This past week was the State / Province / Etc. Championships, and in locales across the world the beating heart of the Standard metagame was set astir. Interesting tales abound, and this has allowed us to enter a wide-open world of creative deck design and unorthodox problem-solving… as one can see with Glare decks changing two slots to fit in an infinite-life engine or the Japanese Clockspinning version of the Dragonstorm deck. In a wide-open, thriving metagame, the world is our oyster and sixty cards our personal dreamscape… and I suspect it will only get better from here, as this is a Standard format that plays like a full-block Standard environment, packed jam-full of good cards and viable options, and we’ll still get two more expansions before this Standard rotates Ravnica Block out of existence. Coldsnap makes up set #2, and while it may not pull its weight overall it still has some heavy hitters, some of which have only begun to be explored (like Haakon)… and the Purps, Time Spiral’s Timeshifted companion set, makes up set #3.
In this wonderful world of plentiful options and dynamic designs, Standard is an excellent place. And care has been taken to increase the overall interest in Standard, as we will soon be seeing the coming of the City Championships at the turn of the New Year. It seems safe to say that a decent chunk of that months-long experience will use Standard as the “format of relevance.” But at the moment, Standard has been dug into… but the ones who will get to do the most interesting exploring is perhaps not us but the professional mages, who are keeping their voices reasonably quiet in the weeks leading up to Worlds, and who will show us a thing or two we didn’t know in Paris next month.
My reluctance to talk about Standard now is two-fold. First, then, is the fact that its relevance as a format has just plummeted, drastically, to greater than 99% of the Magic-playing world. The second, more personally, is that having missed the State Championships (… and my international role-playing conclave, the same weekend, to boot…) for a trip to Pittsburgh for a Halloween party full of twist, turns, and an overabundance of ex-on-ex drama… having missed States I fear I am woefully under-informed, as the final product is so multi-faceted that any analysis I would attempt to make after the fact would be pointless without the ability to start producing real numbers to look at the metagame and its strengths. When the results start to trickle in from across the Union (… and around the world…), I’ll get my spreadsheet humming and track the numbers more accurately.
In the meantime, however, my interests and the purported interests of The Common Mage intersect beautifully. Rather than basking in the afterglow of victory, near-victory, or splendid failure, my aim is to dodge Standard entirely for a more comprehensive look at the current state of Limited play. In just over one week’s time, the spotlight is set on Tom’s River, New Jersey and the staff of Gray Matter Conventions for Grand Prix: New Jersey. I for one am something of a homebody when it comes to traveling for tournaments. I’ll go on a madcap dash to Pittsburgh leaving at 6am on a Friday for a girl, and I’ll get in a car or hop on a bus and drive as far away as Vermont sometimes for a role-playing game… and have driven further still, for the big conventions. But for PTQs, if it’s not especially close, I’m not necessarily going. The furthest I have traveled for a PTQ since coming back off hiatus a year and a half ago has been Boston, and only if I don’t have a LARP that weekend. Even when I made the Pro Tour, back in the dark ages of the game when “people like me” were let in the door and even given a shirt so long as they brought two friends along with them, I never had to go farther away than Boston to play.
But a Grand Prix in my own backyard is too good to miss… and I can sneak out of the Boston LARP that weekend without anyone really being upset at me. This will be just my second Grand Prix since returning from what I had thought was going to be retirement at the time, the other being last year’s Grand Prix in Philadelphia. Last year, I tested my mettle against the field starting with zero byes and a downright wacky deck, playing (and casting at least once!) what I am assured was certainly the only copy of Sadistic Hypnotist in the room. This year, I have one bye, which hopefully will be enough of a boost to push me the one round over into Day 2 that I missed last year.
This Grand Prix upon which I am intensely focusing happens to correspond with the new Pro Tour Qualifier season, and so presumably my level of interest in Limited might work with the readership’s interests as well. I am hoping for next week that Mark Schmit’s DraftCap software will be functional for Time Spiral play, and I can get my geek on over Magic Online, practicing the drafts over the coming week and sharing them for the readership. Since next week is hopefully Drafting With Sean, complete with visuals, this week will be a treatment of Sealed Deck play.
My own experiences with drafting have so far suggested that both Green and Black are underwhelming, though Green can at least be salvaged and is the most frequent companion color I seem to end up with when drafting an aggressive White deck. Blue-White would be nicer, but it’s probably greedy to ask for the two best colors to draft… it may work, but there’s usually some nailbiter moments in there as the packs go around the table and come back with absolutely nothing for you. Red-White also seems nice, but there aren’t very many Red cards you actually want to add… mostly just the Red removal, and doesn’t everyone want that?
