Josh Utter-Leyton doesn't draw a lot of attention to himself, so it's easy for him to fly under the radar – but over the past six months Utter-Leyton has been on a pretty incredible tear. In fact, it's pretty clear exactly what the most popular cards in Standard are: Seachrome Coast and Glacial Fortress Hey, in the dark world of Innistrad, those Humans have to stick together.Īdd to that the mere existence of Jund – big spells with Grave Titan, Batterskull and more – the success of several Puresteel Paladin -based decks and even a throwback Illusions list – complete with Phantasmal Bears – and you have a surprising variety of decks all banded together by the pillars of the format. The Humans decks appeared a bit more uniform, as Champion of the Parish really needs a critical mass of specific Humans to function. There was even a Dungrove list that ran Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise and Swords that I classified as green red aggro that.well, who knows what to call it? Some had big Garruk, some had small Garruk. Some ran Dungrove Elder while some ran Inferno Titan. Then there are the Wolf Run variants which, in some cases, were so different that they could almost be classified as entirely different decks. Imagine my surprise when I saw one prominent player cast a Delver of Secrets as sort of a mini- Dark Ritual in order to enable him to equip a Sword of War and Peace by tapping it!Įven in the best-known archetypes, there's room to innovate. Some chose Moorland Haunt as their colorless land, others opened the avenue to a poison kill with Inkmoth Nexus (usually in conjunction with Runechanter's Pike).Īnd then there were the Delver decks that played, and featured, Grand Architect as both a lord and a fantastic way to cast and attach equipment. Some played Runechanter's Pike and built their decks around it, others eschewed the powerful equipment entirely. It was difficult for me to classify all of the Delver decks together because there was a ton of variety.

Yet.īut what really struck me was the sheer variety within the archetypes that existed.

Delver may have the numbers, but it certainly doesn't have a stranglehold on the standings. It's certainly worth noting that the Tempered Steel deck and one of the UB control decks were playing in the feature match area as two of the last four remaining undefeated decks.

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