Today there was a great article written by Todd Anderson (on the pay side of SCG) called Standard Rules of Engagement.
I normally begin my deck brewing around a card or a theme. Todd is recommending mana base first brewing.
We are entering a new standard in which mana is going to become much more important than the painlands + fetchlands + battlelands 4 and 5 color dream we have had been living in.
Todd Wrote.................................
"Having a functional manabase is a very important part of building new Standard decks. I would argue that it is the most important, above what spells you're actually trying to cast. Time and time again, I win matches in the opening week of a format because my opponent is failing to draw their fourth land, or third color, only to be undone by the most basic of strategies."
So I am looking for thoughts from the group on which manabases you think are strong and deserve to be "built around"...
1 color manabases - mono or mono splashing colorless
2 color manabases - allied? or enemy?
3 color manabases - wedge? or shard?
3+ - using cryptolith rite and oath of nissa shenanigins
In my opinion you're looking at it from slightly the wrong angle. It's not what manabases deserve being built around but it's what cards are good enough that they deserve having a manabase built around them.
For example, I don't think there are 1 color manabases worth building around purely for mana, but I do think that mono-White humans is probably strong enough to be worth playing. I think that Jund (and probably Esper) is probably strong enough to build a manabase around it, but I don't think it's worth building a 3 color manabase for anything else, especially not the wedges.
All shards are playable. Grixis is def strong enough (what I have been testing mostly) and I'm sure Bant and Naya are better with combination of format shrink and new PW support. Wedges via painlands are possible with lifegain strategies ala Abzan Control. Colorless/x/x builds should be possible with the painlands as well. U/R/c has good support.
Best questions you can ask are: What is the best removal in the format? What are the best threats in the format? What mana bases are playable? And then, where does the intersection of those three questions lie, plus, what am I interested in playing and working on? Then, you make a deck and start testing and refining.
Have to agree with Mr Monday that you gotta consider both card pool and mana base.
Mono colored decks:
Have to agree here mono white weenies to me seems the only worth while strategy to play mono colored abd could be backed up with some utility lands.
Dual colored decks:
Honestly the enemy colored duals colored decks pretty much win the mana battle as they all have a man lands. Rb makes a strong argument for aggro and midrange but wb is the obvious best deck in two colord strategies. All the aggro decks especially mono red will ultimately value versatility of adding a color over the utility lands imo.
Tri colored decks:
Again ultimately I think most of your control decks and midrange decks will go to three colors favoring the versatility of a larger card pool having access to manlands and just the overall power level. The wedge manabase is doable but very rough to deal around. I think with the right removal suite it's possible but still slow or painful for them.
Shards will most likely win the day as the mana is strictly better and most of the shards have better card pools than the wedges(abzan making a close call here) jund will probably be the go to midrange strategy, esper for control, bant Megamorph will likely be a thing again, Grixis I think has a smaller pool than esper and Jund but I'm sure will still form a solid tier 1.5-2 deck. I think naya has real potential to be strong but I think more time a love is required to make this deck a thing.
Tl;dr
1: mono white weenie
2: wb is king, RB a distant second
3: jund,esper, maybe abzan, and grixis
I think we are going to see a fair number of two color decks for at least a little while. I also agree that opposing colors probably make out like a bandit on the manabase issue, as the pain lands are more consistent than the tangos or the shadow lands and the manlands are a bigger payoff. Moreover, OGW is not an underpowered set, it just really requires you to have colorless sources. In this way, the pain lands can be viewed as tri-color lands for hypothetical X/X/C decks. I would not be surprised if we see successful B/G/c or W/B/c midrange decks that utilize Evolving Wilds as another tri-land and run relatively powerful colorless cards (e.g. Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher, Warping Wail, Spatial Contortion, etc.). I suspect that such a manabase is much easier than a traditional tri-color deck (with some of the same advantages)
The allied manabases are weaker due to both being less consistent and lacking manlands. However, some very powerful dragons of Tarkir cards are still floating around (notably the dragonlords and the commands), which are pretty good payoffs for a given color combination, even if the mana is somewhat clunkier.
