backstory:
i have always had a love hate relationship with standard, cost vs competitiveness, when jou was first being spoiled i, along with a couple friends who had played religiously during scars-innistrad standard, decided to get back into standard, i was playtesting some meta decks, as well as some brews, including a constellation deck that i was fairly excited about, after a legit amount of testing i was very unhappy with the way anything performed in comparison to it's cost. right as i was about to give up all hope and go back to solely playing edh, it occurred to me that i could probably brew a 10$ deck that could beat the terribly inconsistent and slow decks in the current standard. with that thought i built this.
after some playtesting, against both control and aggro and winning, i was feeling pretty good about this idea, so i decided to supplement the package with cards, that raise the price tag pretty drastically but, we happen to have that currently aren't in use, this is the brew. , updated with sideboard.
the sideboard still feels rough to me, i imagine it will come together better over time.
match ups
UWx control:
this match is very hard for them to win, they can't stick win cons or sphinx rev. most of their answers will be ineffective at dealing with one creature backed up with counter magic. the notable card here is mystic genesis which is a nice 2 in 1 which will often be used against a jace, elspeth, blood baron, aetherling or assemble, they tap out for win con, which they lose, you then get a large beater.
mono black devotion:
this match up seemed pretty simple to me, the principle thing to watch in this match up is pack rat, he can nullify counter magic, and the only easy way to put the breaks on this is cyclonic rift, deal with it very early or lose the game, otherwise smooth sailing, they rely on threats very vulnerable to counter magic and generally you just chip away at them. simic charm is particularly strong in this match up.
mono blue devotion:
more challenging than i expected, and further reinforces my choice to mainboard skylasher, best case you counter master of waves and thasa and bestow boon satyr on skylasher. aetherize is very important out of the sideboard they often don't swing with master, but otherwise all out attack, this leaves master castrated and them at square one.
gruul midrange:
need to playtest more, although i won the match, seems very swingy, the goal is to ride out the early drops, counter the high curve, and drop a flier bestow a satyr and put them on a 3 turn clock.
uw heroic:
i realize this isn't a meta deck, it did however seem like a hard match up on paper, i was able to win the match but i do imagine these sort of decks will have nut hands this deck just couldn't match.
boros burn:
this is very bad match up, i need to playtest the sideboard against this one, i added scavenging ooze particularly for the match, the life gain, getting phoenix out of the way, and the ability to very quickly grow out of burn range make this guy strong, i imagine bringing in the all creatures, and siding out all the higher end counter and essentially try and outrace and out-combat trick them.
i'd love to get feedback on the deck itself, the sb, match ups, etc.
Standard is not "terribly inconsistent and slow". If that's what you're seeing, it is just because of what kind of group surrounds you. There are plenty of other ways to brew a 10 dollarish deck and smash them. In any case, we might as well streamline you while we're at it.
I don't know if you already own the boon satyrs but if you have more, play 4. The first things in this deck that should go would be cancel and the cockatrice. If you have scavenging ooze leftover from EDH, it can find a home here too. Briarpack alpha definitely belongs here in some number and fated intervention is a cheapy that supports the idea well too with good efficiency. Mistcutter hydra is a little more pricy but also good to round out the beater base. In my opinion, that works much better than skylasher where the flash is not nearly as effective. The body just isn't big enough. Probably not worth it unless you see a lot of mono blue devotion.
Standard is not "terribly inconsistent and slow". If that's what you're seeing, it is just because of what kind of group surrounds you. There are plenty of other ways to brew a 10 dollarish deck and smash them. In any case, we might as well streamline you while we're at it.
