Michael Martin does an overall metagame analysis of Worlds, as well as a “winners” metagame analysis based on the 4-2 or better decks from Standard. Check which decks under/overperformed.

Title: Standard Metagame At Worlds

Hello all!

As (I’m presuming) you are all aware, the World Championships of Magic took place this past weekend in San Francisco, California. While there were Innistrad Drafts in between the two, Standard and Modern decks were pitted against each other, giving us lowly netdeckers and tech-ers tons of information to gobble up. (Pun intended. If you’re not from the United States, you probably won’t get it.)

So, I’ve delved into the information from Worlds, looking into both Standard and Modern to see what information can be gleaned. Which decks showed up in force? Which decks over/underperformed? Were there any ‘cool’ decks!?

Well, let’s take a look!

Overall there were 375 players who took a seat on day one of Worlds, contrary to the metagame breakdown done by Rashad Miller in which he stated there were 365. Funny enough, he actually did the math based on 375 players, so I’m assuming this was simply a typo, but it was one that threw me off for a few minutes while I checked and double-checked the math to make sure. Thanks Rashad! Since Rashad did all of the math for me here, I’m just going to plagiarize a bit and post his numbers, since they check out as accurate:

So, the obvious first: G/W Tokens was the number one deck in terms of pure numbers, though Illusions was a very close second. Rumors and rumblings around the community were that Illusions would be the deck to beat, and these were very close to being true. The deck that Todd Anderson has been preaching for weeks now turned out to test itself against the very best of the best.

The third deck in the “upper tier” (in regards to total number) was Mono Red, which may seem surprising to some. After the StarCityGames.com Standard Open: Indianapolis, where the finals was a Mono Red mirror match, the angry burn flingers have kind of fallen off of the map a bit. Apparently the 50 players who brought the pain with their Mono Red lists knew something though (which we’ll get to shortly).

After that, we have two decks that have taken turns as the “flavor of the week, best deck.” Solar Flare was all the rage when Innistrad was first released, with some people proclaiming it to be the next big thing. Then this “Wolf Run Ramp” deck showed up and crushed it. All of a sudden, Wolf Run was the deck to beat. Only, it wasn’t. Not because it’s a “bad” deck, but because the deck wasn’t so much better than the rest that it needed a bull’s eye on its back. Slowly the deck has regressed back into the “pack,” merely being a good deck in a sea of good decks.

Combined, these five decks accounted for 66.12% of the metagame. If you were ready for these five decks this past weekend, you were probably doing pretty well. After these five, no deck accounted for more than 5% of the Worlds metagame.

Now, the coverage team at Wizards was kind enough to grant us a list of all decks with a winning record (4-2 or better; technically I suppose 3-2-1 would count as a “winning record” too, but I digress). With that, I went through and compiled a similar list to Rashad’s using just this “Winners’ Metagame.”

Here’s the chart comparing overall numbers to “winners” numbers:

Overperforming Decks

Let’s break these numbers down a bit more. Here are the decks that “overperformed,” or rather the decks whose percentage of the Winners Metagame was higher than its overall percentage:

Out of the top five overall decks, only Mono Red and Illusions outperformed their total percentage. Mono Red seemed to catch everyone off guard, as it wasn’t an overly represented deck prior to Worlds. Illusions, while a known quantity and something people were preparing for, still overperformed, definitely demonstrating its power. Both decks are definitely ones to keep an eye on, though I’m sure Mono Red being more expected will lead people to be more prepared for the little angry red guys.

As for Tempered Steel, for those of you who weren’t monitoring the coverage, one of the main reasons this deck overperformed was the fact that this was the Team ChannelFireball deck of choice. Why did they pick it? Well, for starters, Tempered Steel just crushes Illusions, a deck that the team was expecting. Tempered Steel also beats up on G/W Tokens, another big deck coming into the weekend. While Wolf Run was a coin flip at best (and if Wolf Run had four Inferno Titan, a horrible matchup at worst), Tempered Steel was probably the most powerful thing you could be doing while no one was ready, and your best matchups were the top two decks in the room.

