Welcome to a special edition of Mox Insights. While we usually bring you a break down after the tournament, this year for the Players’ Championship we are bringing you a summation of the 2019 SCG Tour and preview the competitors who will be battling in Roanoke for their share of $50,000 – by the numbers.
We should emphasize that these numbers are drawn exclusively from players’ performance on the SCG Tour for Season 1 and 2 in 2019 – we didn’t dig further back into previous years performances, which might make some numbers look lower than they should. We wanted to offer this snapshot into each player’s performance though as they progressed through the SCG Tour. Some players might not have as complete statistics (looking at you, Invitational winners!). But for the rest: we have so much.
For this, we wanted to look mostly at games played as opposed to matches won. We also focused on players’ Open and Invitational performances as opposed to their Classic or Team Open records, though we do note those when relevant. Most records are pulled from players’ performances in the Swiss rounds of a tournament except when otherwise noted and when we looked at players’ head-to-head record against other Players Championship competitors, where we included their record against other competitors in elimination rounds.
Players of the Year
#1 Dominic Harvey
Dominic Harvey was the first individual Open winner of the 2019 SCG Tour in the Modern Open at Worcester in January. He ably took down the tournament with an innovative build of Amulet Titan, and proceeded to begin a race for the Players’ Championship that would last all the way until November, winning a Modern Classic in Syracuse in March, was on the winning team (along with fellow competitors Jeremy Bertarioni and Jonathan Hobbs) at SCG Pittsburgh in June, won another Modern Open in Columbus in July with Mono-Green Tron, and winning a Standard Classic in Atlanta in October.
Harvey has favored big mana and combo strategies in Modern – also the format he has performed best in. Of especial note: when you remove Chris Barone’s nearly undefeated rampage at the Season Two Invitational at SCG CON Winter, Harvey is the highest performing member of the Players’ Championship in Top 8 performances, boasting an 86% game win rate in elimination rounds, over 15% higher than his next nearest competition
2019 Vital Stats
- 59% Open Game Win Rate, 63% Open Match Win Rate
- 62% Modern Open Win Rate
- 57% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 50% Standard Open Win Rate
- 64% Classic Win Rate
- 51% Win Rate against other Players’ Championship competitors
- 50% Conversion rate (from Day 1 of an Open to Day 2)
- 60% Day 1 Win Rate, 56% Day 2 Win Rate, 86% Top 8 Win Rate
#2 Drake Sasser
Drake Sasser has spent 2019 attending every single Open on the SCG Tour, including all fifteen individual competitor Opens – a feat matched by only one other player in the Players’ Championship. For that, he has earned the second Player of the Year slot as a veteran SCG Tour player.
Based on his deck selection, we would classify Sasser primarily as a blue mage – Sasser spent much of 2019 playing Izzet Phoenix in Modern and Azorius Control in Legacy. Standard is the softest spot in Sasser’s resume, as it’s the format he has the least results with and his lowest win rate across the formats players will be asked to demonstrate their skill within the Players’ Championship.
Apart from Standard though, Sasser has an exceptionally well-rounded resume. He also has shown a willingness to make a hard call on a metagame – his win at SCG Indianapolis was based off the under-played Gifts Storm, which earned him a trophy for his read. Also of note, Sasser’s experience and dedication to the grind has earned him the highest win rate versus other Players’ Championship competitors and a nice win rate in Top 8 matches. By the numbers, Sasser is one of the most consistently high performing members of the Players’ Championship.
2019 Vital Stats
- 60% Overall Game Win Rate, 65% Overall Match Win Rate
- 62% Modern Open Win Rate
- 60% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 53% Standard Open Win Rate
- 60% Classic Win Rate
- 71% Win Rate against other Players’ Championship competitors
- 67% Conversion rate
- 60% Day 1 Win Rate, 59% Day 2 Win Rate, 69% Top 8 Win Rate
Part of what has been colloquially called “Team AmuLIT” and a formal member of Team Lotus Box, Edgar Magalhaes has made a name for himself off his Amulet Titan prowess on the SCG Tour.
