Hello, my fellow Planeswalkers! I am The MTG Hero, and WOTC stepped in and banned a few pillars of Standard—and we have a new set in The Hobbit. While I think Wizards of the Coast made some good decisions, there is one decision I simply cannot get behind.

They didn’t ban Sunderflock, and it will be king of Standard.

I have said in past articles that I think it is insanely powerful and overlooked. i placed it on my personal ban wish list along with Bandgermole Cub and everyone is about to learn why.

Understanding the Bans

The moment I saw the ban announcement, I knew they messed up. I knew this deck was going to be a menace because it didn’t lose anything.

I have called Standard “Izzet Soup” for a long while now because we had Lessons, Prowess, and Elementals all fighting for their place in the same color combination.

Whenever a ban announcement happens, there are two ways to look at it.

You can focus on the decks that lost their key pieces, or you can look for the strategies that were already powerful and suddenly have fewer obstacles standing in their way.

Elementals falls firmly into the second category.

Something did have to be done to restore balance, and I think all three decks needed a hit if the meta was going to be more in line with what WOTC wants.

Stormchaser's Talent and Boomerang Basics were just too good as a value engine, and a lot of decks couldn’t keep up with them.

Gran-Gran was the best ban to nerf Izzet Lessons and the bigger Jeskai Lessons decks.

But Wizards messed up by leaving Sunderflock alone.

The Deck

I have been playing this deck personally and am taking it with me into Regional Championship Qualifiers. I don’t say that lightly. When I am choosing a deck for an RCQ, I want something powerful, consistent, proactive, and capable of interacting with the strategies I expect to face.

This deck checks all of those boxes.

The only thing that could change my mind is The Hobbit. If something from that set breaks the format wide open, all bets are off. But until that happens, this is the deck I want to be playing.

Playing the Deck

Like most Izzet decks, it is loaded with cheap and effective cantrips and interaction. Opt, Sleight of Hand, and Flow State allow us to cycle through our deck and load up our graveyard to reduce the cost of our Elementals.

This makes the deck extremely consistent while also helping us find the specific answers we need for whatever matchup we’re playing.

Then we have the interaction.

Four Burst Lightning give us cheap removal that can also become a legitimate late-game threat.

Spell Pierce and Spell Snare let us punish opponents for trying to curve out with important spells.

Get Out gives us ways to remove bigger creatures or set up plays by bouncing our own Sunderflock or Eddymurk Crab back to our hand to recast them again.

Traumatic Critique can be a powerful late-game Fireball effect, or it can just help us load up our graveyard for free early.

And then there is Prismari Charm.

I absolutely love this card in the deck.

It provides flexibility in a way that is incredibly important for a competitive Standard deck. Sometimes you need removal. Sometimes you need cards. Sometimes you need to interact with an opposing permanent. Having access to all of those modes means the card is rarely dead.

Hearth Elemental and Eddymurk Crab

The deck isn’t simply four copies of Sunderflock surrounded by random blue and red cards. We need powerful Elementals to reduce its cost. Thankfully, there are two powerhouse Elementals that get their own costs reduced by instants and sorcery cards in our graveyard.

Hearth Elemental is a large elemental that can come down the faster than Eddymurk Crab.

These elementals are exactly why this deck works. Just by playing cheap and effective interaction we are rewarded with giant bodies.

.Hearth Elemental also helps us refuel with it’s adventure half. It is worth noting that you don’t have to have cards in your hand to meet the “discard your hand” part of the spell. We can have 0 in hand, pay two and draw two new cards!

Then we have Eddymurk Crab.

This card can be absolutely ridiculous against Aggro and sets up Sunderflock plays.

The deck’s combination of cheap interaction, card selection, and a graveyard that fills naturally makes Eddymurk Crab a very efficient threat that also slows down opposing creature decks.

The Real Strength Is Consistency

One of the biggest mistakes people make when evaluating Standard decks is looking only at the ceiling.

Sure, a deck might have some absurd draws.

But what happens when you don’t have the perfect opening hand?

With four Opt, Sleight of Hand, Flow State, and Prismari Charm, we have an enormous amount of selection.

That means you can keep hands that might look mediocre at first glance because you know the deck has plenty of ways to find what it needs.

And that is exactly what I want when I’m playing an RCQ.

