Standard Gruul Spiders of Calamity

And some thoughts on the Standard meta. Plus a Standard Simic Greenshell list

I tried playing Standard a month or so ago. I did not particularly like it. It felt like it was just a bunch of clunky midrange decks facing each other down.

I left saying “this format really needs a deck like Phoenix to force the decks to become more streamlined”…and then almost immediately the format got a Phoenix like deck in Esper Pixie.

And I know a thing or two about brewing in a format where a Phoenix like deck is the best deck. So I have been quite enjoying brewing in Standard.

Initial Greenshell Exploration

I of course started with Standard versions of my Pioneer Greenshell lists. Reasoning being a large percent of those decks are Standard legal, including the core engine cards. So if it is good enough for Pioneer, it should be good enough for Standard.

My Greenshell results were good, but nothing great. As I discuss here, the context matters and Standard interaction lines up better against Greenshell than Pioneer interaction does.

2024 at What If Brews

Here is the list I eventually got to. It’s a winning list. There is also room to improve it, so it is worth trying if interested.

Decklist Link

But I felt like I was learning a lot about the format and had elements of a powerful deck so started taking my brewing in different but adjacent directions.

Key Insights

Decks never run out of gas

Esper Pixie is the obvious example of this where it can use all of its mana every single turn. But so can the Beanstalk decks. Somehow even Gruul Aggro never runs out of gas.

This has a couple implications:

• Your deck cannot run out of gas, so you need a solid value engine

• Low resource grinding does not make sense. Focus instead of going over the top of your opponent. When you both have plenty of gas you want to either be faster or bigger and ideally a combo of the two

Stabilizing is an illusion

This is most obvious against Gruul Aggro, but it is really hard to stabilize and then pull ahead. So you need to prioritize closing out the game.

This is one of the issues my Simic Greenshell lists had. They wanted to stabilize and a turn or two later win. But that turn or two feels like it gives your opponent too much of a window.

One for One removal is bad

Esper Pixie is the obvious example here. That deck is full of 2 for 1 creatures for one mana…how do you plan on winning with a plan of one for one removal against this.

There is also tons of ward, flash, and creatures that outscale the efficient removal. This creates a situation where Floodpits Drowner is the best “removal” spell in the format because it is also advancing your gameplan while providing sufficient interaction.

The other option here, and the one I began to lean into more, is “don’t worry about removal, just rely on blocking until you can go over the top.”

You need to be able to beat Hopeless Nightmare

Much like I talk about in this article on brewing in a Thoughtseize format, there is a lot you can do to make your deck robust to discard in a format where a discard spell is front and center.

Mulligan-less Brewing

Key Cards I grew to like while brewing Simic Greenshell

Arid Archway

This should come as no surprise from the person who said:

The four most powerful cards in Pioneer are Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Treasure Cruise, Unholy Annex, and Arid Archway. Simic Greenshell is the current best Arid Archway deck.

Simic Greenshell Card by Card Power Rankings

In a Hopeless Nightmare format, a land that draws you a card on ETB seems obviously powerful.

Smuggler’s Surprise

All of my Greenshell lists had four of this card and it felt consistently like one of the most powerful cards in the format. It helps with card advantage, its ability to help you cheat on mana is key for keeping up with the speed of the format, and instant speed allows you to play around Sunfall.

Spinner of Souls + Insidious Fungus

To the never run out of gas point, I started trying out Spinner of Souls, particularly liking that it pairs well with Insidious Fungus. The key thing is these are both cards that stand on their own, but also work well together.

Colossal Rattlewurm

I was initially focused on Obstinate Baloth as tech against Hopeless Nightmare.

But realized you really want your Hopeless Nightmare tech to be maindeck and when we are talking maindeckable options Rattlewurm is superior as it is a good card in most matchups that has additional upside against Nightmare.

Gruul Spiders of Calamity

I was still struggling with the “stabilizing is an illusion, close the game” point. When I was running both Spinner of Souls and Smuggler’s Surprise my hand would frequently end up full of creatures. So I started thinking is there a two card creature combo that wins the game, but where the creatures are not individually terrible.

Which got me to this combo:

If you put both into play with a Smuggler’s Surprise (ideally 7 or 9 mana version to protect against interaction), the combo is 33 damage, 19 of which is unblockable.

Which got me to this deck eventually.

Decklist Link

This deck is awesome. It is a ton of fun to play and powerful. I cruised to Mythic with it and am continuing to win with it in Mythic currently sitting around 500 and rising.

Calamity is obviously great with Terror of the Peaks, but with Vaultborn Tyrant it is also functionally game winning. Outcaster Trailblazer is the Saddle partner that comes up most often and is very powerful in its own right. Even Calamity with Rattlewurm is often game winning.

Outcaster is one of the quiet beating hearts of the deck. It provides that never running out of gas role. It also allows you to play around Sunfall. But perhaps my favorite use case is plotting it to use it as a ramp spell to get up to a big Smuggler’s Surprise or Genesis Wave if my opponent is not pressuring me.

As I was working on the deck I kept shaving removal spells and it kept feeling better. I started with five maindeck and am now down to one. I may need to do more to shore up the various red deck matchups, but they are winnable with this list.

The Glimpse the Cores are a more recent addition and feel like a big upgrade (replacing Twitching Doll, hence the deck name) and I likely need to rework the mana a bit.

Final Thought

An important part of competitive brewing is playing cards that spark joy when you draw them. If you are competitive they likely only do this if you are finding they are doing something powerful with some consistency. But they also spark joy because they are fun, which is critical for powering you through the grind of optimizing a brew.

And to that end, I challenge you to find a card that sparks more joy than Calamity, Galloping Inferno.