Limited: M14 Common Instants

Creature pump:

Get ready to play around this thing.

W Pay No Heed
1W Show of Valor

2W Fortify

1R Thunder Strike

G Giant Growth
G Ranger's Guile

Removal:
WW Celestial Flare
1U Disperse
2U Frost Breath
B Wring Flesh
R Shock
2RR Chandra's Outrage
1G Plummet

Flash creatures:
B Vile Rebirth
3U Nephalia Seakite

Counterspells:
1U Negate
1U Essence Scatter

1UU Cancel

Other things:
1B Altar's Reap

R Smelt

G Fog

1G Naturalize

(To scan card texts quicker, consult this Gatherer search + Nephalia Seakite.)

Modern: Composition of Melira Pod

Using decks from the last two Modern GPs, this pre-Kansas PE, and a random LSV 4-0 list, here's a grid comparing recent Melira Pod maindecks:

Breakdown of a normal Melira deck:

• 23 lands (3 Gavony Township, 8 fetch, 8 dual, and 4 basic)
• 8 mana creatures (4 Birds of Paradise, 3 Deathrite Shaman, 1 Wall of Roots)
• 7 creature tutors (4 Birthing Pod, 3 Chord of Calling)
• 6 persisty creatures (2 Voice of Resurgence, 4 Kitchen Finks)
• 10 combo creatures (1 Viscera Seer, 2 Melira, 1 Cartel Aristocrat, 1 Witness, 1 Metamorph, 2 Redcap, 1 Ranger of Eos, 1 Reveillark)
• 3 disrupty creatures (1 Qasali Pridemage, 1 Spellskite, 1 Orzhov Pontiff)
• 2 disruption spells (Abrupt Decay or Thoughtseize)

This totals 59 / 60 slots that are quite consistent in all the Melira Pod decks listed.

Distinctions of certain Melira Pod lists:
- Dan Macdonald's list predates the "Pardee template," missing Voice of Resurgence among other stuff.
- The 60th card in Sam Pardee's list is the 2nd Viscera Seer. Pardee has Abrupt Decay instead of Thoughtseize main.
- Pyromaniac4290 played Pardee's 60 cards from GP Portland.
- LSV's version played the 4th Deathrite Shaman over the Wall of Roots, 3rd and 4th Voice of Resurgence over Spellskite and Qasali Pridemage. He played Thoughtseize instead of Abrupt Decay. His 60th card was a Varolz.
- VFS played 2 Abrupt Decay and 2 Thoughtseize, cutting a Deathrite Shaman. He also ran the 2nd Viscera Seer over the Cartel Aristocrat and an Entomber Exarch over the Ranger of Eos.

Distinctions of Manfield's list:

- Dual land over the 3rd Gavony Township.

- Abrupt Decay instead of Thoughtseize.

- 60th card was the 3rd Voice of Resurgence.

Melira Pod decks are all pretty similar right now.

Breakdown of Ari Lax's Kiki Pod deck:

• 23 lands (2 Township, 7 fetch, 12 duals, 2 basic)
• 9 mana creatures (4 Birds of Paradise, 4 Noble Hierarch, 1 Wall of Roots)
• 6 creature machines (4 Pod, 2 Domri Rade)
• 9 combat creatures (2 Voice of Resurgence, 1 Tarmogoyf, 3 Kitchen Finks, 3 Restoration Angel)
• 8 combo creatures (1 Phantasmal Image, 1 Fauna Shaman, 2 Deceiver Exarch, 1 Redcap, 2 Kiki-Jiki, 1 Zealous Conscripts)
• 5 disrupty creatures (1 Spellskite, 1 Qasali Pridemage, 1 Izzet Staticaster, 1 Linvala, 1 Glen Elendra Archmage)

This is the same template but basically all different spells, beyond the Bird-Finks-Pod shell. Two big differences: Noble Hierarch instead of Deathrite Shaman, Restoration Angel instead of Chord of Calling.

Standard: Composition of Jund decks

Here's a table of successful Jund decks over the last couple months. The four decks on the left are Reid Duke from GP Miami, Paul Cheon and Jose Francisco Silva from this PE, and Owen Turtenwald from his last Jund article. (The other decks in the table are pre-Voice of Resurgence.)

Here are the common elements of our four "up-to-date" Jund maindecks:

   25 lands
    (20 duals + 2 Kessig Wolf Run + 3 other)
   7 "small spells" (4 Farseek + Arbor Elf / Rakdos Keyrune / Ground Seal)
   14 creatures
    (2 Olivia + 4 Huntmaster + 4 Thragtusk + 2 Garruk Primal Hunter + 2 other)
   7 removal spells
    (1 Tragic Slip + 2 Putrefy + 4 others)
   3 Bonfire of the Damned
   1 Rakdos' Return

This formula sums to 57 slots; most of the decks spend the last 3 wildcard slots on "big spells" -- the last Bonfire, extra Olivia or Rakdos' Return, or the potentially-big Mizzium Mortars.

