The Magic World Championship is just over a month away.

Magic World Championship 30, to be precise. A culmination of over thirty years of competitive Magic, the event will feature Duskmourn: House of Horror Draft and all the Standard you can handle.

But that's next month. Lately, all eyes have been on Magic's other competitive formats, namely Pioneer and Modern. Both were shaken up with meta-resetting bans last month. With the Modern bannings of Nadu, Winged Wisdom and Grief and Pioneer bannings of Amalia Benavides Aguirre and Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, players have gone back to the drawing board.

Information is more abundant than ever in 2024, but what do you do when there's simply no information yet? In that challenge rests a dream, and from that dream spring thousands of hours and thousands more wasted deck ideas, all in the pursuit of finding the edge on everyone else, of being the news rather than following it.

What was clear from talking with Modern brewers last week is that there's no one-size-fits-all approach in this new meta. Some players like to start from scratch with their wacky ideas. Others like to play a little of every deck they can find. Or one might choose to zero in on a single deck they like and work it to the max. Ultimately, the process from brewer to brewer matters less, and there's more emphasis on finding an individually conducive strategy.

Like Patrick Sullivan, for instance, and his process of making red decks. He builds them, perfects them, and wins with them. It's a formula that has served the long-time Pro Tour player turned beloved commentator (usually alongside Cedric Phillips) very well over the years.

Everything old is new again. Sullivan will be back in the commentary booth alongside Phillips at the upcoming US Regional Championship in Washington DC, and he's playing and winning Regional Championship Qualifiers with a red deck.

T8 underway @TheManaVaultMKE pic.twitter.com/hGJqkq0tIH

— Patrick Sullivan (@BasicMountain) June 16, 2024

"I play a lot of Mono-Red Wizards. I accidentally won an RCQ with it, then hit up the Pioneer leagues. The core of the deck is pretty stable, but the sideboard needed to be completely overhauled. So, I had to take my lumps to see what I needed. It probably took about ten Magic Online leagues before I settled on something I'm happy with," he explained. "When the ban announcement took place, I assumed it would push down the representation of Fatal Push and Thoughtseize as both were heavily featured in Rakdos Vampires and Amalia, and neither are especially good against Izzet Phoenix, the anticipated best deck. In theory, it could make something like Eidolon of the Great Revel a more appealing option. Based on my experience so far, however, there isn't appreciably less black than there was before, so I haven't found this path to be useful, but I consider it something to watch out for."

Eidolon of the Great Revel

Enjoy the look into the mind of a red mage—Sullivan's process went to new cards to try, but specifically in the context of the format at large. Every deck has viable card options that go beyond 60 or even 75, and success is often about finding the right card, not just the abstractly most powerful. And that goes for decks as well.

"I think the biggest trap for players is assuming that untouched previous best decks will be the best thing moving forward. It could play out that way, but metagames are complicated ecosystems," Sullivan explained. "In addition, you play more games post-board than pre-board, and everyone else will have more slots to devote if they no longer need to commit to the other previous top decks."

"Ripples" is how Nile Joan Rivers described the phenomenon: one card choice impacts the next, which impacts card choices from two more decks, and so on. It's a Rubik's cube that can never be solved, only endlessly scrambled and reset.

The thing about a ripple is that you can never see the full extent of it if you're riding the wave. So rather than jump from brew to brew, Rivers lets the ripples come to her.

"Immediately after a ban, I prefer to play tier-one decks first and like to keep playing whatever deck I've been on for a while and just see how it responds to the new environment. For me, this meant Izzet Phoenix," she explained. "Then, once I have a feel for the new meta, I like to start trying new decks out, getting someone to play with me and jamming new decks into whatever the top 3–5 decks are at the time."

"I don't think it often works out, generally speaking, as the next best deck just rises up. A deck or card that held down a particular archetype gives way for other decks to be viable again, and those decks could be a natural predator for a deck that was fine in the pre-ban meta but now suffers indirectly."

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Arclight Phoenix decks were left unscathed by the ban announcement, and that's where Rivers has focused her attention as she prepares for the upcoming Regional Championship—when she's not busy running her own online events.

