Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir has come and gone, and now it's time to make sense of what it means for the Standard metagame at-large. This was the first Pro Tour Hawaii I missed, but I watched most of the coverage from home and thought it was the highest-quality PT coverage to date.

The Quietspeculation.com crew got together each evening of the Pro Tour to discuss the tournament coverage in real-time, and we provided financial coverage as it happened by streaming on twitch.tv. I joined in on Saturday, and it was a fun and rewarding experience.

We generated some great discussion about Standard finance related to the Pro Tour, and experts shared some incredibly valuable advice that can be employed all year long. Before the coverage wrapped up and we shut down for the evening, we had nearly 100 viewers, and their participation throughout allowed us to respond in detail to a ton of questions. It was enlightening for all involved. I encourage everyone to check it out for themselves.

Standard, A Week Later

I'm going to reference a lot of decks, and rather than post them all, I'll simply link to all of the available decklists from the official coverage:

Top 8
7-3 or Better (A-N)
7-3 or Better (O-Z)

It's now a week after the Pro Tour began, and while there have been some important metagame changes, Standard certainly doesn't look entirely different than it did last week, especially not compared to last year when Mono-Blue Devotion and Mono-Black Devotion completely warped the metagame after Pro Tour Theros.

Jeskai and Abzan were top-tier strategies in the SCG Opens and TCGplayer States in the weekends leading to the Pro Tour, and they went on to be dominant at the Pro Tour. The Pro Tour did reveal that Abzan and Jeskai are quite flexible in their construction and in-game role-assignment, with three distinct versions of each of those archetypes reaching the Top 8 and many more variations following behind.

Abzan with lots of planeswalkers won the entire event in the hands of Ari Lax. Highlights include Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Sorin, Solemn Visitor, and Ajani, Mentor of Heroes in the maindeck, with Nissa, Worldwaker and Liliana of the Veil in the sideboard, but zero Fleecemane Lion. Two other versions reached the Top 8, one aggressive build that included Rakshasa Deathdealer and Herald of Torment without Courser of Kruphix, and one midrange without a set of Thoughtseize in the maindeck.

Jeskai was nearly as dominant, also placing three copies into the Top 8. Shaun McLaren's finalist list contained four Dig Through Time and just one Seeker of the Way, but two Anger of the Gods maindeck and a transformational control sideboard including two Keranos, God of Storms. Yuuya Watanabe used Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Gods Willing to supplement the traditional creature package, and Andrej Strasky played a robust flying suite of four Hushwing Gryff and three Ashcloud Phoenix to join Mantis Rider.

Food for thought? The best performing Standard record of the entire tournament was an 8-1-1 finish by Ben Stark, who played Jeskai with three maindeck Nullify.

Abzan got the best of Jeskai in the end; the Top 8 coverage really highlighted how Abzan is better positioned in the matchup. Siege Rhino, with lifedrain and large body, is very oppressive against Jeskai. Black removal is great for killing one of Jeskai's few key creatures and leaving them with an anemic offense.

Going forward I expect Abzan to increase in popularity and push out some of the Jeskai decks from the metagame. Jeskai will be forced to evolve, possibly adopting the flying approach of Strasky or taking on a more controlling role like Justin Cheung, whose deck I wrote about on TCGplayer this week.

One of the breakout decks from the tournament was Dimir Control with Perilous Vault and Pearl Lake Ancient. Ivan Floch played his version to the Top 8. But perhaps the bigger story is that many on Team Pantheon played their own version, designed by Andrew Cuneo, and teammember Owen Turtenwald lost his win-and-in match to narrowly miss Top 8 on tiebreakers.

This deck didn't perform well on camera, much to the mockery of the coverage, but the deck actually performed quite well overall. According to Patrick Chapin's analysis, relative to expectation, it's the best performing archetype of all. (Patrick broke down the PT metagame and his top 50 Abzan deck in his article this week on SCG, and it's a must read.)

Dimir Control would be weak against rush aggro, but that's non-existent. Control is excellent for fighting midrange decks and other control strategies, which is where the metagame looks to be headed. Control decks are hard to build and tune, but it's clear that Dimir control of some sort is going to be a player in the Standard metagame, and it should only grow better as time goes on and the metagame settles. I don't expect it to be hugely popular, certainly not at first, but there will be a tournament in the near future that it wins, and it will start a tide; I'm looking towards GP LA this weekend, but SCG events and perhaps even the TCGplayer $50k Championship next weekend.

Jeskai Ascendancy combo also reached Top 8 in hands of Li Shi Tian, but possibly an even bigger story is that many of the best players in the world from TeamChannelFireball also played the deck. Eric Froelich played it to a strong finish, and I know LSV and PVDDR also piloted it. I recommend checking out Paulo's article--he does a very thorough job of explaining its role in the metagame and preparing someone to play it.

Jeskai Ascendancy combo is fundamentally good, but it didn't have astounding success at the Pro Tour, and now with it on the radar people will be much better prepared for it. Paulo explained that the deck is great against mild disruption, but serious disruption paired with threats are a tough matchup. Jeskai Wins is tough, and while the deck is strong against Ari Lax-style Abzan, it has significantly more trouble with Sigrist's aggressive take.

This is a great deck for anyone looking to train their Magic game and gain mastery over a combo deck, and it's going to be rewarding for some as it evolves throughout the season, but by no means is it a get-rich-quick scheme that will yield free win after free win.

One deck that lacked a champion in the Top 8 was Green Devotion. The tournament was relatively devoid of this strategy, making up under 10% of the metagame, and I didn't see a single Hornet Queen on camera all weekend. On the other hand, some players did work to evolve the archetype, with the biggest innovation being See the Unwritten.

Newly minted Hall of Famer Makihito Mihara's 8-2 record puts him within the top 10 Standard records at the Pro Tour, and he did it with a Green Devotion deck that looks strikingly similar to what he played to the top 8 of PT Theros last year. That's the Green Devotion shell I'd look to going forward. Jon Finkel also played a Green Devotion See the Unwritten strategy, which is a scary thought. Check out Gaudenis Vidiguris' list for insight into Team Pantheon's version. Green Devotion is well-positioned against Abzan Midrange strategies, so it seems like a great choice going forward.

I'm also a huge fan of Tzu-Ching Kuo's deck, which departs from the Green Devotion shell to an Abzan shell abusing See the Unwritten. It doesn't have the same synergistic explosive power as Green Devotion, but going Abzan allows him to play individually higher quality cards, more disruption, and gain access to more reliable ferocious triggers.

Another deck of note is the tokens strategy played by Deniz Rachid to an 8-2 finish. Brad Nelson did a deck tech on the archetype.

The most convincing aggressive strategy of all was played by Yoshihiko Ikawa. It's essentially a Boros Heroic deck, but he uses Vanguard of Brimaz and Launch the Fleet to generate a ton of tokens, which he abuses with a whopping four Obelisk of Urd. Check it out, this deck very narrowly missed Top 8 and is the real deck.

What do you make of the Pro Tour results? Where is Standard headed? Chime in on the comments. I'll also answer any questions you may have.

-Adam