I could fit all of the decklists from the event into the case for booster boxes (but only just barely).
At the end of the event, StarCityGames judge and occasional writer Nicholas Sabin came up to me, much like Jared Sylva had in Indy, with a pile of decklists and the standings. Looking at 300 to 400 decklists can be a large and exhausting task. As luck would have it, I had my computer with me, but as luck would not have it, I hadn’t reinstalled all of my beloved programs (including Word and Excel, to very necessary tools for this process). The trunk of John Stolzman’s car would have to hold everything until I could get back home and plug away at everything.
It was a pretty exhausting Magic weekend, all told. I quickly scrubbed out of the main event and then proceeded to get the singularly most ridiculous sealed pool I’ve ever seen for the Cruise Qualifier, narrowly missing Top 8 after being destroyed by one of the most ridiculous Naya decks I’ve seen in Limited (this makes me wonder if we’ll have to greatly reset our expectations for ridiculousness in sealed deck with the new “six pack” sealed format). After getting back to a crazily hot hotel room, I wasn’t able to sleep a wink, and bowed out of the PTQ the next day; I already know I’m prone to punting, and playing in a PTQ without sleep seems like a great way for me to not win, so I hung out most of the day, watched Brad Nelson do some cubes, and enjoyed some awesome casual Block Party Constructed games with a great guy named Andy.
I’m excited to briefly mention some Madison finishes — the second finish by Jasper Johnson-Epstein in the Top 8 of a $5K since his Boat Brew-piloting experience at the $5K in Indy and, even better news, John Stolzman’s back-to-back wins in the Cruise Qualifier and the PTQ the next day. One last Magic huzzah from John before he sells all of his Magic cards and moves to California to play Poker, I guess. Great work!
I also wanted to thank everyone at the $5K, the Cruise Qualifier, the PTQ, and otherwise that came up to say they were regular readers. I had a blast meeting and talking with many of you, and it’s always great to hear that people appreciate your work. Thanks!
All of that said, let’s get to the meat!
The Contents of the Metagame
We had a solid 335-person event, with 23, count ‘em, 23 archetypes played by more than about 1% of the field (3). That, my friends, is a whole hell of a lotta archetypes.
What this means for the tournament player is actually pretty significant. The most popular deck of the tournament was easily various three-color Jund Cascade variants, clocking in at 40 players. Even with 40 players, this meant that a grand total of just under 12% played the most popular archetype. Everyone’s favorite Bad Guy, Faeries, clocked in at under 10%.
If you’re like me, and you like to be a deck that can simply trump an opponent, the concept of trumping actually becomes quite difficult in this kind of metagame. If we look at a card and say to ourselves, “Man, this card would be incredible against (Faeries or Black/White Tokens or what-have-you),” the simple fact of the matter is that most of your early rounds are not going to be mathematically like to hit those players.
Take Faeries. At 10% of the field, it takes about six rounds of Magic before you’re even close to having had a 50% chance of playing against it. Metagamers beware!
Here is the archetype breakdown:
Jund Cascade – 40 – 11.9%
Faeries – 32 – 9.6%
Reveillark – 27 – 8.1%
B/W Tokens – 21 – 6.3%
Elves – 18 – 5.4%
Red(/x) – 18 – 5.4%
Kithkin – 17 – 5.1%
G/W Overrun – 16 – 4.8%
Bant – 14 – 4.2%
Swans – 12 – 3.6%
Jund Ramp – 12 – 3.6%
Boat Brew – 12 – 3.6%
5cCascade – 11 – 3.3%
Naya – 10 – 3.0%
5cControl – 9 – 2.7%
Doran Junk – 9 – 2.7%
Elves!!! – 6 – 1.8%
Cascade LD – 6 – 1.8%
Elementals – 5 – 1.5%
Naya-Jund Cascade Control – 4 – 1.2%
Treefolk – 4 – 1.2%
Giantbaiting – 3 – 0.9%
Turbo-Fog – 3 – 0.9%
OTHER – 26 – 7.8%
Of course, the field does begin to tighten up. If you limit your look to the virtual Top 32 (those players with a record equal to those in the Top 32 or better), you get a metagame that looks a little different. Here is the “Winner’s Metagame”:
7 — 15% – Faeries
6 — 13% – Jund Cascade
6 — 13% – Black/White Tokens
4 — 8% – Reveillark
3 — 6% – Green/White Overrun
3 — 6% – Swans
2 — 4% – Five-Color Cascade
2 — 4% –Naya-Jund Cascade Control
2 — 4% – Doran Junk
2 — 4% – Kithkin
2 — 4% – Elves
2 — 4% – Red(/X)
1 — 2% – Five-Color Control
1 — 2% – Treefolk
1 — 2% – Boat Brew
1 — 2% – Elementals
1 — 2% – Bant
1 — 2% – Elves!!!
