By Meghan Wolff

Meghan is one half of the Good Luck High Five podcast and an adjunct professor at Tolarian Community College. She loves Limited, likes Modern, and dips her toes into each Standard season. She's decidedly blue and is the #1 hater of Siege Rhino in the Multiverse.

Three hundred eighty-nine teams gathered in Toronto's Enercare Centre on this grey Saturday to play Team Trios Constructed. While it rained outside, inside it was a storm of Standard, Modern, and Legacy as teammates battled side by side, striving for the 6-2 or better record that would allow them to return tomorrow to play for a chance at the Top 4.

This is one of only a handful of Grand Prix whose formats match that of Pro Tour 25th Anniversary, and teams finishing well enough in Toronto will qualify for that PT. But here, sitting down across from one pro player often means sitting down across from three, as daunting teams like Damo Da Rosa/Stark/Froehlich, Jensen/Turtenwald/Duke, Larsen/Floch/Hendriks, Sigrist/Rubin/Hayne, and Wescoe/Sajgalik/Dezani dot the field.

At the end of Day 1, only one team remained undefeated – locals Morgan McLaughlin, Chris Harabas, and Lucas Siow. With the Standard format still in flux from week to week and cards from Dominaria shaking up even Modern, it's sure to be a weekend full of exciting innovation and play. Join us again tomorrow for the conclusion!

An Intro to Team Trios Constructed

In Team Trios Constructed, three players form a team comprised of one Standard, one Modern, and one Legacy player. When teams play each other, the team with two match wins across the three pairings wins.

Team Trios Constructed draws a competitive crowd, since players have the opportunity to play their favorite or best format alongside teammates whose format skills compliment their own. Unlike a format like Team Unified Modern, where decks can't overlap by any cards, Team Trios Constructed allows players to bring their favorite deck in the format.

Or, you know, the deck they recently used to win a Grand Prix.

And while you might expect that allowance for decks to have the same cards in them to come into play between Modern and Legacy decks, this weekend featured a surprising amount of overlap between Standard and Modern, as Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Karn, Scion of Urza found their way into new Standard decks and established Modern archetypes.

Dominaria’s Historic Planeswalkers Make Waves

This weekend, multiple white-blue control decks sported Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, across both Modern and Standard. While its inclusion in Standard control lists seemed like any obvious move to many players, the swap from Jace, the Mind Sculptor to Teferi in Modern took a lot of people by surprise.

Though, of course, Shaheen Soorani called it weeks ago, as evidenced by this clip from GP Columbus.

Let’s just say that Team Cardhoarder member @shaheenmtg ‘s pick for favorite legendary proooooooobably won’t surprise you :D #gpcol pic.twitter.com/JoWW8clbPZ
— Magic Pro Tour (@magicprotour) April 28, 2018

While, at the outset, Teferi’s five-mana casting cost made him seem like an unlikely replacement for Jace, it was days rather than weeks before players pointed out that Teferi’s +1 ability made his casting cost more like three mana than five.

Sample White-Blue Control - GP Toronto

Decklist Stats Sample Hand

Planeswalker (2)

2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria

Creature (4)

4 Snapcaster Mage

Sorcery (6)

1 Supreme Verdict 4 Serum Visions 1 Wrath of God

Instant (22)

1 Secure the Wastes 3 Lightning Bolt 2 Electrolyze 4 Path to Exile 3 Lightning Helix 1 Spell Snare 3 Logic Knot 1 Negate 4 Cryptic Command

Enchantment (2)

2 Search for Azcanta

Land (24)

3 Celestial Colonnade 1 Field of Ruin 2 Hallowed Fountain 1 Glacial Fortress 3 Island 1 Sacred Foundry 4 Flooded Strand 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Plains 2 Steam Vents 1 Sulfur Falls 1 Mountain

60 Cards

Sideboard (15)

1 Negate 1 Baneslayer Angel 2 Celestial Purge 2 Damping Sphere 2 Dispel 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion 2 Engineered Explosives 1 Settle the Wreckage 2 Vendilion Clique 1 Wear // Tear

Deal Another Hand

In Standard, Teferi took White-Blue Control from an archetype that had seemingly lost its way, split between cycling, Approach of the Second Sun, and Torrential Gerhulk-focused decks, to one of the top competitors of the format.