How will Selesnya be positioned after Born of the Gods is released?
Standard forum
Posted on Dec. 21, 2013, 4:56 p.m. by strateupjee
My question is how do people think Selesnya aggro or mid-range will look after BNG is released? Will it be competitive again? Or will it fall back into just barely unplayable? Now this is keeping in mind that I know it is playable, I mean in the Pro Tours and Grand Prixs. I am thinking about making my sister a Selesnya aggro, however if it won't work out I may just trade the stuff off.
strateupjee says... #3
I know, I just figured people were speculating on what they think has an actual chance of being printed
December 21, 2013 5:07 p.m.
Well it's possible there could be an Ajani in G/W colors which would be nice. In any case I doubt that selesnya will become bad because currently it is good (just not the best). I wouldn't be afraid to play it now.
December 21, 2013 5:12 p.m.
Every deck that doesn't currently have its scry lands will see a boost. It might not seem like much, but they are a big improvement to guildgates, which most GW lists are forced to run due to their reliance on quality 2 drops. So GW will get more consistent overall, and consistency is paramount to putting up results.
Baring some very powerful cards coming out of the colors though, GW is going to be in much the situation it is now. It's a fair deck that play individual creatures that are sized well for their cost, but it doesn't have access to a particularly large amount of disruption. This means it has really poor match-ups against the devotion decks. Loxodon Smiter used to be the biggest baddest creature in the 3 drop slot. But look at say Thassa, God of the Sea . Which has to be considered largely without its drawback due to the GW deck not having great weapons to stop the devotion. This is combined with decent, but not amazing, match-up with control as the GW colors lack reach. And it's probably 50/50 with the WWr WWb decks, but perhaps slightly favored. Really, the only deck it's traditionally good against is mono-red, which we're not seeing a lot of. So among the 3 primary decks(MUD, MBD, Esper/UW), it's not very strongly positioned with no good match-ups across the board. This is why the GW lists that have been seeing some success are running more Banisher Priest and even hate cards in the MB like Mistcutter Hydra , but even that runs into problems because cards like Banisher Priest are good against the devotion decks but bad against control.
December 21, 2013 5:22 p.m.
strateupjee says... #6
Very well said Slycne, and I really have to agree, I'm just hoping that the scry land can give it the push it needs, and if we do get a G/W Ajani, dual color gods, and one solid creature that is playable, it may give it the reach it needs to be playable.
December 21, 2013 5:36 p.m.
Selesnya as a token deck is still fairly playable. It may not win may FNMs but it can still place in the right hands. Selesnya as a GW guild can do very well I'm making a GW deck (more green devotion splash white) but I think it will do well at my FNMs. Either way I can't wait for the scrylands
December 21, 2013 5:50 p.m.
G/W will get a small boost from the scry land, but the rest can't even really be speculated on because we just have no idea what wizards will give us in the set. One of two scenarios will happen: G/W gets some format defining bombs and is in a great position, or, G/W gets nothing amazing and stays where it is, which puts G/W at a severe disadvantage because something else will pick up the format definers and be more ahead of G/W than it is now.
December 21, 2013 9:10 p.m.
NerdPounder says... #9
Voice of Resurgence is still one of the most powerful cards in standard, it just happens to be in colors that don't have very much going for them. There was a Bant deck at a GP recently that made some waves, running Prime Speaker Zegana , Advent of the Wurm and the like, but it's probably the closest thing we've seen to a competitive Selesnya deck since Theros dropped.
My friend has a pretty solid Selesnya midrange that runs 4x Voice of Resurgence , 2-3 Wayfaring Temple , some number of Elspeth, Sun's Champion , and Garruk, Caller of Beasts with Advent of the Wurm , Fleecemane Lion , Selesnya Charm , Polukranos, World Eater and all sorts of good stuff. It's kind of a homebrew that is pretty competitive with some unseen cards. He attacks with Wayfaring Temple , you don't block and he flashes in Advent of the Wurm , making 2 5/5 tramplers for the price of one.
That being said, it's about the best thing I've seen out of GW in a while. Sidenote, he's also talking about breaking the deck down for a bant deck.
December 21, 2013 9:31 p.m.
I agree with corythackston. Voice is so powerful, but G/W on its own is so....ehh right now. I played Bant midrange before Theros, and the loss of a lot of key parts really took a toll on G/W in general. That said, I tried the same build with Smiters, Voices, Prime Speaker, and it just didn't do anything good. I play Bant control right now, and I like it a lot, but it's mostly G/U, so that doesn't really help here. I'd love to see that GP Bant list! I think the biggest issue with G/W right now is the lack of being able to keep up with the possibly card advantage the other competitive builds have right now: not much draw in G/W. If G/W (speculated) Ajani does anything to tutor for creatures, we may be looking at a resurgence (pun intended) of the G/W powerhouse.
December 21, 2013 9:39 p.m.
NerdPounder says... #11
I can't find a list, but here's a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDDX0GmvaM8
Reid Duke was playing it, so you know it's competitive.
December 21, 2013 9:57 p.m.
That was an interesting deck, for sure. Thanks for the link!
December 21, 2013 10:32 p.m.
Some1TookMyName says... #13
A guy just recently made top 4 at an Invitational running Selesnya without using U. It'll definitely see more play when BNG is released especially if this new Ajani which has been hinted to be G/W is released and also Kiora Atua a G/U PW might become available. Two and three colors decks are competitive its just a good day for single color devotion right now. With the release of Fleecemane Lion in Theros, there's sure to be more Selesnya-y creatures in the coming sets.Here's the video of Andrew Shrout playing against Red Devotion in top 8.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbW7pwEkfiY
December 22, 2013 9:12 a.m.
I really don't like that new Selesnya Aggro list with mainboard Skylasher , Banisher Priest , and Mistcutter Hydra . It's just a dumb (and late) attempt to metagame against mono-blue. If you just play the deck with all the anti-blue stuff in the main, you lose the thing that makes the deck good; the below-curve creatures.
December 22, 2013 12:08 p.m.
So to those who say G/W isnt competitive...did we forget dragons maze pro tour?
December 23, 2013 4:17 a.m.
Well, PT Theros was a lot more recent, but still ages ago in metagame time. Devotion decks were just coming on the scene, and as others have already said, the rise of devotion decks pushed out G/W aggro a bit. Another problem G/W is currently facing is that the deck completely saturated the metagame during early October, meaning people figured out how to beat it. I decided it was time to give G/W a rest for a while after playing 4 mirror matches in a row at FNM one week, and it seems like a lot of other players did the same around the same time. Combine all that with the lack of their scryland, and you see why things are a little rough for the deck right now. It's still a competitive deck, it just doesn't win as consistently as devotion/control/weenie/whatever.
December 23, 2013 9:20 a.m.
NerdPounder says... #17
Yes, it was competitive during Dragon's Maze, but that's because it got 2 out of 3 good cards from that set, Voice of Resurgence and Advent of the Wurm (Blood Baron of Vizkopa being the third). Like he said, that was just a long time ago and standard has changed a lot since then.
wnorris17 says... #2
I'd say its hard to tell with only four cards spoiled... At this point we only there will be Springleaf Drum and new scry lands. One of those scry lands is selesnya so thats a plus.
December 21, 2013 5:02 p.m.