I almost feel sorry for the poor people that picked Copy Cat for this tournament.

On CGB's stream I put out 2 thoughts.

1) I can almost hear the Saheeli Rai investors crying.

2) I give it 10 minutes before DesolatorMagic releases a video saying something along the lines of: "Heart of Kiran needs banning, ok, I called it like 2 years ago. So you can all shut up, and listen to me because I called it, ok."

Take a look at this! The top 8 decklist from Pro Tour AER.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/pr ... -decklists

x6 Vehicles
x1 Delirium
x1 Energy

Vehicles & Energy splashed for Unlicensed Disintegration and Fatal Push.

My take on CGB's video:

I think at the pro-tour level, it is important for the rules to be enforced, especially rules regarding passing priority and moving on to the next phase of the turn. It can give the active player an unfair advantage if they make it seem like they are passing priority, and then play sorcery-speed spells or abilities when they see that their opponent doesn't have a play.

I've been in a situation where I played a deck with counterspells, and my opponent cast Flamebreak. He had some creatures on the board that had sacrifice abilities (Mogg Fanatic's, I believe). If he sacrifices them, and then I end up countering his spell, it's basically a 3 or 4 for 1 in my favor. But if his spell resolves, then he ends up losing his creatures without getting the extra damage from their abilities. In this case, it has to be a calculated risk on his part if he wants to sacrifice them. I said I didn't have anything in response, and then he tried sacrificing his creatures. I had to point out that it was too late and his Flamebreak resolves since we both passed priority.

He and some of his friends thought I was "rules lawyering" or "scumming" him. While I can understand why they might think that, I had double-checked with him to make sure he was passing priority with Flamebreak on the stack without sacrificing his creatures. If you are going to be in a tournament with prizes, then you should make sure to know the rules of the game, especially that once both players pass priority, it's too late for the active player to do anything else before a spell resolves or the game moves to the next phase of the turn.

That being said, it sounds like Nguyen was a little too hasty to jump on Segovia (unfortunately I haven't seen the video myself, but it sounds like he was pretty quick to call him out on it). When there is a language barrier, I think it's more sporting to verify with a player that what they are saying or gesturing means that they are passing priority.

Dang, that's a lot of vehicles. I wonder if that means we can expect more bannings in Standard. The fact that many of the decks are running 4x Heart of Kiran despite it being legendary I think says a lot about how powerful it is. Looks like we could also build versions of those decks in Duels. Smuggler's Copter can fill in for the Hearts of Kiran that we don't have. The biggest thing we are missing is probably Thraben Inspector and multiple copies of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

I doubt anything will get banned from this. Vehicles can easily be handled with Fatal Push, Grasp of Darkness, and Murder; which bring up another interesting observation.

OT:

Control is not a bad option currently as Jim Davis has shown so far in the SCGTour circuit; Horribly Awry/Push/Grasp for early T2 drops; counter anything relevant T3+, then play Gearhulk and go in from there. Enchantment/Artifacts are a problem though; at that point you could probably splash for Fragmentize though.

Now let me rotate back to the Pro Tour; Walking Ballista is an amazing card in the Snake deck, I'm sure most of us knew this before the PT started, but this event solidified it. Imagine if we had 4x copies of it in Duels. Of course, Rishkar also helps the deck do its thing, and Duels doesn't have that card.

You know what needs banning? Scrapheap Scrounger. Its in every top-8 deck and only 1 deck has it as a 3-of while the rest are max copies. That's worse than Copter.

As for the decks, its an aggro festival that can be adapted easily to Duels.
The boros/mardu vehicle decks look about the same as kaladesh ones, with heart of kiran instead of copters and some Fatal pushes throw in. So for example, start with mattoofar's 2nd place showdown deck and add the heart and some Fatal pushes. Play atention to the Creature/vehicle ratio.
The delirium deck is basically a Snake deck. Who said ballistas suck? We don't have Grim Reaper, so you'll have to adapt. Duels version will tend to be less aggro, more mid-rangish.
The RG energy deck looks pretty standard too. Not too hard to make a Duels version.

