Recapping the Standard Store Championship

Recapping My Win at the MTG Standard Store Championship

A detailed breakdown of my win at the Standard Store Championship! Learn the key strategies and plays that led to victory in this exciting MTG event.

Normally I don't play in store championships, but this time I had to make an exception. Everyone was going on and on how valuable the full art Urza's Saga was, and I had to get in on this. I admittedly didn't have any intention of keeping the card, but I knew that I could get some great trade value for it, or at least be able to sell it for a decent amount of money When the first weekend of store championships took place, this card was selling for $350 USD. It has since gone down to about $270 USD, but it still makes it worth it - especially when the entry for the event was $20, and I already had it covered for free with store credit that I had built up. I waited for the event at my LGS, and I brought my trusty mono-black discard deck, and gave it a shot. There were four rounds in total, and it took a deal at the end to get it done, but I was able to get through the day undefeated and secure the saga. I'll go over how my matchups were, and of course some key elements of the deck that I played. I believe it is very similar to a deck in one of my previous articles, so I won't dwell on the list itself too much. We will mainly just go over the key cards that make everything work, and some of the cards from today that stood out in each matchup. First, let's take a look at the deck!

Magic the Gathering Card - Urza's Saga - MTG Circle

This deck is aptly named Standard 8-Rack. It models itself after a similar archetype in modern that punishes the opponent for having one or fewer cards in hand. Ideally, we have the deck set up where after the opponent has their upkeep and draw step each turn, they are losing four life. You can also double down on that with the fact that one of the effects dealing the damage is a creature that is difficult to block, and that can also accelerate the clock.

Key Cards for the Rack

Magic the Gathering Card - Sheoldred, the Apocalypse - MTG Circle

We all know that Sheoldred one of the best cards in Standard, and honestly a top-tier card in multiple other formats. We want to resolve this creature spell when the opponent has little to no cards in hand, decreasing the likelihood that they would have removal, and force them to either top-deck an answer, or die. Since the deck has a lot of other valuable threats, I was able to wait around lot during the event for the perfect to cast Sheoldred, and it often ended up being the fin that I needed to close out the game. Since it is the most popular card that people wish to be able to remove, I did include four of her in this deck, and in turn, that makes up 4 of our total 8 racks in the deck.

Bandit's Talent is another card today that went bonkers for me. It took a lot of influence over how my opponents played against me today, and it allowed me to have more control over how they played than they did at times. They ended up having to hold more cards in hand than they wanted to in order to not sooner. They also had to sometimes waste removal on it, as white-based decks were using their Get Lost on the Bandit's Talent, rather than saving it for Sheoldred It ended up being ridiculous amounts of value for me to the point where they were more worried about that than my plethora of other threats in the deck.

I have a good bit of practice with this deck on Arena so far, but today was the first time that played it in paper. I had a couple of instances where I could have sequenced mana better, and where I could have made slightly better decisions in the moment, but overall I believe that I piloted the deck well. I wasn't upset with myself over my play, I just knew that there were some things I needed to clean up.

Matchups Throughout the Event

Round one I played against another mono-black deck, oddly enough. Their deck was pretty well-made, but they definitely were more aggro-based, and I believe that allowed me to be favored after sideboarding. I was able to bring in the removal that I needed. After duressing the opponent a few times, it became evident that their deck was pretty much only creatures and removal spells. It was pretty straightforward what I was dealing, and I was to win games two and three after losing game one. It simply came down to having enough removal, and forcing the opponent to dump their hand onto the board in order to try and have enough threats to beat me. Once I did that, I was able to keep my Sheold on the board and level up the Bandit's Talent. This pretty much was the game after I got that point. Thankfully they were pretty quick games, so I got to hang out for a bit after the first and take a nice rest.

Round two, I went against Azorius Mentor. It is basically a prowess deck that also uses Haughty Djinn as a bomb. It had definitely a lot of tempo, but we were able to offset the tempo that they tried to create by attacking their hand constantly. We had good amounts of removal, and the opponent's deck in my opinion did not have enough lands in it, and they missed land drops badly in the two that I won. In game three, they kept a one-land with a cantrip, and I duressed on turn one to take the cantrip. It was pretty much over after that, as they were never able to get back in the game. The match did go to three games, however, because playing against the tempo on the draw was pretty tough. I wasn't able to get enough removal to deal with their threats and then the mentor simply went off. Thankfully, I had a timely turn one duress in game three so that we were able to set up the clear lines for victory.

