What I'm Playing This Weekend at the Kaldheim Championship

What do you get when you test for a major tournament with the likes of Brad Nelson, Seth Manfield, and the famous "Czech House"? Great options for Historic, a deck choice for Standard upon which the whole team agreed, and a solid starting point for a hopefully successful weekend!

yorion - devil


The Testing/Team

I already had an amazing testing squad lined up, but then Ondřej Stráský asked me a couple weeks prior to the tournament whether I'd like to test with his team. Naturally, I couldn't miss this opportunity. His team includes not only the "Czech House" of Ivan Floch, Stanislav Cifka, and more, but also both Seth Manfield and Brad Nelson, names you may have heard before.

Our testing process wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Even the best players put their pants on one leg at a time. We talked about decks we deemed playable or good through Discord and had a number of calls to talk through specifics. In addition I got to play a lot of those players in internal testing matches.

Standard

As the team had played the Sultai Ultimatum deck in the last MPL/Rivals Weekend to at least reasonable success, that was one of the frontrunners for Standard for most of the testing. The only other deck that we really considered was Dimir Rogues, as it is slightly favored in the heads up versus Sultai. Ultimately ("Haha!") we decided on Sultai Ultimatum, as that deck not only does something inherently powerful, we also believed our version to fix some issues and just be quite strong against what we expected to face.

The metagame we expected for this weekend was roughly in this order: Sultai Ultimatum as the most played deck, followed by Naya Adventures (all variants together), Monored, Temur Adventures (more popular than any single Naya deck, but less popular than all of them combined), Cycling, Rogues. Decks we expected to be present, but not in very relevant proportion were Izzet Flash and decks of any sort. Decks we expected only very little of were Monowhite Aggro and Gruul Adventures.

This is the Rogues list we ultimately decided not to play:


Runner-Up Deck Choice for Standard: Dimir Rogues
Main DeckSideboard
  • 4
  • 4
  • 2
  • 4
  • 3
  • 5
  •  
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 2
  • 4
  • 2
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 3
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
  • 2
  • 2
  • 2

I decided on Sultai Ultimatum because I think it's the default best deck in Standard, and I like the version we arrived at. Also, Rogues is not an archetype I would lean toward personally, so the choice wasn't hard on me. This is the list all of us ended up registering:


My Deck Choice for Standard: Sultai Ultimatum
Main DeckSideboard
  • 3
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
  • 4
  • 1
  •  
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 4
  • 3
  • 3
  • 1
  • 4
  • 1
  • 1
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1
  • 3
  • 1
  • 3
  • 1
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 3
  • 1

Over all, the list does not feature a lot of suprising inclusions, but let's talk some about the specific card choices, shall we?

The main deck is mostly because you want some extra cheap interaction, and you can cast this one with . The and instead of are because the 1/1 body is pretty bad in most instances. Temple allows for easier casting of Ultimatum with Dispute backup or casting , Pathway is mostly a Forest, but sometimes casts . I thought about having a fourth instead, but you seldom run out of basics so the little extra upside is likely worth it.

The only other notable inclusion in the main deck is the one , which is a hedge against Rogues that also frees up a sideboard slot. counters Cultivates and is a bit broader in its application than . is useful in the mirror and against Cycling. Three copies of should help with the Monored matchup, but are also applicable outside of that.

Historic

We had a much harder time finding a Historic deck we all felt good with, which also ended with us splitting here. While most of the team decided to go with Azorius Control in the end, I didn't really like how our list looked and wanted to be a bit more proactive than Azorius Control usually is.

There are a whole lot of viable decks in Historic right now. Even during the last two days of preparation we still thought about playing Gruul, Jund Company, Orzhov Auras, and even Selesnya-colored decks with . So if any of those are more your style, I would not fault you for choosing these for a tournament this weekend. This rundown doesn't even include a couple decks that I think are just a bit short and could also get there if they are decks you like playing, or if you think you have good versions of something like Elves or decks built around or .

This is how our Azorius list ended up looking:


Runner-Up Deck Choice for Historic: Azorius Control
Main DeckSideboard
  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 2
  • 2
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
  •  
  • 4
  • 2
  • 2
  • 3
  • 1
  • 2
  • 2
  • 2
  • 3
  • 1
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
  • 3
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 2
  • 1
  • 4
  • 3
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1

Instead, I like how well rounded Jund Food is, while being ahead in the pseudo-mirror against Jund Company. In addition, Jund Food has fewer problems dealing with the hate people run against Jund Company, like or . I hope I'm not making a mistake like I did at the Season Grand Finals, but this time there is hopefully no broken deck that also gets to play Yasharn.


My Deck Choice for Standard: Jund Food
Main DeckSideboard
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
  • 4
  • 4
  • 3
  • 3
  • 1
  • 1
  •  
  • 4
  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  •  
  • 4
  • 4
  • 2
  • 2
  • 2
  • 4
  • 4
  • 3
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 1
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1

The list is quite close to what we saw come out of the SCG circuit last weekend, so I'll only go over the differences. Two copies supplement the card advantage package, and I'd rather not draw multiple copies of but have mixed three-drops instead. Instead of basic lands and , I'm playing more Pathways. This is because drawing basic lands or Passages makes your mana quite awkward in the first few turns, and the upside of triggering and isn't worth that.

No , because the sideboard contains and , so you'd only have it for game one and then the deck also already has four cards with a mana value of five. The sideboard is fairly self-explanatory overall: removal for creature decks, discard for control, and this is just the way the numbers (hopefully) work out.

The Kaldheim Championship begins not long after the publication of this article. Follow the live coverage here—and wish me luck!

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