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Hello,I'm Yuta Takahashi,MTG pro sponsored by Card Rush.
I won the World Championship, so I will try to write an article in English.

The 27th World Championship.

This is the best stage for me, as I have been devoting myself to competitive magic.

The opponents were all super well players, so high quality practice was a must.
I practice with Yoshihiko-Igawa and Rei-Sato, who are all participants in the tournament,
and Riku-Kumagai and Kenji-Tsumura is also my teammate.We practiced as a team of five.

The format of the tournament was 3 rounds of draft, 7 rounds of standard, and then the top 4 would be decided, followed by the winner of standard.

Here is my tournament report.

■Draft Policy: Color Evaluation
Before the World Championships, I had two rules for drafting.
"Don't pick red."
"When in doubt, go for 2drop."

In a previous Shield article, I wrote that the color evaluation was "Black > Blue > White > Red > Green.

However, the evaluation of colors has changed since then, and now I consider the order of strength to be " Blue >Black > Green> White > Red "

The reason for this is the good combination of blue. Blue has the advantage of being strong in combination with any color and not easily becoming a failure deck because of the high quality of its commons and the many things that can go into the deck.

Black has three types of common removal and "Diregraf Horde" is one of the best, but it also has several unplayable commons that don't fit in the deck, and I thought green-black and red-black are the colors that are most likely to fail in draft.

Red was changed to the bottom of priority because of its low creature quality and low advantage factor such as "Flashback" and "Disturb", and players who chose red had a poor win rate in the draft.

For these reasons, I didn't want to open red rares as much as possible, and I even wanted to take good blue and black commons like "Eaten Alive" and "Organ Hoarders" rather than red bomb rares like "Reckless Stormseeker" and "Smoldering Eggs".

Only one of the red rare, Moonveil Regent, to win the late game if it survived, so I thought it might be worth splash it.

"When in doubt, go for 2drop." This is important in Innistrad:Midnight Hunt Draft, where passing on Turn2 is a huge disadvantage: you need at least four of 2drops, and the players around you know that, so 2drops tend to be out of stock.
That is why "When in doubt, go for 2drop."

■Day1 Draft

I had three choices for my first pick. I decided to go with Baithook Angler because I wanted to start with 2drop and Blue.
Hound Tamer and Revenge of the Drowned are also powerful, and I understand that this pick is quite controversial.

I may be giving too much credit to Baithook Angler than others, since it's 2drop and the Disturb makes Shipwreck Sorter and Ominous Roost playable.

After that, no blue or black cards came to me, and while I was taking the Duel for Dominance and green 2drops that were flowing in, I went with the green pick.

I had decided on green after taking a good uncommon in the pack2, but moved on to the pack3 without deciding on the second color.

It helped that I thought about which red rares to play red if I open them beforehand. Green is easy to multicolor, so I picked Moonveil Regent in the pack3pick1 and considered splash red.

The deck constructed was a mistake. Deathbonnet Sprout, which requires a number of creatures, and Delver of Secrets, which requires a number of instant sorceries, are the exact opposite of each other, yet the two coexist in the same deck, which is bad!
I should have replaced Delver of Secrets with Dawnhart Rejuvenator, a mana creature, and aimed for a more multicolor control form.

Deck was bad,My play was also bad,easily 0-3!
Worst start ever, then moving to standard.

■Standard Metagame before the tournament

Beforehand, the two decks I expected to see a lot of were "Mono-Green" and "Izzet-Turn".

On the play,Werewolf→Troll→Chariot is crushing every deck.

With its Faceless Haven and Ranger Class, it fight for a grinding game, making it one of the best aggro decks in terms of aggression and endurance.

However, it has a disadvantage in that it has little power to interfere with the opponent. You can only remove creatures by fight spell, and there is no way to interfere with your opponent's AOE or Alrund's Epiphany.

Mono-Green is a powerful deck if you play first, but since the deck starts with two mana creatures, you may only be able to take one action per turn, and it was rated as difficult to defend on the draw.

When I asked myself
"Is there any good plan to win a Mono-Green mirror match,on the draw, against a supreme opponent," the answer was no.
Therefore, adjustments were made in the direction of defeating Mono-Green.

Izzet-Turn is a deck between combo and control, buying time with removal and Divide by Zero in the early game, foretelling Alrund's Epiphany, and then gaining an additional two turns with the Galvanic Iteration/Alrund's Epiphany combo when you have eight mana.

