After myself missing Day 2 of the Grand Prix in Tom’s River, New Jersey by one round, my goal for this column then quickly became a comparison between the decks and archetypes seen in the elimination rounds of New Jersey as compared to the same just over one month ago in Sydney, Australia. More information and more time practicing has been evident since then, letting us look at the interesting twists and turns of the format as we learn its habits and secrets… and one could argue that the player quality in New Jersey was higher than in Sydney, with however many professionals aware of their Pro Points coming out of Kobe and trying to reach the next level by the time the last match is played and the World Champion crowned in one month’s time.
And if there’s one thing New Jersey showed, it’s that it’s a beautiful thing when a plan comes together. All too frequently, one will see forum posters responding to the “Drafting With Rich!” columns in a derogatory and negative way, even going so far as to say “Have you ever even drafted this format before!?!” Rich Hoaen is considered by most to be the best Limited player in the world, a title of respect not given out lightly amongst the highly-contentious Pro Tour players’ community… and has held this title, in ever-widening circles of recognition, for several years now. Rich made the finals of Grand Prix: New Jersey… in and of itself not an especially interesting fact, to those who are aware of the fact that if anyone in the room belonged there, it was him, but certainly an interesting fact when paired with the fact that he did not lose a single match in the two days of play leading up to the finals.
Sure, he didn’t have to play the first three. Yes, he conceded to help someone else out during the second draft, and the last round or two clearly didn’t matter. So, is going 6-0 with a Sealed Deck, then 3-0 with one draft deck, worthy of special recognition to get into the Top 8? Definitely… after all, most mages would at least break a sweat in doing so. So, to the readership of “Drafting With Rich!” who think Rich’s willful blindness of cards like Infiltrator’s Magemark – or his desire to float around the early picks of the draft trying to get a read on which colors are going to be the best for him to draft while sending good signals to his left in order to get hooked up solidly for “his” cards in packs 2 and 3 – are signs of ignorance or mental defect…
Because if one of the two of you has to be wrong, and you believe the person who is wrong is him and not you, you might do well to check your premise for faulty logic… the odds are not in your favor.
Admittedly, no one is perfect, and Rich is a person, not some liquid-metal construct designed to the singular purpose of going back in time to kill John Connor. But Rich’s performance remains consistent over time and change of format, which suggests that even on an off day his “off” is good enough to beat most anyone’s “on.” Rich isn’t the only one who’s a high-endurance machine at the tasks which they excel, either… after all, it’s only two weeks now into November, and Mark Rosewater has already finished his assignment for National Novel Writers’ Month with just two episodes of “The Great Design Search!”
Now that congratulations have been given where they are due, and my personal involvement in the event has been side-stepped to appear separately at a later date (… check back early next week for “Fast Times At Tom’s River High,” if Craig doesn’t censor every story I tell along the way), there are two things we usually look at to follow up the Grand Prix: the Day 1 Undefeated Decks, and the Top 8 Draft. It seems this week, however, The Ferrett has decided to be a better “me” than I am, or if nothing else he’d at least publish first. Rather than recall the lessons of the Great Lobachevsky, I’ll be side-stepping that entire commentary and just breaking the statistics down again specifically for comparison to Sydney.
Which is a shame… I am never forget the day that I first met the great Lobachevsky. In one word he told me secret of success in all things Magic: plagiarize!
For the record, the Day One Undefeated Decks can be found here.
…
John Pelcak
Colors: Green / Blue splash Black and Red
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 18 (plus Greenseeker, Gemhide Sliver)
Removal spells played: Pirate Ship, Clockwork Hydra, Mystic Snake, Assault / Battery, 2 Strangling Soot
Creature curve:
1cc: 1
2cc: 3 (4)
3cc: 1 (4)
4cc: 2
5cc: 3
6cc+: 4
Guillaume Cardin
Colors: Green / White splash Red
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17 (plus Prismatic Lens, Gemhide Sliver)
Removal spells played: Clockwork Hydra, Firemaw Kavu, Temporal Isolation, Lightning Axe, Disintegrate
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 6
3cc: 2 (3)
4cc: 3
5cc: 2
6cc+: 2
Andre Coimbra
Colors: Green/Red splash White and Blue
Common theme: None
Number of lands played: 15 (plus Search for Tomorrow, Weatherseed Totem, 2 Prismatic Lens)
Removal spells played: Clockwork Hydra, Fledgling Mawcor, Bogardan Hellkite, Flowstone Channeler, Grapeshot, Temporal Isolation, Assault / Battery
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 4
3cc: 3 (6)
4cc: 4 (5)
5cc: 3
6cc+: 1
Rich Hoaen
Colors: Black/Green splash Red
Common theme: None
Number of lands played: 17 (plus Greenseeker, Gemhide Sliver)
Removal spells played: Deathspore Thallid, Nightshade Assassin, Firemaw Kavu, Tendrils of Corruption, Sudden Spoiling, Feebleness, Assassinate
Creature curve:
1cc: 1 (2)
2cc: 4
3cc: 5
4cc: 2 (3)
5cc: 1
6cc+: 2
Conveniently, we have four heavy Green decks, so for starters we have a solid guess of what is going on… but when you look at the second color to go with it, things become less clear, as we have four decks and four different second colors. Each played a large number of removal spells, even if they had to stretch their definition of “removal spell” to get there… after all, Clockwork Hydra was not exactly well-respected at the start of Time Spiral Limited play, but has steadily earned respect as a colorless creature that can take out utility creatures or evasive threats like Trespasser il-Vec. Bombs were definitely opened, but by all appearances, that’s one of the facts of life of Time Spiral Limited, with five Rares, five Timeshifted cards, and plenty of great cards like Firemaw Kavu available to be opened.
