Right after Worlds, I started out by bashing a few decks together. GhaziGlare, Critical Mass Update, Eminent Domain, and Enduring Ideal were all at the top of my list, so JP and I played a bunch of test games.
The first surprise I encountered was that Enduring Ideal was… not terrible. I had assumed it was (despite the fact that Asahara made Top 8 with it), because the combo seemed very fragile. I figured it would pretty much roll over to Critical Mass’s threats plus countermagic, or to Eminent Domain‘s land destruction, but neither was true. It did quite well against both CM and was 50-50 against Domain.
"Huh," I thought. "Maybe this deck is worth investigating."
The aggro matchups, as JP and I quickly learned, were trivial. Ideal had Wrath of God, Faith’s Fetters, and sideboarded Pyroclasm, and as soon as the Epic spell itself resolved, victory was inevitable.
I decided to take that high aggro win percentage out for a spin, and cut a Confiscate and a Faith’s Fetters for two extra maindeck Boseijus, bringing me up to three in game 1. That gave me tons of game against Blue decks, and… yeah, I still destroyed aggro.
I put the deck together on Magic Online, and started running the 8-man queues with it. (This was about a month before the Pro Tour.)
At the time, the popular decks on MTGO were Boros, GhaziGlare, U/B Control, U/R Urzatron, Magnivore, and several different flavors of aggro-control.
It took me about twenty 8-mans before I finally lost a match to Boros, and my percentages against U/B Control and U/R Urzatron were also very high.
I had trouble with the U/B and U/B/g aggro-control decks, and lost two matches to U/B Control decks that boarded into a U/B aggro-control strategy by siding in Dimir Cutpurse and extra Jittes. Magnivore was also about 50-50 with the Remands, though after I added Sacred Grounds to the board, I started beating it pretty consistently.
At this point, my thoughts on the expected metagame of the Pro Tour were as follows.
The environment is very open. On MTGO alone, there are aggro decks, aggro-control decks, board control decks, combo decks, land destruction decks, and permission decks.
U/R Tron is really powerful. It should see a lot of play from players who are confident in their abilities to wield control decks.
Zoo is the fastest aggro deck in the format. Defying your opponent to deal with your super-fast threats is a solid strategy in any wide-open environment, and none of the aggro-control decks on MTGO are prepared for turn 1 Kird Ape. A lot of players should be playing this deck as well.
Although there are a ton of aggro-control decks on MTGO, these should be less present at the Pro Tour because Guildpact will be legal, and the popular Zoo and G/R Beatdown decks will stomp all over them in testing.
I expected Blue control decks and straightforward aggro decks (as opposed to aggro-control) to be the most popular strategies at the Pro Tour. This cemented my choice of Enduring Ideal; what more could I ask for than a deck that defeated the expected most popular decks?
I knew from playing on MTGO that “random” G/B decks playing Cranial Extraction and Naturalize in the board tended to be my worst matchup, alongside aggro-control decks and Land Destruction. In other words, lots of decks that lost to Zoo and G/R, which weren’t legal on MTGO yet because Guildpact had not yet been released. Nobody I had talked to (who was also qualified and testing for the tournament) had found any kind of playable B/W deck, so the fact that I had a bad matchup against that deck did not deter me from my choice.
After the sixth round of Pro Tour: Honolulu, I had played against two Zoo decks, two B/W decks, and two B/W/G decks. As expected, I had beaten the two Zoo decks, and lost to the four B/W/x decks. Unfortunately, this meant I was going home.
So I missed Day 2 of my first Pro Tour. The natural questions that follow are: “Why?” and “What can I do to fix this for next time?”
As for the Why, there are several things that did not cause my early exit from the PT. For one, I didn’t play abnormally poorly. Obviously my play was not perfect, but the few misplays I caught myself making were far from enough to shoulder the blame for my performance. It also wasn’t my deck-tuning ability; my deck did precisely what I tuned it to do – bash Zoo (I did, 2-0) and lose to B/W/x (I did, 0-4). So where did I go wrong?
Simply put, I had the environment pegged all wrong. I brought a deck that beat aggressive decks and Blue control decks, and which lost to B/W, aggro-control, and land destruction. When the environment turned out to be mostly B/W, I got destroyed.
The answer to “What do I do to fix this next time?” is twofold.
First, I should have played a more powerful, less fragile deck in an environment as open as this one. I’m used to playing in Pro Tour Qualifiers, where almost everyone plays a predictable set of decks, and while I thought I had the environment pegged, I should have known better. Running a “metagame deck” (which I was, targeting only a few specific archetypes and accepting losses against other decks I was counting on not showing) is too risky when any number of other players could be coming to different conclusions about the environment, leading them to pick different decks and mess up my predicted field.
