Regional Championship – Hartford Standard Metagame Breakdown

Hey all. Final Fantasy comes out in a few weeks, but as we get ready for the first Standard legal Universes Beyond set to drop, big tournaments are happening, further shaping the Standard metagame.

Standard, and Alchemy, have an Izzet Prowess menace on the Arena ladder that have forced players to consider including options like Authority of the Consulsand High Noon just to hate on the deck. Some players have gone even further and built entire decks to try to counter the strategy.

So looking at the results of Regional Championship Hartford has been quite interesting, as we see the various builds of Izzet Prowess all over the top 16, as well as other decks that have been built with tech against the deck. This is pretty common when there is a well known/perceived “best deck” in a format, but these levels are quite something.

Let’s break down the decks and then discuss some more.

Mono-Red Aggro

Why play Izzet, when Mono-Red do trick? And boy did Mono-Red do trick.

Mono-Red not only took down the whole tournament in the hands of Percy Fang, but there was another copy in the Top 8, and it took down the $10K Standard RCQ at the event.

This build of Mono-Red is pretty similar to the builds from pre-Tarkir: Dragonstorm that were the go to aggro deck in the format. However, they have an interesting new inculsion to fight against Izzet Prowess and Control decks alike: Magebane Lizard.

This little guy has a lot going for it against Izzet. First, it has a whopping four toughness, making it very hard to remove, as even a bargained Torch the Towercan’t take it down. Second, it is going to so much damage to those opponents.

In order to make a token with Cori-Steel Cutter, you have to cast two spells, and in most builds of Izzet, they play mostly noncreature spells to do this. So on any turn that the Izzet player makes a token with Cori-Steel Cutter, they are taking three damage from Magebane Lizard, and then if they cast a third spell, like a Monstrous Rage, they are taking another three damage, up to six damage.

On top of the normal amount of damage that this Mono-Red deck pumps out, the damage from Magebane Lizard adds up very quickly, taking out the Izzet Prowess players before they can even come close to threatening lethal.

This is definitely the coolest part of tournament Magic in my opinion, is when players are able to take some random uncommon from an older set and use it to target a popular part of the metagame.

Like I said, it isn’t just good against Izzet Prowess, it also does a decent amount of damage against the various control decks that are hanging out in the format, dealing extra points of damage here and there.

On the other hand, when sideboard cards like Magebane Lizard end up in the main deck, you know that there is something going on in the format that might not be the healthiest.

So is Mono-Red back? I’d argue that it never left, but just that a lot of aggro players moved over to the new Izzet hotness. I expect a lot of players to pick up Mono-Red over Izzet Prowess now that it had such a good weekend.

Azorius Control

While Jeskai Control took down a recent tournament, Chris Botelho decided to go for a better mana base and just play Azorius, and it paid off as he took down second place in the tournament. While there was a copy of Jeskai Control in the top 16, and another copy in the top 16 of the $10K RCQ, this build of Azorius was the best performing control deck of the weekend.

This build has a few difference from the Jeskai builds outside of just better mana. It gets to play Jace, the Perfected Mind as a win condition for one, but it also has space to play main deck copies of Authority of the Consulsto help slow down the Izzet Prowess, and Mono-Red, decks.

I also like the inclusion of Demolition Field in the main deck, that Jeskai decks can’t afford to play, to help fight against problematic lands.

Overall, I think choosing to play Azorius Control vs Jeskai Control is going to come down to personal preference. If you are a control player, I’d say try some matches of both and see which one you like better against both Izzet and Mono-Red.

Izzet Prowess

Alright let’s talk about public enemy #1. Izzet Prowess had a great weekend despite having such a big target on its back. It was the most played deck, had a great day 2 conversion rate, and put a ton of copies into the Top 16s of both the Regional Championship and $10K RCQ.

More specially, there were three copies in the Top 8 of the Regional Championship, and four more copies in the Top 16, and four copies in the Top 8 of the $10K RCQ, with three more copies in the Top 16.

The builds of the deck all slightly vary, but I picked the list by the Top 4 player from the Regional Championship, Julian Korfine, to showcase above.

This build of the deck has decided to forgo including Monastery Swiftspear in favor of Drake Catcher and sneaking copies of Spell Pierce and Abrade into the made. Spell Pierce can be crucial in the mirror match, snagging a Cori-Steel Cutter early on, or breaking up a Monstrous Rage attack. Abrade obviously takes out resolved copies of the artifact, or a Slickshot Show-Off.

I’m not sure what else there is to say about this deck that hasn’t already been said. It is very good at doing what it does, and if you don’t have a plan for it (and even if you do have a plan for it) you are going to consistently get run down.

Cori-Steel Cutter has proved to be exactly what prowess style decks needed. Normally, cheap removal is good against prowess decks because you can take out their few-and-far-between threats and leave them spinning their tires. Cori-Steel Cutter solves that problem by making sure they always have threats.

So for now, I would say that unless a lot of players go back to Mono-Red Aggro, Izzet Prowess is still public enemy #1 in the format, and is likely to stay that way until Final Fantasy is released.

