NIce rundown of everything to have in Standard. I guessed on the title, and I hope it's what you want.

Note: Magma Spray doesn't hit players.

Athreos won't be a fringe card. Aristocrats 2 (or 3, depending on what you count) will be massive. The extra punishment from Athreos is essential to the Cartel Aristocrat combo. It will be huge.

Sigiled Skink is bad because you have to attack with it to trigger the scry - but having one toughness means that it will almost always die when you die, which renders it pointless.

I sort of disagree with Keranos, God of Storms as well. It's lackluster and completely random, potentially giving you exactly the opposite of what you need. It's highly costed which means it comes out very late. It comes out too late for red to care and to blue is laughable when your goal is to keep mana open for counterspells. I can see it MAYBE being used a slow, grinding finisher in control - but even then it's in the wrong colours and painfully slow.

Here's an example of the impact that Athreos will have: Link

the word "strictly" has an exact definition in magic, and i feel it's used incorrectly each time in this article. "strictly better" in magic terms is a comparison of two or more cards where one card is better to cast in all but extremely fringe situations.

Deicide can be cast at instant speed and has a Lobotomy effect, but it can only hit 50% of the targets of Revoke Existence .

while 2 mana spells that do the exact same thing as 3 mana spells are strictly better, Dictate of Kruphix is the only Howling Mine i am aware of with flash. this allows the caster to draw first, and is a valid upgrade for the extra mana.

as Matsi883 noted above, Magma Spray can't hit players so it is a little less versatile than Shock . Burst Lightning is strictly better than Shock .

Very true. I'll add more to those specific cards.

Magma Spray : Better in some decks and scenarios than Shock. Shock can go to the dome yes but the decks I like using it in are better with it as a form of removal. This is a good way to hamper dredge or graveyard based decks and again cards like voice of resurgence.

Also I said Athero's is a 'possible' fringe card. I love the card and if I pull it I am going to keep it. I just think it needs to find a shell of its own than the ones preexisting in the standard format. If it has a deck built around it, it will be a lot better than say throwing it into the current B/W Midrange, I think Rock would be better suited for it but that's my own opinion.

Dictate of Kruphix is in fact the only howling mine effect right now so yes its value is high for its role. Typically though the decks that utilized Howling Mine had more than one of those effects.

Cableguy, would you like me to change the entry on Magma Spray to anything else?

It's not really necessary. The burn decks that run shock use it in minimal numbers. Usually 2. I think spray is more of a control tempo card or rather prevents you from losing tempo due to some threats.

I don't remember you, but i think that i am going to start to like this Cableguy! Nice article, keep writing.

I appreciate it. I will definitely be doing more especially when I made reports on tournament winning decks in standard and analyze why they won. I will also be doing up and coming decks, deck tech, and my own reports from playing as well.

My next article will probably be on my own underestimation of Sage of Hours . Having seen Brad Nelson slap together a 'Fun' deck of Cipher on heroic targets and along with Bioshift and Nivmagus Elemental . You can take extra turns a lot quicker than you thought especially with tricks like Hidden Strings

Cableguy I enjoyed the article. For the most part your evaluations of the cards are un-opinionated and I can agree with them.

Keranos, God of Storms is one that sticks out. Do you really think he is that good? I haven't tested him but he seems very Assemble the Legion esque. He is a 5cmc enchantment that provides card advantage and a relatively slow clock.

Props for not drinking the Athreos, God of Passage Kool-aid. I do think he will make an impact in this current standard in the form of a W/b aggro deck though, maybe Brimaz, King of Oreskos can actually do something other than eating removal with him. At the same time he doesn't appear to fit into the B/w Midrange deck and that is a better deck and should see more play.

You did a good job covering many of the uncommons that will impact the format. Seems to me the best card in the set are at this rarity. Nyx-Fleece Ram is one you passed over that will play a big role as an anti-aggro card.

