Standard events are having a hard time assembling enough players, and a lot of players are saying that it’s slowly a dying format because of how ridiculously expensive the format has become. Although some may argue that the cards that make the format expensive are playable in other non-rotating formats like Pioneer and Modern, the counterargument here is why not just play Pioneer and Modern so players can have access to their old cards and spend less to enjoy the game?
Tier 1 standard decks can fetch up to $300-500 depending on your color base. Playsets of The Wandering Emperor is the easiest way to burn $180 and you still have 71 other cards to buy to assemble the deck. This is why a lot of players built Mono Blue as an entry deck to the format that’s both cheap and busted.
Don’t get me wrong, the deck is cheap but it’s not as cheap as how we define cheap decks 5 years ago. Before you can get a playset of Delver for $2 (Php100), but these days they sell for up to $8 (Php400). Likewise for Tolarian Terror, a common card mind you, is fetching almost the same price. Did I mention that Haughty Djinn is also being sold at the same price? What I’m pointing out is that the rarity isn’t influencing the cost anymore. It’s the demand, the scarcity, and the price association that people will gladly pay for a few dollars to get playsets compared to a few hundred dollars for a playset.
As a jank player, oftentimes you end up buying crap rares for cheap with the idea of using the card in some fun and broken way. People don’t mind selling these to you cheap because no one is getting them anyway? I once had to go through someone’s spare deck box where they stored rare cards that didn’t merit a place in their binder (sad).
Cards like Black Market Tycoon captures a jank player’s attention like bees to a garden. Few cards allow you to make ‘tokens’ for free by simply tapping and because it’s not legendary, you can definitely do this more often which is why the card penalizes you for creating too much Treasure. But what if the token doesn’t come out as a treasure. Jinnie Fay helps solve that problem. She converts any token into cats or dogs. She didn’t say the token has to be a creature token, she just said if a token was made, she’ll convert it. Isn’t that convenient! Another token factory is Rabble Rousing. What it hides away isn’t that important compared to its passive ability to generate a stream of 1/1 Citizen tokens equal to the number of creatures that attacked that turn. You see where we’re going?
Essentially, you get to sing “Who let the dogs out” every game when you send an army of Dogs (or Cats, we’re inclusive here) and Rabble Rousing doubles them putting the same number of creatures back on the defense. If any of your pets survive post-combat, then the next swing will even be bigger!
Go-wide decks need enough punch to get through bigger creatures. We have a lot of options under the price range of Wedding Announcement. Intrepid Adversary($2.0), King Darien($0.60), and Jetmir($4) are all really good options that provide us more value than anthems. Intrepid trades well early, King Darien is a token generator himself and can give your tokens hexproof and indestructible, and Jetmir gives all sorts of buff, with Trample being the most important. Without further adieu, here’s our Petstore Token Deck for Standard!
The deck also plays some utility cards in Cabaretti Charm, Rite of Harmony and Teachings of the Kirin.
Cabaretti Charm does it all – removal, gives trample, and starts our token engine going. Teachings of the Kirin almost duplicates what our Charm does by giving us a 1/1, grows our lords, and turns into a creature that makes tokens. Rite of Harmony is our card draw which is insane under the right circumstances. You can cast Rite before Rabble Rousing triggers and you get to draw equal to the number of attacking creatures you have essentially. You can also cast this at upkeep when Teachings exiles itself and returns as a creature netting you a card for free. If you have Black Market Tycoon and Jinnie Fay still out, tapping Tycoon draws a card as well! You should not run out of cards in any game if you time this spell right.
The deck costs $119 to make, that’s if you’re going to buy every single card. But if you already have some of the lands, and got the other crap rares for cheap, this deck can be built just under $50 but you’ll definitely get more than $50 worth of laughs and fun.
You might spend more on token cards, to be perfectly honest 🙂
Don’t forget to feed your pets!
Vanson
Forbidden Alchemy 
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