We can say 25 lands / 7 small spells / 7 removal / 21 big spells is the usual formula for standard Jund.

Duke's Miami deck follows this formula the closest:
- His 2 "other" creatures were Vampire Nighthawks.
- His 4 "other" removal were 2 Pillar of Flame, 1 Abrupt Decay, and a 2nd Tragic Slip.
- His 3 wildcard spells were Bonfire #4, Olivia #3, and Rakdos' Return #2.
- His manabase was 22 duals, 2 Wolf Run, and 1 Cavern of Souls.
- His "small spells" were the 4 Farseek, 2 Ground Seal, and 1 Rakdos Keyrune.

Of the four decks we're looking at, Cheon's is the outlier -- it plays 2 Liliana, 2 Arbor Elf, and 3 Forest, which are all "throwbacks" to pre-Voice of Resurgence.

The patterns are a bit different if we look at players' 75s instead of their 60s:

Counting sideboards, our Jund decks all need access to 3 Ground Seal, 2 Vampire Nighthawk, 2 Liliana, and 3 Pillar of Flame, plus some mixture of 5 discard spells. The average sideboard is mostly taken up by filling out those quotas, with a few slots left for big creatures or extra removal or Underworld Connections. Our formula of 25 / 7 / 7 / 21 expands to something like 25 / 10 / 11 / 24, leaving only 5 flexible spaces for sweet sideboard tech.

Reid Duke is really running a "modest" Jund deck here -- he skips out on stuff like Sire of Insanity and Mizzium Mortars, but he includes all 4 copies of Ground Seal and Tragic Slip. The most glamourous thing about the deck was probably that it had 2 Ruric Thar instead of Vraska or whatever, but the Ruric Thars never even made it into the text coverage.

Probably the "big mana" engine makes sideboarding more important with Jund than with other standard decks -- if only 28/60 of the deck is action spells, swapping out 6 cards can make a big difference in what the deck does (unlike in a deck with 40 creatures).

Standard: GP Miami Grinder Scoreboard

Tallying up the undefeated grinder lists:
  5 Reanimator (2 Four-Colour, 2 Junk, 1 Human)
  3 Big Naya
  2 Jund
  1 UWR Resto
  1 UW Resto
  1 BWr Aristocrats
  1 Jund Aggro

- Benjamin Battle's UW Flash ran a Runechanter's Pike for 12 creatures + 2 Moorland Haunts. He only had 2 Supreme Verdict in the deck, with another 2 Supreme Verdict and 2 Terminus in the sideboard.

- Trevor Holmes' Naya had 4 Farseek and 3 Domri Rade co-existing in the maindeck somehow, with a creature curve of 4-4-4-9-3-2.

- Michael Brady's Jund had 2 Zhur-Taa Druid. Robert Pompa's Jund had 2 Thundermaw Hellkite and 1 Staff of Nin.

- Joey Dial's Jund Aggro is the 4 Spike Jester deck that's shown up online. It has a creature curve 8-18-0-8, with 6 burn spells and 20 land, and the obligatory 4 Domri Rade in the sideboard.

Fun: Simon Goertzen introduces himself

A minute or two into this Turbofog(!) video:

"For those that don't know what I'm doing, I'm Simon Goertzen, I won a Pro Tour once."

Goertzen has a terrific haircut here, and he prints his name across the bottom in a font straight from the MS Wordart Truck:

Running his two names together leaves a particular Magic-stream slur between the "si" and the "ertzen."

EDIT: Goertzen chooses to draw first in game 2, which is a pretty cool play with TurboFog.

"I'm playing this because it's April Fools."

He also hits these three cards with Jace, Architect of Thought, when he -2's to dig for a land:

Standard: Xathrid Necromancer Aristocrats for future standard

From the M14 spoiler, Xathrid Necromancer seems like a really good constructed card.

Rotlung Reanimator was amazing in standard about ten years ago -- just for fun, here's a Zombie deck that won French Nationals in 2003:

Now, here is a deck played by megafone and ar7ic that can put many Humans into the graveyard and can also make good use of Zombie tokens:

Human Aristocrats
4 Champion of the Parish, 4 Doomed Traveler
4 Cartel Aristocrat, 4 Knight of Infamy, 2 Skirsdag High Priest
3 Silverblade Paladin, 2 Lingering Souls
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
2 Zealous Conscripts
5 removal
2 varying slots
24 lands (including 4 Cavern of Souls)

This deck uses Champion of the Parish and Cavern of Souls for synergy with the "Human" creature type on stuff like Doomed Traveler and Cartel Aristocrat. It goes light on normal "token combo stuff" (with 0 Blood Artist, 0 Sorin, and only 2 Lingering Souls), instead playing "pump creatures" (Knight of Infamy and Silverblade Paladin) to attack with a giant Champion of the Parish or a giant flying Vampire.

