Haven't looked through all the spoilers of WAR yet, but am most attracted to the new Liliana and Nicol Bolas. New Liliana has some amazing abilities - don't think we've seen many planeswalkers that can kill two threats the turn it lands yet. New Nicol Bolas has a prohibitive mana cost, but the mana in Standard is also quite good. With cards like Bedevil and the original M19 Nicol Bolas already in the format, Grixis control could become a top deck.

In RNA, I spent most of my time playing Reclamation decks. Haven't seen any particularly strong instants in WAR yet, so that deck might drop onto the backburner now. I can't imagine untapping with Niv-Mizzet got any less powerful though.

Finally of course there's my old love Selesnya tokens, but that deck was already not that good in RNA and with other decks getting even stronger in WAR I'm doubtful I'll ever play it seriously again.

What's everyone else thinking of playing?

Orzhov (maybe Mardu) Aristocrats is a topic I picked up that intrigues me. Might take too many wildcards though.

I like my Sultai and Gruul decks these days and if all they need is a few cards, I can see continuing with those.

Bo1 might get flooded with the new t3 combo kills but I suppose that will fold to the two premier Bo1 decks RDW and Esper for those just kill the combo creature with half the cards in their decks. WW might take another hit there though, because that's the deck that does nothing about the t3 kill and it stinks vs the other two already. People say mono blue dies to Blast Zone.

So.. Bo3..
I hope Reclamation gets pushed out of the meta. If you read my posts, I always hate on this deck or another that I don't play, but this is my current nemesis. It's so aggravating to sit there with lethal on the board, ready to pounce and move on to the next game aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand 10 minutes later it's still not even your turn. At some point the odds of that guy going infinite get high enough to concede, but until then I feel like I have to stay in - one miss-step and he's dead. Can't throw away a game just because.

And what I'll actually do:
Make a few calculations regarding which limited format I should spend gems on, act on that and then take a 5 month break for job reasons. Maybe I'll chime on for the daily 1k gold every now and then but I really shouldn't get distracted.

Was thinking of playing Grixis because ... Nicol Bolas ... but then remembered that Grixis didn't have any ways to deal with enchantments last season. That made Wilderness Reclamation one hell of a card vs. them. The only way they beat it is with the Dispersal half of Discovery//Dispersal. Did Grixis get anything to deal with enchantments in WAR?

Heavy planeswalker set seems to imply control gets stronger, planeswalkers backed up with lots of sweepers has always been a good combination.

It seems like the cheap planeswalkers with less powerful abilities could really change the game landscape. I've been enjoying playing with Ajani, the Greathearted and Dovin, Hand of control in a WUG deck. With amass and proliferate you can play green almost like a control deck that also has a good dose of aggro. Have not read any articles or seen any decklists online. I just jumped in sight unseen and started buying packs and building decks.

I've seen quite a few Selesnya opponents featuring the new Ajani, the Greathearted and Huatli's Raptor as additions to the previous token shell. Looks fun, but can't say if it's actually powerful. The losses I remember, I had attributed to not drawing Find // Finality (in time or at all).

Banedon isn't that your pet deck? Go work at it

New Ajani looks like anti-red sideboard card. Minus ability should be inferior to old Ajani's +1 (especially since you need a big board, aka. it's not different from Loxodon & Unbreakable Formation). Huatli's Raptor doesn't seem to do anything special. Why is it better than Thorn Lieutenant? Looking through the new cards there are some cards that can potentially work with the tokens shell, but nothing seems that impressive really. Gideon, the Oathsworn seems good superficially but it costs 6 and I can't believe it's better than The Immortal Sun. Finale of Glory costs too much mana and is sorcery speed too. Gideon's Battle Cry and Pledge of Unity should be inferior to Unbreakable Formation. If there's something else worth playing please point it out because I'm not seeing anything exciting.

I've sort of abandoned Selesnya tokens as well. I still play it a little, but only for fun and almost never in BO3. Currently fiddling with limited while waiting for constructed to shake itself out ...

Yeah, I'm kinda with Banedon here. I'm not necessarily as down on the new Ajani, but you don't really have the counter synergies to really have Raptor go off.

If there is a deck for counters, I believe Simic is the best bet, but even then I'm not sure whether that translates well into Standard.

New Ajani is great, because he also gives vigilance.

He does, but he still competes for slots with Unbreakable Formation, Trostani and Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants. I can see him being a 1- or 2-of, but I doubt he's going to give Tokens the much needed push.

Vigilance doesn't seem like a big deal with tokens though. They're so small after all. I suppose in principle vigilance means you could gain some life with tokens against red when they attack and still be able to block, but that seems about it. Against white decks they'll be playing creature after creature so you can't really attack unless you're already ahead on the board. My instinct is for new Ajani to be a 1-of at most.

