Magical Hack: What In The Worlds?

Last week, we had a very brief look at the trends leading up to the World Championships, with some solid Limited information coming out of a string of Grand Prix tournaments and the Pro Tour in Kobe, plus some blank theorizing about Standard and how the Worlds metagame was going to be representative of the Magic Online metagame rather than the IRL (or for those not electronically savvy, “in real life”) metagame seen at the State Championships last month.

I also tried to muse about Extended, but it’s really a lot like shooting fish in a barrel, you’re bound to hit something just due to the sheer density of information there to talk about.

For those who might be interested or amused to get a rare glimpse into my actual Magic-playing experiences, this week on Star City Games started off with my report on Grand Prix New Jersey… Which, sadly, appeared in an edited form, because we must keep our family-friendly PG-13 rating (and some portions of the report were decidedly not kid-friendly, nor were they mother-approved). Considering how my writing style here on Magical Hack is intended at divorcing details of my experiences from the week-to-week movement of competitive Magic: the Gathering (and I’d like to think I’m often successful at that), some might consider it a rare treat… while others might just be glad it was safely locked behind Premium where wandering eyes need not see it accidentally. (Hi, Norryt!)

But as far as the week-to-week movement of competitive Magic is concerned…

The stage has been set and competition begun in the City of Lights. The chill of winter is blowing in the wind, and if the sun is shining I assure you there are about three hundred spellcasters who couldn’t tell you, locked away as they are in mortal combat at the 2006 World Championships. It’s an exciting time for Magic, and always will be… And more important, it’s an exciting place to be, in the thick of it with the pulse of Magic all around, caught up in the movement of history as the second class of the Hall of Fame is inducted. Even Kai Budde is returning to the game to try his hand at the World Championships again! Decks are being played by the dozens, and it seems the Japanese may well have struck again, with their Blue-White “TriscuitTron” one of the fiercer creations in the room.

It’s a heady time to be a mage, aswirl in the rifts of time that are our game’s history in motion… one might even say that there is Magic in the air…

… Not that I’d know, stuck as I am in a cold and antiseptic laboratory, operating a gun that shoots X-rays at materials to detect dangerous (and potentially poisonous) materials in the darnedest of things. I’m not even just “not in Paris for the World Championships,” but also “not in a particularly safe environment altogether.” Fortunately, this is the kind of stuff I’m actually trained to handle on a daily basis, and I even do so safely without anyone getting hurt or cancer or poisoned.

Fortunately this X-ray gun shoots for five minutes at a time in a completely automated fashion, leaving me much of the day on Thursday to get a solid analytical look at the results of Worlds… Specifically, mining the data from the World Championships to get a breakdown of Standard at the end of Standard play, not counting the Top Eight.

Not counting a couple of surprising disqualifications, and only using those players who were still playing at the end of Day One, a list of archetypes was thankfully made available to us via Brian David-Marshall time-shifted “Swimming with Sharks” article, which when stacked up next to the Round 6 Standings from Worlds neatly sums up to a list of archetypes matched with the players who played them and the results they had after six rounds of play. This gives us the opportunity to go running with numbers some more, and to learn some very interesting things about the Standard metagame in motion.

With a lot more time at my disposal, I could assemble a complete matchup analysis of each deck in Standard that battled everything else they ran into at Worlds… But the time isn’t there and the interest is even lacking for me to personally spend about thirty hours clacking away at Microsoft Excel spreadsheets extracting the liquid essence of knowledge from 300+ people butting heads randomly six times on Day One.

I’ll confess that I’m much less interested in this since I’ve learned a program exists somewhere in the StarCityGames.com inventory that can do the job for me (and even program it nicely into a table), but what is available to us at the moment is quite informative enough: a list of every deck played and their final results gives us quite a lot of information about what is good and what is not.

To limit things right off the bat, we are only going to look at actual archetypes played by three or more people, because we are looking for meaningful numbers, not potential statistical oddities. One person playing a deck and doing well can get an 80% match win percentage or better just with a little luck… But for three or more people to play a deck and get an 80% match win percentage (without Sullivan-ing the numbers), well, that’s an important to know, because then as we’re starting to get into the realm of “actually representative numbers” instead of “outright anomalies.”

This also means sadly that Brian David-Marshall “Pickles” deck will not be mentioned any further, as only two people played it.

Ranking these from highest to lowest, we see some real under-achievers like Snow White, Reanimator and Magnivore hovering around the 40% margin, some very good decks breaking at or around 50%, and the key over-achievers in the match-win department hit around 60% in wins.

