There’s two main topics when it comes to good players. The decks they play, and their mechanical skill. Most players compare the micro advantages of card choices and swaps from a specific decklist and look to see how they can piece together how they came to that conclusion. They test out and swap different parts of their deck to try and make it more similar, or test out a whole package of cards.
The mechanical skill comes with practice. Goldfish your deck and find the lines that might be difficult to piece together. In every project of mine talking about RogThras or a specific deck, I always reiterate how important it is to just get reps in. See the weird lines and find the weird wins. The players that have made this years invitational are mostly players that have been able to go to a mass of events. Those that have won the required number of Bronzes, Silvers, and Golds, and who’ve also placed well in Platinum’s. All 80 of these players deserve their chance to win.
This year is going to be a very interesting year as many players have experimented with a new archetype all together. “Rhystic Control” - or more widely referred to as “slop meta” - was tried and put out to the scene this year by Zach Adler and Jase Sanders. Many players refer to this deck being much better in the top16 than it is in the Swiss rounds of a tournament.
I’m not here to talk about the decks. I want to discuss the Players and the faces in the invitational this year. Who I’ll be rooting for, and what these players have done to earn their spot.
This is going to be a series of posts about these players, their decks and the invitational itself.
Farmers Market
Looking at a breakdown of the general invitational metagame two things become clear.
- Blue Farm is once again the most represented deck.
- Most of the meta consists of “specialist” decks.
This is a general expected meta of the top 64 players and what decks they would generally play at events. “Other” encompasses decks that didn’t show up frequently enough by one or more players. For Example “The Cabbage Merchant” only won a single major tournament across all the players within the invitational, that player also brought other decks like Tymna/Dargo to the finish line, so while a player in the invitational won with Cabbage Man, it will not show up in the breakdown at all. Generally speaking about 45 of the the 64 players analyzed are represented above.
The invitational this year is NOT the top 64 players. Instead it encompass players down to 80th on the leaderboard, so this is excluding around 20% of the player pool. Still though, when 57% of the meta is represented above you can put in some good work to adapt your deck or playstyle to the meta. You can stare at this and look at the leaderboard and draw your own conclusions as to what you would change or who you think is playing what.
I show all this to give context to the first series of players I want to highlight and the development of a new strategy altogether.
The House of Mirrors - Last Year.
For context of today lets go back to how last year’s invitational went. The finals table, consisted of Zach Adler, Nado, Corwin Caster, and Sterlin Sellards. All players on Blue Farm, all players within 10 cards of eachother. Every player had the same relative mix of cards:
- 27 Lands
- 4-7 Enchantments
- 12-14 Artifacts
- 28-32 Instants
- 8 Sorceries
- 16-19 Creatures
Last year the main points for discussion were your interaction and ramp package. Sometimes you would include Copy Artifact or Copy Enchantment in place of a few artifacts. Specifically, Corwin and Sterling opted to not include Grinding Station in favor of Talisman and Grim Monolith Respectively whereas Nado opted to include 2 Talismans as well as Copy Artifact. Sterling’s deck packed more interaction than the others as well as included Storm Kiln Artist as a payoff for the extra interaction. Sterling brought with them more removal including both Path to Exile and Cyclonic Rift
In the end it was Zach Adler’s build which included a small Necropotence package as well as a secondary Delney plan to grind out for wins.
Last years Farm lists were all fundamentally similar with the debates being secondary plans and packages. The main point of divergence can be argued to be the Necro plan as both Nado and Sterling opted to instead have grindier packages and more interaction overall. Another key point of divergence was the tutor density in each deck. Zach opted to forgo both Beseech the Mirror and Praetor’s Grasp to instead include Mnemonic Betrayal and Wheel of Fortune. Corwin (who also played the Necro plan) had an identical Sorcery package.
Farm ended the year purely on top. Fundamentally 4 copies of the same plan entered, and the best version ended up being Zachs.
Farm Splits and Innovates.
