Pro Tour Aetherdrift: Results, Fallout, and Thoughts

Hey everyone. Pro Tour Aetherdrift took place last weekend, and it brought a lot of interesting decks, new brews, and long mirror matches to the spotlight. In the end, the winner was Matt Nass, playing what they called on coverage as Domain Overlords, but what you might just know as the standard build of Domain, which includes various overlords and Zur, Eternal Schemer.

Domain Overlords had a great weekend, as three players piloting the deck made it into the Top 8, and all three of them made it to the Top 4 as well, setting up a mirror match in the finals. 

However, there were a lot of interesting things going on outside of hours-long Domain mirrors, so I want to break down some of the decks of the weekend, and look at how the meta has responded to the strong performance from Domain Overlords.

So let’s dive in and look at some Standard decks!

Domain Overlords

We do have to start with the Champion decklist, Domain Overlords by Matt Nass. The new technology here is the new spell from Aetherdrift, Ride’s End, which serves as cheap removal against aggressive decks, while also triggering Up the Beanstalk to draw a card.

We also see a shift towards Day of Judgment over Sunfall, perhaps because the aggressive decks in the format are killing on turn four-five, meaning that on the draw a five mana wrath is too slow. While sometimes you are able to ramp to it with Overlord of the Hauntwoods, sometimes you need to take that turn to cast a removal spell, or you have a tapped land.

The sideboard features Obstinate Baloth to fight against cards like Hopeless Nightmare and Momentum Breaker, Nissa, Ascended Animist to fight off opposing enchantments in the mirror, and one copy of Stock Up, to help dig and find action against other slow decks.

In the end it just seemed like the deck was well positioned on the weekend, on top of the build being right, and the player being great, it was no surprise that Matt Nass was able to take it down.

Evaluating Pro Tour results can be a bit difficult, because while you do have the best players in the world playing against each other, a lot of times the Top 8 and the overall meta game share will not reflect the MTG Arena ladder or MTGO League results, etc.

So while I do think that Domain Overlords was well positioned on the weekend based on the meta, I’m not sure if it is the best thing to be doing in Standard. But, before we get further down that path, let’s look at some other Top 8 decks.

Gruul Leyline

Gruul aggro was the most represented deck at the Pro Tour, but Lucas Duchow brought back Leyline of Resonance to try to quickly win games and catch his opponent’s off guard.

If we are entering a world where Domain Overlords is one of the top decks in the format, you have two choices to beat them, and Leyline of Resonance is one of those choices, which is to try to kill them before they can get anything set up.

Part of why Domain Overlords is so good, is because once they stabilize with a sweeper, they can cast Zur, Eternal Schemer and animate an enchantment for a big lifelink swing, so a top decked haste creature or burn spell is no longer lethal. This means that the main goal of Domain is now just to survive with removal and sweepers, because it doesn’t matter how low you get, as long as you have one life point you can rebuild.

So, if you are an aggro player, you have to kill the Domain Overlords player before they can cast that first wrath to stabilize the board. Leyline of Resonance offers you that option, because even if you aren’t hitting the turn two nut draw kill, turn three is usually fast enough to take the game.

Ride’s End does help this matchup a little bit, since it does exile, which means that you won’t get the death trigger from Heartfire Hero or Cacophony Scamp, although Snakeskin Veil can help fight against that.

This is all to say, that in a world where the big deck has a ton of lifelink threats, you have to kill them quickly, and that is what Leyline of Resonance offers. So if you are expecting to fight against a lot more Domain Overlords type decks and a lot less Esper Bounce type decks, then Leyline of Resonance could be the way to go.

Golgari Graveyard

New deck alert! Zevin Faust piloted this Golgari Graveyard deck all the way to the Top 8 during his first Pro Tour.

This deck is trying to fill up the graveyard with creatures and then cast Chitin Gravestalker, Hollow Marauder, Huskburster Swarm, and Overwhelming Remorse for cheap. All of these spells, including Overlord of the Balemurk, will trigger Up the Beanstalk, keeping our hand full and ready to deploy.

To fill the graveyard we have Overlord of the Balemurk, Molt Tender, Cenote Scout, Gnawing Vermin, Souls of the Lost, Harvester of Misery, and Chitin Gravestalker. Really most of the deck either fills the graveyard or benefits from the graveyard being full.

Souls of the Lost is great because it gets very big very quickly, making it a great blocker against aggro and a great source of pressure against slower decks.

Overall, this deck is great at attacking the opponent from an angle they aren’t prepared for, and with four Scrapshooter and two Haywire Mite in the board, even graveyard hate like Rest in Peace and Ghost Vacuum may not be enough to fight it.

If you are looking for a new deck to try out that is very friendly on the wildcards, outside of the mana base, give this deck a try!

Jeskai Oculus

Jeskai Oculus is an interesting evolution of the Azorius Oculus deck, folding in other plans to make the deck more resilient to graveyard exile.

