Magic's best players from around the world have assembled in Nice, France to battle for pride, prizes, and a place in history. The Top 4 of the World Championships is locked in. The World Magic Cup returns tomorrow for more awesome team action. We've got three days of Magic in the books already, and all manner of exciting new decks and technology for Standard and Modern, plus a bonus decklist for Legacy enthusiasts. These are five decks you just can't miss.

What more can be said about Yuuya Watanabe? He is a two-time Player of the Year who will be battling for his second World Champion title this weekend; suffice it to say that he knows his way around some Magic cards. When a player of Yuuya's caliber shows up to the World Championship with something spicy, it's in our best interests to sit up and take notice. The rest of the competition at the World Magic cup certainly did. This is Yuuya Watanabe's new take on Jeskai Ascendancy tokens.

Jeskai Tokens ? Khans of Tarkir Standard | Yuuya Watanabe, World Championships

• Lands (24)
• 3 Battlefield Forge
• 3 Flooded Strand
• 1 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 4 Mystic Monastery
• 2 Plains
• 3 Shivan Reef
• 2 Temple of Epiphany
• 4 Temple of Triumph

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Goblin Rabblemaster
• 4 Seeker of the Way

• Spells (28)
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 4 Raise the Alarm
• 4 Hordeling Outburst
• 4 Jeskai Ascendancy
• 2 Jeskai Charm
• 2 Chandra, Pyromaster
• 4 Stoke the Flames
• 4 Treasure Cruise

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Erase
• 2 Magma Spray
• 4 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Glare of Heresy
• 1 Anger of the God
• 3 End of Hostilities
• 1 Elspeth Sun's Champion

Buy This Deck

This. Deck. Is. Awesome. There are a million small synergies that add up to a powerful, flexible, and cohesive gameplan; it's no wonder that Yuuya ran the tables in Standard. You've got a number of cheap token generation spells which let you get aggressive early, particuarly if you hit a Jeskai Ascendancy. Once you've got Ascendancy online, you can chain cheap burn spells, Jeskai Charms, and Treasure Cruises to pump your team until they are very lethal. Utilizing the convoke on Stoke the Flames it's shockingly easy to set surprising kills utilizing cheap and "free" spells, especially if you flash in your tokens using Raise the Alarm.

What makes this list different from all the other Jeskai Tokens lists is its inclusion of Treasure Cruise. It seems like a small innovation, but it makes all the difference. Now you have a gameplan of sticking Jeskai Ascendancy and using cheap removal and loots to stock your graveyard for Treasure Cruise. With that kind of advantage, it's pretty straightforward to stay ahead of your opponent on resources until you can sculpt a gamestate where it's safe for you to get aggressive.

This is particularly true after sideboarding, where you can transform into a much more controlling deck featuring End Hostilities and Elspeth, Sun's Champion. This list has a lot of flexibility to it, both in terms of constructing a gameplan and choosing your role for a matchup, and in actually playing out the games. The ability to switch gears at on a dime and kill opponents out of nowhere makes this an incredible deck, particularly in the hands of a master like Yuuya.

On the other end of the Jeskai spectrum, we've got something greedier and more controlling. We've seen Blue-Black and Blue-White variants. We've even seen Esper and Jeskai builds. This build by TRADEWIND is the first that I've seen that goes fully into four colors to find all the answers he's looking for. Let's take a look:

Four Color Control ? Standard | TRADEWIND, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

• Creatures (2)
• 2 Keranos, God of Storms

• Spells (32)
• 3 Anger of the Gods
• 4 Banishing Light
• 4 Chained to the Rocks
• 2 Chandra, Pyromaster
• 4 Crackling Doom
• 3 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 3 End Hostilities
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
• 3 Treasure Cruise

• Lands (26)
• 2 Battlefield Forge
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 3 Flooded Strand
• 1 Island
• 5 Mountain
• 2 Mystic Monastery
• 2 Nomad Outpost
• 3 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 2 Temple of Epiphany

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Anger of the Gods
• 1 End Hostilities
• 3 Erase
• 3 Glare of Heresy
• 2 Negate
• 4 Nyx-Fleece Ram
• 1 Steam Augury

Buy This Deck

This is a really interesting list for a number of reasons. We've seen a lot of Blue-White shells featuring the Elspeth-End Hostilities-Countermagic shell, but this deck has a new twist on that archetype. Chained to the Rocks. Crackling Doom. Keranos, God of Storms. Treasure Cruise over Dig Through Time. This is not a control deck that is typical of this format. Your mana is greedier. Your answers to Planeswalkers are sparser. But with the End Hostilies, Crackling Doom, and Chained to the Rocks combo, creatures will never be a problem.