Yes I should also take the time to mention that this article is extremely well written and I did enjoy it. Whilst we differ on the opinion of some cards, that not so important. The fact is that this is coherent and well argued.

Would like to read the next one.

I appreciate the feedback guys, please keep it coming and I will also continue to comment on other cards people will mention.

@Rasta_Viking29 I do feel Keranos, God of Storms is a great card. I have play tested him in a few decks. Most notably U/R/X Control. American or Grixis. The idea isnt so much about his Lightning Bolt that can deal damage but it also is good vs creatures, planeswalkers, etc. The biggest effect IMO is returning the gas. I love scry'ing seeing a land and when his ability activates next turn drawing 2 cards and not 1 that would help further weed out lands than by simply scrying itself. Both effects are powerful and if he was anything less than 5 mana he would be too good. Playing him right after a Jace, Architect of Thought just feels sooooo good. That being said I wouldn't run any more than 3.

Yes yes yes. I forgot the ram. The ram is great in anti aggro more for the +1 to life every turn than the 0/5 body. I feel though that with the amount of removal this would only be good vs Mono Red Aggro and as such is a little narrow in its design because virtually any other aggro deck has a cheap removal for it.

...No, this is a horrible article and the way it is written is even worse.

I'm quite glad I never knew of Cableguy before.

You for real? Siyanor. I mean I guess you have every right to be but it would help to know WHY

I can't explain it to you, ChiefBell, since you seem to think it is "coherent and well argued" when it is actually the exact OPPOSITE of either of those. It is highly incoherent and the arguments are ridiculously flawed.

I agree with some of the article but not with parts, for example, I do believe you would have to be mad as a hatter to think Hypnotic Siren is constructed playable, giving an okay 1 drop a mediocre late game utility doesn't make much sense.

I knew someone would bring up Hypno Siren. Chances are this will see moderate amount of play in Mono Blue Devotion probably not a whole lot anywhere else. I run two in my tempo deck and Mono Blue would probably prefer them over Judge's Familiar which the pro players already think is a dead card late game. At least 2 hypno siren's that are both decent early and a possible win con late game against big creature decks.

Schuesseled Judge's Familiar is played in Mono-U, and that's a 1 drop with a mediocre early game utility so...

I did really enjoy this article, though I do have to disagree with some points made, basically the same ones as everyone else. I look forward to reading more articles by you.

Thanks Potato. A lot of this is speculation on cards based on the current format. They are my opinions on the worth of a card to see play. There are some cards here I have no doubt will improve in the right deck or the right time like M15 and after. This list is cards I think are good and will see play. Just some will see more play than others.

I don't usually make articles based on new cards and their strengths/weaknesses or their chance to see play like I did with this article. I usually go over tournament winning decks, up and coming decks, and possible changes to the metagame along with reports from the field so to speak.

@InconspicuousPotato A mediocre early game ability is far more useful to an aggro deck than a mediocre late game ability. Although both cards are far from ideal for the deck. (What Mono-U wants is a good early game utility to go with the okay flying beater.)

Dictate of the Twin Gods isn't getting much attention but R/W Burn is a thing in standard now and dictate creates multiple instant win scenerio's with Boros Reckoner and the fact that flash is a factor and devotion casts it sooner. All an opponent playing this need do is deal 4 dam by turn 4 and flash dictate in on your end step and start their turn and shoot their own reckoner with a lightning strike or helix or any other spell that is 3 dam or above even mortars. End result 16 to your face even pyromaster lady gets ultra dangerous with reckoners.

I don't think you want DotTG in any burn deck.

I think the articles usually write will be really great to read!

I think it depends on the mediocre ability Schuesseled. But lets just agree that they're both not very good and move on with our lives :)

Cheers to that.

Athreos, God of Passage will definitely see a good amount of play. I'm having great fun creating an enchantment aggro shell with him: Ferrier of Damned Souls

That's not to mention all the B/W human type builds I've seen as well. I think that he will also have an impact in B/W midrange with Obzedat, Ghost Council .

