Scutate is a thing. Not as good as Omnath builds imo, but so much fun. Win with Mill or flood of Mutant Scutes (or just regular ones) Just playing U/G now, but could add R for Terror or White for the gain life priest for huge damage or life. Thing is, once it gets going, I rarely lose anyway. (BTW, people should run more sweepers.)

And Cycling is no joke. Lost 2 games in a row where I play Crab t1 and then....they flare me for lethal T5 or so Not a big enough issue to build against it, but yeah... (Just had 64 Greathorns on T6 vs Cycle. Take that Cycling!)

The thing with this sequence is opp didn't interact at all. There are plenty of cards that get out of hand if they sit on the battlefield for four turns. That said, Cobra is definitely gonna get annoying. Either the meta will shift to prioritizing spot removal (like with Sultai in the past month), or it will see a ban, imo.

Also, omfg rogues are bad against Uro...don't get why they're so popular.

Brief initial impressions:

- Lotus cobra/Uro decks are the clear best decks - Not really surprising, but these decks are just pound for pound the best thing you can be doing, and have a sick combination of being a ramp deck that can also go off as early as turn 4-5. I expect them to be pretty resilient to hate as well, can't see any sort of silver bullets to shut down the deck - the blue enchantment is nice, but i expect it to mostly be a mirror breaker rather then allowing other decks to compete. Maybe a Winota deck or some sort of low to the ground RDW can go under them but i'm pretty sceptical (Roiling Vortex is probably RDW's only hope)

- Rogues/ Party decks are just bad - I've seen a fair few of them floating about and while they can do some fancy things i just don't think they're close to being the top dogs, with rogues worst nightmare being the literal best card in the format Uro, and party being a little too cute although i think the white one drop has potential

- New lands are amazing - "But which new lands Nighthawk" i hear you ask, well the answer is all of them. From the mythic cycle, to the rare duels, hell even most of the uncommon tapped lands are amazing freebees for most decks, full props to WOTC as all decks now have some awesome flood insurance - i'm running 26 "lands" in my G/W Aggro counter deck and probably would be running even more if i had more copies of the mythic lands!

Meta has already shifted to point removal for the Cobra, at least in what I've seen on stream and anecdotally. It is unlikely to be banned since it was not too OP previoulsy...it just allows some absurd turns if left unchecked.

Rogues are pretty bad against most decks that can interact with them. Rogues can beat Uro if they built their deck around beating it but at the expensive of other matchups. Still worth a few MD/SB slots since Uro is still the bad boy of Standard.

The new lands are really something else, I love them so much!!!

Yeah, on the one hand they make actually building your mana base so much harder then it used to be, but overall i think they're some of my favourite designs in recent times (Not so much the mythic ones though, they're great but it's such a huge wildcard cost to actually craft them and every deck is just worse without them)

HEY!!!

Question; Can discard effects that have "any nonland card" restrictions hit the new land/spells?

My assumption is that they cannot

Duress works

They are not lands in the hand, and Uro will not see them to put them into play.

On Rogues, the deck was good the first day or so for me, but has gotten much worse with time. With that said, The counter/flash aspect still has some promise vs Ramp....except Ramp runs Uro which pretty much wipes out the advantage of the counter spells. I could see a version working once the meta settles though, but I am guessing some sort of UW control will be the go to counter deck over rogues. IMO, Sweepers are pretty good in this environment, but not sure if control is fast enough vs mono red and whatever other fast decks emerge.

Interesting meta for now, but afraid it will turn into a Ramp/Anti ramp meta soon.

Personally, I just am having fun with Scutate. It may not be the most powerful deck, but it is fun to flood the board with mutants. Even tried a lifegain vs with the new angel that wins at 35. Pretty janky, but fun for a few games.

https://strategy.channelfireball.com/al ... 9-21-2020/

Lol @ the Omnath ramp jokes. But yeah, I can see the allure of Omnath. Aggro decks really have to win quickly because otherwise Omnath & Uro will take them out of burn range, and midrange decks just get overpowered. They don't even fail on mana very often since the new lands + Lotus Cobra go a long long way to stabilizing the mana base. Further, while Lotus Cobra can be removed, it can be pretty absurd if unanswered.

