I realize it recently became a meta-deck, but you didn't include it on your list and it uses a lot of Innistrad cards as well as what I understand to be your favorite colors - Grixis Control. You have Snapcaster Mage , Liliana of the Veil , Olivia Voldaren all as important cards.

True. I've seen Grixis and a few other tri-color decks around a bit, and I think they show a great deal of promise. Olivia Voldaren is a great creature too, especially now that we live free of Lightning Bolt . Maybe Innistrad will have a Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker redesign of some kind. Then I'd HAVE to do it.

It has Red Black Sorin Walker which could be Olivia-esque in damage and control since those were both strong abilities on Sorin Markov and on red and black colors in general.

Yay welcome back KC

I think Burning Vengeance should be mentioned, since it is going to dominate standard when [Faithless Looting] and [Dack Fayden] are released in Dark Ascension :D

The grixis control won worlds from what I understand... might want to pass on that one since it's pretty mainstream now. It's nasty though.

I would love to break either heartless summoning or the new Chandra. A draw go style would also be good for your playing style as it is for mine and we have similar styles.

Welcome back anyway. Nice to meet you as I don't think that we have talked much or at all in all honesty.

didnt even top 8 here is the top list from standard

top 8 deck list

After Dark Ascension is released, I expect R/U Tempo to dominate is what I meant. I know nobody ran it this year, but next year when some crucial cards get released in Dark Ascension (the 2nd set in the Innistrad block), like the red Careful Study with flashback and the U/R planeswalker Dack Fayden, U/R is going to be unbeatable. This is just an opinion. By the way, I'm incredibly surprised to see that Tempered Steel won worlds this year, I was certain that G/W tokens was going to win.

i like the u/w illusions. it made up for 15% of the meta at worlds. which is considerably high. Only to be out done by Gw tokens. And everything was out shined by Tempered Steel Decks.

Here it is.

I played against it today and it beat me 2-1. Super good deck that will see play.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/worlds11/videodt1

i know its good But it didnt top 8 at worlds. It was set up for the meta not thinking Tempered Steel was going to be played much. which It was compared to post rotation only made up for 5% of the meta at worlds. The grixis control was made up for 2% of the meta at worlds. It will get built and played for its uniqueness but idk if it even hit top 16 . All they have up for now is top 8 for standard.

I think the best deck would be 2 colors using one of the enemy dual lands, and maybe splashing a third. Since Caley loves blue, that would mean Blue-Green or Blue-Red

So, here is my suggestion:

deck:challenge-ur

Did I really just see the exact same deck list 4 times in that top 8?

Who needs creativity I guess, eh?

As for the topic at hand, I like the U/G and B/W base ideas.

Hey, at least it was only 4 of the top 8, instead of....8. Caw-CAW!

I'm no talented Standard deckbuilder, especially as I struggle to make up win conditions. As such, I'll just make a list of combos/tactics that may spawn ideas with which to build around.

Venser, the Sojourner +Oblivion Ring /Nevermore /Exclusion Ritual = There must be something to make this a control deck out of?

Mimic Vat +Parallel Lives =Something must be worth it here? Putrefax ? Sun Titan ? Hell, Brain Weevil ?!?

Elspeth Tirel +Mentor of the Meek = Really nice together, methinks.

Liquimetal Coating +Ancient Grudge = I'd like to see a Liquimetal deck work sometime soon!

Burning Vengeance +Self Mill= A more effective version of the Eldritch Onslaught intro deck sounds promising. Skaab Ruinator ?

The Empire artefacts (e.g: Throne of Empires )= There's self-mill now as well as tutoring, and we have Buried Ruin too.

Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur , or any other expensive praetor= We have graveyard discard-recursion, mana-ramp and now also Quicksilver Amulet . Potential seems there.

Those are just some ideas, can any of these make unique and competitive standard decks at all?

I'm for U/B, U/G, or Scrambleverse. Mostly Scrambleverse.

