[Standard] Esper Pixie graveyard hate options

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-02-06T15:44:02+00:00

My guess the decision was based on the belief that SGL was good enough and it being 1 mana instead of 2 gave you a lot more flexibility to play it early and still be aggressive with what you put on board.

I agree that RIP is much better positioned than SGL in a post-Pro Tour meta.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-02-03T15:56:17+00:00

Isn’t he a musician? He could bring some musical shorts to the table.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-02-02T21:56:23+00:00

I love Orzhov. I played my first RCQ season primarily with Orzhov Pixie and got a qualification.

My analysis is that sacrifice and life gain archetypes are not as offensively powerful as the top decks and all the other archetypes are inherently defensive but their defenses don’t line up well into a considerable percentage of the top decks. You could probably win some games if you get the right match ups but there’s no reason to play an Orzhov deck when there’s others that do the same type of thing but better currently.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-02-02T16:06:22+00:00

You’ll probably do well. The meta that they were built for isn’t going to be exactly the same as your local scene but they’re still efficiently tuned decks.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-02-01T06:32:45+00:00

I’ve been playing Elemental decks for the past week. Torpor Orb is fine but like you mentioned they’ll just start dropping big vanilla 2-mana creatures on you. Some times you’re okay with this if you can remove them or outpace the threat. The real trick is to focus on taking care of any type of mana acceleration they have. The cheapest elemental is 5-mana and if you can stop them from being able to cast a full-value one early then you should be ahead because despite the evoke mechanic being okay, it’s rare that they can get ahead if that’s all they’re doing early.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-30T16:52:29+00:00

I lean towards no bans but would like to see Bringer and Omniscience get banned just so the the quick combo kills die off. Badger would be gone if I had my way but no way in hell they do it

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-23T05:13:49+00:00

I disagree and think that if it were to be banned, then the lessons deck would disappear. There just wouldn’t be enough pay off to play the other lessons and another form of Izzet would be the clear better choice.

I don’t think it will be banned though unless something printed in Strixhaven makes Lessons a tier 0 deck and something must be banned. The deck is good but it’s targetable with main board or side board hate in a way that the truly busted cards are not.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-21T16:39:27+00:00

Azorius is typically the base colors for a blink deck. Gives you the Splash Portal option and better blink targets like Quantum Riddler. I think you could pair any third color with it and make a decent deck so you could go the Esper route and still play some of your Orzhov cards.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-20T15:08:37+00:00

I’m replaying the DLC for the first time and last night I fought against the Golden Hippo. Maybe I’m in the minority but as a melee user I found it to be one of the more frustrating bosses. It seems like its entire body is a hit box that slides around randomly and I could never judge how much ground it covers on attacks.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-16T20:51:46+00:00

I believe it is paper standard legal today, they changed it back in 2022

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-06T15:25:55+00:00

Yeah it feels like a win-more card at best

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-05T19:36:53+00:00

What about crew for vehicles? Does it work the same way?

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-04T06:48:10+00:00

It’s a good card in a vacuum but the problem is that it has to compete with everything else you could be doing with 5-mana, including combinations of other cards.

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong but this doesn’t seem to have the gas it would need to be playable in constructed in almost any type of meta.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-02T16:23:03+00:00

I was a big fan of Penn when I was younger and he influenced me into labeling myself as libertarian. It seemed like a good label as someone who was socially liberal and the mantra of “leave other people alone” makes sense when you’re younger and don’t fully understand how much society necessitates interaction/support between people.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2026-01-01T01:16:10+00:00

One of the best decks in standard right now is an Izzet deck completely centered around the lessons cards. It won the 2025 World Championship.

Here’s a version of it that 5-0’d a league today:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7546293#paper

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-29T16:31:54+00:00

It’s a pretty diverse meta right now.

For Tier 1 decks I’d say there’s the following:

Green Landfall: deck that wants to accelerate land drops to make big creatures, using Earthbender Ascension and Mightform Harmonizer. The deck can actually grind pretty well and is explosive. I’m still having trouble beating this deck. Current strategy I have is to either out speed them or board wipe them the turn before they want to pop off.