It’s rather easy to understand why the CFB guys chose this deck. Other than the reasons already mentioned, the format is full of decks that durdle around, not doing anything overly powerful for a while until they can land a Titan. The CFB guys just wanted to do the most powerful thing available in a format where people aren’t really doing powerful things, and what’s more powerful than dropping a bunch of 3/3s on turn one? With that, the numbers for this deck are also artificially inflated simply because the likes of Luis Scott-Vargas, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, Brian Kibler, Conley Woods, Owen Turtenwald, et al decided to play it. With the combined skill level those guys have, the Tempered Steel deck is obviously going to outperform its overall numbers.

As for the U/W Humans/Blade mash-up in the chart: the issue was that I classified four of the “winners” decks as U/W Blade decks while Rashad classified two total U/W Blade decks, so something was obviously amiss. It seems we are getting our wires crossed on what the line is between U/W Blade and U/W Humans, so I combined the two together.

The last two decks, Tezzeret and U/W/R Control, also outperformed their total numbers, but this stems from the fact that these are decks that small ‘teams’ worked on together and came out with rather tight lists. Two of the “Winners” Tezzeret lists were Grixis lists with Vault Skirges in order to “Build Your Own Baneslayer” with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. See here:

Tezzeret

David Kaliski

207th Place at Worlds on 11-20-2011

Standard

Creatures (11)

• 4 Etched Champion
• 4 Vault Skirge
• 3 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (4)

• 4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

Lands (23)

• 4 Mountain
• 3 Island
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus
• 4 Sulfur Falls

Spells (22)

• 2 Mana Leak
• 2 Mox Opal
• 4 Galvanic Blast
• 2 Arc Trail
• 4 Flayer Husk
• 4 Mortarpod
• 1 Dismember
• 3 Brimstone Volley

Sideboard

• 2 Doom Blade
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine
• 3 Ratchet Bomb
• 1 Arc Trail
• 1 Batterskull
• 4 Shrine of Burning Rage
• 2 Olivia Voldaren
• 1 Stensia Bloodhall

 The last Tezzeret deck was piloted by, you guessed it, Shoota Yasooka, with Bloodline Keepers for extra spice.

As for U/W/R Control, this is the deck that Gerry Thompson was touting prior to Worlds in his article here. The list, for reference:

U/W/R Control

Gerry Thompson

55th Place at Worlds on 11-20-2011

Standard

Creatures (9)

• 2 Frost Titan
• 3 Blade Splicer
• 4 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (2)

• 2 Gideon Jura

Lands (25)

• 4 Plains
• 1 Mountain
• 3 Island
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Shimmering Grotto
• 3 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Seachrome Coast
• 4 Sulfur Falls
• 3 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Moorland Haunt

Spells (24)

• 3 Mana Leak
• 1 Think Twice
• 3 Oblivion Ring
• 2 Ponder
• 1 Negate
• 1 White Sun's Zenith
• 2 Dismember
• 4 Gut Shot
• 1 Timely Reinforcements
• 4 Desperate Ravings
• 2 Traveler's Amulet

Sideboard

• 2 Dissipate
• 1 Divine Offering
• 1 Negate
• 2 Celestial Purge
• 2 Precursor Golem
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1 Sword of War and Peace
• 2 Phantasmal Image
• 2 Timely Reinforcements

Shimmering Grotto? Traveler’s Amulet?? Yes!! With manabases looking like total crap these days, a three-color (with only one “friendly” color combination in blue/white) control deck needs these types of cards to smooth out its mana. With these “underwhelming” cards, you better make sure your business spells can make up for the fact that you’re having to durdle around fixing your mana.

