Izzet Overwhelming?

As I was pushing through my post-Thanksgiving sleepiness and pondering what to write about for my post for today, I decided to go browse the stats over at the Standard Pauper Mirror, a handy app I've mentioned before run by rremedio1 that compiles data from both of the weekly Standard Pauper PREs. As of this writing, it doesn't include the results from earlier this week, but it's still a very useful snapshot of what's going on in the Standard Pauper metagame right now.

As I was analyzing the data, two interesting facts stood out to me:

1. There is a surprising difference in the metagame between the Sunday and Monday PREs. This is most clearly illustrated in the case of the Rakdos Delve deck, which by the numbers is the most popular choice of decks right now. Yet despite putting up some strong finishes, it is seeing almost no play in MPDC.
   
2. More importantly, Izzet in its various iterations is posting some incredible numbers, with a match win rate somewhere between 60-70% when you average it out between the most popular versions. Rakdos may be the most popular deck, but Izzet is by and large the runaway powerhouse of the format right now. Earlier this week I complained a bit on Twitter about the fact that I literally have not played against any other archetype in the past two weeks, both in my matches for the Standard Pauper Double League and during MPDC.

So for all you players out there with experience with Rakdos Delve, tell me this: does it have a good matchup against Izzet Control? If so, maybe that's would explain why it's so popular.

Rakdos Midrange

It seems like the RDW deck is out of control.

Then again, maybe it's just me. While RDW and Boros have managed a few Top 8 finishes over the past few weeks, it appears that the decks simply aren't consistent enough to take home a trophy. On the other hand, they are consistently beating me. Between the MagicGatheringStrat Standard Pauper league and MPDC, I faced three of them almost back-to-back. Frankly, I'm tired of losing to it.

So I decided to see what it would look like to throw as many removal spells into a decklist as possible and see if maybe that could stem the bleeding. Surprisingly, the deck has actually performed fairly well in early testing. Here's the list I'm currently playing:

Rakdos Midrange

by gwyned

Creatures 4 Disowned Ancestor 4 Servant of Tymaret 3 Disciple of Phenax 2 Gray Merchant of Asphodel 13 cards Other Spells 4 Debilitating Injury 2 Flurry of Horns 1 Font of Return 4 Pharika's Cure 3 Read the Bones 4 Lightning Strike 4 Magma Spray 1 Covenant of Blood 23 cards

Lands 4 Bloodfell Caves 4 Evolving Wilds 6 Mountain 10 Swamp 24 cards Sideboard 3 Forge Devil 2 Typhoid Rats 2 Baleful Eidolon 1 Flesh to Dust 1 Rotfeaster Maggot 3 Feast of Dreams 3 Scouring Sands 15 cards

The list ended up having a pretty strong MonoBlack shell, but with a full complement of Debilitating Injury, Lightning Strike, Pharika's Cure, and Magma Spray. Against aggressive archetypes, it can also side in Forge Devil, Feast of Dreams, Scouring Sands, and a 2/2 split of Typhoid Rats and Baleful Eidolon. The concept here is relatively straightforward: remove everything your opponent throws at you and grind out on the back of low Power value creatures like Servant of Tyramet, Disowned Ancestor, Disciple of Phenax, and Gray Merchant. It can refill using Read the Bones, and eventually recycle its creatures using the single copy of Font of Return.

If you've got some suggestions for the deck, I'd love to hear them. I'm usually not the best at brewing decks, so I'm sure there's something obvious I missed. Still, I've enjoying my testing thus far, and I hope that this proves to be viable in the current metagame. We'll see.

Thanks for reading.