Just over two weeks ago, we saw Pro Tour: Philadelphia, which was preceded by a Standard-format Last Chance Qualifier. 183 players tried their luck in the event, some grinding on till 4 AM to win their chance to play the following day at the Pro Tour itself, and the metagame of the LCQ was the most developed form of Mirrodin-through-Betrayers Standard thanks to a plethora of good information available from the European regional events. My goal for the event was to pop in and sneak off with the complete information, to get statistics about modern Standard just before the release of Saviors of Kamigawa… and push it through the grist mill, interpreting the entire tournament’s worth of data to provide actual statistical information for presentation here.
For anyone else who wants to come mine the data along with me, and wants to peek further into the small mountain of information I compiled about the event, you can find the Excel spreadsheet compiling and organizing all the round-by-round information by e-mailing Mail us at https://sales.starcitygames.com/contactus/contactform.php?emailid=2 for the information. Other than that, let’s start breaking this down:
Of 183 players, you had this many people playing the major archetypes, and popular variations:
Tooth and Nail: 32
Green Aggro: 17
Mono-Blue Control: 16
“Red Deck Wins”: 30
White Weenie: 10
Red/Green Beatdown: 8
Black/Green Death Cloud: 11
Blue/Green Aggro: 5
Blue/Green Control: 10
Multicolor Green Control: 5
Black Control: 2
Flores Red: 3
A wide variety of other decks, some good and some… less so… also appeared, and between the many different Green decks and their plans for winning the game almost half the field was slinging Forests, with the next largest agglomeration making a push with Mountains to take a slot for Philadelphia. People who thought they beat Tooth and Nail found out they didn’t, or in the case of the Beacon Green beatdown deck laughed and smirked when Tooth and Nail found out that it was in fact not themselves who had the advantageous matchup. The lessons the statistics taught us are rather interesting, and are best summed up thusly:
Mono-Red “Red Deck Wins”
Final Match Record: 74 Wins, 76 Losses, 4 Draws, 2 Byes (48% Win Percentage)
Adjusted Match Record: 60 Wins, 62 Losses, 2 Draws, 2 Byes (48.4% Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Final Game Record: 186 Game Wins, 195 Game Losses (48.8% Win Percentage)
Adjusted Game Record: 148 Game Wins, 157 Game Losses (48.5% Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
In addition to three players playing Mike Flores‘ burn-based Red deck, there was a trio of distinctions that needed to be made: use of Zo-Zu the Punisher, use of land destruction spells, and the combination of both. With the clear “enemy” of Tooth and Nail for the tournament, which of the three possible combinations of these two themes proved quite interesting, as it seems burn cards are better than land destruction spells for taking down Tooth and Nail
Land Destruction without Zo-Zu had a 40.4% match win percentage when facing off against decks other than itself, and a 41.65% match win percentage against Tooth and Nail, winning 46.4% of games against the green meanie. Zo-Zu without Land Destruction had a 54.2% match win percentage against decks other than itself, and a 50% for both game and match win percentage against Tooth and Nail. Combining the two would sound like a wonderful idea, but would yield just a 33.3% match win percentage and 50% game win percentage against Tooth and Nail (admittedly, with a very low number of matches played, hence the rough numbers) and a 45.7% win percentage against decks other than Red Deck Wins-style Red beatdown decks.
Putting Zo-Zu in your Red deck will increase your win percentage by 5%, and taking the LD out after you put him in will be worth almost another 10% facing off against the field. Most of the people who did exactly that put Vulshok Sorcerer in to directly replace Molten Rain and Stone Rain in their strategy, and that may have a fair deal to do with the profitable interactions between their burn and the attacks their one- and two-mana creatures have on the early game pressure that overwhelms opponents by knocking them into reach of the Red deck’s finishing power.
