Magical Hack: Big In Japan

This past week saw an interesting Grand Prix event held in Tolouse, brought to you by the letter “D” (for “dominance”) and the country of Japan, as the trend begun over a year ago of Japanese dominance at Grand Prix tournaments that previously went completely unattended by players from the land of the Rising Sun. Reigning Player of the Year Kenji Tsumura was crowned with his second Limited Grand Prix win in as many months, leaving his self-proclaimed weak Limited game behind as just so much litter on the path to victory. For those who doubt the power of the Japanese, that’s two Grand Prix wins and a Team Trios Pro Tour victory in the bag for a nation about as large as the state of California, versus not quite as many recently for the rest of the world as a whole combined. Since the advent of the Players’ Club and the obvious benefits of high Pro Tour Points in enabling the “Pro Tour Lifestyle”, the nation of Japan has completely changed how they are perceived in this game, as their burgeoning talents overtake even the best players from other nations.

Some would say that it’s just a fluke, that these things just happen sometimes and every country gets its chance to shine in the spotlight with a couple good events in a row. However, I seem to recall much the same argument applied to the early wins of Kai Budde, and it was not until the third or fourth title under his belt… or perhaps the second Player of the Year title… or, even more likely, not until he bested Jon Finkel in a Top Eight match… that the German Juggernaut was given his due credit. Some have even gone further, vaguely discrediting some of the players from the Japanese contingent on a popular website, without a twinge of proof other than supposition saying unequivocally that some of these players have cheated. I don’t think, however, that even a tarnished pedigree or two can explain away the large-scale success of the Japanese players en masse, and these rumors follow everyone around inevitably… Joseph “Mouth” Kambourakis told me a nice one about Antoine Ruel cheating with Psychatog on the stack and discarding Circular Logic to the not-yet-in-play Psychatog to counter a counterspell on the Psychatog itself with just one Blue open, and whether that is accusation or truth it’s still the kind of thing that follows in the wake of success. If it happened once or twice, maybe that could be the explanation… but Godzilla has left Tokyo and decided to take on the rest of the world, and it would seem that Jack Bauer does not make house calls to France.

Besides feeling that kudos should be given where they are obviously due, as Kenji and friends took on Europe and won, we also have the opportunity to follow up on last week’s exploration of Sealed Deck, in which it was posited that name players designing their decks in a certain way and succeeding might not be solid proof that there is “just one way” to go. Sure, they’ve done well as four-color spreads crammed full of the most powerful cards you can get your hands on, using delicate math and skillful mulligan decisions to navigate past the crashing manascrew that fickle Fate holds out to mere mortals. However, if that were all there were to the story, wouldn’t all the pros build their decks that way, and we’d have many more undefeated players to look at? Seventeen or eighteen at least, just going down the list of name players… so there has to be something more, or the element of chance, saying which exact list succeeded and which failed.

Having Byes is clearly a bonus; pretty much all the 8-0 players are big names you recognize or at least someone who walked in with a swagger and a few free wins. None of the Sealed Decks we have seen so far, to the best of my knowledge, were in the hands of a player who had the “misfortune” of playing Round 1, so that’s got to be a part of the story. Late entry into a tournament has in the past clearly affected the metagame, as the kinds of decks played by less skilled players fall away, and so at least some small part of it as well has to be the fact that the players coming in with three free wins have to put themselves up against the 3-0 metagame: extremely talented players like themselves, who will be looking to squeeze every last percentage point out of their Sealed Decks, or the kinds of decks that have already proven themselves with a few wins already, and thus presumably your better-than-average card pools. (What constitutes “better than average,” though, would frankly scare me… because even the “average” Sealed Decks I open present a plethora of choices and powerful things flying every which way, and having all that but more of it besides is a frightening concept indeed.)

Let’s have a look at the undefeated decks, shall we? The link to the MagictheGathering.com coverage of the undefeated decklists can be found here.

Shuhei Nakamura – B/U/g/w, two dual lands and one Karoo, with two Signets.

Olivier Ruel – G/U/B/r, three Karoos (one off-color), two Signets, Birds of Paradise, Verdant Eidolon.

Julien Soum – G/R/B, one off-color Karoo, two Signets, Civic Wayfinder.

