The Current Standard #3

Sideboard

2x Rest in Peace

2x Negate

Card Selection

Salazar968 here, lets break down the list.

Creatures

3x Angel of Serenity: Angel's a triple-threat in this deck. She's flying graveyard, board wipe, and removal hate. But more importantly, she is a creature-based removal machine. Entering the battlefield as a massive 5/6, Angel of Serenity makes any stall favor you by taking their three best creatures and allowing you to swing in, usually for the win. Additionally, she can be dropped after a board wipe, to make the opponent choose, take 5 damage a turn or let you return 3 threats to your hand.

4x Arbor Elf and 4x Avacyn's Pilgrim: Mana dorks are an efficient way to accelerate into our larger creatures. We run eight of them because we almost always want a T1 dork

4x Loxodon Smiter: One of the most efficient creatures in standard, and a great fit for this deck. It’s one of the prime components of this deck, not only because it is a very prickly wall for aggro to get through if played on T2, but it also combos very well with Prime Speaker Zegana, getting you a 5/5 and 5 cards.

4x Restoration Angel: We like Restoration Angel. She’s probably getting old to any of you who’ve read The Current Standard #1 and #2, but she’s just so good. Her job in this deck is to flicker Thragtusk and Prime Speaker Zegana, giving us an obscene level of card advantage.

4x Thragtusk: The “mistake” of M13. A great card in this deck, fitting right into our curve, and providing stall that is necessary for any midrange deck. Thragtusk is a staple in any midrange deck.

3x Prime Speaker Zegana: The namesake of this deck. A 1/1 for 2UUGG seems kinda bad. But with her growth and draw abilities change everything. After dropping our hand onto the board, Zegana kindly refills it for us, giving us an insane advantage over our opponent.

Planeswalkers

3x Garruk, Primal Hunter: The second “Sphinx’s Revelation” in this deck. Being able to draw at least 3 cards at a moment’s notice is an amazing ability. Worst case scenario, Garruk can just call upon his beasts to clog up the board and buy us more time.

Lands

3x Gavony Township: With 26 creatures, Gavony can turn most of your deck into a threat. Even dorks can become 3/3s or bigger, making them useful for more than just mana. Later in the game, Gavony Township makes it so that every creature you play needs to be answered if your opponent hopes to survive. The reason we run 3 is that multiples are always welcome, and we run enough dual lands and mana fixing that the colorless mana shouldn’t hurt us.

Sorcery

4x Farseek: Mana Fixing, Ramp, a very necessary card. Farseek lets us have triple green to play Garruk, Primal Hunter, triple white for Angel of Serenity, and double blue for Prime Speaker Zegana, all at the same time.

Instants

1x Cyclonic Rift: Potentially a game-winner, Cyclonic Rift can save our skin, or seal the game. With the amount of card draw we have, a 1 of is enough that we see it when we need it. Usually, we can Overload Cyclonic Rift to deal with any blockers or walkers, then swing for lethal.

2x Syncopate: This is much easier to cast than Dissipate, and has almost the same value in this deck. In a midrange deck, you usually want to play a creature every single turn. This means that early to mid game, it is way easier to keep 2 mana up for Syncopate than to keep 3 mana up for [[Dissipate]. Later in the game, we always have enough mana for Syncopate to be fully effective.

Why some good cards aren’t in here:

Sphinx's Revelation: With the use of Garruk, Primal Hunter and Prime Speaker Zegana, Sphinx's Revelation is just unnecessary. Garruk and Zegana both add more value to the deck, because they can double as beaters.

Garruk Relentless ^Flip: Garruk, his dark side is disguised. This Garruk, more than meets the eyes. Transform-a-Garruk does a lot. He makes wolves, shoots creatures, makes deathtouching wolves, tutors for creatures, and pumps your team. He doesn’t, however, deal with the more problematic creatures in the format such as Olivia Voldaren, Thragtusk, Angel of Serenity, Loxodon Smiter, etc.)

Detention Sphere: We run these sideboard, as they’re our only Clean Answer to Boros Reckoner, as everything else gives them a 2-for-1.

Sideboard

3x Centaur Healer: Standard aggro hate. 3/3 is larger than most aggro creatures, and 3 life is huge.

1x Cyclonic Rift: More one-sided board wipes! yay!

2x Detention Sphere: Our only answer to Reckoner.

2x Garruk Relentless ^Flip: Killing weenies, making wolves, taking names. All night long.

