Breaking Formats: A Beginner’s Guide to Standard Singleton

Posted on December 30, 2009 by platipus10

The middle of the Top 8 is filled with more Jund and similar style Control decks so we will jump to the 7th and 8th place lists.

7th Place — UWR Control — played by Sti

StdSing UWR Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt format

This Control deck decided to forego Black in favor of pairing Red and White removal together along with Blue draw and shroud. Without some of the card advantage the black offers with cards like Mind Shatter, Cruel Ultimatum, Bituminous Blast, etc. This color combination looks like it will have a much more difficult time keeping ahead on cards and is slightly more susceptible to just sputtering out if it hits a land glut mid to late game. It’s very surprising to see Elspeth, Knight-Errant absent from this list.

8th Place — Naya Aggro — played by thekid

StdSing Naya Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt format

There is not too much to talk about here. This deck is all about aggression and is playing some of the most aggressive cards in the format. Speed can just win, but it looks like the Jund decks can be nearly as fast with some slightly higher card quality or at least with slightly more built in card advantage. It’s easy to see why this deck may be slipping in favor of the Jund menace.

Now that you have enjoyed my rambling for a good 3,000 words: go build decks, play new formats, and try something fresh. In all honestly, I hope you have learned a little something about a more in depth approach to tackling a new metagame or format than just going with the Mad-Libs approach. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Signing Off,

platipus10


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  2. Neat article- I liked your card inventory. Recently I’ve been trying to play a bit of standard singleton myself, and I’ve noticed that the games feel pretty swingy (i.e. one turn you feel like you’re winning the next you’re trying to find the next trump card). It’s also a bit like block constructed- limited card pool, with Jund dominating because of decent discard and cascade. I was wondering if there were any initial thoughts about a deck to combat Jund? I’ve been working on U/W control with alot of sweepers, Wall of Denial and other untargetable or fat creatures like Baneslayer Angel, and those situational counters you mentioned. My thoughts are that though they’re situational, your counters are a bit better because you’re countering their one copy of that card in their deck. A fog like mill deck also comes to mind, but I haven’t really worked that out. Help me out on breaking Jund Menace! http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/809761

  3. Thanks for the feedback.

    My intent was originally to show people a way of approaching a new format, but like you when I looked up the recent T8s and saw the Jund dominance I was left wondering what to do to combat such a metagame. One of the strengths of Jund is there premium access to removal, so fat creatures aren’t necessarily a problem. While a great card, I wouldn’t consider Baneslayer an issue for Jund to deal with as they will have at least 4-6 answers for Baneslayer. The problem that I see is that one needs a way to win a war of exhaustion vs Jund. The idea that immediately sprung to my mind was an Esper deck based on recursive threats like Sharuum, the Hedgemon. Baneslayer would likely make an appearance in such a deck, but not as a specific answer to Jund. If one can consistently recur must deal with threats eventually the Jund player will run out of removal. The issue is getting to 6-8 mana to start abusing some of the recursive artifact synergies without losing first.

    I haven’t tried such a build myself yet, but like I said it was the first thing that sprung to my mind.

  4. I am taking a gander at Std Sing for my next battery of articles/videos, and I am not going to play Jund! Soooo, any brainstorm would be helpful. Maybe a UWb Esper would be the way to go (Steel Wind should auto win versus Jund)? I like the 5c decks, but I really don’t want to lose games to my own mana.

  5. Sadly, even the four/five drop LD spells seem to give some decks trouble- I was playing Jund in the daily event I joined and lost due to mana screw. Ruinblaster and Acidic Slime being pretty good. As far as Esper, Thopter Foundry found a home at Hawaii so maybe that’ll be good for this format as well?

  6. Dear WoTC,

    Pls quit creating one overly dominant deck per STD season. Kinda sucks, yo.

    Regards,

    Trav-bo

  7. Oh, and before I forget, I started up a thread in our forums. Take a gander and share some. I’m sad, I’m lonely, I eat stories to stay slightly rotund.

  8. Without Sword of the Meek I’m not sure how good Thopter Foundry would be. Unless there is another way to abuse the effect in standard that I am not aware of.

    Yeah LD is pretty good in this format, especially against decks that run double colored mana costs across 3+ colors. I tend to try and keep all of my double colors to a single color in a deck and run the other colors as splashes. I made that mistake in the first PE I entered. I ran a Jund deck with double green, red, and black and lost due to mana issues.

  10. Thanks for the format introduction and getting my interest piqued. Although I wish I could say that I read this and went off to build some super-techy deck for the premiere event today, I cannot. Straight up copied the decklist here with few changes to sideboard/maindeck configuration and rode the card advantage / removal suite (and some timely luck)to a second place finish.

    Thanks again,

    Brian (StasisFreak)

  11. Nice job StasisFreak! Just goes to show you not to innovate- Dust_ and I made homebrews and only made Top 4 and Top8, respectively. :) The Blue-Red-White deck you played in the finals seemed pretty good; I don’t think I could have beaten it either!

  12. Hey man great job, StasisFreak. I likely would have played Jund too if i entered a recent event, so I don’t blame you for not coming up with some super0techy deck.