Kenta’s Corner: Extended and The New Standard with Besieged

Extended
From GP Atlanta’s results, we can see that the Tier 1 decks will include Valakut (RG and Wargate), Faeries, and Jund.

RG type Valakut is not so much different from standard, so Besieged will add similar possibilities:

Valakut
Slag Storm: Additional board sweep is always good.
Blightsteel Colossus: A Possible 2nd win condition. Mainly play him off of Summoning Trap seems strong.
Sphere of the Suns: Colorless mana accel and support. Valakut(both wargate and RG)’s weakness was its mana base. This card would be great one to solve that problem. The downside here is you’re not getting additional lands.
Green Sun’s Zenith: Green creature Tinker. I’m not sure in extended, but for standard, the card should be good enough to be played as number 5 (through 8?) Green Titan. If you grab a Mana boost creature, you could use it as a ramp spell.

Thrun, the Last Troll: The best sideboard card against Control. 4/4 clock, not getting countered and destroyed by spot removals are just amazing. Even though it is Legendary, I would like to play at least 3 because this is the card I would like to have in opening against control. It is Mystic rare, so tough to pick up.

Those are possible good cards for current Valakut deck. Phyrexian Crusader can be bad news for this kind of deck. Wargate version might be ok, but for RG, the card is not the easiest one to deal with.

Jund
Go for the throat: Nice Sideboard card. Better than Deathmark so far.
Slag Storm: Nice removal spell. Unlike cards like Firespout and Pyroclasm, cascading into this card would not be that bad.
Phyrexian Crusader: Another 3 drop option for Jund
Sword of Feast and Famine: Good mirror tech.

Faeries
Faeries have also got few good cards coming.
Sword of Feast and Famine: Attach to a Bitter Token, attack, untap my land while holding counterspells seems strong.
Go for the throat: Ok, we won’t have to do like 2 smother, 2 Doomblade or Grasp of darkness crap anymore! The card kills Demigod, Mistbind, Leech, Doran, Creeping Tar pit, Sower, with same removals. Insane…

Standard
Like I mentioned above, Valakut has been getting good stuff. UB has also got good removals and additional win conditions like Crusader against UW and Valakut. I would like to introduce a new deck before I go.

Infect!
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacombs
4 Swamp
3 Island
4 Verdant catacombs
2 Scalding Tarns
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Phyrexian Crusader
4 Ichorclaw Myr
4 Necropede
4 Plague Myr
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Mana Leak
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Preordain
2 Adventuring Gear

SB
4 Go for the throat
3 Spell Pierce
3 Into the Roil
2 Duress
3 Tumble magnet

What’s better than a 1/1 Infect creature for 2? How about making him into a 5/5 and swinging for the win? With Tezzeret on board, there is a lot you can do here. It’s not exactly control anymore. The deck is very aggressive, and the new Crusader is very strong in this meta and can end games quickly. Consider it!