Conquering the Storm: Beating MTG's Top Standard Deck

How to Beat the Standard Deck that is Taking the Meta by Storm!

Learn strategies to defeat the dominant Standard deck sweeping the MTG meta. Tips, counters, and tactics for turning the tides in your favor.

"Temur Rage Ramp" as many are calling it, is beginning to take over the Standard best of three Meta. It is hard to play a few matches on MTGArena without at least facing that deck once. If you haven't played against it on the ladder, it is also difficult to peruse MTG Youtube or any website with decklists and not see this at least once. Creators are all chomping at the bit to make their own version of it, and create content around it. The deck is resilient, grindy, can come back for a one turn kill out of nowhere, and can even have the versatility of throwing a bunch of creatures on the board and using a planeswalker to overrun what you have on your side of the table in a lethal swing. To figure out how we want to gameplan against it, and ultimately give our decks favorable matchups against this behemoth post-sideboard, we have to identify the cards that really make the deck tick, and then identify the tools we have at our disposal to deal with them. The reason I felt so compelled to share this information is that there are two colorless artifacts that effectively shut down this deck. I thought it would be neat to demonstrate how anyone could run these cards in the sideboard of any one of their decks to bolster their chances at winning. First, let's take a look at the cards that make the Temur Ramp deck so relevant.

Total Cards:

Powerful, and Often Overlooked Cards in Temur Ramp

It's no secret that this card drew a bit of attention when it was printed. We can go face and put a bunch of lands from our graveyard onto the battlefield? Feels like it was only a matter of time until someone figured out how to abuse it. This card feels like it would take forever to amass enough resources to smack someone for a lethal shot, but the deck has centered itself around producing nearly infinite amounts of mana.

This card was considered an afterthought when Eldraine came out. Everyone was mainly only using the black and white virtues, as they easily appeared to be the most powerful. Everyone can agree that producing three mana from the tap of one land is great, but spending seven mana to do so in Standard was too clunky, and probably only had a place in fringe jank decks. Because of the ability of this deck to gain life and wipe the board with really good value, it is often able to hold of most aggressive decks until it is safe to resolve this card and untap to use it for it's full potential.

This card has a very unique activated ability, and the Temur deck has masterfully found a way to get maximum value from it. Not only does it get all of the lands back from the graveyard, but it also allows the opponent to gain a ton of life because of using all of the sacrifice and fetch lands from New Capenna that gain one life per land. Couple this ability with the ability from Worldsoul's Rage, and the opponent is gaining a ton of life. The decks also run thirty lands on average, so you can expect that they will draw plenty for what they need.

There are some other cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist and Tail The Suspect that allow the opponent to generate additional resources, but the first three cards mentioned are the ones that we really want to be mindful of. We may not be able to eradicate or cut off all of them from the deck, but we have tools available to make them a lot less broken, and usually allow us to win the game before the grand explosion.

Effective Sideboard Cards Against Temur

Alright, we have identified what the problems are, and we now want to know how to deal with them. The three-year Standard Meta that hasn't rotated since Midnight Hunt has left us with a couple of relevant colorless artifacts that will get the job done for us. If that doesn't sound enticing enough, I'll sweeten the pot a bit and let you know that both of these cards are only one mana - thus making them easily castable in any deck.

This card is incredibly relevant because we can exile the graveyard when the opponent either resolves a Worldsoul's Rage that isn't for lethal, or activates the Aftermath Analyst ability, attempting to bring back all of their lands. In some scenarios, you can also influence the opponent's gameplan, causing them to abandon their normal win conditions. Sometimes they flat out discard the analyst or other relevant spells that may help them win. Once we do this, and it appears we are in the clear, Soul-Guide Lantern will even be so kind as to let us draw a card by paying one mana and sacrificing it. It's hard to find much more value than that from an artifact.