Orzhov Pixie

A Nurturing Pixie deck? In May 2025? While Esper Pixie has fallen from its time in the sun at the end of last year, only putting on copy into the Top 16 of this tournament, John Shindledecker found success as the only player on an Orzhov build of the deck in the Top 8, let alone Top 16.

This deck seems pretty nicely positioned against the Izzet Prowess and Mono-Red Aggro decks in the format, with good interaction such as Temporary Lockdown to clean up the board, and Preacher of the Schism to block early and often.

The fun part of this deck is putting a lot of your own stuff under a Temporary Lockdown, like copies of Hopeless Nightmare, Nowhere to Run, and Momentum Breaker, and then picking the lockdown up with a Nurturing Pixie or Sunpearl Kirin to put all of those permanents back into play and trigger their effects.

Loran of the Third Path also plays very well against Izzet Prowess, and can be picked back up with our bounce effects to take out more copies of Cori-Steel Cutter or Stormchaser's Talent.

I think this deck is well designed to take on Izzet Prowess, and probably plays okay against Mono-Red Aggro, so if you have been a homeless Esper Pixie player for the past month or two, give this build a try and see how it feels on the ladder.

Orzhov Demons

Another breakout deck of the tournament, Orzhov Demons showed up tech’d up and ready to fight against Izzet Prowess and Control decks alike. This build by Gavin Meagher made Top 8 of the Regional Championship, but there were two more copies in the Top 16 of the $10K RCQ.

This deck has a lot of cool stuff going on. I love the inclusion of Duress and Cruelclaw's Heist in the deck, giving you ways to attacks the opponent’s hand and take out copies of Cori-Steel Cutter, Stock Up, Monstrous Rage, etc. before they can deploy them.

Qarsi Revenant and Preacher of the Schism help to stabilize the board early on, while Anointed Peacekeeper continues to attack the opponent’s hand. Unholy Annex serves as the decks main source of card advantage, while Archfiend of the Dross and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse help close out games.

Legions to Ashes gives more ways to remove Cori-Steel Cutter, or an army of tokens that have already been spawned, while Gix's Command can also clean up the board and help gain some life back.

Overall this deck seems pretty well positioned against Izzet Prowess. I’m worried that Mono-Red Aggro might be a bit fast for this build, but I think it has good cheap spot removal to help with that match up as well.

I was surprised to see a newer deck do so well, but I guess that shows that there is still some room to innovate in Standard.

Other Decks

There were some other decks that rounded out the Top 16s of both tournaments, like an interesting build of Jund Insidious Roots, some copies of Azorius Omniscience combo, and Dimir Midrange.

To see all of the decklists, follow the links below:

Regional Championship: https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/208865

$10K RCQ: https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/271587

Meta Analysis

While there were several interesting things going on this weekend, like the inclusion of Magebane Lizard in Mono-Red Aggro, various builds of Orzhov making waves, and a new build of control making it to the finals, I have a lot of concerns about this Standard metagame.

First of all, does Magic only have four colors of mana? In both tournaments there were zero green cards in the Top 8, and only one deck playing green in the Top 16. Whenever an entire color of mana is absent from the top tables of a tournament you really have to question what is going on with the health of the format.

While there will always be best decks, and those decks will always slightly warp metagames as players try to beat those decks, Izzet Prowess was by far the most played deck this weekend, had a great day 2 conversion rate, and put multiple copies into the Top 8 and even more into the Top 16.

Players that weren’t on the deck were playing cards or entire decks built to beat it, and it still performed as well as it did.

When you have players putting sideboard cards into their main deck, an entire color of mana missing from the top tables, and the deck that everyone is hating on is still doing very well, you may have a problem in your format.

I would say that it could be as simple as banning Cori-Steel Cutter, but Mono-Red Aggro, the deck that took down both tournaments I covered today, and was a huge player before Tarkir: Dragonstorm, doesn’t play the card and would rise again to fill the void left by Izzet Prowess.

When blazing fast aggro decks or suffocating control decks are the best decks in a format, it makes it so much harder for new or interesting cards to see play, driving down format diversity and experimentation, because you are either dead before you can use your new cards, or your new cards don’t do anything.

I hope that with the release of Final Fantasy, Wizards seriously considers taking action and banning cards in Standard. While they said that they wanted to wait until rotation to ban any cards, I don’t know if Standard being like this for the entirety of Summer will be worth playing.

Wrapping Up

So there were some interesting things going on this weekend, but the main takeaways are that Izzet and Mono-Red are the decks to beat, Orzhov might have a chance to beat them, and Green has been demoted from being a color of Magic.

I hope that we see some changes in Standard with the release of Final Fantasy, either because of impactful cards released in the set, or due to bans, but I fear that we are going to be locked in an aggro world for the whole Summer.

Maybe I am wrong, and the meta will self correct and push those decks down, but until that happens my hype to jam games and brew decks will be a bit diminished. Regardless, I will be back to look over the cards from Final Fantasy and brew new decks no matter what decks are terrorizing the format.

Until then, best of luck in all of your matches!