blue threats where some of them act as disruption (Faerie Mastermind) and some also as card advantage (Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor)! Powerful threats can sometimes be enough but most of the time you also want interaction! That is where black removal (Go for the throat) blue countermagic (Make Disappear) and premium planeswalkers (Liliana of the veil, Kaito Shizuki) come in to take over these interaction slots!

Both of these lists share a similar idea but we can see some differences in the threat slots. 2nd place list plays threats closer to the Mono-Black Midrange lists consisting of cards like Tenacious Underdog and Graveyard Trespasser while the 5th place list plays more copies of Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor and Faerie Vandal!

Combining potent threats and cheap interaction has always been a strong way to win games of magic and this deck proves that well!

3rd place was taken down with Selesnya Enchantments by MJ_23!

This deck has been showing up more often now and it for sure has the power for it! Being all in on enchantments this deck consists of a lot of different effects that together create a highly synergistic deck! Some of those cards are able to reduce the cost of your enchantments (Jukai Naturalist), some are able to draw you cards (Rite of Harmony), some are good value on their own (The Restoration of Eiganjo) and some of them even provide threats (Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr, Hallowed Haunting)!

With those cards combined this deck has a lot of ways to interact with the battlefield while also providing a lot of value with its cards!

4th place was taken down with Mono-Black Midrange by beraldi!

This deck probably doesn’t need a lot of explanation to those familiar with the format, but we still might have some readers who are reading this article as their first introduction into it so lets take a look at it! The deck is straight mono-black so it only includes black threats (for example Graveyard Trespasser or Tenacious Underdog) and the same goes with removal and disruption (for example Go for the throat or Liliana of the veil). By combining these threats and interaction you get a really potent Mono Black deck that is able to provide a ton of pressure while also clearing the battlefield for its threats!

Being mono color ussualy makes your deck more consistent which is sometimes a really good ability when the color has all the cards you need!

6th place was taken down with Esper Control by Graciasportanto!

Hard to talk a lot about the deck since the gameplan is pretty clean! This is a good example of a control deck since it plays cheap countermagic (Make Disappear), good removal (Sheoldred's Edict) instant speed card advantage (Memory Deluge) and strong board wipes (Sunfall)! Combine all of those cards and you get yourself a really powerful control deck capable of doing all the control stuff while also ending the game quite fast since you play The Wandering Emperor and Sunfall which both can create great threats!

7th place was taken down with Dimir Midrange by AlfredTorres!

This deck is a more midrange-y variant of the 2 above covered Dimir decks! This deck is a lot closer to Mono-Black Midrange including the threat package (which is mostly the same) and the removal package which is also almost the same! The part that differentiates those decks is the blue splash which gives the deck an ability to play Kaito Shizuki, Ertai Resurrected and Make Disappear (and also a few counterspells in the side).

Blue adds the ability to interact better with the opponent, especially with non-creature spells which can sometimes be tough to deal with when you don’t have access to counterspells.

And 8th place was taken down with Esper Legends by musasabi!

This deck has not been showing a lot of results recently and has been slowly vanishing from the meta! To those who are not familiar with it, the deck originally saw its first hype period around the European Regional Championship in Naples (march 2023) where it crushed the event having multiple copies in the top 8! The second hype train was after the bans where it emerged to the top again but after that it started seeing less and less play (but still puts up some results from time to time).

The decks main gameplan consists of curving out your legendary creatures which all of them have powerful abilities that are often able to provide game defining effects for the pilot! This rotation has a lot of legend support including the manabase (the Kamigawa cycle and Plaza of Heroes). The legendary creature package include cards like Rona, Herald of Invasion, Raffine, Scheming Seer and Sheoldred, The Apocalypse so as you see it has a lot of going for it! Combine these threats with interaction (Go for the throat, Make Disappear) and you get yourself a really powerful deck that was at the top of the format twice in this rotation!

That’s it for today! A lot of familiar decks again with not much inovation going on, but its still better to see the top 8 being more diverse than full of only Mono-Black! I hope you enjoyed the article and see you soon!