Additionally, running a two color deck of either stripe also allows for one to run some number of utility lands, which could be a pretty big game going forward (looking at you Westvale Abbey; also some of the "blighted" lands could make the cut). Three color decks should not have that luxury.
There is probably a way to make three color decks work, but I suspect it will take some time to get it right; and it is unlikely to function well for certain strategies. Right now, running a three-color deck runs the risk of needing a large number of ETBT lands, many of which force odd plays to get them untapped, ever. Both the tango and shadow lands really like for you to run a significant number of basics; that won't be easy in a tri-color deck.
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My question would be is Evolving Wilds useful or playable in SOI?
Absolutely, especially with Delrium. A lot of dual colored decks still want to hit their colors every turn anyways and evolving wilds turn 1 is a fine play in standard.
My concern with Evolving wilds is it brings in a tapped land. And that it tempos down aggro decks. I suppose two color aggro decks simply will not use them.
However, midrange decks that would want Wilds, also lose tempo to aggro decks.
We'll see how badly T1 removal is needed. The only dangerously fast decks I've seen so far are B/R vampires and mono-white weenies, and it has not felt unmanageable (I have been mostly playtesting Grixis Midrange Shells w/4 Evolving Wilds). G/W weenies seems like it should be pretty nasty but I haven't played against it yet. Atarka Red was a deck that you were afraid to tap out against every single turn as you could die as early as T3/4. The new meta has not evidenced that same kind of explosiveness yet.
My question would be is Evolving Wilds useful or playable in SOI?
For allied bicolor decks (ex GW) Evolving Wilds is strictly better than the guildgate in those colors -- both of them are dual lands for the purpose of fixing your mana, but Wilds is extra sources of basics for the Battle lands.
You're right to worry about playing tapped lands in aggressive decks. I think it's almost completely incorrect to try to play one-drops in a two-color deck in this format unless the second color is a very light splash. I think this is why BR Vamps is a huge trap: you need untapped red for Falkenrath Gorger but also need double black on turn 3 for Drana.
For more midrange decks it doesn't matter, you're gonna play some number of lands tapped anyway.
Evolving Wilds will be a staple this rotation in tricolor decks. Besides just fetching that land you REALLY need, it also powers delirium and helps flip Jace, Vryn's Prodigy despite the rotating fetch lands. There's 4x in my post-rotation deck.
It's pretty much a given that in tricolor you're going to be slightly slower than your 2 color peers. I certainly wouldn't try a tricolor aggro deck. I'm going Esper but it's slow by nature and a slower mana base isn't going to harm me much. If you're going aggro it's definitely going to be G/R or R/B with as few ETB tapped lands as you can manage. You can't afford the loss of tempo from ETB tapped if you're trying to race Control or Midrange.
I normally begin my deck brewing around a card or a theme. Todd is recommending mana base first brewing.
We are entering a new standard in which mana is going to become much more important than the painlands + fetchlands + battlelands 4 and 5 color dream we have had been living in.
Todd Wrote.................................
"Having a functional manabase is a very important part of building new Standard decks. I would argue that it is the most important, above what spells you're actually trying to cast. Time and time again, I win matches in the opening week of a format because my opponent is failing to draw their fourth land, or third color, only to be undone by the most basic of strategies."
So I am looking for thoughts from the group on which manabases you think are strong and deserve to be "built around"...
1 color manabases - mono or mono splashing colorless
2 color manabases - allied? or enemy?
3 color manabases - wedge? or shard?
3+ - using cryptolith rite and oath of nissa shenanigins
Or is my topic to wide to discuss?