What I find most interesting is that the combination of Crackling Doom, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Keranos, and burn spells lets you shift gears very quickly. You can match your opponents threats up to five mana. Then you get to start jamming answers that double as threats and require immediate answers. How many decks can realistically beat a Keranos if the game goes long? How many can do it while not playing into Anger of the Gods or End Hostilities?

What's particularly interesting is how TRADEWINDS decided which cards to splash. This deck is base Red-White splashing Treasure Cruise, Keranos, and Crackling Doom. Crackling Doom lets you be more aggressive in the midgame and answers large creatures that Lightning Strike can't, but without being sorcery speed like End Hostilities. Keranos is a very resilient win condition that protects itself by keeping your life total high. Treasure Cruise is the most splashable draw spell in the format, particularly when your gameplan involves trading spells early.

In the end, this deck has a lot of tools and flexibility, given its four-color nature, and I'm interested to see if similar, greedy control decks started becoming the norm. The added power certainly helps against the awesome midrange decks of the format, but there are real costs against the aggro and control decks.

Did Josh Utter-Leyton break Modern? His team wasn't exactly sure heading into the World Championships, but the consensus of players at the event seems to be that Josh may have assembled the best build of Jeskai Ascendancy combo and found the new default deck in Modern. How? He cut Green, slowed down the combo, and has put together a combo control list that doesn't have very many moving pieces or dead cards. This is Wrapter's Jeskai Ascendancy Combo deck:

[Cardlist Title= Jeskai Ascendancy ? Modern | Josh Utter-Leyton, World Championships]

• Lands (22)
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 4 Faerie Conclave
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 2 Steam Vents
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Seachrome Coast
• 2 Island
• 1 Plains
• 1 Mountain

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Fatestitcher

• Spells (34)
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Serum Visions
• 4 Thought Scour
• 3 Remand
• 4 Izzet Charm
• 4 Jeskai Ascendancy
• 4 Dig Through Time
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 3 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Path to Exile

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Wear // Tear
• 3 Gifts Ungiven
• 1 Unburial Rites
• 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 2 Swan Song
• 1 Pact of Negation
• 1 Deprive
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Buy This Deck

The combo package is pretty dense here. Just four Jeskai Ascendancy, four Fatestitcher, and a giant pile of cantrips. Faerie Conclave too if you count that one. That's way better than the ten or more cards that Splinter Twin and Scapeshift combo decks have to devote to their combo kills. Not only that, but your combo is way more resilient. Jeskai Ascendancy isn't a creature. It costs less than both Scapeshift and Splinter Twin. Not only that, but when your combo package is more compact, you get more space for disruption and cantrips.

So how does the combo work? Everything revolves around Fatestitcher. You loot him into your graveyard off of Izzet Charm or Jeskai Ascendancy. Then you unearth him and start untapping your lands to pay for your cantrips. Each of your cantrips untap your Fatestitcher to let you chain through your deck making larger and larger creatures. Eventually you loot into more Fatestitchers and Treasure Cruises, tap down your opponents team, and smash in for lethal.

Oh, your opponent has Abrupt Decay for Jeskai Ascendancy or Path to Exile for Fatestitcher? It's a good thing Thought Scour, Dig Through Time, and Izzet Charm are instants, letting you continue to combo in response until you find the piece you're missing again. Even better, Faerie Conclave is yet another way for you to combo off. Once you've made it a creature, your manland generates mana with every Ascendancy trigger.

This combo deck has streamlined control elements and incredible resiliency to the standard package of interactive spells in Modern. Only time will tell if it's truly a dominating force in the format, but it's definitely a scary step in that direction.

