Welcome to my attempt to solve the conundrum that is Midnight Hunt Standard. On one pole we have a brutally efficient aggro deck in Mono-Green. On the other we have a combo-control deck taking all the turns in URx Epiphany. It seems like any deck built to have a good matchup against one would fold to the other. I thought the same thing before I got utterley smoked by a variant of this deck. It got me thinking, in theory at least an aggro control deck should have a reasonable shot against both decks game 1 and be able to board into a favorable build for games 2 and 3. What you see below is my first attempt to brew up that list.
Card Choices
Creatures
Delver of Secrets
The heart and soul of the deck. Being able to swing for three in the air starting as early as turn 2 puts an opponent under massive pressure. Will it get removed or bounced? Almost certainly, but hopefully not before it chipped in for 3 or 6 damage and forced the opponent to waste a spell on a one drop.
Sedgemoor Witch
The second pillar of the deck and (one of) the reasons we are in black instead of red. A 3/2 with menace and ward for 3 is already a good deal. What really makes it shine though is the ability to crank out pest tokens. Against an aggro deck, the pests help gum up the ground buying time to pull ahead. Against control, they can chip in for extra damage increasing our clock.
Spectral Adversary
After a good bit of testing, Poppet Stitcher is out and Adversary is back in. As powerful as Stitcher is when it goes off, there were just too many games where it simply ate a removal or hit the board too late to matter. Spectral Adversary gives us more flexibility. Against slow decks we can flash it in as a 2/1 to pressure the opponent. Later on we can use the ETB ability to protect one of our threats from removal or to clear a blocker out of the way.
Instants and Sorceries
With the core of Delver and Witch, we want a deck that is as dense with cheap instants and sorceries as we can manage. Here are the highlights.
Bloodchief's Thirst and Infernal Grasp
Cheap flexible removal is the name of the game here.
Tempted by the Oriq
This is a bit of a flex pick. Against the aggro decks, especially mono-white, just playing whack-a-mole against their creatures can result in getting run over. Tempted is a removal spell that also gives us a blocker.
Saw it Coming
Game 1 we want to keep our suite of counterspells broad spectrum. Dissipate might be worth testing as well.
Siphon Insight and Behold the Multiverse
Our card advantage engines. Siphon is a great way to spend our mana if the opponent doesn't present a threat we need to counter or remove. Behold the Multiverse is slightly worse value than Memory Deluge, but the flexible casting cost gives it the edge in this list.
Lands
Since this is a new brew I wanted to keep the mana base as safe and clean as possible. I started with 24 total lands, 8 fast duals, 16 basics. Jwari Disruption
was a pretty obvious include for this style of deck so I added that but counted it as a spell since that is how it will usually be used. The question now is where the balance point is between improving the consistency of Delver and keeping the mana smooth. I'm currently testing Hagra Mauling
in place of 4 swamps since I can usually deal with games where my black source comes in tapped. There are options in blue as well but those are a lot more risky. The deck already wants to mulligan aggressively to get an opening hand with Delver. Blue sources that come in tapped increase the chances that the deck looses to itself by simply failing to draw a viable opening hand.
Sideboard
I don't have enough testing to have a detailed sideboard guide yet and a lot of these choice as still in flux. That said, here are my thoughts on the current 15, if you have suggestions for improvements let me know.
Disdainful Stroke and deck:Negate Pretty self explanatory. If they are casting expensive spells, especially ones that generate value right away, tell them NO.
Malevolent Hermit
An efficient way of increasing our threat density against control decks without skimping on interaction.
Concerted Defense Sometimes you just need a Spell Pierce. This gives us the option to deploy our threats a turn earlier while still holding up interaction. I also like to bring this card in against mono-green when we are on the draw as a way to cleanly answer an early ranger class.
Crippling Fear The list originally ran a full set of Meathook Massacre, but after testing I found that card was often just a turn or two too slow. Fear also has the benefit of usually being asymetrical so we don't have to take a turn off to rebuild. I still keep one copy of Massacre in the list as a panic button.
Reject This is a flex slot and could be filled with whatever the meta of the day calls for.
Matchup Guide
Again, this is still very rough but I wanted to record my initial thoughts.
Mono Green
IN - 3x Crippling Fear, 1x Concerted Defense (draw), 2x Reject (draw), 1x The Meathook Massacre (draw)
OUT - 3x Saw It Coming, 4x Delver of Secrets (draw)
On the play we don't need to change a lot. The primary game plan of managing the board with spot removal while pressuring in the air is still viable. On the draw gambling on an early delver flip is much more risky so we board them out and transition to a more controlling game plan.
Izzet Dragons
IN - 2x Negate, 2x Reject, 2x Disdainful Stroke
OUT - 4x Delver of Secrets, 2x Bloodchief's Thirst
This matchup is tricky and how you board is really going to depend on what cards you saw in game 1 and how you expect them to change. If you expect them to board out cheap removal and focus more on Alrund's then you want to sideboard against that.
Izzet Turns
IN - 4x Malevolent Hermit, 1x Disdainful Stroke, 1x Concerted Defense 2x Negate, 2x Reject (draw)
OUT - 4x Infernal Grasp, 4x Bloodchief's Thirst, 2x Delver of Secrets (draw)
Again, this is a matchup where you need to adjust based on the opponents list. If you saw lots of cheap spot removal (or expect them to bring it in) don't be afraid to trim down on Delver even on the play.
Mono White
IN- 3x Crippling Fear, 1x The Meathook Massacre, 2x Reject (STX)
OUT - 3x Saw It Coming, 2x Siphon Insight, 1x Delver of Secrets
This is probably the toughest matchup I've run into so far. We are at a significant disadvantage game 1. Having sweepers helps post board but there are still going to be plenty of games where we never see them and just get overrun.
Final Thoughts
This is very much a work in progress, so please leave a comment with any questions or suggestions for improvements you might have. Happy delving.