This combo is especially advantageous against non-blue medium speed decks, as it can only be interfered with by counterspells.

In fact, Mono-Green's popularity led to the rise of a little bit of black control with lots of removal, but it disappeared without being able to beat Izzet-Turn at all.

To beat Mono-Green, you need creature removal, and to beat Izzet-Turn, you need counterspell.

However, Counterspell is weak against Mono-Green and Removal is weak against Izzet-Turn, so the two conflicting properties made deck building difficult.

■Standard Deck:Izzet Dragon

In the team practice, I was the Izzet attendant, both "Izzet Turn" and "Izzet Dragon".
At that time, I was concerned about the weakness of "Izzet Turn" after mulliganing.

Alrund's Epiphany is one of the most powerful cards in Standard, but it is not a card that is always strong.

Even if you play it for 7 mana in an empty field, you'll end up with 2 of 1/1 Flying + draw a card, and it's not a powerful effect by itself.

Spells that gain extra turns are highly effective when you prepare in advance, such as by lining up creatures in advance to increase the number of attacks, or by lining up 10 or more lands to use more mana.

By making the field more than 50-50 with your opponent before you play Alrund's Epiphany, you can turn 50-50 into an advantage. I think it is similar to Embercleave, which was in the previous standard, and you need to build up the board to some extent before playing it.

Galvanic Iteration has similar characteristics, but it doesn't do anything on its own, so it requires some other preparation.

When you look at the cards by themselves, these two can be factors in accidents where you can't use your cards well. For example, when I mulligan, I often return "Alrund's Epiphany" and "Galvanic Iteration" to my library.

To say it more simply, you need 10 cards, including 8 lands, to make the Alrund's Epiphany, Galvanic Iteration combo, which is not an easy task.

After alternating between Izzet Turn and Izzet Dragon, I found that Dragon requires fewer cards to win.

Smoldering Egg from Alrund's Epiphany requires only eight cards, including six lands, making it easier to build a favorable board after the transform.

An easier way is to play Alrund's Epiphany from Goldspan Dragon, which requires 7 cards including 5 lands to win.

The fewer cards you need to win, it will be better.

To give an extreme example, if you can win with one land and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, you can use all the rest of your cards to sabotage your opponent. The same goes for two lands and Tarmogoyf, or three lands and Oko, Thief of Crowns.

The fewer cards you need to win (the core parts of the deck), the more you can do with the deck, which is what I try to do when I build my decks. (Of course, the reality is that you rarely win with a single land and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, so this is just an example.)

If you are aware of Izzet Turn, you can easily counteract it with a counterspell like Test of Talents or Malevolent Hermit. If this happens, you want to be able to choose to attack with creatures rather than trying to combo an extra turn.

Since Izzet Dragon requires fewer cards to win,you can use a wider range of cards to deal with your opponent after sideboarding,so you won't be at a severe disadvantage no matter which deck comes in.You can also choose to attack with creatures.

It's more flexible than Izzet turn and easier to deal with your opponent after the side.(It is even possible to cut Alrund's Epiphany agaist blue!)

With this in mind, I decided to use Izzet Dragon.

I'll also explain about each card.

Smoldering Egg can be a blocker against Mono-Green, which makes it a good first hand keeper, and if it transforms, it can be a finisher. Even if you draw it late in the game, Alrund's Epiphany or Memory Deluge flashback makes it easy to transform.

It is one of the best 2drop in Standard, and it is incredible impact that I used it as my main deck in "Izzet Turn" in the team practice.

Power Word Kill can't kill dragons (Smoldering Egg, Goldspan Dragon), and 3 damage from Cathartic Pyre can't kill Esika's Chariot. Fateful Absence" and "Baleful Mastery" give draws to the opponent.

With the rotation, Heartless Act has been gone, and most of the two-mana removal in standard today has a bit of a disadvantage.

Old-Growth Troll, Lier, Disciple of the Drowned, Goldspan Dragon, etc.
Now Standard has a lot of creatures with toughness 4, so there is a big difference in the range of removal between 3 and 4 damage. Cathartic Pyre is not enough.

Dragon's Fire is the only removal that can deal 4 at instant speed, exactly it is the best 2 mana removal. The fact that I can use Dragon's Fire is one of the reasons I chose Izzet Dragon.

