The Extended coverage of Worlds provides an excellent pile of information: what was played the most, what “dark horse” decks made themselves known over the course of the six rounds of the format, and even plenty of decklists besides. Of course, I like to go data-mining and play with numbers, so I was disappointed… after all, there wasn’t a complete tally of decklists for all 350 people still playing (… I think…?) at that point, and nothing to pore over outside of a select group of decks. Last week, at least I was able to look at Standard by figuring out the approximate win percentages performed by a variety of decks played on Day 1, because we got a list from Brian David-Marshall Timeshifted return to “Swimming With Sharks” that told us neatly and accurately what finished where. That at least could be put together with the Round 6 standings to get records for each deck played, and we can run from there… this week we have less information, and so the mining efforts will have to be cleverer.
Just because something is hard to figure out, though, doesn’t mean we can’t make good use of what we have. For this week, we have: access to the Round 12 Standings, access to the Round 18 Standings, and a list of decks finishing in the upper echelons. Add to that the fact that Frank Karsten’s Wednesday “Online Tech” article (… and the coverage, but Frank’s article is something you should be reading anyway) included a percentage analysis of the decks actually played during the Extended portion of the event. We can’t get the exact match-win percentage for each deck played, because we are missing the master list. We can, however, look for penetration: choose an arbitrary cut-off point, and see how many decks of each type make it to that cut-off point, and compare that to the original population. Those that get more populous are really good, those that stay even are acceptable, and those that fall behind… should probably be left behind.
Our arbitrary cut-off point will be 5-1, which is chosen arbitrarily because that is the exact extent of the information we possess without looking under rocks to see if we can somehow magically make the complete list of Extended decks appear. Having done coverage myself, I can understand why no one would really want to transcribe 350 decks for each Standard portion… but a guy can hope, can’t he? Our arbitrary cut-off point is also reasonably good for figuring out what didn’t lose more than once, because if you go to a PTQ you don’t want to lose more than once. (Hint: Choose sometime before the cut to Top 8, if you really must lose once during the day.) Looking at that for depth of penetration by archetype gives us some interesting results, and also conveniently excludes one of the “6-0” decklists, as the player of that deck did not in fact go 6-0 – he only accrued twelve points on Day 3. (He also made Top 8, so combined with the fact that the deck went “Undefeated” I am betting it’s more likely he went 3-0-3 than 4-2.)
Doing some quick math to make sure we weren’t missing anyone (we were…) and adding anyone who didn’t literally add fifteen or more points to their tally (Ryo Ogura stopped at 12 points), we arrive at the following list of 32 decks:
| Player | Points Earned | Deck Played |
|
Wesimo Al-Bacha
|
15
|
Blue-Red-White*
|
|
David Brucker
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
G. Ferrari Spampinato
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Elton Fior
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Christian Flaaten
|
15
|
Zoo
|
|
Miguel Gatica
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Gerardo Godinez Estrada
|
15
|
Gifts Rock
|
|
Evgeny Gordienko
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Kaupo Iher
|
15
|
Aggro-Loam
|
|
Sean Inoue
|
15
|
Scepter-Chant
|
|
Kuniyoshi Ishii
|
15
|
U/W Tron
|
|
Mateusz Kopec
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
15
|
Ritual Desire
|
|
|
Emilio Lopez Campos
|
15
|
Aggro-Loam
|
|
Gareth Middleton
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Masahiko Morita
|
15
|
Friggorid
|
|
18
|
Blue-Red-White
|
|
|
Michael Nurse
|
15
|
Balancing Tings
|
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
