Nobody is reading this post six months later, but I’m putting my post-rotation list up here in case I ever want to point someone to it.

About
Name Poison Burn

Deck
7 Island
2 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Floodfarm Verge
3 Adarkar Wastes
3 Mirrex
4 Skrelv, Defector Mite
4 Crawling Chorus
4 Prologue to Phyresis
4 Experimental Augury
4 Serum Snare
4 Bring the Ending
4 Soul Partition
3 Gadwick’s First Duel
4 Distorted Curiosity
3 Arcane Proxy

Sideboard
3 Ephara’s Dispersal
4 Not on My Watch
3 Rest in Peace
3 Annex Sentry
2 Reject Imperfection

The maindeck is very similar. Floodfarm Verge has been a fine addition to the manabase. Soul Partition is a serviceable replacement for Fateful Absence.

I could have condensed the whole match-ups section in the original post down to this, which is still true:

• You are heavily favored against control, especially domain control, which you almost can’t lose to. New in the post-Duskmourn meta is the ability to add time counters to Overlords when you proliferate (Arena doesn’t select them automatically, so remember to click them yourself).
• Midrange and combo decks are an actual challenge.
• Aggro is a very poor match-up. Two thirds of the sideboard is dedicated to fighting red decks, and you’re still not favored against them.

Take out the Arcane Proxies for the Rest in Pieces when facing any deck that makes heavy use of its graveyard – your Helping Hand or Squirming Emergence strategies. It’s not a panacea, because they’ll have stuff like Into the Flood Maw or Tear Asunder, but it should buy you some time. Incidental reanimation like Unstoppable Slasher is not worth diluting your own plan for.

Against base-red aggro decks, bring in the Ephara’s Dispersals, Not on My Watches, and Annex Sentries in exchange for your Proxies, Duels, and two each of Bring the Ending and Distorted Curiosity (I’m still fiddling with the exact balance on those last two). It is rarely safe to block with Sentries, but I run them anyway because the opponent is likely to bring in Urabrask’s Forge, and they’re your best answer to it. You can beat the red decks after sideboarding, just don’t expect it to happen regularly. It’s tough to find a window to get any poison counters on them because you need to be warding off potentially lethal attacks as soon as turn 2. Be very aware of whether your opponent might be able to cast Snakeskin Veil, which can single-handedly ruin your entire defensive strategy. Make them make the first move: if they send an attacker into the damage step with only one power, take it and be glad it wasn’t more.

The Reject Imperfections are catch-all answers for anything you might not be otherwise prepared for. If you suspect your opponent will bring in graveyard hate, use them to replace a couple of your Proxies.

Almost nothing in this deck will survive the 2025 rotation, so enjoy it while you can!

Three unrelated thoughts:

1. Brineborn Cutthroat and Spectral Sailor were at the core of a mono-blue flash deck I played, and enjoyed, in Standard ca. 2019. I will definitely be trying to resurrect it. But power creep has been so bad that I’m not sure it really has chance anymore. Is putting a counter on your 2/1 two-drop every turn still good enough in a world of Emberheart Challengers and Mosswood Dreadknights? I have a deck with Ayara’s Oathsworn in it and even that is kind of underwhelming in the current metagame.

2. I like Llanowar Elves, and it’s an iconic card, but I’m not sure it should ever be in Standard again. Are you ready for turn-two Glissa Sunslayers?

3. This spoiler list is the first time I’ve realized that “Extended Art” and “Borderless” were considered to be different treatments. The difference between them is pretty slight.

This is probably one of those cases where most players were already doing it this way anyhow, because they weren’t aware of the actual rule (which I’d have to say is not intuitive).

The initial shock of Universes Beyond is well behind us at this point.

No, it isn’t.

I could complain about this, or explain why I don’t want it, but what good would it do? The fact that they’re making this announcement means it’s already too late to stop it.

Interesting statistic:

The number of Best-of-One Standard Constructed games ending before turn four has essentially doubled since the release of Duskmourn: House of Horror.

Important to note – wildcards will be given out, but the banning takes effect today, so I don’t know if there’s actually any window to do the “crafting in anticipation of wildcard refunds” thing. (Edit: wildcards have now been given out.)

I’ve saved up some gold for the Kaldheim flashback draft that starts tomorrow; any advice you fine folks may have on that format would be welcome!

