Welcome back to another Ideas Unbound. Last week we looked at the mechanics of Theros. This week, we are going to delve a little deeper looking at the cards themselves and how to use them.



Before we begin, though, I have a quick announcement. Those of you who read Brad's Thirst for Knowledge article earlier this week know that he is leaving the Arena to pursue other interests. I am taking over his role and will be running the blog going forward. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog, please send them to me. I will have contact information at the bottom of this article as usual.

Ok, now let’s get back to Magic. This week, I was going to go through the spoiler and just talk about individual cards and their impact in Standard. However, I don’t really think that is a meaningful exercise if we don’t take in the whole context of Standard. What is useful is looking at how the pieces fit together. Today we are going to look at a couple of potential decklists for the post-rotation Standard format.

I am also aware that the full spoiler is not yet released, so these lists are very likely to change. However, we can start to see some potential synergies and use these as stepping stones for when the set does get fully spoiled. I am still planning on attending the SCG Invitational in Indianapolis as well as Grand Prix Louisville, and these are a couple of the lists I will start my testing with.

WU Control

The first list I have here is a WU control list. This is more of a tap out control list choosing to use a proactive strategy as opposed to a more permission based reactive strategy.

4 Omenspeaker
2 Heliod, God of the Sun
2 Prognostic Sphinx
2 Aetherling

3 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

4 Azorius Charm
2 Cyclonic Rift
4 Detention Sphere
4 Divination
4 Supreme Verdict
3 Sphinx’s Revelation

4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Azorius Guildgate
10 Island
7 Plains

The idea behind this deck is to control aggressive decks in the early game while setting up very resilient endgame. You will notice a lack of countermagic in the deck. With this list we are trying to be proactive. It is very difficult to be reactive in the early stages of a format, because you don’t know exactly what you need to be reactive to.

Omenspeaker is great way to smooth out your draws in the early game while keeping any 2 power attackers at bay. It also serves to chomp block against bigger attackers to preserve life total. Detention Sphere and Azorius charm help defend against early aggression, and Detention Sphere is one of the better ways to deal with Gods when they aren’t creatures.

With Think Twice leaving the format, we have to settle for Divination if we want early card draw for now. It’s possible, we may get a better draw spell spoiled soon, but if not, this is what we have for now. We do still get Sphinx’s Revelation to refill our hands and pad our life total in the mid to late game though.

Jace plays very well with our Omenspeakers allowing them to keep bigger threats at bay until we can find a Supreme Verdict or Detention Sphere. He also is a great source of card advantage if we can keep him alive. I think Jace has been underplayed in the previous metagame, but I think that will change going forward. His abilities are all very relevant and I think it will be easier to keep him alive now since most of the good flash and haste creatures are leaving.

We have several good finishers here to work with. Heliod is basically an indestructible source of creatures. We have almost no way of hitting 5 devotion to white in this deck, so he is immune to our Supreme Verdicts. And the 2/1 tokens he produces will be very effective at closing out a game once we have established control. Elspeth is also a great source of creatures, also serving as an additional sweeper when necessary. And of course Aetherling is just impossible to remove while eating away large chunks of your opponent’s life total.

GW Agrro

This next list is a basic look at a possible Green White aggro deck. We’ve seen a few of these decks popping lately and I forsee them seeing more play post rotation.


4 Elvish Mystic
4 Soldier of the Pantheon
4 Fleecemane Lion
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Boon Satyr
4 Advent of the Wurm
3 Archangel of Thune

2 Ajani, Caller of the Pride

2 Rootborn Defenses
2 Selesnya Charm

4 Temple Garden
10 Forest
9 Plains

As you can see, the general idea of this deck is to play guys and turn them sideways. We start with either an Elvish Mystic that can accelerate us to our 3-drops or a Soldier of the Pantheon which hits hard for a 1-drop and can gain us the advantage in a race against other multicolor aggro decks.

In case we don’t hit an Elvish Mystic, we have Fleecemane Lion and Voice as our two drops. The Fleecemane Lion gives us a lot of power and can be really good if we have to go into the late game. Voice of Resurgence isn’t that powerful on its own, but it does put a large hindrance on our opponent and gives us resilience against removal spells.

Both of our three drops are 4 power. The Smiter will be especially useful in a world without Cavern of Souls cause it guarantees a resolved creature against the counterspell decks. I have high hopes for the Satry and I think he will be really good for this type of deck. If you don’t have other creatures, he comes down and hits hard, especially with flash, allowing you to bypass Sorcery speed removal for a turn. Or, if it’s later in the game, and you have the 5 mana, the bestow ability allows you to surprise your opponent and create some resilience.

We top our curve with Advent and Archangel of Thune. This allows us to go big even after a Supreme Verdict or other sweeper. Plus, the Archangel has potential synergy with the Soldier of the Pantheon. And the Advent plays well with the Rootborn Defenses, which is another answer we have to Supreme Verdict.

As of this writing there are still 100+ cards to be spoiled, so it’s possible neither of these decks will actually be viable options, but I don’t think that’s the case. I’m pretty sure most of the aggro decks are going to want to be one or two color to avoid messy mana issues. Midrange and Control decks can probably stray into a third color pretty easily, but we have to remember that Burning Earth still exists.

We should have the full spoiler on Monday, so next week, I will do my usual prerelease primer and we can evaluate the potential limited format that Theros brings us. And remember to contact me with any questions, comments, or suggestions about my article or the site itself. We here at the Arena really do appreciate each of you that takes the time to read our articles, and we will endeavor to keep creating content for you.

Eddie Walker
@praethus on Twitter
praethus on MTGO
praethus at gmail dot com