With the previous two events of note covering Legacy, Standard, and Shards/Conflux Limited, it seems we finally return to focusing on Extended this past weekend with a Grand Prix in Hanover, Germany. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and much like Pro Tour: Berlin it seems the Elf Menace has risen to the forefront of attention to claim the tournament, a tournament with some very interesting competitors in the Top 8 and a rather diverse metagame breakdown. With 128 competitors on Day 2, they broke down deck-by-deck as follows:
Zoo / Naya Burn 26
Faeries 24
Loam 14
TEPS 13
Elves! 13
Bant Aggro 11
Doran Rock 7
Swans 4
Affinity 3
Tezzerator 3
Slide 2
R/G AggroLoam 2
All-In Red 1
Sullivan Red 1
Jund Token 1
R/G/U Aggro 1
Merfolk 1
Ancient Ziggurat.dec 1
Either seventeen or 8een distinct archetypes came to play, depending on whether you consider Naya Zoo to be different than Domain Zoo, as the coverage didn’t specify any difference between the two in the metagame breakdown. If you wanted to split hairs, you could also ask at the difference between Doran Rock and Loam, as they might be the same decks to within fifty or so cards of each other with the key difference being that one has Doran and some white lands.
Given the Top 8, if we wanted to be snarky we could say the most interesting thing about this deck archetype breakdown is the fact that it lists three copies of Tezzerator had made Day 2, giving us our first clear proof that someone besides Kenny Oberg wins matches with the deck, as following up from PT: Berlin it seemed that Tezzerator was on a lot of minds as an interesting and innovative deck… and then nobody else could actually win with it.
When we get to the Top 8, we see the following results:
Lino Burgold — Winner — Elves Combo
(Defeated Gaudenis Vidugiris [Some Level Blue], Karim Bauer [Knight of the Reliquary Dredge Loam], Ondra Posolda [Naya Aggro])
Gaudenis Vidugiris — Runner-Up — Some Level Blue
(Defeated Lukas Kraft [Knight of the Reliquary Dredge Loam], Helmut Summersberger [Faeries with Tarmogoyf]; defeated by Lino Burgold [Combo Elves])
Karim Bauer — Semifinalist — Knight of the Reliquary Dredge Loam
(Defeated Kenny Oberg [Tezzerator]; defeated by Lino Burgold [Combo Elves])
Lukas Kraft — Semifinalist — Knight of the Reliquary Dredge Loam
(Defeated Pascal Vieren [Combo Elves]; defeated by Gaudenis Vidugiris [Some Level Blue]
Kenny Oberg — Quarterfinalist — Tezzerator
(Defeated by Karim Bauer [Knight of the Reliquary Dredge Loam])
Pascal Vieren — Quarterfinalist — Combo Elves
(Defeated by Lukas Kraft [Knight of the Reliquary Dredge Loam])
Helmut Summersberger — Quarterfinalist — Faeries with Tarmogoyf
(Defeated by Gaudenis Vidugiris [Some Level Blue])
Ondra Posolda — Quarterfinalist — Naya Aggro
(Defeated by Lino Burgold [Combo Elves])
Instead of a diverse metagame with as many as 8een different archetypes, we see a Top 8 that has a lot of things in common with itself: three levels of Blue decks, a Naya Aggro deck, and two copies each of Reliquary Loam and Combo Elves.
To the PTQ-level player, these results will no doubt affect the metagame’s movement, as it is a distinct change from the way the metagame has been driving lately. Elves has slowly but surely been encroaching on the format again, quietly putting up good results were at the start of the season the deck seemed to be entirely dead in the metagame, and a promising result by Elves is sure to increase both the number of Elves decks you see at local PTQs as well as the number of “anti-Elves” decks you see at local PTQs as well: more Faeries than before, and perhaps a return to Domain Zoo over Naya Zoo as Naya Zoo is very ill-equipped to deal with Elves but Domain Zoo has a wider variety of tools to access such as Shadow Guildmage and Tidehollow Sculler thanks to its greedier mana-base.