1x Jace, Memory Adept: Control decks, beware.

2x Rest in Peace: Standard Graveyard hate.

2x Silklash Spider: Our answer to fliers.

2x Negate: Our 1U answer to control decks. Hopefully.

Matchups:

It’s Owlus again, time to look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good

Naya Humans

Loxodon Smiter, Gavony Township and Thragtusk win us this matchup. Loxodon Smiter can at least trade with any of their creatures, Gavony Township makes even our mana dorks a substantial size, and Thragtusk puts them way behind us. Usually, we have no trouble drawing the game out, then killing them with our card advantage.

In:

Out:

Hyper Aggro (RDW, Boros Humans, G/R aggro)

Again, Loxodon Smiter is a great blocker. Against these hyper-aggro decks the only thing that gets by him is Thundermaw Hellkite. Additionally, we can usually keep up with these fast paced beaters using our mana dorks and Farseeks. If we can survive till we get a few Thragtusks out, we can simply beat them with our bigger, better creatures.

In:

Out:

Jund Aggro

Super Smiter saves the day yet again. Though they burn and Abrupt Decay to deal with him, he gives us just enough time to get our Thragtusks and Garruk, Primal Hunters out, securing the game. Ramping early is less important in this matchup because they don’t have an explosive start, so as long as we hit our curve we can just overpower them with better creatures.

In:

Out:

2x Avacyn's Pilgrim

Jund Zombies

Loxodon Smiter is actually surprisingly irrelevant in this matchup. Even though he is still an OK blocker, Geralf's Messenger or Lotleth Troll will gladly trade with him, Falkenrath Aristocrat will go over his head, and Abrupt Decay will easily do away with him. Instead, we rely on early ramp, Thragtusks and Prime Speaker Zegana to make this a good matchup. Thragtusk essentially gives us a whole extra turn, Prime Speaker Zegana can draw us huge threats, like Angel of Serenity or Garruk, Primal Hunter. If we can curve out, we should be able to kill them. Again.

In:

Out:

B/R Zombies

Super Smiter beats down the zombies again. Without Abrupt Decay or Lotleth Troll it is hard for B/R to deal with Loxodon Smiter. They do have Mizzium Mortars, but if they use it on Loxodon Smiter, they won’t be able to kill the Thragtusk or Restoration Angel that probably will follow the smiter. After the early stages of the game, we have bigger, better creatures that they simply can’t deal with.

In:

Out:

B/W Zombies

Super Smiter is back again! B/W zombies has significantly less removal than the other two popular types of undead horde. That means that the game comes down to a war of creatures, and ours are bigger, better, and stronger. Gavony Township helps as well, and eventually we can just overpower the opposition. Their only real threats are Obzedat, Ghost Council, and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Ghost dad we have no answer for, which can be a problem, but Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is more annoying than game-changing, her main impact being on our T2 Farseeks.

In:

Out:

4x Farseek

1x Syncopate

Naya Midrange

In midrange vs midrange, it usually comes down to two things; who has bigger threats, and who has more threats. The first part, they win, barely. Red gives them access to Thundermaw Hellkite, Huntmaster of the Fells ^Flip and Boros Reckoner. But we can generate WAY more threats than them, thanks to the card advantage provided by Prime Speaker Zegana and Garruk, Primal Hunter. Also, in a long game, even our mana dorks become threats thanks to the help of Gavony Township. To top all that off, we are completely fine with trading creatures, as our Angel of Serenity will bring them all back.

In:

Out:

1x Farseek

Wolf Run Bant

Bant vs. Bant. We have two HUGE advantages over this Bant though. The first advantage is that we have bigger threats, and more of them. Sure, even an Augur of Bolas can become a threat in Wolf Run Bant, but usually we have already killed them before that point. Super Smiter gets in for super early beats, putting them immediately on the defensive. The second advantage is that we have more “Sphinx's Revelations”, in the form of Garruk, Primal Hunter and Prime Speaker Zegana, and ours are harder to counter. While they have to tap out to get full value from a Sphinx's Revelation, which can be hit by a Negate post sideboard, we usually have mana open after playing Prime Speaker Zegana, so their Syncopate doesn’t really help them.

