Innovations - Pro Tour Philly And The Modern Debut

When we last left our hero, he had just finished third at GP Pittsburgh and was about to make his way across Pennsylvania towards Pro Tour Philadelphia. The car was filled to capacity, with Gerry Thompson, Matt Sperling, Michael Jacob, Brian DeMars, and myself. We decided to stop in Harrisburg for a couple days to test, at a hotel where we were offered a pretty substantial discount if we paid in cash…

Our trip had begun on a strange note, with Matt Sperling introducing us to some game that features cards asking very involved and strange questions designed to provoke conversation. The first question was a long, roundabout way of asking, “If you were in some tragic plane crash and the actual only way to survive was to eat some of the people that didn’t survive the crash, would you prefer someone old or a baby?” The follow-up to it was “Would it bother you if you liked the taste?”

Needless to say, this topic did not exactly “ignite the party,” but Sperling was ready with a follow-up question. “Let’s say you have been an assassin for years and that your rate is $10,000 per hit. Someone offers you 20x your rate to torture the target in addition to killing them. Would you accept? He didn’t like my answer, “I would do whatever the gamemaster decided that also decided the first portion of the question.”

At this point, we ask if there are any questions that are a little more positive. After all, eating babies and torture are not exactly good times. The follow-up suggested that a diabolical, but honest kidnapper has imprisoned us in an attic that is 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We are bound hand and foot, and after 24 hours of no food or water, we are presented with three glasses of ice water. The diabolical, but honest kidnapper puts what amounts to Iocane Powder in one of the three drinks (colorless, odorless, tasteless, and among the more deadly poisons known to man). He then mixes them up, out of sight. Then he brings them back and sets them in front of you, a straw in each. He promises to release you in 48 hours. Do you take a chance on drinking one of the glasses of water, or do you take your chances with no water?

Long story short, best answer: “I drink all three, in time, having spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane Powder.” Next best answer, “Try to track what the ice cubes look like in poison glass.” Next best answer, “Yes, as not drinking water for three days in a 100 degree attic is more than 67% likely to kill you.” Final answer, “How about we play twenty questions about a Magic card?”

My testing for this event included discussion with that car, as well as Gabriel Nassif, Paul Rietzl, and Drew Levin, who met up with us later. Our group had no shortage of talent, but we were short on people who had much time for testing in person, with only part of the group able to even test during the four days between Pittsburgh and Philly. The short prep time and our inability to test all together left us splintered, with three pilots on Zoo, two on Cloudpost, two on Twin, and Nassif on his Tezzeret home-brew. Sperling’s Boom / Bust Zoo was pretty solid, as was MJ and Gerry’s Cloudpost (with Through the Breach), but overall, we certainly didn’t have anything significantly better than anything else.

I ended up playing Twin, as it was getting the best results in testing, largely due to how heavily we weighted Cloudpost. This was probably the biggest mistake made during testing, as a strategy more in line with my preparation for Paris would have been far superior. In Paris, we knew that Valakut would be the biggest deck on day one, but we figured it would be targeted by a ton of hate and that it would be hard to beat, while also beating everyone else. As a result, we accepted a small weakness to the format’s most popular deck (mostly game one). We got so hung up on trying to beat Cloudpost decks, we didn’t see the solution was to lose game one to Cloudpost in time.

What beats Cloudpost game one? Basically just fast combo, hence the format turning out the way it did. Cloudpost wasn’t level one; it was level zero. Fast combo turned out to be level one. I wanted to play the Esper Teachings deck I was getting solid results with, but it struggled with Cloudpost, particularly game one. Not wanting to be hardheaded and force control when it wasn’t there, I accepted that Twin was the deck that seemed to give the best results 48 hours before the event.

In retrospect, I should have stuck to my guns, tuning and playing the Esper deck. By playing Twin, I was just at level one with no advantage over the field. Twin isn’t a deck that gives me room to outplay anyone either. With no technology, no opportunity to outplay people, and a deck that isn’t actually any better than the average, I basically nullified a number of my biggest advantages.