While getting an Abhorrent Oculusinto the graveyard, and bringing it back with Helping Hand is still plan a of the deck, Profit’s Eidetic Memory offers a nice back up plan, turn all of your card draw from Fear of Missing Out, Steamcore Scholar, and Bitter Reunion, into counters for your threats.

So, even if your graveyard is taken out, you can still put on pressure, especially if you are loading up a flying threat like Spyglass Siren or Steamcore Scholar, or have Inti, Seneschal of the Sun in play to grant trample.

Chandra, Spark Hunter comes in out of the sideboard to provide some extra ways to discard and draw cards, as well as a way to pressure slower decks every turn with a 3/2 vehicle.

It feels like a lot of decks in Standard are either trying to get less one dimensional to better fight against sideboard cards, like in the case of this build of Jeskai Oculus, or going all in on their primary game plan like Gruul Leyline. So we’ll see where these decks end up moving forward.

Thoughts and Analysis

All of this leads me to think about three things:

First, is it time to look at banning Up the Beanstalk?

I know this might come off as strange to a lot of you, as it is a simple uncommon enchantment. But wow does it power so many decks. Without Up the Beanstalk, Domain Overlords would either not exist or look completely different. That cool Golgari Graveyard deck would also look a lot different without Up the Beanstalk to help you chain threats together in the mid game.

Up the Beanstalk has been a problem in other formats as well, and is in fact banned in modern, because it just makes weird high mana value spells that can be cast for cheap, way better than they normally would be. Those spells whole thing is that they can be cast for cheap when certain conditions are met or at a disadvantage, but adding on “draw a card” makes any downside or condition irrelevant.

I don’t think they will ban Up the Beanstalk, and I’m not even sure it needs to be banned. If we continue to see Domain Overlords do well, and other decks are created to be built around it, then it may be worth taking it out as a way to hit those decks without disrupting their other key cards. For now though, I think it will stay.

Second, is Aetherdrift a weak set, or does it just need more time?

Aetherdrift was not heavily represented in the Top 8 of its namesake Pro Tour. We saw Ride’s End make a splash, but that is really only because it triggers Up the Beanstalk. In the Golgari Graveyard deck we saw Molt Tender and Chitin Gravestalker help enable their game plan, and outside of that we saw a copy of Stock Up, a copy of Bounce Off, and some copies of Chandra, Spark Hunter in the sideboard.

So the question is was there just not enough time for the pros to figure out the busted Aetherdrift cards, or did they try them all and decide they just weren’t worth it?

The thing is this is likely to continue happening as we continue with big Standard. I used to play Modern back in the day before direct to Modern sets, and each set that came out would add a couple of cards to the format, and I’m worried we may be heading that way with Standard.

Instead of each set making a big impact and leading to fun new brews, you just pick out the best 5 cards and call it a day. Now, this is a bit of an over reaction to one high level tournament that occurred just a week after the set was released, but it is worth keeping an eye on for the next couple of sets as well.

I do think that Standard is in a good spot, we saw that with the huge deck diversity at the tournament, but I worry that with the increase in number of sets being added to Standard each year, that sets will really stop making impacts and become more and more forgettable as we go along.

Third, does Standard pivot to control to counter the Domain Overlord menace?

While Domain Overlords does have access to Cavern of Souls to help fight off counterspells, control is quite good against the deck, as they can counter or remove their key threats. The other thing control has going for it, is the ability to use Domain Overlords card advantage against it.

Jace, the Perfected Mind was always seen as the Domain killer, as you would wait until their copies of Up the Beanstalk had drawn them below 30 cards, and then use two copies of Jace to mill them out.

Let’s look at an example decklist, taken from a Standard Challenge on MTGO after the Pro Tour.

This deck has the tools to fight against aggro in the main, and Jace, the Perfected Mind to take out Domain. The Standard Leagues and Challenges on MTGO have been seeing an uptick in both this build and more traditional Azorius builds, as a great way to prey on players trying to take Domain Overlords to the top.

This deck also gets to make use of Ride’s End, but also has Stock Up as a key piece of card advantage that can help dig for answers. Control was really missing out on that since the rotation of Memory Deluge, and Stock Up seems to fill that role.

The green in this deck is mostly for sideboard cards Obstinate Baloth and Wilt-Leaf Liege to help fight against Esper Pixie decks.

If Domain continues to be a popular deck, expect Control decks to rise up to fight them. And then another deck will rise up to fight against Control and the cycle will continue. All of which makes me think this Standard format is pretty healthy.

Wrapping Up

Domain was the best deck on the weekend, but is it the best deck in Standard? Was Aetherdrift a flop? Will the increased pace of set releases make individual sets less impactful and less memorable? There are a lot of questions as we continue to foray into this uncharted territory that is big Standard.

Either way, it does seem like the format as a whole is quite healthy, with a good amount of deck diversity, creative answers, new brews, and a wide variety of options. As more and more sets get added I hope that we see that continue, and we end up with a fun format not just at the pro level, but on the ladder as well.

I hope this article helped clarify some of my thoughts after the Pro Tour and got you thinking as well. There are a lot of sweet decks to try, so as always, best of luck in all of your matches!