I am a hug fan of shooting for U/G. It is my current legacy deck and I love that color combo

It's impossible to get into a 24th level subgame with the you used Kaley. Each Shahrazad stays on the stack as the subgame plays out, so you can only go 4 levels down.

I am actually going to suggest my current standard deck. It's new, but certainly not a new concept, AND I remember you mentioning that you were a griever (as am I) so here is my standard RUG LD Deck. deck:carpet-bomb.

Guys. Let's get really original and obscure. Let's (ab)use Sundial of the Infinite.

deck:kessig-dredge

thats my splinterfright deck, i took it to an IQ yesterday

round 1 i stomped u/b control into the ground 2-0 and pissed the guy off royally

after that i won every single game 1 i played (steel, rdw, wolves, wrred) but lost game 2 and 3, going 1-4 drop, due to my teammates convincing me to mutilate my sideboard

or a deck based around scrapyard salvo and lots of mill artifacts like grindclock.

I like KorApprentice idea. if you think about it activating Sundial of the Infinite on your turn keeps your opponent from Forbidden Alchemy and Think Twice on your end step.

i like the kessig dredge, but it felt a bit slow.

My thoughts-

@mozer- Yeah, you caught me, although I should point out that you can get to level five, if level one is "the game that actually determines who wins." I did actually get into indefinite level 5 though; Shahrazad on Panoptic Mirror with Hive Mind in play while in level 4, with three copies of Shahrazad on the stack in level 3 thanks to Twincast , and another Shahrazad on a mirror in level 2, and one remaining copy of Shahrazad on the stack in the main game.

Re: Sundial of the Infinite - I can think of a few combos, but none so powerful or reliable as to make the deck workable. My first thought was Mimic Vat + Glimmerpoint Stag + Sundial as a defensive array, but that doesn't work super well. If anyone can throw me a pitch for a truly effective Sundial deck, I would be pretty impressed. I have many legacy ideas for it (hello, Smokestack !), but not much in standard.

I Bought a Rolex With an Extended Warranty.

Was the best that I could do with it and I won/split the tourney.

It's extended though and I don't think the tools are there.

Maybe you could work something with fiend hunter, glimmer, and o-ring.

what about using blue black and green with your Grimoire of the Dead . That way you could feed Splinterfright early game and fill the graveyard with biggies to come back later. Use some BOPs to utilize unberial if you want and such

Yeah. That is actually a cool deck, but alas, Extended and all. A Sundial deck would need to abuse some equalizing upkeep effect, or some such. Something Smokestack -flavored. Like Call to the Grave , except that works way better by just using zombies. I know of no card that is capable of such abuse right now, though.

Personally my favor is on the four non-silly ideas I posted above, namely:

U/G Control using blue for card advantage and control, using green for early light defense, Prey Upon , and the finisher.

Mono-Black Control, using tons of spot removal and heavy creatures.

W/B Control using a bit like the idea above, but with more control options and access to Day of Judgment , plus a few more finisher ideas in white.

U/B Beatdown/Control hybrid, using blue more for card advantage than for control, with some black spot removal, and card efficiency effects like those of Evil Twin , eventually overwhelming the opponent with card advantage.

Why would Sundial of the Infinite have to abuse equalizing upkeep effects? It can easily abuse Mimic Vat , Postmortem Lunge , Gruesome Encore , or Glimmerpoint Stag /Venser, the Sojourner + Oblivion Ring . Oh well, maybe you meant that those combo's just aren't competitive? I think they could be with enough control. Getting a permanent Sun Titan every turn or exiling a nonland permanent every turn doesn't sound that bad.

Dear Sun Titan , Wurmcoil Engine and Other Fattys

 My Name is Rabidweasel and I have a card for you, Turn to Frog
. I will be giving it to you as your controller enters his or her attack step, then i will Geistflame
 you. Sorry i had to kill you in such a disrespectful way, but it is just to fun to watch your controller flip their lid

Sincerely, Izzet Steam Engine

What about UG self-mill, featuring Splinterfright , Mindshrieker , and Laboratory Maniac ? You could use Prey Upon , Turn to Frog , Dissipate , and Armored Skaab to protect yourself. Maybe Garruk Relentless  ^{Flip  Flip} as well.