If I had played Esper, there is no question I could have bombed out. The thing is, by playing to my strengths, I do give myself far better chances for spiking an event. When there is a deck like Caw-Blade, it can definitely change the equation, but this format doesn’t have anything like that. Instead of giving myself even a 15-20% chance to spike an event, I gave myself the actual average. With 451 players and only 8 making Top 8, those are not great odds. A record of 4-4? Not surprising.

Here is what Paul and I played in the Modern portion of PT Philadelphia:

Twin

Patrick Chapin

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (13)

Lands (22)

Spells (25)

Sideboard

I ended up 2-3 in Modern, with only two particularly notable games. First, in my round three feature match against Jon Finkel, I was on the draw game one. My opening hand was Pestermite, Splinter Twin, Firespout, Steam Vents, Cascade Bluffs, Island, and Gemstone Caverns. I suspected that Jon was playing Ascension, as many of the other NY guys were as well. I decided to exile Firespout to Gemstone Caverns, thinking this was the safe play, ensuring that I had enough land for a turn-three kill. Â

Jon made 24 Goblin tokens on turn two.

My other interesting match was against a Jund player in the 1-3 bracket. I was down a game and had mulliganed. My Pestermite was Thoughtseized turn one, and my next three draw steps were Splinter Twins 2-4. It was so tempting to just give up. To make the pain stop. I was so close to saying, “Okay,” and dropping. You know what, though? Actually, it’s not okay!

Jund didn’t have any pressure, so we just sort of hung out for a while. I put one of my Splinter Twins on a Spellskite for “val.” I discarded my hand after a few Blightnings, and it was time to go into beatdown mode. Deceiver Exarch combined with his three Thoughtseizes, two shocklands, and two fetchlands put him on an eight-turn clock. Spellskite plus Splinter Twin is actually pretty sweet against Bolts and Terminates (though less so against Maelstrom Pulse). Eventually a Treetop Village “stabilized” the board, but Pestermite was able to tap it and keep the beats going. The following turn I dropped a Blood Moon to get rid of his blocker and finish the job!

My comeback was quickly snuffed out in the final round of draft. I had won my first two with a pretty decent U/G tempo deck but could not defeat B/R with the following sequence game one:

Turn 1: Wring Flesh
Turn 2: Incinerate
Turn 3: Combust
Turn 4: Diabolic Tutor…
Turn 5: Zombie Goliath
Turn 6: Deathmark
Turn 7: Doom Blade
Turn 8: Consume Spirit
Turn 9: Grave Titan (He waited until I had tapped out, playing around Mana Leak)

My Pro Tour was over, despite having hardly begun. I have scrubbed out of my fair share of Pro Tours, but there is no question that it felt hollow and sickening to have just played relatively stock Twin, getting what I surely deserved. Twin is a good deck, no question, and two people made top eight with it, but it doesn’t change the fact that I had thrown any potential advantage out the window for the most minimal of values. Still, there is no teacher like experience, and I am wiser for the experience. I am not looking to force control at every event in the future, but I have seen that the threshold needs to be higher for playing the “mainstream deck,” if it isn’t what I want to play.

As for Modern itself, I am still super happy WotC made the move they did. Did it help me? No, and not just because I didn’t do well. I would have been alright with endless Caw-Blade mirrors, but it wouldn’t have been good for the game. A number of people asked me if I thought I was advantaged with so little lead in time and the deepest card pool ever. Looking back, this “advantage” was miniscule in a format so slanted against control, where my greatest strengths lie. Additionally, I guess I was just another guy who needed a few more days to be happy with his deck. One thing is for sure, I am definitely looking to test significantly more in person before Worlds.

