Grand Prix’s always create a huge amount of excitement in our local community, the moment the Grand Prix Trial dates are set, a huge buzz of excitement emanates from all of the stores right through to the Grand Prix itself. Whether you’re a casual player travelling to play the in-ordinate amount of side events, jam some Commander games with distant friends or try your hand in the main event itself, Grand Prix’s are definitely worth travelling to.

The hall had space for 5,000 players – making it a true festival of magic.

So let’s have a look at the 75 that I decided would be my toolbox of cards to try and take down GP London.

Abzan is never going to be the most exciting deck in the world, all it wants to do is survive the early onslaught of the aggressive decks and get to the mid-game where it can start jamming Siege Rhino’s or grinding you out with card advantage.

The creature suite is pretty stock at this point for the Midrange or Control builds, I decided to go with the Deathmist Raptor Package over the Satyr Wayfinder foursome that filled my graveyard – this may seem counter-intuitive but with the red decks running main board Searing Blood I wanted to present them with as few targets as possible. Dragonlord Dromoka can be a little, or rather a big surprise for your opponent and can often stabilise the board on the turn it resolves. A three and three split on Nissa, Vastwood Seer and Courser of Kruphix gave me creatures to play early game and the ability to grind resources in the late game, with Courser clearing lands from the top of the library and Nissa transforming in to a powerful planeswalker.

The main deck spells are pretty straight forward, notable spells are the 2 Thoughtseize, a card which has declined in the face of the red decks but was important enough to be able to pick of Hangarback Walker before it hit the battlefield. Languish was the sweeper of choice for me and seemed to be a good choice with the sheer number of Stormbreath Dragon’s flying around the exhibition hall.

The sideboard provided a set of tools for  fighting the mono-red decks and the midrange mirrors, with a singular Back to Nature, a nod to the constellation decks that had become more popular in recent weeks.

Unfortunately I finished the main event with a 5 win and 4 loss record, with a team-mate handing me the dreaded 3rd loss to knock me out of contention for day two (although he made it, so kudos to him). My first two losses were to a G/R Devotion player, who had explosive draws in Games 2 and 3, and to a G/R Dragons player who top-decked a side-ways Stormbreath Dragon for the win in Game 3.

Having finished up the day a number of us decided to sign-up for the Sunday Super Series, or as my fellow writer Steve calls it – the Super Salty Series. Here’s the deck I played for that tournament:

As you can see, I picked up on the theme that Hangarback Walker was the way to go in Abzan decks, so I tried to move away from the bigger spells like Elspeth and Dragonlord Dromoka and go with the versatile Artifact.

The Abzan deck is definitely one of the most tuneable decks but I feel that the Midrange version is the way to go.

I’ll be back next week with some more thoughts on the Standard format, but in the meantime, feel free to comment or leave suggestions below.