|
Bastien Perez
|
16
|
Sunny Side Up
|
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
|
Agustin Seratti
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Cormac Smith
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Bram Snepvangers
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
16
|
U/W Tron
|
|
|
Helmut Summersberger
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Vasily Tsapko
|
18
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Anil Usumezbas
|
15
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
|
Roel van Heeswijk
|
15
|
Scepter-Chant
|
|
Mike Vasovski
|
15
|
Unknown Deck
|
|
Jelger Wiegersma
|
15
|
Ritual Desire
|
|
Roy Williams
|
18
|
Goblinstorm
|
|
18
|
Flow Rock
|
It’s a solid list of decks, with what seems like a little bit of everything mixed in… and an awful lot of a certain something as well, for those whose eyes discerned that this is a ton of Boros decks. But then there were a ton of Boros decks in the field… so seeing a huge mess of them making it to 5-1 or better doesn’t necessarily surprise. If the deck is even at all “average” you can expect it to maintain its overwhelming percentage of popularity, and if it’s a 60-40 loser to the metagame as a whole… you’d still expect four-tenths of its original percentage share to make it into the percentage share at our arbitrary cutoff point. Comparing apples to apples, then, we see:
| Deck | Number at 5-1 or Better | Percentage at 5-1 or Better | Initial Percentage |
|
Boros Deck Wins
|
15
|
47%
|
29.75%
|
|
Zoo
|
1
|
3%
|
3.48%
|
|
Goblinstorm
|
1
|
3%
|
4.75%
|
|
Friggorid
|
1
|
3%
|
2.53%
|
|
Aggro-Loam
|
2
|
6%
|
1.58%
|
|
U-R-W Solution
|
2
|
6%
|
2.85%
|
|
Rock variants
|
2
|
6%
|
8.54%
|
|
Balancing Tings
|
1
|
3%
|
3.48%
|
|
U/W Tron
|
2
|
6%
|
9.49%
|
|
Scepter-Chant
|
2
|
6%
|
4.43%
|
|
Ritual Desire
|
2
|
6%
|
2.5%
|
|
Sunny Side Up
|
1
|
3%
|
1.9%
|
|
Unknown Decks
|
1
|
3%
|
12.67%
|
This can be split up neatly into three piles: winners, competitors, and losers. The winners are the ones who actually improve on their market share considerably, and since the smallest percentage you can take home is 3%, improving from a slightly smaller percentage to 3% isn’t going to count you as a “winner”… sorry, Sunrise Combo, going from 2% to 3% may be an improvement of 50%, but it’s not a statistically significant improvement, as it falls below our initial detection limit. The winners are clearly a small list, but an interesting one: Boros Deck Wins (… because an improvement of 50% is actually impressive when you’re already almost 30% of the metagame!), Aggro-Loam, U/R/W (“Trinket Angel” or “Solution” depending on who you ask), Scepter-Chant, and Ritual Desire. It’s a reasonably short list, but then we’re talking about the first decks you should actually consider playing, and therefore you’d expect it to be a short list.
The other competitors, who punched their weight but didn’t impress, were Sunny Side Up, Balancing Tings, and Zoo. Anything that kept about 80% of its starting population after we make the cut at 5-1 is worth actually pondering, as at least it’s a reasonable decision… though I wouldn’t advocate Balancing Tings overall, especially in a field that might just be too fast for them to handle adequately (see: Boros Deck Wins). I may be wrong in my belief that Boros is too fast, but if all your lands come into play tapped and you need to cast Burning Wish before you can cast Balancing Act (or otherwise am just running a little slow and need to set up before you reset the board), running into Boros might not be the kind of thing you want to do every other round of the tournament. Zoo punched its weight but frankly didn’t impress, and I figure it’s basically just a worse Boros deck, in that they do the same thing but one of these two decks should arguably lose the mirror, and that’s the one that takes more pain for its mana and doesn’t have pro-Red creatures. Sunny Side Up is an interesting deck that bears exploring, but it didn’t really have a break-out performance after the sudden shock of the first three or so rounds were done; once the trick is known, it’s a lot easier to combat.
