Graham, also known as HamHocks42 on the internet, is a Twitch streamer who adores Magic: the Gathering in all its forms and tries to find the fun, even in the most competitive and sweaty environments.
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Tarkir: Dragonstorm will be launching on Magic: the Gathering Arena on Tuesday, April 8th, so until we get our hands on the products, jank lovers like myself and, possibly, yourself are stuck speculating on which cards will be good enough to cut it in Standard. So far, with only a few days of preview season under our belts, a few have caught my attention as powerful enough to possibly make the cut.
A lot of the current meta, think of as Gruul Mice and Esper Pixie, are very tuned decks and I don't expect these to get many new toys that will be faster or more consistent than their current pieces. That said, I believe (or vainly hope) that a few new archetypes will get the support they need to step up and challenge the current meta in a fun way. Let's look at what those are.
Midrange
The Aetherspark is one of the goofiest types lines on any Magic: the Gathering card we've ever seen before. A Legendary Artifact Planeswalker – Equipment is certainly a novel string of words , and because the word “planeswalker” is in there, the card is eligible to be a Brawl commander.
So, of course, I built it.
How to Even Begin?
The best cards in Standard are making it difficult to brew these days, but where there's a will, there's a way. The current meta is dominated by "This Town Ain't Big Enough" and "Up the Beanstalk" piles, but other cards like Simulacrum Synthesizer and The Mightstone and Weakstone are powerhouse value engines in their own right if we can find a shell for them that works. We also have an absolute haymaker in Radiant Lotus that I'm finally willing to brew with and, I've got to say, I'm impressed.
The Wincon
Last week, Wizards of the Coast gave us a first look at the next Standard release, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and that gives us an opportunity to analyze, overreact, and wildly speculate on what the future holds, which is an opportunity I rarely pass up. This first look was only nine cards from the Standard set itself, but it includes some eye-catching mechanics, so let's get into it.
For this article, I plan to analyze how these cards will impact Standard first and foremost.
The Headliner
The quest for a quality reanimator deck is never-ending for graveyard junkies like myself, and a Standard that includes Atraxa, Grand Unifier and Zombify is just begging for it. So today, I have a fresh take on the archetype in Abzan with a bit of a twist.
The Main Threats
One of the racing teams competing for the Aetherspark in Aetherdrift is the Speedbrood, a species of insects that have such a strong connection with speed itself that they literally transform into vehicles upon achieving their version of enlightenment. Well, that means they're well represented as a draft archetype in DFT and we're able to take advantage of it and ultimately build a pretty slick Standard deck that can hang in best-of-one (BO1) pretty well, even if it would likely falter in games two and three if we tried it in BO3.
The Win Conditions
Our primary finisher is Aatchik, Emerald Radian, which gives us a gigantic board state just for entering the battlefield, and each insect we have suddenly pings our opponent upon death. This makes blocking them a challenge and almost guarantees they'll give you the chance to push damage. Obviously, for us to get Aatchik's enters-the-battlefield (ETB) trigger to maximum value, we'll need to run lots of artifacts and creatures in our deck, along with ways to fill the graveyard. More on that below.
Now This is Pod Racing
Aetherdrift has a number of fun build-arounds and one that saw relatively heavy play during the early access Streamer Event this past Wednesday was Repurposing Bay. Repurposing Bay reads like if you take the two classic powerhouses Birthing Pod and Tinker and smashed them together into a single card, so of course we had to find ways to break it.
Below is a breakdown of the 60-card main deck I landed on after playing in the event. As the meta shifts on the ladder, this will likely be tuned, but I think it gives us a great starting position.
Aetherdrift is right around the corner, and I'm anxiously awaiting the cards dropping on Arena so we can begin brewing all kinds of crazy vehicular nonsense. Like a kid the night before Christmas, however, I feel the need to distract myself a bit from the excitement so I don't absolutely pop. To do so, I've put together a classic Brawl commander that I, somehow, hadn't played before and put some energy into creating a fun experience that can win some games.
I present to you: Milldrotha.
The Commander