How do those cards counter Reclaimation if you don't mind?

Spellbreaker and tithe stops them targeting you or itself on your turn, but they can just kill it on their turn before untapping the lands, or just ignore it and draw cards ect

Addendum actually synergies with reclamation as you can play your addendum cards on your main phase to get the benefit, and then still hold your instants up

I assume many people will WR to establish a lock wherein their opponent can't play any spells without them being countered. Spellbreaker "breaks" that spell. As for addendum, yeah I suppose, but I was thinking you would want to play your non-instant things (i.e., wincons during main phase) then use your instants on opp's turn after mana is freed up. But I guess it kinda depends on the deck. I've been playing around with WR. I guess I'm mad cuz it's not as broken as it seems, lol. I guess the game devs made a balanced set.

I've been really trying to dive in RNA and explore the new mechanics and cards. It seems like there is some really cool stuff with potential, the question is whether it will be viable/competitive. Was disappointed that the season rewards were all GRN cards. I assumed they would just be RNA since that's the newest set. Guess Wizards is protective of their new merchandise...

Eh, Wilderness Reclamation is plenty broken, it literally enables a turn 4 win for nexus decks which is absurd. Thankfully we're entering a new arena era of bo3.

Speaking of which, the bo3 ranked is up! Been playing the bo3 unranked, but it's hard to know where you're at, how good the opponents are etc. I'm hoping this is going to make me a better magic player, and less tetchy about rng. Bo1 was such a bad format, and encouraged such a crappy, uninteresting and boring meta. Played 4 bo3 ranked and so far I've faced sultai mid, mono-u, gates and esper control - not a rdw in sight!

Time to get better at magic and sideboarding!

What’s the t4 win for Nexus decks using Reclamation?

t2 growth spiral

t3 wilderness Reclamation

t4 teferi, hero of dominaria plus, and then nexus of fate on end step

And then starting the chain i guess

Don't even need teferi, seen a few lists with no teferi and only 4 fogs.

There's a few routes that give them access to 7 mana on turn 4 after reclamation untap, so you'd need instant speed enchantment removal to interact.

like:
t2 - spiral
t3 - Gift of Paradise
t4 - Wilderness Reclamation -> nexus

Obviously the winning part is a bit more involved, but they'll have enough mana at this point to just cast nexus end step and devote their turn to casting things like Precognitive Perception. I've lost to fog a couple of times after playing a 3 drop and never getting another turn.

Yeah, but it's magic christmasland. I'm playing nexus at the moment and you need A LOT of luck to curve out like that AND then finding nexuses every turn.

4 lands, reclamation, gift, spiral has to be opening hand (more or less). Then you need to draw nexus and draw spells to continue and on top you need to find more nexuses off your draw. And you also need to hit the lands to cast draw and nexus in the same turn.

From a design and balance PoV, I can see a reason to increase the overall power level of decks with the RNA release. This reason being that GRN featured 5 guilds, which had their time in the sun for its duration and now the 5 RNA guilds need to bring more to the table than what we had before to recreate the experience. It's hard enough for these 5 guilds to shine with dream mana bases for every 3-color-shard.

What I hate though - like I already said - is that they also increased the power level of the bogey men RDW and Turbo Fog. Let me make two separate cases:

RDW needs to exist, but need not be that strong (imo). It is always a relevant deck because it's cheap and fast (not talking easy, but be my guest to say so), two super-important aspects in an online f2p-grinding game. RDW would be played as a t3 deck for these reasons. It being that disgustingly strong is really annoying for that raises the entry bar for every other deck too much.

Turbo Fog on the other hand is plain disgusting as a concept and should never have existed. In today's online world and thus in Arena it's not tolerable to have matches like these where you're chained to your monitor without influencing the game for that long. I don't care if that's not a factor in paper. Substitutions in EA's Fifa games don't take 5 real minutes either.

Now the worst part is that we already had an era of Turbo Fog before GRN, everybody told WotC how **** that was and yet they print a card for RNA that brings this back. What a needless act of evil.

Turbo Fog is fun as a Deck That Does Something Completely Different. Same with Extra Turns decks, and hard control, and OTKs, and whatnot. Those are unique playstyles that make MTG different from your aveage tactical game.
They shouldn't be easily overwhelming tho. And they shouldn't be too consistent.
Teferi is the biggest offender there, IMHO. It's way too strong all by itself, AND it has perfect synergy with all those "annoying" strategies. It is both a perfect source of consistency and an overwhelming battering ram.