If you have read some of my other articles, you know that this card has become somewhat of a best of three special in Numbskull decks. It shuts down planeswalkers, manlands, and anything else that is activated in MTG. When we use this card, we are often looking to call Aftermath Analyst to shut down the activated ability. There are very opportune times to resolve the spell too. A lot of the time they may play the analyst on turn two, hope to untap, then play a land untapped and activate the ability for four mana. If we can resolve it right after they play the spell on turn three, we can force a really bad mana trade for the opponent, and in a way we almost timewalk them. If it is our turn three and we are on the draw, we could play a two mana creature, or hold up removal, etc.

Seeing the Cards in Action

In the video referenced here, you can see that the opponent actually beats us in game one and effectively pulls off their combo. They grinded out the match, even with me resolving many of my relevant creature spells. Game two, with having the lantern boarded in, we are able to force a turn three concession because they know they are effectively locked out of the game. The deck does run Boseiju, but not to worry - we have a second lantern in hand just in case. In game three we were also fortunate enough to get the lantern onto the battlefield. The opponent decided to play it out this time, and we had a pretty exciting game three. While pretty deep into game three, the opponent has boarded in their Abrade and ends up removing my lantern. The issue for them here was that the game had already advanced pretty far and they were never able to execute their combo. This allowed me to develop a pretty advanced board state with plenty of threats, and even more to come in hand. It caused the opponent to concede, because they realized that they would not be able to amass enough mana to defeat me before I killed them with powerful creatures. What we can take away from this is that we may not always stop their combo completely, but if we can delay it long enough, there are also paths to victory from that method. You will see here that I used a Mono Black deck (surprise, surprise) but as previously mentioned, you can add these useful artifacts to any deck that you are running. Hopefully this guide was helpful, and we'll catch you next week!

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I am a Magic The Gathering competitive player, and streamer. I specialize in homebrew decks. My favorite formats are: Standard, Pioneer (Explorer on Arena), and EDH. I first started playing MTG in 2001, and have played on and off since then.

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Explore the power of Rakdos Dragons in this midrange Magic: The Gathering deck. Unleash combos, removal, and ramp for competitive edge in Standard.

This Deck is Sneaky Good! Get Ready for RAKDOS Dragons!

You didn't think I could only give you one dragon deck, did you? I honestly saw too many fun options to do just Boros, so today I'm bringing you another. This one steers toward the more midrange, good ol' honest Magic side of things. I wanted to center a deck around something that is more consistent with the status quo of dragons: carnage and destruction. We have plenty of removal in this deck, and a creature that doubles as a board wipe when needed. Since we aren't doing a super fancy combo in this deck, I wanted to add element of ramp to get to the higher mana spells that we have in the deck. We will be able to use early creatures to help out with that, and also a new fancy artifact. We will torch the board and force our opponents to be more resilient than we are, while flying over the top of what they might manage to keep on the board. Let's take a look at the deck and then I'll tell you some of my favorite things about it. You can see some of the fun that we will have right off the bat with this deck. We are looking to smash aggro decks, and still punish other decks that don't play to the board. Although this one has fewer dragons on paper, we have a few permanents that can actually turn into them, and this leads to some cheeky interactions. Let's check out some of the new cards from Tarkir Dragonstorm that are in this deck, and then we will go over some fun combos! Key New Cards

It's Time to Mobilize the Aristocrats with Mardu Combo!

