Data, data, data.
I’m a sucker for data. One of the reasons, for example, that I collected the data of all of the Hall of Fame nominees for comparison to the current members (at the time of their election) is that I think that a strong comparison between candidates is only possible by giving things a context. Without data, this can be very difficult to do.
Of course, data alone can be misleading.
As Mark Twain said in his autobiography, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
You can make nearly any claim you want with data, simply by omitting some data and focusing on other data. Even so, when it’s approached without an agenda (other than illuminating the truth), plugging through the data can be a great way to accomplish illumination.
Now, of course, after a Pro Tour, there are real questions about what are the best decks in total. Often, I like to go through the best of the best, to give a sense of the “real” Top 8 from the Pro Tour, if we were to isolate just for Standard. With a double Standard Grand Prix weekend in between the Pro Tour results and now, it feels more reasonable to give a quick mention to these decks, and only barely weight them into a sense of what are our most potent Standard decks of the moment.
Here are the top-performing Standard decks from Pro Tour Eldritch Moon.
Two decks finished 9-0-1 in Standard; notably, they didn’t draw in either of the last two rounds.
Creatures (22)
- 4 Pilgrim's Eye
- 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 1 Wretched Gryff
- 4 Elder Deep-Fiend
- 3 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 1 Lashweed Lurker
- 4 Primal Druid
Lands (24)
Spells (14)
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (24)
Spells (23)
Two decks finished 9-1 in Standard:
Creatures (9)
Lands (24)
Spells (27)
Creatures (31)
- 4 Knight of the White Orchid
- 4 Dragon Hunter
- 3 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
- 3 Anointer of Champions
- 3 Expedition Envoy
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Thalia's Lieutenant
- 2 Hanweir Militia Captain
- 4 Town Gossipmonger
Lands (18)
Spells (11)
Four decks finished 8-1-1 in Standard:
Creatures (12)
- 2 Pilgrim's Eye
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 2 Mindwrack Demon
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 2 Distended Mindbender
- 3 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (24)
Spells (21)
Creatures (12)
- 2 Pilgrim's Eye
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 2 Mindwrack Demon
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 2 Distended Mindbender
- 3 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (24)
Spells (21)
Creatures (26)
- 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 4 Reflector Mage
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 4 Tireless Tracker
- 4 Duskwatch Recruiter
- 4 Spell Queller
Lands (25)
Spells (9)
Creatures (15)
- 1 Den Protector
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 2 Sylvan Advocate
- 3 Tireless Tracker
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 4 Grim Flayer
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (17)
These eight decks primarily set the stage for what people moved forward with in their selection of decks moving forward, and rightly so, because these decks all managed to really shake things up. Sure, there aren’t as many Bant Company decks as we might expect otherwise, but there are still a lot of things we’re seeing here that we’d also see doing well at the Grand Prix.
The two Grand Prix after the Pro Tour, Grand Prix Rimini and Grand Prix Portland, ended up having some wildly different results, but combined together, along with the context from the Pro Tour, I think you’ll see some valuable information that is greatly definitive for the top end of the metagame.
If you collect all of the results together, here are the total match points by the representative archetypes:
|
Match Points |
Archetype |
|
884 |
Bant Company |
|
243 |
B/G Delirium |
|
215 |
U/R Thermo-Alchemist |
|
200 |
R/G Ramp |
|
169 |
Jund Delirium |
|
140 |
Temur Emerge |
|
137 |
Four-Color Emerge |
|
117 |
B/W Control |
|
107 |
U/W Spirits |
|
70 |
Abzan Delirium |
|
70 |
G/W Tokens |
|
63 |
W/R Humans |
|
40 |
Grixis Pact |
|
37 |
U/G Crush |
|
36 |
Sultai Control |
|
36 |
Bant Humans |
If we combine a few of the archetypes (Bant Company and Bant Humans, for example, and the B/G/x Delirium archetypes), we get that reduced to the following:
|
Match Points |
Archetype |
|
920 |
Bant Company |
|
482 |
B/G/x Delirium |
|
277 |
Emerge |
|
215 |
U/R Thermo-Alchemist |
|
200 |
R/G Ramp |
|
117 |
B/W Control |
|
107 |
U/W Spirits |
|
246 |
Other (decks played by two or fewer high finishers) |
Put another way, we’re still looking at a top portion of the field that is overwhelmingly dominated by Bant Company. 35% is an incredible portion of the field at this point.
One other thing to think about with this, though, is that Bant Company’s hold on the metagame has actually diminished. I like to think about this as the growth of alternatives. Before the Pro Tour, when we were looking at the SCG Tour® results, Baltimore and Columbus both had four and three of the Top 8 taken by Bant Company, and the full Top 32 even more wildly dominated by the deck, to the point that it was just so dominant that it seemed practically insurmountable. Osyp Lebedowicz may have been able to defeat Bant Company in the finals with G/W Tokens in Baltimore, but he may have been the most talented player in the room by some margin, and he maindecked three copies of Tragic Arrogance.
