Mat Bimonte: Setting a New Standard
The thinking after a new set releases is usually something like this: “Play an aggressive deck Week 1; it’s better to be the one asking the questions than answering them in an undefined tournament.”
Sure, whatever, but then who gets to be the fun police?
If you tuned into the weekly stream at my house on Jeff Hoogland’s Twitch channel, you could see just how powerful this baby was. While we had built the obvious Red/White decks, Black/Red decks, and many other aggressive shells that included the “Looter Scooter”, I wanted to rely on some other cards to take it to what I assumed would be well over 50% of the meta.
I started testing with an aggressive mono-White Eldrazi deck, and quickly decided that I wanted to play a nonzero amount of Blessed Alliance in my main deck.
I was impressed with the deck when I was running on all cylinders, but when I puttered out, I felt like I was getting run over frequently. After playing the deck a bunch, I looked for alternatives. This deck needs a lot of work, and I’m not sure I will continue to work on it, but some clear upgrades I could see getting into the main are Spatial Contortion, and, as previously mentioned, Blessed Alliance. It seems like there’s something here, because the creatures in the deck are just way too powerful to not have an impact on Standard.
Whoever coined the phrase “what’s old is new again” must’ve played a lot of Magic in their day. Bant decks have ruled Standard the past few seasons, so we decided to put together a creature-heavy build to start:
While this deck has a pretty solid game plan I found myself losing to B/G Delirium decks and other removal-based decks. The strengths were the newly minted Nissa, Vital Force; Tamiyo; and just drawing many more cards than my opponent should I survive long enough to get the engine online.
I jokingly said to my playtest group “Why can’t I just have Elspeth back and play Bant Control?” That sparked me to try and come up with some more controlling Bant decks. I knew I wanted to be playing Tamiyo, Nissa, and Blessed Alliance, but how could I put it all together into one deck?
Enter known brewer Ali Aintrazi. Ali and I have chatted about Magic deck building in the past, and with his success during last Standard season with a Sultai Control deck, I figure I would ask him for some pointers.
Ali already had a pretty decent outline, and was on the same wavelength as me that the three cards mentioned above were incredible together. We started with a rough sketch, and started to play some games. Now before I unveil the decklist to you I will tell you this deck is still a bit off, and is extremely hard to play, so play it at your own risk. Here is the final version we decided to register:
While I got torched with a few issues drawing enough lands, 
Ali finished a respectable 20th on the weekend. As I alluded to above, this deck is far from a finished product.
A few things we chatted about throughout the tournament:
- Gisela was very good for us out of the sideboard. I could easily make a case for adding the 3 to the main deck, while removing the lackluster Emrakul/Traverse package.
- I would likely remove the Sylvan Advocates and add some number of Skywhaler’s Shot or Immolating Glare. This would move us into more of a UWg control deck, which could have legs if you’re able to find the right removal package and have ways to fuel your Tamiyo drawing cards.
- I suggest cutting the Filigree Familiars, and possibly Fumigate (which was probably the worst card in my deck), to add more spot removal.
Speaking of a removal package, this is the final brew I was working on Saturday night at dinner (I know, I’m a psychopath) and Sunday morning at the Convention Center. This is a very early rough outline, and the mana base is going to look very poor with zero testing so I won’t include that, but these are the spells I think I want to be playing.
That would leave me with 26 lands in order to be closer to casting two spells a turn. I’ll probably be looking to work on this deck, or some iteration of it this week on the stream, so be sure to tune in for that. While it might not seem like splashing red for Harnessed Lightning is something you’d want to do, I think there is untapped (get it) potential in Deadlock Trap, and two-mana removal in general is big game. Only time will tell if this is a viable strategy.
The new Standard format is incredible. There are a bunch of low-to-the-ground decks currently, and that just means the control decks need to adapt their game plan accordingly. I will be doing my best to not let Smugglers’ Copter ruin my day, and I will be back to you as soon as possible with results! My next large event is the Chicagoland Regional, hosted by Nerd Rage Gaming, so I expect to see a bunch of you there to support NRG, and to sling some awesome Standard spells. Feel free to stop by and say hi to me, have me sign something, shoot the breeze, talk sports, talk Magic, or whatever interests you at the event. See you in a couple weeks!
Thanks for stopping by,
Mat Bimonte
Mat Bimonte first picked up the game during Theros block, but already has a Modern 5K championship under his belt, as well as a number of smaller Standard tournament wins. Based out of Bloomington, Ill., Mat is a regular on the SCG Tour, with future aspirations of qualifying for the Pro Tour.
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