Grand Prix Denver was pretty uneventful for me. I found myself quickly dispatched in the main event after bricking on a Treasure Cruise or two.

I spent day two playing 9 rounds of sealed and taking 9th in the Super Sunday Series event, which was a little heartbreaking, but it's all just a part of playing the game.

This is the deck that I registered for the main event:

After a first round bye, I lost to UW Heroic, Abzan Whip, beat Sam Black Boros, then lost to Monored Aggro.

Oddly enough, the card that performed worst for me was Treasure Cruise. I bricked in tight game threes off of a Treasure Cruise against both Abzan and Heroic in games where I could have easily won with a little more gas, and I lost game one to monored with two uncastable Treasure Cruise in my opener.

It's hard to imagine not playing Treasure Cruise in a Jeskai Ascendancy deck, though, and I was very happy to have it in post board games when my spells were better configured to play a one-for-one game until I can take over with card advantage.

Sometimes you just get unlucky.

Spoiler Alert

Anyway, it's very likely that I won't be able to play Standard until Fate Reforged launches, so I'm much more concerned with experimenting with some new cards than reflecting on an older piece of technology.

There have been a few amazing cards previewed for Boros and Jeskai decks that I am very excited about. The two most important cards spoiled for me so far are Monastery Mentor and Flamewake Phoenix.

What's very interesting about these cards is that they're both obviously strong enough for Standard play in similar strategies, but that they both pull deck building decisions in opposite directions. Monastery Mentor biases one toward Jeskai Ascendancy and a high spell count, while Flamewake Phoenix fits better in a deck with Ashcloud Phoenix and Stormbreath Dragon.

If Monastery Mentor is as good as it looks, then I would just cut Monastery Swiftspear from my Jesksligh deck for it and be relatively happy. The other change I would make to that particular deck is to make room for a maindeck Valorous Stance:

Valorous Stance deals with most of the creatures that the red spells aren't good against without being dead against control decks. I love this card, and I would cut the sideboard Suspension Field for one as well. Hedging against the Temur matchup, destroying Siege Rhino and having a random hedge against removal are all excellent for this deck.

Flamewake Phoenix, on the other hand, doesn't fit in here. It does play nicely with Mantis Rider in order to have more evasive threats, but Jeskai can't rebuy it easily and it's probably not on the power level of Ascendancy and Monastery Mentor for a three-color strategy.

Alternatively, Flamewake Phoenix is exactly what Boros was missing and also lends itself well to Gruul. The question is whether you'd rather play Seeker of the Way and Chained to the Rocks or Heir of the Wilds and Elvish Mystic.

Now, I'm not entirely convinced that either of these strategies is heads-up more powerful than the Jeskai Ascendancy engine. The motivation for going in this direction would be Jeskai's weakness to Drown in Sorrow and the like, as well as finding a way to better combat Siege Rhino.

I'm of the belief that Boros handles these goals much better than Gruul. It is notable that Gruul will generally have better Stormbreath Dragons than Boros on account on the mana accleration, though this is something I consider an acceptable loss. If I were the type of player who really valued mana dorks, I would play Gruul, but that's just not me.

All told, Xenagos, the Reveler would probably be the card that pulls me to Gruul if I end up playing that deck, but for now I gotta go with Chained to the Rocks. If the Gruul deck does end up being very good, it's possible that there is some money to be made on Xenagos, who has decreased in value substantially after exploding previous to the launch of Khans of Tarkir.

The risk you run on this is that every day that passes, Theros is one day closer to rotating out of Standard, and any spike that occurs would require the ability to flip these guys quickly in order to be profitable. Invest cautiously.

Meanwhile, updating the Boros deck I posted a couple weeks ago for Flamewake Phoenix will be relatively easy. The deck already does a good enough job supporting ferocious, so the changes will mostly center around moving the maindeck cards that belong in the sideboard to the sideboard. Namely, Hushwing Gryff and Searing Blood probably have too wide of spreads of relative power levels to be maindeck cards.

Fortunately, Fate Reforged offers another strong Boros card in Soulfire Grand Master.

The obvious downside to Soulfire Grand Master is that it doesn't hit very hard and that redundant copies are literally Glory Seekers. The notion that the card should be payed as a four-of sounds wrong to me, but I like a couple copies.

This is a speculative Boros list, pending further spoilers:

This deck looks very good at getting people dead and has some resiliency. I could see something very close to this being excellent, and am excited to experiment with it.

As for the immediate future, this coming weekend I will be playing in GP Omaha with Izzet Delver. I'm hoping to run better there than I did in Denver, and it's a deck that I'm much more experienced with. I have high hopes and, not long after I return, there will be a new set to play with. I couldn't be more excited.

Thanks for reading!

-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter