My trip to Barcelona, and playing in this Grand Prix, was a total blast. I did better than I could hope, but much worse than I should have thanks to terrible play in my last game. I blame not eating, and not getting enough sleep due to two hours of travel time to and from my hotel between a late Saturday and an early Sunday. On the way back to my hotel after the GP, I couldn’t focus and the world was spinning from fatigue. In the future, I have to take better care of myself. I will be making strict rules about getting to sleep early, and eating by a certain time, for large events from now on.
I’m obviously very happy with my deck choice for the event, but not happy with my build specifically. I spent my time in Barcelona as a tourist rather than testing the cards I wasn’t sure about (like Sower of Temptation), so this was almost a “practice” GP. This is to say that I would recommend Faeries, but I wouldn’t recommend copying my list.
I expect Grand Prix: Barcelona to have a dramatic impact on the format, as Cascade Assault has gone from unknown to Tier 1, probably just attaining “best deck in the format” status. As LSV put it, it felt like playing Extended as decks in Standard rarely get to ignore what the opponent is doing the way it can. Windbrisk Heights decks of all kinds basically can’t beat the Assault deck, so they should become much less popular if people adapt to the format properly.
I really like the Planeswalker Control deck that beat me in the Top 4. It looks like it might want another land, or some more card draw (Esper Charm), but cutting Cruel Ultimatum makes the mana much better. The deck just has tons of counters for control matches and to beat Assault, and tons of sweepers and Plumeveils for aggro decks. Obelisk of Alara was very impressive. I’m not sure that I like Ajani, but it might be necessary for beating other Jace decks. It’s an innovative new direction for Five-Color Control to consider, one that looks like it has a lot of game right now. It also might be worth considering Double Negative at this point.
Talking more about this Assault deck, it went from an estimated 4% of the field to place three decks in the Top 8. That’s extremely impressive. One Primal Command, that should be a staple in the deck now, gives it a lot more play as it can go long and use lands to kill creatures and stuff without running out of lands with which to eventually combo. This also lets it beat decks that gain substantial amounts of life, which it would have trouble with otherwise. It’s also a maindeck answer to hate cards like Pithing Needle, which should become a lot more popular now.
If you’re going to play the Assault deck, you need to be prepared for the mirror. The mirror looks terrible at first, but understand that the sideboard for the deck is very open, and currently opinions vary greatly on the correct sideboard plan. I’m confident that the match can be pretty lopsided if one player has a much better sideboard plan than the other, so I’d say testing various sideboards for the mirror would be an excellent use of time if you want to play the deck. Aside from that, prepare for hate, as I mentioned above, but that really shouldn’t be too much to overcome.
On that note, everyone has to be prepared for Assault, which means Pithing Needle should become the most played sideboard card in the format. It’s a much better answer than Runed Halo, as much of the time Runed Halo does nothing. They just draw their deck, kill all your creatures, and win by attacking. Fortunately for Assault, it can reasonably expect to do well even in a format full of Pithing Needles, as it has a lot of ways to overcome the hate, although it may need to move a Maelstrom Pulse or other answer into the maindeck to better fight maindeck Pithing Needles. Deny Reality can also help with this.
The best ways to fight to deck, as far as I’ve seen, come from G/B/w style aggro decks backed with a lot of disruption (it might be time for Thoughtseize to make a return to people’s maindecks) or heavy countermagic. Five-Color Control can definitely be built to beat the deck, with Pithing Needle, Negate, and Broken Ambitions to fight Assault, and Obelisk of Alara to get out of range. Purely racing the deck is not an option. GW Elf Combo might be faster, but beating a resolved Seismic Assault sounds impossible. Four Needles might slow them down enough that the combo elf deck can win before Assault finds an answer.
The GW deck is another deck that impressed me this weekend. Faeries seems like it should be a bad matchup for them, and still both of my opponents playing the deck managed to take games off me. The deck has a surprising amount of power and resilience. Relying on a bit of removal is insufficient due to the rebuilding power of Ranger of Eos, and the deck seems fast and powerful enough that it’s another deck with great game against Windbrisk Heights.
As much as I don’t want people to do it, at this point I really have to add that people need to acknowledge Faeries and start at least making a token effort to try to beat it again. Red has all but disappeared (and, given a bad matchup against Assault, I don’t expect it to make a resurgence any time soon), and if BW becomes as much less popular, as it should, it’s harder to rely on the field to keep Faeries in check. Faeries, as far as I can tell, has an excellent matchup against Assault (although Hugo said that he swept it Faeries twice in the swiss).
Decks that exclusively prey on creature and token decks – like Sanity Grinding, TurboFog, and Reveillark, products of a warped metagame – should all become less common. Fans of TurboFog seem to think of it as a reasonable control deck that should have a chance against Assault thanks to Runed Halo and Pithing Needle, but I’m really not seeing it at this point. I think the format has diversified enough that such a focused metagame deck has to be set aside. Again, a fact I’m sad about, as I certainly appreciated the free wins with Faeries.