Well, GerryT and Michael Jacob did just that. Desperate Ravings was all GerryT could talk about in his article, talking about how good the card is (and Patrick Chapin agrees here), especially considering we have Snapcaster Mage to use anything that gets discarded, in case we really needed it. Gideon Jura is still the man when it comes to stopping aggro decks cold. White Sun’s Zenith is such a beating every single time I’ve had it cast against me, even in Cube with the best cards in the history of Magic at our disposal; that card is ridiculous if you can make the mana work. Oblivion Ring can mop up anything that gets through the shields.

Wait, is that a Frost Titan? Instead of Consecrated Sphinx?

GerryT’s done it again, planning and metagaming correctly. With the crappy manabases we have running around, Frost Titan can completely shut someone down from being able to cast anything of relevance. Oh, and with the Wolf Run decks now looking to take up a huge percentage of the metagame, Frost Titan is here to shut down whatever Titan they may have happened to have drawn and snuck through the countermagic/O-Ring wall.

Underperforming Decks

Out of the top five decks in terms of overall numbers, G/W Tokens and Solar Flare both underperformed on the day. Of the two, I think Solar Flare continues to trip over its own feet (feet in this case being the manabase). If the deck draws the lands it needs to in the order it needs them, the deck is incredibly powerful. You essentially keep jamming your powerful spells until you win.

If you can’t cast the spells you need to cast, though, you can’t win. It’s just that simple. Until we get some better lands, it seems that Solar Flare will continue to underperform at its current rate.

As for G/W Tokens, it’s not that the deck isn’t powerful or that the manabase is bad… it’s just that people were expecting the deck and were ready for it. Out of the other top overall decks, G/W only had a positive matchup against Mono Red, and even then it was close to even. The deck couldn’t beat Wolf Run Ramp to save its life, and Solar Flare was just as bad. Illusions was also a bad matchup, but again it was close to even, so we can almost call that one a wash.

Esper Control also came in at a subpar level, essentially for the same reason as Solar Flare. Since the decks do basically the same thing (other than the fact that Solar Flare plays Unburial Rites), it’s fairly easy to understand why Esper underperformed.

Decks That Broke Even

When I say “Broke Even,” I mean the deck performed within +/- 1 of the number of expected number of “Winners” given the overall number of players piloting the deck.

Out of the top five decks in terms of overall numbers, Wolf Run Ramp was the only deck that performed to the level of its metagame share. The deck is consistent and just aims to do its thing, drop a Titan, and ask “can you deal with this?” As you can see by the winning list, a lot of players “couldn’t deal” with Inferno Titan on the weekend. If you watched the top eight webcast, every time an Inferno Titan hit the table, you had to have thought to yourself “Why hasn’t Wolf Run been running four of this card before now?? This card is nuts!”  

What this means is: you had better be prepared for Inferno Titan in the coming weeks. This means you should probably go ahead and set down the G/W Tokens and Tempered Steel, at least for now, as this deck is sure to pick up in popularity in the near future.

While Rashad gave the impression that U/B Control “underperformed” on the weekend, it broke just about even overall. The problem with labeling all like decks “U/B Control” is that the decks are only going to be as good as the work that the pilot put into metagame predictions and list tuning. Someone who plays four Coral Merfolk with 32 blue and black permission and removal spells will get labeled as U/B Control the same way someone who meticulously plans and tweaks will.

I actually don’t think U/B Control, well tuned, is a bad choice at all. The great thing is that now could be an outstanding time to be playing U/B Control (Shaheen is probably nodding, smiling, knowing it’s time to tighten the Icy Grip).

With the primary decks sure to be Illusions, Mono Red, Tempered Steel, and Wolf Run Ramp, it’s easy to plan ahead and metagame. While you’ll never be favored against Tempered Steel, you can plan a sideboard for that deck and just wait for the Wolf Run Inferno decks to take out the Tempered Steel players in the later rounds. After that, your deck could (and should, if you tweak correctly) beat Mono Red and Wolf Run Ramp; with cards like Wurmcoil Engine, Batterskull, Despise, Surgical Extraction, and Memoricide available, it’s just a matter of knowing your enemy and planning accordingly. The cool part is that Thrun, the Last Troll and Dungrove Elder are declining in popularity (with the total number of “Wolf Run Green” decks in the Winners Metagame being all of three, and even the holdouts still playing Dungrove Elders will probably pick up the Worlds winning list), making it a good time to start looking at the U/B color combination.

