I finally was able to join a Standard Friday Night Magic at Pro Rei’s Place last Friday. There were not that many readings to do that week so I was able to put our Prerealease loots and preordered cards to good use by building the Team’s first Standard deck post-rotation. The deck was Selesnya Aggro and we based the list from the long line of 5-0 decks from the recent MTGO Tournament results. The deck can curve out from Llanowar Elves into Thorn Lieutenant and can ramp up to the Conclave Cavalier and Lyra Dawnbringer. Here below is the decklist:

Maindeck
Creatures
4 Conclave Cavalier
3 Emmara, Soul of the Accord
3 Llanowar Elves
3 Lyra Dawnbringer
3 Resplendent Angel
4 Thorn Lieutenant
4 Venerated Loxodon

Spell
4 Conclave Tribunal
4 Flower // Flourish
4 History of Benalia
1 Seal Away
1 Settle the Wreckage

Land
6 Forest
8 Plains
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden

Sideboard
2 Dawn of Hope
2 Ixalan’s Binding
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
2 Knight of Autumn
2 Seal Away
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Vine Mare
2 Vivien Reid

After office that Friday I immediately went to Raoul’s place to sort and build the deck. What I preordered were mostly for this deck archetype so we only had a little issue on which card components were missing. We then sorted out the list by its card type and found out that we already completed the main deck. That was also the same case with the sideboard. I then sleeved the cards, grabbed an empty deck box for the container and headed to Pro Rei’s place. It was almost 6pm and there were a lot of players in the venue registering for FNM and some discussing the new cards from Guilds of Ravnica.

I made sure the sideboard is complete and after a few minutes, the FNM Round 1 started. Here is the summary of the matchups.

Rd 1 vs Mark T (Esper Control) – Won 2-0
Rd 2 vs Tonton (B/W Angel Knights) – Lost 1-2
Rd 3 vs Golgari Undergrowth Player – Won 2-0
Rd 4 vs Nonoy Sia (Jeskai Control) – Won 2-1

The deck finished in third place with a 3-1 record and got rewarded with an FNM foil promo card and one Guilds of Ravnica booster pack, despite all of the play mistakes I made. I am pretty rusty considering that I played a new Standard deck even reading all of the cards beforehand. I seemed to forgot the interactions such as the one with the Resplendent Angel with a +1/+1 counter wherein I forgot to play Lyra before attacking, which should be a pretty good board swing advantage as I get to gain 5 lives and one 4/4 Angel token. Anyhow I will redeem myself on with that by doing playtest sessions with the teammates starting this week.

Overall I am still impressed with the deck’s power to overcome other aggro decks backed with a good sideboard plan. While the Mono Red matchup is still the one to consider, we would expect a lot of them in the local metagame because of its consistency and the good matchup with control decks. I cannot gauge it for now without the actual playtest but surely we will know it pretty soon enough.