Second, I should have predicted the environment better.
Hmm.
How, exactly, does one do that?
Magic crystal ball?
Tarot cards?
Hmm indeed.
I talked to Mike Flores at the Pro Tour, and his predictions for the metagame had been spot-on. I believe his exact words were, “Obviously B/W will be the most popular deck, and Zoo second.”
Obvious to him, somehow… but the thought had never even crossed my mind that B/W would be popular. None of my friends had it pegged as a contender. I asked him what the basis was for his prediction.
“I knew a bunch of the Dutch players were testing B/W, plus a lot of-”
Wait – what? A bunch of the Dutch players?
I’ve never even met a Dutch player. Hell, I’ve never heard a word of Dutch spoken in my entire life (and known about it). But Mike knew what decks they were testing.
Exactly how does one get that information? I have no Dutch contacts. I don’t even have a friend of a friend of a Dutch guy. Much less a friend-of-a-friend-of-a Japanese guy. Or a French guy.
Fact: Mike Flores had a dead-on read of the metagame, while Richard Feldman had an almost-backwards read on it.
Fact: Mike Flores has way more contacts in the realm of competitive Magic: the Gathering than Richard Feldman does.
If I want to know what decks are going to be at the Pro Tout, I need to, well, know people who are going to the Pro Tour. Not just my friends, the scattered Pro Tour Qualifier winners from various parts of the US, but actual players from around the world. What are the Dutch testing? What news from the French? Any rumors concerning surprise Japanese technology?
In a Pro Tour Qualifier setting, you can learn what decks people are playing just by watching the Internet. If you get the environment wrong for one tournament, you can watch the Top 8 postings and get a better read for the next one. But at the Pro Tour you only get one shot. In order to correctly build your own deck, you’ve got to know what types of weaponry your opponents will be bringing to the fight.
To do that, you need to tap into something I’ll melodramatically dub The Network.
Mike Flores is in on the Network. He’s got a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. He’s in the know. Ted Knutson is, too, and as you can see by looking at his pre-Honolulu predictions article; his take on the environment was also a lot closer than mine was.
So how does one get in on this information exchange?
First off, make some friends. The majority of Magic players I’ve met are damn fine people, and that includes the pros. Yeah, the jerks and the rules lawyers tend to stand out in our minds, but almost everyone I met at the PT was someone I’d like to hang out with again. You know how almost every pro interview involves the phrase “all the friends I’ve made” when playing competitive Magic? This is no coincidence.
I realize it can be intimidating trying to befriend people you don’t know, especially with the disparaging label of “barn” being thrown about as much as it does, but if you bring something else to the table (besides an attitude of “hey man, I want your tech. Let’s be friends.”), you’ll end up with both new friends and a better chance of Pro Tour success.
I had an awesome dinner at a Japanese Benihana-style restaurant with Mike Krumb, Gadiel Szleifer, Mike Purn, Jerret Rocha, Rashad Miller, and Mike Bernat. I’d never tried calamari before; Krumb offered some of his, and mentioned his preference for fresh-grilled calamari over the more common fried calamari. Gadiel and I talked about colleges. Purn lent me an Ivory Mask. Jerret and I wandered the streets of Honolulu, hitting up the “Worst Strip Club Ever” (another first for me—I’d never been to one previously) and a club with four-dollar Cokes and zero female prospects.
To be honest, I feel kind of dirty titling this article “The Network” because the fun times you have outside the Pro Tour is by far the best reward you get from meeting people there – metagame predictions be damned.
But this is, after all, a strategy site, and I am a strategy writer, so if you need some kind of motivation to go up to someone you’ve never met and say “hello,” let The Network be it. If you’re worried that people won’t know you, that you’re a nobody in the Magic community, and that “nobody will want me barning around them,” then I have two suggestions – either put that out of your mind, summon up your courage, and introduce yourself anyway, or just make a name for yourself. You don’t have to ride the gravy train to do that – all kinds of people, from Josh Ravitz to even Randy Beuhler knew my name (if not my face), just because I write. Cedric Philips is entertaining enough that he could 0-2 at drop every tournament he attended and people would still love to hang out with him.
Go out there and make some friends-in-high-places. Tell yourself it’s so you’ll do better at the next Pro Tour, then go out and get hammered with them and fly home with some memories you’ll never forget. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Until next time,
Richard Feldman
Team Check Minus
[email protected]