While Jeskai Ascendancy may have been the most exciting Modern deck to come out of this weekend, it was not the only fresh take on a combo deck. Owen Turtenwald, Reid Duke, and William Jensen anticipated a huge upswing in combo control decks like Jeskai Ascendancy, Scapeshift, and Splinter Twin. Their response? Combo off one turn sooner.

[Cardlist title= Pyromancer Ascension ? Modern | Owen Turtenwald, World Championships]

• Lands (16)
• 2 Shivan Reef
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 2 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 2 Steam Vents
• 1 Mountain
• 3 Island

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Goblin Electromancer

• Spells (40)
• 3 Treasure Cruise
• 2 Grapeshot
• 3 Past in Flames
• 4 Manamorphose
• 4 Desperate Ritual
• 4 Pyretic Ritual
• 4 Sleight of Hand
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Thought Scour
• 4 Pyromancer Ascension
• 4 Serum Visions

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 3 Empty the Warrens
• 3 Wear // Tear
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Lightning Bolt
• 2 Shatterstorm
• 1 Meddling Mage

Buy This Deck

There's a set of really interesting tensions in this deck that seem very difficult to balance. You want cards in your graveyard for Past in Flames and Pyromancer Ascension. You also want to delve them all away to Treasure Cruise to set up your combo turn. If you can balance all of these tensions, this is a very powerful place to be in the current Modern metagame.

The more controlling combo decks give you plenty of time to sculpt your draw so you can combo through whatever disruption they have access to. Because this deck can kill on turn three and four reasonably consistently, it's pretty difficult for aggro and tempo decks to apply adequate pressure while also holding up disruption. All told, this deck occupies a really interesting spot in the format. It's easy to hate out if that's something you're inclined to do. Sure, there are some Wear // Tears to fight through permanent-based disruption, but if you back up your disruption with counterspells, discard, or a clock, it should be pretty elementary to dismantle the storm deck post board.

The problem is that people didn't pack their storm hate. They were expecting Delver, Twin, and Ascendancy mirrors. If that's what Modern devolves into, then maybe Pyromancer Ascendancy is the Ascendancy we want to be on, rather than Jeskai.

The problem with Goblin Charbelcher and Balustrade Spy combo decks in Legacy is that they are enormously fragile and inconsistent. The threat density is low. There's no space for real disruption. If you run into one counterspell along the way you're probably just dead. Matsumoto Atsushi may have found a new take on super fast combo that eschews these weaknesses, but maintains many of their strengths. This is his take on Leyline of the Void combo.

[Cardlist title= Helm Gains - Legacy | Matsumoto Atsushi]

• Lands (22)
• 4 Swamp
• 4 Ancient Tomb
• 2 Crystal Vein
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Gemstone Mine
• 2 River of Tears
• 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

• Spells (38)
• 4 Helm of Obedience
• 4 Lotus Petal
• 4 Serum Powder
• 4 Leyline of the Void
• 4 Dark Ritual
• 2 Lim-Dul's Vault
• 2 Spoils of the Vault
• 4 Duress
• 2 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Ill-Gotten Gains
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Grindstone
• 4 Painter's Servant
• 4 Grave Titan
• 3 Show and Tell

Buy This Deck

So what happens here? Well, hopefully you lead off with a turn zero Leyline of the Void. Serum Powder should help with that. Then you chain Lotus Petals, Dark Rituals, and Spoils of the Vault into Helm of Obedience and exile your opponents' deck, hopefully with an extra mana for Duress or Thoughtseize along the way.

What happens if you can't find a hand with Leyline plus Helm? That's what Ill-Gotten Gains is for. If your opponent has no graveyard, they can't get cards back. This card lets you effectively Mind Twist your opponent while rebuying some of your discard and fast mana to sculpt another combo hand.

This combination means that you've got a full 12 combo cards backed by an enormous amount of fast mana and plenty of free mulligans off of Serum Powder. You have eight discard effects to force your combo through, and natural disruption against graveyard-reliant cards like Treasure Cruise, Tarmogoyf, and Snapcaster Mage.

I don't know if this is the new direction combo should be headed in, but Ill-Gotten Gains plus Leyline of the Void makes me unreasonably happy, and I can't wait to see if this build has got what it takes to compete.