Let’s take a look at the debut of Modern on a big stage. First, the day one metagame breakdown:

Archetypes	Day One Metagame
Cloudpost	19.7%
Twin	16.8%
Zoo	15.6%
Affinity	7.7%
Ascension	6.5%
Blazing Shoal	4.8%
Storm	4.6%
Elves	3.1%
Hive Mind	2.9%
Melira/Pod	2.6%
Jund	2.2%
Junk/Rock/Doran	1.9%
RDW/Boros	1.7%
Death Cloud	1.7%
Living End	1.4%
Misc. Aggro	2.6%
Misc. Combo	2.2%
All Control Decks	2.2%

One thing’s for sure, there is definitely diversity in this format. With fifteen mainstream archetypes and nothing over 20%, we are definitely talking about a format with a lot of variety. What is troubling is the quantity of combo decks to non-combo decks. Eight out of the ten most popular archetypes were combo decks. Luis Scott-Vargas and I shared a view that the format is basically Cloudpost, two aggro decks, and twenty-one Belcher decks.

If that was what day one looked like, what about day two?

Archetypes	Day Two Metagame
Zoo	19.9%
Twin	18.5%
Cloudpost	11.9%
Affinity	11.3%
Ascension	7.3%
Storm	6.0%
Blazing Shoal	4.6%
Melira/Pod	3.2%
Death Cloud	2.7%
Elves	2.0%
Living End	2.0%
Junk/Rock/Doran	1.3%
Hive Mind	0.7%
Jund	0.7%
RDW/Boros	0.0%
Misc. Aggro	3.3%
Misc. Combo	1.3%
All Control Decks	3.3%

Just look at that drop-off for Cloudpost! I would have loved, loved, loved to have played Esper Control. Maybe I would have randomly got paired up against Cloudpost early and dropped down into the Cloudpost bracket, but if I managed to escape that fate earlier, I would have had excellent chances of continuing to dodge. Zoo, Twin, and Affinity? Sign me up! Red Deck Wins and Boros put zero people into day two? Interesting. Obviously there is also a draft portion, but it is a non-zero amount of information.

Now, let’s take a look at the success rate of each archetype (thanks to Rashad Miller for data), meaning what percentage of players playing it made Day Two. Due to small sample sizes throwing things off, I have divided this chart into two parts. The top half deals with decks played by at least ten pilots; the bottom features the rest. As the average was 36.2%, any deck with a higher success rate performed above average, and those lower were below average.

Archetypes	Success Rate
Affinity	53.1%
Storm	47.4%
Zoo	46.2%
Melira/Pod	45.4%
Ascension	40.7%
Twin	40.0%
Blazing Shoal	35.0%
Elves	23.1%
Cloudpost	22.0%
Hive Mind	8.3%
Fewer than 10 Pilots	Â
Death Cloud	57.1%
Living End	50.0%
Junk/Rock/Doran	25.0%
Jund	11.1%
RDW/Boros	0.0%
Misc. Aggro	45.4%
Misc. Combo	22.2%
All Control Decks	55.5%
Average	36.2%

As you can see, for the most part, the popular decks tended to do well. The decks that did poorly did really poorly. This leaves the median archetype actually at about 40%, which is probably a better standard than the 36.2% figure (since it is no great feat to get the free wins from beating up on Mono-Red, Hive Mind, or Jund).

Let’s look at the format as a whole from another angle.

Strategies	Day One	Day Two	Success Rate
Combo	64.4%	60.2%	33.8%
Aggro/Midrange	33.4%	36.5%	40.3%
Control	2.2%	3.3%	55.5%

As you can see, this is not exactly the pinnacle of balanced formats. Still, despite tons of combo layered on top of us, aggro still managed to improve as a whole going into day two, as did control (albeit with a small sample size). Do I think the format will correct itself?

Well, one thing is for sure, Cloudpost is a massive problem that forces the format into this extremely unhealthy turn-three kill space. Despite Cloudpost producing less than impressive results, the constraints it puts on the format are extremely undesirable. It is possible that given enough time, the format can stabilize into this space where 15% of the field plays a deck that 50% of the field can’t interact with but doesn’t usually win the tournament (i.e. Valakut). I just challenge the notion that this is a “Good Thing.”

