SCG Con: Top 8 Recap

Fairytale in Vegas

I’ve sat through a lot of finals. Most of them end on a topdeck, a misplay, or somebody just running out of gas. This one ended on a rules interaction so clean it should be in a highlight reel — and it’s exactly the kind of play this format was built to reward. Congratulations to Sharkborn, our Vegas SCG Con champion. Let’s break down how it happened.

The Read That Won It: Verdantia + Plant Terror

In the championship match, Sharkborn’s Plant Terror hit the table and copied two targets: Brick’s Eternitumm, the Space Lich — Effectively turning off the sac engine — and Verdantia, Breath of Life, which is where the game actually got decided.

Plant Terror is a Fungorian. Copy that clause, and Sharkborn’s pieces just stopped being legal targets. That’s the setup. Here’s why it mattered so much.

Multiple Engines, One Off-Switch

Bricks didn’t get to the final on removal alone. He had a dedicated engines running full of answers that needed to be able to target Sharkborn’s board to function. That’s the part the Symbiosis play took away in one shot.

One answer was pure anti-Seek tech. Bricks kept Eternitum the Space Lich back specifically to punish Sharkborn’s plan:

Anything Seek’d off Veridan, or off Commanding Croak’s land-fetch, walks into the table as a banish target the second it lands. Every attempt to develop the board is a free meal for the Lich.

Engine two was the actual clock: a recurring kill combo stapled to a Moonfire Crystal Mouse, running Staff of the Eldritch Tribesmen and Helios Heat Cannon at the same time.

Bricks could pull the trigger on his own Mouse whenever he wanted the loop to fire. Kill it on purpose, snipe Sharkborn for -6, get the Mouse back at end of round, repeat next round. That’s a real clock, and it’s the kind of engine that grinds a deck like Sharkborn’s into the ground if it’s allowed to run even three or four times.

Both pieces of the machine operated independently but require the opponent not to have a near Immortal answer. Once Verdantia’s clause was live on Plant Terror, the guns fell silent and Bricks made his first real error of the event.

That’s the exact moment the final swung. Now with the Lich sitting on the sideline, wonders from Veridan’s Seek started hitting the board completely unpunished, and the Heat Cannon package kept firing into a board it could no longer touch. From there it’s just math — Sharkborn had more power on a board Bricks physically couldn’t interact with.

If you’re building around Plant Terror of Ethereal Grove yourself: this is the ceiling. It’s not “copy two abilities” — it’s copy the right two abilities, on demand, for the exact matchup in front of you. That’s what makes it a Mythic and not just a big Wonder.

Bricks — The Deck That Made You Play Perfectly

No shade on Bricks here. A two-engine list that forces the eventual champion into a one-in-a-deck answer is a genuinely elite build, and it should’ve been the story of this whole event on any other day. If you’re gearing up for the next tournament and you’re not respecting the Mouse + Staff to Heat-Cannon plan, you’re going to get run over. Strangely Quiet Cemetery and Summon Crushing Rock were the quiet stat leaders here — both posting a +38.5pp win-rate delta at a tiny 3–7% field share, which tells me this shell is still underrepresented relative to how hard it actually hits.

Brotun — The Hybrid Land Deck Shell

Brotun split the difference between Sharkborn’s synergy package and a more aggressive item-and-spell suite (Aetherium Arc Launcher, Seafire Eyepatch, Starfall Cascade). Baron, the Unstable and Ashenleaf did a ton of quiet work here, both showing up across multiple Top 8 lists with win-rate deltas of +24.3pp and +22.0pp respectively.

What the Numbers Are Telling You

Three things I’m taking into the next event: Plant Terror is still under-hated as a build-around — six of eight Top 8 lists ran it and it’s winning at a top-of-format clip. Baron, the Unstable is criminally efficient disruption for a 3-cost Wonder — sac an item, Deny 2, move on. And Commanding Croak, the Leader is just the format’s land engine now; if your list doesn’t have an answer for someone Seeking 5 deep for a land multiple times, that’s a gap to close before your next bracket.

Also worth noting: CAPRICORN (4th) and RoamingBoss (6th) brought identical 50-card lists. When two pilots land on the exact same build independently, that’s not a coincidence — that’s a shell that’s been solved.

Branch Staton’s Round 2 Heater

Branch Staton finished 8th, but don’t sleep on the run — this pilot posted the single best round of anyone in the bracket on a Boundless tempo shell, before gravity took over.