The early days of Standard after the rotation are usually adaptation of the deck archetypes prior to the changes. The recent big event of SCG last weekend has shown Mono Red as the winner. This deck is one of the most popular and is not usually affected by the rotation. The deck archetype that I will discuss today though is the one that emerged late in the Jund midrange metagame. It is also one of the Farseek decks, but didn’t utilized Red and instead sticks to just two colors. The deck is Golgari Control or popularly known by the term The Rock.

Here is my Theros Standard version of the deck:

Lands
4 Golgari Guildgate
4 Overgrown Tomb
9 Swamp
8 Forest

Creatures
4 Desecration Demon
4 Lifebane Zombie
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Reaper of the Wilds

Spells
2 Doom Blade
2 Hero’s Downfall
1 Primeval Bounty
2 Putrefy
3 Read the Bones
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Underworld Connections
1 Ultimate Price
2 Vraska the Unseen
1 Whip of Erebos

The creature choices are the same with the pre-rotation list, only losing Thragtusk though. Sylvan Caryatid basically replaces Farseek, and the same time provides early defense vs aggro.

The rest of the Theros additions are Hero’s Downfall, Read the Bones (a better card replacement for Sign in Blood), Whip of Erebos and the new critter Reaper of the Wilds. The reaper may not be that of a threat but having Hexproof activations makes it difficult to answer by most removals.

Another Theros card I would like to include in the main is Thoughtseize, but basing on the top decks in the recent tournaments, it is only viable as a sideboard card.

Basing my sideboard list on my local meta, my options are Pharika’s Cure for Mono Red, Duress for Control and probably additional Underworld Connections and spot removals and maybe edict effects.
If given the time today, I will be testing the list and I am hoping for good results playing with certain matchups.

Until next post.