Hello again for another Magic: the Gathering Brother’s War Standard Decks update and today’s archetype in spotlight is the top-tier Esper Raffine deck. As you have remembered, this is the most preferred deck during the recent World Championships and is continue to strive in the metagame. With the entry of The Brother’s War, we check if it benefited from it or not.

The basic strategy of the deck that goes with out-tempo opponents, countering their relevant spells,& prevent them to develop a board. Raffine goes with filtering your draws and at the same time, becomes a clock that is at times difficult to be dealt with. There is a grinding process on this setup, as most value cards will not be drawn on time, such as curving to the Wedding Announcement. Now that most build have a built-in Destroy Enchantment spells, the list has some adjustments to be made.   

Here below is the full decklist from the event/tournament Daily Tournaments @ Hareruya (Japan) and was piloted by Takahashi Ippei:

https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=39778&d=496467&f=ST

Last weekend, another major Magic was the Gathering local tournament for the MTG Iloilo Community. It was another APAC League qualifiers event, with Standard as the primary format. There was a total of 19 players in attendance, me included. Huge prizes are at stake so yeah, we had to send out three players and maximize the decks from the card pool.

I played a version of the Esper Raffine deck, as suggested by my teammate Ace. I was initially not confident that I will play it well as before my deck choices were Jund and Grixis, but Ace assured me that it is the best currently in the format.

You can check the previous night’s MTG Arena ranked playtest here.

After five Swiss rounds, I was able to secure the Top 8 slot with a 3-1-1 record. The last round match was with a teammate who was playing a Mono-Black midrange deck and so we decided to draw to cement our Top 8 spots.

Upon checking the decklists, it was good to see the variance of the decks in the post-ban Standard metagame. Here below are the decklists of the Top 8 finishers.