Some thoughts from my experience over the long weekend at GP Birmingham.
First of all, my non-cube endeavours - I was signed up for the Legacy GP, planning on playing Death and Taxes, but a couple of nights before I had a crisis of confidence in my deck and switched over to the Constructed Fanatic package. I'm still not 100% convinced on these packages, as over the four days I was still only able to play in 5 events out of the six, in part because most of Thursday was taken up actually sorting out the switch, and it does commit you to playing a lot of events even if you would maybe rather not. The scheduling meant that the earliest event I would play in each day was at 12:00 and then I played another at 4:30, meaning that as my friends in the main event were finishing up I still had another 1-2 rounds to go. If however I had entered those five events separately it would have cost me an extra £25.00 so there is some saving to be made.
In constructed I played 2 legacy events. The first was with Death and Taxes going 1-2 losing to Belcher and Elves (both terrible matchups) and beating Miracles (not a great matchup but not so bad), which in my mind justified my decision to drop from the main event. The second event I played Miracles and went 0-3, losing to Sneak and Show, Aggro Loam (I think, I'm not that familiar with the deck) and Burn. The deck is so hard to play, I felt like I could have won each of those matches but just didn't know how.
I also played Boros Monarch in Pauper to much more success, going 2-0 and splitting the last round in three events, which gets you half a box and some prize tickets, or a box and more tickets for the Sunday double-up event. This deck is so cool.
I also managed to get in a 9 person and an 8 person cube draft. I unfortunately didn't manage to save the decklists, but I can remember some general archetypes:
Aston - UWR control/tokens and GBu God Pharoh's Gift
My first draft started off UW controlly, then I saw
Jeskai Ascendancy and went more in that direction. I got passed a third pick Jace the Mindsculptor, without which I don't think I would have stood a chance in any of my games. I was lacking a bit in cheap spells for ascendancy, but I did manage to deal 22 damage to someone in one turn, and still went on to lose as they slammed Sword of Feast and Famine to discard my lethal Elspeth Knight-Errant, and untap and play Batterskull to hold the fort. Hordeling Outburst was a new card for this deck and I liked it better than Empty the Warrens, which it replaced.
Second draft my picks were
Champion of the Parish,
Soulfire Grandmaster,
Recruiter of the Guard, then I saw fourth pick
God-Pharoh's Gift (which gives you a
Gate to the Afterlife to go along with it) and hard switched into that. I also got to try out
Oversold Cemetery which was decried for being too powerful as it rebought
Shriekmaw and
Walking Ballista over and over again.
Charlie - Bu Reanimator and Naya Humans
I got smashed in one game by Dark Ritual into Liliana the Last Hope, which went ultimate very quickly, but the reanimator side of his deck was shut down pretty well by Jace. The second draft looked sweet, it was all the humans in GRW with at least one Champion of the Parish and a Thalia's Lieutenant. It could get some very explosive starts, but that mana base was a bit shaky.
Jay - 4 colour Mentor/Pyromancer and 4 colour control
I only saw a bit of the first deck but he was triggering Monastery Mentor and Young Pyromancer off Traverse the Ulvenwald and Cabal Therapy, which looked like a lot of fun. I played against the second deck which was planeswalkers and value - he got to play Kess, Dissident Mage to immediately flashback Swords to Plowshares.
Claude - WU Oketra's Monument and Monored
Another Oketra's Monument convert. The card is so sweet.
He also drafted monored, but I'm not sure how well he did with it. The deck is still playable but not the bogeyman it was in earlier versions of the cube.
Ethan - GR Ramp and Ug Split Screen
The first deck was fairly straightfoward but did have some cool parts, like a Birthing Pod chain from 1 to 7 to get out Myr Battlesphere if the ramp plan didn't pay off. He also Genesis Waved for 3 against me and hit elf elf land which seems way above expectation! The second was kind of a Split Screen buildaround, it was mostly blue with green for things like Coiling Oracle and Scavenging Ooze. Unfortunately I think someone else got a few of the good Split Screen payoffs in Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya, but he still said he really liked the card even without much synergy. This was also the deck that led to the game where his opponent Phyrexian Metamorphed the Split Screen.
There were a few other decks but I didn't get much of a chance to see them in action: Grixis control, 5c Urza, Two big green, one with colourless and one without, Esper God Pharoh's Gift, and another reanimator deck with Bazaar of Baghdad and Cephalid Colliseum. Split Screen and Oketra's Monument went down very well out of the new cards, Oversold Cemetery was quite unpopular.