The "O-Ring vs. D-Sphere" argument frankly makes no sense. If you start playing O-Rings because you want to hit D-Spheres, then your opponent can just hit your O-Rings, and vice-versa.

Aside from that, no one's really questioning D-Sphere at the moment anyways. It's been a four-of in anything that has used it over the past year.

I was also going to bring up your loose usage of the word "strictly". "Strictly" means "virtually better in every scenario", and you won't find many cards which are "strictly better" than others. One of the few examples, actually, is Shock versus Lightning Bolt . In virtually every situation, Lightning Bolt will outclass Shock .

Saying Dictate of Kruphix is strictly worse than Howling Mine irks me. Sure, Howling Mine is likely the better card, but Dictate has something Mine doesn't - Flash. Without Flash, Howling Mine always gives your opponent the advantage first (unless you find a way to tap it on your opponent's turns). Mine is also an artifacts, and susceptible to artifact hate. While Dictate can be destroyed as well, it's not getting hit by the same thing and is thus different.

Magma Spray is clearly not strictly better than Shock , so I'm thinking you may have just misread it.

Just neutral thoughts.

Props on the article Cableguy, and welcome back to TappedOut! I'm not all that interested in standard, but I really like the title, and the card evaluation seemed pretty good from my limited perspective. At least it seems like my deck won't be affected too much, which is fine by me. Less people playing control is good for me, and I did get a few new tools to play around with.

Good article, A+ would read again.

"... My answer to that is so does playing an untapped shock land to cast Thoughtseize, but we do it anyways."

Wait, there are people seriously doing that?

Yeh. Really common T1.

Detention Sphere is horrible in the mirror. Detention sphere cant target other detention spheres and lets say you both have a permanent in play of the same name like Jace, Architect of Thought it will eat both of them and now you are at a disadvantage. Banishing Light will be seen maybe in a 3-1 split main board and potential for 1-2 in SB. This card is also better for decks like Esper control that dont want to worry about the double color to cast. This will also see play in midrange decks that wont utilize blue like Naya, Rock, or B/W Mid range as a way to keep tempo.

Texas I've seen modern players play a fetch land, turn 1 it into a black shock land, and then cast Thoughtseize dealing a total of 5 damage to themselves on turn 1.

Also Cableguy I liked the article but in response to this last comment I don't think Naya will be playing Banishing Light as long as they have Chained to the Rocks, although I maybe wrong seeing as Chained doesn't hit dudes.

I cringe everytime I see unnecessary turn 1 seizing. We're not in legacy here and unless you have a perfect curve you want to protect or that potential one-drop your opponent could have breaks your entire deck, there's no need to waste one extra card of valuable information, especially if you're on the play.

I rarely see a T1 Shockland into Thoughtseize in either of my metas.

I see it a lot in Mono Black Devotion every week in the 5k events. It is effective on the play. You can get info and try to stop them from ever getting into the game to begin with or slow them down since Mono Black takes a few turns to get going. It is the best deck in the format as well as it has won the majority of the 5k's since it's creation.

What play could possibly be so important, that mono black cannot stop if from turn 2 to 700.000?

If you immediately play your thoughtseize, you have 7 cards worth of information. If you however wait a turn, you can access 8 cards of information. The peek is just as important as the disruption and that's why Thoughseize is so good.

There are justified situations for turn 1, land, Thoughtseize. If you know your fighting a deck with soldier of the Pantheon and you hand is full with Dreadbores for example. But shocking yourself just to get less information earlier? That is pretty questionable.

Most of the time, the people who're (mindlessly) seizing you on turn 1, are the same guys that take your sevendrop out of the starting 7. I'm thankful, because if everyone in my shop knew how to use this card correctly, I'd win a lot less games.

Oh, by the way, I'm really sorry for straying that far off topic.

These are interesting observations. While I don't agree with all of them, I would take bets on most of your statements. As an example, you're totally right about Banishing Light , the card will see play. Some in the Sphinx's Revelation decks and also in white decks without access to blue. I could even justify one or two in aggressive white deck sideboards.

