The big winners so far have been UWR tempo, Junk midrange and Green based devotion with BWR midrange, RUG monsters, BUG delve (not to be confused with BUG Delver) and some stupid combo deck also making space for themselves.
Unsurprisingly, at least to me, all of these decks are based heavily around their three colour creature card of choice and filled in with a supporting act.
These cards are Mantis Rider, Siege Rhino, Butcher of the Horde, Savage Knuckleblade and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. There is obviously more to each deck than just these powerful creatures but these are all very good magic cards that play a big part in enabling these decks.
Green devotion is the outlier here as it is not based on playing a few very good magic cards and supporting them but rather it is based on playing an overwhelming number of bad magic cards and overrunning their opponents with them. Personally I think that the best magic card in mono green is likely Elvish Mystic.
(Yeah ok, Courser durdles pretty well, I get it. I prefer killing my opponent.)
Obviously the format is very young and far from settled. I expect to see a bunch of sweet new decks from the Pro Tour just like we did with PT Theros except hopefully the PT decks won’t be the only decks played for the entire season like they were last time...
Of all the cards in Khans, Mantis Rider was by far the most underrated and undervalued.
It started off at a measly 2$ bulk rare price tag and being called 'probably playable' and 'ok but not great' by the vast majority of sites and reviewers.
Did people not read the card? Did they look at it and go 'oh, UWR are control colours, creature must be bad'?
Whatever the case may be, just in case anyone is still confused, the card is very obviously insane.
The insanity of Mantis Rider aside, it is unfortunately in the wrong colours for the type of deck I like to play so for me, Khans standard became all about this guy:
Now granted, Butcher needs a little bit of work to gain haste but given it's a 5 powered flier, I'm willing to let it slide. The guy hits harder than Stormbreath Dragon or Sarkhan and only costs 4 mana to their 5, even without haste, the card is fine in my books.
I immediately started putting together agro lists that curved into Butchers and my initial attempts had a creature base that looked something like this:
4 Soldier of the Pantheon
4 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Chief of the Edge
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
4 Butcher of the Horde
Which I was supporting with a couple Sarkhans, removal and burn.
The synergy between Butcher and Rabblemaster/Bloodsoaked Champion is very real as both provide an endless supply of food for the demon, more or less for free.
Unfortunately it became very clear that even the best 2 powered 1 drops are not playable in a world where 85% of people are on midrange with at least two thirds of them running the Courser + Caryatid durdle special.
I removed the 1 drops entirely and eventually ended up and the same creature base as the list piloted to a second place open finish by Jon Goss which can be found here:
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=73384
The creature base I was left with was this:
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
4 Butcher of the Horde
4 Stormbreath Dragon
Goblin Rabblemaster can win games on its own and doubles here are food generation for Butcher, Brimaz is a house, Butcher is my boy and Dragon? Well everyone loves dragons.
Originally the rest of my deck looked like this:
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
4 Lightning Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
4 Crackling Doom
2 Mardu Charm
1 Hammer of Purphoros
25 Assorted lands
Towards the end of last season, a few people in my play group were working on a 'RabbleCats' deck which worked on the principle of having Rabblemasters and Brimaz as your creatures and running a ton of removal and burn to clear the path for them to win you the game.
I was not a fan of this deck before rotation as it had an extremely low threat count in a format full of 2 mana removal spells which meant you had issues actually killing your opponent.
Now we are in a 3-4 mana removal spell format and with the addition of Butcher, the time has come for RabbleCats II: The Butchering. (Div came up with the name, blame him ;) )
I'm a red mage at heart and so had initially leaned the deck heavily into burn for removal but Stoke the Flames is actually pretty bad if you're not convoking it and it also doesn't kill the green fatties you need it to so Hero's Downfall is the correct card in that slot.
The Charms played fine but they were a little too cute. Hammer of Purphoros is one of my favourite cards in standard and was an all-star against control in the red devotion decks I played last season but control doesn't really exist (at least yet) in Khans standard and with the low creature count it didn't really do much in a lot of matchups.
