Table of Contents
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty CONSTRUCTED Articles
- The Winners and Losers of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Standard and the One Deck That May Break Standard
- Review and Preliminary Decklists of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty’s Planeswalkers
- Here Be Dragons! – Review and Decklists with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty’s Dragons
- Three New Graveyard Decks with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
- Three New Tempo Decks Made Possible by Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
- Three Awesome Standard Aggro Decks Made Competitive by Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
- Three Unique Enchantress Decks for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Standard
- Top 5 Overrated and Underrated Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Cards With Decklists and the Card That May Break Standard
- 25 New Standard Decks with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
Hello everyone!
With the spoilers being fully released, everyone has been in a brewing frenzy to try and find the next top decks to tackle the metagame with. Reto went with some neat tempo decks while Josh was looking to channel his inner Johnny with his graveyard synergy decks. What have I been doing you ask? Well I’ve been looking at the decks I always gravitate towards the most: Aggro decks.
There’s just something about aggro decks that I really love. You always know what your game plan is, but the way you can approach it is extremely varied, always changing, and much more complex than it looks. I love high octane game play and there’s no better way to find it than in aggro. Furthermore, at the beginning of set release, it’s always a great time to play aggro as you can cut through a lot of the brews people are playing while refining your own. It’s a win-win!
However, aggro has been a tad bit stale recently. Being pigeonholed into either Monowhite or Monogreen Aggro, we’ve been missing the variety that’s been known with aggro. That said, I think that’s all going to change come Kamigawa! I have three new aggro decks that are both interesting and look extremely promising to be strong in the new metagame. Let’s get into it!
MONORED AGGRO
Monored Aggro – Kamigawa
by DoggertQBones
Standard
best of 1
12 mythic
12 rare
18 uncommon
18 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Planeswalkers (2)
Creatures (21)
Enchantments (4)
60 Cards
$136.56
Sideboard
7 Cards
$3.09
Oh Monored, how does it always come back around to you? Not so long ago, Monored was synonymous with week one domination as the deck’s low and efficient curve consistently chopped up the clunky brews of it’s competitors. However, ever since Torbran, Thane of Redfell, Embercleave, Anax, Hardened in the Forge, and Bonecrusher Giant left Standard, the deck has been completely non-existent. Even when those cards were in Standard, the deck struggled to make any significant foothold as the other strategies were just so good at protecting themselves to it’s safe to say that Monored has had it rough for quite awhile. While it seemed Monored was a meme before Kamigawa, that’s about to change in a big way.
The heart and soul of a Monored deck is always in its one drops. If your one drops are bunk, your aggro deck is extremely unlikely to work. Monogreen was a recent exception as they had such powerful cards and Monowhite right now had decent pickings with Hopeful Initiate, Stonebinder's Familiar, and Usher of the Fallen. What did Monored have?
Well that’s not going to cut it. Thankfully Kamigawa gave us not one, but TWO extremely good one drops. First off we have Rabbit Battery, and I know what you’re thinking: is Raging Goblin the new hotness? No, but when it’s a Raging Goblin that can turn into an equipment, that’s a whole different story. Being able to attack in for a few points of damage and then start putting this on larger creatures to continue pushing through more is going to be a really strong, but underappreciated play pattern in Standard. Imagine playing an Atsushi, the Blazing Sky turn 5, equipping it with the battery, and slamming in for 5? Not so ridiculous, right?
I could’ve made Monored happen with just the Battery, but to get Kumano Faces Kakkazan too? That’s just gravy. Although I think this is less good than the Energizer Bunny, this still does a lot of good things. Pinging the opponent for 1 guarantees a damage which is vital for your cards. Growing your next creature is reminiscent of Alchemy’s extremely powerful Tenacious Pup so that’s obviously a good mode. Finally, getting a Hasty 2/2 with a non-negligible triggered ability to top it off is the complete package, all for one mana! Unlike Rabbit Battery, this is going to drop off harder in the late game, but what one drop doesn’t? On the contrary, I would say this is a better top deck in the late game compared to the vast majority of one drops in Standard!
With these two cards, I’m thinking Monored is going to…wait. There’s still more good cards for the deck? I don’t know who Torbran paid off, but this feels like Monored’s set!
Next up we have Ogre-Head Helm which is an extremely unique and powerful card with the extra bonus of having some of the dumbest art I’ve ever seen.
Love it.
Monored is all about having aggressive cards that are impactful in the late game, and Helm is that in spades. When it (or the equipped creature) connects, you can pitch your hand to get three fresh cards! This immediately reminds me of The Flame of Keld, and while you don’t need to connect nor do you get the broken third ability, it is substantially easier to get to a point where you’re happy to throw away your hand to get three fresh cards. I don’t think I have to tell you how good drawing cards is!
Finally, we end our new card spree with Atsushi, the Blazing Sky. There’s not too much to say here, Atsushi is a great threat that gets you some really nice value if the opponent can kill it. Monored has always been a fan of their good 4 mana 4/4 Dragons when they had them, and Atsushi is no exception.
Beyond all the new cards, we have the underpinnings of a very solid deck. The curve looks great, we have a solid amount of interaction, and the card quality looks surprisingly high. If you’re a fan of Monored, this is definitely the time to rejoice.
ORZHOV TOKENS
Orzhov Tokens – Kamigawa
by DoggertQBones
Standard
best of 1
12 mythic
32 rare
4 uncommon
12 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Planeswalkers (8)
Creatures (16)
Instants (4)
Lands (24)
60 Cards
$378.92
We started off with the hyper aggressive and efficient Monored, but let’s view the other side of the aggro spectrum. As I said before, Monogreen was a recent exception to the 1 drop rule in Standard as their card quality was so high which made me think if there could be other exceptions. With this list, there very well might be. We aren’t necessarily looking to be the fastest deck on the block, but we can go extremely wide and beat the opponent down once we have a board state set up!
