Standard Tier List

A Consistent Interactive Midrange Deck: Play threats that bring out the best from each other, while slowing the opponent down with the right answers at the right time. Orzhov is more consistent than other standard midrange black decks, sacrificing countermagic and recursive creatures for more value generators, superior answers, and perfect mana.

An Aggressive Explosive Rectangles Deck: As quickly as possible, Boros Convoke wants to flood the board with permanents. One-mana creatures create additional artifacts and creatures, and these rectangles can then be used to power out convoke creatures, grow Warden of the Inner Sky to attack in the air, or simply grow as a team to attack wider than can be blocked.

A Controlling 5-Color Ramp Deck: Spend early turns changing cards into lands, then later turns changing those lands back into game-ending cards. Domain Control is a base G/W deck for easy access to ramp, sweepers, and stabilizing lifegain. The other three colors are a splash to kick Archangel of Wrath, cast Atraxa, and benefit from Domain spells like Herd Migration and Leyline Binding.

A Consistent Aggressive Spells Deck: Get the most out of impulse draw spells, consistently turning them into damage for an aggro plan with a combo feel. Gruul Aggro runs all of Standard’s most damaging red spells at two mana or less, to take advantage of all 12 available two-mana Reckless Impulse effects. Questing Druid is the only green card, as both a growing creature and draw spell.

A Disruptive Midrange Cardflow Deck: Use cheap interaction every turn the opponent deploys a threat and flash creatures every time they don’t. Cheap, evasive threats keep cards flowing with Gix while Sheoldred and lifelink creatures bolster the lifetotal. With value creatures and cheap interaction, Dimir Midrange has some amount of a game plan against every standard deck.

A Traditional Hard Control Deck: Answer threats, generate value, lock down the game, and win at your leisure. Azorius Control runs the best removal and sweepers available in standard, and the new addition of Deduce allows for even more two-mana counterspells. A few planeswalkers, lands, and Ezrim are the only win conditions needed once the board is empty.

A Disruptive Midrange Attackers Deck: Utilize specific meta answers and threats in the full scope of all three Esper colors to kill the opponent with the perfect card at the perfect time. Esper Midrange gets the most out of Raffine, Scheming Seer by conniving away mismatched interaction and redundant threats or growing the right kind of threat for any matchup.

A 5-color Combo Ramp Deck: Play a control plan with a maximum of one spell that costs less than 4 mana to win the game with a resolved Invasion of Alara’s “Cascade”. Invasion will always hit the Fetch Quest of a Bramble Familiar to put a massive threat into play, usually one that also wins the Invasion of Alara for more value than most opposition can handle

An Aggressive Explosive Toxic Tempo Deck: Fight for every poison counter, protecting toxic creatures to deal damage that can’t be healed. Bant Poison is an aggressive deck that attacks on a different axis, invalidating lifegain and using Venerated Rotpriest to punish targeted removal. Dodge specific interaction and sweepers until the Poison builds up to a lethal dose.

A Resilient Midrange Value Deck: Play creatures with extra value or recursion, while killing opposing threats. Compared to other base-black color combinations, Golgari Midrange has access to more creatures like Mosswood Dreadknight and Sentinel of the Nameless City that generate value on their own, in addition to the standard suite of black removal and disruption.