Xathrid Necromancer fits this deck's strength -- it is a Human; it cashes in on Humans; and it makes lots of tokens. Here's a sketch of an all-in Aristocrats combo deck for summer standard, using the same WBr Humans mana-base:

Future Human Aristocrats
4 Champion of the Parish, 4 Doomed Traveler
4 Cartel Aristocrat, 4 Blood Artist, 2 Gather the Townsfolk, 3 Skirsdag High Priest
4 Xathrid Necromancer, 4 Lingering Souls
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat, 2 Sorin
3 removal
24 lands

This weakens the mana-fixing power of Cavern of Souls a lot, so it might be optimal with something like 12 shocklands, 4 Clifftop Retreat, 4 Isolated Chapel, and 4 Plains. I've called Blood Artist weak, but sacrificing creatures will be much more affordable when Xathrid Necromancer is legal.

Here is a fun turn-4 goldfish:

T1 Champion of the Parish.
T2 Gather the Townsfolk, attack for 3.
T3 Xathrid Necromancer, attack for 4 with Champion.
T4 Blood Artist, Cartel Aristocrat.

Attack for 5 with Champion of the Parish. Sacrifice 4 Humans to drain 4 life and make 4 Zombies. Sacrifice 4 Zombies to drain the last 4 life.

Wackier options include Intangible Virtue, Bloodthrone Vampire, Disciple of Bolas, and Maw of Obzedat. Brian Braun-Duin sketched a WB Humans deck with Mutavault and suggested the glorious option of Increasing Devotion. A more sensible option might be to play a 4c Human Aristocrats deck with Avacyn's Pilgrim and Mayor of Avabruck, using the Necromancer just for value instead of for combo potential.

Standard: Online Scoreboard, June 21-27

(Decklists grabbed from the righthand column of MtgOnline.com.)

Here's a table of all the 4-0 decks (DE) or 6-win decks (PE) from June 21 to 27:

Deck	Count	Players
Junk Rites	10	JFumerton79, Exokell, L1X0, YS, CharLy, 88trample, Enrico, MagicPlayerDudeBro, SethDrone, L1X0
Saito Rg	9	tayman227, vsk, hot milk, Azazel314, syrup16g, TheNoodle812, Devil, megafone, vsk
Jund	7	Boin, dailyllama, juppal, nitechill, bluedragon123, Chlywly1, ProtossX
UWR Resto	7	BigAnnie, Bluecry, Zorrrba, MituliakV, Cryptic, Cryptic, Mingpac
Naya Humans	4	ThomasH, the adult swim, frankkarsten, Diem4x
UWR Slow	4	Crossfire42, bratschnik, Born2Win, Carl
Big Naya	3	Blinky010, AKMiD, BytorAndTheSnowdog
Bant Control	3	trunks132, reiderrabbit, Trailerpark
BWr Aristocrats	2	i b TRUE, xLeitix
Naya Blitz	2	Silver Death, HaM 187
Junk Aristocrats	2	MagicLair, enzoreal
UWB Alchemy Rites	2	pelli, pelli
Bant Auras	2	Lister1991, RReigle82
Jund Creatures	2	Xeroo, battleofjace
Red	1	trog3r
4C Alchemy Rites	1	zhuhao
4C Faithless Rites	1	usokui3
GW Tokens	1	armel
Surgeon Generals	1	Scream
Jund Blitz	1	AmericanO
Farseek Naya	1	duparcqG
GB Mutilate	1	Ofelia
Prime Speaker Bant	1	XxForgexX
BWr Human Aristocrats	1	ar7ic
4C Human Aristocrats	1	Vicalis
URw Nivix Cyclops	1	le fondue

The three players in bold (YS, ThomasH, i b TRUE) won PEs with their decks.

The four players in italics (L1X0, vsk, Cryptic, pelli) are the players who appeared twice.

This table counts 71 decks that 4-0'ed (or similar), and it gives roughly the same archetype breakdown as the MtgGoldfish stats that include 3-1 decks:

Combining some different decks into rough categories, we can make this pie chart of what standard decks are doing well on Magic Online:

Compared to the scoreboard I made in early June:
- Aristocrats decks and Big Naya decks are performing worse now.
- Fast Red decks (now with Madcap Skills!) and Fast Naya decks are performing better now.
- Junk Rites and UWR are still the best (though the UWR lists have changed a lot).