As the Wonderbrewers group continue to check on the possibility of a breakout counter deck for the current Standard metagame of Vampires, Scapeshift Zombies and Esper Control, I have come up with a set of check list or guidelines in the qualification of the new deck builds. it is somewhat funny to be based on the efficiency but then I had to reason out that these scenarios listed are to be dealt with by the deck.

See the checklist below:

• Can it deal with a Turn-two Hero and its Human tokens?
• Can it survive the early aggression of the Vampires deck?
• Can it kill off a hasty Rotting Regisaur?
• Can it survive the Burn spells to the face from Mono Red aggro?
• Can it deal with a turn-three Nissa, Who Shakes the World and its 3/3 Elemental land?
• Can it race against a Boros Feather deck with online mana for pump spells?
• Can it recover after a Kaya’s Wrath?
• Can it cope up against multiple use of Oath of Kaya?

This is so far that I can come up as deck guidelines for now. Feel free to message me if you have something that I missed to include. See the comment box below.

As for the Standard metagame decks and updates, you can check it on this website page. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/standard#paper

As I was doing my research for the Standard deck brew that I am planning in a previous blog post, I came upon the Hareruya website and recalled that the Japanese players are well known for a lot of deck brews in the past such as the Goblin Bidding deck. The website’s decklist page has one column for its rogue decks and one in particular under that category is this decklist that I am sharing today. I named the deck as Drakuseth Reanimator based on Drakuseth, Maw of Flames as the card spotlight in the deck. It can be reanimated in an earlier turns via Bond of Revival or can be hard casted in the late game.

See the full decklist below.

Maindeck
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
5 Island
4 Blood Crypt
3 Dragonskull Summit
4 Watery Grave
4 Drowned Catacomb
2 Field of Ruin

2 Lazav, the Multifarious
4 Tomebound Lich
3 Rotting Regisaur
1 Etali, Primal Storm
4 Drakuseth, Maw of Flames

1 Search for Azcanta
4 Thought Erasure
2 Tyrant’s Scorn
4 Chart a Course
3 Ashiok, Dream Render
2 Cry of the Carnarium
1 Ritual of Soot
4 Bond of Revival
1 Ugin, the Ineffable

Sideboard
3 Duress
3 Cerulean Drake
1 The Elderspell
1 Fry
1 Entrancing Melody
2 Noxious Grasp
3 Flame Sweep
1 Hostage Taker

So I finally decided to participate in the Gameswalker 50k Standard event in Bacolod city and as of this time, the tournament preparation is very abrupt. That means we barely have a month to brew, research, playtest and do other stuff needed for a successful finish in the tournament.

To detail the brewing process, we look into old or referred to as unconventional deck builds to combat the current metagame in Standard. In our chatgroup Wonderbrewers, we discuss some of the decks changes if needed and also made some playtest while continuously looking at other options. We have some guide questions such as “Can it defeat Esper Hero?” “Can it defeat Vampires?”, gauging specific cards for that match and so we can grade its performance pre-playtest.

So far we had one major deck on spotlight, which I may share the decklist soon. It got our curiosity on the card components that can deal with the relevant matchups.

For now, we will do further testing of its features and again its performance against Top Tier decks in the metagame while taking notes of the results.

That is a wrap for now, stay tuned for updates.