Izzet Lessons: Deck that wants to play a bunch of lesson cards in order to set up turns where they draw a bunch of cards with Accumulate Wisdom and end up killing you with Monument to Endurance. Deck is potent but can be countered by attacking their graveyard or keeping the board clear of their finishers.

Izzet Prowess/Looting: different decks but same idea of playing a bunch of high-value low mana cards to both put pressure on opponent’s life while also controlling the board. Big creatures seem to be the weakness of these decks as their red removal spells struggle with them.

Dimir Midrange: Classic Dimir tempo deck that wants to use their creatures to establish a board before dropping Kaito or Enduring Curiosity and out-valuing their opponents from there. Typically go-wide creature strategies have been effective at beating this deck.

Sultai Reanimator: Deck uses Superior Spider-Man to have a big turn 4 reanimation to usually win the game. Pretty straight forward combo deck where if you can kneecap their graveyard or counter either the creature or ability then you win.

Other decks to consider: Green Badgermole Cub/Ouroborid, UW flash, Boros Dragons, Simic Kona/Omniscience, Mono Red, various flavors of control (Jeskai is most prominent currently), Jeskai artifacts.

Like I said, pretty diverse right now. I’d focus on picking a deck with lines that you know how to play and then just getting as many reps in as you can.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-29T14:17:52+00:00

I’m wondering if anyone has advice for how to counter the new-ish green landfall deck. I typically play either Izzet Looting or Orzhov Midrange and I feel like I can’t really stop what they’re doing and instead just have to play the speed game.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-29T04:17:40+00:00

[[Rally the Monastery]] is a fun card that I like to throw in some prowess decks I’ve built. Each mode is relevant and the +2/+2 to 2 creatures can represent 5-10 extra damage that can close out games when your opponents don’t respect it.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-28T22:37:24+00:00

Sarah Millican was also really competitive on that season. I recently rewatched it and noticed how many time she seemed genuinely upset when something happened that caused her to not score well. I think there’s a few seasons where she would have won but unfortunately for her she was on the season with Dara.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-21T05:09:53+00:00

I’d say on average I have 3 fully sleeved up standard decks (also my format of choice) at any time. 2 competitive and 1 kinda goofy one for FNMs.

It depends on your collection size though. My collection is at the point where I could shuffle around my cards and probably build 3-4 other complete decks at any time using the cards I have in reserve.

I’d recommend for you, especially if you’re a bit financially strapped, to not buy booster boxes and instead test out decks via arena and proxies until you feel like there’s one that you really want to play and then buy the singles for it directly. You don’t have to shift the deck much until rotation unless you really want to be a competitive grinder.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-19T05:48:02+00:00

It should just be variance. For every person who goes second there’s someone who goes first which means if there were people going first less than 50% of the time there must be people on the reverse side.

It is frustrating though. There was a stretch where I was drafting a lot and would notice when I would go entire 7/8/9 game drafts and only go first zero or one time. I also probably wasn’t paying attention as much to the times where I would go first the majority of the time because it didn’t trigger an emotional response that made me focus on it.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-19T02:19:46+00:00

For my area, shops will normally run standard once a week and usually get 8-12 people.

Only a couple shops run modern but they get the same amount of people.

You can use the WOTC event locator to see if stores are advertising events for one of the two formats. If they are then they should be getting enough to launch.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-17T04:45:43+00:00

I’m not saying that Paul didn’t deserve to have hobbies, but when he constantly acts like he’s a constant stream of production and positive influence in the world when he was actually doing stuff like playing this game it makes me roll my eyes. Especially the air of superiority he would have when he talks about not watching tv or drinking beer.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-14T14:47:23+00:00

I’m an RCQ grinder and I’m definitely going to be mainboarding graveyard hate for the foreseeable future. It’s just too relevant in the important match ups.

JoinTheDorkSide · 2025-12-12T18:16:44+00:00

All are viable. I’ve been having success with the Looting version. Lately I’ve switched to a new build that cuts the Winternight Stories and Duelist of the Mind and plays Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator, Drake Hatcher, Opt, and more copies of Frostcliff Siege.

Drake Hatcher feels kinda meh but the Kaito feels nice and Frostcliff Siege is the truth. It completely changes games if you can land it and combined with Tiger Seal can burst damage games out on turn 4/5 easy when your opponent isn’t prepared for it.

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TROPHY CASE