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Title: Which 2 Colors Offers the Best Range of Standard Decks?

Date Posted: Tue Oct/09/12 at 12:53pm

Posts: 909
Joined: 13-Apr-11

Alright, there's been plenty of submissions for building on a budget in Standard, and a lot of them find themselves as mono-colored decks. And it makes sense, with the access we currently have to lands (duals of every combination, and soon every shockland as well), multi-colored decks are finding these additions to be kind to their mana-fixing capabilities, but not to their wallets. Each Shockland is running for at least $12 (4-ofs mean you're shelling out nearly $50 for those at least), and the allied colored duals (WU, UB, BR, RG, GW) are thankfully only at $3 a piece or so, but the others are closer to $8 or more. A player looking for 4 Woodland Cemetaries and 4 Overgrown Tombs for their BG deck is looking at $140 in mana-base alone.

So what's a player with some money (but not a ridiculous amount) to do about these costs? It's especially daunting for players looking to get into standard, but maybe didn't want to get involved during innistrad (understandably, it wasn't especially fascinating) so missed out on those enemy duals.

Procuring these lands for just one deck is especially upsetting. Who wants lands to be the most expensive things they're playing? So my suggestion? Spreading out that cost of land over several decks makes things easier, meaning its best to be picking colors that you can use for many competitive archetypes. So which colors (I'm restricting this to 2 colors, going 3 colors sets your mana base cost at around $200) have the most competitive decks in their toolbox to help out those Standard players who want to have multiple decks at their disposal, without worrying about securing all of the Shocklands and Duals?

I'm opening this up to the other players to hear their thoughts. Be ready to support your decision with let's say 3 deck types that those colors can support in a somewhat competitive setting (we're not trying to win Pro Tours, just beat face at the local FNMs). At the end of the day (eastern time), I'll post 3 competitive (and well playtested) decklists for the color combination of my choice, but I wanted to hear from others first.

Date Posted: Tue Oct/09/12 at 9:30pm

Posts: 2788
Joined: 13-Oct-09

With the possiblitys that this standard offers, you can choose any two colors and you will have a good possiblity especially with gatecrash right around the corner.

My choice would be White and Blue

Delver- took a beating with the rotation however, some of the detain spells can easily fill those voids, so it could still stick around. Its got the speed and power to be a contender.

Izzet with white splash- Red has finally got some good support, and when combined with blues control can be pretty strong. throw some white in there for a little more control such as detention sphere, azorius charm, supreme verdict or even some arggo elemeents like skymark roc

Bant- has always been a solid build combining the ramp, control, and aggro

Tokens-white is a strong token producer and with populate they will have a place in the future, adding blue helps get them out.

UW control in general still has alot of life left in it.

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