Here is an example of one of the many Cloudpost decks:

Breach Post

Jesse Hampton

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (20)

Lands (25)

Spells (15)

Sideboard

That these decks have inevitability vs. basically everyone forces everyone else into a racing position, which leads to the countless variations on turn three and four kill decks we are seeing. It is important to remember that it is not about banning “what’s best.” After all, Wild Nacatl did well, and there is no trouble there. One of the goals of the Modern format was to clamp down on turn three kills. The first wave of bannings certainly produced a unique and different format, but it was still extremely populated with turn three kills.

How do you solve it though?

The tough thing is how little overlap many of the combo decks have. Are you supposed to ban Preordain? Does that really accomplish what is desired? After all, control might also want Preordain, and even if combo loses Preordain, all that means is their Preordains get downgraded into Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand. That is really not the end of the world.

What about the Rituals? After all, if it weren’t for mana acceleration like Rite of Flame, people wouldn’t actually be winning on turn two or three nearly as often. It is a little troubling that there are so many of them, but perhaps starting with Rite of Flame would help slow things down. Here is an example:

Pyromancer Ascension

Max SjÃ¶blom

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Lands (18)

Spells (42)

Sideboard

And here is an even faster version from Jon Finkel (and Zvi and the rest of the Team Mythic guys):

Swath Ascension

Jon Finkel

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Lands (14)

Spells (46)

Sideboard

Still, not even every Pyromancer Ascension deck plays Rite of Flame, to say nothing of Splinter Twin, which is arguably the “best” combo deck. For reference:

Splinter Twin

Samuele Estratti

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (11)

Lands (23)

Spells (26)

Sideboard

The Swath decks don’t really care that much about Ascension, and the Ascension decks don’t really care that much about Rite of Flame. Splinter Twin doesn’t care about either, and even if you banned the enchantments (Swath, Ascension, and Twin), more enchantments would just rise up in time (like Hive Mind). In addition, we still haven’t even touched on Blazing Shoal. The Blazing Shoal deck combines infect creatures with Blazing Shoal and red cards that cost nine or more for a one-hit kill (sometimes on turn two). Here is an example:

Poison Shoal

Sam Black

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (5)

1 Progenitus
4 Blighted Agent

Lands (19)

Spells (36)

Sideboard

Sam’s first top eight deck was primarily designed by Poker Pro, John Stolzmann, who managed to top 50 himself at his first tournament “back.” I talked with John a bit about his deck in the week leading up to event and suggested Dragonstorm over Reaper King, which would allow him to play Peer Through Depths. It is definitely super cool to see both Sam and John achieve such great success. I have a feeling both of these players are on the rise.

So basically, I think Cloudpost should go, as it is the single biggest reason why two-thirds of the field is combo. When there is a combo deck with inevitability that always wins on turn five, everyone starts playing turn four kill decks. When everyone plays turn four kill decks, people start racing to be the turn three kill deck, especially with almost no control to keep them in check. Modern is supposed to be a format where the turn three kills are clamped down (Vintage is supposed to be against turn ones and Legacy turn twos). Banning Cloudpost would help alleviate the stifling influence, but there is still too much potential for turn three kills with Blazing Shoal and the many various U/R combo decks.

Banning Blazing Shoal is an easy fix for that problem, but the various U/R combo decks are a trickier problem. My suggestion is to ban Rite of Flame, if anything, as it is the poster boy for turn two kills (to say nothing of turn three kills). It won’t “solve” the problem but will slow the format down a bit.

To really slow the format down a turn, I suspect the banning of blue card advantage engines ought to be loosened. Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Ancestral Visions, and Bitterblossom (and even Jitte) were the ways that blue decks could have realistically gained some advantage once they survive a few turns. There are others, like Teachings, Thirst for Knowledge, Gifts Ungiven, Compulsive Research, Careful Consideration, and so on, but they pale in comparison. I am not sure it is “vital,” but there is no question that giving blue mages one of these three back would go a long way towards incentivizing more than 2% of the field to play control (which is counting Mono-W “Control,” Tezzeret, and Faeries as “control.”)