“Creatures you control get +10/+10”

I hope this one is called “Bag of Colossus Hammers”.

Artifact Creature – Phyrexian Construct

Let’s assume this is a reprint. Here are the possibilities. What’s your vote?

I haven’t heard that Snow or Poison are going to be in this set, so that rules out some things. I think Zenith Chronicler is likely because it plays well in Commander. Personally I’m rooting for one of my pet cards, Phyrexian Walker. It’s probably a dark horse but I think as zero-cost creatures go it’s one of the fairest.

It crossed that threshold for me a while ago. “Diluted” is the right word. If somebody asked me to describe Magic to them now, I don’t know what I would say.

Oh my god, they’re doing Omniscience Quick Draft.

For anyone who hasn’t done Omniscience Draft before: I strongly advise against paying currency to play it. (Since I wrote that, they changed the starting hand size to 3, but it didn’t really improve things.)

Ninja of the Deep Hours and Sprout Swarm are two of my favorite cards ever; it’s like they made this video just for me. Great showmanship to boot.

Historic Pauper is on the Midweek Magic schedule next month!

They’ve updated the Midweek Magic page now and it’s not that similar:

Choose any legendary Frog (or Tatsunari, Toad Rider) on MTG Arena and build a Brawl deck without needing the cards in your collection! Plus, Yargle’s magic makes all of your frogs better than ever: they’re cheaper to play and hungry for power.

So you have to build your own deck, but it’s all-access. I like it. There are 13 possible commanders (that search says 14 but I’m pretty sure you’ll only be able to use the rebalanced Uurg, not that you’d want to use the original anyway), and you’ll definitely at least be in either green or black.

“Cheaper to play and hungry for power” might indicate the same emblem as last year: frogs cost 2 less and when a frog ETBs, you may sacrifice a creature to draw a card and have the frog gain all the abilities of the sacrificed creature.

Based on the timing and the unpronounceable name, the Midweek Magic event scheduled for the first week in September is likely to be similar to last year’s “Yargle Day” event.

Thanks for all that info. This is actually even more complex than I anticipated, and reinforces my conviction that the average player can’t be expected to know what is and isn’t a “keyword ability”.

I like both of these new abilities and wouldn’t mind seeing them in real sets. My only concern is how many players know the difference between a “keyword” ability and a regular ability. Off the top of my head, I’m not sure whether something like Descend is a keyword ability. Let’s say it is: then what about something like Ruin-Lurker Bat’s trigger? It’s an ability that uses a keyword; is it a “keyword ability”? Probably a lot cleaner to just have thoughtweft copy all abilities, keyword or otherwise.

Cheapest listings I could find on TCGPlayer for damaged-but-tournament-legal power nine cards:

• Ancestral Recall: $2,700
• Black Lotus: $30,000
• Mox Emerald: $2,150
• Mox Jet: $2,200
• Mox Pearl: $1,800
• Mox Ruby: $2,400
• Mox Sapphire: $2,700
• Timetwister: $3,680
• Time Walk: $2,170
• Total: $49,800

Let’s make the math easy by saying you can get the whole P9 for $50k including shipping. Now of course you’re going to want four copies of Oracle of the Alpha, so in case you draw all of them, you’ll need four copies of the P9. So that’s $200k. But you’re not thinking like a real Magic player yet. Any creature with a good ETB ability, you’re going to want to blink it. Let’s add four copies of Momentary Blink. That means you can potentially proc Oracle an additional eight times per game, so now we’re up to $600k. Oh wait, I forgot Soulherder existed. That’s, uh…

The ultimate flex, if your name is Post Malone or something, would be to build a 60-card Oracle of the Alpha/Battle of Wits deck. Let’s say that in the worst case you might draw through half of it before you get the combo set up. That means you’ll need to refill with 170 cards, or 19 copies of the Power 9. This deck will cost you $950,000. That’s ignoring the fact that you will pretty quickly start affecting the market by trying to build it…

This is a flavorful ability and would absolutely work as a real card. My only complaint is that there’s no way a starting town NPC is 3/3. It’d have to be 0/1 or 1/1.

This seems way overcosted given how incredibly difficult it would be to make all that happen.

Wow. I always liked the Future Sight border, and the Mercadian Masques Counterspell art remains my favorite to this day. I think this is my new favorite Counterspell. I hope it’s… less ridiculously expensive than it could be.