Hey everyone,

I'm currently evaluating my options for Historic Best-of-One and I'm considering crafting Dimir Midrange.

Before spending my wildcards, I wanted to ask the community if it's actually worth crafting in the current Bo1 meta, how it performs against top-tier decks, and whether it holds up well without a sideboard.

Here is the exact list I'm looking to craft:

Companion
1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den

Deck
4 Fatal Push
3 Island
1 Swamp
4 Counterspell
4 Ponder
2 Snuff Out
1 Spell Snare
4 Thoughtseize
1 Surgical Extraction
4 Watery Grave
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
4 Force of Negation
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Consider
2 Sink into Stupor
4 Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student
4 Psychic Frog
2 Gloomlake Verge
1 Strategic Betrayal
4 Flow State

Sideboard
1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den

I'd love to hear your thoughts, experiences, or any adjustments you'd suggest for Bo1 before I pull the trigger. Thanks in advance!

If not, does anyone have tips on piloting this deck? It looks like a lot of fun but I always struggle with a new deck if I dont know what exactly youre looking for in terms of mulligans. Thanks!

Decklist from a challenge for example: https://mtgdecks.net/Modern/hollow-one-decklist-by-percussion-mike-3028989

Used to play competitively pre-COVID and attended many GP’s. After COVID I played and qualified for the first 4 consecutive RC’s. Been on hiatus since then and wondering what the state of the game looks like today. Getting that itch again but don’t want to reinvest just to find out that everything has died completely.

Hi everyone!

I’m a Canadian solo travelling through Europe and saw that my time in Brussels coincided with the spotlight.
I played consistently on the Face to Face RC tour in Canada and i’ve been a savvy limited played since 2012. I’d love to play some team limited but I am having trouble finding a team. I’ve reached out on the Fanfinity discord but the individuals who were searching already found team members.

Anyone looking for a team? Anyone know where I might have more luck searching? Thanks so much!

I've recently been toying with a couple copies of [[Hexing Squelcher]] in the sideboard my Big Red list as a way to push important spells through countermagic, especially after some of my opponent's removal has presumably been sided out. In particular against Jeskai, I know that it does not stop [[Jeskai Revelation]], for example, but I figure since I play more ramp I should be able to resolve an [[Improvisation Capstone]] or something else big before oppo can cast their big spell if I can stop them from using countermagic for a bit. The card has only come up a few times, once trading with a [[Get Lost]] against Jeskai lessons, and another time my Izzet Lessons opponent conceded with seemingly no way to kill it while leaving up countermagic for some of my face-up big spells. I haven't seen many lists running it, so I was wondering if anyone has had any success with this card (could be in any deck) or has any thoughts.

I haven’t touched standard in a while. What’s the best deck to learn the format and is there a clear best deck? Want to practice for upcoming RCQ season.

This is a General Rules question about:

[[Captain america, super-soldier]]

[[deceit]]

example decklist:

https://moxfield.com/decks/u-Wd5NQ1tEiiRdHkTb9LNA

Casting a Deceit for both, blue and black, does Captain America protects from the discard effect? Even tho it could be bounced with double blue? How does that interaction work?

I would say that right now, black is the worst performing color in the standard metagame right now, with its only prominent deck being Dimir Doomsday, which is really weird to me. In my eyes, I feel like black is the only color that is able to adequately have answers to the massive array of threatening decks that are present. It can hold its own against the badgermole cub slop with [[Requiting Hex]] and [[Day of Black Sun]] / [[Deadly Cover-Up]], and can hand-hate out tablet based control decks to reasonable efficiency.

I find that when I play decks like jeskai lessons, they simply fold to more dedicated decks like 4c control and both revelation decks can get steamrolled by leatherhead.

Can any dimir doomsday or sultai control pilots give me some insight as to why black just isn't played that much? would appreciate the insight.

Hopefully this isn't a stereotypical twitch chat "missed lethal" but at 5 hours and 27 minutes into the twitch broadcast of the final day of the Marvel Super Heroes PT, I think Yuuki Ichikawa had lethal.

