Challenger Decks Review and Upgrades
Back in February, Wizards unveiled a new product line, named Challenger Decks, branding them as an on-ramp to the Standard format. In the past, Wizards has released products intended to serve as a next step for casual players, but things like Planeswalker Decks can’t realistically compete in a Standard environment. The Challenger Decks, however, can. Let’s take a look at each of them.
What It Does Well
Hazorer Aggro is a monored aggro deck not far from the actual build of monored running around Standard. So much of the power of this deck is in its cheaper spells, and this deck has four of the most important cheap spell: Bomat Courier. It also contains the full suite of burn spells in 4 Shock and 4 Lightning Strike. Ahn-Crop Crasher, Fanatical Firebrand, and Kari-Zev ensure that you’ll be off to an aggressive start every game.
Most Important Improvements
If you’re looking to upgrade the Hazoret Aggro deck, the two cards that the deck misses the most are the full playset of Hazoret the Fervent (~$10 each) alongside the full playset of Earthshaker Khenra (~$2 each). Earthshaker Khenra is the often the deck’s best Turn 2 play and is consistent with the gameplan of preventing your opponent from blocking. Hazoret, on the other hand, is so powerful because she attacks from a completely different angle than the rest of the deck and requires different answers. Hazoret lets you turn dead cards in your hand into two points of damage a turn, makes your mulligans better, and will happily eat one of your opponent’s creatures every turn when she attacks. She’s a true powerhouse in the deck, giving it much more play in the lategame, a phase where traditional monored decks struggle.
Where do you cut if you decide to upgrade? Now that Temur Energy is gone, the 3 Harsh Mentor can be cut, as they’re often just textless 2/2’s in practice. The 2 Magma Spray and the 3 Soul-Scar Mage are also spells Red has been moving away from, and you can afford to cut. The sideboard could also be spruced up with Aethersphere Harvesters to give more play in aggro mirrors.
Current Positioning in the Metagame
With the printing of Moment of Craving, UB Control and UBx Midrange rose to the top, pushing Monored down. However, the recent resurgence of UW God-Pharaoh’s Gift decks to combat the UBx decks improves Red’s positioning, as it has a strong matchup against the UW deck. However, be sure to include additional Abrade in the sideboard to kill those 7-mana artifacts!
What It Does Well
This deck might be the closest out-of-the-box to its actual Standard counterpart, Mardu Vehicles. It has all the key components of the deck: the full sets of Heart of Kiran, Bomat Courier, Toolcraft Exemplar, Unlicensed Disintegration, Scrapheap Scrounger, and Veteran Motorist. You honestly can’t go too wrong with the rest of the deck if those are the 24 cards that you’re starting with. The deck’s most busted starts involve Toolcraft Exemplar on Turn 1 followed by Heart of Kiran on Turn 2 and a Scrapheap Scrounger on Turn 3, leaving your opponent at 10 life if they fail to interact.
Most Important Improvements
Skysovereign is too expensive for the deck’s beatdown plan, and Cultivator’s Caravan is too clunky. In fact, even Depala is a bit too slow. Replace the Caravan and the Skysovereign with 2 Aethersphere Harvester and, if you’re willing to dish you the cash, the Depala’s should be Hazorets. You might also need to rejigger the manabase a little bit, as Unclaimed Territory becomes pretty questionable when you’re only running 8 Dwarves. In a deck as aggressive as this one that cares so much about its plays on Turns 1 and 2, it’s worth picking up additional copies of Inspiring Vantage (~$4) and Concealed Courtyard (~$5).
Current Positioning in the Metagame
Mardu’s position in the metagame hasn’t been great for some time. While you can certainly steal games with your most busted starts, monored out-aggros you and Grixis out-midranges you. The popularity of cards like Champion of Wits and Gonti, Lord of Luxury, who provide their value when they enter the battlefield, will happily trade off with your X/1’s. If you enjoy the playstyle of the deck, go for it, but of the four Challenger Decks, this one is probably the weakest moving forward.
What It Does Well
Second Sun Control’s gameplan is extremely straightforward: don’t die and cast Approach of the Second Sun twice. Out-of-the-box, you’ve got the 4 Glimmer of Genius, which are keystones in any blue control deck, 3 Fumigate, and 4 Cast Out, which allow you to answer pretty much anything your opponent throws at you. The land count might look high, especially when compared to the other Challenger Decks, but decks like this cannot afford to miss land drops, particularly when they want to cast a 7-mana sorcery around Turn 7.
Most Important Improvements
The deck needs Disallow (~$5). Badly. Supreme Will and Censor are fine, but Disallow is the best counterspell that Blue has had in Standard since Dissolve. The deck also wants another couple Settle the Wreckage, though there’s long been disagreement over what the correct Fumigate/Settle the Wreckage split is. Finally, in today’s creature-centric metagame, Essence Scatters are also a must-have. The final card that has gone a huge way to make control decks viable in Standard is Search for Azcanta (~$17). Search is particularly important here, where both sides help dig you to Approach faster.