Two out of the three had Moldervine Cloak, and the third had Selesnya Guildmage; power uncommons are a key thing to open, and those are two of the very best. Two of the three names would be known by pretty much anyone “in the know,” being considered up at the highest echelon of the professional circuit. But the question is, why is it the name we don’t recognize is the one that did well with a just-three-color deck, and the other two decks were the full-on four-color mash-up we’re now used to seeing in this format? Let’s compare the card quality and we’ll see:

Ruel / Nakamura – Top Quality Cards
Selesnya Guildmage
Helium Squirter
Bottled Cloister
Compulsive Research
Faith’s Fetters
2 Last Gasp
Ribbons of Night
Galvanic Arc
Moldervine Cloak

Ruel / Nakamura – High Quality Cards
Blind Hunter
Golgari Rotwurm
Orzhov Pontiff
Snapping Drake
Azorius First-Wing
2 Demon’s Jester
Wildsize
Birds of Paradise
Nullmage Shepherd
Stinkweed Imp
Szadek, Lord of Secrets
Torch Drake
Assault Zeppelid

Ruel / Nakamura – Solid (Role-Player) Cards
Greater Mossdog
Ostiary Thrull
Terraformer
Tidewater Minion
Transluminant
Simic Ragworm
Twisted Justice
Centaur Safeguard
Drift of Phantasms
Dimir Infiltrator
Drooling Groodion
Dryad Sophisticate
Elves of Deep Shadow
Verdant Eidolon
Darkblast
Fists of Ironwood
Flight of Fancy
Strands of Undeath
Train of Thought

Ruel / Nakamura – Solid On-Color Cards Left in the Sideboard:
Bathe in Light (Nakamura; not very much White)
Consult the Necrosages (Nakamura)
Netherborn Phalanx (Nakamura)
Trial / Error (Nakamura)
Convolute (Ruel)
Infiltrator’s Magemark (Ruel; with five other Enchant Creature spells in his deck)
Muddle the Mixture (Ruel)
Telling Time (Ruel)
Voyager Staff (Ruel)
Enigma Eidolon (Ruel)
Sporeback Troll (Ruel)

Their decks fairly clearly built themselves once you get into the perspective of trying to look to squeeze in the greatest number of the best cards, even if the Japanese do play more Twisted Justices than the rest of the world. After picking a color to exclude entirely, and a color to dip into just for splashing, the decks effectively assemble into their configuration with just a very few actual decisions left to be made, figuring out what the base colors should be.

Julien Soum – Top Quality Cards
Seal of Fire
Wrecking Ball
Civic Wayfinder
Viashino Fangtail
Char
Hex
Moldervine Cloak

Julien Soum – High Quality Cards
Bramble Elemental
Lurking Informant
Mausoleum Turnkey
Indrik Stomphowler

Julien Soum – Solid (Role-Player) Cards
Drooling Groodion
Goblin Spelunkers
Greater Mossdog
Gruul Scrapper
Mourning Thrull
Scab-Clan Mauler
Shambling Shell
Transluminant
Clinging Darkness
Pyromatics
Scatter the Seeds

Julien Soum – Solid On-Color Cards Left in the Sideboard
Brainspoil
Gaze of the Gorgon
Ordruun Commando (no White)
Cytospawn Shambler
Drekavac
Slaughterhouse Bouncer

Julien Soum – Solid cards in other colors not played:
Clutch of the Undercity
Compulsive Research
Dimir Doppelganger
Faith’s Fetters
Divebomber Griffin
Flame-Kin Zealot
Goblin Flectomancer
Snapping Drake
Nightguard Patrol
Terraformer
Vacuumelt
Guardian of the Guildpact
Plumes of Peace
Wee Dragonauts
Simic Signet

Essentially, the deck that stands out from the crowd is the odd duck that didn’t get nearly as much mana fixers as you tend to see in other decks, using two Signets to fix its own mana and playing an off-colored Karoo, plus leaving a third Signet in the board. The power cards suggested themselves and the possibility of splashing a fourth color was not helped by any of the “free” fixers, his mana already looking like a 8 / 6 / 6 split evenly across the board, favoring his main color (Green) but unable to effectively stagger his mana without losing access to solid playables that are pulling his mana in too many directions.

He does have two more top-notch cards than seen in Ruel’s and Nakamura’s decks, with seven to their average of five a piece, but he has far fewer second-tier cards and an awful lot of filler in his deck, filler that happens to attack and block and apparently kill people much more consistently than it otherwise appears. The truly curious thing is to see the Brainspoil in the sideboard, as sub-par as it is generally thought to be, because it still kills any creature dead so long as it’s not enchanted. While Black is clearly the less-relevant color, thanks to the Red and Green pairing up for an aggressive combination, there’s still enough mana for a double-Black and there are plenty of generic filler guys that can end up cut out of the deck.

