“Oh, you all built your deck to beat B/u Zombies, U/B Control, and R/G Aggro? That’s adorable.”
The first StarCityGames.com Invitational of 2012 is in the books, and without question the tournament has had ominous implications about the health of the formats. I’d like to mainly focus on Standard today, but it’s worth noting that the Top 16 Legacy players were made up of:
First, it shouldn’t be overlooked that Gerard Fabiano has once again put up a good finish with his W/B/R Team Italia. W/B/R is probably the least used of all of the one, two, or three color combinations. Even more interesting is when a deck is played by only a single player, but he puts up great finishes every single time. Is this the fourth Legacy event in a row for him that he has made Top 16? Maybe it’s like 4/5 or even 4/6, but it’s almost unheard of for someone to hit so many good finishes with a deck that isn’t picked up by many (if any) players. What does that mean? It’s really hard to say, as it’s quite strange. Likely, most people just can’t wrap their mind around Grim Lavamancer over Brainstorm.
Not surprisingly, the Legacy portion was dominated by the format’s big three, with Esper replacing U/W. More alarming, however, is the realization that this tournament was actually:
Snapcaster Mage Decks – 10
Stoneforge Mystic Decks – 10
Decks with Neither – 1
What do you do with a format that’s basically one-third Snapcaster but not Stoneforge, one-third Stoneforge but not Snapcaster, and one-third both? Well, I suppose that’s a function of Legacy tournament attendance. As long as people keep wanting to play the Snapcaster Mage/Stoneforge Mystic format, it may continue. Of course, while the format has been doing ok, Legacy attendance hasn’t held as strong as fans of the format would like. This isn’t to suggest that Snapcaster and Stoneforge are the only problems. After all, the format may be 63% Snapcaster at the top, but it’s also 63% Brainstorm and 63% Force of Will. Likely they’ll try unbanning cards first. After that, however, more drastic measures may be needed. If they are, Brainstorm and Force of Will are likely to get a pass…
Sure, sure, sure. So Legacy as a format is degenerating. What else is new? At least Standard is healthy, right?
Well, that’s a tough one. Standard has been healthy, continuing to evolve from week to week. This weekend, however, didn’t promise great things about the health of the format. Hopefully this was just an outlier. Hopefully this was just the perfect weekend to play Delver (or at least another perfect weekend to play Delver).
Ok, so Delver dominated. That isn’t that bad, right? After all, a single Top 16 is hardly a sample size at all…
Fair, but we should also factor in that Esper Spirits and Delver Humans are both really just variations of the same Delver strategy. Another way to put it:
I see.
Was there ever been a better time to play Grixis than last weekend…?
Wait a minute! The Invitational was two formats! Maybe that Top 16 isn’t representative, being biased by Legacy results! Gerry Thompson, Lauren Nolen, and Orrin Beasley all went 6-1-1 or better in the Standard potion but didn’t Top 16. Does that change it at all?
Not surprisingly, two of them were playing Delver. Of the ten players that went 6-1-1 or better in Standard, seven played Delver.
Well, the good news is that this is likely going to be followed with another surge of anti-Delver decks. The format may be very warped, but it’s still dynamic and still has room to evolve. It’s not clear if it’s actually going anywhere, however. After all, it’s looking suspiciously like we’re in a loop. Once formats reach a point of looping around to earlier iterations, the loop gradually shrinks, happening faster and faster until equilibrium is reached.
Of course, Avacyn Restored is just five weeks away. It’s possible that we can survive long enough to keep the “streak” going (formats not getting stale before the next set is released). I’m a pretty optimistic guy, but I’m not super optimistic about our chances here.
Wait! What about Pod? That’s what’s different this time! Every time the loop happens, as long as something important is different, everything changes!
You don’t remember the first time this happened? Or the second? Remember the whole, “I thought Pod was supposed to be good? Why did it fall off the week after doing well?”
It has done this every time.
One of the quick questions at the Invitational:
“Are you hoping the Delver-lull continues, or did you come prepared?”
After weeks of great performances by decks built to be competitive with Delver, like U/B Control, R/G Aggro, and B/u Zombies, the format had finally gotten to a point where Delver wasn’t even one of the top couple targets. How quickly we forget just how powerful the Delver strategy is? What’s next? We forget how good Primeval Titan is…?
When everyone sets their sights on beating “fair” decks like B/u Zombies, U/B Control, and R/G Aggro, the format becomes right for Pod decks to have a great weekend. Next weekend, the format shifts again, and Pod (miraculously) seems to drop back down a bit.
So, what IS different this time? Has anything important changed this iteration?
Yeah, something has changed. The Delver decks have adapted to fight the hate. Use of such a variety of angles of attack as Batterskull, Jace, Memory Adept, and the like is only a small part of what has really happened. The key to Delver’s return to dominance is the variety of Delver decks: the mutations. When Delver is just one, two, or even three strategies, decks like U/B Control can tune themselves to beat it, R/G Aggro can pick apart their weaknesses, and so on.
