Standard: 5 New Lists for the Banned Decks

The bans are here, and with them, seven cards left Standard last Monday: Abuelo’s Awakening, Cori-Steel Cutter, Heartfire Hero, Hopeless Nightmare, Monstrous Rage, This Town Ain’t Big Enough and Up the Beanstalk — in essence, what this intervention brought was a complete overhaul in the format’s Metagame, removing basically all the pillars that defined the top tiers.

As players explore new lists, one question that remains for those who dedicated themselves to decks like Izzet Prowess, Mono Red Aggro and Esper Bounce is whether these strategies are still viable after losing some of their key cards. In this article, we look to evaluate how these archetypes could transform in the coming weeks, with some decklists that serve as a starting point for them.

Mono Red Aggro

Without Heartfire Hero, it's hard to justify keeping Manifold Mouse just to interact with Emberheart Challenger, not to mention that Monstrous Rage enabled a pseudo-Embercleave with Manifold and now that option is also gone, so we're going for a more "traditional" Mono Red Aggro list, with more Burn and less pump, combined with fast and aggressive creatures.

This time, we're betting on Sunspine Lynx at the maindeck. The bans will make the mirror match less common and other archetypes will feel safe with greedier mana bases, allowing us to start with a quick beatdown to pressure the opponent's life total and, from the fourth turn onwards, threaten to end games with Sunspine, or a combination of it with Wild Ride after a Sunfall, or Ultima.

Boros Mice

For those who want to continue playing with Manifold Mouse, going for Boros Mice is probably the best solution. We lose Heartfire Hero and Monstrous Rage, but we keep Flowerfoot Swordmaster and find space for Cheeky House-Mouse as an extra one-drop that also works as a pump and evasion.

Although it doesn't offer the same permanent pump as Heartfire Hero, Swordmaster increases the power of all mice and, with its copy with Offspring, we can have some explosive turns with Opera Love Song or other spells that target two creatures at once.

Izzet Prowess

Losing Cori-Steel Cutter was a lethal blow to Izzet Prowess, but it still has a solid base of spells and creatures between Drake Hatcher and Vivi Ornitier if we want to go more for value or Slickshot Show-Off if we would like to follow a more aggressive line.

Astrologian’s Planisphere is probably the closest thing we have to Cutter right now, and the permanent power boost is essential to either expand the mana generated by Vivi Ornitier or to turn Drake Hatcher into a more relevant threat. We also bet on Wild Ride as our "pseudo-Dark Ritual" with Vivi or to create more tokens with Drake Hatcher.

Esper Bounce

Without This Town Ain’t Big Enough, we have a good opportunity to test the potential of Dark Confidant in Bounce lists, with a more aggressive line with more copies of Spiteful Hexmage, since we now have up to twelve targets that we don’t mind putting its token on.

With so many one-drops and two-drops, it's easy to increase the number of creatures who Bounce, but we can trade some copies of Fear of Isolation or Sunpearl Kirin for Kaito, Bane of Nightmares to generate more value in longer games, but with the risk of losing a lot of life with Dark Confidant in a list that already suffers from concessions of losing life with pain lands.

Naya Overlords

Up the Beanstalk is an irreplaceable card for Ramp lists and other archetypes that used it, and one possible route for Domain players is to set the stage for rotation with Yuna, Hope of Spira, whose ability and interaction with enchantments is the closest we'll get to Zur, Eternal Schemer when Dominaria United leaves the format.

In this list, we're going for a Midrange-Combo plan where we want to interact with the opponent in the first few turns, discarding an Overlord to bring it back with Yuna, Hope of Spira, which grants Trample, Ward and Lifelink for them during your turn — this interaction is even more important with Overlord of the Boilerbilges, which turns into a Warleader's Helix when it comes into play or attacks.

We could consider including Summon: Knights of Round or even a more Ramp-oriented and/or multicolor version, but the Naya version is probably the best starting point for the archetype today, without that, it depends too much on the graveyard to function.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!