Magic the Gathering Card - Bandit's Talent - MTG Circle

Round three was definitely a tough matchup, and when I saw the pairing I was dreading playing the match. It was a local player that I knew plays Magic well, and they were playing Azorius Control. I usually have a hard time against that deck, but I will say that all of the spells in the deck that I have tend to help a lot. Thankfully today that was also the case. I was able to beat them in three games as, and they simply were not able to ever really take control of the game This individual really wanted the Urza's Saga, and I actually ended up trading it away to them for a bunch of valuable cards. I felt okay about that because they wanted to foil out their modern deck that runs four Sagas. I respect the want to bling out the deck, so I was willing to make the trade them.

The Finals

Round four in the finals I also had a matchup that was kind of a toss-up. Since I knew it wasn't a guarantee that I would win, I asked the individual if they wanted to split and just take all of the store credit between the both of us, and I would take the Urza's Saga. They agreed to this, because they said that they were simply going to sell the card back to the first L that would buy it. Since it was likely that this person would only get 100-140 in store credit for the card even if they won, I recommended that they just take the store credit from splitting with me that was over 100 USD, and they went for it. So I technically went 3-0-1 on the day, and was considered the champion for my LGS. The Urza's Saga went to a good home, I got some sweet cards that are very valuable, and my opponent in the finals got a bunch of store credit. It seemed like a good day all around, and I can definitely that this store champ was worth playing in!

I would also like to leave a final note that I do believe the Urza's Sagas will start to drop in value, so I thought it best to take as much value as I could get today, as the value will be dropping going forward. It made more sense to me to take guaranteed value now, rather than list the for sale and wait, while hoping it doesn't drop in value too quickly. We have another weekend of store championships, and once that weekend passes, it is likely that the card will have a significant drop in value.

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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 new Aetherdrift mechanics in Magic: The Gathering, rated for Limited and Constructed play. Discover which mechanics excel in Standard format.

Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed

Every time a new set comes out, there always seems to be a mechanic we are excited for, but maybe it doesn't pan out to be as powerful as we thought. Sometimes we think it will be good in constructed, and it ends up only being good in draft. There are other times when it is a sleeper, and we may have overlooked it when we were predicting what might be good. When we examine set design, sometimes we can also see the clear intent for the mechanics to be good in both the limited and constructed environments, and there are cards with power levels for each different environment. One might be watered down a bit to be more limited-friendly, and another might be that overpowered card that you need to be a bomb in constructed. There are a few ways to go about it, and we do what we can to identify which mechanics we should be mindful of in constructed, particularly in Standard, where the new cards affect the format more than other constructed formats. What we will do today is look at the mechanics that are prevalent with the new cards. There are some that are familiar mechanics, and I will still go over those. There are a couple of new ones that I think are quite interesting, and I have opinions on. Let's check out these mechanics, and give them some ratings! Exhaust You guys can tell that I am pretty excited about this one. The deck that I made for exhaust seems like it will run pretty smoothly. I believe that Exhaust is a mechanic that has cards that are intended for limited, and cards that are intended for constructed, and that the mechanic will be useful in both environments. One of the reasons that I believe it can be so good in draft is that you can almost consider the ability to act as another card later on in the game. You could have no cards in hand, but if you have two exhaust creatures, it is almost like you have two cards in hand that can make something happen. I'm excited for the mechanic, and I'm excited to draft the set and see if I can get a good bit of Exhaust cards going. I think it will be relevant in constructed because of the crazy value that you can get from some of the rares, and because there is one that allows for graveyard recursion.