So, if pro-tour marks the tendency for the season, expect an aggrofest at the showdown/fightclub. Control has its work cut out for it.

I think Haven may be right about Scrounger. A lot of these decks only splash Black for that and UD (Fatal Push looks sideboarded often here). Apart from Kalitas, there's not a clean AND efficient answer to it that also works against the rest of the cards you're facing in these decks. Dec in Stone for example, is the same mana to allow the to keep their artifact for triggers like Apprentice and Exemplar, but also miss Vehicles and give them a cantrip. It's also the best way to reliably crew Heart of Kiran, even from beyond the grave.

As far as Control goes, I gotta disagree with you ZZ. The PT just illustrated perfectly the 2 biggest issues it has against Mardu Vehicles and the GB decks.

1) Missing a land drop nearly always resulted in a loss for the Control deck. Whereas some of the later games between Vehicles and Constrictor decks showed comebacks from being stuck on 3 or 4 mana, the Control decks got stuck playing one-for-one removal at a slower rate than their opponent's could dump out threats. A big portion of this, which we don't have to worry about in Duels, is sweepers being 2-ofs in a sideboard only. We get Languish that can just about hit everything GB and Vehicles has to throw at us on curve, but Yahenni's expertise becomes irrelevant with most of the creatures in GB counters starting at 3 toughness. Fumigate (or in our case Planar Outburst) hits a turn after you die consistently to Vehicles.

2) Less relevant for Duels, but the 2 dominant PWs were Gideon (surprise) and OGW Nissa. What makes these 2 in particular problematic is how much the deck's don't even really rely on them to beat you. Spend an Anguished Unmaking to stop Gideon smacking you? Great! 3 less life for Mardu Vehicles to worry about, and presumably they still have their Heart, Scrounger and a Soldier token for you to worrying about after tapping out. Nissa seems hardly worth dealing with in her respective deck. The Constrictor, Rishkar and Kalitas all weigh much heavier on the mind when Nissa's only providing chumpers and then dumping counters maybe...twice before you take lethal? These are cards that need to be dealt with before they build up an overwhelming advantage, but you don't get the luxury to do so in the face of most of these board states. The games I was seeing Control win on camera were often down to GB not playing anything until turn 3, or when they pulled out an uninterrupted Saheeli-Guardian combo, and you can just look at the day 2 conversion rate to see how often that succeeded.

As far as Duels go, point 2 isn't that big of a factor with 1-of-PWs. But the first one can ring somewhat true the more consistent aggro gets. DJ put up a R/B aggro list using Heart, Copter, Cruiser and Harvester with Scroungers and Forerunner of Slaughter to consistently crew the bigger ones (as well as being 3 power 2 drops). Weldfast Engineer was also massively underestimated in this archetype, and the PT proved how strong it combos with Heart, which'll work just fine for Copter and the rest too.

Well, as Mardu Vehicles is the dominant deck I thought I'd try and emulate it as close possible to see how it stacks up:

Creature(21)
2x Bomat Courier
1x Kytheon, Hero of Akros
2x Toolcraft Exemplar
3x Inventor's Apprentice
2x Scrapheap Scrounger
2x Selfless Spirit
1x Speedway Fanatic
3x Veteran Motorist
2x Pia Nalaar
1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
2x Depala, Pilot Exemplar

Instant(7)
4x Shock
3x Unlicensed Disintegration

Planeswalker(3)
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1x Nahiri, the Harbinger

Artifact(6)
2x Smuggler's Copter
1x Heart of Kiran
1x Cultivator's Caravan
2x Aethersphere Harvester

Land(23)
5x Plains
1x Needle Spires
8x Mountain
2x Isolated Chapel
2x Dragonskull Summit
2x Clifftop Retreat
3x Aether Hub

Creatures:

8 drops, all of which have seen play in the top eight. The obvious exclusion here being Thraben Inspector.

8 drops. Here we had to make concessions. While we do have access to both Veteran Motorist and Scrapheap Scrounger, rarity restrictions mean we're bringing in a common sideboard card, Selfless Spirit. To make up numbers we've got 1 Speedway Fanatic. I think one of the main goals of the 2 drops was that they be able to crew Heart, but our pool of 3 power 2 drops aren't great and as we only have 1 Heart I opted for more utility.