In:

2x Negate

Out:

2x Avacyn's Pilgrim

2x Arbor Elf

The Bad

Esper Control

Sigh, those pesky board wipes. Unfortunately, they are very effective against us. However, we do have a lot of resilience against them. Thragtusk replaces himself, Garruk, Primal Hunter can ignore Supreme Verdicts (but dies to Planar Cleansing or Merciless Eviction), and Angel of Serenity can call back some creatures from the dead. Additionally, Super Smiter can get in for a ton of beats early, and is unaffected by Ultimate Price. However, if the game goes too long, it is hard for us to spring back against esper’s multitude of murderous responses .

In:

2x Negate

Out:

4x Avacyn's Pilgrim

Jund Midrange

Midrange vs. midrange, battle of the creatures led by ‘walkers. Unfortunately, Jund has a set of insanely efficient and fast creatures, as well as access to some of the best disruption in the format. This is a hard but winnable matchup. We have Prime Speaker Zegana to draw all our creatures, but they have Rakdos's Return to make us discard them. We can play early dorks and Loxdon Smiters, but they can Abrupt Decay. We can swarm the board and pump them all with Gavony Township, but they can steal our huge creatures with Olivia Voldaren. In the end, it really comes down to who draws the right things at the right time, and in that respect we have a slight advantage, because we draw almost everything.

In:

Out:

1x Syncopate

Naya Blitz

With no board wipes, Naya Blitz is a hard deck to stop. Super Smiter makes the matchup slightly more favorable, but he can't block more than 1 creature. To survive against Blitz, we have to end up sacrificing our mana dorks to try and stay alive. If we can hit a Thragtusk and some Garruk, Primal Hunters, we should stand a fair chance of winning, but they can swarm super fast and get in for huge amounts of damage.

In:

2x [[Garruk Relentless]

Out:

2x Loxodon Smiter

Junk Reanimator

The high resilience of this deck is what makes this matchup hard. Junk Reanimator is a midrange deck that looks to get huge threats out early, using Unburial Rites and ramp. They get card advantage in the form of Grisly Salvage, reanimating any creatures they bury with rites. Eventually, they hope to Craterhoof Behemoth and win. However, we are faster than them, and our threats can eventually beat them down. In the end, it comes down to who can get better threats out fastest.

In:

Out:

Grixis Control

Grixis Control runs tons of removal, backed by great disruption and annoying finishers. Things like Barter in Blood and Tribute to Hunger keep us in check, while Slaughter Games takes away our threats. However, we have one card that can come back and save us the game, and that is Angel of Serenity. Angel is a great board wipe “counter”, as she can either bring back 3 creatures, or just hit for 5 till they are dead.

In:

Out:

2x Arbor Elf

2x Avacyn's Pilgrim

The Ugly

Human Reanimator

The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often buried with their bones. Human Reanimator is one of the most annoying decks in standard. They can go infinite as early as turn 4, leaving us no chance to kill them. Game 1, we have no way of stopping their combo, and game 2 Slaughter Games will happily remove our Rest in Peaces. Our only hope is that they don’t draw Slaughter Games, and we can Rest in Peace once they have already dug through their combo pieces.

In:

2x Rest in Peace

Out:

UWR Flash

UWR is hard to beat with this deck. Boros Reckoner, Detention Sphere and Supreme Verdict keep us in check easily, and Counterflux can seriously set us back. Additionally, Assemble the Legion is a HUGE pain, creating chump blockers and eventually just overrunning us if unanswered. Our only hope of survival is spewing out threats faster than they can answer them, which requires an amazing starting hand and a lot of luck.

In:

Out:

The Aristocrats

Spirits, Vampires, and Angels, oh my! The Aristocrats runs a multitude of efficient fliers, like Falkenrath Aristocrat, and Sublime Archangel. Game 1 we have no answers to these winged creatures, instead, our only hope is to race them. Unfortunately, with the lifegain provided by Obzedat, Ghost Council, and the evasion of Falkenrath Aristocrat, it is hard for us to beat this deck. Game 2 gets a little better with Silklash Spider, but [Cartel Aristocrat]] and Falkenrath Aristocrat are hard to remove, and Sublime Archangel will already have done enough damage by the time the spider can kill it.

In:

Out:

Dark Naya

Hey, it’s Salazar968 and I’m going to take you through the one matchup Owlus knows nothing about.