To start us on that mission, we have to immediately slam 4 of the new Blade of the Oni. It’s rare that a Mythic has such a simple design these days (I guess simple is relative), but this one is very good. A 2 mana 3/1 Menace or equip for 4 to make something a Demon? That’s very good. When our deck plays a lot of random tokens that are going to be lying around? That’s makes this even better. Speaking of…
Tribute to Horobi is a really interesting card that I feel has been mostly overlooked. Cards that give your opponents value are very often bad as helping your opponent is generally not conducive to winning the game, and giving two tokens (even temporarily) seems very brutal. That is, if we only view it through that lens. There are two predominate ways that I look at this card: either it’s a 2 mana Suspend 2 that makes a 3/3 Flying, Haste and 2 1/1s with the cost of losing 3 life or a Suspend 2, 3/3 Flying Haste. Both of those rates are very good and having the option on which one you want is definitely appealing for the payoff you get at the end. Sure this is going to be a bit rough if you’re behind, but most 2 drops aren’t going to catch you up realistically. If you play this at parity or when you’re ahead, this is just the squeeze that I’m looking for out of my early plays. Worst comes to worst if I’m wrong about this card, you can just play any of the other excellent 2 drops in Orzhov colors and this deck will still thrum.
To round off the new cards in the deck, we have to play the best card in Kamigawa: The Wandering Emperor. I talked about Emperor at length in my planeswalker review article, but I’ll give you an extensive recap: it’s broken. If you can afford to play 4 in your deck, you should, and I am.
For the rest of the deck, we have a nice threat package, good grindy tools with the planeswalkers, some interaction, and a lot to do with our mana. I know this doesn’t look like your typical aggro deck, but with 16 two drops (four of those being removal) , 11 three drops, 7 four drops, and 2 five drops, this is a really nasty curve that will allow you to constantly pressure the opponent with great threat after great threat.
BOROS EQUIPMENT
Boros Equipment – Kamigawa
by DoggertQBones
Standard
best of 1
6 mythic
32 rare
14 uncommon
8 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Creatures (31)
Sorceries (2)
Enchantments (1)
Lands (22)
60 Cards
$213.62
Let’s time travel back to a full year ago. Kaldheim was just released and there were a lot of cool cards, a lot of powerful cards, and a lot of new things being tried out. One of the things that caught my eye though were these two fine folk.
Koll was a cool design as it’s a psuedo lord for equipement that had a pretty decent ability of making it hard to permanently kill a creature, but that was nothing compared to Halvar. Halvar is the absolute nuts. The front side gives any equipped (or enchanted) creature double strike and it can move equipment/auras around? That is extremely powerful, and that’s only one side! Halvar’s back half is another equipment that gives great stat boosts and also makes it harder to keep creatures down!
I was super excited by the prospect of an Equipment deck as it seemed we had a lot of the pieces. Fireblade Charger is a minor, but helpful creature towards this plan, Kor Blademaster is awesome, and Akiri, Fearless Voyager was yet another payoff. The deck seemed to be coming together, but there was a slight issue, the equipment sucked. Beyond Halvar’s back half and Maul of the Skyclaves, equipment were pretty bad as they have been since the Mirrodin block where the Sword cycle was legal (so give or take 11-12 years ago!) I gave up on this idea as Standard just doesn’t get good equipment…until now! With Reconfigure, we have the Equipment we always dreamed of and more!
First off, I get to extol the virtues of Rabbit Battery again! Battery was good in Monored as an early beater that turned into a helpful Equipment in the late game and while those are still true, it’s much better here! With our synergies between Kor Blademaster, Koll, the Forgemaster, Akiri, Fearless Voyager, and Halvar, God of Battle, having cheap equipment is simply unbelievable.
Next up we have two more in the Reconfigure pair. First up is Lizard Blades which are a simple, yet great equipment. The Blades work well in this deck to give something double strike when we don’t have a Halvar, but funny enough, the creature side may actually be better! Putting equipment on Lizard Blades themselves seems quite strong and having the option to turn them into Equipment is extremely nice.
Once again, we have Ogre-Head Helm which acts as a solid threat, decent equipment, and all around good card.
Finally we have our last new Equipment in Eater of Virtue. It is only a 1 of and it’s been flying under the radar, but Bonesplitter is a really good card and this is almost strictly better. I would be over the moon for just Bonesplitter, but the chance for Eater to pick up some nice keywords from our creatures to carry onto the next one is extremely appealing.
Equipment aren’t the only new cards we’ve gotten though! The last addition is 2 Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa. Kyodai is pretty nasty as a great threat that can insulate your other creatures is definitely welcome. I know I said in the previous section that you want to play The Wandering Emperor when possible, but Kyodai being a more active threat in itself and protecting a creature that may have a lot of Equipment on it seems a bit more apt of an addition.
With the new reconfigure creatures, this deck seems very fast, has a great curve, extremely synergistic, and by the virtue of all the Equipment creatures, you will always have something to do with your mana early and late. These are the things I look for in an aggressive deck and to be able to find them in a deck as inherently gimmicky as Equipment aggro is an extremely welcome sight.
All in all, these three aggro decks are extremely varied, but all seem very good at what they do. I’m excited to try out some new fast decks that aren’t jamming Faceless Haven and I really think that these may be able to stand up to the metagame.
Thank you for reading!
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DoggertQBones
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