I don't know if you already own the boon satyrs but if you have more, play 4. The first things in this deck that should go would be cancel and the cockatrice. If you have scavenging ooze leftover from EDH, it can find a home here too. Briarpack alpha definitely belongs here in some number and fated intervention is a cheapy that supports the idea well too with good efficiency. Mistcutter hydra is a little more pricy but also good to round out the beater base. In my opinion, that works much better than skylasher where the flash is not nearly as effective. The body just isn't big enough. Probably not worth it unless you see a lot of mono blue devotion.
if you consider the top decks in the meta, black devotion, or orzhov midrange (slow), UWx control (slow), blue devotion (not really slow, but very reliant on 3 and 4 drops, so i'll have counter mana open)
maybe my opinion of slow and inconsistent is clouded from a standard era where delver, geist, frites and pod dominated. i was playtesting online, so it really has nothing to do with my play group.
as for the constructive part, i like boon satyr and may end up raising it to four by dropping the cockatrice number. i have scoozes but i genuinely enjoy how the deck operates entirely at instant speed, which would also exclude mistcutter imo, brair pack alpha is great, and definitely has places in my 75, i really enjoyed playing with a high number of counterspells and don't think i'd want to cut from there mb, the cockatrice and chimera both seem relatively unimpressive but in playtesting i found that the incremental damage i was able to push over in the air was very key to the tempo of the deck. skylasher in the main seems better than shambleshark. fated intervention seems pretty bad to me, i'd much rather play the cockatrice which can not only trade with all the major threats in the format but also serves as a flying beater.
anyway thanks for the feedback, any thoughts as to the construction of sb, should i load the sb full of flash bodies, or more tricks like cyclonic rift and aetherize.
You're comparing it to a heavy blitz standard. This standard has those too. They're just a tad less popular.
Horizon chimera is very important to the deck due to incremental lifegain and the damage push. I don't feel that the cockatrice shares that same strength due to the pace and the fact that the deck can get enough push with briarpack and especially a boon satyred up chimera. The cockatrice is slightly precarious with the lands and the deathtouch doesn't matter nearly so much when you're not aiming to trade with it in the first place. Better to just tempo at that point. If I were paying 5, I think I'd rather have the extra body which notably adds to 6 and can block polukranos favorably, leaving a 3/3 body behind post gang block and whatnot. That and if I'm controlling the board more like I should be, the extra power will be more pivotal. The deck may tempo but it is not so fast that it would rarely need to defend.
hmmm... i appreciate the advice, i think i want to try and keep 2 cockatrice in the deck, maybe it is just a pet fascination, but i think he is pretty strong, dropping him down to 2, would free up for the 4th satyr and one space for briarpack, maybe cut cancel to 2 and run 3 alphas? are you of the opinion that i should make room for 4 briarpack alpha? what is your opinion of cancel vs essence scatter in the main?
Essence Scatter is much better than Cancel, Flash.deck is inherently a favorite against control and a dog against midrange/aggro. Cancel isn't a great Magic card at the end of the day, really.
Basically just cleaning up some numbers. If you want to try 3-4 Mutavault, you'll likely need to add Guildgates (ew) or Mana Confluence. 15-20 creatures (somewhere in there) is the "correct" number. One note is that you 100% want 4 Simic Charm. When I was playtesting the original deck (and later a Bant spin-off), it was a super impressive card.
i'm not sure i'm sold on the idea of shambleshark being better than skylasher, and i really don't care for fated intervention, i'd much rather play the cockatrice in that spot. as for 4 charm, i pretty much agree this card is an all star in this list, but basically the opinion here is dropping counter magic for more dudes and tricks, in my experience with playtesting the thing that made the deck oppressive and hard to deal with was the 16 counter spells. i need to playtest the split some more, figure out exactly where i want my numbers to be.
any suggestions for sb construction, 4 negates and then the rest stuff to deal with aggro?
>not wanting 2 3/3s at instant speed at the same time over a 3/3 that on;y becomes a 6/6 at 7 mana and it'll probably be dead at that point with no acceleration
ok, you've got ways to protect it, but i'm still not a fan. you could run both if you tweak the numbers a bit
also, how is skylasher better than Shambleshark mainboard? It has 2 power and will evolve at least twice, and your mana base looks smooth enough that it's likely to hit UG on turn 2.
