What fascinates me when building Magic: the Gathering Standard decks is the color splashing that they do to be efficient in countering other metagame decks. Adding a third color goes beyond the traditional build with the minimal drawback of not getting the right lands for example. In today’s Standard AFR deck feature, we have a Gruul Aggro list that went “dark” by having access to Black’s strong spot removals. Not to mention the main deck Valki, God of Lies.

The deck was played by Dustyn Aranda Rojas and finished in 1st place in the SCG Tour Online – Satellite #8 @ Star City Games wherein the Top 8 was mostly composed of aggro decks.

Check out the full Dark Gruul Standard deck below.

21 LANDS (25)
4 Blightstep Pathway
4 Cragcrown Pathway
4 Darkbore Pathway
2 Den of the Bugbear
3 Forest
3 Lair of the Hydra
1 Mountain

28 CREATURES
4 Bonecrusher Giant
4 Edgewall Innkeeper
2 Embereth Shieldbreaker
1 Gemrazer
3 Goldspan Dragon
4 Jaspera Sentinel
4 Lovestruck Beast
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
2 Valki, God of Lies

4 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Shatterskull Smashing

7 OTHER SPELLS
3 Embercleave
4 Esika’s Chariot

SIDEBOARD
2 Burning Hands
1 Gemrazer
2 Klothys, God of Destiny
3 Ox of Agonas
3 Ray of Enfeeblement
2 Redcap Melee
2 The Akroan War

Reference: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=31890&f=ST