RecSur (1998) vs. Bant Company (2016) | 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 a battle between two value-heavy creature decks that dominated their Standard formats nearly 20 years apart, with RecSur (Recurring Nightmare with Survival of the Fittest) from 1998 up against Bant Collected Company from 2016! Who is moving on, and who is out of the tournament? Let's get to the video and find out! Oh yeah, you can find all the decklists and the bracket for the Best Standard Deck Ever Tournament here.
RecSur (1998) vs. Bant Company (2016)
Built around the synergy between Survival of the Fittest to tutor up creatures and get them into the graveyard and Recurring Nightmare to reanimate creatures repeatedly, the biggest upside of RecSur is inevitability. If the deck can get its two namesake enchantments online at the same time, it can loop Nekrataal and Man-o'-War for infinite removal, Spike Feeder for lifegain, Spike Weaver to Fog every turn, Orcish Settlers to blow up all the opponent's lands, and Wall of Blossoms to draw cards, before eventually winning the game with a finisher like Verdant Force or Spirit of the Night. While its two build-around payoffs—Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest—are incredibly powerful, the creatures in the deck are very '90s, which isn't a compliment.
RecSur was the dominant deck during the first part of 1998, taking first at Worlds and putting three more players into the Top 8. But this would change quickly toward the end of the year when Urza's Saga was released, bringing with it the historically broken Academy deck and kicking off Combo Winter, which put an end to RecSur's reign.
Dominating during a strange, short period of time in 2016 when Standard actually rotated twice a year, and fueled by its namesake instant Collected Company, Bant CoCo is doing the same thing as RecSur in many ways—trying to generate value with creatures backed by a super powerful non-creature payoff—except nearly 20 years into the future. In comparing the two lists, there are some hilariously direct examples of power creep, like Man-o'-War turning into Reflector Mage.
The deck also features Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, a card that reached $100 during its peak in Standard, causing the prices of Standard decks to spiral to around $1,000, which might be more common today in 2026 but was incredibly rare a decade ago.
Bant Company was a dominant force in Standard for pretty much its entire life in Standard. It broke out at Pro Tour Shadows Over Innistrad in April 2017 by bringing Andrea Mengucci to a Top 8, only to follow this up a few months later at Pro Tour Eldritch Moon by putting two players into the Top 8, including LSV. While nothing was banned in Standard because of the deck, this comes with a couple of asterisks. For one thing, Reflector Mage would be banned in Standard, but this happened after Collected Company had already rotated from the format. Secondly, Wizards later stated that they thought they had made a mistake by not banning Collected Company itself during its run in Standard. The deck was that strong!
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: Tooth and Nail (2005) vs. 4C Copy Cat (2017)
Next week, we have a Tron ramp deck in Tooth and Nail from 2005 against notorious Splinter Twin–style combo deck 4C Copy Cat from 2017!