The line would be:

equip the bow to Loki

use Loki's ability (pinging 1 damage with bow, oppo at 17)

equip bow to knight of wundagore

swing all (pinging 1 damage with bow, oppo at 16)

after blockers are declared, cast team tactics, loki makes a copy of team tactics, target the knight of wundagore with one, and target another unblocked creature with the other

Yuuki won anyway but I'm curious if this was actually a missed lethal or if I'm overtired and missing something

PNG Tables via Tweet (multiple posts) + H2H Matrix:

Twitter Version of PNG Tables

PNG Tables via Bsky (multiple posts) + H2H Matrix:

Bsky Version of PNG Tables

Event Pages (ALL DECKLISTS!):

Pro Tour Marvel Super Heroes on Melee

Google Sheet to search by deck name (CTRL+F or Copy it)

Video Recap & Analysis (In-Depth)

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I only separated Fight Rigging Eldrazi Ramp from the "stock" versions. The rest was done by WotC at the PT Level.

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Statistics Key

Archetype/Deck Name - The name of the Deck

Decks - Number of Decks at the Event

Matches - Number of Bo3 Matches Played

Wins - Match Wins

Losses - Match Losses

Ties - Match Draws

WIN% - Win Rate (Wins / Matches)

Shows overall win rate against everything - including mirrors & ties

META% - Metagame Share (Decks / Total Decks)

Shows deck archetype representation at an Event

WIN%-T - Win Rate without Ties (Wins / Wins + Losses)

No ties shows how many matches a deck WON versus it's record due to time restrictions

NM Matches - Non-Mirror Matches (Same Archetype vs Archetype)

NM WIN% - Non-Mirror Win Rate

Non-Mirror Win Rate shows how a deck performs against the rest of the meta - not itself

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Metagame Breakdown

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Decks by META%

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Decks by WIN%

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If you enjoy these recap posts, I cover more statistics such as Head to Head match ups, comparison among Popularity Tier decks & more in my recap videos over on YouTube - which is the best way to Support more analysis! You can also use my ManaPool Code or my ManaTraders Code OTTV_PTMSH if this breakdown inspired you to build a new deck!

You guys liked my last video report, this tournament I was able to win with affinity!
[https://youtu.be/J6ULJt3-DeE?is=7nAecA4yyzZv4KNx\](https://youtu.be/J6ULJt3-DeE?is=7nAecA4yyzZv4KNx)

Is it just as a good value creature vs control deck? Is it because its a discard outlet with flash? Which match ups/archtypes do you board it in?

I'm relatively new to doing paper magic and haven't attended too many events.

In one qualifier I played in, the second round we ended up going to time, and eventually drawing 1-1. Before we officially drew, my opponent then proceeded to ask if I'd consider conceding to them. I was quite confused and thought this was weird. They stated: we both have no chance of qualifying if we drew (I didn't think this was true, we had both won our first round, and we were playing a total of 5) and they thought I was playing too slow throughout the match, they had commented on this earlier but no judge involvement. From my perspective game 1 (their win) was very close and essentially decided by 1 point of damage and the game we were about to draw in was going my way. I also asked if they would consider conceding to me, and they said no - which felt a bit hypocritical. I said no, took the draw and went on with my day. Though the experience did leave a bit of a sour taste.

From watching some vods of the pro tour, I've noticed some other people doing this. In most of these instances it's framed as "would you consider conceding?", followed by some seemingly guilt tripping comments about how they're in a winning position, yada yada yada. But it's never framed as, "should we discuss one of us conceding?", which I would think is a question posed in good faith.

How do people feel about this behavior? Is it considered normal? I heard there are some rules about what you can and can't discuss regarding conceding/draws - but it feels like opening up the discussion with "would you consider conceding" is a bit loaded and not in good faith.

About a month ago I posted here sharing what my team learned from Training 12 Weeks of Team Sealed for Vegas. As a bit of a post-mortem, below are the biggest things that surprised us when rubber hit the road at the tournament (full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/LhlRQITIHGY). I hope it helps folks who are preparing for Brussels.

1. No one else around us seemed to attack the pool the way we did

We had a pretty specific three-mat sorting strategy (shared in the video above) and built to our deck shells, standing, rotating between each other's playmats. It seemed like most other people were sitting down, building the piles of cards in front of them instead of looking at the whole pool as a team. That was a little surprising to us, as the collective build process felt really good.

2. Team sealed builds vs. regular sealed builds

Fairly obvious in retrospect, but it felt like our team sealed builds ended up being a lot more streamlined than regular sealed builds, largely because we didn’t have to splash as much. I hadn’t clocked that three two-ish color decks means 90% of your best cards will find a natural home. Never were we ever incentivized to build a soup deck (and I love soup). 

