What We Learned In Miami

Grand Prix Miami was notable for a few reasons. Very rarely does a new deck show up late into the season and more or less dominate the tournament. Some
might consider the Top 8 weak overall, but what I saw was a Top 8 filled with players who have put up very solid results over the years. We might look back
on this Top 8 as the beginning stages of very promising careers for a lot of these players.

Formats, Especially Standard, Shift Quickly

Two weeks ago in Memphis, Abzan Midrange (which was bordering on full control) took five of the Top 8 slots. Going into Miami, it was the deck to beat, and
people succeeded in beating it. While the deck had two players go undefeated with it on Day 1, neither of those players ended up in the Top 8. In fact, the
only copies of Abzan in the Top 8 were the Aggro and Reanimator variants.

R/W Aggro was also noticeably absent. Brad Nelson and Sam Black both tuned their G/W Devotion decks to beat up on those decks, and it seems like everyone
else did as well. In order to succeed in this format, you really don’t want a target on your head. If you’re like Brad, you probably want to switch decks
every other week to keep up with the metagame. For him, it continues to yield fantastic results.

What I Learned

For the Grand Prix, I stuck with Abzan Reanimator. I won a Grand Prix Trial on Friday, which further solidified my deck choice. Chad Kastel made the Top 4
with the same 75 as I registered, so that was pretty nice as well. Despite Chad’s success, I think I played the wrong deck. The other deck I was
considering playing was the Brad Nelson version of Sam Black’s G/W Devotion deck.

Awkwardly enough, I was the one who turned Brad onto the deck in the first place! I was looking for a deck that had inevitability over R/W, Abzan, and the
U/B/X Control decks, which G/W Devotion did. However, I didn’t like the fail rate on the G/W deck, plus racking up draws was a potential issue, as the deck
made you take more game actions than most and didn’t kill particularly fast.

What do I mean by fail rate? Well, the deck has a demanding manabase that also features four colorless lands, a lot of mana creatures, and some high end
threats that require the mana creatures live. In truth, each deck in Standard has a weakness, so by playing something other than G/W, I was simply trading
one weakness for another. I’ve played Devotion decks in the past, and therefore, have been burned by them.

Still, I’m not sure I should have played G/W either. I learned that I did a reasonable job identifying well-positioned decks for this tournament, but I had
that nagging feeling I could be doing something better. This tournament is going to haunt me for a while, not because of my mediocre performance, but
because for once, I don’t know what I was supposed to be doing.

For reference, here is the list Chad and I played:

Abzan Reanimator

Chad Kastel

3rd Place at Grand Prix on 03-07-2015

Standard

Creatures (21)

Lands (25)

Spells (14)

Sideboard

Mastery of the Unseen is Very Real

We’ve seen this card pop up in sideboards (where it is very potent against control and grindy matchups), but Sam Black was the first (successful) person
I’ve seen to actually transition it into maindecks. Clearly the best thing with Mastery of the Unseen is a plethora of mana, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is
there to provide that.

Mastery of the Unseen gives you a favorable matchup against control decks in Game 1, which most midrange decks don’t have. When you pair it with a mana
engine, you end up with good matchups against midrange (as long as you’re able to stabilize) and good matchups against aggro (again, as long as you’re able
to stabilize).

That gives you a powerful tool against most of the decks in the format, but you can’t just lean on Mastery itself. Thankfully, the rest of the G/W Devotion
deck is able to pick up the slack.

Mastery of the Unseen is Very Miserable

Sam Black had three unintentional draws. Corey Baumeister had three unintentional draws. Several other players playing the G/W Devotion deck also had some
number of them. It’s noteworthy that Brad Nelson, who rarely draws and was the most practiced with the deck aside from Sam Black, had zero draws.

Several times during mirror matches, the boardstates would be bogged down so much that the commentators wouldn’t be able to provide any real commentary on
the game — Nothing was really happening. People were manifesting things or trying to deck the other person because neither was super prepared for the
mirror match.

If you’re considering playing the deck, do yourselves and everyone watching a favor — Become proficient with the deck. If you have no interest in playing
the deck, play something that smashes it.

For all our sakes.

Defensive By Way of Offense is a Viable Sub-Strategy

When you’re giving your opponent the beatdowns, they rarely have time to mount much of an offense of their own. Brad used that with Fleecemane Lion out of
his Abzan Midrange sideboard two weeks ago, and he ran it back last weekend, albeit this time in the maindeck.

In Limited, I tend to like cards like Bitter Revelation in W/B Warriors a lot more than in control decks, because you’re often at twenty life when you cast
it in the aggressive deck. That typically finds you the Rush of Battle, Duneblast, Dead Drop, or whatever stall-breaker you’re looking for. The fact that
you’re already ahead on board means that your opponent can’t capitalize on the loss or life, and you don’t really mind that they get a turn of reprieve to
help them stabilize because you’re trying to find a card that breaks through the ground anyway.