What decks are everyone else playing? There are so many good cards in different colors, there're a lot of possibilities.

To be honest I haven't set foot in the metagame yet. The limited time I have played I spent within Limited.

I kind of want to try my hands at UW/Bant/Esper Midrange. New Gideon, Dovin's Veto and new Teferi all seem pretty nice tools for the matchups vs. Control and Reclamation decks.

Well I've been playing Grixis and Esper control.

Grixis can't seem to keep up with enchantments and Esper cant seem to keep up with the threats grixis keeps throwing out.

Everyone is playing control where I'm at. I hate aggro, so I don't know what to do.

Not playing anything WAR yet. Just collecting daily gold until Bo1 Draft starts.

Orzhov mythics may become a deck now, like Boros Angels a while ago. Don't know if they can beat Control, doubt that, but as a "fair" deck these God-Eternals are nigh unbeatable. Meanwhile Control can just counter or discard them.

You could play something anti-control, e.g Temur Reclamation was quite favored game 1 last season.

@Sol77 what makes you say God-Eternals are nigh unbeatable except with control? E.g. if I'm playing monowhite and you play God Eternal Whatever, I could Conclave Tribunal it. You'll get it back in 3 turns, but by then, you could be dead.

If you are close enough to the finish line and a bounce grants you the tempo you need, fine.

I had a match with my green Gruul deck yesterday and lost games 1 and 3 to Oketra. Couldn't finish those games and his board presence became overwhelming. I dislike that you can't deal with them - except for bounce. I also killed Gideon in both these games but I think I had to.

There's some real low to the ground aggro decks that seem to be running over Temur Rec. Then control has way too many counters. I don't know what to play. I like control, but I don't wanna sit there and draw-go all day.

I think the problem isn't Oketra per se, but rather the fact that the Gruul deck from last season doesn't have ways to deal with a 3/6 double striker. Oketra the True would walk over you too, for example. But that's not too bad - there are other cards that a color combination can be weak to, e.g. Wilderness Reclamation if you're Grixis, Adanto Vanguard if you're Jeskai, Rekindling Phoenix if you're monoblue.

Ultimately we will have to accept that playing last season's decks is going to lead to losses. It's also possible that R/G just doesn't have a card that can deal with Oketra at all (don't know, haven't looked). If that's the case, you could be in a similar spot to Reclamation decks last season, which tended to fold over and die easily to Azorius aggro & monored. Having a really bad matchup isn't the end of the world, but if you can't tolerate it, I'd play a different deck.

Not sure what the difference is between an SCG Open and SCG Classic, but first results are in.

In the Open: 3 monored, 2 Esper control, 1 Selesnya tokens and 2 Bant midrange in the top 8. The Selesnya deck was running Gideon instead of the usual Ajani/Shalai. Two of the monored decks barely changed except for Tibalt/Chandra in sideboard, although the last one (and the one that won the Open) ran 4 Chandra maindeck instead of Experimental Frenzy. Esper switched some removal spells and added Narset & Liliana, and also new Teferi (if not maindeck then at least in sideboard), but is otherwise the same deck. Finally Bant is the only new deck, utilizing Oketra in the maindeck as well as new Vivien & Teferi.

In the Classic: This has a lot of new decks, with Grixis control, Mardu Judith and even Naya Feather in the top 8. Bant Nexus won. The list had Tamiyo & big Teferi as win conditions, as well as 4x Revitalize and Callous Dismissal.

Seems like Sultai fell off the edge of the Earth.

That is probably right and it would be a disappointing set if you didn't need any new cards. Still, the power level of the WAR mythics seems off - I didn't make that up, this sentiment is present in the pro coverage as well (for example LR set review rare/mythic).

Now Magic has many different archetypes of decks. And while I prefer decks that win through creatures, which might be massively affected by cards like Oketra, decks like Control or Combo don't really care - neither for the powerlevel nor for the cost (plenty of mythic wildcards).

Regarding your Top8 lists, SCG Open seems to be the bigger format. It's only one event, but funny how both RDW and Esper dominate without obvious improvements (please enlighten me, does Lily alone warp the midrange matchups?) from WAR. And then we have 3 incarnations of Selesnya - as per our earlier discussions. Also funny how this can push the superior Sultai und Gruul lists from before WAR out. Though only one of them features tokens - even Saproling Migration of all things. The others took a midrange shell and substituted black for the new bomb Oketra (best overall creature now?) and little Teferi to fight fire with fire - GG 20 minute endstep shenanigans. I had expected WW to adopt little Tef as well, but maybe WW in general isn't good enough now? Again, it's only one event - and I ignored the all-over-the-place classic event.