Show Notes
Oracle Text:
What a year it's been! From Aetherdrift to Avatar, we've seen Standard through its highs and lows of 2025, and we ourselves have grown from focusing solely on Standard to becoming a competitive-constructed podcast, expanding to include segments like Mildly Modern and Hardly Highlander.
All of this is thanks to you, our listeners and our community, and we cannot thank you enough for the support that you've given us this year. When we started this show in February, we had no idea where it would take us. To be here, at our last episode of Season One, forty-nine episodes later, is a dream that we are humbled to share.
Today, we're reminiscing on the year: our favourite episodes and our favourite decks, as well as looking ahead to 2026 (and the start of Season Two!) From the bottom of our hearts: Thank You. We cannot wait to bring you another year of Raise the Standard in all its forms.
| Music from HitsLab via Pixabay.
| This episode of Raise the Standard was recorded at Hen House Rehearsal Studios. Raise the Standard and its hosts would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we operate on. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung peoples as the Traditional Owners of the land. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.
More from Raise the Standard: an MTG Podcast
Don your raincoats and pop open your umbrellas as we prepare to brave the weather with none other than Richard Owen as we journey through the history of Storm as a 7PT archetype in Highlander.
He's back! There are few people who have played as much storm as Richard, and few people still who have beaten storm as much as he has. While the storm archetype remains the Big Bad of the Highlander metagame as we wait to see what impact the most recent points update has on the format, Richard is here to reassure us that storm is beatable!
The day before the Highlander Committee pointed Storm, it rained for three days straight in Melbourne, Australia, where we set the scene for the latest Highlander Points Update. And who better to talk about the latest changes to Storm than the weatherman himself: Richard Owen!
Today's episode is brought to you by Kira, who really, really wanted to talk about the merits of Underground Sea as your 8th point. Within this discussion, we debate the broader pointing philosophy, the function of good mana, and having to re-think deckbuilding decisions after a points update.
There's a lot of churn happening in Standard post-ban, and that leaves room for a lot of innovation in the format. New sets and recent bans mean that players are going rogue--looking for new combos, synergies, and play patterns that may prove to be incredibly powerful.