You see dorks, Boros Reckoners, Thragtusks, and Restoration Angels. Standard naya, right? Wrong. Falkenrath Aristocrat, Rakdos's Return and Undying Evil all make an entrance here, throwing a perfectly aimed wrench into a reasonable anti-midrange plan. As a deck that relies on filling our hand and controlling the board, this deck is ridiculous against us. Dorks into Falkenrath Aristocrat into Huntmaster of the Fells ^Flip into Thragtusks with Undying Evil to keep everything alive makes a killer midrange combination that we are hard-pressed to deal with. Making us a Victim of Night.

In:

Out:

2x Syncopate

Our sideboard gives us the ability to mill and stall them out, giving us the time we need to take the game back into our favor. Good luck out there, minotaurs, vampires, and Swag-Daddy’s await you.

Changing to your meta

Owlus here, in this section I plan to show you how to adapt this deck to fit different meta’s better. This will hopefully make it perform better at your local FNM or in your playgroup.

To make any deck work, it is important to make the list meta-specific. This particular list is made for a meta where there is a healthy mix of all things, and you don’t really know what you will be facing. It’s evenly balanced to deal with aggro and midrange well, which means it has a slightly weaker match against control. It also plans to remove things by trading creatures, which means Boros Reckoner is a problem if he’s prominent in the meta. But we can change that.

Aggro heavy meta:

If you are facing hyper aggro every round, and almost every game ends in under 20 minutes, then these changes are for you.

Add Centaur Healer mainboard. Turn 3 Centaur Healer is game-changing against almost every hyper-aggro deck. The life-gain puts them even farther behind, and a 3/3 blocker is scary to them. I would suggest pulling the Syncopates and Cyclonic Rift.
Consider Feeling of Dread sideboard. This slows down hyper aggro significantly, and helps against some midrange as well. However, it is worse than Centaur Healer against Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and control decks, which is why I suggest it sideboard instead of main. In an aggro heavy meta, Negates are pretty useless, as well as Jace, Memory Adept. I would suggest pulling the 2x Negates for 2x Feeling of Dread.

Midrange heavy meta:

If every turn 2 is a Farseek followed by a 4 drop, or a turn 3 Boros Reckoner, these changes are for you.

Detention Sphere over Syncopate. Detention Sphere is our only “clean” response to Boros Reckoner. It also hits pesky planeswalkers and Falkenrath Aristocrats. Usually, Syncopate is near useless against these decks, because they always have extra mana.
Add more Cyclonic Rift. This card is great against midrange. If it ever gets overloaded, it is pretty much a game-win. Even without being overloaded, it can save your skin, and it makes for a really nice before blockers spell. I would suggest pulling a mana dork or two for 1 or 2 more Cyclonic Rifts, because the mana acceleration provided by the dorks becomes irrelevant very fast in a midrange matchup.

Control heavy meta

If turn 4 Supreme Verdict happens every single game, or Detention Spheres are hitting your Garruk, Primal Hunters right away, these changes are for you.

Rootborn Defenses.....what? That’s right, the first card spoiled for RTR. The one everyone forgot about. Rootborn Defenses is essentially our Boros Charm. It “counters” Supreme Verdict, Planar Cleansing, and Blasphemous Act. Also, it can copy 3/3 beasts for additional value. I would suggest pulling 2 mana dorks, because you never want to see a late-game dork against control.
Strangleroot Geist. Geist is another board-wipe resilient creature that no control player wants to see. Also, the haste is extremely useful to push in that last bit of damage after a board wipe. I would suggest pulling the Syncopates for Strangleroot Geist, because Supreme Verdict can’t be countered, and most control decks have a plethora of mana all the time. If you want to run Strangleroot Geist and Rootborn Defenses, make sure to pull 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim, not Arbor Elf for the Rootborn Defenses so Strangleroot Geist can be more-reliably cast.

Wrapping up

Prime Speaker Bant is a well-balanced deck that fares really well against most decks in this format. It is really fun to play, and I loved playtesting it. If you love playing a super-resilient deck that always has a full hand, I strongly recommend PSB. Next week we will be looking into Jund Zombies. If you have a list and think we might like it, post it on my wall (Owlus). Also, if you want to know a specific matchup we haven’t covered, or want to know how to fine-tune your deck for a very specific meta, tell us in the comments. Thanks for reading, be sure to tell us what you think by commenting, and look out for next week’s article!

Just a note: If you guys would like to see a specific deck in The Current Standard, toss it onto my wall and we’ll take a look at it!

This article is a follow-up to The Current Standard #2 The next article in this series is The Current Standard #4

Salazar968 says... #1

We tried to add more matchups this week, let us know if we missed any, and we'll do them in the comments.