I find it interesting that you still see that at competitive tourneys. With R/W Burn and RDW hanging around that is pretty much suicide. Players such as BBD & CVM have been preaching to hold off on T1 Thoughtseize for months now even if you played a swamp to start because you will receive more relevant information on their hand and can make a more informed decision based off of your own draws on turn 2-3. TexasDice is spot on with his comment.

It's not really unnecessary the pro's do it well. The idea is the quicker you know what there playing the sooner you can have a game plan. If they are running burn and you thoughtseize you know you have to play more conservatively and get a certain board state if you want to win. If they are running aggro and you can stop their turn 1 or turn 2 creature you effectively throw their early game away which is their main hope of winning. If you see it is a control deck you know you have to play around certain cards and weed out certain cards from their hand. I've seen pro players thought seize turn 1 and two and start he game at 16 basically to essentially Time Walk into their mid game where they begin to keep up their advantage even after playing Underworld Connections to lose even more life. I am not saying it is the right or wrong thing to do but if the people who are winning higher end tournaments are doing it and in the pro tour doing it something must be right about it. All things in moderation and knowing when to do something and what hands to keep. I would thoughtseize early game to gain an upper hand and its a dead card late vs control. Theres many different factors people dont take in about the card.

If someone sticks on a mainly land hand and you get multiple early game thoughtseizes it's GG. A lot of the time when playing against RG monsters, if they stick on a hand with 4 lands or more then a T1 thoughtseize followed by a T2 thoughtseize can be game breaking. I've literally won games before off the back of multiple early turn thoughtseizes so the point where all the other guy could do was play Elvish Mystic .

*to the point where.

Motto with hand removal especially 1 mana ones is, They kept their hand for a reason, find out why, and get rid of it.

"If you however wait a turn..."

Oh, you mean until that turn when you'd normally be playing Pack Rat ?

A pro once activated Underworld Connections for no reason during his turn and lost the World Championship because of that.

Pro's are not an entity and have different opinions on different topics. I followed Reid Duke article about Thoughtseize and the results speak for themselves.

@zandl: 1. Turn 2 pack rat dies. Seizing for removal to drop a safe Rat is one of the described applications turn 1 seize makes sense. 2. You don't always have a Pack Rat in Hand.

LMAO TexasDice I just looked up that article to post here as you were referring to it.

Reid Duke - Thoughtseize You

"The gameplay of Thoughtseize comes down to two questionswhen to cast it and what card to take. The two questions are related.

...

I could go on and on with examples of proactive problem cards that your opponent could have, but the answer is typically going to be to cast Thoughtseize as late as you can conveniently do so without giving them a chance to cast the problem card. It's important to note that in reality there are frequently multiple problem cards in any given matchup, in which case you need to adjust accordingly." - Reid Duke

I can understand that in games 2 and 3 when you know what you're dealing with, but in game 1, I still feel like a T1 thoughtseize isn't a bad idea.

There seems to be a whole lot of "the pros say" statements in this discussion.

I don't play standard because it's not worth the investment, but I am somewhat aware of its meta and would like to make a few comments. Again, please bear in mind that I barely know what I'm talking about.

For starters, doesn't U/W control not use many permanents to begin with. It should generally only be using Jace, Architect of Thought , Detention Sphere , AEtherling , and maybe Archangel of Thune . So in a control vs. control mirror match, wouldn't it be better to side in Deicide as opposed to Banishing Light ? It's cheaper, faster, and extracts all of your opponent's copies. And if your opponent had sided in some Banishing Light , you could hit those with extra your Deicide draws. On another note, Banishing Light is not another Oblivion Ring reprint. Its trigger ability acts differently and can't be use to make silly shenanigans like Oblivion Ring can.