Red-White-Blue Control decks and Black-Blue Control did the best, with Dragonstorm and Boros Deck Wins also hitting good numbers in the 55% range across the entirety of their population. So far that means Steam Vents is still the most important dual land, as predicted by the MTGO metagame. But right now, at least, Blue-Red Tron is in the middle of the mish-mash, not separated from the different versions of Tron available out there… Of which there were three real types, U/R Tron, the U/W Tron deck played by ten players of the Japanese contingent as well similar versions put up by Andre Coimbra, Christian Fehr, Daniel Piechnick, and Michel Dach, and the Martyr of Sands?Tron deck played by a Nassif, Herberholtz, Barbero, Henke and Mueller, paying the high Forecast cost on Proclamation of Rebirth using just UrzaTron mana, recursing Martyr of Sands, for many lives.

Change is not always for the better.

So we have learned a few things, then, about the Worlds metagame… specifically that the paper metagame coming out of Worlds has finally synched up with the online metagame seen on MTGO, and in the weekly Wednesday columns of Ray “Blisterguy” Walkinshaw and Frank Karsten. Pulling things apart by sub-archetype, however, can prove quite informative as well…

Some evolutionary changes succeed, like how people have thumbs but cats do not, where others fail to prosper, like Blinky the three-eyed fish. Part of the good results of some of these archetypes were due to very specific changes, while other more standardized versions might have dragged them down.

Black-White Control

Two versions stand out as being actually good despite the high middle-of-the-pack status of the archetype as a whole, and that would be the Japanese “Peekaboo!” deck (still sight-unseen due to a lack of decklists available at time of printing) and the Norway-to-Denmark-to-StarWarsKid concoction known as “The Panda Connection”, with a 68% match-win percentage between five players that is literally the highest win percentage of a collaborative effort we’ve seen across the entirety of Day One. That said, here’s the decklist:

Panda Connection

Øyvind Anderson

Pro Tour on 12-03-2006

Standard

Creatures (24)

• 4 Hypnotic Specter
• 4 Savannah Lions
• 1 Soltari Priest
• 2 Paladin en-Vec
• 4 Dark Confidant
• 3 Ghost Council of Orzhova
• 3 Martyr of Sands
• 3 Knight of the Holy Nimbus

Lands (22)

• 3 Plains
• 4 Swamp
• 4 Caves of Koilos
• 4 Godless Shrine
• 3 Orzhov Basilica
• 1 Orzhova, the Church of Deals
• 3 Flagstones of Trokair

Spells (14)

• 1 Persecute
• 3 Faith's Fetters
• 4 Castigate
• 2 Psychotic Episode
• 4 Temporal Isolation

Sideboard

• 4 Wrath of God
• 2 Persecute
• 4 Phyrexian Arena
• 2 Angel of Despair
• 1 Orzhov Basilica
• 1 Adarkar Valkyrie
• 1 Martyr of Sands

Blue-Black Control

The French Blue-Black deck, “Dralnu at the Louvre,” put up an awesome 60% Day One performance, with one high finish (Guillaume Wafo-Tapa) and solid finishes of nine points or better down the line. Admittedly, this might even be considered a disappointment, given the caliber of the players sporting the deck… But 60% is very solid numbers and among the best for any archetype or sub-archetype seen on Day One.

Perhaps most the most amusing thing is seeing Antoine Ruel playing a Blue-Black control deck, after players on the MiseTings.com forums tried to sneak and scout Standard technology from his brother Olivier on MTGO, and came up with a Red-Black-splash-White Gargadon-Husk deck featuring hits like Mogg War Marshal and Nether Traitor as the French deck of choice. Just remember: Scouted information prior to an event is worth about as much as you pay for it.

I just happen to like seeing a deck with four copies of Desert in it do well…

Dralnu du Louvre

Guillaume Wafo-tapa

Pro Tour on 12-03-2006

Standard

Creatures (5)

• 1 Skeletal Vampire
• 1 Dralnu, Lich Lord
• 3 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

Lands (24)

• 4 Underground River
• 7 Island
• 4 Desert
• 3 Dimir Aqueduct
• 4 Watery Grave
• 2 Dreadship Reef

Spells (31)

• 3 Mana Leak
• 1 Cremate
• 1 Last Gasp
• 4 Remand
• 4 Repeal
• 1 Seize the Soul
• 3 Spell Snare
• 4 Rune Snag
• 1 Cancel
• 4 Mystical Teachings
• 1 Sudden Death
• 4 Think Twice

Sideboard

• 1 Darkblast
• 2 Moonlight Bargain
• 1 Shadow of Doubt
• 1 Seize the Soul
• 1 Spell Snare
• 4 Deathmark
• 1 Cancel
• 2 Dreadship Reef
• 2 Trickbind

Blue-Red Control

U/R Snow was a moderate performer, putting up a reasonable percentage (48%) that suggests it has a home in the metagame but won’t be taking over the place anytime soon. This one is for everyone who saw Stuffy Doll and thought it was an excellent place to point their Skreds, but otherwise doesn’t really stand out from the crowd… It just happens to have earned its place in it.

Blue-White Control

… a poor performer, with no sub-archetypes showing any promise of having the necessary saving graces to consider non-Tron U/W a good archetype right now.

Boros Deck Wins — No Subtypes Noted (54% Match Win Percentage)
Clocking in at 54% is pretty reasonable when a lot of players choose an archetype, as some will do well and others poorly: so spaketh the Law of Averages. With thirty-three players, 54% doesn’t sound very impressive… but all but one of the 6-0 decks for Day One were Boros Deck Wins, a fact that I am sure will be noted all around the world in the aftermath of Worlds, and that’s before we even get to the Top Eight Playoffs.

Dragonstorm

Adding the Tron package (instead of presumably non-Tron plus Gigadrowse decks) improved your overall percentage by 3%, though your mileage may vary. As a whole, this archetype did very well, marking it as a key player in Standard.

Glare of Subdual

Glare decks got massacred, falling below 50% but with individual versions hitting as low as 40%… Only a reasonable bunch of players trying the Glare-with-Demonfire plan brought it up near the 50% tally, as Glare sporting Demonfires pulled out a 60% match win percentage for that particular sub-archetype.

R/W/U Control

Expect at some point to see Shaheen Soorani deck, Blink Riders, and Internet writers everywhere will have to give serious consideration to extracting their eyeballs with a plastic spork.

U/R/W Counter-Mesa scored a solid 60%, with a seemingly uncoordinated group of players from a diverse national background, from Japan and Brazil to England and the Netherlands… And no one playing a deck like that one in particular scored fewer than three wins during Day One (and that’s out of seven players ). “This Girl” also put up reasonably acceptable, if not dominant, numbers, ranking in at 54% with four players taking that as their deck of choice… And again, they are all from a diverse background, rather than with one national group or known team’s support.

Magnivore — No Subtypes Noted (43% Match Win Percentage)

“Project X” — No Subtypes Noted (50% Match Win Percentage)
No one knows what this deck is yet other than that it is French, and here we know it is French and that it did less well than the other French deck, the Black-Blue Mystical Teachings control deck. More information will be forthcoming that will disclose the secrets that lie within Project X…

Reanimator — No Subtypes Noted (39% Match Win Percentage)

Simic Aggro

Blue-Green fails to impress, and no version truly “broke out” and was noticed outside of the crowd. It’s a solid deck that plays fair, which is funny considering that it’s built around “abusing” undercosted 8/8 tramplers.

Snow White

Once again, we see the Netherlands bring us a slow and plodding life-gain-based control deck, this time presumably with some kind of Martyr recursion, in the hands of Kamiel Cornelissen. I’m sure in the hands of a less capable pilot, it would have seven points instead of nine.

Solar Flare

Solar Flare decks as a whole disappointed, with only one version (piloted by Gerard Fabiano and Mike Thompson) getting above the break-even point of 3-3. The hype over Akroma, Angel of Wrath has been officially dismissed, as Solar Flare and even dedicated Reanimator strategies have failed to truly impact the metagame in a substantially dominant way.

Tron Decks

The Japanese consortium once again appears poised to declare victory; after removing the four players from outside of the known Japanese testing circuit, you get a total of 198 points possible between 11 players, and 131 earned… A win percentage of 66%.

Presuming Andre Coimbra got it through a connection with these players, rather than brainstormed an original copy, and the other three more or less unknown players (Dach, Fehr, and Piechnick) came with similar yet different builds, the TriscuitTron deck is currently doing just about the best among all decks or sub-archetypes we’ve seen played in considerable numbers, with only the Black-White deck of the Norwegians topping it by any reasonable percentage (and that only by 2%).

This, then, is the deck to beat coming out of Day One at Worlds. Once again, a Japanese deck sets the pace for Standard in the winter months… Twice as prevalent, and thus much more consistent, than the higher-finishing deck played by StarWarsKid and co.

Unfortunately, BDM’s listing of TriscuitTron is short three cards, and thus we’ll need to wait for another update after the time of this article’s printing to get the full skinny on the Japanese Tron deck.

Zoo

The Zoo deck that did the best was played by Billy Moreno, Osyp Lebedowicz, Gabe Walls and Bob Maher… And only that version beat 50% against the field. It will be interesting to get to see the decklists and what specific divergence they took from the “classic” 20/20/20 lands-burn-men package that is considered the standard issue, as that will give us an idea of what aspects of the metagame can be exploited by attacking with small creatures then lighting the opponent on fire.

And that’s all the news we have from France until more decklists are forthcoming… by the next time I’ll get to say anything about the events of Worlds, it’ll be over and done with, so hopefully my plan to look at post-Worlds Extended will not be all used up and dried out by the time next Friday rolls around. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled and I’m sure any number of interesting things will be seen as we plumb through the event coverage…

Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com