Looking at the Pro Tour from not too long ago, we can see the Day 1 6-0 decks, and look for trends that might help find some deeper understanding of the format. We have six drafters with two decks each, for twelve samples of the best the drafters in Kobe had to offer. If we see anything in common across a reasonably diverse sample of players, which these six names seem to represent, one might be well-served by learning why they did what they did… or at least imitating their frameworks, and trusting that things will work out well in the end. These twelve decks worked out like this:
Amiel Tenenbaum – Deck 1
Colors: Green, double-splashing White and Red
Common Theme: Slivers (10 Slivers)
Number of lands played: 18
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (2)
2cc: 4 (5)
3cc: 2
4cc: 2
5cc: 4
6cc+: 6
Amiel Tenenbaum – Deck 2
Colors: Black / Red
Common Theme: Removal spells
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 1 (3)
2cc: 2
3cc: 4
4cc: 2
5cc: 1
6cc+: 3
Chris Ripple – Deck 1
Colors: White / Red
Common Theme: Slivers (8 Slivers)
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 1
2cc: 2
3cc: 3
4cc: 5
5cc: 4
6cc+: 2
Chris Ripple – Deck 2
Colors: White / Red
Common Theme: Evasion (9 creatures with evasion abilities)
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 3
3cc: 6
4cc: 2
5cc: 5
6cc+: 1
Andre Coimbra – Deck 1
Colors: Green / Black, splash Red
Common Theme: Thallid sub-theme
Number of lands played: 15 (also two Totems + Lens, with Search for Tomorrow)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 5
3cc: 6 (including Call of the Herd)
4cc: 1 (3)
5cc: 2
6cc+: 2
Andre Coimbra – Deck 2
Colors: Green / Black, splash Red
Common Theme: Thallid sub-theme
Number of lands played: 17 (also Search for Tomorrow, with double Greenseeker)
Creature curve:
1cc: 2
2cc: 3
3cc: 4 (6)
4cc: 2
5cc: 4
6cc+: 2
Mark Herberholz – Draft 1
Colors: White / Blue
Common Theme: Evasion (7 creatures with evasion abilities)
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (3)
2cc: 6 (8)
3cc: 2 (6)
4cc: 2
5cc: 2
6cc+: 5
Mark Herberholz – Draft 2
Colors: White / Red, splash Green
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 5
3cc: 6
4cc: 3
5cc: 0
6cc+: 0
Nigel Higdon – Draft 1
Colors: White / Black
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 4
3cc: 2
4cc: 4
5cc: 2
6cc+: 2
Nigel Higdon – Draft 2
Colors: Blue / Green, splash White
Common Theme: Slivers (12 Slivers)
Number of lands played: 18
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 4
3cc: 2
4cc: 7
5cc: 2
6cc+: 1
Tomoharu Saito – Draft 1
Colors: Green / Red, splash Black
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 15 (also 3 Search for Tomorrow, with Weatherseed Totem and Twisted Abomination)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (3)
2cc: 5
3cc: 3
4cc: 4 (7)
5cc: 3
6cc+: 4
Tomoharu Saito – Draft 2
Colors: Mono-Black with a minimal splash of Red for Strangling Soot
Common Theme: Madness sub-theme
Number of lands played: 17 (also Twisted Abomination)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 3
3cc: 6
4cc: 0
5cc: 3
6cc+: 3
Saito also made the Top 8, where we get to see a third draft deck of his… and since one of the things I will be looking at is repeating specific plans, this one gets noted here as well:
Tomoharu Saito – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Mono-Black
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17 (also Phyrexian Totem)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (2)
2cc: 2
3cc: 4
4cc: 5
5cc: 0
6cc+: 4
We see the following color combinations: Mono-Black twice; Green/Red once, splashing Red; Green-Black twice, splashing Red; Blue-Green once, splashing White; Black-White once; Red-White three times, once with a splash of Green; Blue-White once; Black-Red once; and Green-Red-White not really corresponding with our previous Red-Green deck. We did not see, specifically: Blue-Red, the draft archetype that was considered by many to be the most coveted coming out of Grand Prix: Athens… White-Green with a strong White base component (it played well with Green decks, apparently, but Green didn’t play well with White decks)… and Blue-Black, perhaps because other colors just fit better with your Blue spells, any other colors. So out of thirteen instances so far (which will be twenty in a bit), we see only three color combinations not being up to snuff to get a mage to 6-0: Blue-Red, likely because it is highly prized and thus actively fought for, weakening one’s deck in the earlier rounds; Blue-Black, because it is not considered to be very desirable or a good use of either color by most higher-level players; and White-Green, which showed up as a key part of a three-color Sliver build but did not appear as a supplement to an aggressive White deck as it is usually considered.
