Pro Tour Nagoya and the new face of Standard

Pro Tour Nagoya has finished and the new face of Standard is beginning to take shape. Nagoya was a Block constructed tournament, meaning all cards needed to be from the Scars of Mirrodin block. The decks that we saw win today will be the shells that winning decks will adopt as soon as Zendikar rotates out of Standard in October.

A quick breakdown of the Top 8 shows 4 White Artifact aggro decks, a 4 color control deck, 2 Red aggro decks, and a Black Infect deck.

1st: 4 Color Control, utilizing lots of Artifacts and Tezzeret
2nd: Mono Black Infect with an interesting choice of Piston Sledge
3rd: White Artifact Aggro, Tempered Steel
4th: White Artifact Aggro, Tempered Steel
5th: White Aggro, Equipment
6th: Red Aggro, including Koth
7th: White Aggro, Equipment
8th: Red Aggro, including Koth

These are the standings of the constructed portion, after the constructed Top 8, all players then participated in drafts to determine final standings, with David Sharfman (who placed 7th in Constructed) winning overall.

I think that the 4CC deck is very interesting, however, I don't see it being overly powerful outside of block constructed, so I'd like to take a look at the Black Infect list.

Gaudenis Vidugiris' Black Infect
Lands - 23 4 Inkmoth Nexus 19 Swamp Creatures - 16 4 Ichorclaw Myr 4 Phyrexian Crusader 4 Plague Stinger 4 Whispering Specter	Other spells - 21 3 Despise 4 Dismember 2 Gitaxian Probe 4 Virulent Wound 4 Mutagenic Growth 4 Piston Sledge	Sideboard: 2 Go for the Throat 4 Grasp of Darkness 3 Marrow Shards 2 Mortarpod 4 Phyrexian Vatmother

There are definitely a few things that I like here. The Despises and Gitaxian Probes allow you to see your opponent's hand, giving you information. The Virulent Wounds and Dismembers will help clear the way for your creatures, or shut down your opponent's threats. Finally, the Mutagenic Growths and Piston Sledges put some very nice power into the hands of your infect creatures.

A very powerful early game play is to attack with Whispering Specter and pump it with Mutagenic Growth or Piston Sledge, putting at least 3 poison counters on your opponent, and then sacrifice your Specter, forcing your opponent to discard a large portion of their hand. The card and control advantage gained from a simple play like that is often enough to win you the game in the next few turns, with your opponent unable to do anything worthwhile.

The Marrow Shards are interesting in the sideboard. However, I am certain that there will be a much more powerful card that would fit that slot better once we have access to Innistrad and M12. The Mortarpods are a nice touch, and are often able to win you the game, if they are equipped to an Infect creature, they deal poison counters to players. The Phyrexian Vatmother is often too large of a threat for most non-Infect strategies to deal with in the limited Block format, but I feel that she will be a bit too slow in a full Standard list.

Aside from the Black Infect list, the 4 White Aggro decks that placed in the Top 8 are divided into two very different camps. Two decks chose to go with powerful White creatures, and back them up with solid Equipment like Sword of War and Peace, fast Equipment that also puts a body out with Flayer Husk, and great utility Equipment with Mortarpod. Meanwhile the other two lists used White as their "Toolbox" and relied heavily on powerful and fast Artifact creatures backed up by Tempered Steel.

I believe that these are the beginnings of the Archetypes that we will be seeing come October, at least until the Innistrad block has rolled out enough cards to make a large enough impact on the card base. I strongly feel that Poison will start to become a very competitive deck with the addition of some of the accessory cards that I've seen of in the M12 spoilers.

Thanks for reading.