Current Positioning in the Metagame
This deck occupies a weird spot. Out-of-the-box, it’s definitely the worst of the four. Not only is it missing a large number of vital pieces for its optimal build, but it sees basically no play in Standard anymore. The only reason why I would consider this a better buy than Mardu Vehicles moving forward is because it looks to pick up some additional key components when the next set, Dominaria, drops on April 21. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is a fantastic card-advantage engine and Seal Away is the instant-speed, 2-mana creature removal spell that this deck has been desperately missing since Blessed Alliance and Immolating Glare rotated. As such, UW Approach might be making a bit of a comeback post-Dominaria, which is why I can recommend picking this one up over Mardu Vehicles, which doesn’t seem to be getting much from the new set.
What it Does Well
You’ve got 4 Winding Constrictor alongside creatures that make Energy and put +1/+1 counters on things. Since “the snek” has been printed, that’s basically been the recipe for BG midrange decks in Standard. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner is also one of the best cards in the entire format right now, so having the full playset of those is absolutely vital as well.
Most Important Improvements
This Challenger Deck is strange because it was printed before the final evolution of its optimal build was found, which means that this Challenger Deck, while sharing a couple of the same cards, actually has a different, more aggressive gameplan than its optimal version.
In Standard, the deck has splashed Blue for Hadana’s Climb, leading it to become a Sultai Energy deck rather than a straight BG deck. While Hadana’s Climb is important and certainly worth considering, it also forces you to adjust the manabase to incorporate Blue as well. Whether or not you decide to go Blue, the other improvements to the deck are the same for both the BG and Sultai versions.
The key cards this deck is missing are (on the cheap end) full playsets of Servant of the Conduit (~$0.20) and Bristling Hydra, (~$0.30). On the more expensive end, Jadelight Ranger ($9) is an incredible value-creature and Vraska’s Contempt (~$13) is the format’s best answer to The Scarab God, the format’s best threat. Fatal Push (~$6) is also one of the best removal spells in the format. Maxing out the number of Walking Ballista (~$10) also goes a long way toward improving the deck. When making these upgrades to creatures, the cards to cut (in this order) are Dreamstealer, Longtusk Cub, Scrapheap Scrounger, and a Rishkar or two. If you’re upgrading removal, cut the Walk the Plank first, then Hour of Glory.
Current Positioning in the Metagame
The optimal Sultai build of this deck is a great choice right now in Standard. If you update this Challenger Deck to its optimal version, you’ll have the strongest deck of the four. If you play it as-is or make only minor upgrades, it’s probably second to Red, but still more metagame-competitive than Vehicles or Approach.
Ranking the Challenger Decks
Most competitive out-of-the-box
- Monored
- BG Constrictor
- Mardu Vehicles
- UW Approach
Most competitive when fully upgraded
- BG Constrictor
- Monored
- UW Approach
- Mardu Vehicles
Smallest Difference between out-of-the-box build and optimal build
- Mardu Vehicles
- Monored
- UW Approach
- BG Constrictor
Cheapest to upgrade from out-of-the-box to optimal build
- Mardu Vehicles
- Monored
- UW Approach
- BG Constrictor
Overall Recommendation
- Monored
- The other three, depending on what matters to you
Final Thoughts (ignoring playstyle preference ex. if you enjoy control, you’ll obviously be more inclined to get Approach over Monored)
By most metrics, Monored is the best choice. It’s the best out-of-the-box, close to its optimal version, the cheapest to upgrade, and will remain competitive going forward.
If you don’t care quite as much about being competitive in Standard moving forward, but want a powerful deck to play with friends and bring to FNM, Mardu Vehicles is your best bet. It requires almost no upgrades and is super-close to its optimal build, with its only problem being a poor metagame choice that doesn’t look to improve moving forward.
If cost is not an issue, and you’re just concerned with buying a Challenger deck, upgrading it fully, and want to be as competitive as possible, then BG Constrictor is the winner. But that’s a bit of an odd scenario; given those conditions, you’re probably better off just buying singles for the optimal build.
If you want a deck that could be a breakout moving forward, it might be worth it to pick up UW Approach, though you will need to devote significant resources to optimize the build.
Hopefully you enjoyed this piece and it was helpful! Feel free to share any questions, thoughts, or comments below.
Ryan is a grinder from Boston with SCG & GP Top 8’s and a PT Day 2. His fragile self-esteem is built on approval from others, so be sure to tell him what you think of his articles on Twitter @RyanNormandin and in his Twitch chat at twitch.tv/norm_the_ryno.
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