Mythic Championship London By The Numbers

As you might have seen from this weekend’s Mythic Championship, we’re entering a new phase in Magic’s history: a deck’s performance is no longer hidden information. Wizards of the Coast themselves published the actual win rates of the major archetypes from MC London, a dramatic shift from just a few years ago when data collection projects were discouraged. The time we’re moving into will be akin to the advent of what in professional baseball was termed Sabermetrics, when data assumes a much more prominent role in decision-making than it had before.

It’s very exciting. And there is so much potential data that we can use with the complete publication of data as WotC has provided.

So let’s break down this tournament beyond the most basic information. We’re going to talk about the end of Day 1 and how it fed into Day 2, how major archetypes matched up against each other, and what lessons the Mythic Championship offers to Modern players moving forward in the format.

Day 1

We should note our methodology might look a little bit different in terms of numbers from what you’ve seen on WotC’s official reporting of win rates. We can’t speak to their methodology, but in our accounting, we include unintentional draws as one-third of a win (calculating off match win percentage), and exclude byes and mirror matches. We feel this is a more accurate representation of the games won and actual deck win rates. We also focused on the top nineteen most popular archetypes for this report, lumping the rest under an “Other” category, as the players from the nineteenth to the twentieth archetype dropped off significantly.

Sorry, Prime Speaker Vannifar combo fans – you didn’t have enough wins to make it. Give the SCG Tour a shot and we can start tracking you on a macro level.

Going into the event, there had been momentum slowly building around two decks: Azorius Control and Humans. Social media was buzzing about these two decks, as people felt they were well-positioned and could take advantage of the open decklists that were going to be shared at MC London. To understand this tournament better, we felt it would be better to break down the format into several levels of decks and how these decks matched up against each other.

Our Level 1? Decks that were perceived to be strong with the new London Mulligan rule, period. Level 2 were decks that could benefit from the open decklists: Humans and reactive decks like Jund, Azorius, and Esper Control. Level 3 players diverged into two tranches: those decks that had strong potential against Level 1 (Affinity, Hardened Scales, and Ad Nauseam), but also had game against Level 2, and those decks that were aggressively targeting Level 2 (Eldrazi variants). These are the decks that were poised to prey on the Level 1 of MC London.

Ad Nauseam

Daniel Grafensteiner

101st Place at Mythic Championship on 04-26-2019

Modern

Creatures (5)

• 4 Simian Spirit Guide
• 1 Laboratory Maniac

Lands (20)

• 1 Plains
• 3 City of Brass
• 2 Island
• 4 Gemstone Mine
• 2 Seachrome Coast
• 2 Darkslick Shores
• 3 Temple of Deceit
• 3 Temple of Enlightenment

Spells (35)

• 4 Sleight of Hand
• 4 Serum Visions
• 4 Pentad Prism
• 3 Spoils of the Vault
• 1 Lightning Storm
• 4 Angel's Grace
• 4 Lotus Bloom
• 3 Pact of Negation
• 4 Ad Nauseam
• 4 Phyrexian Unlife

Sideboard

• 1 Echoing Truth
• 1 Pact of Negation
• 1 Slaughter Pact
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 1 Path to Exile
• 4 Leyline of Sanctity
• 1 Supreme Verdict
• 1 Fatal Push
• 2 Bontu's Last Reckoning

You can see from Gräfensteiner’s list that he’s prepared primarily for Humans, with the variety of removal spells and Wraths – which makes sense, as Humans is on that Level 2 that Gräfensteiner needs to fight through to reach the Level 1 decks. Ad Nauseam was a deck choice that played into the matchup lottery of Modern sometimes, as it had a highly polarized spread of matchups: Ad Nauseam fared well against control decks, Affinity-style decks, and Tron, but fared poorly against Thoughtseize and Meddling Mage strategies.