One thing also quite interesting to note is that Affinity wasn’t on the radar. Affinity was growing in popularity consistently among the PTQ results, and to all appearances hit its peak about two weeks ago. Now it managed to field three copies out of 128 on Day Two, out of who knows how many possible robot overlords playing on Day One… and zero copies in the Top 8. With Affinity falling off the radar at the moment to focus on Elves instead, and with potentially more Faeries decks rising to the challenge of beating those Elves decks, Affinity may very well begin to mount a resurgence: it is strong when the preparations against it are weak, and worth playing against a field that has one of its better matchups present in greater numbers.
But more interestingly to me, we can compare decks over time and see how they have developed. We may make fun of the Tezzerator deck because nobody but Kenny Oberg does well with it,
5 Snow-Covered Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Chrome Mox
2 Academy Ruins
2 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Great Furnace
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Tolaria West
4 Trinket Mage
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Condescend
3 Cryptic Command
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Spell Snare
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Vedalken Shackles
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Pithing Needle
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
Sideboard:
3 Ancient Grudge
3 Firespout
2 Future Sight
3 Stifle
2 Threads of Disloyalty
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Trinisphere
Tezzerator is a deck that, much like The Rock, either succeeds or fails based on how well it tweaks itself to fit the environment around it… and thus, while I never expect to want to play Tezzerator myself unless I can legally change my name to that of someone who actually succeeds with the deck, I nonetheless find it highly informative. Kenny’s changes to the deck since PT: Berlin are as follows:
+1 Polluted Delta
+1 Seat of the Synod
+1 Tolaria West
-1 Snow-Covered Island
-1 Steam Vents
-1 Miren, the Moaning Well
Minor changes to the manabase; Kenny added a fetchland over a Steam Vents as this presumably costs less life overall those times you need the land to come into play untapped, and cut an Island for a Seat of the Synod to be fetched with Tezzeret or Trinket Mage. Miren was either too slow or just didn’t come up often enough to really be relevant, by all appearances, so he replaced it with a re-buy on his other utility lands by way of Tolaria West as a singleton.
+3 Condescend
+1 Chalice of the Void
+1 Cryptic Command
+1 Engineered Explosives
-3 Stifle
-1 Venser, Shaper Savant
-1 Aether Spellbomb
-1 Trinisphere
Here the change is more like what I wanted to see: moving Trinisphere to the sideboard presumably means Kenny doesn’t expect to face a lot of Storm Combo matchups, and while Trinisphere might perhaps fight Elves Combo as well, another Engineered Explosives and another Chalice of the Void is coming into the deck and both are better at fighting Elves anyway. The inclusion of Aether Spellbomb in Berlin tells us that the deck is preparing against a wide-open metagame that might conceivably include anything… but as it narrows down from virgin format at a Pro Tour to well-heeled format at a Grand Prix months later, the Spellbomb clearly wasn’t needed. Stifle likewise went the way of the Trinisphere, as Storm combo is only a minor player and in many cases Stifle can be hard to trade for significant value when you’re trying to control the game… which is presumably why it traded into the early-game counterspell Condescend, to counter a turn-two spell with value, showing that we have a much faster metagame than a “wide open” one and the update to Tezzerator is made with that in mind. Venser just wasn’t viewed as being as powerful as the extra Cryptic Command, and given the fact that we face either aggressive creature decks, other Blue decks, or Loam decks, it’s hard to argue against that change.
To the sideboard!
The Trinisphere and Stifles go from the main-deck to the sideboard, showing that Kenny does still value them: the decks they were meant to fight still exist, they just aren’t populous enough to warrant a main-deck slot that is hard to leverage against everyone else, or playing Stifle over a utility counterspell to ease up the early game beatdown pressure. Ancient Grudge disappears from four-of necessity against Affinity to three-of; presumably the third Engineered Explosives in the main covers the post-sideboard changes here, as EE tends to take down the most dangerous cards anyway (Ravager and Plating, and to a lesser extent Atog) and sideboard space is precious. Likewise a Firespout disappears after sideboarding, but is replaced in the main with an Engineered Explosives and so the same number of sweepers as he used to have in post-sideboarded games is still present.
