I attended a 46-person Standard Showdown and placed 2nd going into top 8. After grinding wins against Temur/4-Color Energy, I took 2nd Place Overall to Grixis Midrange.
The deck is meant to be a fast aggro deck. It plays hard to remove threats like Gideon, Lathnu hellion, and Adanto Vanguard. To sustain the Hellions, as well as create artifacts to pump with Built to Smash, the deck runs 4 Aether Chaser and 3 Harnessed Lightning. 3 mainboard Glorious End serve as tempo plays and hard counters, given you have a Gideon on the field or in hand. If Glorious End was revealed game 1, I would typically take out 1-2 depending on the match up. Against Approach, I'd leave all 3 in. Against any deck with access to Vraska's Contempt, I'd drop to 1 mainboard.
On Gameday, I initially ran 2 main board Abrades. While they were really good in the aggro matchups, they under performed against control. I also ran 1 mainboard Ixalan's Binding & 1 Combat Celebrant because I only had access to 2 Lightning Strikes in total. I'm going to go ahead and post the slightly updated list.
As for the sideboard, this deck really suffers against Chandra and Glorybringer as they can easily remove Gideon. So I increased the number of Chandra's Defeats in the side from 2 to 4. The 2nd Abrade comes in against God-Pharoah's Gift. The Harsh Mentors serve to punish decks that rely heavily on activated abilities like Temur Energy. The Cast Outs serve to fend off planswalkers and evasive threats or combo pieces. The 3rd Fumigate comes in against token decks.
Suggestions and thoughts are very much appreciated!