Hardened Scales

Luis Scott-Vargas

80th Place at Mythic Championship on 04-26-2019

Modern

Creatures (20)

• 4 Arcbound Ravager
• 4 Arcbound Worker
• 4 Steel Overseer
• 4 Hangarback Walker
• 4 Walking Ballista

Lands (20)

• 1 Pendelhaven
• 9 Forest
• 4 Darksteel Citadel
• 1 Blinkmoth Nexus
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus

Spells (20)

• 4 Welding Jar
• 4 Ancient Stirrings
• 4 Mox Opal
• 1 Throne of Geth
• 1 Dismember
• 4 Hardened Scales
• 2 Animation Module

Sideboard

• 3 Pithing Needle
• 2 Nature's Claim
• 2 Dismember
• 4 Grafdigger's Cage
• 1 Evolutionary Leap
• 3 Damping Sphere

Luis Scott-Vargas’s list is another good example of a Level 3 deck. You can see Scott-Vargas’s systematic targeting of those Level 1 decks: maximum Grafdigger’s Cage for Dredge, a maindeck copy of Dismember for Humans, focusing on Pithing Needles and Damping Spheres for the Tron matchup. Hardened Scales was a particularly good choice among the Level 3 decks performance-wise versus the rest of the format.

Mono-Red Eldrazi

Mark Jacobson

10th Place at Mythic Championship on 04-26-2019

Modern

Creatures (24)

• 4 Simian Spirit Guide
• 4 Eldrazi Mimic
• 4 Eldrazi Obligator
• 4 Reality Smasher
• 4 Thought-Knot Seer
• 4 Eternal Scourge

Planeswalkers (2)

• 2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

Lands (23)

• 4 Sulfurous Springs
• 3 Mountain
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 2 Gemstone Caverns
• 4 Eldrazi Temple
• 3 Wastes
• 2 Scavenger Grounds
• 4 Ramunap Ruins

Spells (11)

• 4 Serum Powder
• 4 Chalice of the Void
• 3 Dismember

Sideboard

• 2 Blood Moon
• 2 Shatterstorm
• 4 Leyline of the Void
• 1 Anger of the Gods
• 2 Rending Volley
• 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• 2 Abrade
• 1 Damping Sphere

Jacobson’s Mono-Red Eldrazi list deserves a highlight: although he placed tenth, we don’t see a lot of talk about this innovative build. Riffing on a traditional mono-red “Skred”-style prison deck, Jacobson eschewed the Snow-Covered Mountains and turbo Blood Moon / Ensnaring Bridge part of the plan for the colorless Eldrazi core with the addition of Eldrazi Obligator, a significant improvement against Izzet Phoenix and Humans decks.

Into these approximate levels, the players of MC London entered Day 1. Since the concerns about Faithless Looting seems to have calmed down (remember when people talked about how it was likely we would need to ban Death’s Shadow?), there was a relatively even spread of decks. Tron players assumed the topmost position of the metagame, with Izzet Phoenix and the resurgent Humans behind them, and Azorius Control and the perennially underappreciated Dredge rounding things out.

Players: pick up Dredge! The number of Surgical Extractions has literally never been higher in the Modern format’s history and it still posted a positive win rate against the field.

While the camera was focused on Azorius Control players, they were quietly struggling in the background against Izzet Phoenix, Humans, and the Eldrazi decks. We had hyped Esper Control after Zach Allen’s run through SCG Cleveland, but Esper Control posted the worst conversion rate of all the top decks. They seemed to run into a bundle of Amulet Titan and Whir Prison players that ruined their tournament, along with a mess of Tron players goaltending against that Day 2.

Based exclusively on Day 1, you can see two all-stars near 60% and above: Ad Nauseam and Hardened Scales, decks in that Level 3 category. Ad Nauseam swept when it played Tron and Azorius Control. Hardened Scales also crushed Tron while posting mostly respectable win rates versus the rest of the field. But other than these, most of the event clustered around a 50% win rate, plus or minus 5%. Small-creature aggro decks like Infect and Hexproof were the ones pushed out of that rough winner’s metagame, Hexproof by Hardened Scales and Tron and Infect by Humans and Izzet Phoenix.

