This deck was so utterly dominant at the time that it drove people away from the game. Then, once the Scars of Mirrodin block brought powerful Equipment like Batterskull and Sword of Feast and Famine, the deck added Stoneforge Mystic and became Caw Blade. It played Squadron Hawk and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and was a classic control deck with permission, interaction, sweepers and card draw. Still, for those two and a half weeks in Standard, Omnath was the headline act for one of the most unbelievably powerful decks ever seen in Magic’s history.Ĭaw Blade started off in life as a deck called “Caw-Go”, a play on the classic control gameplay pattern of draw-go. Omnath burnt hot and bright – it went on to be banned in Historic as well, while its Modern career was cut short by the banning of Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath. The fact that it replaced itself, stabilized your life total and added mana for just four mana made this card an unstoppable force, and it was banned very quickly as a result. The card was so good that the one major tournament while it was Standard-legal saw almost 60 percent of the field playing it.īetween Fabled Passage and Escape to the Wilds (Escape would also go on to be banned), getting three landfall triggers from Omnath was a lot easier than anticipated. It was one of the swiftest bans in Magic’s history, and with good reason – the card was broken in half, as it turned out that it wasn’t difficult at all to trigger Omnath multiple times in the same turn. Omnath, Locus of Creation lasted about two and a half weeks in Standard before it was banned.

It’s a tough question to answer and I fully expect people to disagree, but you can’t deny these five decks definitely have to be in the conversation (although the consensus on number one seems to be pretty solid). Today, we’re going to count down the five decks that I believe to be the be objectively the most powerful Standard decks in the history of the game. It’s a difficult question to properly settle – each deck is a product of its respective environment – but it’s still possible to try to figure out which one is the most powerful in objective terms. Magic players love to argue about all sorts of inconsequential nonsense, and something that really fires us up is the debate over the best decks ever from throughout Magic’s history.

Smashing four best deck arena 9