5 drops. No concessions made here at all

Instants:

Apart from missing a single Unlicensed Disintegration, we've got this covered. You can cut/split the Shocks for Fatal Push as you see fit, but as we don't have the same mana as standard I went for the full playset of Shock.

Walkers:

Probably the biggest loss here is not being able to run 3 x Gideon. Chandra saw sideboard play, but Nahiri is really just to make up numbers. Our lack of multiple copies of Heart as well means if you're building a deck more tuned for duels these would be your first cuts to make way for Pia and Kiran/Cruiser in the 4 drop slot.

Vehicles:

So as I've mentioned we only have 1 Heart of Kiran, but we have Copter, so we can make up for this somewhat. Caravan and Harvester both saw play, though how you want to split them is open for debate.

Mana:

No Spire of Industry or fastlands means we suffer here: just have to make do with what we have.

Overall it isn't that bad. You could certainly do alright with it on the ladder, though I'd rather tune it for duels, especially as we have access to cards that standard doesn't (Thopter Engineer etc).

I'm running something similar. my changes from your list:

-2 Bomat Courier
-1 Speedway Fanatic
-1 Nahiri, the Harbinger

+2 Sram, Senior Edificer
+1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
+1 Cultivator's Caravan

-4 Mountain
+1 Needle Spires
+2 Smoldering Marsh
+1 Plains

Since we don't have the fastlands, I decided to cut down on the 1-mana plays slightly; and Bomat Courier is the exclusion seeing we don't run Temper anymore.
Not a big fan of Speedway Fanatic; and Nahiri in my mind is better as a defensive walker (her -2 doesn't get rid of a blocker, her +2 is alright but nothing special).
Instead, I maxed out on Caravans and Thalia and also run Sram; partly to try him out partly because I wanted more 2-drops. I could see cutting him though; he's been okay but not great.
The manabase accomodates more heavily for the Black splash and helps cast either Gideon or Chandra t4.

Someone want to use an aggro counters deck against me before i submit my decklist?

Yeah, my own actual list has a few differences from the one above. I'm a little heavier in red, my removal suite uses Harnessed Lightning for more hub use to try to ease the mana restrictions, plus there are a lot of 3 toughness creatures hanging around! And I'm running Cruiser over Caravan. I already had a bunch of 3 drops and no evasion/trample means it often just gets chumped. Cruiser often works as a nice little finisher. The reduction in toughness, increased mana cost and the fact it helps fix means I'm constantly changing this though - I just can't seem to settle.

We can make this deck better in Duels actually because we still have access to Origin cards unlike current Standard. That means Thopter Engineer, Pia & Kiran and others.

Better in some ways yes; as we have access to Origins and Copter. Flat-out better? Don't think so; rarity restrictions/card omissions hurt us there (Gideon, Motorist, Scrounger, Toolcraft, Thraben Inspector).
I legit think Pia Nalaar is better in Vehicles than either Thopter Engineer or Pia and Kieran. The latter costs 1 mana more; the former puts up less power and less utility. Kytheon is the main gain from ORI, and even he is filling in for rarity restricted cards.

This is my version of the PT Vehicle deck. I omitted B mana and took out the 3 cost removal for mana efficiency. In it's place I added "sideboard" cards like Stone & Frag. I also added Engineer & Nalaars because of how good they are vs. spot removal.

3 x Inventor's Apprentice
1 x Kytheon, Hero of Akros
2 x Toolcraft Exemplar
2 x Selfless Spirit
2 x Scrapheap Scrounger
3 x Veteran Motorist
2 x Depala, Pilot Exemplar
3 x Thopter Engineer
2 x Pia and Kiran Nalaar

1 x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 x Nahiri, the Harbinger

1 x Heart of Kiran
2 x Smuggler's Copter
2 x Aethersphere Harvester
1 x Skysovereign, Consul Flagship

4 x Shock
2 x Fragmentize
2 x Declaration in Stone