So after playing jank and fun and brewing stuff, and getting stuck @ platinum rank, I finally caved and joined the dark side.

Rakdos burn face.

What a joke. Everything just melts.

With sword point and rf?

Post the list!:-)

Esper feels pretty solid atm, although I'm still lacking a copy or 2 of the W/U dual lands. Turbofart is still a struggle in Bo1 though, really missing a counterspell that exiles outside of Syncopate.

So far Consecrate//Consume has felt worse than Eldest Reborn despite the hype. Kaya's Wrath and Nova have been enough to handle Carnage Tyrant more consistently, but Consume not being able to bring back a wincon has been sorely missed. Warrant//Warden on the other hand has been much better in testing, even allowing an extra couple of finishers stapled to removal lategame.

Sure. I went from platinum rock bottom to diamond in one sitting last night. Lost maybe 10-15 matches, so in worst case, that's 15 losses to 43 wins (if my math isn't off).
Playing jank and ****, I stayed around 50% win/loss ratio. Got up to platinum rank 2, and eventually found myself way back down.

I play the 8 wizards, because they are awesome both on their own and as a wizards lightning AND spectacle enabler. I took down the risk factor and sword-point count to 3 each, it felt as too much when you can't finish off an opponent who refuses to pay life and you just chain them into each other.

Light up the Stage and Skewer the critics are phenomenal and perform very well. Theater of horrors is on trial atm, I don't wanna run too many, but when it does get to sit there, it just provides SO much value. And multiples are just insane, so perhaps swap out something for a 3rd copy. It's also 1 mana cheaper than experimental frenzy, albeit somewhat different, it still gives advantage, even in multiples which experimental frenzy doesn't. Soveriegn's Bite is the last iffy card, but vs RDW, it's saved me quite a few times. Perhaps -1 Sovereign's bite, +1 theater.

4 x Shock
11 x Mountain
4 x Lightning Strike
3 x Risk Factor
4 x Wizard's Lightning
3 x Sword-Point Diplomacy
1 x Swamp
4 x Sovereign's Bite
4 x Dragonskull Summit
4 x Viashino Pyromancer
4 x Skewer the Critics
4 x Ghitu Lavarunner
4 x Light Up the Stage
4 x Blood Crypt
2 x Theater of Horrors


Importable version in the spoiler tags

I loved SP back months ago before the wipe in my discard deck but I believe after the wipe I might still have none. LoL
I've got an alternate Rakdos Burn set up in the constructed subforum that works pretty damn good. Can't say about in the ladder. I got up in the high Gold and just kind of forgot about it.

Eldest hits planeswalkers. It's just better.

It's looking as though Standard will have a whole load of viable decks again, even more than last standard. That's good, and might mean I get to pick a deck based on personal favourite cards. Bruna, the Fading Light isn't in Standard, but Lyra Dawnbringer is.

Has anyone seen a competitive deck including Lyra Dawnbringer? It's hard to see angel tribal as competitive since the only other top-tier angel appears to be Aurelia, and besides being weak to control isn't somewhere I want to be; but perhaps some kind of midrange deck that includes Lyra as a threat?

Probably some kind of B/W deck including Lyra, Seraph, Kaya's Wrath, and Ethereal Absolution in the sideboard, hmm.

EDIT: Maybe not. Spending six mana on an enchantment that can be killed in a variety of maindeckable ways sounds iffy. Guess I wait for the results of the first big constructed tournament before doing anything.

My mono white with Lyra is still competitive after the new set dropped and I have an Angel tribal that does very well.

Boros Angels was competitive last season. Not top tier, but saw play in pro tour.

Other than that deck, off top of head: Jeskai Midrage, Jeskai Control, Esper Control, Mono White, Turbo Fog, and Rainbow Litch can run some Lyra maindeck or sideboard (some versions of those builds do at least). In undercity tourney, Devil Wuster has some in his maindeck and Divinevert has some in sideboard. Not sure what other NGAers might be running it too, but I know I've seen her make appearances in other participants lists.

I don't think you give enough respect to Resplendent Angel. It's a strong piece in Boros Angels and lifegain decks, and sees play in some Jeskai Midrange, WW, and Boros Aggro builds. It currently sells for more money ($15) than Lyra ($13.50) or Aurelia ($5) on MTGGoldfish. Also, Shalai is a quality angel, and helps with your concern about being weak to control.