Matt

March 23, 2013 10:18 a.m.

SupremeAlliesCommander says... #2

A little something missing from this edition. Another great article, though!

The Current Bant

SCORE: 2 | 8 COMMENTS | 665 VIEWS

Standard Owlus Playtest

March 23, 2013 1:57 p.m.

Salazar968 says... #3

@ SupremeAlliesCommander

Thanks for posting that, we completely forgot about it this week XD

March 23, 2013 2:21 p.m.

x8bitGangsta says... #4

Would you mind seeing how my deck would match-up against this one? Aurelia's Flicker

March 25, 2013 11:03 a.m.

Owlus says... #5

@ x8bitGangsta

Just to clarify, do you want me to write from PSB's point of view, or as if I was playing Aurelia's Flicker. Just want to make sure before I write it up.

March 25, 2013 12:04 p.m.

x8bitGangsta says... #6

@Owlus

It's your choice.

March 25, 2013 12:08 p.m.

Owlus says... #7

@x8bitGangsta

Alright, I'm going to write from PSB's perspective.

Aurelia's Flicker looks like a fast and furious deck, that can explode easily turn 3-5, but later runs out of steam. Our lack of removal and just general responses make this a bad matchup.

Our main concern is the first few turns of the game. We want to ramp early and fast, letteing us play things like Thragtusk , Restoration Angel , and Angel of Serenity to give us an edge. If we can curve out well and sacrifice some restoration angels to blocking Aurelia, the Warleader and Thundermaw Hellkite , we should be able to just overrun them with card advantage, like we do to so many other midrange decks. However, we have to be careful. If we over extend and leave our defenses down, Aurelia's Flicker could come back with a nasty counterattack using Aurelia, the Warleader , easily swinging in for lethal.

In:

Out:

1x Garruk, Primal Hunter

March 25, 2013 12:31 p.m.

x8bitGangsta says... #8

I see, Thank you for this! I appreciate you taking your time here for this! The only other deck I would have asked on is Blood Debt (It wont let me link it for some reason, but it can be found on my profile.) it is the second main deck I really want to just shine. Me and my roommate want to take these two decks to a PTQ.

March 25, 2013 12:57 p.m.

Owlus says... #9

Nice!

Hope you do well, both decks look really good. Thanks for reading and hope it helped you understand the meta better. I have some suggestions for your sideboard ill post on your deck.

March 25, 2013 1:07 p.m.

x8bitGangsta says... #10

Thanks! The flicker deck SB really hasn't had much thought. We were much to busy fine tuning the MB!

March 25, 2013 2:02 p.m.

papastanley says... #11

One suggestion - as a relative newbie it'd be good if there was a link out to the various decks you are commenting about playtesting, so we can see the structure of them?

Aside form the cards you mention I have no idea what UWR Flash consists of, for instance.

Even a couple of links to example decks in tappedout would help, even if they're not the "definitive" example of the deck. Close enough would be good enough...

thanks

March 25, 2013 7:03 p.m.

Salazar968 says... #12

@ papastanley

Thanks for the suggestion! We'll link all of the decks for our next article!

March 25, 2013 7:58 p.m.

papastanley says... #13

@ Salazar968 Cheers mate, much obliged :-)

March 25, 2013 8:41 p.m.

shift says... #14

Could you test against a B/W tokens?

March 25, 2013 10:58 p.m.

Owlus says... #15

@ shift

Sure, I need a list first though. If you could post one I will start working on it right away.

March 26, 2013 8:06 a.m.

shift says... #16

B/W Tokens? is what i run :)

March 26, 2013 11:09 a.m.

Owlus says... #17

Alright

B/W Tokens looks like a deck that stalls early game with Gather the Townsfolk , Oblivion Ring , and Lingering Souls , then drops a few Intangible Virtue and simply swarms the opponent. It's a lot like the deck that was very popular during DKA, and is still pretty powerful.

This seems like a good matchup for us. Our creatures are way bigger than all but Entreat the Angels , giving us a great early to midgame If he doesn't miracle Entreat the Angels . This matchup basically boils down to a creature race, because both decks run very little removal. We have bigger creatures, a better "anthem" (Gavony Township ), and a faster start, not to mention way more card advantage. PSB loves to race like this, because our effective creatures + our great card advantage puts us in a good position.

In:

Out: