The Sunset of Aether Reborn Standard.

Flying Boats and Metal Cats! - A lookback on Aether Revolt. 

The months just fly by and we've come to the end of a format, with Amonkhet around the corner it's time to wrap up another season of Standard, this time I'll be looking back at what this meant for competitive play and how as a global community we either solved the format way too early or were just incredibly lazy at innovation. (Hey Chapin, you still there buddy?) So what were the top 5 cards of the set and what happened?

Top 5 Cards in Aether Revolt Standard.

 

1st - Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.

Gideon remains the most powerful card in Standard, winning games sometimes by himself in a field of no real instant speed answers (because who's playing To The Slaughter anyway?) Gideon features in the Mardu Vehicles/Ballista deck which has been tearing up tournaments since the onset of this Standard. Are you sick of Gideon yet? (That's probably because you don't have a playset or him or aren't using him already!) This guy has been consistently played in standard as a playset and only for a couple of formats were people underwhelmed with him (and that was only on the draw, not on the play!) You had better believe he'll be tearing up the field during Amonkhet standard and is likely to pop-up here and there in Modern too. 

2nd - Saheeli Rai

Oh yes, we've truly gone into a shifted place of Magic where Planeswalkers are everywhere and are disgustingly overpowered. Our top-2 cards and top-2 decks run a brace of Planeswalkers respectively, be it a brace of Gideon or a brace of this new high-flying lady. Why's she so great? Well she's essentially allowed Splinter-Twin-esque decks again. Turn 3 Saheeli, Turn 4 Felidar Cub + Win. While we have plenty of disruptions in the format Saheeli and her 4-Colour Combo shell have adapted and become a deck which fires at many angles, often wasting opponents resources and providing many slots of card advantage (Whirler Virtuoso and Rogue Refiner) until an optimal moment comes to use Saheeli with her favourite Cat and abruptly end the game. This deck has milage past Battle for Zendikar and Shadows over Innistrad rotate with the only real concern being if Wizards of the Coast pull the trigger and ban this combo. Remember that Wizards are vocal and open about their dissatisfaction towards game ending & consistent combos. So don't be surprised if either Saheeli or her cat falls foul of the Banhammer! 

3rd - Walking Ballista

It's dominance hasn't faltered since it's printing, the construct looks like an antiqutied version of RoboCop's ED-209 crossed with the Aliens P-5000 Power Loading 'Alice Suit' and packs the power of both. We saw this card tearup PPTQ's and GP's in the Green/Black value deck where 'Snek' (Winding Constrictor) provided a potent buff enabling this thing to get out of hand quickly. As the Saheeli-Felidar Cub combo began to really kick off Mardu players were quick to forsake their Veteran Motorists for this magnificent bronze beast, providing a much needed insurance policy against the Combo. (We could call that little insurance policy 'Directive 4' if we were seriously wanting to run with the RoboCop terms.) The card fits in every deck in the format and while it remains to be seen if it's better than Hangarback Walker, none of us can deny it's had the same impact. Another card which may also make it to Modern.

4th - Fatal Push.

"The Little Spell That Could" This card would go straight to the top of the list if it wasn't based on just Aether Revolt period standard, but harshly many decks are setup to either get around this card or force the Revolt clause. Fatal Push still deals with a vast swath of creatures pre-Revolt including the above Ballista, the Winding Constrictor, Veteran Motorist, Sylvan Advocate, Grim Flayer, Toolcraft Exemplar & others. Part of the cards needed to push G/B decks into the Tier 1 (or Tier 1.25? as it's a 2 deck format?) and very much one of the Linchpin's for Mardu Ballista/Vehicles to be dominant in this environment. The trick with this card is literally the mana cost, it's such a good rate and that's why it'll see play in every format from now until the end of Magic (except EDH where of course evertything is rather silly!) 

5th - Torrential Gearhulk. 

Rumour has it they took 4 Snapcaster Mages and that glowey blue goo in the artwork from the Innistrad printing and basically threw it into a super quick artifact construct, that's how Torrential Gearhulk might have come to be.... Well madness aside it really does have a similar level of power (if not higher) than Snapcaster Mage did in it's Standard days. Torrential Gearhulk makes control decks viable, it allows Temur Tower to be a thing and serves for all those who like to play magic outside of the hallowed Top-Tier of decks. Torrential Gearhulk fluctuated from being in the Saheeli Rai combo decks to now finding it's place in the above mentioned Tower decks and the silently growing number of Grixis/Dimir players in Standard.

The decks of the Format. 

Well as mentioned above we really had only 2 main contenders in this format, a little vying for position at the start of the standard but a quickly defined meta which spanned across a half a dozen Grand Prix Circuits and countless PPTQ's. 

Tier 1.

Mardu Aggro & 4 Colour Saheeli Copy Cat

Tier 1.5

Golgari Aggro/Midrange & Temur/Izzet Tower

Tier 2

Grixis Control, Aetherworks Marvel, Rakdos Eldrazi Aggro & Temur/Grixis Emerge.

At the top of the pile was Mardu Aggro which almost took the crown for outright best deck (for a while that was by some margain too!) but the 4-Colour Saheeli decks have been constantly evolving to perfectly set themselves up against the meta and raise neck and neck with the Mardu force. The Golgari decks which synergized Winding Constrictor with just about anything almost made Tier 1 but fell off the bandwagon in the last 6 weeks of the format, despite in the first 6 weeks being at the top of the pile. The deck is still powerful as anything but it loses so much ground to the 4-Colour Saheeli deck which has been on the rise it had to drop a tier and join a deck which only just mades Tier 1.5 due to control players not wanting to give up and that is the Tower decks. These came out to play a lot in the last 6 weeks of Standard looking to control the game with the Tower the Gearhulk and all the bounce/counter/burn and draw that could be shoehorned into the deck. Going down into Tier 2 we have some decks which are still sweet but lack the consistency to really win any major tournaments. Grixis Control which wants to play quite similar to the Tower exept it's winning with exclusively the Gearhulk, the Aetherworks Marvel deck that rolls the dice when it gets enough energy and prays for an Ulamog (or it just folds), the Rakdos Eldrazi threat which is likely to move into Tier 1.5 as a deck which feasts on Saheeli Copy Cat while not being completely run over by Mardu, the best part of this deck is running Reality Smasher which makes ample use of keywords Trample and Haste. Finally we have the Temur/Grixis Emerge/Zombie style decks that want to chain multiple Elder Deep-Fiends keeping it's opponents tapped down whilst going over the top, a great deck in principle which just can't get through the speed of Mardu consistently or provide the answers needed to deal with Saheeli quick enough.

Innovations? Well I'm left wondering if Bant had a home anywhere, ignoring the combo and going more towards Spell Quellers and Tamiyo's to just lay decent creatures and be able to play defensively against Mardu until the board state enables them to go over the top. Being able to run Negates and other elements of control against 4 Colour Saheeli means that perhaps Bant could've stood a chance? Who knows, no one really took that deck and tried to run with it.

Red/White Humans, with Metallic Mimic I was left wondering if Humans could galvanise with the amount of Lord/Anthem effects it's now recieved. It could even go into Green White or Naya Humans for much needed lifegain against Mardu in the form of Heron's Grace Champion.

Black/White control, with cards like Ayli, Kambal, Avacyn, Sorin and Anguished Unmaking I'm quite shocked we didn't see a Black/White deck drive through the middle of the format showing some resiliance to Mardu with artifact/creature hate and power against Combo/Control with hand-distruption and timely removal. The longer the games go on surely the stronger Black/White can become.

What did you think of the format? Did you enjoy the challenge of dealing with the top-2 decks? Were you one of the pilots of these decks crushing Grand Prix's or PPTQ's? or like much of the vocal minority online were you just sick to death of the same two decks?

Thanks for reading.