The same weekend produced two very different champions. In Lyon, Simon Nielsen locked up first place with a turbocharged Simic Ouroboroid list; in Atlanta, Kye Nelson piloted a revamped Bant Airbending shell to a surprise victory. Together the pair of Magic Spotlight: The Avatar events—one in France, one in Georgia—offered a useful snapshot of a Standard that’s still rearranging itself after the World Championship and the last wave of bannings.
A quick snapshot from the floor
Each Spotlight event awarded eight Pro Tour invites and a $50,000 prize pool; across Lyon and Atlanta more than 1,500 players showed up hungry to test Standard’s new contours. Izzet Lessons remains a major player (large field share and solid win rate), but the weekend’s real stories were newer or previously fringe builds finding answers and optimizations that pushed them into the top tables.
Simic Ouroboroid didn’t just show up—it exploded. The archetype surged at the Spotlight events and accounted for an outsized portion of Top 8 slots across both tournaments. A common thread running through the winning builds was an aggressive mana plan designed to turn Badgermole Cub into enormous, game-ending ramps. Spider Manifestation and Mockingbird variants let lists multiply cheap creatures into absurd mana turns, and Quantum Riddler provided both a safety valve and an engine for value. With Nature’s Rhythm as the tutor into massive finishers such as Craterhoof Behemoth, the deck can convert a single broken start into a game-ending sequence as early as turn three.
Simon Nielsen, whose team-tuned list dominated in Lyon, praised Spider Manifestation for how much it amplifies explosive openings, and singled out Riddler as a reason the deck can afford aggressive mulligans. Across both events, Cub-inclusive lists posted a notably higher win rate than they had at the World Championship, a reminder that metagame attention can shift quickly: cards that were widely targeted one month can feel unanswerable the next.
The Bant combo that learned a new trick
If Simic was raw power, Kye Nelson’s Bant Airbending was engineering. The shell still tries to achieve the classic Doc Aurlock + Appa + Aang loop—airbending each other into an overwhelming army of Allies—but Nelson’s addition of Interdimensional Web Watch changed the deck’s practical ceiling. Web Watch gives the combo an extra dimension: it helps dig, smooth, and in some lines produce infinite card advantage or mana once the engine is running.
Nelson’s run wasn’t a fluke of bracket luck. He squeaked into Day 2 but then navigated a gauntlet of green and Simic lists by leveraging Web Watch’s resilience and sideboard answers such as Reclamation Sage to fight through Monument-type hate. In the final, a timely Quantum Riddler sealed the deal against a heavy Izzet Lessons draw engine. Nelson admitted he doesn’t play tonnes of Standard these days, but a focused testing spike on Arena and a willingness to tweak old Airbender lists paid off.
What the numbers and tech suggest
- Badgermole Cub decks were potent over the weekend; lists with at least one Cub won a strikingly high percentage of their matches versus non-Cub opponents at these events.
- Mono-Green and Selesnya Landfall variants turned in excellent win rates among archetypes with meaningful sample sizes—Landfall engines (Icetill Explorer + Fabled Passage + Esper Origins) can snowball into impossible late-game positions and also threaten explosive Mightform Harmonizer finishes.
- Izzet Lessons is still healthy and adaptable. A noteworthy sub-trend: a minority of players cut Stormchaser’s Talent and traded that space for additional interaction (main-decked Spell Pierce, for example), and those lists performed slightly better in the Spotlight sample.
Jeskai Control showed up as a logical hedge against Simic Ouroboroid: sweepers like Day of Judgment plus ample countermagic and spot removal give it a favorable answer to mana-flooded boards where Ouroboroid wants to capitalize. Conversely, Landfall lists and some value engines still present awkward matchups for full-control plans.
Small changes matter
A recurring lesson from the weekend: tiny tech choices can flip matchups. Interdimensional Web Watch turned Bant Airbending from a fringe combo into a tournament winner; in Simic shells, the decision to emphasize Riddler over older cuts like Overlord of the Balemurk shifted mulligan incentives and late-game stability. Even sideboard racoons and high-toughness one-drops were picked specifically to dodge the format’s common two-damage removal.
Meanwhile, graveyard hate—Soul-Guide Lantern in particular—kept Sultai Reanimator and other graveyard plans under pressure. Several field lists even included Rest in Peace in the main deck to shut down reanimation engines.
Why this weekend matters
Two different winners out of two nearly simultaneous open events is healthy for Standard: it shows there isn’t a single recipe that dominates every pod, and it rewards players who iterate and find novel inclusions. Whether Simic Ouroboroid becomes the format-defining deck depends on how many pilots adopt its new hardware and how many metagame answers migrate to punish it—Jeskai Control looks like the next obvious counter to try if you expect more Cub ramps.
If you’re preparing for the upcoming RCQs or the next Spotlight series stop, the practical takeaways are straightforward: respect explosive mana lines, pack ways to win or interact on turns three and four, and don’t dismiss older combo shells if someone found a missing piece that actually works.
The weekend left the format feeling raw and alive—players are still discovering which small inclusions turn a good deck into a tournament winner, and that’s the best kind of chaos for anyone who enjoys brewing.