Tired of playing the same Standard deck ? Or even against the same decks ? Trying to figure out a new plan of attack for today’s Standard environment and still coming up short?

Well.. you can always try the following:

This is not the Maze’s End deck you’re all used to seeing is it? Where’s all the Fog effects, Jace Architect of Though and Sphinx’s Revelation? Well, this deck tries to be more proactive. It plays more creatures to hold down the fort and to give us more value for our lands. Plus there’s this new planeswalker that fills the role of Urban Evolution #5-8.

One of the rare planeswalkers that has somewhat lived up to their hype

Vincent Laberge, a local Montreal player provided me with the decklist. Although I have yet to play with it, I must admit that it looks particularly delicious. I can’t wait to start casting ramp-like spells without always being a full turn behind (the deck only runs one of each Guildgate versus the traditional 2-of’s). Whelming Wave seems like a very odd addition to the deck, but it is a very effective way to slow down aggro decks on top of being yet another main deck answer to a Pack Rat swarm.

The deck plays a full 16 creatures in the main deck, all of which are green. While this may pose a problem post sideboard versus monoblack decks, the pre-board matchup seems rather favorable. There’s quite a bit of lifegain too, which can stave off some Gray Merchant of Asphodel life loss. Everything happens at sorcery spee here, unless we drop a Prophet of Kruphix. That’s where the fun starts:

Untap on your opponent’s turn, activate Maze’s End and put a Guildgate into play. Play Maze’s End on our turn and repeat the same play on your opponent’s turn. We are basically negating the disadvantage of playing Maze’s End as our land of the turn, since we can use it every turn this way instead of every other turn (the way it was meant to be played).

How many turns will it take you to reach the ‘End’?

The Prophet also allows us to simply do more of everything. It gets even better after sideboarding. Interesting interactions can happen with the lifegain of Courser of Kruphix and Archangel of Thune. This Kruphix is quite a cool god. Eventhough his card has not been released yet, I have the feeling he will rank amongst most Magic players’ favorite god.

The deck is somewhat soft to any mill effect or Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver/Nightveil Specter. By running only one of each guildgate we are somewhat vulnerable to something that might remove one of our gates from our deck. We discussed a few possible solutions to this and three potential solutions presented themselves:

Reshuffle our lost guildgates back!

Versatile, to say the least …

Nothing at all

Unsurprisingly, the answer is C) Nothing!

Have you seen the sideboard on this deck? It’s basically transforming into a better creature aggro deck. High quality dudes like Blood Baron of Vizkopa, Archangel of Thune and Aetherling mean we don’t only have to rely on the Maze’s End plan. Plan B is very viable and I 100% approve.

The End ?