Hello, and welcome back to Casual Competitive! My apologies to all for leaving you all hanging for so long while I recovered from Spoiler Season and got situated with the new semester. The good news is: I’ve been able to play a lot of Magic: the Gathering, both casually and in several large tournaments, and I have some new ideas to throw at you today! Let me start with a look at a card that is one of the most underrated cards in Worldwake:



The first thing that I think about when I look at this card is its remarkable similarity to Trinket Mage. Sure, the Mage was never really enough to generate its own deck, but it is a staple in every format that it has been legal in. The Mystic has the potential to look the same way. Let me give you an example of it going all the way back to Legacy:


This is a deck that one of the members on my team came up with. We’re still working on the mana base, but aside from that the deck is really shaping up solidly. Here is the ideal game plan of the deck:

Legacy, a format that has now gotten famous for the control decks that win by playing a little guy and then equipping him with a few key Equipment, seems like the perfect format for the Mystic to find his home. The ability to put him in a Standstill shell just makes the deck seem like it can be a solid contender in the Legacy metagame.

But let’s not stop there. For those of you who aren’t avid Legacy players (and I’m going to guess that that’s most of you) let’s take a look at a far more accessible format: Standard. Last weekend I played in a large tournament here at my college, with several of the events being Standard tournaments. The guy on my team who built the Legacy deck also cooked up a Standard version, and ended up running this list:


This deck was piloted to a very successful weekend. The Mystic gives you some of the card advantage that you need to combat the brutality of Jund, for those who haven’t figured out that it’s starting to go out of style. The Lifelink capabilities of the Baneslayer and the ability to just go grab a couple of Sledges make the deck a monster to the Eldrazi Green and Red-Based decks of the format. I’ve seen the deck be on the back foot, and then just drop a Mystic, grab the Sledge, and then toss it on a Knight to jump right back up to twenty.

Really, the deck's biggest weakness in this format is probably the new found “Rock” deck, which is the post-Worldwake version of Vampires. This Standard Mystic deck plans to combat Vampires with its board, rocking the three Purge and the Vines to fight off their attempt at removing some early threats. Another stellar card is Windstorm that is essentially a one-sided Wrath of God for those players who haven’t figured it out and boarded out their Vampire Nocturnus.

So now that I’ve told you some of the deck's tricks, I encourage people looking for something to play in Standard to sleeve it up and give it a shot. The deck is really flexible, and currently underrated, which is always a plus, as people aren’t expecting it and won’t effectively know how to deal with it at first. There are also even more tricks to be found in the deck, especially when you start working with and getting comfortable using Knight of the Reliquary and the toolbox he provides. The deck is good, and also a lot of fun to play.

So that’s it for this week, I’ll be back next time with some more advice on Standard, and possibly some more hints about our new upcoming Magic series that we have in the works!