Standard Competitive Decks before Dragon's Maze

Dragon's Maze will likely not have a major effect on standard. I averaged the Converted Mana Cost of all of the cards in the RTR block, and DGM is a little over-costed. I use X = 2 for X cards.

Looking at 12,192 cards, these are the ones that got used, ranked. These are online top 8s for the first week of May. Boros Reckoner, Burning-Tree Emisary, and Thragtusk top the list. The most notable missed cards are Delver of Secrets (no play!) and Geist of Saint Traft (8 played).

Red Deck Wins is very popular these days.

Planeswalkers are not getting heavy use and Obzedat is the top legendary. Azorious and Boros are the most popular charms. Dreadbore got used, but only so much.

Three Tibalt Decks

Tibalt has earned the dubious distinction of worst planeswalker issued to date. I am surprised Wizards doubled down on this one with the latest duel deck. I have let my curiosity get the better of me and got me three of these from the bots. Its a $2 card, therefore not that harmful to my hurting wallet. I made three builds:

Red Deck Loses (the normal one is wins, but with Tibalt ..., I need to be ready to lose.)

Then I made an Izzet build, which did much better, but, of course, its because I threw in two Chandras, two Tamiyos, and a play set of Temporal Mastery for good measure.

The third build is Rakdos, and its between red and Izzet, but not a great deck.

The bottom line is that this planeswalker has a useless +1 ability, a mid ability that takes way too much energy to get to and is too situational (anything with number of cards in hand hails from the depths of Saviors of Kamigawa and is just plain bad design), and I will never get to play the ultimate ability....

Deck building for ISD to DGM Standard

[follow this link to the previous phase of standard-to GTC]

Because of the multicolored nature of the RTR block, the four-color and five-color decks are quite doable, even with a limited budget.

Interestingly enough, Crackling Perimeter, a fairly obscure uncommon from Gatecrash, has been my centerpiece in preparation for the release of Dragon's Maze.

1. Crackling Perimeter Miracles Deck (pre-DGM)
Miracles are the closest equivalent to Infect or Curses decks I can think of. Decks with miracles are very dependent on the draw, and if you run a few, you will eventually see the need to run as many of them as possible. This deck started as a Gates-only Maze's End deck, but I then trimmed it and added more miracles to it. It can actually win in tournament practice, something none of my previous cheapo decks have ever been able to.

DGM decks.

2. Five Dollars for Azorious
I paid the bots $5 to make a better casual Azorious deck.

3.Master of Cruelties DGM Build Around
I bought four packs of DGM online, and in my very first pack I pulled a Master of Cruelties.

4. Pack Rat is back for DGM: Meet Blood Scrivener
I bought a play set of Blood Scrivener and an additional Mutilate for a mono-black build (always my favorite deck).

Pricing the Planeswalkers

Here they are from cheapest to most expensive. Karn Liberated and Liliana of the Veil are rising, and there are two new ones that still have a way to go to settle to their normal, post-release, and definitely lower price.

Name	Color	Price
Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded	Red	$2.00
Chandra Nalaar	Red	$4.00
Chandra, the Firebrand	Red	$4.00
Koth of the Hammer	Red	$4.00
Garruk Wildspeaker	Green	$4.00
Venser, the Sojourner	White/Blue	$4.00
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker	Blue/Black/Red	$5.00
Ajani Goldmane	White	$6.00
Gideon Jura	White	$6.00
Gideon, Champion of Justice	White	$6.00
Sarkhan the Mad	Black/Red	$6.00
Ajani, Caller of the Pride	White	$7.00
Jace Beleren	Blue	$7.00
Liliana Vess	Black	$8.00
Sorin Markov	Black	$8.00
Chandra Ablaze	Red	$8.00
Vraska the Unseen	Black/Green	$8.00
Jace, Architect of Thought	Blue	$10.00
Tezzeret the Seeker	Blue	$10.00
Liliana of the Dark Realms	Black	$10.00
Garruk Relentless	Green	$10.00
Nissa Revane	Green	$10.00
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad	White/Black	$10.00
Ajani Vengeant	White/Red	$10.00
Elspeth Tirel	White	$12.00
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas	Blue/Black	$12.00
Garruk, Primal Hunter	Green	$12.00
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage	Blue	$13.00
Jace, Memory Adept	Blue	$15.00
Sarkhan Vol	Red/Green	$20.00
Elspeth, Knight-Errant	White	$30.00
Karn Liberated	Colorless	$30.00
Liliana of the Veil	Black	$50.00
Jace, the Mind Sculptor	Blue	$150.00
Ral Zarek	Blue/Red
Domri Rade	Red/Green

Crackling Perimeter Miracles Deck

Miracles are the closest equivalent to Infect or Curses decks I can think of. Decks with miracles are very dependent on the draw, and if you run a few, you will eventually see the need to run as many of them as possible. This deck started as a Gates-only Maze's End deck, but I then trimmed it and added more miracles to it. It can actually win in tournament practice, something none of my previous cheapo decks have ever been able to.

You Make the Card 2013: Black Enchantment

Whatever I come up with needs to at least not be a card that has been previously issued. I would like to design a card that has very little text. I like cards like Progenitus, with "Protection from Everything."

Here is some data on black enchantments issued to date. I came up with 167 from Gatherer. Here is the mana curve.

This is the casting cost.

...and the major theme. It looks like Graveyard, Like, and Sacrifice are the big three themes.

From these, I kept for study the ones with the smaller text.

A lot of design ground has already been covered. Here is one of my favorite black enchantments.

And here is my submission:



BBB

Pay 3 life.
Sacrifice a creature with converted mana cost 3 or more.
Return a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Gates Deck Building Heaven

...or something like that. I have been working on a deck shell for Dragon's Maze that can be used once the mythic land Maze's End is issued.This is a fourth or fifth iteration. The deck is very, very slow without Temporal Mastery. At first, I got just one from the bots, but this deck can only be sped up with a playset (I am sure the bots are happy about that). I also added Index because I want to get Temporal Mastery coming my way as soon as possible. I tried everything that is a creature with a gate advantage, but these cards proved ridiculously slow and ineffective. Crackling Perimeter, though, is a keeper. With it I can hit the player or a plainswalker for damage and use up all of my mana to win at the same time. I bought a Tamiyo now that it has come down in price for my redemption and figured I might as well use it in this deck to delay my opponent, but I may decide to add a second one because one card of anything is usually not enough to help a deck's strategy.

And here is another iteration.