by Jared Maguire

Jared Maguire urges you to look beyond the current States and Provincials darling decks (U/W Control, Valakut, Eldrazi Ramp, and miscellaneous Fauna Shaman decks) and take advantage of the excitement and possibility in deck building that accompanies a huge rotation in Standard. He brings us a U/R decklist abusing a duo of Mages. It's like Soul Sisters only…well…I guess not really at all like Soul Sisters.

Is your meta as boring as mine? Ever since rotation I've been brewing several decks a week, some great, some good, and some not so good. I think we're in the middle of the most exciting time of the year for Magic – right after a big rotation. There are hundreds of new potential cards to be tested and tested again, yet it seems like almost no one is doing it. Mostly what I see when I look around my local meta is people playing the same "rotation proof" decks: U/W Control, Valakut, and Eldrazi Green. I understand the point of this, it's better to be playing Tier 1 when everyone is fooling around with their crappy homebrew infect deck, but it also really bugs me. The metagame will never be more narrow and defined than it is now! This means that to brew a deck that hates on the majority of the meta should be much easier than it is usually! It also means that if you really want to put the effort in, you can play some of those NEW CARDS you were all excited about a month ago. If you're the kind of person who wants to play U/W WITHOUT Path to Exile and WITH Ratchet Bomb (Innovation?) then the following list may not be for you, but if you enjoy Koth of the Hammer, Trinket Mage and Kuldotha Phoenix (Ka-kaw!), read onward.

U/R Mage:

This deck is designed to abuse a few tasty interactions with Basilisk Collar. Hooking it up to Cunning Spark Mage is pretty good, but latching it to the arm of an Inferno Titan is usually game over. If someone ever removes your Collar with anything (besides Revoke Existence) you can shuffle it back up with Elixir of Immortality and gain some life while you're at it. Trinket Mage enables both these plays, allowing you to get your combos going, as well as grabbing one of the 'silver bullets' in the deck (Chimeric Mass for U/W, Effigy for pesky Eldrazi, and Nihil Spellbomb for Vengevines from the board).

Another slice of the deck is Koth of the Hammer. This deck wants to play as many mountains as possible in order to get the most of his abilities, but since blue is a very important part of the deck, Silver Myr is a must for mana fixing. However, Silver Myr also lets you cast a Turn 3 Koth, which is just about the best thing you can do against U/W right now right after they tap out for Wall of Omens. Once you have Koth set up, going ultimate generally wins you the game, but if you have another one in your hand or need to hit a Planeswalker, dropping a Kuldotha Phoenix with his -2 ability usually does the trick. Because of the Trinket Mage package, metalcrafting Kuldotha Phoenix back from the graveyard is surprisingly easy, but even if you can't continuously bring him back, a 4/4 flying haste is nothing to sneeze at.

The next thing you can do is Mimic Vat any awesome creature that you're already burning down with Spark Mage or Inferno Titan, or if Inferno dies himself he's just about the best Vat target you can have. For 3 mana you can do 12 damage a turn, essentially. Other good interactions with the Vat are imprinting an opponent's Wall of Omens after they cast Day of Judgement for an extra card every turn, imprinting an Emrakul after sparking it down for a hasty 15/15 flying annihilator, or imprinting an Avenger of Zendikar for an endless supply of chump blockers. The Vat is great in a deck with a lot of removal, especially because it's good at getting around removal itself.

In playtesting so far, this deck has favorable matchups against the Tier 1 gauntlet and it gets better after boarding. The weakest aspect to it right now is its inability to use Pyroclasm as a board sweeper because of the amount your creatures it actually kills. This means the deck is a little soft to the new mono white aggro decks, but boarding in Ratchet Bombs generally solves this problem. Against other red decks Flashfreeze will be your best weapon, but if you manage to resolve an Inferno Titan, you can usually nearly wrath their board and be left with a 6/6. Another thing which is constantly happening is that people sideboard improperly against this deck, believing it to be a nearly mono red sligh with Koth. If your opponents are bringing in cards like Kor Firewalker and Obstinate Baloth, they're pretty much doing you a favour as those cards do nothing to disrupt the overall goals of your deck.

I think it's a good time to be building new archetypes. In the next few months before the next part of the Scars block comes out, new and exciting decks will undoubtedly surface and cement their way into to the Tier 1 gauntlet. I would always rather play the hate then play the hated, but the hate is so much better when people actually have to pick up your cards and read them to see what they do. Sometime around next March people will be complaining how standard is too stale and how there is no innovation. Now is the time to innovate! This isn't an argument for rogue deck building as much as it is an argument for deck building in general. When the format is new, no decks are rogue.

– Jared Maguire

This article is brought to you by the Broken City School of Magic.

Kar Yung Tom

Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.