What about other colorless decks? Eldrazi variants (colorless and mono-red, like we highlighted above) were riding hard on Izzet Phoenix, posting a combined 11-6 versus the deck, but struggling against Humans, going 1-9 – not a surprise for anyone who had played Eldrazi Tron at the dawn of Humans’s dominance over the Modern format. Whir Prison players did surprisingly well against Tron but were crushed by Azorius-based control players. This is the vise of Modern: your deck will fare well against any top-tier deck and be potentially crushed by another two.

Day 2

Now we turn to the winner’s metagame of Day 2 as the field whittled down. Dramatic shifts happen in the metagame share: Humans gained ten percentage points from Day 1 to Day 2 as the deck feasted on most archetypes: against Azorius Control, Grixis Death’s Shadow, Golgari Midrange, and Esper Control, it went collectively 23-7, perhaps bearing out our initial analysis from SCG Cleveland that Aether Vial decks match up well versus Cryptic Command and Thoughtseize decks. Humans annihilates the Eldrazi players of either the Taxes or Stompy variety. Amulet Titan (and Hexproof?) go from bad to worse.

Most interestingly, TitanShift gains over ten percentage points in Day 2. What can account for this? People who track the Modern meta closely will have noticed that, of the recent MagicFest finishes, there has been a run of TitanShift decks making the Top 8: MagicFest LA, Bilbao, Calgary, and Sao Paulo. It might be that TitanShift is an excellent Day 2 deck. We don’t have a lot of data to back up this hypothesis, but it’s something to look into: TitanShift did well against Tron and Izzet Phoenix, and that was enough to carry it to a strong finish in Day 2.

While Izzet Phoenix wasn’t perceived as the boogeyman of MC London, as players didn’t expect it to benefit tremendously from the London Mulligan rule change, it quietly performed consistently well over the entire weekend, maintaining an even win rate and even improving slightly over the weekend.

Jund players in the Mythic Championship were extremely interesting: they posted excellent win rates against Izzet Phoenix and Dredge.

Jund

Logan Nettles

44th Place at Mythic Championship on 04-26-2019

Modern

Creatures (15)

• 4 Dark Confidant
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 4 Bloodbraid Elf
• 3 Scavenging Ooze

Planeswalkers (4)

• 4 Liliana of the Veil

Lands (24)

• 1 Forest
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Mountain
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 2 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 4 Verdant Catacombs
• 3 Raging Ravine
• 3 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 2 Blooming Marsh

Spells (17)

• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
• 4 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 1 Abrupt Decay
• 2 Kolaghan's Command
• 2 Fatal Push

Sideboard

• 2 Engineered Explosives
• 1 Leyline of the Void
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 3 Fulminator Mage
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
• 4 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Collective Brutality
• 1 Liliana, the Last Hope

Looking at the highest-finishing Jund list, piloted by Logan Nettles, there’s nothing remarkable about his maindeck configuration that explains Jund’s success against Izzet Phoenix and Dredge. Despite Surgical Extraction’s popularity in the event (top-finishing Azorius Control players like Luis Salvatto and Petr Sochurek had two copies each in their maindeck), Nettles eschews the card entirely in favor of Nihil Spellbombs. It might be that Nettles leaned on the Spellbombs in a similar way that Zach Allen utilized Nihil Spellbombs in his SCG second-place Esper Control finish: as resource exchanges versus the graveyard decks to choke them out. This design choice from Nettles also allows him to maintain Bloodbraid Elves after sideboard.

Whir Prison seemed to struggle with polarizing matchups among the top tier on Day 2:

• It did poorly against Tron on Day 2, when it did well against it Day 1.
• It did worse than might be expected (slightly below 50%) versus Izzet Phoenix Day 1, while doing well against Izzet Phoenix Day 2.
• It did well against Humans Day 1 yet tanked against Humans Day 2.

We can confirm that Whir Prison is bad against control, so if your local metagame has players who watched Oliver Ruel play on camera and started sleeving up their Cryptic Commands, it might be better to move your Chalice of the Voids to a different deck. Might we suggest Humans?