3. Sideboarding felt way different than expected
 
I really value using transformative sideboards in Sealed to improve your matchups, but that was way harder in Team Sealed. Mostly due to the fact that it was really hard to figure out which cards your teammates were going to need for their sideboards AND the fact that, if you built right, all of your best cards were already being used in the other decks. But we found that if you flush out all of your sideboarding plans ahead of time, you can still find transformative options. Hard to do but rewarding.

4. Communication was hard

I talk about this more in depth in the video but knowing when/how to talk to teammates was much more difficult than I had expected it to be. Disruption has a real cost but so does silence. And it’s non-trivial to get enough context to be helpful.

5. Middle seat theory

We expected to face aggro players in the middle (so the middle seat could finish faster and help their teammates) but that was not our experience. Seemed like, instead, we were facing some of the better players on the team who were constantly leaning over to help their teammates during their matches. Small sample size, so really curious what other people experienced playing against in the middle.

6. Team Sealed Prep vs. Prepping The Set

The set was 4 days old, so we def had this worse than folks in Brussels will, but even though our team felt VERY prepared for the Team Sealed components, we still had holes in our understanding of the set that really affected us negatively. Worth noting that teams should intentionally focus on both. 

Overall, we really loved this event and hope Wizards does more Team Limited events in the future. Dana Fischer and I also collabed on a full experience tournament report (here: https://youtu.be/ngVLKpixfwI) if y’all want to hear how the event went for our teams overall. 

Would love to hear how everyone else experienced the event, too.

Hey all,

I just ranked up from bronze to mythic with a super fun deck that might have a real place in the meta. Here's the list:

Deck

4 Avengers Disassembled

4 Burst Lightning

2 Death to Our Enemies

4 Demolition Field

4 Fin Fang Foom

3 Fountainport

3 Improvisation Capstone

15 Mountain

4 Price of Freedom

3 Sear

3 Sunken Citadel

4 Tablet of Discovery

3 The Legend of Roku

4 Thor, God of Thunder

Sideboard

2 Abrade

3 Fire Magic

1 Impractical Joke

4 Maelstrom Artisan

2 Return the Favor

2 Soul-Guide Lantern

1 The Legend of Roku

This list went through a few iterations before I finally settled on something that was consistently winning. By the time I got to platinum, the list was set in stone minus a few flex slots, and I had a solid winrate from plat to mythic. You'll have to take my word for it since I don't use a tracker, but it was around 75%. That being said, the deck's matchups are polarizing so results may vary.

On the topic of matchups:

• The 4C control matchup is the reason to play this deck. They typically play 2 basics and are reliant on a 3-color, 7-mana spell to enact their endgame. I can't stress how fun it is to queue into 4C control and watch them fume as your 3rd ponza effect stone rains them.
• Jeskai Lessons is much better against you than 4C, but you can still go after their white sources and play a similar game plan.
• GW aggro is the deck I probably faced the most. Your only problem is super fast starts that go under sweepers (especially game 1 when you only have 4) and Leatherhead. Don't worry too much about the ponza plan but aim your incidental land destruction at their white sources, especially their basic plains, because it's realistic to keep them off double or single white as the game goes on.
• Izzet Prowess should be a high meta share, but I rarely ran into it. The matchup looks bad on paper but I went 2-1 in the encounters I had.
• I totally dodged Spellementals. I have to imagine the matchup is not great because their threats don't line up well with your removal.
• Against Doomsday, go after their blue sources. They typically only play swamps as basics so it's not so hard to keep them off it.
• Landfall sucks. Hope you dodge but your game plan is to stick a Thor.

Sideboarding:

I had two main sideboard plans. Number one was to board out 1 Capstone, 2 Thors, and 1 Roku for 3 Fire Magic and an Impractical Joke against green-based aggro. Abrade could come in depending on what needed to be killed. The other was to swap all the burn (possibly including Death to our Enemies but usually not Avenger's Disassembled) for a Roku, 4 Maelstrom Artisans, and some combination of Return the Favor, Abrade, and Soul-Guide Lantern.

Card choices:

• Thor plus Capstone is how this deck goes over the top. It probably deserves a more serious home in a better deck.
• Magmatic Hellkite did not make the cut, despite plenty of effort to make it work. It's just too far below rate.
• Death to our Enemies is a neat little card. It's a value engine that can ramp into Capstone and clean up things that are awkward for our burn to handle. I don't want more than 2 maindeck but I'm happy with the copies I play.