So, predictions about what will happen:
People will still play BW. They have the cards and the deck can reasonably be modified to have a chance against Assault. I think 4 Thoughtseize and 4 Tidehollow Sculler can reasonably beat Assault, but you’re probably not favored. Also, if you prepare too much you risk getting leveled by a BW player that prepared less. I’d say BW should still make up at least 10% of the field.
Riccardo Neri’s Planeswalker Control deck should move from rogue to 5% of the field, possibly more, since I think it’s actually very well positioned right now, and it looks pretty fun. I think this is should be the go-to for control players.
Combo is suddenly a real part of this metagame, and I think GW Elf Combo should continue to be played, but it won’t be a huge part of the metagame. (Note that in Barcelona only BW Tokens had more than 10% representation, so a lot of decks deserve relative consideration.)
I think Assault should be the most played deck. It’s intensely powerful and looks relatively easy to play. Fear of hate might keep the numbers down to 15% or lower, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pass 20% of the field. Its conversion to Day 2 and Top 8 won’t be as high as it was in Barcelona, since people will be prepared, but it has a lot of room to get worse while still being impressive.
Faeries should rise in popularity. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it climb to 10% of the field. In Barcelona I was thinking I was probably wrong to play Scion of Oona, which is pretty bad against the field right now, but the expected resurgence of Faeries might prompt me to keep playing the card, as I would hate to lose Faerie mirrors.
Jund Cascade and R/B Aggro took an estimated 9% and 8% of the field respectively. I don’t think either of them did well, as I never played against or saw any of them play. I’m guessing they were mostly played by people with few byes, and were largely virtually eliminated by the time I started playing. As far as I can tell, Red decks never do well and people never stop playing them, so I can’t expect the numbers to fall that far, but both decks seem like terrible choices right now and they put up no good results. It seems hard to justify continuing to play them, so I would hope the numbers would fall at least to around 5% each.
Despite championing by Manuel Bucher and the Ruels, I expect TurboFog to all but disappear at this point. Sanity Grinding is a little more realistic, as resolving a Grinding against Assault might stop them from going off and killing you without casting Primal Command. Besides, Boomerang is good against a deck with so many lands that come into play tapped. I would guess that fans of this kind of deck should mostly move here, and the deck will occupy a little less than 5% of the field.
I also predict that Patrick Chapin will continue to work on Five-Color Bloodbraid Elf with Putrid Leech, Kitchen Finks, and Maelstrom Pulse. The pressure of the powerful early creatures and the disruption of Maelstrom Pulse and Cryptic Command will give him a reasonable game against Assault (enough that he should be favored in the matchup). The diversity of the field and other things that need to be tested will stop many other players from devoting time to the deck, and it should continue to be underplayed.
GW and RW Token decks should both become even less popular, as their lack of disruption makes them a virtual bye for Assault. Kithkin should probably be in a similar position. I think all of these decks together should be reduced to about 5% of the field.
GB Elves should stay about where it was in popularity, or maybe move up a little on the back of its sole GP Top 8. There are some players who will play GB whenever they have an opportunity, and I think the opportunity is certainly available now. There will be fewer tokens around, which I think is good for them, and I think they should have a fairly even matchup against most decks in the field, which is what the kind of player who likes GB decks is usually looking for. Personally, I would be very tempted to add White to this kind of deck, for options on cards like Tidehollow Sculler or Quasali Pridemage, and I might consider Doran. 5-10% of the field, if you include G/B/w as the same archetype.
Bant is another deck, like GW Tokens, that I think has too narrow a game plan and risks falling into a traditional Aggro versus Combo role in which the combo deck goldfishes faster. In a format that isn’t just about racing with giant tramplers, I think this deck’s time has passed. I think most other players should agree, as I haven’t really seen a huge Bant contingent anyway, so that deck should essentially be a rogue (non viable) option.
Traditional Five-Color Control (Cruel Control) is still reasonable, although I don’t like its matchup against a Five-Color Control deck with planeswalkers, more counters, and cheaper (Obelisk of Alara)/more powerful (Nicol Bolas) finishers. The deck can play Maelstrom Pulse easily, which is good against Seismic Assault (and planeswalkers, for that matter). This deck should function more or less as it always has.
That basically covers what I would want to expect/prepare for regarding Grand Prix: Seattle and any other PTQs next weekend. Look forward to an exciting Standard format that should change very rapidly in the coming weeks, with a GP next week and another two weeks after that, followed shortly by an even more substantial shakeup at the release of the new core set.
Thanks for reading, and I’m sure I’ll see many of you in Seattle.
Sam