And the losers… U/W Tron is arguably the second-best deck in the metagame, and was certainly the second-best represented deck in the field, but as far as the cut at 5-1 or better is concerned, it’s tied for second with five other decks, all of whom had a smaller market share. Rock decks punched in at 6% with a starting share of eight and a half percent, when you combine the two competing variants, Gifts Rock and Flow Rock. Both seem reasonable, which is to say they seem to be tuned to face the metagame, but Rock is ultimately the fairest deck around. It’s an excellent choice for a great player who just wants to interact with the opponent and outplay them, but not necessarily the metagame tool of choice. It belongs here, but it’s still tied for #2 deck with U/W Tron and the other four despite having had the #3 population in the room (combining both versions, that is).
Another loser is Goblinstorm decks, who dropped a considerable share even if they did do reasonably overall, suggesting among other things that their attack phase-based Storm combo might not be as good as the other Storm combo decks. To me, this means that Combo-Goblins will probably not run over the metagame anytime soon… for which you can probably thank Soltari Priest and Silver Knight, plus the plethora of burn in the Boros deck removing very key assets like Goblin Warchief and Goblin Sharpshooter. Splash damage resulting from the Boros mirror in general might be what killed this one here, and things may get worse before they get better… as four Priests becomes the standard version of Boros, and it will, weird things like Rain of Blades may make it in from the sideboard, which I imagine can’t be good for those emptied warrens.
And then there’s the decks you don’t see in the cut at 5-1, namely Heartbeat, Affinity, and Psychatog. Admittedly there was a Tog deck in the top lists, but 4-1-1 is not fifteen points, so we don’t actually include a Tog list… when 4% of the room came armed with Dr. Teeth without Ichorids nearby. Heartbeat didn’t make it to the cut either, despite having eleven pilots to begin with, and the 14 Affinity players likely found out that even without Kataki in their deck, they don’t beat Boros decks with Sudden Shock. No surprises there, especially when some of the cleverer versions of Boros pack Ancient Grudge.
(Note to the attentive reader: My numbers are different than Karsten’s because his calculations for percentage played did not include the 40 unknown decks not explicitly mentioned in the coverage from mid-day Friday by our friendly neighborhood Kanoot; re-calculating with 316 players instead of 276 will change his numbers into mine.)
So… the deck to beat by a wide margin is Boros, and the fact remains simple that the best deck to be is Boros… specifically, Boros tuned to beat the mirror. Expect very shortly to see all Boros listings starting with the version played by Jeroen Remie, Billy Moreno, Tsuyoshi Fujita and Frank Karsten, among a cast of thousands I’m sure.
Creatures (22)
Lands (22)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
I would, however, argue that some changes might be for the good, specifically to have operating mana under both Blood Moon and Destructive Flow… I’d suggest two Plains instead of just one, at the expense of a Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] that frankly is the worst dual land in the deck. A miniscule change, but probably a relevant one, and it’s worth considering the second Mountain as well to give the deck some chance greater than zero of ever flashing back Firebolt in a key situation while under Destructive Flow… Flow appears to be part of the metagame and likely one that is going to stay, and if fifteen Sacred Foundries isn’t enough to count as “good mana,” I doubt having sixteen or seventeen is really going to push you over the edge into functionality. Given knowledge of the Worlds metagame in its entirety, Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] is probably not as good in the mirror as “just a Plains” or “just a Mountain” might be, as the deck is very color-intensive and already prone to damaging itself… plus the greater-than-zero argument of trying to operate under Destructive Flow might be cause to sneak in more basics.
I’ve also been looking into interesting things following Worlds, and have been trying to have a look at Psychatog in this same format… but as one might have followed from last year, “my” Psychatog approach is a bit left of the conventional one. Focusing on it as more of an aggro-control deck and trying to play Fish instead of pure control, it comes across as an odd hybrid of Fish, Rock, and Tog, fitting itself into a very different role in each matchup.