Now we have a downright interesting addition: +2 Future Sight, where before he was sideboarding Blood Moons. This trend towards stuff like Future Sight is one you’ll also see in Faeries decks around the format, and is likewise somewhat telling about the format in general that it is appearing as a niche card against key strategies.
So, looking at the changes in a nutshell, Tezzerator tunes from what it was to something that is less focused on worrying about Storm, and better able to control the game in the early game. Overall it still respects the same aggressive strategies as you might have expected to see in Berlin, but if anything pays it more respect as now it is prepared to answer early drops with a Condescend rather than hope to Stifle a fetchland and ride the tempo boost that provides… and focuses more on the matchup against Blue decks, as you’ll see with power spells like Cryptic Command appearing more frequently, and sideboarded bombs like Future Sight.
So what is up with those Future Sights anyway? For the Blue mirror, it’s go big or go home, apparently… Gaudenis had a Meloku main-deck and a Rude Awakening in his sideboard that seemed specifically aimed at beating other blue decks, Kenny is sideboarding Future Sight to go along with Tezzeret the Seeker as an expensive card-advantage bomb for the Blue-on-Blue mirror, and if you read Manuel Bucher tournament report from Hanover you’ll see his list is sideboarding a singleton Future Sight, and several times he’s mentioning riding it to victory against another Blue deck or to beat a Loam deck that focuses on using Raven’s Crime. Suddenly five-drops are the new two-drop. At the Grand Prix at least, Blue decks were focusing on beating other Blue decks, and capitalizing on the fact that a five is really hard to Spellstutter Sprite, and basically requires they have a Mana Leak or a Cryptic Command to control in a world where most Blue decks aren’t even on board with playing Cryptic in the format yet.
Having peeked at the Grand Prix and mulled some thoughts, let’s look at the PTQs that were recently added for the past two weeks:
Faeries: 2 Wins, 9 Top 8s
Bant Aggro: 2 Wins, 5 Top 8s
Naya Zoo: 1 Win, 13 Top 8s
Domain Zoo: 1 Win, 3 Top 8s
Elves: 1 Win, 5 Top 8s
Gifts Loam Rock: 1 Win, 1 Top 8
Mono-Red Burn: 5 Top 8s
Some Level Blue: 4 Top 8s
Storm Combo: 4 Top 8s
Reliquary Loam: 2 Top 8s
BGW Rock: 2 Top 8s
Kithkin: 1 Top 8
Affinity: 1 Top 8
Tooth and Nail: 1 Top 8
Tarmo-Rack: 1 Top 8
Astral Slide: 1 Top 8
UW Tron: 1 Top 8
UB Tron: 1 Top 8
G/W Sullivan Stompy: 1 Top 8
Loam Rock: 1 Top 8
Sullivan Red: 1 Top 8
For a deck that was making a big wave a few weeks ago, Affinity has fallen mightily to the bottom of the heap, with the experimental decks like Adrian Sullivan new Stompy deck, Tooth and Nail, and varieties of Tron deck… oh, and Kithkin, now with 100% more Extended goodness, even if it still sort of looks like a Standard deck. Above the very few appearances, we see the format basically looks like this: combo decks (two flavors), B/G decks of various varieties, three competing flavors of Red deck, and three different Blue decks. The Blue decks are of course Bant Aggro, Some Level Blue and Faeries, the B/G decks are B/G/W (usually Doran, but not always) Rock, Gifts Loam Rock, and Reliquary Loam Rock, and the Red decks are Naya Zoo, Domain Zoo, and Monored Burn. To round that out we have Elves and Storm as the combo decks, one of which just won a Grand Prix, the other of which, well, won a Grand Prix a few months ago.