Bitterblossom may be the most effective for propping a deck that combats combo, while not hurting aggro. The problem there? It is very possible the cure is worse than the ailment in many people’s eyes.

What about Ancestral Vision? This might be the most likely candidate. The problem? It is not nearly as interactive as Jace, the Mind Sculptor (which actually meaningfully interacts with creatures, while punishing the creatureless). Jace’s power level is probably too unhealthy, but I am sure if you ask most people, the majority would probably say “He wouldn’t even be good.” They would be wrong, of course, but at level one, Jace seems “too slow” for Modern. Â

My suggestion? Ban Cloudpost, Blazing Shoal, and probably Rite of Flame, and unban Ancestral Vision or Jace, the Mind Sculptor (preferably Jace, obv…).

What about Mental Misstep, you say? Please. That would be a monumental misstep on Wizards’ part. The goal is to scale back the combo decks, not destroy the possibility of playing aggro. Look what Mental Misstep has done to Legacy! Is that really what you want to have happen to Modern?

Jitte is another card that would help control, but would hurt aggro far more. The goal isn’t to “make control good,” and in fact Wizards surely wants aggro to be even better. The goal is just to slow the format down a beat, easing up on the fast combo decks.

As for the aggro decks, a third of the field playing aggro isn’t “bad,” but I am sure Wizards’ would prefer that number to be more like 50% or more. Additionally, the aggro decks are really just Zoo, Affinity, and a bunch of bad decks. Day One featured 23.3% Zoo and Affinity, 10.1% all other aggro and midrange decks combined. Day Two saw those numbers change dramatically, to 31.2% Zoo and Affinity, 5.1% all other aggro and midrange decks. The world where Ravagers wearing Cranial Platings are the good guys is kind of messed up by definition. Here is an example of one of our “heroes:”

Mono-Red Affinity

Chikara Nakajima

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (28)

Lands (14)

Spells (18)

Sideboard

And of course, our other “hero,” Wild Nacatl (as piloted by Wrapter):

Counter-Cat

Josh Utter-Leyton

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (18)

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Lands (22)

Spells (18)

Sideboard

This hybrid of Naya and Bant is quite interesting and deserving of its own column, but I will leave that to Kibler (who top 16’ed with it, himself), who will surely do the deck the justice it deserves, later this week.

Overall, this was an interesting and exciting unveiling of the Modern format. Are there some kinks to work out? No question, but we are definitely seeing the makings of a format that is more Legacy than Extended. Despite the overabundance of combo decks, the variety we saw was inspiring, and there were definitely some sweet brews putting up decent numbers (albeit with small sample sizes). My hope is that WotC continues to attack the decks that do something degenerate by the third turn (even if it is just a Primeval Titan or Scapeshift leaving someone with Eye of Ugin and 20 mana) and lets the rest of the format do its thing.

That is just about it for me, today. I am going to head back over to the site and battle Sperling, Ochoa, and Pikula some more Vintage (I am still battering with Skullclamp). Another silver lining to missing day two was having time to play in a 62-man win-an-iPad Standard tournament. My girlfriend wanted an iPad anyway, so mise. Here is the deck I won the event with, defeating four Caw-Blades, a Mono-Red, a BUG Pod, and a U/G Infect. My only loss came at the hands of U/R Twin.

No-Combo RUG

Patrick Chapin

Test deck on 09-11-2011

Modern

Creatures (26)

Lands (22)

Spells (12)

Sideboard

My only change from the list I ran last week in Pittsburgh was swapping the Flame Slash that had been in the sideboard, for a fourth Obstinate Baloth. I won the event, so not surprisingly, I continue to be pleased with the archetype. It is weak to Twin, but it’s just so good against Caw-Blade.

Congrats to Josh Utter-Leyton and Sam Black on their Top 8s, as well as Brian Kibler, Jon Finkel, Tom Martell, and Brian DeMars on their Top 16s. Thanks again to WotC for the interesting format and for continuing to find ways to shake things up. See you guys next week!

Patrick Chapin
“The Innovator”