Discussion Forum

Quite honestly it is incredibly difficult to be both original and effective in standard.

Step 1 is balance between niche cards and staples. Whenever I make homebrews I take a card that is usually considered bad, and use "good" cards to support it and make it better. You have to balance originality with conformity to make your deck both new and effective. After all, staple cards are considered staples for a reason.

The next thing to consider is hate. What cards are currently dominating the format, and how do I beat them? Finding ways around the top decks or ways to nullify their playstyle will make winning so much easier. Sideboarding is especially important here, but maindecking strategies that can either go beyond or completely halt the enemies progress is much more effective.

Lastly, and most importantly for original standard decks, is go big or go home. Make them fun. My current decks are RUG Hydra Tribal, an orzhov human servitude deck (AKA Destroy all Humans :p), a really janky GW lifegain, and a possibility storm combo deck. NONE of these decks are as good as jund midrange, and I have only minimal faith in them at fnm. However, when they do win, it is the most satisfying thing in the world. Nothing says success like getting a $500 deck to -50 life with a $40 mess, or gaining 200 life in one turn without a boros reckoner or thragtusk in sight, or permanently preventing your opponent from casting spells. Basically, you will have more fun if your deck is fun to use. I always play against the meta, and I know that that isn't the way to win every time. But when I win, I win by a lot (and I still win more than I lose). Going over the top in interesting ways is what keeps it interesting for me.

I hope this helped at least a bit. This all works for me, hopefully it can keep the game fun for you too. :)

I think you're crazy playing standard to begin with, it's clearly not a good format for you and its only natural that you're frustrated. You have a very limited set of cards so it's obvious that pro players with entire testing teams will identify what is worth playing and what is not weeks before a set is even fully spoiled to the general public.
This is not an environment to be origenal in, this is an environment to take a well tested deck and learn to pilot it to the best of your ability because even that takes a lot of time. If you play it well you will perform well.

What you need is to play legacy tournaments, it's such a slow moving format that cards that are clearly good take months to break through. They are now finally playing Jund in Legacy, years after it was popular in standard. And it moves in slow cycles where cards are popular for a long time and then they are not but they will be again, they always do.

Anyway, it's a format with tons of sleeping staples that no one cares about, changes are very slow, the meta is wide open and there's so much opportunity to brew and metagame. Meta's differ from place to place. I know guys that have been brewing, perfecting and playing the same deck for years.
Due to rotations that just isn't possible in standard.
And even if it costs you 5000$ to buy into legacy these days it will still be cheaper then playing competitive standard for a number of years. All my legacy cards (and I have 99% of all staples) go up in price every day, have been for years. It's better then money which goes down in value every day.
Also it's always the same guys that win, not because they play superior decks but because they are superior players, luck has very little to do with it. If you're good and dedicated it pays off.

What the other people said here...

Anyway something intresting i learned from watching pro tours etc was this:

There will always be decks that will be laughed at and/or are never featured by the stream. 6 months ago i think i was watching a stream when the commentators mentioned someone won in round 4 both games. With Rancor and Fencing Ace, this deck actually was the beginning of Bant Auras. Which is now an official deck that people like to play. Or atleast was.