As it is, with the State Championships over and Coldsnap just around the corner, and this being one of numerous articles on the subject I’ve written at this point, further analysis of the Sealed Deck portion doesn’t lend new insights. It merely confirms that in most cases you will see the best decks being the ones that are crammed the fullest with the best cards, four-color concoctions that have mana-bases that would give weaker players the screaming mimis. Don’t fear the “greedy gobbler” situation of playing everything and counting on mana fixers and mulligan decisions to turn “potential for disaster” into “calculated risk mitigated by play-skill and correct mulligan assessment.” Let’s have a look at the Top 8 draft decks, then…

Kenji Tsumura – U/B/R, 2 Karoos (one off-color) / 2 Signet, 16 Lands (18 Mana)
Marijn Lybaert – U/R/W, 2 Karoo / 1 Signet, 17 Lands (18 Mana)
Adrian Oliviera – G/B/r, 1 Karoo (one off-color) / 2 Signet, 16 Lands (18 Mana)
Shuhei Nakamura – U/W/B, no fixers, 17 Lands (17 Mana)
Thomas Didierjean – B/W/R, 1 Dual / 1 Signet, 15 Lands (16 Mana)
Olivier Ruel – G/U/r/b, 1 Dual, 2 Karoo / 2 Signet, 16 Lands (18 Mana)
Julien Soum – R/G/U, 2 Karoo (one off-color), 16 Lands (16 Mana)
Shouta Yasooka – R/W/B/g, 1 Dual (off color). 2 Karoo (one off-color), 17 Lands (17 mana)

(Just one Karoo went unloved between all eight players’ sideboards, and every Signet in the draft got played. The player who left the Karoo at home could have played it, but chose to run just seventeen basic lands instead.)

Cutting to the top tiers of the tournament Red pushed forward the best, but with seven out of eight players having Red in their deck one way or the other that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Black and Blue were likewise heavily drafted for a main color, with nobody dabbling in Blue for the splash of a fourth color, and just one of the remaining three players touching Black cards lightly for extra power. Black and Blue both pushed on to see 60% of their practitioners advancing to the Top 4, while Blue pushed on just like Red and saw both of the players in the finals playing both Blue and Red together.

Looking at the mana counts as we advance forward, we start with 11 Karoos out of 8 players (1.375 double-lands per player), while the Top 4 had 5 Karoos out of 4 players (1.25 double-lands per player) and the finals had 4 Karoos out of 2 players (2 double-lands per player). With both of the finalists having two Karoos each, no matter who won we were still going to see two Karoos in the hands of the winner. Likewise we start with 8 Signets in the hands of 8 players (1 Signet per player), while the Top 4 had 5 Signets between 4 players (1.25 Signets per player). Cutting to the finals we see 3 Signets shared between 2 players (1.5 Signets per player) and the finalist was one of the three players to have two Signets in his mana base. Top 8 results show, Karoos and Signets are your friends! (But then, we saw all of this three weeks ago, in my Your Fate Is Sealed article here on Magical Hack. The numbers may be different but the trends are the same: more Karoos and more Signets and more mana sources in general as you climb the elimination rounds, a steady upward trend.)

More running with numbers: we started with 17.25 mana sources per player in the Top 8 (138 mana sources split eight ways), and the elimination of the first four players brings us to 17.75 mana sources per player (71, split four ways). The finals saw two players with 18 mana sources fighting, and obviously one of them won. (It’s in the rules: two men enter, one man leave.)

So… pick your Karoos as highly as you have to, because they are the one limiting factor that you aren’t going to have plenty of over the course of the draft: good cards are available in abundance, but good mana is to die for. The trend goes steadily upward favoring decks with sixteen lands (two of which are Karoos, but I bet people would play more if they happened to have been in the draft) and two Signets, giving enough mana fixing to help your consistency improve remarkably. People who take Karoos highly are the kinds of people who realize that they are the best kind of Vanguard card, the kind you can play in a regular deck that will often yield at least one card, one card for the “free” second mana it taps for, and one card for “your punk ass didn’t have to mulligan this time because you drafted good mana.” Unsurprisingly, the people with the fixers did well and those without it went home, but hey at least three of the four had a dual land to go with their $800 prize and qualification to Pro Tour: Kobe.

It seems to me that as fluid as the format is for Limited play, there are still some rules to follow if you want to do well, and we’ve covered them all already… mana is king, and shall dictate what you can and cannot get away with (or should even try). Soon we shall be drafting with Coldsnap, and we’ll have new lessons to learn for Draft play while we struggle along with the same Sealed Decks we’ve been seeing for some time.

Sean McKeown
[email protected]

My life has been extraordinary, blessed and cursed and won
Time heals but I’m forever broken, by and by the way…
Have you ever heard the words I’m singing in these songs?
It’s for the girl I’ve loved all along… can a taste of love be so wrong?
The Smashing Pumpkins, “Muzzle”