The Top 8 from GP Pittsburgh is in; no busted combos, no punishing locks and no Burn! This week, we'll take a look at the Grand Prix and compare it to the RPTQ winners from two weeks ago.

A Trio of Twins

First, let's take a look at the two U/R Twin decks, which are standard builds (that's not a bad thing). They run a combination of small efficient counterspells and lots of draw. These are fair decks that provide a foil to the more broken strategies in Modern. Bloom Titan, for example, has a very tough matchup against this deck.

I'm more interested in the white Splinter Twin deck that won the event. While past lists ran a set of Wall of Omens, this one cut the Wall down to a single copy. Instead, it makes full use of Path to Exile. Path is one of the strongest removal spells in Modern right now, taking out big threats like Primeval Titan with no hesitation.

White also provides a few interesting sideboard options. Here, that means an Elspeth, Sun's Champion and some Timely Reinforcements.

I have felt recently that Twin would benefit greatly from the inclusion of Path. This deck skips the more conventional white cards and pares down its choices to what really matters.

Affinity Crushes Again

Affinity placed two decks in the Top 8. This matches up with my assay of the metagame earlier--Affinity was also the most common deck to appear in the Top 8 of an RPTQ.

If you compare Affinity lists from last year to these decks, you might find a lot of cards are just plain gone.

• No Ensoul Artifact in either deck. For that matter, no Thoughtcast either!
• 3-4 Etched Champion in the maindeck.
• Two Spellskites in each maindeck.
• Two Ghirapur Aether Grid on the sideboard.

This is the new face of Affinity, a form that can edge past the blowouts of Vandalblast and the power-downs of Stony Silence. Affinity can win right through a Stony Silence if it gets Etched Champion out early enough. The deck has shed its blue components, since they're mediocre against Jund and Junk decks.

It's hard to find something worth speculating on in Affinity. The prices are all pretty well set. That said, you can go in on staples like Etched Champion and Steel Overseer, both key pieces in the archetype that remain reasonably priced.

Grixis Control Continues to Evolve

Corey Burkhart's Grixis list is something of beauty. With four Snapcaster Mage and four Jace, Vryn's Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound, he'll rebuy just about every spell he casts.

I think his inclusion of Thought Scour is a little loose, but it does tend to fuel those aforementioned creatures. And I've recently rediscovered how powerful Inquisition of Kozilek is in a base-blue deck, letting you really plan for what needs to be answered.

Speaking of answers, Corey's list has a lot of removal, but interestingly, no counterspells in the main deck. Sure, his sideboard has three Dispel and a Spell Snare, but preboard it looks like a straight attrition game.

One of the prime engines of attrition here is Kolaghan's Command. Corey has four in his maindeck, more than I've seen just about anywhere. On top of that, he has a miser's Rise // Fall as well! The idea seems to be to grind an opponent's hand down and use the Command to rebuy your high-impact creatures.

Pia and Kiran Nalaar (aka Key & Peele) make an appearance here (as well as on a Twin board). I hesitantly like them over Siege-Gang Commander or Inferno Titan because the tokens have flying and act as a Lingering Souls against both Junk and Affinity.

In both Modern and Standard this card has been eager for its time in the sun. We've seen one copy here; how many more will make their way into decks?

Grixis did well in this event to make it this far, fighting off popular decks like Jund and Junk. Those matchups matter because they can easily out-grind you, and Tarmogoyf is a real pain to stop. On the plus side, you can bring in four Fulminator Mages and combine those with Commands to shred their manabase.

Corey was wise to run three Exterminate!s and a Dismember as answers to the infamous lhurgoyf; I'd go so far as to drop the Dismember and go up to four Terminate.

Craig Wescoe Gins up Another G/W Deck

Craig did his signature move by bringing G/W Hatebears to another Top 8. With Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter, Craig didn't want his opponents to ever benefit from Path to Exile, much less stuff like Scapeshift and Primeval Titan.

I was surprised to see how well Craig handled his Burn match against Ari Lax, as well as the way he out-valued Jund using Voice of Resurgence.

This deck is a pain in the ass to play against. You think you're all set and they're just soft to Tasigur, the Golden Fang, but then bit by bit, the deck slows you down, removes your creatures, then beats you to death with 2/x dudes. I am not looking forward to playing against it in the next few weeks.

When these hate decks are good, it's a symptom of broken things going on. The Aven and Arbiter are both there to stop deck searching, which is abundant and deadly in Modern.

If the only thing they hosed were fetchlands, this deck would be a lot worse. However, those cards singlehandedly wreck Bloom Titan and can spell trouble for other decks too. Thalia compounds the pressure on mana bases and punishes "unfair" decks too reliant on spells.

If we see a banning from something like Bloom Titan (oh please please please), I expect this deck to lose power. It has a challenging time chasing down an Affinity deck in a race, for example. That's why Craig has four Stony Silence on his board.

There's no Tarmogoyf here, but some stupidly expensive cards like Ignoble Hierarch and Horizon Canopy (a staggering $57) will keep this deck out of the hands of budget players. This is the kind of deck a pro pilots because they have a read on a metagame. I don't expect to see much of an uptick on the deck's price in general.

The one attractive target here is Leonin Arbiter. Hovering around just $1.90 on TCGPlayer, it's a great pickup with plenty of room to grow.

Titan Scapeshift Makes a Appearance

Finally, we saw a Scapeshift deck show up in the Top 8. Scapeshift has been floating around the edges of Modern for a while, and we've been talking about it consistently on QS Cast.

This deck is unusual in the fact that it skips out on blue entirely! No Izzet Charm, no Goremand. Instead, it just runs very consistent mana ramp to power out one of its two namesake spells. From there, a bunch of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacles come out and burn you up.

The reason for running blue before was simply because you didn't have better options. The red mana in the deck didn't really accomplish anything in and of itself, so it was easy to jam some Steam Vents both to up the mountain count and support a few worthwhile spells.

Cinder Glade makes this deck much more consistent and provides an incentive to return to the straight red-green Valakut builds from Standard past. The card must have a pretty meaningful impact, as Thien Nguyen chose to cut down to a single Stomping Ground!

This is about as budget as a deck can get in Modern. Scapeshift is $20 and Titan is $10, but Valakut is a meager $3.50. I've got to imagine that Twin just crushes this deck (hence the Rending Volleys) but if you're playing a "fair" game this style of deck will run right past you.

If Blood Moon gets too popular, the deck can also run Rude Awakening as a work-around. Players did this in the past, and it still feels like a fine strategy.

~

What a great Top 8! It was a little disappointing to see no Jund or Junk (no Tarmogoyfs at all, in fact!), but the Top 8 was a diverse mix of interactive strategies. The only super linear deck to appear was Affinity, and while it's still powerful everyone also knows how to beat it.

This is the sign of a healthy Modern environment. I hope to see that continue through to Pro Tour Atlanta.

-Doug