A Clash of Titans: Comparing Tooth and Nail and 4C Copy Cat in Standard History

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next match in the Best Standard Deck Ever Tournament! This week, we have an interesting matchup. On one side, we have Tooth and Nail, a Tron-based ramp deck from back in 2005 that looked to turbo out big finishers like Darksteel Colossus, Sundering Titan, and card-ref:Mindslaver with the help of the absurd amount of mana that Tron can generate. On the other, we have 4C Copy Cat, a Splinter Twin–style combo deck that broke Standard in 2017 before being emergency banned in hilarious fashion. But more on this in a bit. Which of these iconic decks from Standard's past is moving on to the round of 32, and which is going home? Let's get to the video and find out!

Looking to use Tron lands to ramp into Tooth and Nail and tutor up and copy finishers like Sundering Titan, Darksteel Colossus, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Tooth and Nail was overshadowed during its time in Standard thanks to the historic dominance of Affinity. But this didn't stop the deck from winning Nationals (which were a big deal back in the early 2000s) in France, Italy, the UK, Japan, and the USA during its life in Standard.

The story of Copy Cat Combo is one of my favorites, to the point where it may deserve a history video all its own. But here's the short version. Saheeli Rai was printed into Standard in Kaladesh during the fall of 2016. Then, Wizards dropped Aether Revolt in the winter of 2017, which brought us Felidar Guardian. Together, these two cards form a Splinter Twin–style infinite combo with Saheeli Rai copying Felidar Guardian, which then blinks the Saheeli Rai so it can be activated again, which will then copy Felidar Guardian, then rinse and repeat. The end result is infinite hasty 1/4 attackers coming down as early as Turn 4, just like Splinter Twin.

While Wizards missed this combo during design, the community didn't. Literally minutes after Felidar Guardian was spoiled, people were talking about how Splinter Twin was back in Standard. And backed by an energy shell, the deck would dominate Standard pretty much from the day it was first released.

By April, everyone was sick of Copy Cat and trusted that the scheduled ban-list update on April 24th would ban the combo and fix the problem. But when the ban-list update dropped, it said, "No changes." This led to a huge amount of pushback from the community. Two days later, on April 26th, Wizards posted an emergency ban list update that basically said, "Just kidding, guys, we're actually banning Felidar Guardian," claiming it was because of new data they had gathered from Magic Online over the previous two days.

The banning of Felidar Guardian killed the combo, but the energy shell that backed it was so strong that it would remain the best deck in Standard even without being able to go infinite, which ended up leading to Attune with Aether and Rogue Refiner being banned later in the year.