Standard Look Ahead
Standard – Past, Present and Future
What to expect from the upcoming Standard format
Author: Matej Zatlkaj
All the relevant Standard tournaments have wrapped up, and boy has this format delivered!
Across all regions we have seen a wide variety of decks be successful with aggro, midrange, control and combo all represented, and it was honestly one of the best Standard formats of all time. Now that Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 is behind us and the Pioneer RCQ season is in full swing, the focus has firmly shifted away from Standard but with this article I wanted to prepare you all for the upcoming Standard rotation and make sure you know which cards to keep and which one to potentially buy if you want to play Standard for the foreseeable future.
Standard is slated to be the best format for the rest of 2024 with not just Bloomburrow releasing in early August but Duskmourn:House of Horror coming in late September and the very exciting MTG Foundations in mid-November 2024.
THE STANDARD ROTATION
As was announced over 1 year ago Standard has changed its tradition of being a format of cards from the last 2 years into a format with 3 years’ worth of cards which meant that with the release of Wilds of Eldraine in September of last year, Standard did not rotate, and we were being treated to one more year of some cards being legal longer than expected.
This time around, with Bloomburrow scheduled for release on the 2nd of August, we will see a rotation, and we are going to be losing the following sets and respective cards.
Please keep in mind that this assessment is based on the last version of the Standard format and doesn’t take into account all the playable cards that existed in these sets.
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt
Major losses:
- Memory Deluge
- Play with Fire
- Slogurk, the Overslime
- Allied Slow Lands (Deserted Beach, Shipwreck Marsh, Haunted Ridge, Rockfall Vale, Overgrown Farmland)
Minor losses:
- White – Adeline, Resplendent Cathar; Brutal Cathar; Fateful Absence; Homestead Courage; Ambitious Farmhand; Lunarch Veteran
- Blue – Consider; Fading Hope; Malevolent Hermit; Otherworldly Gaze
- Black – Graveyard Trespasser; Infernal Grasp
- Red – Bloodthirsty Adversary; Burn Down the House; Light up the Night; Reckless Stormseeker
- Green – Storm the Festival; Turn the Earth
- Multicolored, Artifacts & Lands – Dennick, Pious Apprentice; Faithful Mending; Rite of Oblivion; The Celestus; Field of Ruin
Special mention:
The loss of Memory Deluge is a massive hit to control and combo strategies and while there are many card-draw effects, none have the same level of inevitability that Memory Deluge brought. Mono Red will be missing Play with Fire but not as much as Legends decks would miss Slogurk (if channel lands were not rotating out as well). Slowlands were fantastic for midrange and control strategies and will be sorely missed.
Some of the minor cards were also good role players or enabled some lower-tier decks, especially Graveyard Trespasser kept finding its way into decks throughout its Standard tenure.
Innistrad: Crimson Vow
Major Losses:
- Wedding Announcement
- Voldaren Epicure
- Enemy Slow Lands (Deathcap Glade, Dreamroot Cascade, Stormcarved Coast, Sundown Pass, Shattered Sanctum)
Minor Losses:
- White – Lantern Flare; Thalia, Guardian of Thraben; Hopeful Initiate; Welcoming Vampire
- Blue – Hullbreaker Horror
- Black – Path of Peril; Parasitic Grasp; Sorin, the Mirthless
- Red – End the Festivities; Vampire’s Vengeance; Reckless Impulse
- Green – None
- Multicolored, Artifacts & Lands – Bloodtithe Harvester
With this being a smaller set, the impact of the set to Standard was lower but losing the rest of the Slowlands is impactful but likely not as significant as losing Voldaren Epicure is to Boros Convoke or Wedding Announcement to Esper Midrange.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
Major losses:
- The Wandering Emperor
- March of Swirling Mist
- Kumano Faces Kakkazan
- Channel lands (Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire; Otawara, Soaring City; Takenuma, Abandoned Mine; Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance; Boseiju, Who Endures)
Minor losses:
- White – Farewell; March of Otherworldly Light; Invoke Justice; The Restoration of Eiganjo; Spirited Companion
- Blue – Spell Pierce
- Black – March of Wretched Sorrow
- Red – Thundering Raiju; Experimental Synthesizer; Voltage Surge
- Green – Shigeki, Jukai Visionary; Tamiyo’s Safekeeping
- Multicolored, Artifacts & Lands – Colossal Skyturtle; Kaito Shizuki; Hidetsugu Consumes All; Oni-Cult Anvil
Special mentions: Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Invoke Despair, Reckoner Bankbuster
This set will definitely go down as one of the more powerful sets, but the depth wasn’t quite there. Still, 3 banned cards, a rare cycle of lands that sent ripples across all MTG formats and some ever-present cards such as The Wandering Emperor and Kumano Faces Kakkazan will be departing Standard – about time!
