Standard formats have always been my favorite to work with, especially in the past four to five years. The card pool is small enough that decks aren't completely degenerate (like Legacy) or extremely wide open (like Extended). Innovation is still prime, and most importantly, it's the format of choice for Friday Night Magic.

Standard is a complicated beast right now. While the field has a lot of diversity, the metagame is dominated by one specific deck; Jund. As a midrange deck, it plays hand control through Blightning, and keeps up the aggro beats with Putrid Leech and Sprouting Thrinax. Most interesting about this deck is that every spell they play generally gets them card advantage, either through Cascade, abilities, or through enters the battlefield effects. Jund tends to cast creatures , and then make the beats.

The rest of the field is also decidedly aggro - control decks have been doing pretty poorly, with a few minor shining performances at Star Ctiy Games' 5K events, most notably a win with a WUr control deck from Luis Scott Vargas.

One thing that all of these decks have in common is their inclusion of one color - Red. Red has been the "under-performer" this season, and most people really haven't given the color a lot of thought, but spells like Lightning Bolt, Earthquake, Blightning, and Goblin Guide have shown up in a variety of Standard lists.

In fact, Red is probably the most-played color in Standard right now. At the recent Star City Games Dallas Standard Open 5k, 14! of the Top 16 decks were playing Red in some shape or form. In case you missed that last point, that's about 87% of the Top 16.

That's a lot of Red.

So it's no doubt that this new Worldwake card is going to shake up the metagame a bit.




White weenie has been struggling to land a foothold in the current format, and it's had some solid placings at States and at the SCG Open events. But now, it seems inevitable that this little gem of a Solider is going to help the mono-White deck get there.

Mono-White has a lot going for it, in a way - cheap efficient creatures that have backbreaking abilities like Knight of the White Orchard and White Knight backed up by strong team protecting spells like Brave the Elements and the power and toughness enhancing Honor the Pure. Topping out at Emeria Angel and Ajani Goldmane, the deck can put the hurt on in quick fashion. Currently though, it's outstripped by more aggressive decks like Barely Boros (a mostly mono-Red deck) and Boros Aggro (which uses its cheap creatures and Landfall abilities to make powerful attacks each turn).

But now, with Kor Firewalker, this fun , sometimes Soldier-centric White weenies deck actually can compete with better decks in the format! Consider this 4th-place deck list from the Dallas Open. Justin, who must rely on getting quick creatures out the door immediately and pound as quickly as possible now has the onus of trying to fight through your first strikers and buffed soldiers, in addition putting even more damage on you - every Lightning Bolt he casts, almost every single spell he makes heals you a point, and worse yet, your Kor Firewalker is almost completely invulnerable to harm.

Boros Aggro decks have similar problems, although they're a bit more resilient to Kor Firewalker due to White creatures like Steppe Lynx and Elite Vanguard. For a "burn deck" like Boros, where it's speeding out the most damage that it possibly can, ramming itself into Pro-Red creatures is not the way it wants to spend an afternoon.

Kor Firewalker opens up a brand new method of attack for the White weenie deck, and this is something I expect to see in the weeks following Worldwake's release. We've seen plenty of Red decks like Valakut Control splashing White for cards like Ajani Vengeant and Path to Exile but now White can turn the tables by splashing Red, and use some of this powerful removal for themselves! Every burn spell the WWr aggro deck casts becomes a mini Lightning Helix!

The question is though - can Kor Firewalker make White weenie good enough for consistent Standard play, or is it not good enough? The answer to that question lies with another question - Can Kor Firewalker shake up Jund?

The answer is yes and no. Jund relies on creatures like Sprouting Thrinax and Bloodbraid Elf as a way to end the game, and Firewalker makes those creatures less stellar. It also is protected from powerful removal like Terminate, Lightning Bolt, and Bituminous Blast. Still, Kor Firewalker can take the edge off of Jund's beat down, it can't stop it entirely. The deck is still running Maelstrom Pulse and Putrid Leech, which don't care about Kor Firewalker at all. Worse yet, cards like Master of the Wild Hunt and Garruk tend to make quick work of the 2/2. So, I can't say that Kor Firewalker is necessarily a Jund stopper, but it is something they'll be annoyed to deal with. Follow up the Firewalker with Honor of the Pure and some other weenies, and you've got a solid plan to get 20 damage, and the Kor Firewalker makes it anywhere from 2-5 damage harder for Jund to finish the game.

So, while White weenie isn't the Jund breaker, I do expect to see more White weenie aggro decks, especially running Kor Firewalker, in the near future.



To finish things off, here's a little untested deck tech:

It would be fairly easy to substitute burn in this deck for one of your two drops, and cards like Lightning Bolt can definitely change the game state a bit. I'm fairly certain that Ajani Goldmane is better for this deck than Ajani Vengeant, but I could be wrong - as always, your mileage may vary.

Soul Warden, a normal part of this deck, gets removed for the potentially more explosive Kor Firewalker, and some of the numbers get fiddled with as well.


Make sure you check out the rest of our Worldwake content this week, as Eye of the Vortex plows through the previews to bring you the latest analysis and coverage of the spoiler season!

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