Michael Flores’ burn-heavy Red deck went 13-6-1 in matches (65% match win percentage) and 28-19-1 in games (58.3% game win percentage), and should be a worthy starting point when thinking about how to make your Red deck. Considering that the other Red decks got a better game win percentage by taking out miscellaneous cards and adding spells that burn your opponents’ life directly in some fashion or another, this should be no great surprise. The relative quality of the players who were “in the know” about Mike’s deck before he went public with it on StarCityGames.com last week might also have lent something to these numbers, and there are only a small number of samples to gather information from, but this deck certainly bears watching. But don’t go too far over the edge with this one… Burning Bridge decks likewise showed up at the tournament, and went 5-8 in matches (41.7% match win percentage) and 14-18 in games (43.75% game win percentage)… a step in the opposite direction entirely. [Yeah, but Mike’s deck is actually good… – Knut, who’s played it more than a little]
A beatdown deck using the Shoal/Myojin “combo” went 5-3 in matches, 11-9 in games, but may have been just a freak occurrence.
Mono-Blue Control
Final Match Record: 30 Wins, 33 Losses, 5 Draws, 1 Bye (44.1% Match Win Percentage)
Adjusted Match Record: 28 Wins, 31 Losses, 5 Draws, 1 Bye (43.75% Match Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Final Game Record: 83 Game Wins, 82 Game Losses, 1 Game Drawn (50% Game Win Percentage)
Adjusted Game Record: 80 Game Wins, 79 Game Losses, 1 Game Drawn (50% Game Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Mono-Blue does pretty decently against the field, but things get really interesting when you delineate the difference between the versions with Thieving Magpie and those without. Four players without Magpies won 13 matches, while 12 players with Magpies won 17 matches. Magpie Blue had a 37.5% match win percentage, and a 47% game win percentage, while ditching the Magpies brings that up to a 54.15% match win percentage, and a 54.85% game win percentage… and unfortunately we have no clue how much better or worse the Magpie-free version fares against the Green Meanie, as the players without Magpies played it all of twice, netting one win and one draw. We did reap some rather useful information, though… as Magpie-based decks beat Tooth and Nail 20% of the time each match, winning a mighty 30.4% of all the games they played. Not the kind of numbers you’ll be wanting to build Regionals around, I suspect.
There has been a long-running debate as to whether sideboarding Boseiju, Who Shelters All is the proper response to facing that particularly nasty Legendary Land against Tooth and Nail, and players without Boseiju went 0-3-1 in matches (3-6 in games) against Tooth and Nail, while those who brought in Boseiju went 3-4-1 in matches (8-11 in games) against Tooth. How fortuitous it might be to both drop the Magpies and bring in Boseiju against Tooth and Nail isn’t clear, but I’d say that it certainly seems to help. Tooth and Nail players had some fun ideas about sideboarding in Boil against the Blue decks, and the one player who both faced Blue and brought Boil still lost that match anyway (against a Boseiju-free Magpie-based deck, and former Pro Tour Rookie of the Year contender Lawrence Creech) while going without Boil in the sideboard (against both sides of the fence, of both the Magpie and Boseiju arguments) saw Mono-Blue accrue a 3-6-1 record (27.3% match win percentage) and win 11 games compared to the 15 they lost (42.3% game win percentage). Whether you had Boil or not, Blue didn’t do so hot against Tooth and Nail, so save those sideboard slots for matchups where it will actually affect your numbers, you Tooth and Nail players!
White Weenie
All but one player brought Equipment-based White Weenie decks, with no reason to think it greatly affected the way the decks played out against the majority of the field. White Weenie racked up the following numbers:
Final Match Record: 24 Match Wins, 29 Match Losses, 3 Matches Drawn (42.85% Match Win Percentage)
Adjusted Match Record: 22 Match Wins, 27 Match Losses, 3 Matches Drawn (42.3% Match Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Final Game Record: 63 Game Wins, 68 Game Losses, 1 Game Drawn (47.7% Game Win Percentage)
Adjusted Game Record: 58 Game Wins, 63 Game Losses, 1 Game Drawn (47.5% Game Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
While a reasonable choice for the tournament, at least compared to Mono-Blue Magpie, it still couldn’t beat the 50% mark that should be the minimum requirement for a good choice for a tournament. In the hands of a good player, that can take advantage of pressuring the opponent via the combat phase, it’s an acceptable choice… but as you’ll see, there are definitely better ones.