Why does Eidolon of the Great Revel love to be in cheaper decks? I can see that logic for modern or other, faster formats, but standard is generally full of larger spells. The only place I see it is sideboard tech against RDW. This is under the presumption that RDW uses a bunch of cheap spells, as I can't see how it would be RDW without cheap spells.

I would only semi-agree with Keranos, God of Storms . He is a slow, grindy win con and will probably find a home in fringe grixis or America builds. I would like to emphasize that a control deck would like to play its win con after it has all the necessary resources. It should be able to maintain card advantage long enough that it can gather the lands to cast Keranos and save some mana for a counterspell (just as AEtherling should never be cast unless mana is reserved for a flicker). Unfortunetally, with Deicide , Revoke Existence , Detention Sphere , and Banishing Light , it will be exceedingly difficult to actually use him as a win con with faster, better options like Desecration Demon or AEtherling .

Just as Spirit Away saw no play, I assume Hypnotic Siren will not be used either. The creature side makes it a little more versatile, but that bestow cost is extremely unappealing.

I would again like to emphasize that I know close to nothing about the current standard. As a reader, I was not satisfied with how short this article was. When I read the title and blurb, I was expecting more of a breakdown of standard and Journey Into Nyx, and it feels like all I got was "this card is good and so is this. Standard will get a little faster. What you do early game will affect the later game." Sorry, just my opinion.

Not a bad article on Thoughtseize . In some ways I feel like he almost over-analyzes it. I do like the argument about redundancy, as I'd never really thought much about it.

"There seems to be a whole lot of "the pros say" statements in this discussion."

Is there anything wrong with learning from those more talented than you are? I think we can all agree Reid Duke and BBD are better Magic players than we are.

"I don't play standard because it's not worth the investment"

What's the point of continually saying this?

Other than Banishing Light and Deicide you make good points on the cards. Deicide hits enchantments and only searches for God permanents. Banishing Light answers so much more and can be used in any deck with white that can't run Detention Sphere .

Note that I didn't say anything about it being wrong. Also note that I only said I don't play standard because it's a terrible investment only once. I really have no idea what you're talking about. If you're referring to my saying that I don't know the standard meta redundantly, it's to emphasize that I may not know what I'm talking about. I don't know if grixis control shells even use Desecration Demon as a win con, or how many permanents are used in a common U/W control build. I was basically saying if I said anything off, don't hold it against me.

After rereading Deicide , it has come to my disappointed attention that it only extracts God cards. Somehow I missed that in my first reading.

Yeah it would easily be a $20 card or more in this set if it got rid of a permanent and all copies. Hell with legacy in mind it could have been much much higher. No worries though :P

@Cableguy: Are there many relevant enchantments in Legacy? I have no idea what's going on in that format.

codebread you've said it before in other threads. This isn't one of those "I can't afford fetchlands" threads. It's a thread about how the new cards affect standard. Is there a reason for bringing it up now?

@Texas: I don't focus a lot on legacy but I know Sneak Attack still see's a lot of play.

@Rasta_Viking29: I see what you mean. I didn't realize how often I say it. I brought it up to lead into the fact that I may not know what's going on with the standard meta. I didn't want to go into a discussion saying I don't know anything about standard but here's what I think of standard, that seemed awkward. I don't remember saying something along those lines in a fetchland thread, though.

@Codebread: I didn't address this earlier and I wanted to answer it but I had completely forgotten. UW Control Deck run a variable amount of permanents. The one I will use as an example won the Star City 5k last week and beat Mono Black Devotion. In his mainboard he had:

1x AEtherling
2x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
4x Jace, Architect of Thought
4x Detention Sphere

11 Permanents

Sideboard he had:

1x Pithing Needle
3x Archangel of Thune
2x Blind Obedience
1x Jace, Memory Adept

7 Permanents

So Banishing Light is pretty good against control to remove their primary threats like their Banishing Light 's or Detention Sphere 's, planeswalkers, etc. It is why I run it in my sideboard for my Naya deck here:

Naya Brave (Journey)

I see. Thank you for enlightening me.