I feel that you need more draw; Opportunity and Inspiration are the better cards in a flash build for that.
as for SB, 4 negates is too much with all the counters you already run mainboard. i say 2 negate and 2 essence scatter to start you off, then pithing needle for 'walkers. i think the rest depends on the other decks you're up against. Aggro and midrange are probably the deck's biggest weaknesses, so aetherize or a fog effect for that (Druid's Deliverance if you decide to run Fated intervention). Curse of the Swine is good to power down some threats, but it's a sorcery. Gainsay for MUD just in case, but you have Cyclonic Rift (which hoses any devotion strategy anyway--you just need acceleration to overload it early) and a bajillion counterspells. Bow of Nylea and Bident of Thassa could work too
the reason i prefer cockatrice over fated is more to do with the evasion and the ability to literally stonewall any threat in standard, the monstrosity is a bonus that i expect to seldom utilize, although, late game, which this deck does pretty well, it does have some added pressure, as far as draw spells go, i would normally agree, i love drawing cards as much as the next guy, but the deck manages to maintain even ca with decks that draw by denying those spells with counter magic, because the deck relies so much on 1 for 1ing with counters idk if i have the breathing room for weak one time draw like inspiration, and opportunity seems like it would only really improve the control mu which, as stated is already very strong.
shambleshark vs skylasher i look at like this, control mu, skylasher is better, dodges counter and a good amount of answers they run, mono blue skylasher is better defensively and aggressively, as well as being better defensively in general, i guess the real determining factor would probably be the creature to noncreature ratio, in the original extreme budget brew i usually got one evolve off the shark, definitely worth playtesting though.
as far as the sideboard suggestions, aetherize is definitely in, as for needle, needle is almost always a pretty safe sb card, i guess the real question is how many noncontrol walker lists will be floating around, rg is a thing now, and in theory ajani will spawn some creature heavy decks with walkers, plus it does have the added bonus of hitting most control deck win cons. i don't think curse of swine would do much for me, fog effects seem kinda weak to me in standard mainly because the fogs in standard are very one time use, and the sort of deck that even one times work really well against, like some stompy variation don't exist, all the aggro decks in standard have more sustainability than to be foiled by preventing one turn of damage. lastly bow and bident are both great cards and bow might deserve a spot, not an instant obviously, but it does give me things to be doing if i don't have things i need to cast eot, i'd rather run jace over bident though, if i were going to play a sorcery speed 4 drop, i feel like bident only really shines in very high creature count lists with a lot of evasion like mono blue and even those lists often opt for jace.
You could use Dictate of Kruphix as care draw if you are a tempo deck then to some extent you don't card a huge amount about giving the opponents cards.
also OMG how did I forget about shambleshark and skylasher as flash threats.. I forgot there were two drop flash creatures apperently.
i could try playtesting dictate though i think it would probably favor low curve aggro decks, who are more like to draw threat after threat, as jank as i know it is the thought to splash black to play dictate with notion thief had crossed my mind ^.^'
i'm about to playtest a refined list, i'll post results and the updated list with sb.
also cockatrice still seemed good in playtesting, if i could have more chimeras it probably wouldn't be neccessary but as it stands he serves the purpose very well.
i have always had a love hate relationship with standard, cost vs competitiveness, when jou was first being spoiled i, along with a couple friends who had played religiously during scars-innistrad standard, decided to get back into standard, i was playtesting some meta decks, as well as some brews, including a constellation deck that i was fairly excited about, after a legit amount of testing i was very unhappy with the way anything performed in comparison to it's cost. right as i was about to give up all hope and go back to solely playing edh, it occurred to me that i could probably brew a 10$ deck that could beat the terribly inconsistent and slow decks in the current standard. with that thought i built this.