Laboratory Maniac decks scare the hell out of me. One kill spell gets through, and you've just gone through a ton of effort to beat yourself. Takes a lot of protection, not just for you to mill yourself before the opponent kills you, but to ensure your Maniac survives to win the game once you're out of cards.

Actually, you just flashback Think Twice or cast it from your hand in response to their kill spell and you win with Laboratory Maniac .

Three deck concepts I've thrown together in exploration of these themes:

1- deck:wb-standard-control-concept

2- deck:ug-standard-control-concept

3- deck:ub-standard-advantage-concept

I'm not sure if this is an actual challenge or not, but i have 2 decks, Challenge U/R, and Tribal Spider

Clarification- NOT a challenge. Just a discussion, though if you have a deck concept, throw it out there for us to check out.

i made two deck based on some of your concepts. In case you wanted to check them outhttp://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tribal-spider/http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/challenge-ur-1/Then i had an idea, to run a R/G infect deck with Warstorm Surge and Phyrexian Swarmlord

First, welcome back Caley...you were missed.

Second, I would LOVE it if we could put together something Mono-Black. I have tried to do a Mono-Black deck in the past and it just didn't work. I know you wanted to base it on Innistrad, but I think the deck, if we build it, would have to include Phyrexian Obliterator .

Indeed. Obliterator is THE reason to run a mono-black deck. It's preposterously powerful.

...and Dismember is the reason not to

or oblivion ring, Fiend Hunter, or any other spot/field remover.

It's solid, just not overpowering in this environment. Eats red alive though xD

You can see what I am running, deck:bantimuspod, I am the only one in my area running this deck as just everyone else is running, Red Deck, Tokens, or U/B control.

I have seen a fun deck of Heartless Architect that runs Heartless Summoning , Grand Architect s with tons of Wurmcoil Engine s, Steel Hellkite s, and Treasure Mage s.

I have also seen Phyrexian Obliterator / Prey Upon decks that work fairly well. It is really turn 5 they can't go a damn thing.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/secretfish/

U/G Aggro Control

has been runnign really well for me

Cool build! Quick question for you, since I also am running this card in my build- How is Skinshifter working out for you? Good beans?

4 was way to many. but when i put a sword on one its nasty. it sucks vs grand abolisher. idk im split on it. it may get the cut for more snappys

I'm crying tears of joy right now. I'm sorry, but I've always thought you're one of the most awesome users and now you're back.

Too much of the meta atm, is very anti control. Almost all of the big decks beat the best control has to offer regularly. U/B control just falls flat on its face to all the quick beats in this format.

I believe your control ideas are not on solid footing. The deck that probably has the best chance and i think is the most interesting is the possibility of a green / blue deck.

Biggest problem is that you are running enemy colors... and all the lands from inn are probably some of the most over powered things you could be doing w/ your deck atm, and not having access to those i think really hurts your ability to build a strong deck for standard. You do still have inkmoth nexus as a possibility but not any real good ways to pump that sucker, for lethal w/ out those other lands. Maybe wolfrun could be fit in w/ the birds and some of those red / green dual lands?

If you are gonna run green then you probably ought to be considering Beast Within in addition to Prey Upon as the former is very powerful.

I thought about both of those, but I wasn't really sure what to cut for them. Hit me up with ideas on the deck's page.

I think you should do something with Bloodlord of Vaasgoth and Heartless Summoning . He gets no love. :(

What about a deck focusing strictly on graveyard recursion? We have flashback spells in the set and more will be coming, but we also have zombies who can easily be brought back from the Graveyard. This is theme i think we can focus on and that will clearly grow as the next two expansions are released as the cards for this will only get better. Plus it means for the time being we get to play blue and black as those are the zombie colors.

