Fading Hope broke me. It was a blast playing Orzhov Midrange with Henrika Domnathi // Henrika, Infernal Seer and Liesa, Forgotten Archangel until I was face-to-face with Izzet which spent 1 mana happily answering all my creatures until they hit their 8th land drop and won by default. My ego couldn't take it any longer so I decided to splash red.

Red? Really? 

When your playing against Izzet, you have to be the beatdown, no matter how your deck is built. Playing Skullport Merchant? Better get to turning that dwarf sideways because the birds are coming and they give zero fucks. The challenge of making a midrange deck becomes how well can it preform as an aggressive deck when your playing against Alrund's Epiphany. I decided to splash a third color for what I think are the best aggresive cards in standard:

Stormseeker is one hell of a magic card. It comes down as a 3/3 for haste which is already good against control, but if it sticks every other threat you play has haste, allowing you to get in huge chunks of damage before removal or wraths take out your creatures. Playing a draw-go style of control against it is heavily punished by the day-night cycle turning your 3 drop into Reality Smasher at home.

Showdown is basically Into the Story exept it makes all your creatures huge and doesn't force you to play rouges. It perfectlly fills a role both as a midrange card allowing you to outgrind your opponent, and as an aggresive card helping you recover quickly after a board wipe. 

The Curve

Shambling ghast is the best turn 1 play in the deck. The deck doesn't have sacrifice synergy, but it doesn't need it. Shambling ghast can 2-for-1 decks running 1 toughness creatures like mono-white or rakdos vampires, and in other matchups it turns into treasure, which smooths out your curve letting you vomit more stuff onto the battlefield. Ghast is the underappreciated card propping up Mono-Black's high winrates against the aggro decks of the format. If you really want to lose to Mono-White you can replace this with Hopeful Initiate but I don't reccomend it. Concealing Curtains is also great. Having an early blocker often makes the difference in games versus Mono-White, and it can also turn into a threat while answering obnoxious cards like Expressive Iteration.

If you've played standard in the last few months you've lost enough salt-enducing games to know how good these cards are. Intrepid Adversary is even better in this deck then it is in mono-white, because in grindy games it can come down and blow open the board, perfectly filling the role of both a good aggro and midrange card.

I've already talked about Stormseeker but he's got friends in the 3 drop slot. Adeline is a lot like Esika's Chariot in that it's way to many points of power, toughness, and bodies on one card. If your opponent doesn't deal with it quickly it will snowball and win the game on its own. Concealing Curtains functions as both a 3-drop and a 1-drop in this deck, since generally you want to activate it's ability on turn 3 to get a hasty evasive Thought-Knot Seer.

Best planeswalker in Standard. Basically impossible to kill with creatures, draws a card every turn, spits out evasive attackers, gets like 3 loyalty a turn in this deck, insane card. If you are in black you should play Lolth.

The Rest

Vanishing Verse is the best removal spell in standard. It hits every creature in the 3 best decks (Mono-Green, Mono-White, and Izzet), it hits every good planeswalker (Lolth, Spider Queen, Wrenn and Seven, Sorin the Mirthless), it hits obnoxious non-creatures (Ranger Class, Esika's Chariot, Felidar Retreat), basically everything. Agadeem's Awakening functions both as an untapped black source (untapped being a key word in a deck with 7 black 1-drops) and a strong mass-reanimation spell in the late game. The deck has seven 1-drops eight 2-drops, and seven 3-drops, so Awakening is often able to get its full value.

Sideboarding

Wait you marked this list as Bo1!

Well, it's a deck that works both in Bo1 and Bo3, and Bo1 gets more clicks. If you do want to play the deck in Bo3, here are general sideboarding guidelines:

Izzet Epiphany / Dimir Control: 

+2 Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton, +3 Paladin Class, +2 Duress

-2 Intrepid Adversary, -1 Adeline, Resplendent Cathar -3 Lolth, Spider Queen, -1 Shambling Ghast

Mono-White Aggro:

+3 Ray of Enfeeblement, +3 Liesa, Forgotten Archangel +2 Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton

-4 Reckless Stormseeker // Storm-Charged Slasher -4 Showdown of the Skalds

Mono-Green Aggro:

+2 Immersturm Predator, +3 Liesa, Forgotten Archangel

-4 Reckless Stormseeker // Storm-Charged Slasher, -1 Intrepid Adversary

Mono-Black Control / Orzhov Control:

+2 Duress, +2 Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton +2 Immersturm Predator +3 Liesa, Forgotten Archangel

-4 Intrepid Adversary -4 Shambling Ghast -1 Luminarch Aspirant