G/R Aggro Oscar Christensen 2nd Place at Miscellaneous on 1/25/2015 (Standard)

Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to look at Oscar Christensen's deck from the Sunday Super Series. Oscar lost in the finals to Luis, but come on - I would have made a point to talk about this deck even if he'd been eliminated long before that.

Oscar's deck is clearly an update to the G/R deck that was somewhat popular before the release of Fate Reforged, and quite similar to the updated version I was playing after Grand Prix Denver. The only new cards in Oscar's maindeck are two copies of Yasova Dragonclaw, which pretty much just replaced Fanatic of Xenagos on the curve. I like the change. Yasova has pretty big upside against other creature decks and is also guaranteed to enable ferocious, while Fanatic had three power when I really needed it to have four too often for my liking.

Yasova also works quite well with Chanda, Pyromancer, which Oscar has chosen to play over Xenagos compared to previous versions of the deck. If you have both Chandra and Yasova, your opponent is pretty much never going to get to block. Chandra can ping their Siege Rhino, while Yasova steals their smaller blocker, and then your opponent is pretty much dead. Oscar supplements this plan with Harness by Force in his sideboard, which is a card that I flirted with in the deck before but never quite pulled the trigger on. If people are ramping out huge monsters, Harness is certainly an exciting card, though it seems like most of the big ramp is putting out things like Hornet Queen or Ugin, neither of which is really vulnerable to threaten effects.

Interestingly, Oscar didn't choose to play Shaman of the Wild Hunt. While it's a little sad not to see one of the exciting new cards getting play, I can totally understand the decision. Shaman is a card that's good in two scenarios - your creatures are attacking and connecting with your opponent, or the game has gone long and you're looking for additional resources to help you win. In the first case, you're already pretty happy - you're getting damage in, and you're on your way toward winning the game. Shaman can solidify your position, but that's not really what you're looking for in that case. In the second instance, you're probably pretty sad - this is not the kind of deck that really wants to play for the long game. You'd rather have a card that can help keep you from getting to that position in the first place, which is the role Ashcloud Phoenix plays in the four slot instead.

One thing that I really like about this deck is how bad Valorous Stance is against it. I actually think that card alone may be reason to abandon Savage Knuckleblade in favor of straight G/R. Literally no creatures in this list can be killed by Valorous Stance unless they're bestowed with Boon Satyr - which is certainly something to keep in mind when playing with Boon Satyr against any deck with 1W untapped.

Poor Polukranos. He's likely not even worth a slot in the sideboard anymore.

It's interesting how different a picture each of these tournaments offers of the impact of Fate Reforged on Standard. At the Open Series in DC, the winning deck was an entirely new archetype, and the finalist's list was a very different take on an old one. In the Super Series, the first and second place decks each had exactly two copies of one new card in their maindeck and two copies of another in their sideboard.

Tuning the old or brewing the new - which way will Standard go? I'm not sure, but I'm excited to find out.