Standard: the final frontier. Where few have dared to go before, we shall dive headfirst. What decks should we play? What is at the top of the heap? As I write this, Ravager Affinity is officially gone. What is the new deck to beat in an unsteady, arguably non-existent metagame for Type Two? Ask anyone who regularly plays the format and most will list a few names off the top of their heads: Plow Under green, Ponza, Death Cloud, and, most noticeably, Mono Blue Control. Has it been a while since MUC was a dominant deck? Definitely. Is it alive again? Definitely.

For starters, we better construct a build of the new control to act as a testing starting point. Gone are the days of maindeck Annuls (although with Aether Vial, we shall see), Relic Barriers, and the like. Here is the list that I began my testing with.

Counter (16):
4 Hinder
3 Condescend
3 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mana Leak
2 Rewind

Other Control (6):
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Echoing Truth

Draw/Card Advantage (11):
2 Gifts Ungiven
3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Serum Visions
2 Pulse of the Grid

Creatures (4):
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
2 Keiga, the Tide Star

Land (23):
18 Island
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Stalking Stones
3 Blinkmoth Nexus

Sideboard:
2 Relic Barrier
4 Last Word
2 Bribery
3 Quash
4 Crystal Shard

Okay, let me explain. This was by no means a final build, only one to test with. Some of you are already cringing at the absence of a fourth Shackles and the strange sideboard. Don't worry, this will all change very soon. As you will see, the playtesting quickly showed what works and what doesn't against the known Tier 1 builds.

Mono Green: If you look at my last article, the Mono-Green build that I proposed and tested was considered a bit shaky on the forums. Perhaps I wasn't fully clear with this, but the reason for several of the deck's seemingly strange card choices has to do with the Mono Blue matchup. Using my build of Green as a test dummy, Mono Blue did what it was supposed to: counter early threats and then take over after dropping a Shackles or two. There was one problem though: Mono Green did very well against Blue. No, it didn't dominate, but a 50-50 win percentage was noticeable. The first thing to note was the lack of protection against a Sword of Fire and Ice that the above build had. The Crystal Shards and Briberies were great out of the board, but sometimes the little Green men just overwhelmed the control deck.

Cards to consider for the next step:

Oblivion Stone: While may disagree with this inclusion, the stone is one of the only ways that blue can get out of a tight board position if the counters don't hold up. This is a possible maindeck consideration for the future. It also takes care of any Swords.

Crystal Shard: Even though I knew this wouldn't make maindeck, the little Shard can act as a sort of permanent Spiketail Hatchling against the right deck. Keeping this in the sideboard started to seem like a necessity after playing against Green.

Death Cloud: Okay, okay, you stomp this deck to little bits. The G/B builds have a horrible time against you, and the Mono Black matchup is a joke. While they may be able to take out your creatures with tons of removal, your Nexi and Stones keep them from actually preventing a win on your part.

Cards to consider:

Bribery: Possibly a maindeck inclusion (as a two of), Bribery is gold against Death Cloud (for Kokusho), Tooth and Nail, R/G Freshmaker, and even the mirror match.

Ponza: I was actually a bit surprised at how Ponza could pull out wins from nowhere. While this matchup tends to be very build dependent, and early Slith Firewalker can cause all sorts of trouble for you. I found the Echoing Truths to be great in these games, and a Quash from the board can always help to get ride of Fireballs, Pulse of the Forge - you know, burn spells... Disrupting Shoal was also great as an early line of defense against any early beats.

Cards to consider:

Quash: While it was good here, I'm not convinced that this is anything more than a sideboard superstar.

Tooth and Nail: A lot of people will be playing tooth and nail in standard in the months to come. Luckily for the common Blue mage, however, their tools are limited against you. Their deck is based off of a nine-mana sorcery, and you have 16 counter effects in your deck without sideboarding. The only weapon that they can use against you is Boseiju, Who Shelters All. Keep their land-fetches at bay and this is a good matchup for you.

Cards to consider:

Quash: This was great in this matchup as well.

Bribery: Oh gee, I would like a five-mana Darksteel Colossus.

Echoing Truth: If they do manage to drop a Tooth and Nail on you, this becomes your last line of defense. By this point in the testing of the deck, the possibility of adding a forth maindeck copy started to seem like a real possibility.

White Weenie: I'll let you in on a little secret: I've wanted this deck to make a comeback for a long time. Actually, I piloted White Weenie at my first tournament ever (I lost... this was back in 2002). It's finally back and ready for action, and this isn't good for Mono Blue. White Weenie can place threats on the table a lot faster than you can counter them. This matchup is definitely your Achilles heal. So, what can we do to improve the situation?

Cards to consider:

Annul: Put four copies in the board to bring in against WW may be the only hope of stopping Aether Vial in its tracks (although it's also good against and equipment and even Chrome Mox).

Oblivion Stone: As I said earlier, this can get you out of a bad position very quickly.

Crystal Shard: This matchup really didn't change my mind on where to keep the Shard, but it did make it clear that it needed to stay there.

Moving on, it's time to work out an "optimized" build for the above matchups, one that you can expect to see a lot of in the months to come. So, what's going in? What's coming out?

Thirst for Knowledge: I agree with Mike Flores 100% on this one. Thirst just doesn't provide the card advantage necessary to warrant any more than two copies in this deck.

Meloku: I know this may sound a bit brash, but I rarely won with this guy. By the time that you have enough control over the game to drop him and use his ability to any great extent, it's just easier to play a Keiga or activate some manlands for the win. One copy will stay in as insurance against Cranial Extraction, but two is unnecessary.

Minamo: While this is great with Keiga in play, I found that its spot in the deck was better suited to an Island that could assist in boosting the use of Vedalken Shackles.

Disrupting Shoal: Even though this card was a lifesaver in several games, it was more often or not relatively dead in your hand. Three is just a little much for this effect.

Relic Barrier: I found this card fairly useless, even in the Tooth and Nail matchup.

Oblivion Stone: Two of these are needed maindeck to help in case your counters run out. If I haven't made this clear enough in what I said earlier, take a look and read a little bit above.

Pulse of the Grid: Another on of these to make up for the loss of a Thirst. These were just excellent against so many decks, and smart hand management can keep these around for several uses.

Annul: In the sideboard, something needs to stop the Vial.

The final build:

Counter (15):
4 Hinder
3 Condescend
2 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mana Leak
2 Rewind

Other Control (8):
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Echoing Truth
2 Oblivion Stone

Draw/Card Advantage (11):
2 Gifts Ungiven
2 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Serum Visions
3 Pulse of the Grid

Creatures (3):
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
2 Keiga, the Tide Star

Land (23):
19 Island
1 Stalking Stones
3 Blinkmoth Nexus

Sideboard:
3 Annul
3 Last Word
2 Bribery
3 Quash
4 Crystal Shard

Thanks to my good friend TK for help playtesting for this article.

Thanks for reading,
David Tao
Cheeseman202000@gmail.com
Cheeseman on starcity's forums