Blue/White Control
Mixing your Blue and White cards, at least at this tournament, would be good for a 8-11 match record (42% match win percentage) and a 16-27 game record (37.2% game win percentage). While fairly comparable to the win percentage for the mono-Blue control decks, adding White doesn’t seem to have given us any real benefits to work with, as they seemed to handle creature-based decks equally well with either Wrath of God or Veldaken Shackles… and in no cases, both. Not enough people played this deck to get any useful matchup breakdowns, but like the Mono-Blue Control decks that showed up, the numbers don’t give you any reason to play the deck.
Black Control
Two players brought a Black Control deck to the tournament, and one of them was within a match of winning himself a slot at the Pro Tour the next day, as can be seen on the MagicTheGathering.com coverage page. The other went 1-2, but even combining those two you still have a 7-3-1 record going into the elimination rounds, for a 63.6% match win percentage, and 15-12 in games, for a 55.55% game win percentage.
A discard-centric Black deck didn’t win any matches at all, showing that discarding cards is good but not dying to the creatures your opponents may be playing in the meantime is not the correct method for winning games.
And a Rat Ninja-based Rat deck likewise finished within a match of something good, this time falling one match short of making the elimination rounds… a deck that was noticed, and picked up, in time for the Magic Invitational. Between the two players who played the deck, however, you saw a 6-6-2 match record (42.85% match win percentage) and a 15-15-1 game record (48.4% game win percentage)… pretty close to even. While good, we’ll have to see more out of this deck before making any judgments on it.
Especially given the “rules of Standard”, which I’ll explain more on at the conclusion of this article, and the addition of cards like Kagemaro, First to Suffer in Saviors, there is definitely potential for growth in the Black Control deck, and the “Rat.dec” will also bear looking into.
And now… the Green decks.
Tooth and Nail
Final Match Record: 95 Match Wins, 78 Match Losses, 12 Matches Drawn, 1 Bye (51.35% Match Win Percentage)
Adjusted Match Record: 78 Match Wins, 61 Match Losses, 8 Matches Drawn, 1 Bye (53.05% Match Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Final Game Record: 238 Game Wins, 203 Game Losses (54% Game Win Percentage)
Adjusted Game Record: 196 Game Wins, 161 Game Losses (54.9% Game Win Percentage)
Tooth and Nail is the front-runner in Standard at the moment, the acknowledged “best deck” and the measuring-stick against which all other decks currently must be measured against. While there’s a lot of good matchup information to be gleaned about Tooth’s matchups, they’re discussed in the sections for those key matches, as in the Mono-Blue analysis above, or the Aggro Green analysis below.
The mono-Blue matchup analysis suggests that Boil out of the sideboard is unnecessary, and even Choke may not be worth bothering with, when even a single sideboard slot to a second Boseiju, Who Shelters All (assuming that there is one in your maindeck, as is common nowadays) may help ensure that Mono-Blue has a miserable time trying to dodge Tooth and Nail’s inevitability.
There was a trend among a minority of the Tooth and Nail players to sideboard Circle of Protection: Red against the adversarial horde of “Red Deck Wins” decks that were geared to have a distinct matchup advantage against Tooth and Nail, powered off of a single Plains and in some cases the appropriate Talisman. The Tooth and Nail decks who brought in CoP’s went 2-4 in matches (33.3% match win percentage) and 6-9 in games (40% game win percentage) in the six matches played, while the greater number of T&N decks facing off against Red decks without Circles of Protection in their sideboard went 16-14-1 in matches (51.6% match win percentage) and 39-37 in games (51.3% game win percentage) against all Red decks, including the Burning Bridge and Flores-designed burn decks. The initial claims made by several proponents of the Red deck’s advantage against Tooth and Nail didn’t bear up, though it is surprisingly even, and Circles of Protection don’t seem to create any distinct advantage that just following the rest of the Tooth and Nail plan wouldn’t garner anyway. As with Boil in the Blue matchup, CoP: Red hasn’t proven to be worth the space in the sideboard it takes up, and something else might be appropriate instead.