Zombies are Coming back from the Dead with Aetherdrift

Whenever I see the word "Zombie" in a new set, I always like to revisit the archetype a bit in order to see if anything could be good. I decided to raise these zombies from the dead due to some cards that I saw from Aetherdrift, and I thought that we could at least make a deck that is fun, and who knows, it may be competitive too. We have received decent support lately with cards like Gisa, The Hellraiser. Although she isn't a zombie herself, she creates them every turn, and acts as a lord for them. Not to mention, the ward cost on her makes it so that she adequately fills out the top end of our list. She will help us immensely with swarming the board with skeletons, and efficiently rebuilding after board wipes. There are also going to be some ways to play our zombies from the graveyard, whether it be re-casting or embalming. Since we have the opportunity to raise our dead, we have to give it a shot. There is too much flavor that entices me. This will be my mono black list for the new set, as I think this is the best mono black deck to showcase as many new cards as possible. Any other mono black deck would likely just be adding one or two cards into an already good mono black deck, so I wanted to give you as much as I can with the new cards showcase. Without further ado, let's check out the deck! As you can see, we have plenty of lords in the deck. We are going to make these vanilla zombies huge, both to use as infinite blockers, and to have a threatening attack. We also brought back Unstoppable Slasher for some extra fun, and to guarantee that we have alternate win conditions when needed. In typical zombie fashion, we also don't mind getting rid of some of our creatures if it produces extra value for us. We can get rid of one of our zombies to deal with any problematic creature with Final Vengeance. I chose this over Eaten Alive because it allows us to sacrifice enchantments too, and there are some useful enchantments that support our zombies, so that could prove useful too. There are new cards in the deck, so let's take a look at those. Aetherdrift Zombie Support Cards

This Deck is Sure to be EXHAUSTING to Play Against

Gruul is an archetype that is usually reserved for the aggro decks in Standard. I'm sure that you guys have had enough of that, so I will spare you another Gruul Aggro list that you only play because the deck is good. We are trying something new with this one, and we are taking advantage of the Exhaust mechanic from the new set. It is something that remains to be seen if it is a constructed-playable mechanic, or something that is better suited for limited. I believe that I am pushing the limits of its capabilities here, and that we can do some pretty cool stuff with the deck. One thing that I am excited about is that the deck features a TON of new cards. It will be really difficult for anyone in Early Access to say that this deck didn't showcase any new cards - the creatures and vehicles are almost all exclusively new! We are looking to reduce the activated costs of abilities within the deck, and then get crazy value from it that overwhelms the board. If we play our cards right, we can do some activated abilities for next to nothing, and gain a strong advantage from it. We can possibly also have a Fireball finish if we play our cards right. This deck does a little bit of everything, and I am excited to try it out. Allow me to present to you: Gruul Exhaust! There are some staple cards that we include when we have activated abilities of creatures. One card that forces its way into the deck is Agatha's Soul Cauldron. It is too powerful not to include. We have a couple of ways to mill our cards, and the meta is pretty removal-heavy. We should have enough ways to get things into our graveyard, and if we don't we simply add one or two more Hedge Shredders to mill more cards. With the Exhaust ability, you sadly can only activate it once, BUT we are going to put multiple instances of said abilities on one creature, thus making it much more palatable. We also will reduce the cost of all exhaust abilities with one of the new cards to be shown later, and with Agatha of the Vile Cauldron. I was surprised to see this card - I did not know that it came out with the Soul Cauldron itself. We have seen the Cauldron so much, but we haven't seen a ton of the actual Agatha Creature. The deck has a few removal spells, but some of our vehicles also have a way to do direct damage, so we don't need to include as many as we normally would. We kept it pretty simple on the lands due to the demanding mana values in some of our cards, and because the deck is a little faster. There are multiple cards that have two pips of each of the colors represented, so we do not want to stall when it comes to having the right mana. Although I have a bunch of new cards from the set in this deck, I will showcase to you five of the ones I think are the most impactful. Relevant New Cards

These Aetherdrift Aristocrats are Racing to Victory!

