We lacked a GP this weekend, but SCG Cleveland has given us a lot to talk about anyway. Over five hundred people showed up to do battle with swords and sorcery in Standard, leading to an interesting and highly competitive Top 8.

Heroes Abound in Cleveland

Bant Heroic took the top spot in the event, highlighting a deck that's been floating around for a month now. Ever since Tom Ross concocted this, we've seen it on the fringes.

Last week, I called this the deck to play at the moment and it looks like I was right! The deck makes phenomenal use of Dromoka's Command.

Dromoka's Command

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The Command gained $2 since the beginning of April and this deck was a great showcase for it. In the quarterfinals, Ross Merriam used it to blow away a blocker and make his opponent sacrifice a Mastery of the Unseen. Two-for-ones (with the kicker +1/+1 counter) are normal in this Heroic deck.

Monastery Mentor showed up as a two-of and Lagonna-Band Trailblazer also appeared in an interesting pair. The latter, I believe, is to gain an amount of built-in resistance to Draconic Roar and Wild Slash messing up your day. Those cards are getting ever more common and Trailblazer makes a good counter.

Monastery Mentor is another thing, though. Merriam used a pair of Mentors to steal an unwinnable game from his quarterfinals opponent, shamelessly spamming little monks for a big alpha strike. Mentor has been looking for a home in Standard for a long time. I doubt that this deck can support four, but two is an interesting number. Remember that for all the hype Dragonlord Ojutai gets, it started off as a two-of in a few lists. It's entirely possible that Mentor gains a home in Heroic, the Heroic deck gains speed, and Mentor's price stabilizes.

Stabilizes, you say? That guy has been on a price decline for two months, dropping $9 to a current price of $17 in that time. Despite an interesting showing here, now's not the time to buy.

Actions: Keep a very close eye on Bant Heroic and especially whether it's running Mentors. If this deck has three more good weeks with Mentor, then I predict the price will see a modest gain. This is not an endorsement of buying Mentors, but it should make you reconsider trading yours away if you're fearful of more price drops.

Dragons Starting to Turn on One Another

This Top 8 had two Esper Dragons decks filter to the top and Gerard Fabiano's list is the next stage. Why? He's got a maindeck that keeps an eye on beating the mirror. For example, two maindeck Ashiok are there to grind away an Esper opponent (while also nabbing fatties from G/R Monsters). He packed in three Dragonlord Ojutai to get better odds of landing the hexproof finisher. At the same time, there's two copies of Foul-Tongue Invocation in the main to eliminate opposing untargetable Dragons.

He can also turn to his sideboard and pull out Narset Transcendent. We saw Narset come and go from this deck and the consensus right now is that she's not maindeck material. On the other hand, she's downright nasty in a mirror where she can rebound a spell or two.

Note as well that he and Kenta Hiroki both have trimmed a copy of Drown in Sorrow from their boards. They fear tokens and Mono-Red a lot less. I tend to think that the double Invocations in the main add a bit of padding for the life total, making it an even better matchup for Esper Dragons.

Actions: The price of Ashiok is very fickle. At the beginning of October 2013, it jumped from $17 to $26 overnight. There must be something about autumn because this September, it again spiked up from $10 to $16. Finally, Ashiok ended January by going from $10 to $18. It's now at $13 and trending downward.

That kind of behavior makes me happy to see. It says people are quick to buy these, but also to sell them when they don't need them any more, making them rebuy. The next few iterations of Esper Dragons will likely involve much more Ashiok in the maindeck, so the price should see upward movement. It's still dropping, though, and you don't want to buy into a dip.

If Ashiok ends up at $10 by the end of May, it's a good pickup. If it doesn't drop by that point, avoid it--the season won't be long enough to use the planeswalker much more.

G/R Dragons Remains Strong

Second place went to a straightforward G/R Dragons list. I thought his choices were pretty interesting because he ran four Draconic Roar and only two Crater's Claws, which indicates that the Searing Blood effect is overtaking the burn firepower. Thunderbreak Regent has held steady at $10 despite its event deck printing. Like I said last month, this card is the $10 bill in DTK that will facilitate trades for you.

Xenagos is holding steady just shy of $7. He's a three-of in this list but a lot of G/R Dragons lists skip on him entirely. I don't like picking him up right now, since he's thinly played and close enough to rotation to spook me. The more worrisome thing for me about investing in cards from this deck is that the whole core is a Theros list with Thunderbreaks and efficient burn rounding it out. The core of this deck just evaporates on rotation.

Actions: Avoid picking up anything from this deck besides Thunderbreak Regent at this point.

Abzan Goes Aggro This Week

Maybe it's all the Bile Blight floating around, but Elspeth was mostly absent from the two Abzan aggro decks that made the Top 8. Kyle Boggemes had a pair of her in the sideboard, while Connor Bowman had two Sorin, Solemn Visitor in the same role. The list that Kyle Boggemes played was pretty stock; two Wingmate Roc made things interesting in the maindeck.

Connor's list, though, was pretty wild. It felt like a real homebrewer deck, to be honest. I'm not sure that's a compliment, but I do have a lot of respect for a guy who jams four Collected Company in his main. To maximize it, he's got things like Boon Satyr, Herald of Torment (!) and even a pair of Grim Haruspex to get with the instant.

It's a list that just keeps the hits coming. Warden of the First Tree can lifelink back damage from Herald of Torment, for instance. Collected Company can spawn a big army. Haruspex can pick up value from guys you're sacrificing to Foul-Tongue Invocation.

I like Connor's list and I'd love to run it, but there's little to speculate on right now because this list is unlikely to get much attention. That's sad because it's neat; Connor isn't a famous writer, he didn't take the event down, and his deck name doesn't draw attention to the fact that he's using the innovative Collected Company in his list.

Actions: Keep an eye on this list. If we see Company get love again in the next few weeks, it could jump in price from $4 to about $7. I'm also following Warden's slow decline. If I'm wrong and this deck gets picked up, expect both cards to go up a bit. Warden can see $10, even though I don't respect it as a card. It is, however, a mythic that comes down from Company and can really mess up the math on an attacking Thunderbreak Regent.

Quick Hits, With Bonus Modern Stuff

• One Jeskai Tokens deck in the Top 8, but only one Secure the Wastes in it. This is another bog-standard Dragonlord Ojutai strategy, but it's good to see people still running Tokens.
• No Mono-Red in the Top 8, but some of it appears at the end of the Top 16; not a good week for it, but as Drown In Sorrow disappears from sideboards, it'll be back.
• Collins Mullen made the Top 8 with a G/W Deathmist Raptor-Den Protector-Mastery of the Unseen deck, splashing Ojutai. It looks decent but I have to imagine these decks would be so much better if they had 2x Nykthos to make their lategame mana crazy. It looks so bottlenecked as a deck.
• For all the talk of how good Twin is in Modern, only one list made it to the Top 16.
• G-Fab's Sultai Control deck from Modern makes another appearance this week in the top spot, piloted by someone else. That was the deck that made people lose their minds speculating on Night of Souls' Betrayal last month.
• If you're going to a Modern event, Affinity is probably the deck to run these days. It rampages past the very annoying Amulet Bloom decks that still float around Modern.

If it happens next week, we'll talk about it next Monday. Until then,

-Doug