If there's one thing that's remained true throughout Standard since the Magic World Championship back in December, it's that no deck can stay on the top for long. Following the breakout of Izzet Lessons, the metagame has continued to evolve over the past six months. After a massive weekend of Magic that saw a range of Regional Championships hosted across the world, it's clear that trend is nowhere close to finishing. Four Regional Championships were won by four different events.
At the first US Regional Championship of the cycle, 940 players traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, to compete in Standard.. It was an exciting field, and each player was looking to one-up the Standard metagame that saw Landfall win Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven before falling off hard at the next event, Magic Spotlight: Secrets in London.
That left players heading into the Regional Championship weekend on the lookout for anything in Standard. Over two days of intense competition, that's exactly what they found.
That set the stage for Cincinnati, and it was a stage that Zachary Aymie was prepared to star on. Those hopes took a major hit when he dropped his opening round in two successive games to Brian Feria's Sultai Control list. But you don't play a control deck if you're not willing to fight from a disadvantaged position—and that's exactly what Aymie did. He kept the faith and continued to use Flashback on Jeskai Revelation. By the end of Day One, he was near the top of the leaderboard at 7-2.
And he wouldn't lose again. Not only did Aymie reel off five straight wins on Sunday to draw into the Top 8, but he followed that up with a Top 8 run where he dropped just a single game in victories against Sam Ng, Jake Bailey, and Robert Wagner Krankel.
Aymie's deck put together a 30-10-3 record in games over the course of the Regional Championship, an incredible win rate that, while exaggerated, was emblematic of the very strong weekend for the new Tablet of Discovery, Jeskai Revelation, and Flashback Control archetype. Among the Top 25 in Cincinnati, eight of them were playing Four-Color Control featuring Tablet of Discovery.
The Top 8 was a mix of Regional Championship Top 8 newcomers and veterans of the competitive scene and featured six unique archetypes, among them the combo deck Temur Omniscience piloted by Jake Bailey that advanced all the way to the semifinals. But the World Championship invitations went to Wagner Krankel and Aymie, who will compete at Magic World Championship 32 later this year.
Like Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven, Izzet was the big winner in terms of metagame share, but it was far from dominant when it came to its win rate. The deck found success over the weekend by placing two players in the Top 8 and Wagner Krankel in the finals, but Aymie's Four-Color Control list was the true breakout deck.
Other developments included the continued success of new archetypes. Christopher Kral helped design Mardu Discard in the Pro Tour testing house and used it to secure a Top 16 finish in Cincinnati. The deck would go on to see greater success elsewhere. Another winner was the Callous Sell-Sword variant of Izzet going all-in with cards like Ancestral Anger and Wild Ride. While some blue-red decks have gone bigger and used Eddymurk Crab to gain an edge, Wesley Hickman's run to the Top 16 was filled with flinging creatures at opponents, and it proved there's more than one to pilot Prowess.