What seems most interesting to me here is that I am seeing more higher-cost drops than I’d expected… coming into this event, the results tended to favor those who focused very heavily on spells that cost four mana or less, or at least could be Suspended within the first few turns. The implication thus seems to be that while all-out aggression is definitely a key component of the format, it’s not the only component of the format, and some six-cost or higher bombs are actually very playable. Big creatures have a big effect, and we saw more of that here in Kobe than we had previously in Sydney. Combining the first twelve decks by mana curve, we get the following percentages:
1cc: 4 (2.1%)
2cc: 46 (24.1%)
3cc: 46 (24.1%)
4cc: 34 (17.8%)
5cc: 32 (16.7%)
6cc+: 29 (15.2%)
This is a tally without compensating for Morphs in the three-spot, or the various one-, two-, or three-mana Suspend creatures that often saw play, as things just got more and more complicated to count… where does one count Fathom Seer, after all… as a two-drop or a three-drop? If that’s easy, how about Coral Trickster, who’s actually a quite reasonable two-drop? That said, we’re seeing about 50% of a deck’s creatures castable within the first two turns, and if you include Morph and Suspend, that proportion definitely goes up… some of the six-plus creatures were Baloths and Ephemerons, while other of the more expensive creatures had Morph. But instead of the catch-all guideline of “almost every creature should be castable by turn 4” that we saw at least in the Sealed Decks in Sydney, even if you are willing to consider playing it with Suspend as “casting” a card, here we are seeing a reasonable chunk of five mana or higher creatures seeing play, the kind you even actually have to pay for.
Some hype surrounded Sage of Epityr at the Pro Tour, but of the four one-mana creatures making the cut in these twelve decks, three were Greenseekers and the fourth happened to be a Sliver. We’ll see if this trend of playing the Sage actually worked out by looking at the Top 8 draft decks in just a bit, to see whether the crème de la crème of the Time Spiral drafters considered it to be a playable card, hopefully putting it to rest as an actual correct card valuation or perhaps as just a flash in the pan.
Meanwhile…
Lands per deck: 16.83
Most decks play seventeen lands, with a few going as high as eighteen. Some play as few as fifteen… but increase their mana-count with artifact mana, such as Prismatic Lens and assorted Totems. So seeing that the average lands per deck comes to about seventeen is misrepresentative, as even the decks cheating on actual lands were still playing “mana” cards in their place… and the decks with fifteen lands still had at least eighteen dedicated mana cards, if not more. Playing between seventeen and eighteen lands is the norm, though some take the risk of adding three mana to the cost of their land in order to potentially get a creature out of it later, and seventeen lands plus a Totem is probably nearer to the “standard” configuration unless you are a truly dedicated beatdown deck… the straightforward White attack decks played seventeen lands, period.