I like the idea of a Burning Vengeance . So many good cards to recur at the moment.

For playing blue primarily I think the heartless architect is about as good as it gets, it is U/B control with combos.

Now I have also ran U/G pod that was really fun but it was too slow for Red Deck and Tokens and both colors lack the end game finishers that black and white have (Grave Titan, Elesh Norn).

B/G pod would be fun, allows you to run lots of ramp, fight, obliterators, and grave titans, with lots of removal.

I have seen a fun twist on B/G Pod, it was Heartless Spider Pod. The main deck revolved around Heartless Summoning , Arachnus Spinner , Phyrexian Obliterator , Prey Upon , and Sheoldred, Whispering One (cause she looks like a spider).

What do we think of the recursion idea? U/B? Maniac says Burning Vengeance which would force a bit of red.

It would only force enough for the card and Desperate Ravings /Geistflame

My early zombie / graveyard recursion thoughts sorta went this way... maybe board includes a lot of options, and this was a very quick first pass... but it gives you something to at least think about. Zombie Graveyard Recursion

In descending order of importance:

Kaley's Back! Welcome Back!

mono black infect and wolf run red / wolf run green should be added to your list of decks in the metagame to consider, yes? also blue / red delver seems to be gaining popularity.

Also, re: comment #13, it's not a lack of creativity that put the same deck in the top 8 4 times -- they all brewed and tested as a team.

okay, so:

I really think there's space in the metagame for a powerful BUG deck.

i've been thinking about this interaction alot:

Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas searches up an artifact, and puts a creature on the bottom of his library. Cellar Door mills that creature and gives you a zombie. Unburial Rites cheats that creature into play, or Noxious Revival puts it on top of our library.

also, one of the artifacts tezz can hunt for: Grimoire of the Dead , which can be pumped with things like card:Tezzeret's Gambit, Contagion Clasp , etc.

I haven't done any real tournament play, so I don't know what strategies people are bringing to the table, but I put my thinking cap on and created a fun U/B zombie deck that mills the opponent at an exponential rate, check it out: deck:28-seconds-later.

landot, I love it. You should make this deck immediately, the idea wouldn't be as original if I had to make it to see it done :D

I agree with landot. The bug idea sounds viable, and it fits with one of the ideas of Caley. Plus its just plain fun.

This DOES sound like a fun idea -- Can we make it standard competitive? Since it's landot's idea, perhaps he should make a build for us to evaluate.

I considered running a kessig run blue. Run counters etc. with removal in the form of beast within and ambush viper.

So i vote U/G.

Or mono-Green?! control that's right I said it.

Landots idea seems fun viable and original. I like it

I certainly can't make the tezzeret / cellar door thing competitive.

here are a few of my failed attempts to do so -- one is focused on tezz, and one is more of a Splinterfright / self-mill version.

can they be saved, doctors?

graveyard BUG ('combo' version)

graveyard BUG 2 ('splinterfright' version)

I think it would work well, I think that a graveyard-centric BUG pod deck would work well. I think that between Unburial Rites , [[sheoldred, whispering one] and Skaab Ruinator that you could get this done easily.

I'd look at running

CMC 1 Birds of Paradise , Ponder , Prey Upon CMC 2 Mana Leak , Cellar Door , Doom Blade CMC 3 Skaab Ruinator , Forbidden Alchemy CMC 4 Skinrender , Phyrexian Obliterator , Birthing Pod CMC 5 Acidic Slime , Unburial Rites , Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas CMC 6 Grave Titan , Wurmcoil Engine CMC 7 Sheoldred, Whispering One

Biggest problem right now w/ a tri color deck especially one with enemy colors in it is that it just doesn't have a solid enough mana base to reliably hit all the color's necessary. This isn't like Zendikar block where we had all those really sweet mana fixing options. So 1. we need to realize that if we are going to try to run 3 colors we are going to have mana issues, and 2. we probably need to run some non land mana fixing in order to help smooth out our land draws.

