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Pro Tour Aetherdrift Day Two Highlights

February 23, 2025
Corbin Hosler

Restart your engines!

Pro Tour Aetherdrift continued in style on Saturday, with more than 200 of the original competitors returning for Day Two of the tournament, taking place in front of more than 17,000 fans at MagicCon: Chicago. With the brand-new set on display for the Draft rounds and a too-stubborn-to-be-solved Standard format taking over from there, it was time for the final sprint toward the Top 8.

What began on Friday as the largest Pro Tour field in many years narrowed by Day Two, but still there were 219 players who advanced. That meant that despite the lead built by Friday's pair of undefeated players–Ben Stark and Matt Nass–the margin for error was nonexistent for anyone hoping to punch their ticket to Sunday's Top 8 showdown.

What followed was a fracas. The top pod for Saturday morning draft sported a combined 43-1 Day One Draft record. That's unheard of, even among a collection of the world's best. But that's life on Day Two of the Pro Tour, and when the dust settled on Draft, it took five rounds of shocking Standard developments to deliver us our final eight who will return on Sunday morning.

Or–if you were Matt Nass, the renowned combo king (Krark-Clan Ironworks remembers)--it took just 13 rounds to qualify for his third career Top Finish. Nass was on fire from start to finish in this one, reeling off 10 straight victories to open the tournament on his way to earning his twelfth victory in the thirteenth round.

That meant an early afternoon for the Domain Overlords player. Thanks to his Limited testing with team Ultimate Guard and his dominant run with Domain, Nass was the first to earn a spot on the Sunday stage. He was soon joined by the other seven competitors who will have a shot to earn the first Pro Tour title of 2025.


Pro Tour Aetherdrift Top 8

  • Matt Nass (Domain Overlords)
  • Zevin Faust (Golgari Graveyard)
  • Kenta Harane (Jeskai Oculus)
  • Lucas Duchow (Gruul Leyline)
  • Christopher Leonard (Domain Overlords)
  • James Dimitrov (Domain Overlords)
  • Yuchen Liu (Gruul Mice)
  • Ian Robb (Mono-Red Aggro)

Here's how we got there.

Finding Your Lane in Aetherdrift

While it may have once been commonplace, the timing of the latest set release to the Pro Tour upped the degree of difficulty in Chicago. Aetherdrift released just ten days before the start of the Pro Tour, meaning players and teams had less time to prepare than they have in a number of events. Two weeks in a testing house is great if you can do it, but even that is not enough time to fully explore every line of a format.

So Matt Sperling got creative. The 2019 Pro Tour finalist knew he had a tight schedule in the weeks leading up to Pro Tour Aetherdrift, and he made a plan.

"I was only able to do a handful of drafts before I left, so I consumed as much content as I could. I would watch some drafts while at the park with the kids and I listened and took notes from my teammates," he explained.

It worked. Sperling dropped only a single match in Limited all weekend on his way to a 11-5 finish and a near-miss for the Top 8. He specifically credited Sam Black's Drafting Archetypes as well as Limited Level-Ups as key to his early understanding of the format. From there, he gathered all the wisdom he could from his team, and they settled on a list of ten notes that Sperling used to guide his drafts.

One those guidelines? A strong preference for a certain color pair. While it was widely agreed before the event that green is the strongest color, Sperling said he has just as much of a preference for black. Like green, he saw black as full of interchangeably strong commons.

Another key? With so many vehicles racing around Aetherdrift Limited, any noncreature spell has to carry its weight without question. Combat tricks in Aetherdrift are very powerful, but they require a commitment to creatures that's at times in conflict with drafting Vehicles. Sperling was able to find his preferred lane in both drafts, splashing for a first-pick Boommobile that he planned to build around.

"Splashing is well-supported in this format. If you decide during the draft that you're going to, take the lands," Sperling explained. "If you take lands, you can be confident in splashing; in both of my drafts I had 4-5 nonbasics in my deck and that was an important piece. The investment paid off and I didn't have to abandon my first pick."

Overall, six players finished the weekend a perfect 6-0 record in the Limited rounds: Yuchen Liu, Zevin Faust, Matthew Giudes, Helena Brake, Hiroki Nakahara, and the unmistakable Andrea Mengucci. Success at the Pro Tour is hugely impacted by drafting since it's the first thing you do both days, and many longtime players consider it the biggest place to gain an edge against their peers.

