Hey there everyone, it’s been a while. I’m glad to be back, and I’m looking forward to an exciting couple of months ahead of us with a trio of Open Weekends over the next month and a half. I am excited to keep bringing you all the information I can… let’s get down to business!
Worldwake hit stores a little over a week ago, and some have predicted a shakeup of the Extended metagame, but it has failed to immediately materialize with the Top 8, mirroring a lot of the Online trends from the past month. In fact, Worldwake only contributed three copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and 4 copies of Loam Lion to the entire Top 8. Not much of a splash… yet.
Let’s take a look at what’s new for this week’s spreadsheet: The 4+ versus 4+ worksheet. On this worksheet, you can see all of the matches between two players who ended the day with 4 or more wins. This cuts out about 75% of the total number of matches and makes the results a little more selective, showing only good players with good deck choices playing against each other. A couple of notable differences between the full field results and what you get when you cut away some of the chaff:
• Thopter Depths goes from 6-3-1 against Zoo to 4-0-1, suggesting that a skilled player with Thopter Depths should have an excellent match-up against Zoo.
• Although Faeries was the most numerous deck in the field and posted a solid 56% win percentage in that field, that drops to an unimpressive 43% when the top players are sitting on both side of the table.
The spreadsheet can be found here.
For this week’s feature, lets take a look at Anthony Duval’s Hypergenesis deck:
Creatures (21)
- 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- 4 Sundering Titan
- 4 Angel of Despair
- 4 Bogardan Hellkite
- 4 Simian Spirit Guide
- 3 Progenitus
Lands (21)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
Round 1 — Won 2-0 versus Faeries (Brandon Cook)
Round 2 — Won 2-1 versus Doran Rock (Justin D. LaRose)
Round 3 — Won 2-1 versus Living End (Patrick King)
Round 4 — Lost 0-2 versus All-In Red (Chris Bingham)
Round 5 — Won 2-1 versus Zoo (Kenny S Mayer)
Round 6 — Won 2-1 versus Esper Control (Michael J Stanfar)
Round 7 — Lost 1-2 versus Rock (Chris L Burroughs)
The cat is already out of the bag with Tomoharu Saito’s Top 8 performance at GP Oakland, but you would do well not to forget that this deck exists. Unlike Saito, Anthony left the deck in pre-Worldwake form, passing on Terastodon for the similarly devastating Sundering Titan. The deck is capable of some staggeringly powerful plays, and is most dangerous when you aren’t ready for it. Knowing how your match-up plays out against this deck is worth the preparation, even if you don’t move it into your regular gauntlet.
Overall, we are still waiting for Worldwake to make a splash in the PTQ level scene. No new archetypes showing up, but there is still time. Now we turn our thoughts to Standard for the Pro Tour and the upcoming StarCityGames.com Opens. Perhaps Worldwake can fulfill the promise of the prices some of the singles carry over the coming month.
I am looking forward to following the Pro Tour and upcoming SCG.com Opens from on site, so if you see me, I hope that you will feel free to say ‘hi’ and talk some shop.
Jared