I don’t want to depend on drawing the perfect combination of cards.

I want my deck to give me options.

Why Aggro Has Such a Hard Time

This is where Sunderflock becomes the star of the show.

Aggressive decks want to establish a board, attack your life total, and force you to answer their threats one at a time.

Sure, we have cheap interaction to stop the early plays.

But we have the backbreaking combo of Eddymurk Crab into Sunderflock sitting there as a giant “no” to the opponent’s attempt to overwhelm us.

The Crab taps down the two biggest attackers, then we just bounce the board, leaving us with two 5/5 attackers, and there isn’t a lot they can do to stop it.

Some aggro decks play cards that try to counter sweepers by giving their creatures buffs or with cards that give one or more creatures indestructible.

But again, Sunderflock bounces.

This means they have to manually cast their creatures back onto the board one at a time, possibly over two or more turns, hoping we don’t have counters or removal while we bash with our 5/5 beaters.

If they can’t, they might have to discard to hand size. And even if they can recast everything, we can just bounce Sunderflock back to our hand and recast it.

That is what makes this card so oppressive against aggressive strategies.

The Mana Is Excellent

The mana base is another major reason I like this list.

We have:

4 Riverpyre Verge
4 Spirebluff Canal
4 Steam Vents
2 Stormcarved Coast
6 Island

That’s a very clean mana base for what we’re trying to accomplish.

We aren’t trying to cast expensive spells with complicated mana requirements.

We’re a streamlined two-color deck that wants to interact early and consistently.

That allows us to play our spells on time without having to sacrifice too much consistency.

The Sideboard

The sideboard is built with a similar philosophy.

These are important against artifact- and enchantment-heavy strategies.

When you know a particular permanent is going to cause problems, having cheap answers after sideboarding can completely change the matchup, especially against cards like Rest in Peace and Soul-Guide Lantern.

This is just the best graveyard hate in the format due to its flexibility. It is one-sided, and we can just pop it for a new card in a pinch or if we draw both.

This is what we bring in when Sunderflock isn’t good.

A threat with haste, self-protection through ward, and the ability to get bigger as we cast our spells is exactly what we want.

It also makes copies of itself when we cast a kicked Burst Lightning or a large Traumatic Critique.

The only troublesome matchups I have found is Dimir Doomsday and the Reanimator decks with Terror of the Peaks (without terror, if we survive their big swing after casting harvester we can just bounce the board with Sunderflock). Tidebinder helps both of these matchups by countering the key creature’s effect. This lets us beat them evfen if they have Cavern on Souls.

Sometimes opponents can just swarm us before Sunderflock can come down. As a result, I like playing a hand full of other sweepers, and this is probably just the best one. It can even pop man-lands.

This is our go-to removal spell for larger creatures and the mirror match.

A powerful planeswalker that supports our deck’s spellslinging style is exactly the alternate win condition we need.

If you find yourself struggling against 4c Control, I could see adding some Negate or Disdainful Stroke to the list over Annul or Ral.

Is This REALLY the Best Deck in Standard?

Right now, I think the answer is yes.

That’s obviously a dangerous statement because Standard changes incredibly quickly.

The Hobbit is here, but Universes Beyond decks can be hit or miss when it comes to defining a meta. There is always the possibility that one card or one interaction nobody anticipated completely changes the format.

Maybe The Hobbit gives us a new aggressive deck that can punish Izzet.

Maybe it creates an entirely new archetype that makes everything we’re talking about today irrelevant.

That’s Magic.

But until we see that happen, I don’t see a reason to move away from this deck.

Wrap-Up

I’ve played a lot of Standard decks over the years, and one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that the best deck isn’t always the deck with the most powerful individual cards. It’s the deck that consistently executes its game plan while forcing the opponent to make difficult decisions.

That’s exactly what this deck does.

It has card selection.

It has efficient interaction.

It has threats.

It has a powerful late game.

And, most importantly, it has Sunderflock.

I genuinely believe Wizards of the Coast missed an opportunity with the ban announcement by leaving Sunderflock legal. I think the card is going to continue to create enormous problems for aggressive strategies.

Maybe I’m wrong.

That’s the fun part of Magic.

But if you’re sitting across from me at an RCQ, don’t be surprised when I bounce your board.

Until next time, Planeswalkers, Hero out!

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