It’s only a single datapoint, but still nice to have this information 😀 Thanks. I hold that Devotion is pretty “bad” in this metagame, meaning there are currently big mana decks to play with far stronger matchup profiles overall. But it’s also known among Modern enthusiasts that an expert with a given deck can experience success regardless. Mastery and tuning are critically important here. So I’m not surprised that a Devotion deck, in the right hands, did indeed perform.

The GenesisWave Version from Brennen was not good, no doubt about it, but the explosive Version from Anthony Skrzypczak is a viable good Deck with better plan and consistence.
With Genesis Wave you can only hope for the best, or you just doing a bit toolboxing like Anthony’s Version.

Don’t blame Green Devotion as a unplayable fringe Deck. That isn’t true, after all. And still a very unerestimated Deck type.

Haha I can dream. E-Command for life 😛

Ha! These can bother me but I quite like your Tron analogy. Perhaps its focus will allow Gx Tron to overshadow Eldrazi Tron on the big stage, although I can see pros swinging either way on deck choice; Gx is more straightforward and overtly powerful, while ET is more well-rounded. A lot of the decision between the two decks I think is likely to come down to playstyle preference (here we’ll see the “you can play anything” adage do some work among the pros with less time to test).

You are probably right about Living End, and if there’s a stage for the deck to find its true configuration (or close), it certainly is the Pro Tour. It would be a really interesting development if that did happen in Bilbao, as it did with the last Modern PT and the aggressive Eldrazi decks. I’d wager a final-ish build omits Remand completely.

Your excitement is palpable, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Eternal Command 😉 Good luck in those side events.

On eldrazi tron: The deck’s weird. I pulled the pieces together ages ago, even went to the trouble of sleeving up any innovations and keeping my list up-to-date, but when it came to actually playing with it, I never picked it up even once. I don’t have a proper excuse, other than I tended to see a lot of the deck floating around and it never really managed to break cleanly into top8s and finals. It seems like a “top-32 deck” which is sort of an odd idea in modern. In this regard I gravitated towards putting in a tremendous amount of reps with devoted druid coco decks (which are now somewhat dwindling in the meta although still “OK”). Based on my rather unusual experience with the deck (I assume most people don’t keep a cutting edge tweaked modern deck lying around ready-to-go but never actually play it) I honestly have a hard time pushing my imagination as far as it succeeding by any significant strides at the protour. Call it what you will, it’s a gut feeling at best. My gut says the eldrazi will probably be “medium” and other decks will cannibalise its niche.

On tron:
Recently I discovered a lost love and rebuilt RG tron, for my sins. It felt like I was a craftsman rediscovering a long lost and storied chisel, to find it still sharp and capable in a world of plastic and cordless drills. I fully realise it’s not to everyone’s taste (and I can practically taste the salt from here), but to fan those cards out on my playmat once more was bordering on a spiritual experience. I can’t attest to its viability, only that for some reason I was drawn, like a sailor to a siren. There she was, singing beautifully whilst enthusiastically stomping over six small fishing villages, a fleet of boats and a small army. Stomp-stomp-stomp. Somehow, this is my song.

In a completely different part of my brain (the older, craftier part that lurks from the depths of early magic and untamed formats) I’m thinking deeply about decks which apply tempo as a form of pressure and resource, and I have to say I’m a little more optimistic about Humans at this tournament than other writers I’ve seen, and I think we’ll see deep runs from the deck. Anecdotally, I’ve not lost a single match playing the deck yet (100% winrate. *never* happened before) so at next week’s GP side events in London I’m looking forward to having my proverbial glass tower completely stoved-in by basically everything and everyone in a bludgenous display of blunt reality.

And finally, the recent weirdo-darling of the fringe crowd, 5-0 league bracket and some accommodating MTG writers; As Foretold Living End. Let’s not kid around, there’s a powerful core inside this poorly-optimised burning trashpile of a deck. It was so alluring I even went out and bought a playset of ancestral vision (I may have a fever. Someone call a DCI approved physician). Oddly enough, when one takes more than a cursory glance at the rough diamond that people have been attempting to play, there’s actually a good deck to be had beneath the rubbish. Strip away the multiples of expensive spells, unplayable jank and too-spicy spice, there’s a surprising 12-or-so maindeck spots free to fill with powerful modern staples and whole suites of interaction. With these changes the trashpile becomes something of a found-object sculpture. In a truly heroic feat of upcycling, jund living end has birthed a bizarro progeny which I genuinely think has legs in the format. My point here is that someone “figures it out” with this deck, it’s a good ‘un. For real, it’s not just a one trick pony. Just the ability to run 1x maindeck tutorable engineered explosives is reason enough to sit up and go “huh…”. Weird? Yep. Currently fringe trash? Sure. Pretty terrifying if someone “solves” it? I’d say yes. There’s a lot to like and as a fun journey to be part of, the development of this deck has been equal parts hilarious and insightful.

Anyway enough rambling. My true wish for this tournament is that some as-yet unnamed hero for the ages rocks up with Eternal Command and makes top 8 like an absolute boss.