Both of these things are not so good because they mean that we are purposefully making our deck weaker. Unless there is a very good reason to do so that is quite powerful then we aren't going to overcome the inherent disadvantage of the situation.

Hey there.

I just today built a deck that you might like, thought it might be not original enough;

It's a U/R control deck, basically building on the idea of pat chap's grixis build, but then without black. I think it's more solid due to not running 3 (or really 4 even!) colors and should stand up against the current metagame quite well with slagstorm, arc trail and gut shot. Here's the deck i'm talking about: (needs work though) Infernal Control.

Hope you like it!

Jund Prey Upon with Phyrexian Obliterator + Kessig Wolf Run their guy = make them sac all their permanents!

U/W/R control with Manabarbs + Personal Sanctuary and counterspells. Or just straight boros.

Also, I want to see Bump in the Night get broken. B/R or Grixis lava spike!

Really? Jund Oblitterator? xD

Ironically, I like the idea.

It might be doable in a Birthing Pod shell, because you cheat the BBBB cost.

If you do U/G I highly recommend doing it as a quicksilver amulet control. If you can end your opponents turn with a Jin Gitaxias in play you would probably win, and it works well for control decks in general. In my opinion. It also isn't bad to surprise your opponents with Wurmcoil Engine at instant speed. Chancellor of the Spires to grab their spells, perhaps even counterspells from their graveyard.

i'm surprised no one's even mentioned Essence of the Wild ... it can be good in a ramp type shell with cheap creatures to cast after you drop it

Sundial of the Infinite + Manabarbs burn deck tap all your land for mana, let manabarbs damage go on the stack, then spend the mana to play instant burn spells, then end your turn after they resolves be before manabarbs damage resolves.

not sure how competitive that deck can get, but I love manabarbs.

Gideon's Sanctuary V2 is my manabarbs deck if you want to look at using the barbs.

U/G with stuff like Splinterfright and Armored Skaab , and then finish them off with Kessig Cagebreakers , all while countering with Dissipate . Splash black dual lands for flashback with Forbidden Alchemy and Spider Spawning . So Innistrad-y.

I was about to propose my Scrambleverse deck. But I'm with sarpnasty, Manabarbs is such a sweet card. I like that sundial combo idea. But anyway,

sCraMble this..

Jund style.

Chandra Firebrand +card:Sorin's Vengeance=20 damage! =D

I made a mock up a while back called deck:sorins-girly-giggle, but it uses Wurmcoil Engine and Viridian Emissary . Not impossible to avoid those and stick with M12/Innistrad though.

I'm wondering if there's room for mono green. My roommate built waht started as a troll deck for fun and now it's pretty competitive. I'm thinking heavy ramp, Lure with Engulfing Slagwurm , tons of hexproof, and card:Hunter's Insight. Heck, even if you just put Lure on Troll Ascetic you're doing well. My huge fear for this is card:Black Sun's Zenith, because some things you just can't regenerate. . .

Don't forget that Melira, Sylvok Outcast and card:Melira's Keepers exist. Might as well through in Phyrexian Unlife for some fun troll times.

Troll Ascetic isn't in standard though =/

And the other combo is pretty much all out of the Scars Block. I'd say if Caley was wanting to play from the Scars block then a Rage Extractor deck or even Precursor Golem decks would be in order.

So many ideas here, hard to narrow it down.

I've been playtesting a few versions of these builds and right now the most effective ones, in order, are:

1- U/B deck I posted above, once I made some modifications to it

2- BUG-style build

3- W/B deck I posted above.

I really like the w/b build. Mostly because its very budget, and still seems quite viable. I like the sorins, recurring skeletons, and all those less-played, black bombs. Everyone will be expecting you to be running snapcastera, but the nice thing about control is that you don't have to have a top-8 deck to be competitive, unlike aggro and whatnot. You just have to play smart.

What does the BUG deck look like?