Three out of four decks clearly support the theory that playing a lot of lands or pseudo-lands will be profitable, as it is incredibly vital to develop one’s mana properly in the early turns even if it increases the chance of flooding on mana if the game draws on longer… and the fourth deck doesn’t contradict it, per se, so much as do it in a different way. Three of the four decks have nineteen mana sources, once counting all the creatures that can tap for mana, find lands, and stuff like Search for Tomorrow, the Totems, and everyone’s favorite, Prismatic Lens. The fourth had a whopping twenty potential mana sources, telling us with reasonable certainty that at least as far as mana is concerned, more is in fact better. Nothing stands out as a truly ridiculous deck, no Jaya Ballard into Avatar of Woe “game-plans”, and only one seems to have opened the apparently all too common Sacred Mesa plus Disintegrate “Timeshifted” run, out of an entirely too large number… I saw or heard about at least a dozen such decks on the floor, which shouldn’t be surprising in a room with over 900 players, and only one of the twelve made it to 9-0.
The luck factor of opening truly ridiculous card-pools seems not to have come up, at least at the highest level. Good play and perhaps more importantly a keen understanding for the value of subtly powerful cards… after all, three out of four players employed Clockwork Hydra, instead of having three out of four players at 9-0 getting there on the backs of abusive decks stuffed filled to the brim with rares and Purps. The four names at 9-0 should most certainly tell you this is a skill-based format… after all, two of the four players at 9-0 met in the finals, and a third made the Top 8.
Draft, however, is a very different animal than Sealed Deck; every pack passed is a game of Choose Your Own Adventure, and each decision must be carefully weighed (or blissfully ignored, to keep on trucking with your prior plan) to feel how the tide is pulling. Sealed Deck is certainly skill-based, as card choices and overall strategy have to be chosen carefully and honed to the best of one’s ability… which, unsurprisingly, favors those with ability… but drafting is not a game of perfect information, like Sealed Deck, where not a single card is put into the deck until all the cards are known and examined. One month ago, we looked at the results of Grand Prix Sydney, which can be seen here (and please pay no mind to the clearly wrong science segue which begins the article, my search for an amusing anecdote to begin the column with a witty turn of phrase exploded in a flurry of bad science).
So, we will be looking to compare the same things: color matchups, deviations from the “standard assumed norm” of 17 Lands / 23 Spells, and (as in my article following up PT: Kobe, which can be found here) overall mana curve. The Top 8 draft decks can be seen here, for a complete list.
Guillaume Cardin — Top 8 Draft
Colors: Green / Black
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 16 (plus Gemhide Sliver, Weatherseed Totem, Chromatic Star, Scryb Ranger)
Removal spells played: Squall Line
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 5
3cc: 4
4cc: 4 (6)
5cc: 1
6cc+: 2
Rich Hoaen — Top 8 Draft
Colors: Green / Red double-splashing White and Black
Common Theme: Slivers. Lots and lots of Slivers.
Number of lands played: 17 (plus Foriysian Totem, 2 Greenseeker, Gemhide Sliver)
Removal spells played: Rift Bolt, Word of Seizing, Strangling Soot
Creature curve:
1cc: 2 (3)
2cc: 4
3cc: 0
4cc: 3
5cc: 4
6cc+: 3
Tim Aten — Top 8 Draft
Colors: Red / White
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 18
Removal spells played: Lightning Axe, Temporal Isolation, 2 Conflagrate, Sulfurous Blast, Flowstone Channeler
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 2 (3)
3cc: 6
4cc: 4
5cc: 2
6cc+: 1
Jason Imperiale — Top 8 Draft
Colors: Red / Blue
Common Theme: Suspend / Storm
Number of lands played: 17
Removal spells played: 3 Temporal Eddy, 2 Rift Bolt, Lightning Axe, Jaya Ballard — Task Mage, Goblin Skycutter, Fledgling Mawcor
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (3)
2cc: 2 (4)
3cc: 4 (6)
4cc: 4
5cc: 3
6cc+: 3
Shouta Yasooka — Top 8 Draft
Colors: White / Green
Common Theme: 17 (plus Greenseeker)
Number of lands played:
Removal spells played:
Creature curve:
1cc: 1 (4)
2cc: 1 (2)
3cc: 3 (5)
4cc: 3
5cc: 1
6cc+: 5
Andy Stokinger — Top 8 Draft
Colors: Green / Black splash Red
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17 (plus Weatherseed Totem, Search for Tomorrow)
Removal spells played: Disintegrate, Strangling Soot, Tendrils of Corruption, Phthisis, 2 Dark Withering, Assassinate, 3 Deathspore Thallid, Nightshade Assassin, Clockwork Hydra
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 4
3cc: 1
4cc: 4
5cc: 2
6cc+: 1 … plus the curve-fitting Wurmcalling.
