Welcome Magic lovers!
With Bloomburrow barely a month old, and new Duskmourn spoilers already flooding the Magic: the Gathering sphere, it's safe to say that Standard is anything but stable. The evolution of the metagame over the past month has been interesting to watch unfold, and with no serious competitive play happening, aside from the odd Magic Online Showcase Challenge or real-life tournament in Japan, it's difficult to pin down exactly which decks are leading the charge.
Today, we will cover the current state the Standard format, which decks are seeing the most play online, and which decks can be expected to get better with the release of Duskmourn in just a few short weeks.
Gruul Aggro
According to Magic Online and real-life tournament data from the last two weeks, Gru Aggro is currently seeing the most play, making up a whopping 21% share of the Standard metagame.
While many of the Gruul lists pre-rotation were simply mono-red aggro touching green for Snakeskin Veil, this new crop of decks fully embraces the power of the forest, running pump spells like Audacity and Giant Growth alongside the ubiquitous Monstrous Rage.
Its core of aggressive creatures includes new additions Manifold Mouse and Heartfire Hero, of which the latter is quickly becoming one of the best one-drops in Standard. The Hero grows VERY quickly and can deal an enormous amount of damage out of nowhere, especially when sacrificing it using the adventure side of Callous Sell-Sword, Burn Together, to fling it at an opponent's face. While Callous Sell-Sword costs black to cast, it's largely irrelevant since the adventure Burn Together costs red and will often be the last spell cast in a game However, don't forget that, in a pinch, one can name black Thran Portal to cast the creature side of the Sell-Sword if one must. Heartfire Hero, alongside the similarly templated Cacophony Scamp, gives the Gruul deck a massive amount of reach, which means that it only needs to put six or eight damage on the opponent before they're in danger of losing to one of these 'small' creatures being flung at them.
While not new to Standard, March of the Machine equipment Mirran Banesplitter is a recent addition to the deck that plays very nicely with Burn Together, often allowing one to pump a Heartfire Hero or Cacophony Scamp to lethal levels before flinging it.
These latest iterations of Gruul are much more reliant on finishing the game with spells than creatures, allowing them to dodge most sorcery speed removal, like Sunfall and Temporary Lockdown, as many of their creatures can be cast, pumped up, then sacrificed to Burn Together all in the same turn in order to end the game. Watch out for this powerful, aggressive strategy that's currently the most-played deck in Standard.
The next couple of slots on the list of most-played decks in Standard are very closely contested, with Rakdos Aggro and Dimir Aggro all making up between 8% to 11% of the metagame. It's fairly safe to say that aggressive strategies are currently dominating Standard.
Rakdos Aggro
Currently sitting at about 11% of the Standard metagame, Rakdos Aggro, more colloquially known as 'the lizards deck', is a deck born of Bloomburrow, as the vast majority of the creatures it plays are recent printings from that set.
Maximizing the synergy between the various, powerful lizard creatures that were recently added to Standard, like Gev, Scaled Scorch, Hired Claw and Fireglass Mentor, while also incorporating powerful lizards from previous sets, like Laughing Jasper Flint, this deck is an efficient killing machine that can do ton of incremental damage.
It's one of the few aggressive decks that also packs a ton of disruption in the form of Deep-Cavern Bat and the new Thought-Stalker Warlock, which can be crucially important when the opponent is relying on casting that Temporary Lockdown to survive.
With excellent black removal spell Go for the Throat, and Lightning Strike (which also happens to go to the face), plus a sideboard full of additional removal, disruption and the difficult to deal with Urabrask's Forge, Rakdos Lizards can dismantle about any other in the format with ease.
Dimir Tempo
Coming in at 8%, but rising rapidly with a 1st and 2nd place finish in a Standard Challenge this past weekend, is Dimir Aggro. A deck that lost very little from the Standard rotation, it was one of our top picks for best deck once the dust settled, and it's not hard to see why.
Unlike the other aggro decks making up the majority of the < class="correction-yellow" style="background: yellow">metagamespan>, Dimir Aggro is more of a tempo-aggro deck, relying on disruption from creatures like Deep-Cavern Bat, Tishana's Tidebinder and Ertai Resurrected, backed by spells like Phantom Interference and Duress, to protect its powerful three and four-mana threats that can easily take over the game, such as Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor, Preacher of the Schism and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.
With such cheap, effective disruption and removal at its disposal, it becomes difficult to attack this deck directly, as it can easily leave up a counter or Tidebinder to stop any opponent trying to go over the top of it with a sweeper or an Atraxa, Grand Unifier. In addition, its powerful midrange creatures threaten to snowball so quickly out of control that leaving even a single one alive usually spells doom for the opponentp>
Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor and Preacher of the Schism are capable of quickly burying the enemy under a mountain of card advantage, while the last two years of Standard play has shown how effective Sheoldred, the Apocalypse can be at ending the game in short order.
Cute, new Bloomburrow addition, Mockingbird, fits in nicely here as additional copies of the potent Deep-Cavern Bat, or perhaps another flying threat like Spyglass Siren in order to really power up that Gix next turn. Remember, copying the opponent's powerful threat is always an option as well, making Mockingbird a cheap and versatile addition to the deck.
In the Sideboard, we see additional counter-magic in the form of Negate and Disdainful Stroke that can be brought in against the late-game decks like Domain Ramp and control.
Other aggressive lists can be managed with removal like Cut Down and Malicious Eclipse, and when in an attrition war against midrange decks, additional, more resilient threats can be added, such as Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal and Kaito, Dancing Shadow.
A powerful, flexible deck, Dimir Aggro is certainly on the rise, so watch out for it.
Conclusion
It's aggro's time to shine! With so many flavors of aggressive decks to choose from, the sky is the limit when it comes to how quickly and efficiently one can destroy one's opponent in Standard. When deciding which direction to head, however, consider the subtle interplay between the aggro decks when they square off against one another. Some softer in the aggro mirror than others, and while they are all powerful they can certainly be placed along a spectrum from most all-in, to most reserved, with Gruul being on one end and Dimir on the other. In addition, there are a few other aggressive decks running around such as Mono-Red and Jeskai Convoke, however their metagame share is flagging. Get out there and find which aggro deck suits you best, and crush your enemies with it!
