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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Top 5 Standard Cards from the Upcoming Final Fantasy Set
Final Fantasy is right around the corner, and the time has come to theorize about what cards are going to see play once the set hits MTG Arena. The overall power level looks in line with the standard we've come to expect for Standard sets like this, which is to say, very powerful and very fast, but which ones will stand out from the crowd and make a meaningful impact on the Standard meta?
While I can’t claim to know the future, here are my predictions and explanations for five cards that just might make the cut once the set drops on June 10th.
Honorable Mentions
We live in a Standard Valgavoth, Terror Eater, and Atraxa, Grand Unifier coexist, so of course graveyard junkies are going to reanimate them. While reanimating a huge threat faster than the opponent can respond is a tried-and-true Magic: the Gathering tradition, today's deck isn't focusing on that as much as you might think. Yes, the possibility of a turn four Valgavoth exists within this deck, but that's only one of many gameplans that we're going to use to move forward and climb the ladder. You could call this a midrange deck without lying, but reanimation is also a key element, so I'll stick to the reanimator label.
The Core Package
Sibsig Ceremony is one of the most intriguing build-arounds we’ve seen in a while. It challenges you to build a deck with creatures, but it destroys them when they first enter the battlefield. On its face, this is a blatant contradiction, but with some clever deck building, we can benefit from the creatures dying and have a reanimation backup plan to get our win cons out of the graveyard and into the fight.
The Main Event
Cascade and discover are keywords that conjure images of crashing Footfalls or Geological Appraiser dominating tournaments on the backs of combos able to power out threats far ahead of any reasonable curve or go infinite. Free-casting effects like this have been staples of various formats over the years, and can often be seen on banned and restricted lists with examples like Tibalt's Trickery sitting in the prestigious company of Channel and Demonic Tutor as one of only three cards too strong to be unrestricted in Timeless.
While Tarkir: Dragonstorm isn't giving us a new card with the keyword cascade or discover on it, we're getting an uncommon that behaves similarly in Breaching Dragonstorm. The titular Dragonstorms are uncommon enchantments that give an effect upon entering and then bounce themselves when a dragon enters under your control. Breaching Dragonstorm is the red installment and its text is almost “When Breaching Dragonstorm enters, Discover 8.”
Is This Good?
Blue is a powerhouse in Standard, appearing in plenty of meta lists from Dimir midrange to Azorius Control and Esper Pixie. This Town Ain't Big Enough and Stormchaser's Talent create a value engine that disrupts your opponent while creating an aggressive board state that's difficult to deal with, so it's not surprising it finds its way into a variety of decks. The one thing that's not overly popular at the moment is blue by itself, however. I set out to see if the powerful blue cards in Standard could create a viable deck without dipping into any other color, and after a few hours of tweaking and a lot of feedback from my Twitch chat, I'm pleasantly surprised by the results.
The Core Engine
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