1 — 2% – OTHER (Bant Tokens)
Even here, though, we can see that the metagame is so diverse that we’ve merely gone up to 15% for our highest represented deck. In the strangely biorhythmic metagame that we have going on right now, where people are engaged in a complicated guessing game about which archetype is going to reign supreme, the particular top deck is likely to change from event to event, but it seems unlikely that the general situation will change. Whether it is Green/White, or Elves!!! (Elf-Combo), or Elves (Elf-Beatdown), or Faeries, it’s all the same, really. Expect to face a wildly diverse metagame.
If we merely look at the list of archetype that at some moment in the tournament were outperforming the average expected result, you have a pretty significant list of deck archetypes:
Faeries
Reveillark
Five-Color Cascade
Jund Cascade
Naya-Jund Cascade Control
Doran Junk
Treefolk
Black/White Tokens
Boat Brew
Elementals
Green/White Overrun
Elves
Giantbaiting
Swans
Elves!!!
The decks that continuously underperformed were the following:
Cascade LD
Jund Ramp
Kithkin
Red(/X)
Naya
Bant
Turbo-Fog
OTHER (miscellaneous decks)
Obviously, this is not to say that these archetypes are completely dead. Kithkin, for example, had two competitors in the Top 8 of the Indianapolis PTQ. It does just mean that these decks failed to do well in the field.
The Top 8
It is worth noting that the Top 8 went down to 10th place, on tiebreaks. That gives us the following “Top 8”:
2 Faeries
1 Reveillark
1 Jund Cascade
1 Treefolk
1 Black/White Tokens
2 Green/White Overrun
1 Elves
1 Five-Color Control
Other than the Treefolk list, this is not such a shocking revelation. Here are those top lists:
Only the two decks that met in the finals, Faeries and Green/White Overrun managed a double-representation. The Faeries decks were pretty wildly different (as much as Faeries can be, anyway), with one running Vendilion Cliques and Thoughtseize, and the other more maxed out on anti-creatures. The two Green/White Overrun lists were practically identical, with champion Corey Baumeister list sporting an extra Cloudgoat Ranger and Overrun. The fifth place finisher is a fairly similar build to the champion from Boston, Joseph Shi’s list, changing a Steward into another Pridemage and slightly shifting the land. All of this remains evidence that even if Green/White isn’t highly played (less than 5% of the field, and only about 6% of the winners), it is probably worth your time to test against these lists if you hope to win the single-elimination portion of a PTQ Top 8.
The Complicated Stuff
There are many more conclusions to examine from the data. There is fair amount of it in the following breakdown of the archetypes:
I understand that the image is small, but I wanted to fit everything relevant on a single table. First, some quick notes.
“xxx” indicates that there were no longer decks being represented in that portion of the field.
“% in Top X” is the percentage of players of an archetype who succeeding in making the Top X portion of the field.
The numbers in the Total row that are highlighted light blue are the EV of simply playing in the event. Thus if you played in the event, you have a 23.3% chance of making the top 64, a 14.3% chance of making Top 32, a 6.9% chance of being in the Top 16, and a 3% chance of being in the Top 8, all other things being equal.
The numbers highlighted in bright green are the instances when the percentage of players playing an archetype over performed the expected performance (in light blue) discussed earlier.
Looking at this data, the first thing to examine is those decks that did not perform well in the lower portions of the field and then began to emerge as high performers. These lists are:
Five-Color Control
Doran Junk
Elementals
Elves-Beatdown
This implies that if you are not a higher quality player, you can’t expect to succeed with these decks, probably because of their difficulty level. Elementals is regularly asking you to tutor, Doran Junk and Elves probably has a very narrow margin of victory over people, and Five-Color Control is likely asking complicated questions for you every single turn. Only two players playing Elves managed to get into the Top 32, with one in the 24th-48th and one in 1st-10th. Similarly, only one player manage to do better than Top 64 with Five-Color Control, but they made it all the way to the Top 8. Do not touch these decks unless you think you have a great deal of skill with them.
Then, there are the high average performers:
75% – Naya-Jund Cascade Control
38% – Black/White Tokens
36% – Five-Color Cascade
33% – Swans
31% – Faeries
30% – Reveillark
25% – Jund Cascade
These decks managed to get an above-average return. Treefolk (which made virtual Top 8) and Giantbaiting also made this cut, but were both only represented by a single player, so their standard deviation could be very high.
Of these lists, the Naya-Jund Cascade Control decks were shockingly represented. These lists might actually be more appropriately called Dedicated Cascade Control. Here is the top-placing list, from Jesse Hawkins, tied for Top 16.