While some of our Top 8 earned their way there through the Limited streets, Standard is where much of our field carved out a path of their own.

Standard Shocks the Course

When we started Pro Tour Aetherdrift on Friday, we thought we knew Standard. The format that launched off the starting line with Bloomburrow's suite of mischievous Mice has gone through many undulations since, from Demon-based brews to the self-bounce decks that began as one creatives player's MTG Arena deck, to the recent innovations on Domain, we had the big three decks for Chicago that combined to represent nearly half the field. We had the metagame all figured out.


Or so we thought. When the dust settled on Day One, only one of those three archetypes (Domain) had posted a positive winrate, and as the tournament closed on the top tables in Standard we saw more than anyone expected the format had to offer. In the end, six different archetypes advanced to Sunday, but we saw successful Standard experiments on camera all weekend.

None moreso than Zevin Faust's Golgari Graveyard list.

4 Up the Beanstalk 4 Swamp 4 Huskburster Swarm 1 Forest 4 Hollow Marauder 2 Chitin Gravestalker 4 Overwhelming Remorse 4 Overlord of the Balemurk 4 Souls of the Lost 4 Blooming Marsh 3 Llanowar Wastes 4 Underground Mortuary 4 Wastewood Verge 4 Molt Tender 4 Cenote Scout 4 Gnawing Vermin 2 Harvester of Misery 3 Terror Tide 1 Cut Down 1 Harvester of Misery 2 Obstinate Baloth 4 Scrapshooter 1 Starving Revenant 1 Duress 2 Haywire Mite

"This is crazy; I didn't even think this was possible," Faust reflected in wonder after another dominant Standard win guaranteed the Nerd Rage Gaming testing team member a Pro Tour Top 8 in his first-ever appearance.

And in a format this open, why not? Hollow Marauder and Huskburster Swarm? Worked for Faust.

How about a Jeskai Oculus list, adding Fear of Missing Out and Inti, Seneschal of the Sun to this half-combo, half-midrange deck? It worked for Top 8 competitor Kenta Harane.

Maybe Omniscience? Or even Phyrexian Obliterator? Christoffer Larsen posted an absurd 9-1 record on his way to a 11-5 finish at the Pro Tour with the iconic four-drop leading the way.

602635 4 Phyrexian Obliterator 4 Restless Cottage 4 Blooming Marsh 4 Wastewood Verge 4 Llanowar Wastes 1 Obstinate Baloth 4 Mosswood Dreadknight 2 Preacher of the Schism 3 Duress 4 Sentinel of the Nameless City 4 Bushwhack 3 Go for the Throat 4 Cut Down 2 Anoint with Affliction 3 Maelstrom Pulse 1 Gix's Command 7 Swamp 1 Caustic Bronco 1 Harvester of Misery 1 Duress 2 Tear Asunder 1 Tranquil Frillback 1 Obstinate Baloth 1 Gix's Command 1 Choking Miasma 2 Archfiend of the Dross 2 The Stone Brain 4 Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber

The race is on–and who knows what's coming up the Standard backstretch as we near the finish line here in Chicago.

Sights and Sounds of the Pro Tour

The Pro Tour is, of course, at its heart a celebration of the gathering that Magic brings. Hundreds of players, judges, and staff come together from all corners of the globe every few months to celebrate their shared passion and root on their friends and country-mates.

So who can truly begrudge Riley Knight for this?

In other news, Giant Growth effects are back in Standard. Namely, Monstrous Rage has been a key part of the format for months, and it's no surprise to see games in a flurry of pump spells that make for some truly mighty Mice.

But there's more than one way for a mouse to find cheese as Top 8 competitor Lucas Duchow showed off to secure his spot in the Sunday elimination rounds.

The top tables weren't just a handful of new faces to the Pro Tour scene. In fact, some true old-school players (and Hall of Famers) found themselves making deep runs. Matt Nass ended up in the Top 8, while Ben Stark, Matt Costa, and Paul Reitzl all made deep Day Two runs.

Much to the delight of some of the longest-tenured Pro Tour regulars among us.

Looking Ahead

The third and final lap of Pro Tour Aetherdrift is all that remains to race. With World Championship invitations for later this year already locked in, a simple goal remains for Aetherdrift's elite eight: win the whole thing.

You won't want to miss a minute. Tune in at 11 a.m. ET (9 a.m. PT) on February 22 at twitch.tv/Magic or on the official Magic: The Gathering YouTube channel!

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