During this period, another prominent circuit concluded and onto the scene came the hard work of a Japanese player with his archetype of Semi-Blue. Whether or not you like the strategy or the mentality that goes into Semi-Blue, it started a craze. Turbo-time.
Selfish plays and greed became the name of the game and post-invitational everyone felt the speed ramp up. Necro got slotted into more decks, YouTube tutorials on how to Necro better started popping up. Outside of black decks, we see a rise and the attempt of making Semi-Blue in more colors. DogStorm, Helga, and Sans-W Storm started terrorizing LGS cEDH into nights and bracket 4 alike. Around this time players also started having a common complaint on the meta. the phrase “Turn-Order Simulator” started creeping into the vocab of many players. When everyone is playing irresponsible, and everyone is playing greedier, its better to push faster. The natural end point to this is players migrating to RogSi, Etali, and Ral the fastest decks at doing their things.
With this greed and with this faster play, how did good old Tymna/Kraum change? Fundamentally most players adapted by expanding the “red package” in the deck. JWill, Birgi, Warrior’s Oath, Last Chance, and Ezone started creeping more into decks. Explode faster, use Necro better. Out goes Mistrise Village, in goes another Wheel.
The meta sped up, and the flex slots for farm got a little bit faster. Necro became a staple and decklists were thinned out to make it easier to win. Everyone else was jamming, so Farm jammed with them.
Control’s Big Splash, RogIshai, and a metashift
Fast Forward a few months, and we get 2 major sets that change the game. Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Lorewyn Eclipsed. These sets bring several fundamentally altering cards to the table. Within these short 3 months we get:
- Badgermole Cub (Now freshly banned in standard
) - The Cabbage Merchant
- Wan Shi Tong, Librarian
- Formiddable Speaker
- Hexing Squelcher
The Pressure of Ral
Within these sets several innovations were made to another deck: Ral, Monsoon Mage. The specifics are outside of the scope of this story - keep in mind the popularity of Ral increased enough to put Ral within the top 10 most popular decks. Several cards printed in this time are Ral exclusive cards.
Ral as a deck is more explosive than any other Semi-blue or storm deck however it is probably the most skill intensive when it comes to the micro choices needed to be made within a random game.
Bad Ral players give the deck a much worse average winrate than it probably should have. Top players have to plan around what other top players do. If you’re a top player you have to keep in mind that several of the best players within the US meta are Ral specialists. The existence of Ral within a pod should fundamentally change your mulligan plan.
For the purposes of this story, Ral is the deck with the biggest target on its back entering the start of the 2026 year.
Badgermole Cub gave a new life to RogThras and green-creature based strategies. The Cabbage Merchant likewise brought with it a whole new form of mana advantage engine, and Wan Shi Tong became both an infinite mana outlet and card advantage piece. New splashy cards were printed that gave players a reason to play a slower game.
Following this, Hexing Squelcher gave a rare protection piece to non-white based decks that also provided fantastic advantage for players to have uncounterable counterspells. Likewise a new tutor combo presented itself with Forbidden Speaker for green based decks as well as provided a nice tutor for the newly printed Badgermole.
Its within this that we enter for the first time a new deck. The deck this year has been defined by - RogIshai - Rhystic Control. New to cEDH; a control deck that looks to establish multiple copies of rhystic study as well as smothering tithe on the board. The ultimate answer to turn order simulator. A control deck that looks to get asymmetric advantage until you can establish a win. With Jase’s Win at a Texas 3k, as well as Zach Adler’s win 2 weeks later in California. Farm finds itself in an interesting spot
Split between two wildly different gameplans with proven merit and players brewing both poles. Farm was for a time… directionless. You could play the Rhystic control plan and double up on all of your advantage pieces, but this would dilute your rituals and Tymna plan as well as make Necro and Naus so much harder to convert faster. Alternatively you could cut the Rhystic plan and instead play closer to RogSi planning on using your white spells like Silence as protection. This would sacrifice some agency within your games as you would often cut your counterspells to make room to win faster better.