I joked this weekend that the G/W Devotion deck got its opponents down to eight life, then had to turtle up and gain 100 life before finally finding a way
to kill its opponent. Brad joked that this deck represented everything he didn’t think was real in Magic, such as some matchups being about how much life
you could gain.

Overall, it doesn’t make much sense on paper, but the variety of angles and the rogue factor contributed to a large amount of wins. The original plan of
having inevitability wouldn’t have been enough.

Aggro Must Be Respected

The Day 2 metagame basically boiled down to 50% Aggro, 40% Midrange, and 10% Control, with a significant portion of the midrange coming from Devotion
decks. Overall, that’s a heavy portion of the field that requires early removal to keep up with.

I think that, no matter what, aggro is going to remain a large part of the metagame. Being aggressive is basically the only way to beat G/W Devotion before
they actually get set up, and while a Mastery of the Unseen trigger will be enough to keep some aggro players at bay, it will not defeat everyone.

In fact, I think this is one of the best decks to come out of Grand Prix Miami:

Naya Aggro

Zan Syed

8th Place at Grand Prix on 03-07-2015

Standard

Creatures (24)

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands (24)

Spells (11)

Sideboard

Brad didn’t seem to have issues with R/W Aggro, but I know that Sam and I did. They could remove our early mana creatures with burn spells, remove our
midgame threats with Valorous Stance and Chained to the Rocks, and pressure us with Goblin Rabblemaster and Stormbreath Dragon. Zan has access to all of
that plus Elvish Mystic to keep up. He also has powerful threats instead of things like Seeker of the Way. His deck is scary for G/W Devotion.

Then again, the deck that knocked him out was G/W Devotion.

R/W Aggro is a Good Outpost Siege Deck, But It Might be a Bad Deck

Threat light, low power level, and overreliance on a single card does not make a good deck. A lot of those problems are fixable, but as people catch up and
build decks that are good against R/W’s overall strategy, is it even worth it? I don’t think so. I fully expect to see less and less R/W as the format
develops, even if Ben Stark showed us how the archetype is capable of evolving at Grand Prix Memphis.

Killing Some Things is Mandatory, Killing Everything is Not

If you look at all the Top 8 decklists side by side, you’ll notice a common trend — Each deck uses removal as a way to carry out their gameplan. Some
decks are removing blockers, while some are only removing the permanents that are causing them to lose the game. Most of the decks can ignore an aspect of
their opponent’s deck, and therefore, only have to remove what truly matters.

Loading up on removal spells in an attempt to kill everything simply doesn’t work in the face of creatures that create card advantage or those with haste.

How to Beat G/W Devotion

Shaun McLaren already covered this, so I’ll try not to step on his toes
too much.

The deck only has a tiny amount of removal, so when you land a threat, you can almost guarantee it will stick. All that’s left is to clear the way. G/W
relies on gaining life to stabilize against those threats, so something like Erebos, God of the Dead might be what you want. It focuses on creating an
overwhelming boardstate, so Archfiend of Depravity and Doomwake Giant might become more popular.

Overall, there are numerous ways to go about things, but Doomwake Giant and Goblin Rabblemaster seem like the best options. U/B Control with lots of
Perilous Vaults and splashing Sultai Charm could be a thing, but U/B Control routinely does poorly, so I doubt that’s the best way to go about things. In
fact, I’d be more interested in playing Mardu Control if I wanted to fight G/W Devotion.

The one deck I thought Brad was overly concerned about was G/R Devotion, mostly because it went over the top faster than the G/W deck could. Xenagos, the
Reveler was a big part of that and is something you could potentially incorporate into your G/W deck to gain an edge in the mirror.

People Attack Metagames Differently

It used to be pretty easy to predict how the Day 2 field was going to differ from the Day 1 field, but with the variety of archetypes available, the
ability to predict anything precisely has gone out the window. You might be able to guess how some people are going to react to the prevalence of Abzan
Midrange in Memphis or even the dominance of G/W Devotion here, but you’d probably be better off hedging your bets.

At this point, I’d be more willing to metagame against general archetypes rather than specific ones because you can get yourself in trouble by focusing too
much on one thing. With the format being so wide open and shifting week to week, you are better served playing broad, general answers than overly specific
ones.

#SCGDAL is Going to be Interesting

Some are saying Sam Black broke the format, and that’s bound to cause a reaction.

I would expect G/W Devotion to have another good weekend while players get creative in an attempt to beat it. Past that, I wouldn’t expect too much from
it. It’s one of those not-quite-a-glass-cannon decks that Brad aligns with once a month or so, and those are the ones that don’t typically stay around. G/W
Devotion is a fragile deck with a lot of issues, but it was able to perform so well because those issues weren’t being exploited.

This weekend is going to be fun to watch.