The Yawning Portal Event Guide and Decklists

The Yawning Portal event is live for the next two weeks from July 30 to August 12, where you get to play Standard Singleton. Build a 60-card deck with only one copy of each card (except basic lands) with a twist in mind: Your second spell each turn allows you to venture into the dungeon! Here is our event guide with the details of the event and our decklists for you to use to win some Gold and Rulebook Card Styles.

Event Details

Welcome to the Yawning Portal!

For the brave adventurers of Waterdeep, this tavern is the entrance to the infamous dungeon of Undermountain, where the Mad Mage Halaster Blackcloak made his lair. For a modest fee, you can be lowered into the dungeon to try your luck and seek your fortune!

If you choose to venture down the well, you’ll face all manner of foes—and maybe find a few allies along the way, to boot. Each time you complete a run of this event, you’ll win rulebook card styles from Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, representing some of the creatures you may have encountered along the way. You’ll get new card styles each time until you’ve collected the whole set. (If you’d rather let others do your dirty work, then feel free to hire some adventurers to do the exploring for you! Simply join the event and resign, and you’ll still collect card styles without ever leaving the comfort of the tavern.)

• Duration: July 30, 2021 at 8:00 AM – August 12, 2021 at 7:00 AM
• Format: Standard Singleton with On a Quest! Emblem
• Entry Fee: 400 Gems or 2,000 Gold
• Ends After: 3 wins or 3 losses (whichever comes first)
• Match Structure: Best-of-one matches (BO1)

On a Quest! Emblem

“Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, venture into the dungeon.”

Banned Cards

The following cards are banned in this event:

• Cauldron Familiar
• Escape to the Wilds
• Fires of Invention
• Lucky Clover
• Lutri, the Spellchaser
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Omnath, Locus of Creation
• Once Upon a Time
• Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath

Event Rewards

Wins	Rulebook Card Styles	Gold
0	2	0
1	2	500
2	3	1,000
3	3	2,000

The following card styles are available in this event. Each is equally likely, and you will always receive styles you don’t own yet:

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Strategy

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To get the most out of this event’s special clause where you get to venture each time you cast your second spell on a turn, these decklists are built with cheap spells and ways to restock your hand in mind. Adventure and Learn cards are especially good here, since they give you two spells for the price of one!

You might notice some of the decks playing one or two off-colour cards. That’s because it’s very easy to splash just a card or two, because you can go down Lost Mine of Phandelver and get a Treasure token off just two Venture triggers – which you should be able to do in the early turns of most games! I’d recommend going for Lost Mine whenever you’re unsure which dungeon to go down – it’s quick to complete and gives decent rewards.

In longer games, going down Dungeon of the Mad Mage gives you amazing value and card advantage, and Tomb of Annihilation is a great option for the faster decks, chipping away at your already weakened opponents and giving you a pretty scary threat!

The mana is a bit tough in a singleton format, since Standard doesn’t have a wealth of duals available that come in untapped, so the 3-colour decks below will be prone to some awkward hands and starts. Still, the massive power increase from something like Naya Adventures may well justify the small consistency hit!

Remember that it’s often correct to hold your 1 drops to play them a little later on alongside another spell, especially if you’re not a very aggressive deck!

The Yawning Portal Decklists

Here’s our sample decklists, which we’ll be adding to as the event progresses:

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[sd_deck deck=”OJSEDCXl0″]

Naya Adventures is based on the popular Standard deck, which plays a fantastic early and late game by leveraging ramp and hyper-efficient creatures into game-ending value engines!

[sd_deck deck=”1XmeFT3IK”]

A strong Standard contender that has fallen a bit out of favour lately, I’m hoping that Dimir Rogues’ combination of lean efficient spells and lots of card draw can break the second spell per turn mechanic wide open! It’s a bit reliant on drawing specific cards for a Singleton deck, but it’ll be totally unbeatable when you get the right draw.

[sd_deck deck=”3t3KEgVBV”]

Mono White presents a good mix of fast starts and late game value, which is the best way to put those repeated Venture triggers to good work. Just as the Standard Mono White decks are sticky and resilient, this one will make your slower opponents keep having more and more answers well into the late game!

[sd_deck deck=”0e73XGn9b”]

Standard has enough good Mono Green cards that you don’t have to include too many stinkers to build a Singleton deck. It’s not making too great use of the second spell per turn mechanic other than simply having ramp and cheap spells, but you can’t do much better in terms of raw power alongside consistency!

[sd_deck deck=”DdfVA5nNi”]

Having lots of cheap spells and killing your opponent rapidly, stopping them from playing too many of theirs, is a solid way to approach this event! This is the main budget option for this event, and you can replace some of the rares in there if you don’t have them.

I don’t think Mono Red will be great this event, that being said, since there aren’t enough good 1 drops in Standard to fill a Singleton deck and this event thrives on them, so I’d look to some of the other options if you have more cards!

[sd_deck deck=”AM29ylK1b”]

Strixhaven and Adventures in the Forgotten Realms introduced some fantastic reasons to reinvigorate the Orzhov Aristocrats archetype, with a bunch of little creatures that produce value, efficient ways to sacrifice them, and great removal spells/planeswalkers to sink all that card advantage into! This is a controlling value-oriented deck that can grind its way through anything.

[sd_deck deck=”IY9TZzWsc”]

This is the deck that maximises the Forgotten Realms experience, building around the two spells per turn and Venture mechanics with cards like Monk Class and Ellywick Tumblestrum. The mana base isn’t amazing and it’ll have some slow starts, but it’s probably the coolest and most fun way to experience the event, letting you play with the most new cards!