Streets of New Capenna
Major losses:
- Topiary Stomper
- Raffine, Scheming Seer
- Common Fetch lands (Brokers Hideout; Cabaretti Courtyard; Riveteers Outlook; Maestros Theater; Obscura Storefront)
- Rare Tri-Lands (Spara’s Headquarters; Jetmir’s Garden; Ziatora’s Proving Ground; Xander’s Lounge; Raffine’s Tower)
Minor losses
- White – Depopulate; Knockout Blow; Giada, Font of Hope; Illuminator Virtuoso;
- Blue – Ledger Shredder, Make Disappear
- Black – Tenacious Underdog
- Red – Strangle; Big Score; Unlucky Witness
- Green – Titan of Industry; Courier’s Briefcase; Fight Rigging
- Multicolored, Artifacts & Lands – Corpse Appraiser; Ob Nixilis, the Adversary; Unlicensed Hearse
That’s a lot of cards rotating out, but there are many more coming in to replace them, so some new strategies are bound to pop up. Here are some shells that I would keep an eye on!
Black-based Midrange decks
Despite some losses to rotation, there is still a very solid backbone of creatures.
Deep-Cavern Bat, Caustic Bronco, Preacher of the Schism and Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor to curve out while still having access to the Standard boogeyman of the format Sheoldred, the Apocalypse alongside Archfiend of the Dross, Hostile Investigator and Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal. And there’s still Liliana of the Veil on top of all those cards!
Black has kept a lot of removal options that will be the foundations of Standard for at least another year.
here is Cut Down, Go for the Throat, Long Goodbye as well as Bitter Triumph all on the cheap side, and you get Virtue of Persistence and Gix Command for those big backbreaking effects.
You can also easily dip into an additional color for access to some manlands, powerful creatures or support spells to adjust to nearly every strategy in an open format.
Blue-based Control
The demise of blue control with the departure of Memory Deluge has been largely overblown.
You still have Three Steps Ahead as well as No More Lies as your core counterspells, and you have access to white sweepers such as Sunfall and Temporary Lockdown with White or Devious Cover-Up if you dip into black that we know has those great spot removal spells.
Win conditions might be a bit more difficult to get by, but there are still some solid planeswalkers with Jace, the Perfected Mind or Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim or dipping into other colors for The Eternal Wanderer, Archangel Elspeth or Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting.
You also can find some powerful top-end win conditions across all the color combinations with blue, and I am particularly intrigued by Ezrim, Agency Chief which should work nicely with the Deduces you want to play anyway.
Ramp and Reanimator
While we are losing the powerful Triomes which will likely mean that the classic Domain deck will not port over into the new Standard but Atraxa, Grand Unifier has proven to be a prime target for ramping or reanimation purposes and I would be shocked if there weren’t strategies trying to maximize it.
Just thinking back to the Dimir Reenact the Crime decks which are losing very few cards with the rotation and can get Atraxa into play on turn 4…
In terms of ramping, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a deck based around Ancient Cornucopia to pop-up, my current inclination would be a Sultai-Control shell, but it could go a lot of different ways based on what kind of cards get printed.
Red-based Aggro
Never count out Red!
Between Monastery Swiftspear, Monstrous Rage, Feldon, Lightning Strike and Urabrask’s Forge, among many others, I am sure there will be a red deck out there.
Dipping into other colors can bring worse mana but comes with a larger pool of powerful cards to choose from, so I will be following spoiler season closely. I will especially keep an eye out on the Izzet Pirates deck that was just outside of Standard playability through last year but has a nice selection of aggressive creatures to choose from alongside your typical burn spells or counterspells
Conclusion
The upcoming Standard format is looking juicy, and I can’t wait for spoiler season to begin, so I can start some brewing.
Once Bloomburrow drops, I am hoping to bring you some decks to get you started in the new format so that you can crush your local Store Championships or on the MTG Arena ladder.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter for deck help or advice, I am more than happy to send you a few notes and tips!
You can find me there under @matejzatlkaj
Matej Zatlkaj
About the Author
Matej Zatlkaj is a self-proclaimed Magic boomer, who has played MTG since 1999 and started to play competitively in 2001. He got 2 Pro Tour Top8s under his belt, as well as a Grand Prix win in 2014 alongside other minor achievements. You might also recognize his name or face from video coverage of 2010s European Grand Prix as one of the main casters and he still does coverage of the Regional Championships that are part of the Legacy European Tour events.
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