@Sol77_bla - one must remember that Wizards is usually a few sets ahead. You can see this from the announcement that banned Rampaging Ferocidon. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2018-01-15 The article notes that Rampaging Ferocidon was designed at a time when the Saheeli Rai / Felidar Guardian was running amok in Standard. Felidar Guardian came from Aether Revolt. Rampaging Ferocidon came in Ixalan. There were two sets (Amonkhet & Hour of Devastation) in between.

Nexus of Fate came out with M19. Wilderness Reclamation came with Ravnica Allegiance. In between there was only one set: Guilds of Ravnica. So chances are, Wizards were simply unaware of the Turbo Fog archetype before they printed Wilderness Reclamation.

Having said that it's not like Turbo Fog is unbeatable or anything. There wasn't a single Nexus deck in the top 32 of last week's SCG open. BO1 is a different matter and maybe it'll get banned there, but BO3, there's nothing to worry about yet. RDW is the same: the tools to beat it are there, people just need to use them.

agreed...

or put another way, it's not a T4 win - at least not with any real consistency.

That lists are cutting Teferi and fogs for more fast card draw suggests very much that they're intending to win before Teferi would be relevant - t4 or t5. I think the bant lists with teferi/dawn of hope that play a longer game are better, but the all-in lists are a very fast combo deck for standard.

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been playing. Relying on revitalize and paradise instead of fogs and then just more draw with precognitive perception etc. Just to quickly get into the loop.

Fogs are too important to protect your Teferi through a turn where you have not cast your infinite turn loop IMO. If anything you can consider cutting 1-2 Gift of Paradise, even though it works really well with Teferi.

Honestly though, I'm not sure whether I'd want carddraw or a couple counterspells in their stead (Spell Pierce / Negate)

IF they've cut Teferi, then there's no Teferi to protect

If you cut Teferi, there's 0 reason to run White (Revitalize is not good enough) and you're better off just running Simic or Temur.

Sure, they're all still turbo fog though right. I'd say the non-teferi version fits the turbo part even better

- Accidental double post -

We've had a few "state of Standard" articles now:

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.a ... e=2-8-2019
https://www.channelfireball.com/article ... 1548684761
http://www.mtgmintcard.com/articles/wri ... ard-so-far

These are the ones I've seen. They all give huge credit to Sultai midrange, which makes things easy for modulo I guess! All these articles stress standard is still young though, and there're still new decks making high finishes, e.g. the Bant tokens deck in the last team constructed open. Offhand I also find that to be an interesting idea. Whatever else might be, the Selesnya tokens deck from GRN standard was a 21-land deck (always good to prevent flooding out), it's still got a powerful proactive strategy that demands the opponent interact, and March of the Multitudes into Flourish is still a game-winning combo. If it weren't for the fact that Sultai midrange has 3x Find//Finality maindeck, I suspect tokens would be more viable.

As it is, I'm most attracted to playing Esper midrange with Teferi instead of Dovin, although I've yet to pull the trigger. Esper colors does seem to have answers against all the top decks, including Sultai. I wonder: whatever happened to playing Tocatli Honor Guard? This card isn't showing up in the sideboards of many white decks. The Immortal Sun isn't being played either, although it was a strong anti-Golgari card last standard. Further, Esper could presumably also sideboard into a control version with sweepers to mop up Sultai's many small explore creatures, as well as Kaya (lol) to keep their graveyard empty.

Thanks for the links!

I think the issue with esper vs sultai is that sultai can outvalue them pretty massively and has access to a really strong sideboard. Krasis card draw being uncounterable is massive, the card comes into play as a 2-3 for 1 pretty much as a minimum, throw a counter at it and even a krasis for 4 is a 3 for 1. And there's 2-3 more krasis to come, plus maybe two memorials and 3 finds. So esper, which relies on producing card advantage suddenly has to fight through up to 8 or 9 krasis, with each one becoming a harsher trade - 3-1 into a 4-1 into a 5-1 etc. And it's not like the rest of the sultai list isn't producing value.

I'm not saying esper can't win, it's a strong deck, but krasis is huge for a midrange strategy. It's certainly a much better matchup than it would be for straight golgari, and that's without bringing in the sideboard options like Negate, Stroke, Thief of Sanity, Eldest and Duress. I know I'm way happier to face esper control than any deck running dive down as sultai.

Another issue for esper might be mono blue, if that does become popular. But I've not updated my esper list enough to really know how bad a matchup that is.