Master Your Magic the Gathering Journey with Video Insights!

Welcome Magic lovers!   With the first week of post-Foundations, Standard Regional Championship Qualifier tournaments in the books, it's now time to peruse the plethora of lists to see which tried-and-true decks are succeeding and perhaps which promising new archetypes may merit further exploration.

Welcome Magic lovers! With the release of the massive Foundations set this week, the Standard format is abuzz with new ideas, new lists, and potential new archetypes to tweak, test, and tune in preparation for the upcoming Regional Championship Qualifier season that's set to begin on November 16th. Today, let's take a look at a couple of new, potentially powerful, deck ideas that may inject new life into the Standard format.

Foundations has brought a lot of powerful tools from the game's history back to Standard and, in some cases, to Arena for the first time. Among them are Llanowar Elves and Zombify, which both add speed to strategies by ramping on turn one and reducing the total cost of the target spell, respectively. Given this perfect storm, I had to create a Golgari reanimator deck leveraging these two with the hope of jamming out an Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Valgavoth, Terror Eater on turn three. The Main Gameplan

I know, it's been longer than expected since I last talked to you about our beloved Goblins, but, despite having a couple of updated brews, I preferred to wait for the arrival of Foundations for the possibility that they would add new ones... And so it was! On top of that, Masters has been confirmed for next month, so there’s a lot going on for Goblins as it becomes buildable in more and more versions! An example of this is the one we are about to see today, which wasn't among those planned and which I put together just a few days ago, being impressed by one card in particular during the Foundations spoilers.

Foundations is, as Wizards of the Coast describes it, a set distilling the very nature of Magic: the Gathering – what you would get if you simply made a set called, “Magic: the Gathering,” and it doesn't disappoint. Fortunately, one of Magic's features that survives the distillation process is janky build-arounds that create fun moments at the table when huge power plays crop up in improbable ways. Foundations has a number of build-arounds that might not see competitive play but deserve to be attempted. I've selected seven such cards that I'll be attempting with the primary focus being on Standard. Keep in mind that this set will be legal for at least five years in the format, though, so the cards surrounding this set will fully rotate multiple times before any of these cards leave. Meta shifts will mean different builds and synergy points will be available through the years. Stay tuned for articles about those as we go! Everybody's favorite self-absorbed intellectual is back with a new incarnation, Niv-Mizzet, Visionary. When WotC spoiled this card, they specifically pointed out that it goes infinite in older formats with Niv-Mizzet, Parun, which is a fun interaction, but we don't have any source like that in Standard at the moment. We do, however, have a lot of sources that can deal direct damage to opponents when casting spells such as Coruscation Mage. Combine those with Urabrask and you can build a machine gun that's constantly reloading.

We went into Foundations knowing that the demon deck was a top archetype in Standard, and even in Pioneer, but the question still remained: with new cards coming, would it still be good? And if it's still good, what could we do to make it better? Foundations gives us some key cards that almost appear to be made for the deck, and we won't scoff at that. The set is made to be a basis for many different archetypes, so it was nice that we got some decent demons with our core set. Something we'll have to worry about going forward is all of the other decks that will be popping up. We will be vigilant about our sideboard choices and stay prepared to make the changes that are needed. We do have some cards in the sideboard from the new set, so let's take a look at the deck itself that will show us main deck and sideboard additions from Foundations.   We are following the previous demon archetype, but now we are able to be a little bit more well-rounded, and we have cut down on some of the cost by building the deck in paper. One could also argue that the deck has a better mana curve, as the previous version ran 10 four drops. Since we took out two copies of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, that lowers the cost of the deck by about $150 USD. While some argue that we have taken out one of the best cards in the format, we are also helping the deck stay more true to its goal, while making it more accessible to newer players.

Welcome Magic lovers!   With the first week of post-Foundations, Standard Regional Championship Qualifier tournaments in the books, it's now time to peruse the plethora of lists to see which tried-and-true decks are succeeding and perhaps which promising new archetypes may merit further exploration.