Now it’s almost like all the Delver players got together and orchestrated an assault on the metagame, hitting from a dozen different angles. So many Delver players are making strategic decisions that are intentionally the opposite of conventional wisdom specifically to punish those hating out the norms. Making it even more deadly, they’re diverging in unpredictable and erratic ways. Trying to hate them all out is becoming more and more difficult. It may already be too late.
This isn’t variety in the form of, “Oh yay! Look at this random selection of decks!” This is an intelligently crafted attack on the metagame, coming from all sides.Â
Let’s take a look at some of this variety we’re seeing.Â
Creatures (15)
Lands (21)
Spells (24)
Ok, pretty standard fare. This isn’t too bad, right?
This may be a mostly standard Hexproof Delver deck, but we should keep an eye on all the ways it diverges as we continue down the list. Ben is using Batterskull main, has artifacts to pump hexproof creatures, and sideboards Jace, Memory Adept, Timely Reinforcements, and more permission.
Now it’s on to the next one:
Creatures (13)
Lands (21)
Spells (26)
Consecrated Sphinx? That’s a way to punish someone for tapping out for Curse of Death’s Hold! Spectral Flight? I’d hate to be holding an Ancient Grudge when he does that! He even has a diverse selection of equipment in the board for matchups where it’s most relevant or when people don’t expect it.
Caleb is an absolute monster. Coming off of back-to-back GP Top 8s, now with an Invitational Top 8, one can’t help but feel like the current invite system is a little flawed because he’s not qualified for the Pro Tour. If only we had some sort of a rating system like they have in chess, where we could see that Caleb has been performing easily in the Top 100 in the world…
Of course he does have 14 Pro Points from this, which means if he earns just one more point he gets a free invite to the PT of his choice…
… Wait, no that was last year. Under the new system, he’ll be eligible for two byes!
What I’d like to see is the player that gets 15 Pro Points but doesn’t already have at least two byes from Planeswalker Points. Please don’t mistake my criticism of this detail as a negative indictment of the entire system. Obviously there have been a ton of changes recently, so it’s to be expected that not all of the numbers are in the right spots yet. I can tell you that many players have echoed the feeling of frustration of how much harder it can be to get onto the Pro Tour in the first place. No longer having a 15 Point invite to work towards to use as a stepping stone is a big source of that frustration.
I’m the first person to challenge the notion that anyone is “entitled” to the gravy train and the like. After all, if you can’t get 25 Pro Points in a season it stands to reason that you haven’t “earned” it yet. That said, the game is probably worse off if the ways to earn it are making Top 8 of a PT or winning a PTQ, then putting up a solid finish, then winning a PTQ, then solid finish, then win a PTQ, then solid finish, along with several good GP finishes. That’s a pretty daunting jump to make. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it does seem like awarding one invite to the PT of their choice for players with 15 Pro Points (no plane ticket) would go a long way towards making chasing the dream a more realistic reality.
A mistake many critics make when suggesting moves like this is assuming they can just go ahead and add some invites without paying for them. After all, however many invites are awarded now, if you just add five more people, it doesn’t really hurt everyone else that much and it could mean the world to those five. However, every one of these invites has a real cost, so we have to ask ourselves, “At what cost?”Â
How many free invites would be given out a year under this system? I have no practical way of counting how many players this year that have 15 Pro Points do not already have invites, but as of this writing, there are 68 players that have between 15-24 on this season. Some of those players have invites to all the events other ways, but an even larger number of players will hit 15 after Barcelona. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this number is doubled.
Even discounting invites from other methods, we’re surely talking over 100 extra invites over the course of the year. That’s not a cheap resource. I can’t even imagine where we could get 35 slots per PT without expanding the PT. Where would you cut them from? GPs issuing only four slots instead of eight is already very painful since we now live in the world where there are a growing number of amateurs that have made Top 8 of GPs but have never been eligible to compete in the Pro Tour. What about PTQs? It might be tempting to cut 35 PTQs a year to pay for this, but the people that is especially brutal for are the players in small markets that were most hurt by the change in the Nationals and Worlds programs.
So, then what? Just add the slots and increase the PTs from 345-360 (what they will be this fall) to 385-400? That’s one option, but that definitely eats up a massive chunk of what WotC had accomplished in the first place in their aim to make the Pro Tour more elite. Maybe there’s a solution that involves cutting a few PTQs and inflating the PT a bit. However, maybe the solution is right under our noses…
What if there were four Pro Tours in a year?