Fading Hope is great against Mono-green, bringing back Old-Growth Trolls and Wrenn and Seven tokens, but it's not good against Izzet, so I decided it was risky to use so many copies.

Memory Deluge is the second most powerful draw spell ever used in Standard. (No. 1 is "Dig Through Time," which is also banned in Legacy, and No. 3 is "Fact or Fiction.)

It has flashback makes it even better than Fact or Fiction, and the late game you play it, almost win the game. If you want to build a blue deck in the future standard, I think you should start with 4 Memory Deluge.

Likewise, Expressive Iteration is also a Legacy-grade draw spell, and these two give you a great option to find key cards.

Since the World Championship is an open decklist, I spread out the number of counterspells to prevent my opponent from playing them easily.

Negate is good against Izzet turns and can be played at least against Mono-Green. If I played Test of Talents, there was a risk that I wouldn't be able to play it against Mono-Green, so I went with Negate.

Since I thought Memory Deluge was strong, I expected my opponent to use it as well, so I played a Dissipate with an exile effect.

If I only have one foretell card, my opponent will be able to see that it is Alrund's Epiphany, so I also have a Saw It Coming to make it not easier for opponent to play.

All of them have a risk of being weak if you draw more than one, so we use one card each that is strong when you get into it. In an environment with strong draw spells, it's easy to find them, so the effect of such a single copy is higher than usual. This is a technique that is also effective in Legacy.

Divide by Zero is a useful card that touches both the board and spells, but it only returns them to hand and doesn't fundamentally solve the problem, so you also need a definite counterspell.

It's very similar to Remand, and is strong against 3-5 mana decks, but weak against 1-2 mana decks. I wanted the number of cards to be such that I could side out all of them to mono white, etc., so I ended up with two Divide by Zero.

As for the lesson cards.

Environmental Science, which prevents Mana Screw, and Mascot Exhibition, which is a late game finisher, are essential, but I had my doubts about Teachings of the Archaics.

Teachings of the Archaics is a card that depends on your opponent's moves, and while you can use it when you have a lot of cards in hand by stopping their lands or bringing them back with Fading Hope, you often can't play it. It is not efficient to draw 2 for 3 mana.

In many cases, I had to choose between Environmental Science and Mascot Exhibition, so I cut Teachings of the Archaics, which I felt I didn't need in many situations.

Prismari Command is weak against Izzet because there is no target for 2 damages, and it is great against Mono-Green simply because it can remove Esika's Chariot. This is one card because I am concerned about its weakness to Izzet.

If you only have damage removal or Fading Hope, you will have a big problem when your opponent's Esika's Chariot comes through, so I took an extra copy in the sideboard for Esika's Chariot.

I had Consider in the deck at first because it seemed to work well with "Smoldering Egg," but it gradually dropped out.

The reason is that Standard requires full use of mana, such as a two-mana spell on turn two and a three-mana spell on turn three, so there are almost no turns to cast Consider, and its impact is small.

The act of playing Consider to find lands is weak, so I decided not to use it because I thought 28 lands including double-Faced lands would be better than 4 Considerers and 24 lands.

Jwari Disruption is often played as a spell, except when lands are stopped. It is also easy to play from the treasure of  Goldspan Dragon.

However, Jwari Disruption is also a card that can easily be taken care of the better your opponent is, and having this in play can backfire. During team practice, it was always taken care of and became a two mana loss for me. Especially on the draw, you have to make a decision to put it on the first turn.

Shatterskull Smashing can increase the value of X, making it easier to transform Smoldering Egg. Since Goldspan Dragon produces a lot of mana, I often play it with X=6. You should also keep in mind the little trick of targeting your Goldspan Dragon to create treasure while removing it.

I use four full copies of Shatterskull Smashing because it works well with both dragons.

Spikefield Hazard is against Malevolent Hermit, but as a land it's a tap-in, so it's a much lower priority than Shatterskull Smashing. Since Izzet Dragon is a deck that wants to move in a neat 2, 3, 4, 5 sequence, it is best to use as few tap-in lands as possible.

■Tournament Results

I got it！World Champion.

Big thanks to my best friends who practiced with me.
Yoshihiko,Rei,Riku,and Kenji.

I understand that sideboard guides are required, but I don't dare post them because you will improve more if you think for yourself rather than simply memorizing the answers.
The idea has been stated, so please refer to the text.

Thank you for reading,

Yuta Takahashi