There is an ongoing argument in both Standard and Pioneer currently. What color combination is the best for aggressive decks? We have seen people try out Jeskai Aggro to try and incorporate the best of both worlds between Azorius Aggro, and Boros Aggro. Some like to stick with Gruul Aggro because of the high rolls that it allows for, and there is also an argument that sometimes all you need is mono red - and the results have proven as much in major events. There has been a bit of a surge of some Mardu Aristocrat/Sacrifice decks, and today's list will follow that to some degree. We went a little bit more aggro-based, but there is a combo element to it, along with a healthy sideboard that should provide for balanced gameplay. We will look to get a bunch of creatures onto the board, and then create a bunch more based on the amount that we have, while punishing the opponent when they die. If that isn't enough, the go-wide strategy should also allow us to swing for ample damage at an ample pace. A new ability called Mobilize that is being brought to us in Tarkir Dragonstorm is going to allow us to pull off some pretty powerful swings in combat. Mobilize allows us to create a bunch of tapped and attacking 1/1 tokens based on either the number behind it, or circumstances that pertain to "X." Something that is particularly fun is that we can benefit from our creatures dying, because the mobilize ability requires us to sacrifice the creatures that we get from mobilizing at the beginning of our end step. This is yet another deck that can allow us to win on the end step which is always fun. Another fundamental reason why I think the deck is good is because we are rewarded for something that would normally be considered a setback. If you find enough ways to turn negatives into positives, it usually can translate into the small margins that win you a match. Enough of me blabbing. Let's take a look at the cool new cards! Key New Cards

Demons Are Getting New Toys, and This Deck is ROTTEN

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Free Dragons = Turn 4 Wins!

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I See a Monument and I want it Painted Black

It's been a few weeks since Aetherdrift came out, and we are starting to see the cards that are standing out in the meta. We didn't expect the set to change things too much with regard to what we have been seeing. What we did get from it is a nice supplement to many other decks. Although we did not get a ton of format-shaping cards, we have seen a couple that have lit up fringe archetypes. What I've brewed for today plays off of a familiar archetype, and it was one that we kind of already had, but it allows us to pivot in a certain way and get additional value from it that we may not have gotten in the past. One of the biggest things that our deck can do is have plenty of action on the end step/cleanup step. It's an interesting scenario because usually when we think of the cleanup step at the end of each turn, we remove damage, and we discard to hand size. Usually discarding to hand size is pretty much the final step, and there aren't any triggers... until now. We will be using Monument to Endurance to have triggers when we discard to hand size, and get additional value from it. Now we don't care if we end the turn with nine or ten cards in hand, because we are going to benefit from it. This will help us possibly get in some finishing damage against our opponent, or get extra value. It is worth noting that this will cause triggered abilities on the cleanup step, and this is something that our opponents can respond to. This has historically been a point in the turn where no player can respond to actions. We'll take a look at the relevant cards in the deck, and then I'll detail a few fun combos that we may see during gameplay. Relevant Cards

We've had a Couple of Weeks to Try Achievements on MTG Arena, and I have Opinions

The economy on MTG Arena has always been a pain point, and a grand debate over how far a digital version of a card game should go to ensure players feel as if they are getting proper value for their time. Wizards has two different versions of its beloved game on the internet, and they both seem to have their benefits and drawbacks. On February 11, Arena launched the Achievement System to reward players for hitting milestones in-game, and completing specific tasks. While it is always fun to do these kinds of things in each game, something that gamers always do is assess whether the reward for doing so in-game is worth putting forth the extra effort for the task. While there are some things in the achievement tab that I believe to be kind of fun, and certain things that I know people will want, I view the entire thing as largely a waste of time. Today we will look at why the new feature on Arena simply isn't enough for what the game should have, and what it could be. The Good and The Bad There are plenty of things that we love about Arena, with how it is the easiest way to play our favorite decks from Standard, and not spend thousands of dollars in doing so. It is probably the most efficient way to try out decks. We also love the wildcard system. Although it is not the easiest to obtain them, it is great that a rare/mythic wildcard could buy a rare/mythic card that is of any value and it still just costs one wildcard. This was especially helpful in getting a play set of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. I still don't have a play set in paper simply because I don't want to spend that much money on it, but on Arena it was easy. I had the wildcards to do what I needed. The only part where this may be lacking is the economy itself. What if we could earn wildcards for hitting certain achievements (I.E. the achievement tab giving us wildcards instead of sleeves, etc.)? I believe that the rewards from this new feature being solely cosmetic underscores the ongoing issue of the economy on Arena simply not being enough for us.

This Deck is Sneaky Good! Get Ready for RAKDOS Dragons!