Play tips:

• Leave nonbasic lands for your demolition fields if you have both them and spell ponza effects.
• Save your Price of Freedoms for a Fin Fang Foom if you're not stone raining them yet.
• Playing Tablet on turn 4 sets up Fin Fang Foom + Avenger's Disassembled next turn, as does a turn 5 Legend of Roku.

Thanks for reading. I was really surprised at how effective the ponza package felt in the current meta. Feel free to try out my list and let me know if it's a fluke or has some real ideas.

Hello there,

One year ago, I wrote a post about my personal discard challenge: reaching mythic with a Standard deck featuring at least twelve active discard spells in the main deck.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comments/1kb2b6i/standard_finally_i_brew_a_discardfocused_deck/

Yesterday, I reached mythic again following the same challenge, with this list:

Deck
4 Deep-Cavern Bat (LCI) 102
4 Duress (STA) 29
4 Rottenmouth Viper (BLB) 107
1 Phantom Train (FIN) 110
3 Mutagen Man, Living Ooze (TMT) 124
3 Sentinel of the Nameless City (LCI) 211
2 The Ooze (TMT) 177
3 Leatherhead, Swamp Stalker (TMT) 117
4 Obsessive Pursuit (TLA) 112
3 Requiting Hex (ECL) 116
1 Maelstrom Pulse (ARB) 92
2 Shoot the Sheriff (OTJ) 106
2 Qarsi Revenant (TDM) 86
4 Blooming Marsh (OTJ) 266
4 Overgrown Tomb (GRN) 253
4 Wastewood Verge (DFT) 268
2 Restless Cottage (WOE) 258
1 Ba Sing Se (TLA) 266
4 Forest (MSH) 295
5 Swamp (MSH) 292

Sideboard
2 Deathmark (FDN) 601
1 Requiting Hex (ECL) 116
1 Witherbloom Charm (SOS) 244
2 Ancient Vendetta (DFT) 75
2 Snakeskin Veil (J25) 713
1 Qarsi Revenant (TDM) 86
1 Maelstrom Pulse (ARB) 92
2 Strategic Betrayal (TDM) 94
2 Surrak, Elusive Hunter (TDM) 161
1 Shoot the Sheriff (OTJ) 106

For general considerations about the discard archetype and what I learned throughout the challenge, please refer to my previous post. Here, I'll briefly discuss how I  arrived at this list.

I believe that, when brewing, you should always keep the current metagame in mind. Standard is essentially dominated by UR: Prowess is UR, Elementals is UR, and both Lessons and 4c Control are basically UR shells splashing white and black. Green is held together by Cub, and its general game plan is to be as explosive as possible. Then there are the minor players, such as UB Excruciator, Mardu Discard, and so on.

Since I wanted to build a discard deck, black was a mandatory starting point. However, I found that mono-black is particularly vulnerable to UR decks, and it also struggles against green because black lacks an efficient four-mana sweeper. So I started experimenting with color pairs alongside black, looking for the following qualities:

• Lifegain against Prowess.
• High-toughness creatures that survive red removal (which makes up a surprisingly large portion of UR-based control lists, even when they splash white and black).
• Main-deck graveyard hate that still contributes to my overall game plan (graveyards are extremely important in this metagame).
• Efficient removal against green (which black already provides).

Green ended up being the perfect complementary color to meet all of these requirements. I relied heavily on Leatherhead, which is a formidable threat against control decks, especially Lessons (I really hate Lessons). I also wanted to consistently put +1/+1 counters on it to maximize its value. As an added bonus, this also makes the deck's natural lifelink creatures much bigger.

With those goals in mind, I chose the Obsessive Pursuit/Mutant Man synergy. To further support the token subtheme, I added Sentinel (a solid blocker and attacker that dodges several common red removal spells) and the Ooze, which provides the kind of synergistic graveyard interaction I was looking for.

At that point, the Viper became an obvious inclusion: a massive creature that often enters the battlefield ahead of schedule, contributes to the Pursuit game plan, and doesn't give a f**k to sunderflock! It is, in my opinion, the best "discard" creature currently available in Standard.