Streamlining the Red deck to attack Tooth and Nail more specifically, as discussed in the Mono-Red section above, does make life more difficult for Tooth and Nail, and how Tooth might best combat this particular mode of attack will require more analsis if it does continue to bear a following in the post-Saviors Standard format.
Blue/Green Control
Blue-Green Control decks played to a 23-25-2 match record (46% match win percentage) and a 61-58 game record (51.25% game win percentage) by mixing the Blue control cards and counterspells with the more potent Green cards. Like U/W Control, the match win percentage does not appear greatly different from the mono-Blue versions of the deck, though it picks up at least somewhat by synergistically combining control cards and Eternal Witness, plus mana acceleration and Veldaken Shackles. This deck seems to play out better against the aggressive deck, even if it does face the same problems Mono-Blue does when it comes to facing down a Troll Ascetic or countering spells with Boseiju in play. The game-win percentage is quite good, and the matches this deck lost didn’t seem to be the 0-2 blowouts that Monoblue Control decks seemed to face, always having a distinct chance to pull out the match in most circumstances.
Multicolor Green Control
An eclectic mix of up to five colors of control cards, and the card-drawing machine that is Etched Oracle, the decklists that made up this grouping seemed unfocused and in need of significant tuning before being considered as a potential archetype, and put up a 6-12-2 match record (30% match win percentage) and 18-27-1 game record (39.1% game win percentage). Admittedly this is a small sampling of decks in a large tournament, and so larger numbers might provide a clearer number closer to the standard 50% mark, but there doesn’t seem to be any great promise to this idea in this format, with excellent numbers from other Green decks.
Black/Green Death Cloud
Final Match Record: 26 Matches Won, 25 Matches Lost, 5 Matches Drawn (46.4% Match Win Percentage)
Final Game Record: 65 Games Won, 65 Games Lost, 2 Games Drawn (49.25% Game Win Percentage)
At a close to 50% match win percentage, and a dead-even game win percentage, B/G Death Cloud seems to be a very reasonable choice for this metagame, which brings us to look closer at what exactly is going on to discern the difference between the many versions of Green decks we see at our disposal here. As the last of the control decks to be looked at here, B/G Cloud had 8 match wins and 6 match losses against Tooth and Nail, for a 57.15% match win percentage, and a 19-14 game record for a 57.6% game win percentage against the Green Meanie. There is a definite advantage to the Black/Green deck in the matchup, at least in part because both are trying to accomplish the same thing, stunting each others’ mana with Plow Under and building up their own mana base… but one of these two is capable of realistically being the aggressive player when it comes to creature attacks while this is happening, and that is the B/G deck. A resolved Tooth and Nail can be “undone” with Death Cloud, and while that may be difficult if T&N fetches out Sundering Titan / Kiki-Jiki, they can just as easily have been hit with a Cranial Extraction for Tooth and Nail, making things difficult for that particular counter-strategy.
Looking at the Death Cloud deck as the aggressive deck in this light, comparing it to “Mono-Green” Aggro to see how it holds up, shows us a 3-5-1 match record (33.3% match win record) and 11-11 game record (50% game win record). Looking at B/G as the aggro deck against Tooth and Nail, Aggro Green does the same right back here, being the better beatdown deck… and even overwhelming your average Death Cloud with a pre-emptive Beacon of Creation, which just happens to be one of the best Green “creatures” available for beating down right now.
Blue/Green Beatdown
As an aggressive deck, the U/G beatdown deck mustered a 9-10-2 record (42.85% match win percentage) and a 25-26-1 game win record (48.1% game win percentage). Compared to the other aggressive Green decks utilizing the same class of cards, this combination is simply outclassed, as Blue’s nonaggressive nature doesn’t complement the things that are proving successful for Green cards at the moment.