Jesse Hawkins, 21st Place, Minnesota $5k
3 Vivid Grove
2 Vivid Crag
3 Vivid Meadow
2 Wooded Bastion
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Forest
1 Plains
4 Treetop Village
2 Fire-lit Thicket
1 Llanowar Wastes
1 Karplusan Forest
2 Graven Cairns
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Captured Sunlight
4 Enlisted Wurm
4 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Enigma Sphinx
4 Incendiary Command
4 Wrath of God
3 Primal Command
2 Bituminous Blast
3 Maelstrom Pulse
Sideboard:
3 Anathemancer
4 Cloudthresher
4 Volcanic Fallout
4 Fulminator Mage
This list is very similar to one of the decks that has been making the rounds on MTGO. Only four players chose to play the deck at the event, but three made Top 64 or better, two were in Top 32 or better, and one broke Top 16. Definitely a deck to watch.
Except for that deck, the remaining decks look largely like our expected metagame. Once again, here they are, with the percent of the players playing them who did better than the expected value of 23%:
38% – Black/White Tokens
36% – Five-Color Cascade
33% – Swans
31% – Faeries
30% – Reveillark
25% – Jund Cascade
Of these, all of the Cascade decks (including the dedicated Cascade, above, and, of course, Swans), failed to meet their expected value given the number of people who played them, when it came to the penetration of top eight. This does suggest that Cascade might be “merely” a “good” archetype, and not one of the outstanding archetypes for the format.
If you view yourself as a good player, and you’re looking for the safest bet, it seems pretty clear that you should choose one of the following decks:
Faeries
Reveillark
Black/White Tokens
Green/White Overrun
This list is probably not at all surprising to many of you, but it should be noted what this breakdown is essentially made of: dedicated anti-creature (Reveillark), dedicated Windbrisk Heights (the two tokens-based decks), and potential absurd synergy (Faeries). If you’re not playing one of these decks, it should be for one of the following reasons:
a) You have an absurdly good build of a deck.
b) You know the deck you’re piloting at an incredibly strong level (think Cedric and Kithkin).
c) You think you’re literally one of the best players in the room, and you have a good handle on the metagame allowing you to choose a different deck.
d) You want to have fun with the deck you’re choosing.
That’s about it. There really aren’t satisfactory reasons otherwise, at least not that I can think of.
The OTHERS
There were, of course, a few decks that managed to crack the top of the field that were distinctly in the surprise category. Here they are:
Bant Tokens — Justin Vavrina, “Top 32”, 35th Place
4 Flurry of Wings
4 Spectral Procession
3 Bant Charm
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
2 Overrun
4 Cryptic Command
2 Repel Intruders
1 Ajani Goldmane
2 Kitchen Finks
4 Gilt-leaf Ambush
2 Cloudgoat Rangers
2 Martial Coup
2 Reflecting Pool
3 Wooded Bastion
3 Flooded Grove
1 Mystic Gate
2 Yavimaya Coast
2 Adarkar Wastes
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Seaside Citadel
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Forest
Sideboard:
1 Story Circle
3 Wrath of God
2 Snakeform
3 Runed Halo
3 Qasali Pridemage
2 Celestial Purge
1 Raking Canopy
This is a pretty neat deck. There is always something exciting about getting to run 4 Cryptic Command and 4 Windbrisk Heights!
Nip! — Scott Markeson, “Top 64”, 61st Place
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Nightsky Mimic
4 Zealous Persecution
4 Relentless Apparition
4 Nip Gwyllion
4 Edge of Divinity
4 Unmake
2 Deathbringer Liege
4 Stillmoon Cavalier
1 Identity Crisis
4 Fetid Heath
10 Swamp
9 Plains
Sideboard:
2 Ranger of Eos
3 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
3 Wrath of God
4 Path to Exile
3 Celestial Purge
Attacking for a 4/4 or 7/7 lifelinker on turn 2 is always pretty crazy. Note that Scott runs the Paths in the board with Unmake in the main for maximum Mimic/Liege action.
“Shenanigans”-Esper-Control — Todd Godbersen, “Top 64”, 73rd Place
4 Master Transmuter
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Cryptic Command
3 Ethersworn Shieldmage
3 Master of Etherium
3 Agony Warp
2 Sharuum the Hegemon
2 Filigree Angel
2 Sphinx Sovereign
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Scourglass
1 Sphinx Summoner
1 Ethersworn Adjudicator
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Mystic Gate
2 Sunken Ruins
2 Fetid Heath
2 Arcane Sanctum
2 Cave of Koilos
1 Underground River
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
Sideboard:
2 Meddling Mage
3 Path to Exile
3 Esper Charm
2 Runed Halo
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Executioner’s Capsule
.
1 Sower of Temptation
Shenanigans indeed! If a Master Transmuter gets into play, things actually look potentially downright devastating. Ethersworn Shieldmage tricks are especially agonizing to think about, completely locking out many players from the game. I’m sure this deck could be improved, but its basic idea is pretty neat.
Looking over all of the decklists is a lot of work, but I’m hoping that you got a lot out of it. If you like the data from these kinds of articles, make sure you let me know in the forums. It can be pretty exhausting, and I’m happy to keep doing it if there is a demand.
Until next week,
Adrian Sullivan