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (8)
Lands (25)
Spells (15)
The reason that the metagame is likely diversifying is simply more options that are powerful and explored. The two great examples of this are the various B/G Delirium decks and U/R Fevered Visions decks.
Creatures (15)
- 1 Den Protector
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 2 Sylvan Advocate
- 3 Tireless Tracker
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 4 Grim Flayer
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (17)
Sam Pardee’s deck, for example, is a highly honed example of the archetype at large. This deck is capable of taking a game long and then closing it out with the overpowering nature of Emrakul, the Promised End. If you try to find anything remotely similar to Pardee’s list prior to the Pro Tour, about the closest you can get is Todd Stevens’s G/B Delirium from several weeks ago. In comparison, Stevens is not as well-built to go long, and while it is using some powerful effects with Deathmist Raptor and Den Protector, it isn’t truly doing devastating plays but rather working a value angle in its long game.
The emergence of a tuned build of this archetype changes the metagame because the additional options it provides makes “Bant Company or no” a bit less oppressive when it comes to your choices. The B/G Delirium deck played by Pardee can fight the early game of an opponent like Bant Company and put forth a scary late game. In many ways, this makes it a classic midrange deck, able to fight the game in every stage with relevant cards for the entirety of the game.
The sub-archetypes hidden in this 19% of the metagame – Jund Delirium and Abzan – are both basically using the same shell, but having alternative, powerful cards to be able to add to the mix. For Jund Delirium, this means having fodder for Distended Mindbender in the form of Pilgrim’s Eye, and for Abzan, this means access to premium planeswalkers and Anguished Unmaking.
While these are significant differences in terms of the capabilities of these decks, they don’t fundamentally alter the core of what the deck is doing: playing powerful cards, gaining card advantage, and taking over the battlefield.
On an entire different end of the spectrum is the newly arrived U/R Thermo-Alchemist deck, brought to the forefront of our awareness by Pedro Carvalho.
Here is the top-placing U/R Thermo-Alchemist deck, taking third at GP Rimini:
Creatures (9)
Lands (24)
Spells (27)
This build is only ever so slightly different than Pedro Carvalho’s build in the maindeck, replacing Thing in the Ice with Stormchaser Mage and running a slightly different sideboard package but otherwise essentially the same deck.
I predict this deck is just going to continue to grow in popularity. Prior to the Pro Tour, nothing like this had really existed. I recall sitting next to Pedro a few times at the Pro Tour, watching his deck play, and at one point saying out loud to him, “I love what you’ve done with this deck – I couldn’t get my own build to work.”
Sadly, I played him in the last round of Day One, barely losing in Game 3 to a topdecked burn spell for the win for him. So it goes.
Without any real precedent of note before the Pro Tour, this deck is still getting into people’s consciousness. There are a surprising number of truly difficult choices for the deck, and once people attain more skill and understanding of how to pilot it, I expect to see it as an even bigger player in the metagame.
Take, for example, Simon Enckels’s choice to play Sphinx’s Tutelage in the sideboard. Where would you bring in this card? What would you take out?
Personally, I love Sphinx’s Tutelage as a card. But even with a lot of experience playing Tutelage decks, I’m a bit hard-pressed to determine which matchups I’d bring the card in. Is it for the more controlling matchups? Is it to overload Dromoka’s Command? You tell me!
One of the intriguing surprises to me is the way that Emerge decks actually only took up a sliver of the metagame. All of these decks were simply a wildly exciting archetype to witness from the Pro Tour, and I simply expected them to come to a level of dominance in the metagame that would be noteworthy.
I think the likely reason for this lack of dominance is simply put: Bant Company isn’t required to stay the same. It can change. Take this build from Grand Prix Rimini champion Arne Huschenbeth:
Creatures (27)
- 2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 4 Reflector Mage
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 2 Archangel Avacyn
- 3 Tireless Tracker
- 3 Duskwatch Recruiter
- 4 Spell Queller
- 3 Selfless Spirit
Lands (25)
Spells (8)
Ojutai’s Command, Clash of Wills, and Summary Dismissal. All of these cards are excellent against Elder Deep-Fiend. Elder Deep-Fiend, unlike many of the emerge creatures, doesn’t gain any card advantage on its own. In conjunction with a Kozilek’s Return it can wipe a battlefield, but Bant Company still has access to Selfless Spirit to fight that. On the other hand, the Deep-Fiend tosses away a card to get used, and if that card is stopped (let alone runs into an Ojutai’s Command!), it can signal the beginning of the end.
I’m heading to a tournament this weekend, and I’m doing the same thing I was doing at GP Portland: I’m waffling between three decks. At Portland, I made the mistake of choosing a deck that had a weaker Bant Company matchup, and I paid for it, failing to win a single game versus Bant Company. If I had had a better sense of the metagame, I wouldn’t have made that mistake.
The Invitational will be underway by the time you read this, but there are also Opens and Classics to think about. Wherever you’re competing, think about the metagame, and do what you can to apply that knowledge to your deck selection. I won’t be at the Invitational, but regardless I know I will be doing that metagame thinking. Wish me luck, and good luck at your own events this weekend!