I’m not talking about the World Championships or interfering with the World Cup (which will be exciting to see play out). I’m talking about a fourth actual Pro Tour, having one line up with each major release of the year. In the world where we have four Pro Tours, even if WotC extended an invite to everyone that earned 15 Pro Points (or whatever the appropriate Silver Level stepping stone is given that four PTs would increase the total Pro Points available), they could greatly increase the number of PTQs. If there are 600-ish a season now, they could actually increase that to 700-ish plus the Silver invites and not actually make Pro Tours any larger than they already are!
You say that solutions can’t just add Pro Tour slots, so your solution is to add an entire Pro Tour? Innovative.
Look, this is obviously a nuanced issue. Assuming there are only three Pro Tours next year, it’s not clear that this stepping stone goal is actually more important than WotC’s goal of making the PT more elite (or maybe it is; that’s another debate). I’m saying that if it’s viable to add a Pro Tour, WotC could do so, improve the Silver Club benefits, increase PTQs, and not actually inflate the Pro Tour size. Innistrad was already the bestselling set of all-time, then WotC rolls out the revamped 2012 plans, putting their money where their mouth is regarding supporting tournaments, then Dark Ascension comes along and blows all the records out of the water. This isn’t a one-to-one causality thing, but there is some connection.
WotC increased support for organized play by millions and millions of dollars this year. That’s a really good thing for Magic, a fact that’s hopefully quite clear to everyone trying to figure out what to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars WotC is making from this growth. How about this idea? How about every year Magic is at an all-time high, we increase support at every level; FNMs, PTQs, World Cup, GPs, PTs, Promos, and so on?Â
The link between support for Organized Play and Magic sales is one that will always be partially obscured by a multitude of variables. That said, even if we can’t always agree on what is causing what, maybe we just don’t kill the Golden Goose, eh? If you had a box where you literally threw ten million dollars in it and set that money on fire but a hundred million dollars appeared on your doorstep at the beginning of the next year, maybe it’s worth considering setting some more money on fire. You never know; maybe, just maybe you aren’t actually setting the money on fire! Maybe there’s a system at work that we don’t fully understand; a system that produces results but requires investment.Â
Some people call that marketing.
Magic has doubled in sales and player base in the past couple of years, with the biggest numbers appearing to come from Dark Ascension after increasing support to organized play. How about, just as an experiment, we try nurturing that? What if WotC literally just added another Pro Tour without cutting from anywhere? What do they get out of it? More profit. More customers. More exposure. Organized play to market Magic is working.
Ask yourself what you’d do if you were in their shoes? Would you eat the cost of another Pro Tour? After all, you probably don’t need to. Of course, if spending the cost of another Pro Tour leads to an increase in revenue of just ten million dollars, was it worth it?
When is it going to be enough? Wizards just added millions to OP, and now you want more for next year?
When are you going to have made enough profit? Magic made record money this year, and you want to make more next year? Funny how that works…
Tone is always a tough one, in print, so I hope it’s clear that this feedback is both serious and light-hearted. Things are really, really good in Magic at the moment, so this is one of those first world problems where you have to figure out what to do with your embarrassment of riches. It’s clear from the past three months that everyone currently steering organized play has a pretty good grasp on the scene and how to continue to help it flourish. The more people talking about how to continue and increase that momentum, the better.
You were saying something about Delver…
Creatures (15)
Lands (21)
Spells (24)
Dungeon Geists? Sword of Feast and Famine?
Creatures (11)
Lands (21)
Spells (28)
Intangible Virtue? Blade Splicer? Sorin? Jace? Lingering Souls without other Spirits to Corrosive Gale?
Creatures (19)
Lands (22)
Spells (19)
At least this one we expect, but it’s still a very different direction from the other Delver decks, with Drogskol Captain, Dungeon Geists, and fully buffed Lingering Souls.
Creatures (18)
- 1 Blade Splicer
- 4 Phantasmal Image
- 1 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
- 4 Snapcaster Mage
- 4 Champion of the Parish
- 4 Delver of Secrets
Lands (20)
Spells (22)
Nick’s take on Delver Humans is the latest evolution of Sam Black Delver Humans deck from GP Orlando. This strategy bears some resemblance to U/W Delver, but is a closer relative to the Illusions deck. The primary difference is replacing Lord of the Unreal and Geist of Saint Traft (or Merfolk Looter) with Champion of the Parish and Gather the Townsfolk, aiming to maximize the “nut-draws.” This deck has a lot of ways to present five or more power by turn 2. It’s also a very different angle of attack than Batterskull or Jace or Consecrated Sphinx or Sword of Feast and Famine or Lingering Souls or…
What does the future hold? After all, you can beat any couple of Delver decks you want, but they have all diverged from each other so strongly that it’s not clear it’s possible to beat them all.Â
Let’s take a quick look at the other top finishing Standard decks from the Invitational:
Creatures (28)
- 1 Solemn Simulacrum
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Archon of Justice
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 1 Inferno Titan
- 1 Sun Titan
- 1 Wurmcoil Engine
- 1 Viridian Emissary
- 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
- 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 3 Blade Splicer
- 1 Fiend Hunter
- 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim
- 1 Geist-Honored Monk
- 1 Daybreak Ranger
- 3 Strangleroot Geist
- 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
Lands (24)
Spells (8)
Combining many of the best elements of R/G aggro with a Pod package instead of mediocre removal, this is a pretty exciting direction to be going with Pod, and the one I think may have the best chances of surviving a week of people knowing about it. A couple of Titans leading into Elesh Norn is a very exciting endgame, Birthing Pod + Strangleroot Geist is bananas, and Huntmaster of the Fells continues to be a defining force in the metagame.
