First Impessions of Eldraine Standard

Thanks to the #MTGEldraine early access event, I was able to play with a ton of decks and get a general idea of what I like and where the power levels of everything was. Today, I'm going to be talking about the few decks that I enjoyed playing and I'm posting the lists with upgrades. 

With what I assume to be an Oko, Thief of Crowns, Simic Flash, and probably some amount of Knights or Red deck thanks to Bonecrusher Giant meta, I want a ton of removal for week one. I'm trying Mystical Dispute as it gives us a cheap answer that can deal with Simic Flash and Oko. The deck performed with a solid win rate. The only deck that could be a problem is if the food and troll deck takes off. I can't imagine me playing a deck that doesn't have black in it with ELD's release as the removal is just way too key. Don't be surprised if I play a single copy of Noxious Grasp in the main deck to deal with all the Questing Beast. Speaking of Questing Beast....

Golgari Midrange

Golgari has the absolute best creatures in standard. I know we're very clunky as we're heavy with a ton of four drops but even with that, the deck just drops too many efficient threats that are tough to answer. Right now in standard, we don't have a ton of efficient two mana removal spells like Cast Down. Without something like that, decks will have to turn to Murderous Rider and with how many threats we'll have, we can definitely force our opponents to pick which threat they are more concerned with. Even better, Garruk, Cursed Huntsman has definitely started growing on me as the 0 ability that makes two wolves is just too sweet. If I were to play some green based midrange deck, I'd probably start somewhere near this list.

In the next segment, I'll be lightly touching up on cards that have let me down or have surpassed expectations to give you all a view of cards I'm avoiding week 1 and cards I will gladly dump all my wildcards into!

The Bad

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These were the cards I played to a medium at best result. Drown in the Loch is way too slow to get to work in standard. Way too often my opponents were able to just play cards with a mana cost that surpassed what we could counter or remove and it made it feel like we were always a few turns behind with the card. Its obviously really nice as we get into the late game as it paired quite well with Enter the God Eternals but otherwise, this card usually doesn't become useful until after turn 5.

Stormfist Crusader just isn't aggressive enough. The menace and card draw is great but my issue was giving my opponents a card. The downside of this was just too much for me to play the card. Maybe if I were to play this it would be out of the sideboard of a Rakdos Midrange deck but I feel like there are better cards to be playing in this slot like Robber of the Rich which is easier to cast and kind of draws us a card anyways.

Outlaw's Merriment has been compared to a card like Assemble the Legion and after playing with and against it, it doesn't feel like it has the inevitability like Assemble did as we can actually race against Merriment. The fact that it cost four and doesn't immediately do anything for our board is a huge knock on the card. I think if the card created a token as we moved into combat, it would be significantly better.

The Good

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Garruk, Cursed Huntsman is insane. The 0 ability creating two wolves was way too much to keep up with. The viability of the card was dependent on whether its better than Liliana, Dreadhorde General or Ugin, the Ineffable and after playing against it and with it, I think it definitely holds its own. Things that would keep this card from being played is an extremely fast meta but I feel like the format will be very midrange which this card will definitely excel in.

Murderous Rider is pretty much the brand new Heros Downfall but it has the upside of turning itself into a 2/3 creature with Lifelink which shuffles back into your deck if it were to meet it's demise. The creature not dying to a shock was extremely relevant and even better, it makes opposing Teferi, Time Ravelers work a bit harder as bouncing this back to the hand is a bad time. Upon it being spoiled, we already knew the card was good and after seeing what decks are running around, I think this will become a staple in standard and probably a card you'll play four of due to the lack of efficient removal for some creatures and being able to hit a planeswalker is even better.

Bonecrusher Giant fits perfectly into the Rakdos Aggro and Red Decks. Its a burn spell that draws you into a 4/3 that hits our opponents for two if it gets targeted by spells. It even fills out our curve going into turn three and that's really all you can ask for.

The REALLY good

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I feel these cards don't need much explanation as we already know how good these cards are but after playing them, they're even better than we thought. These cards feel like the safe crafts to spend your wild cards on right out the gate. The biggest thing is probably Oko, Thief of Crowns as it was able to turn my God-Eternal Kefnet into a vanilla 3/3. Oko single handedly dunks on all the God Eternals, Cavalier cycle, and any of the Cauldrons if they were to take off. 

Conclusion

By the time this article goes up, we'll already have a week 1 event to give us more details but this new standard looks to be very Midrange heavy. After losing a ton of sets due to rotation, I'm excited to see what people come up with as I hope there's a new deck that spawns a new archetype or something. All the decklists above aren't final and I'll be testing a lot more after I get back from Twitch Con but I can assure you that the three mythics mentioned under "The Really Good" will show up and are safe cards to spend your hard earned wildcards or dollars on! Thanks for reading and I'll see you on the ladder!

-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger

Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com