Pro Tour Outlaws of Thunder Junction Top Decks Breakdown

Hi! My name is Vertyx and I will go over the top finishes of the recent Pro Tour Outlaws of Thunder Junction that took place on this weekend in Seattle! Over 200 players fought for a whopping prize pool of $500,000 with the winner taking $50,000!

Pro Tour Outlaws of Thunder Junction Top 8 + Top 32 Standard Decklists

Top 8 Deck Breakdown

As for the top 8 we got a very diverse field with at least one candidate from 6 of the most present decks in the metagame. You can read about the metagame here:

Pro Tour Thunder Junction Standard Metagame and Top Cards

The whole tournament was taken down by Yoshihiko Ikawa with Domain Ramp!

This deck has been one of the top contenders in Standard and has not changed much in its time span. you got ramp like Topiary Stomper, large payoffs like Atraxa, Grand Unifier, removal like Leyline Binding and a card engine in the form of Up the Beanstalk so you never run out of cards. Combined together you get a strong contender in the format.

The second finalist was Yuta Takahashi with Azorius Control! After winning Worlds in 2021 we see this familiar name rise to the finals once again. Unfortunately, his card Faerie Mastermind did not belong in the deck here.

The deck got a nice update in Outlaws of Thunder Junction in the form of Three Steps Ahead and Phantom Interference so the deck has even more ways to control the board by countering spells, removing creatures and gaining card advantage!

3rd place was taken down by Takumi Matsuura with Boros Convoke!

A deck that swarmed into multiple formats with the printing of Gleeful Demolition and Knight-Errant of Eos and Standard isn’t an exception! The goal is to swarm the board with tokens, convoke your board into big threats like Venerated Loxodon (in non-Standard formats) or Knight-Errant of Eos and then finish the opponent with an anthem effect like Warleader's Call or Imodane's Recruiter!

4th (by Arne Huschenbeth) and 6th place (by Lucas Duchow) were taken down with Esper Midrange which took up a whopping 31% of the whole tournament meta!

Even that both of the decklists have differences, they share the same idea of cheap interaction combined with powerful creatures to get control over the opponent!

5th (by Rei Zhang) and 7th place (by Jason Ye) were taken down with Four-Color Legends!

A creature based legendary deck has been a contender in the format for a while now either it be Esper Legends, Abzan Legends or various Four-Color variants. And as with most of them, this deck also utilizes a bunch of powerful mana hungry creatures to make the game a nightmare for the opponent while maintaining a bunch of value thanks to its creatures like Slogurk, the Overslime, Rona, Herald of Invasion or Inti, Seneschal of the Sun!

And the last 8th place deck by Sean Goddard is a new addition to the format called Temur Analyst!

This deck is all about ramp in various ways! For example the namesake card Aftermath Analyst, a removal and ramp in one Worldsoul's Rage or Spelunking. When you get enough mana, you can get a lot of advantage with cards like Memory Deluge or Ill-Timed Explosion and that should be enough to find more ramp and a copy of Worldsoul's Rage to one shot the opponent!

Interesting Decks From Top 32

Let’s take a look at two interesting deck from the top 32 finishes.

First one is 15th place Jund Analyst by Andrew Kidston!

Same idea as Temur Analyst, but instead of blue card advantage spells, this deck plays Pillage the Bog and Pitiless Carnage so you can gain value from your lands and swiftly return them from the graveyard right after with Splendid Reclamation and Aftermath Analyst!

And the second deck is 18th place Orzhov Midrange by Kevin Anctil!

With a new addition in the form of Caustic Bronco and other cards like Insatiable Avarice, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Anointed Peacekeeper this deck is able to apply pressure while also gaining value from its cards!