Creatures (26)
- 1 Cemetery Reaper
- 2 Fume Spitter
- 2 Phyrexian Obliterator
- 4 Phantasmal Image
- 4 Diregraf Ghoul
- 3 Skirsdag High Priest
- 4 Gravecrawler
- 4 Geralf's Messenger
- 2 Diregraf Captain
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (22)
Spells (10)
The biggest twist here is the downplaying of Diregraf Captain, a sacred cow four-of to many players. The pay-off? A slightly better mana curve.
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 3 Think Twice
- 1 Doom Blade
- 3 Day of Judgment
- 1 Go for the Throat
- 1 Batterskull
- 3 Curse of Death's Hold
- 2 Forbidden Alchemy
- 3 Lingering Souls
- 2 Tragic Slip
Sideboard
Shaheen managed to take LSV’s Esper Walker deck to a respectable finish. Solar Flare may be long dead and gone, but it’s good to see the best elements of it survive and find a new home. This one looks like it’s actually capable of sealing the deal rather than always being an “also-ran.” One of Solar Flare’s biggest weaknesses was always its mana base, which Evolving Wilds helps out with. Rather than rely on Unburial Rites and Sun Titan, Shaheen uses planeswalkers and Lingering Souls to generate an advantage that’s not hated out by all the Surgical Extractions and Go for the Throats in the format. Curse of Death’s Hold, Day of Judgment, and Despise are all worth paying extra attention to, as they are well positioned.Â
Obviously, I kid about Shaheen using LSV’s deck, as this is the same deck that Shaheen unveiled a few weeks ago (and physically lent to LSV last week). However, I expect its popularity to increase, as people love anything remotely resembling Solar Flare, and there are few ways to get people more excited about a deck than to tell them it has tons of different planeswalkers in it.
This weekend also featured a SCG Standard Open, which was in the interesting position of being held the day after Day 1 of the Invitational (giving the players in it a bit more information). The result?Â
More Delver.
To be fair, the meta at the top was a lot more diverse, but there’s no denying the domination of Delver decks.
Of course, it was B/u Zombies that walked away with another trophy for the SCG Standard Open. As of this writing, there was still a lot of final day of Invitational to be played, so we’ll see if Delver ends up with the top slot there.
Alright, I gotta take off, but I do have a closing, unrelated thought.
“How much sympathy can you really have for someone ridiculing/bullying/teasing/generally ruining the time of many people at a tournament that feel like they are now getting picked on getting an 18-month ban? The defense of ‘I should only have gotten 6 months or a year,’ is particularly absurd. If one knew that their actions were deserving of getting banned, they can hardly ask for sympathy that they underestimated just how long of a ban they were earning. WotC is not the police, but tournaments are their business. If someone is taking compromising photos and attaching extremely cruel commentary with the express purpose of ridiculing and hurting people at Magic tournaments, why in the world wouldn’t WotC show them the door?
Just days ago, a player was banned for 18 months for unsportsman-like conduct after particularly cruel behavior that left many with a very poor taste in their mouth about Magic tournaments. A Magic tournament is many things, but it’s not a place one goes to feel bullied and to be tormented. Some people wonder why he didn’t get a warning first. A warning? What do you think he got all weekend on Twitter, where he was putting on a show? He loved the attention and only upped the ante after being warned.
Was WotC making an example of him? Absolutely. Cheating isn’t the only thing you can get banned for. Steal bags? F#$% you. Counterfeit cards and try to sell them to people? F#$% you. Assault players or judges? F#$% you. Make it your mission to torment countless strangers, publicly humiliating tournament attendees, and generally being cruel to an awful lot of people in the ways they are most self-conscious of? F#$% you.
Free speech is a right, but coming to Magic tournaments is a privilege. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to be on some kind of martial law crackdown on making fun of people or anything. There’s a big difference between jokes, even insults, and the kind of deliberate, prolonged cruelty that led to this ban. Be a freaking halfway decent human being and there will be no trouble at all. You want to be part of the community? Act like it.”
Patrick Chapin
“The Innovator”