John Pelcak — Top 8 Draft
Deck not included in coverage. (Blue-White.)
Gerry Thompson — Top 8 Draft
Colors: Blue / Red
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17
Removal spells played: 2 Orcish Cannonade; Psionic Blast; Grapeshot; Subterranean Shambler; Goblin Skycutter; Flowstone Channeler; Triskelavus; Draining Whelk; Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (… removal for Suspend spells, that is…)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 3
3cc: 3 (6)
4cc: 4
5cc: 2
6cc+: 4
Rich Hoaen (Four-color Slivers) defeats Shouta Yasooka (White-Green)
Tim Aten (Red-White) defeats Andy Stokinger (Green-Black splash Red)
Guillaume Cardin (Green-Black) defeats John Pelcak (Blue-White)
Jason Imperiale (Red-Blue) defeats Gerry Thompson (Red-Blue)
Rich Hoaen does not play Tim Aten.
Guillaume Cardin (Green-Black) defeats Jason Imperiale (Red-Blue)
Guillaume Cardin (Green-Black) defeats Rich Hoaen (Four-color Slivers)
Reinterpreted to just take a specific look at the mana counts played in each deck over the elimination rounds, we instead see:
Rich Hoaen (17 lands+4) defeats Shouta Yasooka (17 lands+1)
Tim Aten (18 lands) defeats Andy Stokinger (17 lands+2)
Guillaume Cardin (16 lands+4) defeats John Pelcak (unknown)
Jason Imperiale (17 lands) defeats Gerry Thompson (17 lands)
Rich Hoaen (17 lands+4) does not play Tim Aten (18 lands).
Guillaume Cardin (16 lands+4) defeats Jason Imperiale (17 lands)
Guillaume Cardin (16 lands+4) defeats Rich Hoaen (17 lands+4)
Average lands per round:
| Elimination Round | Lands per deck |
|
Quarterfinals
|
17 (+1.5)
|
|
Semifinals
|
17 (+2)
|
|
Finals
|
16.5 (+4)
|
|
Winner
|
16 (+4)
|
Up until the finals, there is (again) a very steady crawl of more mana… first 18.5 sources, then 19, up to a whopping average of 20.5 between the finalists’ decks. In the end the player who had one fewer land ended up winning, but the coverage does not suggest that there was any noticeable difference between the two as far as mana played out: no one was flooded, no one was truly short, or if they were it wasn’t mentioned in the coverage… sadly I had to leave while the Cardin versus Imperiale match was still playing out, and can’t say from a first-hand perspective whether there was things were close enough that the difference of one land between their decks would have swung it in either player’s favor. Both certainly had more mana in their decks than their opponents, which seems to have been well rewarded… perhaps that is the true secret benefit of playing Green, not just getting more mana acceleration early in the game to smooth the earliest turns out, but also some worthwhile things to spend that mana on… and Greenseekers if there are too many lands, letting you normalize your draw in favor of whichever effect you are currently experiencing, flood or screw. I suspect that it is no small mistake that saw Rich playing two of them, and that may yet prove to be something we’ll see more of in the future.
As far as color matchups, pairing this Top 8 draft’s results with that of Sydney doesn’t show us any particular patterns, besides noticing that this is the second Grand Prix in which Green-Black made it to the finals… with one win, versus a four-color Sliver build, and one loss, against Blue-Red. Green-Black beat Blue-Red in the semifinals here in New Jersey, beat Blue-White in the quarterfinals and lost to Red-White in the quarterfinals. So far, we have not seen any clear “best” color combination, with the main bone of contention being that many players seek to avoid Green… but some of the best players are more than content to play it, including the de-facto the best, and Green has stuck its way into the finals in two out of three Grand Prix… plus met in the finals of Pro Tour: Kobe.
Nothing is so out of balance that one combination is dominating, and by the looks of it, any of the two-color combinations could be the base of a reasonable deck. Black-Green and Blue-Red are apparently among the favored color combinations that are performing best, but if they have any advantage at all, it is at best a slight one. This weekend we get to see Grand Prix: Yamagata, to add another GP event to our compiling statistics, and if nothing else it will be interesting to see how many of the same faces from New Jersey travel half a world away to Japan to chase each other up and down the Pro Tour levels in the last Grand Prix of the 2006 Pro Tour season…
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com
And when his work is done – ha ha! – begins the fun
From Dnepropetrovsk to Petropavlovsk
By way of Iliysk and Novorossiysk
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk to Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run
Yes, to me the news will run
And then I write, by morning, night
And afternoon, and pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed
When he finds out I publish first!
Tom Lehrer, “Lobachevsky”