Everyone is a few minutes away from the first round of the Philadelphia Standard Open hoping to earn a sizable chunk of the $5,000 prize purse. There are plenty of Top8Magicians in attendance with no consensus deck among them.

I drove down here in a car with Jacob Van Lunen, Jacob’s friend Greg, Gabe Carlton-Barnes, and Matt Ferrando. MichaelJ drove down with a resurgant Josh Ravitz and two other players. Between those eight players in the two cars — I am sitting on the sidelines for this one to bring you updates and maybe draft some — there was only one deck that overlapped two players. That is partially due to card availability since Ravitz provided the cards for half the decks but gives you an idea of how open this format appears on the eve of Worlds.

I say ‘appears’ because it may very well be all Fae and Reflecting Pools come the Top 8. If that is the case then the feelings of my carmates will be able to be summed up by this sticker we parked in front of at a NJ Turnpike reststop.