@devil monowhite with Lyra? That sounds quite weird. Monowhite would imply an aggressive strategy, in which case Lyra doesn't fit very well.

I think Resplendent Angel is crappy and borderline unplayable. It's a 3-mana 3/3 flyer, which is unimpressive in the current standard because so many of the flyers brawl well with it (Rekindling Phoenix, Tempest Djinn, Seraph, Drakes, etc). It can be good if you get to make angels, but how many cards can gain 5 life in one card? Sinking six mana into Resplendent Angel is very costly, especially since the opponent could e.g. respond with Vraska's Contempt to waste your turn. Alternatively you can connect with Lyra, but if you ever untap with Lyra you are generally doing well, so one cannot count on that happening.

Shalai is not a bad angel (I ran her quite a bit in Selesnya tokens at one point) but she's definitely a role-player that isn't strong on its own. Again she doesn't brawl well with the most threatening flyers (she would have been so much better as a 4/4). She's not good against control either. Yeah she's GW's only way to prevent Settle the Wreckage, but she's dying to Cleansing Nova and Kaya's Wrath. Protecting other creatures is a minor effect that's usually not important, and the mana sink rarely comes up either. Ajani is definitely the better anti-control card.

But anyway I should shut up and await the results of the first major constructed tournament, which if I'm not mistaken is happening this weekend This is an especially special Standard, since one can't just expect the best decks from the previous Standard to still be good; the new shocklands are quite a deck enabler.

On another note I've kind of lost interest in monored. It's a decent deck, but it feels so coin-flippy. If I draw poorly there's no way to mitigate it, no way to outplay my opponents. Either I draw 20 points of damage before my opponent kills me, or I don't. That's not exactly a bad thing, and if e.g. I were going to play a match against the world's best player then I could play this just to remove the skill factor and leave everything up to luck. On the other hand, if I believe I'm better than the average player (and I do believe that), I should avoid the deck. Too bad I've already sunk some ~7 rare wildcards into it. It's not all a disaster though, I underestimated the number of wildcards I still have - about 7? mythics and almost 20 rares left, along with tons of commons and uncommons.

Why Lyra works well in my mono white IS Resplendent and Benalish Marshal to be short about it. By the time Lyra shows there's a great chance that an Resplendent and a Marshal are on board and she sets off the RA a turn early and the next turn if I land that 6th mana anyway, leaves it all for me to do something else with instead of spending it on RA ability. Also, you sink the mana into RA only after you have last priorty during the attack phase and not before to guard against losing that mana via removal.
I know you've never seemed a fan of either but considering the opponent's decks I've met in the tournament with my mono white and the fact that I'm 4-3, both cards play very respectably. My sideboard sets RA off at 4cmc due to Devotion and Moment if I have them in hand and she doesn't eat removal and I tell you what, she is a removal magnet so others must feel the same way I do about her.

Not that card prices are the end all of card evaluations (rarity alone has an effect on that), but I can't believe an unplayable card would cost you around $15 a pop at your local card shop. What 3 mana creature are you playing in white that brawls better vs the cards you mentioned, and has the benifit of flying over ground decks plus bonkers upside with Lyra? It's an odd criticism that a 3 drop has a handful of 4 drops it struggles with (Tempest Djinn is 3, but it's only in 1 deck; Enigma is also 3 but it's really just played in 2 variants of 1 basic deck - Crackling, Phoenix, and Sereph are all 4 drops). It's usually the case that more expensive cards have better stats... but you still got a curve to fill. I wouldn't argue RA is one of the best creatures in the game; I just don't buy that it's crappy.

At any rate, back to your comment about doing some kind of Orzhov deck with Lyra, Sereph, Wrath, and Absolution - BW Angels is a decent Midrange deck. I've watched Jeff Hoogland play around with some different builds of it on YouTube, and it doesn't look bad. Here's a decklist he posted online: https://www.powned.it/mazzi-mtga/bw-ang ... -hoogland/

Maybe something to get gears turning on what you want to build.

My UW Angel tribal.
Much fun and works well.