4 horizon chimera
2 briarpack alpha
4 fleetfeather cockatrice
4 simic charm
2 disperse
2 essence scatter
4 cancel
4 dissolve
2 mystic genesis
2 Fleetfeather Cockatrice
4 Syncopate
4 Simic Charm
2 Essence Scatter
4 Dissolve
2 Mystic Genesis
2 Cancel
8 Island
4 Temple of Mystery
6 Forest
4 Skylasher
2 Cyclonic Rift
4 Boon Satyr
4 Breeding Pool
2 Briarpack Alpha
2 Mutavault
3 Negate
2 Essence Scatter
2 AEtherize
2 Briarpack Alpha
4 Shambleshark
2 Scavenging Ooze
the sideboard still feels rough to me, i imagine it will come together better over time.
match ups
UWx control:
this match is very hard for them to win, they can't stick win cons or sphinx rev. most of their answers will be ineffective at dealing with one creature backed up with counter magic. the notable card here is mystic genesis which is a nice 2 in 1 which will often be used against a jace, elspeth, blood baron, aetherling or assemble, they tap out for win con, which they lose, you then get a large beater.
mono black devotion:
this match up seemed pretty simple to me, the principle thing to watch in this match up is pack rat, he can nullify counter magic, and the only easy way to put the breaks on this is cyclonic rift, deal with it very early or lose the game, otherwise smooth sailing, they rely on threats very vulnerable to counter magic and generally you just chip away at them. simic charm is particularly strong in this match up.
mono blue devotion:
more challenging than i expected, and further reinforces my choice to mainboard skylasher, best case you counter master of waves and thasa and bestow boon satyr on skylasher. aetherize is very important out of the sideboard they often don't swing with master, but otherwise all out attack, this leaves master castrated and them at square one.
gruul midrange:
need to playtest more, although i won the match, seems very swingy, the goal is to ride out the early drops, counter the high curve, and drop a flier bestow a satyr and put them on a 3 turn clock.
uw heroic:
i realize this isn't a meta deck, it did however seem like a hard match up on paper, i was able to win the match but i do imagine these sort of decks will have nut hands this deck just couldn't match.
boros burn:
this is very bad match up, i need to playtest the sideboard against this one, i added scavenging ooze particularly for the match, the life gain, getting phoenix out of the way, and the ability to very quickly grow out of burn range make this guy strong, i imagine bringing in the all creatures, and siding out all the higher end counter and essentially try and outrace and out-combat trick them.
I don't know if you already own the boon satyrs but if you have more, play 4. The first things in this deck that should go would be cancel and the cockatrice. If you have scavenging ooze leftover from EDH, it can find a home here too. Briarpack alpha definitely belongs here in some number and fated intervention is a cheapy that supports the idea well too with good efficiency. Mistcutter hydra is a little more pricy but also good to round out the beater base. In my opinion, that works much better than skylasher where the flash is not nearly as effective. The body just isn't big enough. Probably not worth it unless you see a lot of mono blue devotion.
if you consider the top decks in the meta, black devotion, or orzhov midrange (slow), UWx control (slow), blue devotion (not really slow, but very reliant on 3 and 4 drops, so i'll have counter mana open)
maybe my opinion of slow and inconsistent is clouded from a standard era where delver, geist, frites and pod dominated. i was playtesting online, so it really has nothing to do with my play group.
as for the constructive part, i like boon satyr and may end up raising it to four by dropping the cockatrice number. i have scoozes but i genuinely enjoy how the deck operates entirely at instant speed, which would also exclude mistcutter imo, brair pack alpha is great, and definitely has places in my 75, i really enjoyed playing with a high number of counterspells and don't think i'd want to cut from there mb, the cockatrice and chimera both seem relatively unimpressive but in playtesting i found that the incremental damage i was able to push over in the air was very key to the tempo of the deck. skylasher in the main seems better than shambleshark. fated intervention seems pretty bad to me, i'd much rather play the cockatrice which can not only trade with all the major threats in the format but also serves as a flying beater.
anyway thanks for the feedback, any thoughts as to the construction of sb, should i load the sb full of flash bodies, or more tricks like cyclonic rift and aetherize.