It can be aggro-control against control decks, playing Fish with Wild Mongrel plus Circular Logic, or just setting up Counterbalance plus Top and attacking with the one threat over and over again until the opponent dies because you have total control. It can be control against aggressive decks, almost like a Rock deck with Psychatog, setting up weird combinations with Genesis (Kagemaro plus Genesis is expensive but not impossible after all… or just Ravenous Baloth plus Genesis to gain life) or popping Deed and controlling the remainder with Counterbalance plus Top. What’s really odd, though, is that like any good Tog deck you can play the turn 4 combo-kill deck. For racing combo, look at the following not-impossible draw:
Turn 1: Fetchland, Sensei’s Divining Top (five cards in hand, one in graveyard).
Turn 2: Fetchland, Wild Mongrel (four cards in hand, two in graveyard).
Turn 3: Discard Life from the Loam to Wild Mongrel during the upkeep, and dredge instead of drawing. Attack for three. (Opponent is at seventeen.) Fetchland, Psychatog (two cards in hand, six in graveyard).
Turn 4: Discard Life from the Loam during your upkeep, dredging Life from the Loam as your draw for the turn. (9 cards in graveyard, 2 in hand, 1 Psychatog pump so far.)
Then, you have two paths: both start by casting Life from the Loam to get three lands, and use Sensei’s Divining Top to dredge it back to your hand. One cycles Lonely Sandbar for another Dredge on Life from the Loam before going into the attack phase, while the other plays a fetchland again and casts Life from the Loam a second time after Dredging, getting more cards in hand to discard. Both add up to exactly 14 Psychatog pumps, which is why your first three lands have to be Fetchlands or you come up one half-card each short of killing the opponent. 14 pumps + 1 natural power + 2 from Wild Mongrel = 17, your opponent’s life total.
Yes, this requires you be able to lock in seven of your eight cards after your first draw step as three Fetchlands, Sensei’s Divining Top, Wild Mongrel, Psychatog and Life from the Loam. Worse yet, you have to draw the Top on turn 1 or never have a chance to cast it and still hit twenty on turn 4. I didn’t say it was likely… but people mention Dragonstorm in Standard can kill on turn 1, I thought it would be impressive to note that this control deck can combo-kill on turn 4 if it draws the right hand. At least the fetchlands are interchangeable, as there are eight copies. (It’s a lot easier to do, without requiring such a crazily rigid hand, if the opponent loses any life to their duals or fetchlands.)
If you can throw away the need to combo-kill turn 4 and just interact with the opponent normally if you have Logic or Remand to buy a fifth turn with, the combo stops requiring Fetchlands or Divining Top for starters, just casting Loam on turn 4 keeping up Remand or Logic mana before going crazy Hulk Smash on turn 5. Then the combo is just Loam + Tog + Mongrel with three lands; much more believable.
But then, this is just my pet deck, and isn’t exactly an Internet standard yet. But it is an interesting deck, especially as it is a treatment of Aggro-Loam into Loamatog, so I expect if nothing else the truly curious will test it and find out it actually performs, as I was consistently inches from the Top 8 last season with this deck’s predecessor (think: no Breeding Pool, no Counterbalance / Top yet) and many of the same decks existed in one form or another in the same format. If John Rizzo can actually make a good Extended deck, or at least provide the kernel for one, I don’t see why the intricate web of interactions that is the following deck might not be worth considering:
Creatures (8)
Lands (25)
Spells (27)
The Leylines in the sideboard are actually placeholders, as I need to test between them and Duress to see which I am happiest with; Leylines are more powerful in the abstract, but Duress is just better against combo decks and control, and my testing of this new format is still nowhere near complete enough to really say with any certainty what the “actual sideboard cards” instead of “Wishboard cards” should be.
But as long as we’re not talking about Boros decks, which lots of people will play and which you probably should, one must wonder what you can accomplish with a Friggorid build if you set your heart on breaking it in twain. Using the “I want as many cards as possible in my graveyard right now” theory, using Tolarian Winds can accomplish a whole heck of a lot if you give it a chance. Of course one must then ask the question of what are you to do with most of your library in the graveyard, and the answer is use a cheesy combo kill just like everybody else!