4 x Resplendent Angel
12 x Plains
4 x Squire's Devotion
3 x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
2 x Lyra Dawnbringer
2 x Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
9 x Island
4 x Moment of Triumph
3 x Opt
2 x Blink of an Eye
1 x Search for Azcanta
3 x Syncopate
2 x Unexplained Disappearance
2 x Glacial Fortress
2 x Quasiduplicate
2 x Dive Down
1 x Chart a Course
2 x Angel of Grace

I'm getting to this point, however, I don't have four light up the stage. LUTS seems like a crucial part of keeping the tempo going and chaining together burn spells. Also, don't have the other rakdos choice rares, like the demon and Judith. I think splashing black makes the deck more mid-rangey and gives more stuff to play around. Of course this creates the obvious downside of the deck no longer being monored, and aggro-burn decks don't really have time for mana-fixing. So I guess the jury is still out on rakdos. This begs the question of what guilds, if any, might be standard playable. The strongest contenders for me so far might actually be Orzhov. The combo with glass of the guildpact and afterlife creatures is simply insane. So far, though, at least on Arena, I have not seen how the meta has been drastically affected by RNA. If anything, people trying to play mostly RNA cards seem to be disadvantaged.

Here are 8 undefeated RNA decks in MTGO's competitve league. Gives you an idea of what decks are gaining early popularity in standard this season.




Sultai Midrange (the explore package with some +1 counters stuff from RNA; last season's Golgari Midrange, evolved)

Gruul Aggro (runs the cheap cost gold riot doods from RNA along with the dragon at top of the curve)

Rakdos Control (not much RNA in this, just a bit of removal from the new set)

Esper Control (basically what Vert and others are doing in the Esper thread in constructed subforum)

Temur Vannifar (birthing pod deck; creature heavy w/ riot enchantment)

Selesnaya Tokens (RNA adds Growth-Chamber Guardians and Incubation Druids)

Mardu Aristocrats (most of this deck is RNA stuff, like 90% RNA)

Temur Control (Wilderness Reclamation deck)


Full list of 5-0 decks from 1/21/19 (ones w/ some highlighted in video)
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/ ... 1-21#paper

Full list of 5-0 decks from 1/24/19
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/ ... 1-24#paper

Very early impression:

Isn't it stupid to make RDW stronger and bring back the scourge that was Turbo Fog? Especially from an Arena PoV, where Bo1 is the main format and time/win (instead of win/games) is the dominating metric?

To be honest, I even joined the dark side (RDW) and play 4 wins per day waiting for something to happen.

Yeah, I think it's dumb to make red stronger, but that's just me - I like games to last a bit longer. I'm sure a lot of people enjoy playing it.

I'm starting to think that Wilderness Reclamation might actually be banworthy though, and I'm normally against bans especially early on in a format. But the card seems completely broken. It'd be good if it cost 6 mana to cast, at four mana it's absurd. Why wizards are so scared of ramp spells but then print stuff like this really confuses me.

Maybe the idea is that red kills you by turn 4 (which it can do quite consistently), so there needs to be a control card that wins on turn 4? Dunno seems like a rabbit hole.

Its pretty gross... our meta is absolutely GARBAGE!

Its Rakdos Burn or its Wilderness Nexus... anything in between dies

I'm doing great against RDW with my mono white still. It's holding up in the meta scramble. I am trying something. Took out my two Hazzda's and put in two Angelic Exaltation. Finally got one out. A 9/9 Angel token was nice. Next turn she would have been 11/11 lifegain.
Two Moment of Triumph's on my two lifegain, from the Warleader, tokens taking out two Ghuitu's and growing the Angel token was LUTZ.

Golgari still works, very draw dependant though, get the wrong cards vs the matchup and you just die. And red decks are utterly consistent now, all the cards do pretty much the same thing and they're all strong too.

Been trying out sultai midrange (basically golgari with krasis, maybe hedana's climb too if I get round to crafting it) and it's been pretty good. Once we get bo3 ranked I think it'll be a solid choice, really strong sideboard options vs control and can run 4 maindeck cravings instead of a 2/2 split with cast down I feel I have to use in bo1. Being able to shift to duress and negate while having a lot of pressure and recursion seems like it'll work out.