5 Out of Top 8 Players Crewed Mardu Vehicles in SCG Atlanta Open

When a new Magic: The Gathering set launches, many players would watch Star City Games' Standard Open series to get an idea what the new meta would look like with the new cards, especially after Wizards banned Felidar Guardian to end the dominance of Saheeli combo decks. While the two-day 15-round Magic event showecased a good diversity of deck types in video coverage, the Top 8 decks weren't so diverse.

Sadly, five of the Top 8 players ran Mardu Vehicles or "Mardu Ballista" (the other decks are Mono Black Aggro, Green-Black Delirium, and Red-White Humans), and one of them, Andrew Jessup, ultimately won the tournament. Yeah, we know that Mardu Vehicles has already been a top-tier deck before Amonkhet's release and many of us expected to see Black-Green Delirium and Control decks have more of a fighting chance against Mardu thanks to new cards like Manglehorn and Forsake the Worldly but it's just disappointing to see that five of them topped the competition. As expected, Aggro decks usually dominate the first week after a new set's launch since it usally takes time for Control to figure out the best build to deal against it, but the lack of diversity in the Top 8 shows that Mardu is the most consistent. 28 players that made it Day 2 ran Mardu Vehicles, greater than all other deck types. We've seen other Aggro builds like Black-White Zombies, Green-White Tokens, and Green-Black builds and some cool Control decks like Emma Handy's Jeskai Control and Blue-White Control that uses Approaches of the Second Sun to win, but those decks failed to beat Mardu Vehicles.

The results remind me of Grand Prix Shizuoka 2017 all over again, where the majority of the Top 8 players ran Mardu Vehicles. Is Standard better now that Saheeli-combo is gone? Probably; the answer would definitely be the same if a key card in Mardu Vehicles like Gideon Ally of Zendikar or Heart of Kiran was banned. Is Standard "still broken" because of the lack of diversity in Star City Open's Top 8? I think it's still too early to tell since the new meta usually takes some time to adapt and evolve, and we'll probably see more deck geared to beat it. After all, Reid Duke predicted Mardu to be the "deck to beat"n and a lot of players in the tournament most likely prepared against it but apparently failed. Now that Saheeli combo decks are gone, we clearly have one Tier-1 deck players always have to prepare against, and I'm just hoping that Pro Tour Amonkhet will show us decks that can consistently beat it. I would hate to see another Top 8 full of Mardu Vehicles. I'm going to cheer for Shota Yasooka. I'm sure he's going to have a Control deck ready to break Mardu down.

To check out results from the SCG Atlanta Open, check out Starcitygames.com.

Watch me open some Amonkhet prize packs:

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