Your Deck Sucks: MC London 2019 Edition

Why did some of the fan-favorite decks not perform well? We want to dive more deeply into the specific archetypes and how they matched up against each other to explain this. Bryan Gottlieb mentioned that Amulet Ttian struggled with Humans in his article this week. This is partially true, as Amulet Titan did not perform at its best versus Humans, but other decks truly slaughtered it: Grixis Death’s Shadow and Mono-Green Tron both resoundingly defeated Amulet Titan. With mostly middling results against the rest of the field and Dredge not showing up in the numbers Amulet Titan players might have anticipated, this was a rough weekend for the deck, especially Day 2, where it dropped a full ten percentage points in win rate.

Speaking of Grixis Death’s Shadow, the meme is that Grixis Death’s Shdow has no good matchups. Apart from clowning on Amulet Titan players at MC London, this was actually mostly true for the weekend: Grixis Death’s Shadow posted sub-optimal results against the top four decks (Mono-Green Tron, Izzet Phoenix, Humans, and Azorius Control). Of the top ten decks, Grixis Shadow only performed positively against two of them: the aforementioned Amulet Titan and Dredge. Even knowing your opponent’s decklist and being able to mulligan to the appropriate disruption was not enough for Grixis Death’s Shadow.

As we noted above, Tron posted a sub-50% win rate against the field. Where did those losses come from? Tron actually performed poorly against the variety of “other” matchups we’ve tracked and was extremely vulnerable (unsurprisingly) to any combo deck that showed up. Among the top-rated matchups, it still performed well, posting a solid win rate versus Grixis Death’s Shadow and Amulet Titan. While we don’t anticipate Tron to persist in the metagame, it’s not a bad choice for future tournaments. It just has middling results against most of the top decks.

Again, we go back to our theoretical positioning for best deck and come up with two recommendations for Modern moving forward: Hardened Scales and Humans. Humans seems to have adapted to the Modern metagame and has a fantastic amount of customizability for your local metagame. Hardened Scales, on the other hand, is riding the wave of Humans players as well as being a deck that trumps the Affinity mirror. Walking Ballista seems to trump Experimental Frenzy in the Affinity mirrors.

And while Humans is on the rise, we simply cannot recommend Eldrazi decks. Eldrazi decks are in the unenviable position of squeezing on Phoenix decks while being squeezed by Mono-Green Tron and Humans. Those Level 3 deck choices of Eldrazi stumbled and fell over the course of the tournament, while Affinity and Hardened Scales did very well, Experimental Frenzy being a key element in these top-finishing Affinity decks, such as Matt Sperling’s Top 8 performance.

Open Lists. Full Hands. Can’t Lose.

Based on the results of the event, Humans seemed to be the deck that benefited most from the openly shared decklists in the event. It also fared well in the winner’s metagame, as it fought through a metagme that was ill-prepared to fight it and had focused on decks like Mono-Green Tron and Dredge. But don’t count out the once and potentially future king: Izzet Phoenix is still one of the best decks in the format, with the results to prove it.

Still, on the whole, we wanted to point out how remarkably balanced the results from this event were. Much like discussions about Humans, and Grixis Death’s Shadow before that, Modern is doing well and surviving even with a de facto best deck like Izzet Phoenix. Midrange players have re-tuned their decks to post respectable win rates against the deck. For all the concerns about both the London Mulligan rule change and Izzet Phoenix’s overwhelming popularity, the format seems to be adjusting in a healthy manner with a variety of options for any player’s preference. We hope parting the veil on some of the outcomes from this tournament will allay player concerns and cool talk of future bannings, especially as we approach Modern Horizons.

In conclusion, we wanted to give our thanks to Wizards of the Coast for publishing all this data. We know that we’re not the only ones who are using it. We encourage everyone to dig into the decklists (and hope to bring one to you next week with a deep dive on the preferred graveyard hate card of choice, Surgical Extraction) and explore what we’ve been given.

We are at the dawn of a new epoch in Magic and you can count on us to deliver future Mox Insights.