Red Decks:
Naya Zoo: 1 Win, 13 Top 8s
Domain Zoo: 1 Win, 3 Top 8s
Monored Burn: 5 Top 8s
It seems pretty clear among the Red decks that Naya Zoo has a solid shot of getting you to the Top 8, but converting one win out of thirteen tries is a downright terrible average. Monored Burn might get you there but basically is a worse Naya Zoo deck, as Naya Zoo is intended to be the ‘informed’ Burn deck that plays threats that matter and finish with the same key burn spells as the monored deck has… so, no surprise that the re-designed update does it better. Domain Zoo is the one that shows up in the Top 8 less frequently, probably due to a greatly-reduced frequency of play in the first place, but when it shows up in the Top 8 it seems to have a greater chance of sealing the deal… we saw the same trend when I looked at things last week, where Domain Zoo was half as frequent in the Top 8s, but won twice as many slots, making it overall four times more likely to win a PTQ when it appeared in the Top 8 as the Naya Zoo deck. Here we see one win for each and Naya Zoo four times more populous, so trend-watching is telling us that Naya Zoo is actually failing in the current metagame and should switch back to Domain Zoo, but people are likely amped up by the fact that double-digits Naya Zoo decks are making Top 8s each week, hyping an archetype that by the numbers is clearly inferior in the metagame to its polychromatic progenitor.
Combo Decks:
Elves: 1 Win, 5 Top 8s
Storm Combo: 4 Top 8s
Last week we saw more Top 8s for each of these, and between the two, the one win was for Elves. Here we see Elves won again but the numbers are lower in general for each, and alongside a Grand Prix win for Elves we can expect to see a resurgence in Elves decks as well as a resurgence in the decks that “beat Elves”, notably Faeries. More Faeries is good for Storm; more Elves is not.
B/G Decks:
Gifts Loam Rock: 1 Win, 1 Top 8
Reliquary Loam: 2 Top 8s
BGW Rock: 2 Top 8s
B/G has been falling out of favor lately, but again, the Grand Prix is perhaps going to be more telling. Michael Jacob made the Top 8 of a Grand Prix with his dredge-heavy Loam deck, and suddenly it caught significant attention and an influx of players… this weekend we saw two very similar Knight of the Reliquary dredge-based Loam decks in the Top 8 of the Grand Prix, where overall on Day Two it was the third most populous archetype. While PTQ Top 8s over the past two weeks were not very frequent, a significant upturn of play can be expected for the next few weeks as the B/G deck is a real archetype worth playing in this format… it tends to handle Red decks nicely and can beat combo decks, it’s just a little bit soft to Faeries even as they claim it’s a pretty good matchup.
Blue Decks:
Faeries: 2 Wins, 9 Top 8s
Bant Aggro: 2 Wins, 5 Top 8s
Some Level Blue: 4 Top 8s
Bant Aggro is unfortunately about to be euthanized, as playing Bant against Combo Elves is about as fun as playing DanBock.dec in Vintage… you sit there and do nothing of relevance, then watch them kill you in a twenty-minute turn that cycles a huge number of things in and out of play, draws a bazillion cards, and then somehow mysteriously kills you. It’s been doing respectably well to this point based on the fact that it is the better Blue deck to play against Zoo-style decks and that it stands up respectably against the other Blue decks, but you’re playing the pinata against the deck that just won the Grand Prix and you have to know it when you sit down and register. Faeries continues to pull good numbers, while Some Level Blue decks likewise turn up well, due to the fact that Tarmogoyf is very good and without the piles of Mutavaults and Riptide Laboratories, Some Level Blue can play both Vedalken Shackles and Cryptic Command in large numbers (sometimes all four Commands, at that) and these are very key cards in the mirror or pseudo-mirror.
But let’s look at a slightly more interesting fact I was tracking:
Some Level Blue: 1 deck with main-deck Rude Awakening.
Faeries: Two decks with one main-deck Meloku; one deck with one sideboarded Meloku. One deck with one sideboarded Future Sight; one deck with two sideboarded Future Sights. One deck with two sideboarded Teferi.