Red/Green Beats
And now, something unexpected that’s worth looking at…
Final Match Record: 26 Matches Won, 23 Matches Lost (53.1% Match Win Percentage)
Adjusted Match Record: 24 Matches Won, 21 Matches Lost (53.3% Match Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Final Game Record: 61 Games Won, 58 Games Lost (54% Game Win Percentage)
Adjusted Game Record: 56 Games Won, 53 Games Lost (54.9% Game Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
When I was going over the decklists initially, I saw what looked like a “best of” Red/Green deck, combining some of Green’s strengths (Troll Ascetic and Eternal Witness, plus mana acceleration) with the best that Red has to offer (Arc-Slogger, burn) and wondered what substance this might have to it. I honestly didn’t expect this to break even, as it did not fit my world-view of Standard going into this event, and hearkened it as a throwback to former days when this color combination used to be good. But even pretending to play like the Mono-Green Aggro deck did very well at this tournament, yielding a good matchup against Tooth and Nail and solid win percentages overall.
As good as the Red did in this deck, splashing Black for Cranial Extraction and Blue for Meloku was the more standard substitutions in the “mono-Green” aggro deck proved quite thoroughly better.
Wakefieldian Green
Two players brought near-exact copies of Jamie Wakefield Green Elf deck to the tournament, looking to Blanchwood Armor up a forestwalker and swing at most of their opponents with unblockable animals, but were unfortunately eliminated early in the tournament facing matchups that did not possess Forests to walk over, and put up a 2-5 (28.6% match win percentage) and 7-11 (38.9% game win percentage) record overall. While a valiant effort, it did not prove as well as I had hoped it might, as big a fan of the Wakefield Way as I am.
I’m happy in my belief that the King of Fatties won’t blanch at this, and will probably prove us right by not doing so. The people who played the deck weren’t Jamie, after all, were they?
“Miscellaneous” Green/X Aggro
While poring over decklists, I classified four decks as “Miscellaneous” Green/X decks, being variants of the Aggro Green deck that widely diverged from the standardized listing seen played by Brett Blackman among others. I cut them apart from the rest of the Aggro Green decks, due to this divergence, but two of these four players put up a 6-2 record and were within striking range of the Round of Eight for most of the tournament, and so should not be so easily dismissed. These four players put up a 14-8-1 match record (60.87% match win percentage) and 33-24-1 game record (56.7% game win percentage), and with two inexperienced players lashed together with two better players who pushed their way to the top for most of the tournament it would seem its similarities to Aggro Green proved much more important than the differences.
And now, for the result I’ve been working up to…
Aggro Green
When facing off against a sea of Green decks, the Green deck that is best at being an aggro-tempo deck pulled to the top of the pile, because it gets to be the beatdown while both the Green decks try to use and re-use Plow Under and land destruction to prevent the opponent from using top-end cards like Tooth and Nail from coming online, or to simply stall out the flow of cards on the opponents’ deck while your own develop naturally… and attack. And when the consensus strategy for beating Green decks with non-Green decks is a Red-based attack strategy, the Green deck that can actually flourish against that deck as well will be the one who rules the day… even if more Tooth and Nail decks made the coverage on MagicTheGathering.com.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Iwamori of the Open Fist
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 4 Wood Elves
- 4 Eternal Witness
- 2 Viridian Zealot
Lands (23)
Spells (16)
Innocent-looking, isn’t it?
