Outpost Siege’s ability to draw cards is also contingent on not playing highly situational cards. Siege plus burn is a win condition on its own if you get in for damage early and rely on a steady stream of burn to close out the game. It’s particularly good with cheap removal like Chained to the Rocks and burn spells. Outpost Siege lets you take the control role against aggressive decks and even mirror matches, creating inevitability. Outpost Siege helps provide long-game card advantage in much harder to answer package than Chandra, Pyromaster. The issue previously was that the deck had no card selection or form of card advantage, which puts you at the mercy of mana flood or screw. RW was a good deck before Fate Reforged, but Outpost Siege put the deck over the top. Casting a Rabblemaster or Outburst and killing Courser of Kruphix in the same turn helps you gain a substantial tempo advantage. Note that Stoke the Flames in concert with Hordeling Outburst or Goblin Rabblemaster also helps play a similar role to Chained to the Rocks. I personally don’t even love the inclusion of Brimaz in this deck-something I’ll get to later. Chained to the Rocks is out of reach even for most R/W-based decks, requiring the deck to consist of mostly red cards and have very few requirements of other colors. Chained to the Rocks lets you do both in the same turn.īut unconditional one-mana removal is very rare and Chained to the Rocks comes at a steep price: putting a huge strain on the number of basic Mountains in your mana base. Typically in this format you get the choice between removing an opposing threat or adding your own (something that highly favors the player on the play). This allows a RW player to play two highly impactful spells in the same turn, taking control of the game from a tempo perspective. Usually, if a player stumbles through this midgame stage, they might end up too far behind moving into the late game, because their spells are too inefficient to catch up.Ĭhained to the Rocks fundamentally breaks this paradigm by answering a 3- or 4-mana creature for only one mana. The best cards in Standard right now all cost between 3 and 5 mana, so most games of Standard are defined by each player developing their board (or removing the opponent’s) at a rate of one card per turn through the midgame. The most important card that differentiates RW Midrange from other Standard decks is Chained to the Rocks. This was the best-performing version of RW from Grand Prix Seville, with a record of 12-3: These aren’t crazy numbers, but if you sit down for round one of your local PPTQ, RW is the single most likely pairing. In fact, there were 0 copies in the Top 8 of GP Seville, although close to 20% of the remaining players who cashed chose to play RW. This is honestly a good sign for Standard, since it’s not like RW has been dominating the Top 8s of these events. Magic Online results, Open Series events, and Standard Grand Prix suggest that a big percentage of the field has chosen to play RW. ![]() The early days of Fate Reforged Standard have seen RW Midrange emerge as the most popular deck. My hope is that the best deck in Standard changes often enough that I get to explore new strategies early and often. In future installments, I plan on looking at the rest of the metagame’s reaction to the deck, which strategies and cards are good against it, and how the deck has changed to combat this reaction and the presence of the mirror. As a new top dog emerges, I’ll introduce it and familiarize readers with the ins and outs of the deck. In this column, I’ll explore the evolution of the most popular deck in Standard over time. While I’m always searching for that reason, I think it’s important to have the deck in your back pocket should you decide it’s the best choice on any given weekend. You need a good reason to not play the default best deck. I know many players consciously try to avoid playing popular decks, but I use them as a starting point. The Standard metagame often revolves around the idea of “the best deck.” Whether there is a strategy with a clear best winning percentage-or simply a deck that is the most popular, “the best deck” should always be on your radar.
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