Realistically, Thoughtseize is the clear choice for this deck but I was avoiding it because I hate the card and don't like playing with it. In the end I decided I do like winning games so I cut the weak cards and pulled my play set of Thoughtseizes out of my folder.
The final changes where swapping out the Elspeths for Sorins (taken from Jon's list) to lower the curve a little while gaining access to some life gain and finding room for a Chandra as the card is super powerful in midrange fights.
My sideboard ended up a bit different as I tuned it for my local meta and personal play style.
I ended up pulling the mana base entirely from Jon's list as it checked out fine.
The final list I've been running looks like this:
Creatures(14):
4 Butcher of the Horde
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
3 Stormbreath Dragon
3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
Planeswalkers(5):
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
Spells(16):
4 Crackling Doom
4 Hero's Downfall
4 Lightning Strike
4 Thoughtseize
Lands(25):
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
1 Battlefield Forge
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Caves of Koilos
2 Mana Confluence
4 Nomad Outpost
2 Temple of Malice
2 Temple of Silence
1 Temple of Triumph
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sideboard(15):
1 Hushwing Gryff
2 Bile Blight
2 Magma Spray
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Whip of Erebos
1 End Hostilities
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Despise
The deck has been playing very well in testing and I went undefeated with it at the first two sanctioned weekly events I played with it last week as I have finally acquired all the new cards I needed.
I feel the deck is very well positioned to battle against other midrange decks while also having enough early interaction to deal with aggressive decks.
Cracking Doom is a personal favourite and is definitely the Honeybadger removal spell of the format; it doesn't give a fuck. Oh you have pro white? Dead. Indestructible? Still dead. Hexproof? Definitely dead. Nice regen shield brah! You're dead.
Oh, and you take 2.
Seriously, the card is gas, don't leave home without it in a BWR deck.
I wasn't sold on Sorin going in but the man has earned his price tag in my eyes. Sure, he doesn't do anything super broken on paper but in play he supports the rest of the deck extremely well and he's a must kill threat that will win you the game if your opponent decides to ignore it.
Firstly, making a 2/2 flier for -2 is almost worth a card which ensures a 2 for 1 every time unless your opponent crackling dooms you, in which case you are sad but it's still a 1 for 1 trade which is fine.
It is however his +1 that makes Sorin good. Even in this low creature count deck, the +1 swings the game hugely in your favour if you start hitting your opponent for 10-12 point swings with Butcher or Dragon/Sarkhan. The +1 is also super hard to beat with Brimaz for agro decks.
In my match against a mono red agro opponent, I was a reasonably low life and had a Sorin on my otherwise empty board. My opponent decided to attack me with his creature rather than kill the Sorin as he had just scried 2 burn spells to the top with a Magma Jet on my vampire token and would be able to burn me out the following turn but I followed up with a Sarkhan on my next turn, plused Sorin and gained 5 life, firmly sealing the deal.
You also want the life gain against the Junk midrange decks as the drain on Siege Rhinos is something you can't keep up with if you're trading 1 for 1.
Siege Rhino is the reason I've included a Hushwing Gryff in the sideboard as the Helix Rhino sees a lot of play in my local meta and it can be difficult to keep up. Card also has nice interaction with Hornet Queen.
I have been thoroughly enjoying Khans standard so far, even though it is a gigantic midrange grind fest.
One of my matches last week was against a Junk reanimator/dredge deck which I ended up winning 1-0-1 with us going to time in game two.
I didn't draw enough threats to close the game but the reanimator list is super threat light, even more so than my deck, and I was able to keep up with an active Whip of Erebos easily as I had an active Chandra in play for probably 10+ turns that my opponent was unable to deal with through my removal.
The one major concern I had coming into this season was the viability of 3 coloured mana bases but they seem to check out fine.
This deck requires RR, BB and WW and apart from the game when I mulled to 5 with my hand being Strike, Chandra, Rabblemaster, Swamp, Swamp (yes I lost that game), I have not had any significant mana issues.
I've even messed with the Idea of cutting Brimaz for Mantis Rider but that might be pushing it slightly... we'll see...
Anyway, I'll be sticking with the Yemen Midrange list for the foreseeable future and look forward to tuning it further once the meta game fully shapes up and settles.
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