If you missed yesterday’s news, three powerful green cards are now banned from Standard (in addition to Field of the Dead) – Oko, Thief of Crowns, Once Upon a Time and Veil of Summer. These cards collectively made green-based decks dominate Standard for almost two months since the release of Throne of Eldraine, and this change is bound to create a big shift in the metagame.
Check out all the decks from the recent Twitch Rivals tournament!
Players are already brewing and experimenting new and old deck archetypes without fear of getting their cards turned into a 3/3 Elk, especially those who will be competing in the high stakes Twitch Rivals tournament starting today at 12 PM PST. We have scoured the social media for some Standard decklists you can try (at least until the tournament decklists are released). Worst case scenario, many players are in the same boat in that nobody knows what to expect, so playing new decks tend to throw unprepared opponents off their guard.
Decklists
Let’s start off with the raw decklists, before we rationalize how the current decks and the new metagame will be impacted from the bans (which we will do at more length tomorrow after Twitch Rivals)! Many people will be familiar with some of the deck archetypes below that have been biding their time, being suppressed by the Oko meta.
- The winner of the metagame is the Cauldron Familiar and Witch’s Oven sacrifice synergy, using Trail of Crumbs as the card advantage engine. Even without Oko it can grind down opponents in the long game.
- Azorius Control, Temur Reclamation (remember to take out Veil of Summer from prior decklists) and Fires decks remain almost untouched, though it remains to be seen whether they can prove themselves in the new metagame.
- Aggro decks such as Rakdos Knights or Gruul Aggro look to be stronger with strong sideboard options (e.g. Cindervines, Embereth Shieldbreaker, Leyline of the Void) with one less planeswalker to kill.
- Simic Ramp (blue/green base) decks are still fine with Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Hydroid Krasis still intact. Players just have to adjust to not having Once Upon a Time in their decks.