We are coming to the end of spoiler season, and we are ramping up for early access for Aetherdrift. Almost all of the cards have been revealed, so Magic players are dashing to find the new deck that will work for them. This is an exciting time for creators as well, because it is our chance to make predictions on what the most impactful cards will be. We can straight up make a prediction, we can come out with a top 5 or 10, or we can theory craft new decks. I'm going to be dropping a few decks over the next couple of days that I think will be really fun to play in Standard, and that I will be playing in early access for Aetherdrift! Here is a look at the first deck I made that is an Orzhov Sacrifice Combo Deck! This new Orzhov Creation looks to take advantage of a lot of low-mana high-value creatures. We have multiple different sacrifice outlets, and a couple of different ways to interact with our graveyard. Most of the creatures are two mana value or lower, so we can even use a card from Foundations to bring them all back at once! We will draw a ton of cards, drain our opponent's life total, and have tons of blockers for the various aggro decks that we may come across. We can even punish the opponent for killing our creatures. The deck also features 23 lands due to the fact that our curve is pretty low, and we can operate pretty well with two or three mana. You might be wondering: "OK, so what is actually new about the deck?" We are looking to take advantage of the Start Your Engines mechanic that has been brought to us in this set. If you are unfamiliar with how that works, you can read my most recent article for a deep dive! For now, let's take a look at some relevant new cards from the set! Relevant New Cards

This New Mechanic in Aetherdrift WILL Have BIG Implications!

Aetherdrift is upon us, and everyone is ready for a refresh to the current Standard format. It's not particularly bad, but it could use a bit of a shake up. Foundations beefed up some of the archetypes that were already good, and it did so to the point that it is impossible to play a few matches in the format without seeing some type of Dimir. There are so many good different artchetypes of it currently that it is difficult to decide against playing it. Aetherdrift is bringing us a ton of vehicles, and it appears that this card type will force it's way into relevancy in the format. These new vehicles are announcing themselves with a little bit of flavor, however. There is a new mechanic that is coming to MTG that is called Start Your Engines. Initially, this mechanic didn't stand out to me too much. I had to take a bit of a deep dive into how it worked, and how to get to what is called "Max Speed" before I realized that we can do some broken stuff with this. Before I did my research, I went from thinking that it would be a draft-only mechanic, to thinking this might be the most powerful mechanic in the entire set. Let's take a look at how exactly Start Your Engines works, and then we will look over some examples of cards in Standard that should allow it to be ridiculous in all of the best ways. How Does Start Your Engines Work? This is an interesting one, and it fits in perfectly with the flavor of the set. We will have the Start Your Engines mechanic on a few of the cards, and it's ability instantly starts when the permanent enters the battlefield. If it is the FIRST Start Your Engines card played, it will instantly give you a Speed of 1. This is something that automatically happens as the permanent enters, and it is not a trigger that can be stifled, or fizzled by removing the permanent giving the Speed. Now, what I initially thought for this mechanic was that you got more speed by playing cards that had the Start Your Engines ability, but that isn't how it works, and I'm glad it's not that way. So how do we gain speed? In order to increase our speed past 1, we will have a trigger of an increase in speed once per our turn when an opponent loses life. What is pretty fun about this is that we do not need the permanent to stay on the board in order for the speed to increase. This means that the mechanic is comparable to The Ring Temps You from LOTR.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Recapping MTG in 2024

2024 was a huge year for MTG. It was a lot of things. Controversial, exciting, frustrating, promising, and refreshed. We saw some formats get ruined, then fixed, then ruined again. We saw some great changes to Standard that not everyone was fans of at first, but they seemed to quickly warm up to them. We saw Wizards effectively abandon a format in favor of propelling Standard into a more prominent position. We saw some great cards printed for Standard, and some promising things to come in the next year that were announced. Along with that, a fair amount of people were still bothered by the new trajectory of the format. Some are calling into question the longevity of MTG now with the heavy lean into Universes Beyond. A little bit of everything happened this year in the MTG world, and it was interesting if nothing else. On a personal level, it was also a hell of a year for me, as I took down two different events and grew a lot as a player. We are going to look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from this year! The Good I have to admit, I'm pretty excited that we have an infinite gain and drain combo in Standard right now. With Enduring Tenacity and Bloodthirsty Conqueror having made a lot of my dreams come true in my favorite format. Although the deck isn't the most viable in the format, it is incredibly fun to play, and I'm just happy that we had such exciting cards printed in the format. It leads to good card design going forward, and gives us promise for what's to come in the next year.

Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed