Hello fellow Armada Gamers! This is Brennan DeCandio, one of the many judges that come to Armada Games on a regular basis and I have been given the honor to write articles for the Armada Games viewers just as you may have seen on various other sites.
  We here in Tampa are very lucky compared to most of the Magic community in this country as we have a strong player and judge base locally. We actually have three FNM’s! That’s insane! While I enjoy and embrace all formats known to magic I’m going to focus on our new Standard Metagame for this one.  That doesn’t mean I won’t be doing more reports of various formats, it’s just that Standard is well the Standard and everyone loves new formats.
  Let’s kick things off with the Boogie Man of the format, Jund. Here is a sample list.

Maindeck:
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Broodmate Dragon
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sprouting Thrinax

3 Bituminous Blast
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Resounding Thunder
2 Terminate
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Blightning
3 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Swamp
3 Dragonskull Summit
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
4 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard:
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Jund Charm
4 Duress
1 Pyroclasm
2 Thought Hemorrhage

  This is the new Faeries, its just plain powerful and will catch you with your pants down and at 0 life if you’re not ready for it. This specific list was piloted to a 5K win a few weeks ago by Jack Wang and is a good starting point as how to view the archetype; lots of removal, a ton of 2 for 1’s, and efficient aggressive creatures and Planeswalkers. This was the best deck by far in block constructed and in new formats aggro decks are always better then control decks because aggro decks are a little easier to build and the control players don’t know what it is exactly they’re needing to control so they can’t react properly. Also people are also more likely to play with a deck that they’ve played a hundred matches with and know how to play and build rather then a deck with all new cards that they have little experience with. Don’t get me wrong, the deck is great. It’s powerful, aggressive and has very degenerate draws that sometimes can’t be beat if you’re not ready for it. Blightning is no joke and you should be well prepared for it on turn 3 even as the first spell of the game. Although on a happier note, this deck doesn’t have the unbeatable draws that Timespiral Faeries has and there’s plenty room for game.

  There are a wide variety of other decks to play once you get passed the narrow mind set of the Cascade Ultimatums. One of the decks that has obviously been supported by wizards is the new tribal, Vampires. Man was I shocked when Vampire Nocturnus shot up to the $20 dollars it will cost you now on most websites. I was giving away my Promo ones to people who wanted to use them for some casual legacy decks, big mistake.
Here is where we find ourselves today with the Vampires:

Main deck:

4 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper Of Malakir
3 Malakir Bloodwitch
3 Vampire Hexmage
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Vampire Nocturnus

1 Eldrazi Monument
3 Disfigure
4 Tendrils Of Corruption
2 Mind Sludge
4 Sign In Blood

16 Swamp
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard:
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Disfigure
3 Deathmark
4 Duress
3 Marsh Casualties
2 Mind Sludge

  No I didn’t build this deck, it has a few too many odd numbers on cards that I think are fantastic in the current Metagame. This list was pulled from the same 5K top 8 as our Jund deck took the title of. That doesn’t mean Jund is superior, just means it might have been the Jund players lucky day. I think that this deck offers what I’ve wanted to do since Kamigawa left the standard format, play a mono black deck. Since then we’ve been spoiled with Dual lands and awesome multi-colored cards that make it hard not to be at least 2 colors. But now we’ve got not only Tendrils of Corruption, but Mind Sludge too! So the incentive to be running plenty of swamps has been heightened. The changes I would make to this deck are the one random Eldrazi Monument would come out for a main deck the 4th Malakir Bloodwitch. While she might be one of the best Bituminous Blast targets I’ve seen getting play, she is pretty dominating against a lot of other decks supporting white. Also the 8 fetch lands can be helpful in shuffling a non black card off the top when you have Vampire Nocturnus in play but I’m not so sure it’s worth the life loss or if you even want to thin you deck out having numerous 5 drops, not to mention they cost a lot of money. But I could be wrong. I guess my Budget option would be 24 Swamps FTW!

  So lets say that aggro isn’t really your kind of style. Both the aforementioned decks have been pretty aggressive and play a ton of creatures. Where are all the counterspell decks? Well I had the chance to talk with Pro Tour Historian, Brian David-Marshall, about how Magic R&D (Research and Development) has been pushing the power level of creatures and lowering the power level of spells. Yes I realize that Cruel Ultimatum is perhaps the most devastating spell to resolve in a game of Magic pretty much ever, but Wild Nacatl is probably the most aggressively costed creature this side of Tarmogoyf. Brian expressed his concerns with the direction that Magic is going in as the creatures might be at their Peak of Power and spells quite low on the power curve.
  This might be the worst time in magic history to try and play a blue deck with controlling elements but we’ll give it a try.
  Here is a Blue/White control deck that I recently came across:

Main deck:
3 Sphinx Of Jwar isle
3 Wall of Denial

4 Path to Exile
3 Essence Scatter
3 Negate
3 Cancel
1 Celestial Purge
1 Pithing Needle
1 Martial Coup
4 Day of Judgment
2 Mind Spring
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Jace Beleren

4 Glacial Fortress
2 Gargoyle Castle
4 Sejiri Refuge
8 Island
7 Plains
1 Arcane Sanctum

Sideboard:
3 Celestial Purge
4 Flash Freeze
2 Baneslayer Angel
1 Negate
2 Ajani Goldmane
3 Devout Lightcaster


  This list is a little loose and just goes to show you what lengths you have to go through to play a counter spell in this format. (Incase you were wondering this deck went 7-0 in an online cash tournament on magic workstation). One of the really interesting reasons that this deck does well against the Jund and Vampires of this format is its creature choice, note they both have Shroud.  Now if you look at the Jund list above you’ll note that they play Maelstrom Pulse, Terminate, Lightning Bolt, Resounding Thunder and Bituminous Blast in order to deal with the opponent’s creatures handily. Against the Jund list above, this deck blanks (makes specific cards useless) Maelstrom Pulse, Terminate and Bituminous Blast giving you virtual card advantage when they happen to draw those cards in game 1. Lightning Bolt and Resounding Thunder still have the job of going to the face if it comes to that. Shroud is an incredibly powerful mechanic that I think is being underrated at the moment. Tired of all your dudes dying to terminate? Well, here is your answer. I would suggest picking up your set of Sphinx of Jwar Isle while they’re still really cheap. I see them going the way that Uril the Miststalker did in block where he was $30 dollars at the Pro-Tour, the morning of the event.

  So Games Day is coming up this Saturday to Armada games and their giving away some pretty sweet promos for the event. Lets just say that you don’t have a spare million dollars in your budget unlike the Federal Government does……(note that incase you were wondering we are 1,140,000,000,000 dollars in debt, and that’s just from spending this year!!!) So what’s the option to remain competitive and stay in a healthy budget? Well I’m going to take a leaf out of the Mother Ship’s book (note that the Mother Ship is MagictheGathering.com) and a deck that Jacob Van Lunen wrote about on October 21st, the Sedraxis Specter aggro deck.

Here’s what he suggested:
Main Deck:
2 Akoum Refuge
4 Ancient Ziggurat
4 Crumbling Necropolis
3 Forest
1 Island
3 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp

4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Hypnotic Specter
3 Madrush Cyclops
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sedraxis Specter
4 Sprouting Thrinax

4 Blightning
3 Burst Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Terminate

Sideboard (note he didn’t make one but im sure it would look something like this):

3 Pyroclasm
4 Duress
3 Magma Spray
2 Soul’s Majesty (Green card draw)
3 Fleshbag Marauder (Good against those pesky shroud guys)


  So that’s what a budget beat down looks like and I’ve done some testing with it myself out of curiosity and its been running very well. If Blightning is the best spell in the format then Sedraxis Specter is the answer. Say it is turn 3 and they Blightning you, you discard a Specter. Next turn you can play a Tapped land and unearth your specter and battle! If it connects then its just like undoing your Blightning as the 3 damage is symmetrical and the amount of cards used is also symmetrical.

  That’s the current state of Standard. I could go on with the various red decks such as the Boros Bushwhacker deck or the more traditional RDW style of decks, and even the crazy Pyrmoancers Ascension/Cruel Ultimatum decks but I’ll let you guys do some innovating yourself.
  What am I going to play? Well you’ll just have to see this weekend at Armada Games. Until then this is Brennan DeCandio saying Happy Gaming! (I’ll think of something more clever I promise!)

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