Black Lotus Control (1994) vs. Simic Oko (2019) | Best Standard Deck Ever Top 64

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next match in the Best Standard Deck Ever Tournament! This week, we have the oldest deck in the field—running a full set of the Power Nine—in Black Lotus Control against a deck fueled by a planeswalker banned in basically every format in Simic Oko! Oh yeah, you can find all the decklists and the bracket for the Best Standard Deck Ever Tournament here.

Lotus Control vs. Simic Oko

Black Lotus Control is the oldest and one of the most interesting decks in the field. The deck won Magic's first-ever World Championship way back in 1994. Its primary power comes from getting to play many of the most broken cards ever made, including a full set of the Power Nine and some brutal stax pieces like Winter Orb, Stasis, Meekstone, and Armageddon. But many of its best cards are just one-ofs because they showed up on the first-ever Restricted List published in January 1994. (In the early days, cards weren't really banned, outside of the ante mechanic for legal reasons, and instead were restricted so you could only play a single copy in your deck.) 

The deck's biggest challenge is that its finishers all come from the early '90s. Being able to make a ton of mana with Black Lotus and the Moxen is great, but the deck is literally ramping into Serra Angel as its finisher, which looks pretty quaint compared to the finishers that would be printed in coming years. Still, playing a bunch of Moxen and then blowing up all the lands with Armageddon or locking them down with Stasis gives the deck a chance to steal wins against many modern archetypes.

Simic Oko, or Simic Food, was a historically dominant deck in 2019. Throne of Eldraine was released during a crossroads in Magic's history. The set brought with it the launch of Magic Arena and also marked the start of the FIRE design era, two things that many players believe contributed to the set's absurd power level. While many Eldraine cards were strong, the strongest by far was the new planeswalker Oko, Thief of Crowns, which quickly surpassed Jace, the Mind Sculptor for the title of best planeswalker ever. 

Six weeks after Throne of Eldraine was released, Mythic Championship VI took place, and a record-breaking 69% of players ran Oko, Thief of Crowns in their deck. The deck's plan is to get its namesake planeswalker on the battlefield on Turn 2, with the help of Gilded Goose and Once Upon a Time to find Gilded Goose, and trust that the planeswalker would take over the game, which it usually did thanks to its extremely high loyalty and its ability to not just make a steady stream of threats by turning Food tokens into 3/3 Elk but also disrupt the opponent's gameplay by turning their best permanents into Elk. Eventually, the deck would stick a Nissa, Who Shakes the World, another planeswalker that was pretty busted during its time in Standard, to double its mana. Then, if it didn't win with the Elk, it could play a massive [[Mass Manipulation] to steal the opponent's board or cast a huge Hydroid Krasis to refill its hand and gain a bunch of life.

After its record-breaking performance at Mythic Championship VI, the deck was emergency-banned just 10 days later, with Oko, Thief of Crowns, Once Upon a Time, and sideboard staple Veil of Summer all being banned in Standard less than two months after Oko's release. Over the next year, Oko, Thief of Crowns would be banned in Pioneer, then Modern, and then finally Legacy, while also winning the Vintage Eternal Weekend tournament by turning Black Lotus into a 3/3 Elk. The card's that busted.

Updated Bracket

Each week, we'll update the bracket with the results of last week's match. (Today's matchup won't be included until next week, to avoid spoiling the results if you haven't watched the video yet.)

Next Week: Academy (1998) vs. Delver (2012)

Next week features one of the most dominant combo decks in Magic's history—Academy, which caused the notorious Combo Winter back in 1998—against Delver, a tempo deck that emerged as the best deck in Standard back in 2012 thanks to the power of a new mechanic: double-faced cards, as highlighted by its namesake Delver of Secrets. Which deck is moving on, and which is going home? Come back next Monday to find out!