Conclusion

With the results of Worlds giving us a good idea of what to expect going forward, we should know to expect and plan our gauntlet accordingly:

Wolf Run Red (With Inferno Titan)

Tempered Steel

Illusions

Mono Red

…with Tempered Steel losing steam when people realize that the deck just folds to a quick Inferno Titan, which we’re going to see a lot of in the next couple of weeks. Illusions seems well positioned against the Wolf Run decks while having a bad matchup against Mono Red, with Mono Red having a bad matchup against Wolf Run.

So you have your three pillars for next week (as these things change on a weekly basis now). I would definitely include U/B, as I’m sure players will look to play the deck that beats the “best deck.”

And as for my pet deck, U/R Tempo? Yeah, not a one in sight when looking at players with winning records. Too many G/W Tokens and Mono Red. Yeah, it’s probably time to tone down on the Tempo, tone up on the Control.

Extra Content: G/R Aggro at Worlds

One last bit for you guys before I head out. When checking through the lists, other than the Grixis Tezzeret and U/W/r GerryT special, I found this interesting number at 4-2 in Standard:

G/R Aggro

Yuki Yosioka

Test deck on 11-27-2011

Standard

Creatures (21)

• 4 Llanowar Elves
• 2 Grim Lavamancer
• 3 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 4 Chandra's Phoenix
• 4 Stromkirk Noble
• 4 Daybreak Ranger

Lands (24)

• 7 Forest
• 7 Mountain
• 4 Rootbound Crag
• 4 Copperline Gorge
• 2 Kessig Wolf Run

Spells (15)

• 3 Incinerate
• 3 Galvanic Blast
• 3 Arc Trail
• 3 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 3 Batterskull

Sideboard

• 2 Manabarbs
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 2 Combust
• 3 Beast Within
• 3 Sword of War and Peace
• 3 Vulshok Refugee

This list is obviously not tuned (it seems like he just jammed “3 of every spell, 4 of every creature”), but I found it pretty interested nonetheless, simply because he had a 4-2 record at Worlds. Obviously he did something right.

Here’s how his six Standard rounds went:

Round 1: Won 2-1 against Petr Brozek (Mono Red)

Round 2: Lost 1-2 to Alex McCormick (U/B Control)

Round 3: Won 2-0 against Danilo Sendra (Unknown, No Decklist Available)

Round 4: Won 2-0 against Anton Jonsson (Illusions)

Round 5: Won 2-0 against Thierry Ramboa (Puresteel Paladin)

Round 6: Lost 1-2 to Luis Scott-Vargas (Tempered Steel)

I’m pretty sure we can excuse that last loss, as there’s no shame in losing to, arguably, the best player in the game today. However, this shows the power of bringing an unknown deck to game with. With most decks in Standard right now powered down due to the relatively small number of cards available at the moment, Yuki Yoshioka just decided to smash face then burn face. I don’t see how this deck could beat U/B Control (though Swords give you a chance) and looking at the sideboard, it’s also easy to see that he wasn’t overly prepared for Tempered Steel as well.

However, this is the power of bringing a rogue deck to a tournament where people are trying to “break” the format and bring decks prepared for the expected decks. When your opponents are thinking on an incredibly linear level, keeping their sights on a limited set of decks, there’s something to be said about blind-siding them with something unexpected, even if it’s only slightly off the beaten path. That small advantage may end up being astronomical!

That’s all for this week. Next week we’re going to dive into the Modern metagame from Worlds to try to give a leg up on the competition in the upcoming PTQ season!

Until next week,

Michael Martin

@mikemartinlfs on the Twitter