New Eldritch Moon Standard

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

The dust has settled on the weekend's StarCityGames Open Tournament in Columbus, Ohio and the results are in as to how the newest set of Magic: the Gathering, Eldritch Moon has impacted standard format.  From the 120 decklists going forward on Sunday, it appears that although there is still a measure of variation required for a healthy format, Bant Company was a clear winner as shown below in the top eight deck archetypes.

Bant Company – 34
U/W Spirits – 18
Bant Humans – 10
W/R Humans – 7
B/W Control – 6
U/R Eldrazi – 4
G/B Delirium – 4
G/W Tokens – 3

The best card in standard appears to the anchor of the Bant Company decklist, Collected Company.  This card got a lot better with the addition of Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Spell Queller which provides a volume of control in this list.  Thalia slows down your opponent a titch while Spell Queller can now exile key components such as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, members of last season's strong list G/W Tokens.  Here are the top 16 finalists for the SCG tournament in Columbus.

Bant Company 1st Devin Koepke
Sultai Control 2nd Ali Aintrazi
Bant Company 3rd Kyle Boggemes
G/W Tokens 4th Eric Rill
Bant Company 5th Dan Jessup
G/R Goggles 6th Matthew Voltz
B/G Seasons Past 7th Kasey Walton
B/W Angel Control 8th Ronnie Ritner
G/W Tokens 9th Andrew Boswell
Bant Company 10th Tom Maney
G/W Tokens 11th Chris Robinson
W/R Humans 12th Tom Ross
U/W Spirits 13th Jeff Hoogland
Bant Company 14th Jack Fogle
W/R Humans 15th Todd Anderson
Bant Company 16th Chris Andersen

Given the new powerful cards such as Mausoleum Wander (buff and instant / sorcery counter), Selfless Wanderer (saving your bacon from a board-wipe) and Spell Queller (jack of all trades remoal) we were expecting to see a strong presence in the top 8 of U/W Spirits.  These lists did do decent going forward to day two, just not quite across the finish line, which indicates to us that perhaps fine-tuning against Bant Company may be all that is needed.  The format is still very young and what is certain is the evolution of strategies.
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