Enter Hatthew Mayes
Rewind to May 30th. Put yourself in Arizona and you’re paired into a blue farm player named Matt in round one. You have a Ragavan and you look to swing at either a RogSi player or the Farm player. Matt speaks up and says to you: “My life total doesn’t matter, I’m not on Necro. This is a slow deck.”. Matt Hayes will go on to win that tournament with only a single loss.
This deck is looking to get resources from what the other players do. From Rhystic, to Tithe, to Faerie Mastermind, this deck places itself in a new world compared to the farms of old. To use the numbers and examples from earlier to show just how different this version is from last year;
- 24 Lands (Compared to 27)
- 7 Enchantments (Compared to 4-7)
- 9 Artifacts (Compared to 12-14)
- 35 Instants (Compared to 28-32)
- 9 Sorceries (Compared to 8)
- 14 Creatures (Compared to 16-19)
If Matt was to sit down at the previous years table he’d be 21 cards different from Zach’s winning list. But the real kicker to this - only 1 card was not printed at the time of the invi last year being Redirect Lightning. The entire idea of Matt Hayes’ list and this new “Rhystic Control” archetype has been possible within cedh for a long time. The pieces being utilized by this years decks are all old pieces just being used in new ways.
The pieces for the new farm have always been here, but Matt Hayes seems to be the first person to put them together and find success across multiple tournaments. Spearheading new gameplay across DGrid, to the Siege 10k, and hopefully - the invi too.
Who is this beast?
Matt himself is a relatively new player to the cedh scene. based out of the Hawaiian meta game; a fusion of Japanese turbo and west coast politics . Since playing in only the last 2 years, Matt started his journey on Talion learning the control game then migrating to Nadu for the short time it was legal. After Nadu’s record ban, he jumped to Blue Farm, but never was satisfied with the direction of the deck as his playstyle was always more slanted to the Talion style of stopping other players and going for a “win after” playstyle.
Once Matt saw RogIshai and the power it had at the Atrium, he got to work. RogIshai was adapted and forged to what Matt liked in BlueFarm and so starting at Just Jam DGrid he forged his own control list. Elements from Talion, RogIshai and Traditional Farm bleed together to form this amalgamation of treasures and card draw.
Matt’s farm is a clear departure from the blue farm of last year. This version is almost 40 cards different from what you might think of as a “traditional” Blue Farm list. This also cannot be called a Control Farm list in the traditional sense as Matt’s list has also forgone any piece that might slow down each of your opponents gameplans. No Stax, No Bowmaster, and No Thassa’s Oracle in sight. The goal is to play a big game. Lots of resources and make sure everyone draws their deck. You’re the last one who tries to win. Stop everyone else, play the timer and go.
How does a somewhat recent player to the scene beat some of the giants on this years invitational? Players like Sam Black, Nado, and the defending champion Zach are all present and are all ready to take you out. Matt’s answer to this was simple. Place yourself in more niche situations. Take someone out of their comfort zone and play your deck in ways that they don’t expect. The new farm is on Ad Naus. Its on 148 cmc of spells and very few rituals or fast mana. Naus is here to refuel your interaction after someone pushes. Its here to win politics not the game. The goal is attrition with the deck and Matt’s goal is to play that game better than you can.
I personally have lost to Matt a few times. At the Siege 10k, in a stack over 80 spells deep with 6 total win attempts over each other and 2 turn skip penalties lined up. Matt brought the grindy 3 hour game to a close punishing my own miscalculation and sequencing of spells with a game winning Mnemonic Betrayal to convert a different players Thoracle into his own win. Matt Hayes wins his games not through turboing out a win or relying on turn order but using his agency in games and his own threat assessment from his experience on Talion and in playing control to beat the table.
I certainly hope some of his games are on stream and I for one will certain be watching and rooting for Matt to take it down.