"I've got the Regional Championship coming up, and I'm practicing and studying like crazy for it, and I feel ready," she said in between games, trying out various aggressive strategies. "If the RC were tomorrow, I'd be excited to game."

Todd "Tandy" Anderson will also be in attendance at the Regional Championship, and he's spent the last few weeks excitedly testing a new card for the format: Ygra, Eater of All.

Hey, if you're going to swing, swing big. You never know what's going to attack the metagame in the right spot, and Anderson stressed how much he wants to center out-of-the-box thinking at the forefront of his deck-building process.

"I don't test tier-one decks often, as their dominance has already been proven through sheer force of will. I look for trends," Anderson explained. "Removing Amalia has fundamentally changed the nature of Pioneer. Creature-based strategies can now exist and thrive. Vampires has left a Thoughtseize/Fatal Push power vacuum, but nothing has come close to filling that void just yet. The old order is dead."

From that, comes Ygra.

"Ygra, Eater of All has been a pet card of mine since it was released," Anderson explained. "I was really into Golgari Food with Trail of Crumbs, using Ygra as a game-ending combo. Future iterations became Jund Sacrifice, which has become one of the more popular archetypes in the current format."

Ygra, Eater of All Trail of Crumbs 643206

These approaches are more than just an exercise in how a format evolves. With Regional Championship Qualifiers taking place every few months across the world, those who are best able to apply these principles are rewarded. With Regional Championship invites, yes, but perhaps more than that—with seats at the World Championship directly on the line when all these experts converge in the US capital, it's a race to learn all there is to learn about the new Pioneer.

Jund Sac Sideboard Guide in Pioneer

This new archetype features Ygra, Eater of All alongside Mayhem Devil and the Cat/Oven crew. I've included my pick for Top 15 archetypes and gone over sideboarding for each. Shares appreciated. https://t.co/RKSu3ytJvB pic.twitter.com/zzesDBWGj3

— Todd Anderson (@TandyMTG) September 3, 2024

The Road to the World Championship

The event everyone is trying to qualify for is, of course, Magic World Championship 30, coming on October 25–27 in Las Vegas. It's a major milestone for Magic as we enter our third decade of the Pro Tour and World Championship series, and the history of the game is something that sets Magic apart from even its most distinguished contemporaries.

To honor that, my column mate Frank Karsten and I have been looking back at each of the previous 29 World Championship events, along with the 28 winners from 13 different countries (Shahar Shenhar is the only two-time champ, having won back to back in 2013 and 2014). This week takes us all the way back to … 2018. Not exactly all that long ago, but long enough that the event and its Fervent Champion have become etched into Magic lore.

The Magic World Championship in 2018 moved back to Las Vegas, a year after hometown favorite William "Huey" Jensen won the title surrounded by family and friends in Boston. It's a tough journey to top, a lesson Jensen had learned over the season. In Boston, Jensen entered the finals match and left a champion. Javier Dominguez entered the match with similar hopes, but left heartbroken and in second place.

That's hard to come back from. In many ways, its even more difficult than letting go of a 0-2 start. But Dominguez didn't let it go. He built upon it, thrived on the experience, and a year later, he didn't just find himself back at the World Championship but soon back in the finals. And this time, Dominguez wasn't letting anything slip him by.

Once he was back in the final match, squaring off against Grzegorz Kowalski in a Rakdos mirror match, the commitment he had put in paid off in Chainwhirlers. Showing no fear and determined not to let this chance slip by, Dominguez claimed victory. The match, the moment, and the Magic all came together, and he left Las Vegas a World Champion.

This was far from the beginning for Dominguez. How could it be, when his career spans almost two decades and includes vast successes before the World Championship runs? But claiming victory in 2018 may well have been closer to the beginning of Dominguez's dominance than the end of it by the time it's all said and done. Dominguez followed with a Pro Tour win in 2019 and has continued to make Pro Tour Top 8s since, most recently in Amsterdam at Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 just two months ago. The champion remains at the top of his game, and we'll see him back in Vegas.