Grand Prix: Providence results are in!

And let me tell you; I'm excited.

Forceless Bant winning the whole thing? Hive Mind? Stoneforge Mystic as four of the five (nonland) creatures in a deck?

We're in business now.  But the question that always arises after a Grand Prix: "Is the format healthy?"
I'm going to say that it is; let's take a look:

Natural Order RUG - Aggro-Control-Combo
Deedstill(UGB Landstill) - Control
Forceless Bant - Aggro-Control
Welder Painter - Combo
Little Zoo - Aggro
Merfolk - Aggro
Mystic Landstill - Control
Show/Hive Mind - Combo

You can label Merfolk and Stoneforge Mystic Landstill as Aggro-Control, but I feel like that's kind of stretching the label.

Control - Standstill proves to be the best draw engine in Legacy, yet again.  Misstep seems to have pushed the deck over the edge, but I was surprised, but not overly so, to see the Stoneforge Mystic/Batterskull combo in the UW variant.  The common problem found from playing the grinding control deck at long tournaments is just that; the games go long, and it ends up being difficult to manage the clock.  Mystic/Batterskull lets you have an actual finisher that requires a low mana investment and can be played early, or protected easily.

Aggro - The Zoo list is good.  Play it; but don't be afraid to pay life off Sylvan Library.  I watched the match between Forceless Bant and Zoo in the top 8 of the GP, and if he had paid 8 life right away to it, he probably would have won the second game.  I kept saying, "Come on guy.  Your opponent is playing Bant.  Just pay the man."

Also, Merfolk is a real deck.  We already knew this one.

Combo - I'm kind of surprised that Painter would make it, instead of dodging Misstep like Hive Mind does, it just overloads them with Red Blast.

Mental Misstep has clearly had an effect on the format, as there were 0 cards with Storm in it; there was Storm in Chicago, Madrid, and Columbus (not the first time).  This isn't the end of Storm; just harder to pilot through right now.

Check them out.  Go find the lists, and try them out.  This format's awesome.

-G