Going on now to the Top 8, we see the following:
Winner – Jan-Moritz Merkel
Finalist – Willy Edel
Semifinalist – Thomas Diderjean
Semifinalist – Bastien Perez
Quarterfinalist – Tomoharu Saito
Quarterfinalist – Kenji Tsumura
Quarterfinalist – Takahiro Suzuki
Quarterfinalist – Bram Snepvangers
Jan-Moritz Merkel – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Green / Blue
Common Theme: Morph
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 8 (10)
3cc: 3 (9)
4cc: 3
5cc: 1
6cc+: 6
Willy Edel – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Green / Red, splash Black
Common Theme: Thallid sub-theme
Number of lands played: 17 (also 3 Search for Tomorrow)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 2
3cc: 5
4cc: 3 (4)
5cc: 1
6cc+: 2
Thomas Diderjean – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Black / Red
Common Theme: Sliver sub-theme
Number of lands played: 16 (also one each of Phyrexian, Foriysian Totem)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (2)
2cc: 3
3cc: 6
4cc: 3
5cc: 1
6cc+: 5
Bastien Perez – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Green / Red, splash Black
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17 (also 2 Search for Tomorrow, Weatherseed Totem)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0
2cc: 4
3cc: 4
4cc: 4
5cc: 0
6cc+: 3
Tomoharu Saito – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Mono-Black
Common Theme: None
Number of lands played: 17 (also Phyrexian Totem)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (2)
2cc: 2
3cc: 4
4cc: 5
5cc: 0
6cc+: 4
Kenji Tsumura – Top 8 Draft
Colors: White / Blue
Common Theme: Evasion (9 creatures with evasion abilities)
Number of lands played: 17
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (1)
2cc: 5 (7)
3cc: 7
4cc: 2
5cc: 2
6cc+: 2
Takahiro Suzuki – Top 8 Draft
Colors: Red / Blue
Common Theme: Suspend sub-theme
Number of lands played: 18 (also Forisyian Totem)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (4)
2cc: 3 (4)
3cc: 1
4cc: 4
5cc: 5
6cc+: 3
Bram Snepvangers – Top 8 Draft
Colors: White / Red, splash Blue
Common Theme: Momentary Blink sub-theme
Number of lands played: 17 (also Prismatic Lens)
Creature curve:
1cc: 0 (2)
2cc: 6
3cc: 3 (5)
4cc: 1
5cc: 2
6cc+: 4
Worthy of note is that all copies of Sage of Epityr drafted were in the sideboard, or possibly even ripped up for tokens over the course of Top 8 play. The hubbub surrounding the fools’-gold Sage over the course of the tournament did not stand up throughout the tournament, as far as the home readership could see, with none played in the Top 8 and none played in any of the 6-0 drafters’ decks. And continuing our look at vital statistics, we had a total of 136 lands in the Top 8, which averages to exactly 17.0 lands per drafters’ deck, with eleven non-land mana sources among the eight decks… putting the average mana per draft deck squarely up to eighteen, with the preferred configuration seemingly including one Totem to provide that extra mana for getting to the higher part of your curve with, without flooding too heavily.
Looking at the amalgamated mana curve across all eight decks, we see:
1cc: 0 (0%); 12 with 1: Suspend 1 (9.3%)
2cc: 33 (25.6%); 5 with 2: Suspend (3.9%) [Pardic Dragon doesn’t count,
and everyone knows it.]
3cc: 33 (25.6%); 8 with Morph / 3: Suspend (6.2%)
4cc: 25 (19.4%); 1 with 4: Suspend (0.8%)
5cc: 9 (7%)
6cc+: 29 (22.5%)
If anything, the prevalence for higher-cost creatures in the successful draft strategies increased over time, with only about half of those being accounted for by Suspend. This brings us back towards more familiar territory for me, actually, with the Top 8 decks playing some higher-cost creatures but primarily paying Suspend costs for them, instead of paying full price; 83.8% of the creatures played in the entire Top 8 can be cast (or Suspended) for four mana or less. This matches my observations from Grand Prix: Sydney, proving reasonably well that aggression, not size, is king of Time Spiral limited… Pro-tested, mother approved.
Nothing accentuates this quite so well, however, as the performance of the winner, Jan-Moritz Merkel. This has already been mentioned by Brian David-Marshall following up on the Pro Tour in Kobe, but not just the deck but the entire attitude of the winner was all about hyper-focused aggression, maximizing damage and mounting pressure upon his opponent in a way you just don’t see very often. Looking at the Top 8 decks, Merkel’s is far from the most impressive, shy on removal as it is… one would pick a deck with more board control, from Banishings to Bolts, as the winner of the tempo war. But the synergy of the deck, tapping blockers and mounting pressure, leaves us with that certain special something to remember it by, and hints that there is more than just tempo and card power at work here: card synergy interacts favorably to create deck synergy, and the deck that won was the deck that was best able to focus on aggression and enact its plan.
We have but scratched the surface of Time Spiral Limited, and that reveals to us depths as-yet unplumbed, in a world full of unusual interactions and tricksy cards. Next week we’ll dive in head-first with some draft walkthroughs, if available, to discuss the actual interplay of drafting with Time Spiral now that it’s “broken” on Magic Online… drafting online was what broke the Selesnya Conclave’s strengths to the world in triple-Ravnica draft, and the ability to draft constantly is bound to reveal similar gems of strategy and execution-of-planning that can yield bountiful results.