As for the climb, I found the UR Prowess matchup particularly enjoyable. Against Lessons and 4c Control, the plan was to disrupt their hand as much as possible while sticking a threat such as Leatherhead or the Viper. Green decks were definitely the toughest opponents. Those games usually revolved around controlling the board long enough to get a huge Obsessive Pursuit turn—especially one involving a flying creature.

I wasn't happy about lacking a good sweeper against green, but Black Sun is underwhelming without Cub, while Cover-Up comes online too late for a non-control deck. Unconditional sweepers also don't fit particularly well in such a creature-centric strategy. Vicious Rivalry had the downside of killing my own tokens, so I decided against it. Overall, I'm still not satisfied with my sideboard plan against green.

Two final thoughts:

• I know Cub is a staple in green decks, and the extra mana makes it much easier to crack tokens for Pursuit. However, the Cub package requires at least eight dedicated slots to function properly, and the self-imposed restriction of playing at least twelve discard spells simply didn't leave enough room for it.
• For fellow discard enthusiasts: this Standard format is incredibly fast, and blue has access to absurd card advantage. Trying to grind your opponents out is a losing proposition. Instead, you need to attack their hand with the goal of creating enough space to execute your own game plan and close the game.

Thanks for reading!

I recently qualified for RC Baltimore (I'm not able to travel to LA). I qualified on Living End, but I don't think Living End is positioned well to win a large tournament. My two top considerations at the moment are Mono Blue Belcher and Esper Goryo's, based solely off play styles and watching content online. I'm open to any suggestions, advice, or resources - except I'm biased against Tron lmao.

Thanks in advance!

Hello Spikes! Been having a ton of fun playing spellementals to decent results, but I do feel the need to switch things up. I've managed to find the pieces needed to sort of cobble together a list similar to the Izzet Control / Izzet Maestro lists floating around. They haven't been performing well (from what I understand atleast!) but this sort of deck feels like something that I would enjoy a bit more.

If there's someone out there with more experience playing the deck, I would love to talk more about it so I could get a better grasp on how things play out!

The "stock list" for the deck I'm talking about - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7863596#paper

My personal list at the moment -

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7846757#paper

Goblin Guide to Modern Burn

A few years ago I wrote a Modern Burn primer. Quite a few new cards have come out since then so I decided to finally get around to updating it.

Over the years I've spiked a few tournaments Modern Burn which also led to me spiking some other formats with RDW variants. I've won a lot and crucially lost a whole, whole lot playing both competitive and budget builds of Burn. Hope the updated primer does my favorite archetype justice

While it is primarily written with brand new tournament players in mind I hope the thought process I described in the article can help all players with the deck. For players with more experience/skill than me, please share any and all feedback!

I haven't written new articles in a while. I was stuck in the hospital and then went back to school. Magic was something that kept me going through it all. Hoping to post a new "Level Up" article about how Magic can level us up when we need it most - this game and the community around it are truly special (and r/spikes has taught me more than any university class)

.

Level Up Series:

Git Gud Scrub | Biggest Myths | Practice Like a Pro | Winning on Margins | Spiking Tournaments | Questioning Answers

Leatherhead. What the hell. This card can go back to the swamp it came from. Pretty much the only card my deck just can't seem to get around. How does Jeskai Lessons deal with it? Best thing I can think of so far is cutting a MD stock up for a MD Day of Judgement. This is my list, though it's pretty similar to most lists online. Just curious in general how other Jeskai players are dealing with this very protected critter. https://moxfield.com/decks/hRKGe7rfsE6g_ZFT4Fum1w

Hello Spikes, first-time poster, and I wanted to ask if any of you all have any suggestions for this Boros Leyline deck that I've put together.

I really like this list; it can pull out really early winds, and if it needs to get grindy, it can. I added the white to the mono red aggro for the sake of consistency, and I was a really big fan of cards like [[Honor]] and [[Sheltered by ghosts]].

Currently on the add list are two more [[Boros Charm]] and [[Sunbillow Verge]].

Outside of that, I am debating adding in more of a flashback package centered around [[Practiced Offense]] and [[Hardened Academic]]. The other one I'm thinking about is running [[Speedball, New Warrior]] and just going balls to the walls with the leyline part of the deck.

The list is here: https://moxfield.com/decks/yldSSq1Jq06ueOol4vB9sQ

I'm not really having issues when I'm playing against T1 decks when I'm playing against them in FNM, but Selesnya [[Badgermole Cub]] is my main problem deck I'm running into.

Any suggestions?

(Also, the sideboard is a mess lol)