Top 8 Standard Cards from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt

8. Infernal Grasp

Mark Rosewater often says that restrictions breed creativity. In Standard, a diversity of removal, each with different strengths and weaknesses, tends to make for a more interesting format. There's a healthy churn where removal is adjusted to fit threats, which then causes a shift in threats, and so on.

Power Word Kill is, on its face, one of the best removal spells ever printed.

The four creature types listed are typically relegated to more casual formats and are not present in competitive Constructed, making this close to an easier-to-cast Terminate. Yet in Standard, Goldspan Dragon is one of the premier threats of the format, making Power Word Kill far worse than it might have been.

Enter Infernal Grasp.

A two-mana instant-speed catch-all removal spell is certain to be powerful and see plenty of play in Standard. Yet the two life is a real cost if the format takes an aggressive slant. For now, the White Weenie decks are mediocre, and Vampires seems to be missing a couple pieces, but if the format becomes aggressively slanted, then Black players will likely switch from Infernal Grasp to Power Word Kill, or at least play a mix of the two.

Alongside The Meathook Massacre, Soul Shatter, and Dragon's Fire, Standard isn't lacking for strong, efficient removal, and Infernal Grasp is a fantastic addition to the suite.

7. Smoldering Egg

The most natural comparison to Smoldering Egg is Thing in the Ice.

Both are two-mana 0/4's that want you to cast spells to transform them. Awoken Horror bounces everything and sticks around as a vanilla beater while Ashmouth Dragon is an evasive attacker that wants you to cast more spells.

There is a subtle difference, however. If you want to flip Egg efficiently, you want to cast a couple of more expensive spells, such as Prismari Command, Memory Deluge, Saw It Coming, or Alrund's Epiphany. But they can't get too expensive, or you'll have trouble dealing more than a couple points of damage when it flips. Thing in the Ice, on the other hand, could be easily flipped with Opts, Crash Through's, and a burn spell or two. This changes the types of spells that get included in the Egg shell as compared to the Thing shell, which is something to keep in mind during deckbuilding.

The foremost reason why Smoldering Egg is so playable right now is because the format struggles to answer creatures with four toughness. Egg being a two drop demands an answer even more quickly, and this is what makes it an excellent threat. Furthermore, Egg blocks well against the best cheap aggressive cards, all of which have three power. Werewolf Pack Leader, Reckless Stormseeker, and Intrepid Adversary all get walled off by the mighty Egg. Early defense combined with an ability to close out games quickly after flipping makes it a perfectly deadly threat for Standard.

6. Reckless Stormseeker

I guess the takeaway here is don't fly into a thunderstorm or you'll turn into a werewolf? Regardless, this card is real good. It comes down as a 3/3 haste, which is a strong rate, and then ensures that every subsequent creature gets a buff and haste for the rest of the game. The threat of flipping into its much stronger werewolf side punishes opponents hard if they can't cast a spell, often forcing them to make sub-optimal plays solely to prevent the transformation.

If it ever does flip, it also benefits from the fourth point of toughness making it challenging to kill. Multiples stack well; you can go all in one a giant creature to get through more damage, or spread the tramply love to make combat untenable for opponents.

This card is not a “werewolf” card – it's a generically great three-drop for any aggressively slanted Rx deck.

5. Memory Deluge

Most recent Standard formats have each had a signature “four mana draw two” spell.

Many have also had a flashier, more expensive draw spell.

(Admittedly, Dig Through Time was often two mana.)

It was not uncommon for control decks to play four copies of the cheap “Draw two” effect, and one copy of the more expensive “Draw several” effect. In Memory Deluge, we have both effects in a single card. Not only that, but even ignoring the Flashback, Memory Deluge is one of the best four mana “Draw two” effects we've ever had, competitive with all-timers like Fact or Fiction.

This card is so pushed that decks outside of pure control will want it. Already, it's being incorporated into UR Dragons, UR Turns, and Ux Midrange decks as an entire card advantage engine contained within a single card.

4. Siphon Insight

A throwback to Think Twice, Siphon Insight has a more restrictive mana cost and draws cards out of your opponent's deck instead of your own, but gives you more selection to make up for it.

Siphon Insight is great for all the same reasons that Think Twice was. It's instant-speed and cheap, which means it's a fantastic place to dump your excess mana on the end of your opponent's turn. Each individual casting digs deeper for land drops than Think Twice does (off-color is better than missing!), and has both a lower floor and higher ceiling than its predecessor. Depending on the opponent's deck, you may hit cards that you can't use effectively. On the other hand, you gain access to powerful threats and answers that your own deck doesn't have access to. Insight makes it challenging for your opponent to play the game optimally, as now they're not only playing around the cards in your deck, but the cards in their own deck as well.

It's not flashy, and it's flying a bit under the radar right now, but Siphon Insight is a fantastic spell that I believe will be a player in Standard so long as UB is playable.

3. Slowlands

The so-called Slowlands/Deliberatelands/Gablands/Yellowhatlands are pretty dang close to pure duals in formats like Standard, which tend to be slower. It's not unusual to play a tapped land on the first or second turn of the game anyways, so the downsides to these lands are pretty weak. They provide great fixing and will be powerful staples of Standard; I hope we get the remaining five in Crimson Vow!

2. Malevolent Hermit//Benevolent Geist

The four premier threats of the format are Goldspan Dragon, Esika's Chariot, Wrenn and Seven, and Alrund's Epiphany. Malevolent Hermit counters three of them, and is strong against the shell of the fourth.

Thus far, the Standard format has emphasized playing things on or before curve, with cards like Prosperous Innkeeper, Lotus Cobra, Tangled Florahedron, and Murasa Rootgrazer all helping to provide a boost of mana. Malevolent Hermit forces opponents to play something closer to a normal game of Magic by slowing down the deployment of noncreature threats; even if they answer it, the act of answering it is likely to slow them down.

Because of the format's current threat profile, Negate and Disdainful Stroke are powerful, maindeckable cards. The Hermit dodges most countermagic, can come down before the countermagic it doesn't dodge, and then, most absurd of all, it comes back to stop stuff from being countered.

This card's front face alone is playable in sideboards; the fact that it's a built-in two-for-one in a color that very much cares about two-for-ones puts it over the top. Even if they counter the Geist, that will often tap the opponent low enough for you to resolve the threat you'd wanted to anyways.

Hermit/Geist has been an all-star for me so far, and as long as the format revolves around non-creature threats, I don't see that changing.

1. Wrenn and Seven

Midnight Hunt gave us a lot in the way of answers, but it also gave us one powerful threat. Wrenn and Seven is generically strong: it comes down, makes a 5/5, and then helps you to hit land drops and fuel the graveyard. In this particular format, it's better than advertised. The Reach and size of the Treefolk token makes it a perfect, hard-to-remove blocker against Goldspan and Ashmouth Dragons and Esika's Chariot. Furthermore, it curves perfectly with Esika's Chariot, allowing you to clone the Treefolk the turn Wrenn comes down. In Landfall strategies, both its +1 and 0 abilities fuel triggers as well.

Despite the short time it's been in Standard, it didn't take players long to realize that 4x Wrenn and Seven are an auto-include in every Green deck alongside Esika's Chariot. It's already warping the format around itself, it's competitively costed, and we should all expect to see lots of Wrenn and Seven going forward.

Ryan Normandin is a grinder from Boston who has lost at the Pro Tour, in GP & SCG Top 8's, and to 7-year-olds at FNM. Despite being described as "not funny" by his best friend and "the worst Magic player ever" by Twitch chat, he cheerfully decided to blend his lack of talents together to write funny articles about Magic.