Take your stock Friggorid deck, packing four Tolarian Winds however. This can play Psychatog turn 2 off of a Chrome Mox and use Tolarian Winds to combo-kill with Tog on turn 3. To add redundancy, be more tricksy. Insert, perhaps, the following cards:
2 Sutured Ghoul
2 Dread Return
2 Dragon’s Breath
This unfortunately requires having creatures of significant power to remove from the game, which Psychatog, Stinkweed Imp, and Golgari Grave-Troll are not. (0/0. Nice.) Presume you require a Putrid Imp and two Ichorids returning to play on your third turn’s upkeep to accomplish the feat of casting Dread Return in the first place, and so have a guaranteed seven power and three toughness. Add in another creature of reasonable size that isn’t completely useless somewhere in the Dredge engine… oh wait, is there even such a creature?
Gigapede! Re-use Dredgers stuck in hand if you don’t have a conventional discard outlet in play, letting Gigapede pretend to be extra Grave-Trolls sometimes. Add three or so, so you can be reasonably sure that by the time you have hit the rest of the combo into your graveyard, you’ll have two Gigapedes contributing twelve power. Add seven from the creatures you cast Dread Return with, and one more from absolutely anywhere (… or even just an attack from that Putrid Imp you cast on turn 1 who got the whole she-bang started…) and we have twenty.
This is however a pretty mucked-up corruption of your “standard” Friggorid deck, possibly looking something like the following:
Creatures (29)
- 4 Psychatog
- 3 Gigapede
- 2 Sutured Ghoul
- 4 Putrid Imp
- 4 Ichorid
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 1 Golgari Thug
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 3 Nether Traitor
Lands (15)
Spells (16)
It’s not necessarily “done”… after all, there are more cards I’d love to squeeze in, like Careful Study and Deep Analysis. But it’s a proof-of-concept, suggesting that a little tuning can give a Friggorid deck multiple routes for a combo kill, and that in and of itself is fascinating. This one is shaving mana sources out of the deck (it’s shy about three lands or so) and cutting other components that may or may not be vital or worthwhile, and hasn’t been tested in play one whit… coming up with the deck and sticking it into sixty cards was just a proof of concept, to see if I could rather than actually tune it and see if you should. If you want to cut the combo to the bare bones, drop the second copy each of Dread Return, Dragon Breath, and Sutured Ghoul, and replace three Gigapedes with one Krosan Cloudscraper, buying back five slots in the deck for lands and spells. It’s a complicated thought-puzzle, but the potential exists for sneaking in an alternate route to victory, and a sleazy one at that. But I like my thought-puzzles, and it’s already being discussed some in the StarCityGames.com Forums.
So the lesson in short: we’ve seen the decks, and Boros is the most plentiful and so far it seems the best deck in Extended… it may play fair, but it does so with cruel intentions and a solid game-plan. There’s plenty of crazy stuff going on, and more than one combo deck can be thought up or hybridized into an existing deck… and plenty of things can be viable, interactive or non-interactive. Just make sure you test against Boros before deciding your creation is the greatest thing in the Universe. Because it might not beat Boros as consistently as you think, and therefore half the matches you play at any Extended tournament may have a very reasonable chance of knocking you out for good.
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com
{Insert Song Lyrics Here}**
*: Wesimo’s deck looked nothing like Gabriel Nassif deck, but rather than list it as “random Red-White-Blue Deck We Don’t Know How It Won With Nothing But Four-Drops,” we’ll give credit where it is due to the archetype as a whole and give the nod for “penetration of the field” to Nassif’s Solution-esque deck instead. It may be media bias, but it’s the kind of media bias you can feel warm and cuddly inside about, rather than the kind you cry about when you watch Bill O’Reilly in action.
**: I’d quote song lyrics here usually, but I think Evan Erwin quoting We Only Come Out At Night by The Smashing Pumpkins in ”The Magic Show #19” may have broken me a little on the inside.