For example, I don't think there are 1 color manabases worth building around purely for mana, but I do think that mono-White humans is probably strong enough to be worth playing. I think that Jund (and probably Esper) is probably strong enough to build a manabase around it, but I don't think it's worth building a 3 color manabase for anything else, especially not the wedges.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Best questions you can ask are: What is the best removal in the format? What are the best threats in the format? What mana bases are playable? And then, where does the intersection of those three questions lie, plus, what am I interested in playing and working on? Then, you make a deck and start testing and refining.
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
Mono colored decks:
Have to agree here mono white weenies to me seems the only worth while strategy to play mono colored abd could be backed up with some utility lands.
Dual colored decks:
Honestly the enemy colored duals colored decks pretty much win the mana battle as they all have a man lands. Rb makes a strong argument for aggro and midrange but wb is the obvious best deck in two colord strategies. All the aggro decks especially mono red will ultimately value versatility of adding a color over the utility lands imo.
Tri colored decks:
Again ultimately I think most of your control decks and midrange decks will go to three colors favoring the versatility of a larger card pool having access to manlands and just the overall power level. The wedge manabase is doable but very rough to deal around. I think with the right removal suite it's possible but still slow or painful for them.
Shards will most likely win the day as the mana is strictly better and most of the shards have better card pools than the wedges(abzan making a close call here) jund will probably be the go to midrange strategy, esper for control, bant Megamorph will likely be a thing again, Grixis I think has a smaller pool than esper and Jund but I'm sure will still form a solid tier 1.5-2 deck. I think naya has real potential to be strong but I think more time a love is required to make this deck a thing.
Tl;dr
1: mono white weenie
2: wb is king, RB a distant second
3: jund,esper, maybe abzan, and grixis
The allied manabases are weaker due to both being less consistent and lacking manlands. However, some very powerful dragons of Tarkir cards are still floating around (notably the dragonlords and the commands), which are pretty good payoffs for a given color combination, even if the mana is somewhat clunkier.
Additionally, running a two color deck of either stripe also allows for one to run some number of utility lands, which could be a pretty big game going forward (looking at you Westvale Abbey; also some of the "blighted" lands could make the cut). Three color decks should not have that luxury.
There is probably a way to make three color decks work, but I suspect it will take some time to get it right; and it is unlikely to function well for certain strategies. Right now, running a three-color deck runs the risk of needing a large number of ETBT lands, many of which force odd plays to get them untapped, ever. Both the tango and shadow lands really like for you to run a significant number of basics; that won't be easy in a tri-color deck.
C Long Live Eldrazi C
Absolutely, especially with Delrium. A lot of dual colored decks still want to hit their colors every turn anyways and evolving wilds turn 1 is a fine play in standard.
However, midrange decks that would want Wilds, also lose tempo to aggro decks.
Evolving wilds will fetch you: Plains, Island, Mountain, Swamp, Forest, and Wastes. Unfortunately no battelands such as Smoldering marsh
C Long Live Eldrazi C
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
For allied bicolor decks (ex GW) Evolving Wilds is strictly better than the guildgate in those colors -- both of them are dual lands for the purpose of fixing your mana, but Wilds is extra sources of basics for the Battle lands.
You're right to worry about playing tapped lands in aggressive decks. I think it's almost completely incorrect to try to play one-drops in a two-color deck in this format unless the second color is a very light splash. I think this is why BR Vamps is a huge trap: you need untapped red for Falkenrath Gorger but also need double black on turn 3 for Drana.
For more midrange decks it doesn't matter, you're gonna play some number of lands tapped anyway.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
It's pretty much a given that in tricolor you're going to be slightly slower than your 2 color peers. I certainly wouldn't try a tricolor aggro deck. I'm going Esper but it's slow by nature and a slower mana base isn't going to harm me much. If you're going aggro it's definitely going to be G/R or R/B with as few ETB tapped lands as you can manage. You can't afford the loss of tempo from ETB tapped if you're trying to race Control or Midrange.
WUBEsper ControlWUB