Final Match Record: 58 Match Wins, 36 Match Losses, 5 Matches Drawn (58.6% Match Win Percentage)
Adjusted Match Record: 53 Match Wins, 31 Match Losses, 5 Matches Drawn (59.55% Match Win Percentage, removing mirror matches)
Final Game Record: 143 Games Won, 104 Games Lost, 1 Game Drawn (57.65% Match Win Percentage)
Adjusted Game Record: 128 Games Won, 89 Games Lost, 1 Game Drawn (58.7% Match Win Percentage)
Among all the decks played in reasonable numbers, for which we are able to compile a large number of matches for statistics purposes, this is the deck that had the highest match win percentage; by the standards I’m used to looking at doing this over the years, I’ve learned to pay attention to anything with more than five people (preferably ten or more) that has a 55% or higher match win percentage. Adding one Fecundity / Blasting Station-based deck, and two decks splashing for enough lands to power up Etched Oracle, and excluding two decks that had a 6-2 record by my initial sorting method… this certainly impresses me, and having dug further perhaps you’ll be impressed too. Remember how Tooth and Nail is Enemy #1, and the Red decks are a response to this and an attempt to beat Tooth and Nail with a clear ‘enemy’ deck that is a foil to its strategy?
Aggro Green vs. Tooth and Nail: 10-3-1 Match Record (71.4% Match Win Percentage)
Aggro Green vs. Tooth and Nail: 24-14 Game Record (63.15% Game Win Percentage)
The Beacon Green deck does what Tooth and Nail does to itself in the mirror, except that it does it game one, and while attacking with reasonable creatures to finish the game rather than trying to rely on a 7GG sorcery to finish the game. Add in Cranial Extraction out of the sideboard, or perhaps even in the main, and we’re looking at something quite unpleasant for the Tooth and Nail deck.
Aggro Green vs. Red decks: 12-5 Match Record (70.6% Match Win Percentage)
Aggro Green vs. Red decks: 27-14 Game Record (65.85% Game Win Percentage)
While beating the Tooth and Nail deck, it also beats the deck that “beats” the Tooth and Nail deck. While things will be shaken up by the coming of Saviors, the starting point for Standard as dictated by the numbers presented at the Last Chance Qualifier is definitely the Beacon Green deck.
The Rules of Standard
Standard at the point just before Saviors of Kamigawa is dictated by some very simple rules as for what does and does not work. Any deck that wants to start in this metagame and still work has to respect these very simple rules:
1. If you’re not Green, you’re playing one color. While we have the allied comes-into-play-tapped lands, and Tendo Ice Bridge and Wayfarer’s Bauble to help smooth the mana of a two- or more-than-two-colored deck, two or more non-green colors are hard to make work together. Green does it better, and the cards that you’ll probably want to be playing are either color-intensive or otherwise restrict your mana base for other reasons (such as Veldaken Shackles). Good mana is hard to come by right now, and it’s looking like it will stay that way until you reach for Birds of Paradise, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and friends.
2. Be prepared to work around Cranial Extraction. Just one path to victory that can be Extracted (as with Tooth and Nail) is a bad idea, unless you’re ready to disrupt your opponent playing it with land destruction, pinpoint discard, or countermagic. As with colors being generally restricted if you aren’t Green, Cranial Extraction’s existence should at least in part dictate how you build your deck, either with threat cards or with answer cards.
3. Tooth and Nail is still the benchmark deck for sheer power in the format; if you don’t have game against Tooth and Nail, keep working on your strategy until you do. This has some corollaries such as “Don’t lose to just one Boseiju if you’re a Blue deck”, and “Pay attention to both the game-one and game-two plans” – the game-two plan for Tooth and Nail against control decks is the game-one plan for Aggro Green after all.
4. Games will take a while, but not playing early will get you killed. Purely reactive decks such as Mono-Blue are at a disadvantage, and you can’t give your opponent permission to massage their deck with Sensei’s Divining Top until the cows come home. Aggression is good, and pure power is good, but tempo seems to be winning the day, in the end. Red decks play tempo-based cards like Vulshok Sorcerer because they suit the environment right now, Green’s slinging Plow Under, and disruption mixed with aggression is the question you are attempting to present your opponent who better not have the wrong answer.
Other than that… what these results mean to someone trying to finesse the metagame, and what Saviors of Kamigawa has to offer us… will have to wait to be the subject of my next article.
As I’m writing this, the prerelease is still tomorrow after all. See you again soon!