Horizon chimera is very important to the deck due to incremental lifegain and the damage push. I don't feel that the cockatrice shares that same strength due to the pace and the fact that the deck can get enough push with briarpack and especially a boon satyred up chimera. The cockatrice is slightly precarious with the lands and the deathtouch doesn't matter nearly so much when you're not aiming to trade with it in the first place. Better to just tempo at that point. If I were paying 5, I think I'd rather have the extra body which notably adds to 6 and can block polukranos favorably, leaving a 3/3 body behind post gang block and whatnot. That and if I'm controlling the board more like I should be, the extra power will be more pivotal. The deck may tempo but it is not so fast that it would rarely need to defend.
Here's how I'd fix up the deck:
4 Shambleshark
4 Boon Satyr
4 Horizon Chimera
4 Briarpack Alpha
3 Fated Intervention
Spells (17)
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Essence Scatter
4 Simic Charm
4 Dissolve
1 Mystic Genesis
4 Syncopate
4 Breeding Pool
7 Forest
7 Island
2 Mutavault
4 Temple of Mystery
1 Bow of Nylea
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Mistcutter Hydra
2 Negate
2 Plummet
2 Polukranos, World Eater
Basically just cleaning up some numbers. If you want to try 3-4 Mutavault, you'll likely need to add Guildgates (ew) or Mana Confluence. 15-20 creatures (somewhere in there) is the "correct" number. One note is that you 100% want 4 Simic Charm. When I was playtesting the original deck (and later a Bant spin-off), it was a super impressive card.
any suggestions for sb construction, 4 negates and then the rest stuff to deal with aggro?
ok, you've got ways to protect it, but i'm still not a fan. you could run both if you tweak the numbers a bit
also, how is skylasher better than Shambleshark mainboard? It has 2 power and will evolve at least twice, and your mana base looks smooth enough that it's likely to hit UG on turn 2.
I feel that you need more draw; Opportunity and Inspiration are the better cards in a flash build for that.
as for SB, 4 negates is too much with all the counters you already run mainboard. i say 2 negate and 2 essence scatter to start you off, then pithing needle for 'walkers. i think the rest depends on the other decks you're up against. Aggro and midrange are probably the deck's biggest weaknesses, so aetherize or a fog effect for that (Druid's Deliverance if you decide to run Fated intervention). Curse of the Swine is good to power down some threats, but it's a sorcery. Gainsay for MUD just in case, but you have Cyclonic Rift (which hoses any devotion strategy anyway--you just need acceleration to overload it early) and a bajillion counterspells. Bow of Nylea and Bident of Thassa could work too
enchanting Witchstalker with Raised by Wolves
shambleshark vs skylasher i look at like this, control mu, skylasher is better, dodges counter and a good amount of answers they run, mono blue skylasher is better defensively and aggressively, as well as being better defensively in general, i guess the real determining factor would probably be the creature to noncreature ratio, in the original extreme budget brew i usually got one evolve off the shark, definitely worth playtesting though.
as far as the sideboard suggestions, aetherize is definitely in, as for needle, needle is almost always a pretty safe sb card, i guess the real question is how many noncontrol walker lists will be floating around, rg is a thing now, and in theory ajani will spawn some creature heavy decks with walkers, plus it does have the added bonus of hitting most control deck win cons. i don't think curse of swine would do much for me, fog effects seem kinda weak to me in standard mainly because the fogs in standard are very one time use, and the sort of deck that even one times work really well against, like some stompy variation don't exist, all the aggro decks in standard have more sustainability than to be foiled by preventing one turn of damage. lastly bow and bident are both great cards and bow might deserve a spot, not an instant obviously, but it does give me things to be doing if i don't have things i need to cast eot, i'd rather run jace over bident though, if i were going to play a sorcery speed 4 drop, i feel like bident only really shines in very high creature count lists with a lot of evasion like mono blue and even those lists often opt for jace.
also OMG how did I forget about shambleshark and skylasher as flash threats.. I forgot there were two drop flash creatures apperently.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
i'm about to playtest a refined list, i'll post results and the updated list with sb.
also cockatrice still seemed good in playtesting, if i could have more chimeras it probably wouldn't be neccessary but as it stands he serves the purpose very well.