Six of the nine Faerie decks were playing fives for the mirror, just like we noted was starting to happen in the Grand Prix Top 8. If you want to get past Faeries, you’re going to need an edge for the mirror, and fives are hard to counter in the mirror plus these particular fives tend to just win the game they resolve in. Sure, you can Sower either Meloku or Teferi, but they can Sower it right back at you… and really, Teferi is not a card you can expect to lose control of when you’re the only Blue deck that is actually able to counter the opponent’s spells still. Quentin Martin recently had a good look at Faeries for Extended which you can find here, which takes a solid look at the recent trend for five-drops in Blue decks… which Mike Flores also looked at this week for The Week That Was, but he focused more on the Tezzerator deck than the Faerie decks, and so his mention of Future Sight as a good thing for the Blue-deck mirror is somewhat colored by the fact that he’s found a new, complicated deck to game with, which mixes two of his favorite things: complicated mid-range control decks with a Rock-like feel, and tap-out Blue decks.
So as Extended is breaking down right now, the Blue decks are so critical to the format that they are starting to hybridize in other cards specifically to beat the Blue mirror, while Zoo decks remain quite popular but have unfortunately been failing against the format as a whole even if they are intended to be really good against Faerie decks. So the conventional wisdom that leads many to play Naya Zoo in the first place is somewhat incorrect: instead of an awesome matchup against Faeries, it’s really like 55% instead of the 50% you’d have playing the blue-deck mirror match, and obviously whichever deck wins the die roll has the greater chance of winning the match based on the fact that it’s a distinct advantage, be it in the Blue mirror or when Blue and Zoo face off. Now, the other Blue decks can likewise increase their match-win percentage against Blue decks by 5% by playing or sideboarding fives as has been the current trend, leaning on Meloku or Future Sight to win the match by riding the technology advantage to a small but meaningful percentage gain.
Now you have the ability to build your Faerie or Some Level Blue deck to have as distinct an advantage against other Blue decks that don’t know your secret as the Naya Aggro decks have against the Blue decks in general, but against all of the other matchups out there, you’re a Zoo deck, not a Blue deck, and against everyone else the Blue deck is advantaged overall compared to the chances of the deck that is running Woolly Thoctar in Extended. As we’ve seen for two weeks of results in a row, Naya Zoo is winning less than one out of every 8 Top 8s it appears in, with two weeks of one win per thirteen Top 8s. What we have is an information cascade saying that Naya Zoo is good, when really it isn’t carrying its weight. It “makes a lot of Top 8s”, but it loses a lot of Top 8s, twelve out of every thirteen it plays in at this point. It “beats Faeries”, but it beats Faeries about as well as Faeries beats itself when it has a technology advantage, so most of the compelling draw to play it can be had by playing a Faeries deck with some hot Meloku or Future Sight action in the mix.
In the coming weeks, you can expect more Elves and Faeries, so Blue decks can’t just slow down and chock themselves full of four-drops like Sower, Cryptic, Venser, or Archmage… they’d lose to Elves if they tried… but they do have some compelling argument to try and add more Cryptic Commands, which is the key reason why some players have been finding themselves drawn to Some Level Blue over regular Faeries, as it can support Cryptic Command more readily. Bant can be expected to fall off the face of the Earth, while Naya Zoo can be expected to continue to thrive based on the sheer self-perpetuating myth that it is a good deck to try and win a PTQ with. (It’s not. Writers lie, but numbers don’t.) Elves will have a bit of a resurgence for the next week or two before falling back down to its normal level of importance, which is to say it will fade back into the background only to strike back at the very end of the season with a vengeance, and it is quite possible that with an expected up-tick in Faeries decks, Affinity is primed to make a comeback, especially as players return to focusing against Elves rather than actually bringing the cards they need to beat Affinity. I’ve seen a good number of main-deck Katakis lately, and that trend is bound to backslide now that Elves have had a recent success on the world stage, making room for more Affinity now that it has all but entirely faded off the Extended radar.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com