Traditionally, what macro archetype is good against ramp? Maybe some kind of combo deck? #BringBackNexus (j/k I doubt Nexus is playable without Wilderness Reclamation) Come to think of it: are there any combo decks in Standard at all? Gyruda I imagine?

I'd argue that the omnath deck is basically a combo deck considering it can go off as early as turn 4

Traditionally the best way to kill ramp is with aggro, but they have Uro so that plan is out the window - you need a aggro deck which punishes uninterative decks, so probably best bet is an Embercleave deck or Winota

https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/statu ... 4518623233

We might see bans soon. Not ideal given how bans in Standard used to be so rare and now they are seemingly happening every set. Still, when you got the likes of Uro and Oko seeing consistent play even in Legacy, there's clearly a problem with power level. If bans do happen, Omnath is probably losing something. A part of me is also hoping they'll ban Winota because I hate the randomness with that deck.

On another note, maybe they'll unban something, presumably Cauldron Familiar because it's the only card on the list I can see with potential to be unbanned.

They’ve been power creeping like crazy, so not surprising they’re putting out too many broken cards that they have to ban when those cards interact with other busted cards. They’re playing so fast and loose rn they have to errata mechanics a few weeks after they drop in a set ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was a bit skeptical about calling Omnath a combo deck, then almost decked myself on like, turn 6. Two Lotus Cobras led to very early Genesis Ultimatums, and the mana + cards never stopped flowing from there.

Deck is clearly busted, a ban must be coming.

EDIT: Lol, this deck is so busted you can change 10+ of its non-land cards and it still works without a hitch. That means you got 10+ flex slots to beat whatever the next-best deck is. A ban must be coming.

There's no good thread for this and I can't be assed to make a new one.

Anyone getting Asset Error when they log in to Arena? I get one about 2/3s of the time.

I'm having some pretty good results using the new Valakut Roiling Vortex in mono red and in UR. I think mono red is probably the best way to go.

It stops Omnath and Uro from putting the player to far ahead. I don't event think people know everything that card does because when I activate it they just stare at it for a long time. It puts them on a clock since they never get aggressive until they've played an Ultimatum or an Escaped Uro.

It is fairly slow though. If Lotus Cobra / Omnath survive, they can easily draw most of their deck by turn 6-7, and they can definitely put up a clock from there, be it with Kenrith-hasted creatures, Felidar Retreat, Terror of the Peaks, or simply escaped Uros. My experience playing the deck is that it seldom loses to monored unless Embercleave is involved, or there is an unanswered Torbran.

Sooner or later Redcap Melee might be worth maindeck inclusion, not just because of monored but also because it kills opposing Omnaths. Later in the game the Omnath deck generates enough mana that sacrificing a land is no big deal (although by that point, they're probably winning ...).

On another note, I'm not enjoying the Omnath deck. Can't put my finger on why, especially since it's superficially a deck I enjoy (since I enjoy ramp in general). It feels disgusting to be using Spikefield Hazard on opponent's vanilla 3/1 instead of Edgewall Innkeeper, because I only need to stay alive and don't care if Innkeeper draws cards, the Omnath deck is going to overpower any amount of cards they draw. Keeping track of the total available mana is annoying, too.

You might be a genius. I should run 2 redcap melees, probably over Roil Eruption, I never kick that thing anyways.


I do play Embercleave as well. I kill every cobra in sight, I'm like Daniel San. Those new lands that do 1 damage and exile are sweet!

I'll post a version of the deck tomorrow. I need help with edits anyways. I just die to monogreen. Kids are on PC for school right now though.

As promised, this is the red deck I'm playing right now.

4 x Fervent Champion
4 x Fireblade Charger

2 x Rimrock Knight
4 x Roiling Vortex
3 x Scorching Dragonfire
4 x Robber of the Rich

3 x Slaying Fire
4 x Bonecrusher Giant
4 x Anax, Hardened in the Forge

2 x Torbran, Thane of Red Fell

3 x Embercleave

3 x Castle Embereth
3 x Kazuul's Fury
4 x Spikefield Hazard
1 x Valakut Awakening
12 x Mountain