Frequently teaming up with fellow Players’ Championship contender Matthew Dilks and Daryl Ayers, Magalhaes spent much of 2019 playing Esper Control in Standard and Amulet Titan in Modern. Despite his preference for toolbox combo decks in Modern, he’s eschewed those in Legacy for Brainstorm-based, more midrange or controlling strategies, such as the Four-Color Snow decks in Legacy: decks where Magalhaes gets to make decisions that turn the course of the game.
This year has been a rough one for Magalhaes, however: he has struggled to close in the elimination rounds, even as he is in the upper third of conversion rate on players in making Day 2 of Opens. He’s the only member of the Players’ Championship (outside of returning champion Joe Lossett, who has not Top 8’d an event this year) who has no solo wins against the other players in a Top 8, something that he will have to change to be a contender at this year’s Players’ Championship.
2019 Vital Stats
- 57% Overall Game Win Rate, 59% Overall Match Win Rate
- 58% Modern Open Win Rate
- 53% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 57% Standard Open Win Rate
- 64% Classic Win Rate
- 45% Win Rate against other Players’ Championship competitors
- 75% Conversion rate
- 60% Day 1 Win Rate, 53% Day 2 Win Rate, 0% Top 8 Win Rate
Coming in at #4 and boasting the second highest number of games played on the SCG Tour this year, we have Dylan Donegan. Donegan has performed exceptionally well in Standard and Modern this year. He has demonstrated a preference for proactive midrange or tempo-based strategies where he can lean into card efficient threats like Death’s Shadow or Feather, the Redeemed – we would expect Donegan to play Death’s Shadow in Modern and a flash style deck in Standard.
While Donegan might appear soft in Legacy based on this year’s statistics, you should underestimate him at your own risk. Legacy has not been a cornerstone of the SCG Tour in 2019 and has a much smaller sample size comparatively, though it will of course be a significant portion of the Players’ Championship.
Long-time SCG Tour fans will know that Donegan has proven proficient in Delver strategies in Legacy in prior years – Donegan’s invitational token, of course, being a Young Pyromancer Elemental – and has robust experience with the archetype.
2019 Vital Stats
- 61% Overall Game Win Rate, 65% Overall Match Win Rate
- 62% Modern Open Win Rate
- 37% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 64% Standard Open Win Rate
- 56% Classic Win Rate
- 50% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 79% Conversion rate
- 61% Day 1 Win Rate, 58% Day 2 Win Rate, 42% Top 8 Win Rate
#5 Zach Allen
Michigan-based Zach Allen joined the hunt for his Players’ Championship berth rather late – outside of our Invitational Winners and Joe Lossett, Allen has the lowest number of games played on the Tour this year. What he’s done with that time though is deliver a strong performance in that short time, especially in Legacy where he has one of the strongest resumes in this Players Championship field.
Allen has tended towards controlling archetypes across all formats he plays in, leading the way with Esper Control in Standard, though he recently experimented with Amulet Titan to great success as he locked in his fourth Top 8 this year with the deck.
Something to keep an eye on is Allen’s consistency: while some players dip in their win rate from Day 1 to Day 2 of an Open as competition gets harder, Allen has maintained the same win rate throughout the tournament. Allen has come close to finishing with a win but has been so far denied a trophy – this Players’ Championship could be the one he is making it a goal to be his first.
2019 Vital Stats
- 57% Overall Game Win Rate, 63% Overall Match Win Rate
- 60% Modern Open Win Rate
- 64% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 50% Standard Open Win Rate
- 64% Classic Win Rate
- 43% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 50% Conversion rate
- 57% Day 1 Win Rate, 57% Day 2 Win Rate, 50% Top 8 Win Rate
Co-host of the podcast MTG Grindcast and Team Lotus Box member, Collins Mullen was the sixth member by points in the Player of the Year race to join the Players’ Championship. Mullen has carved out the second-best win rate against fellow competitors after Drake Sasser and has made several deep runs in the Opens this year, though has yet to hoist a trophy of his own.
Mullen has the least Legacy play of all the Players’ Championship competitors this year, which makes identifying his choice or preference of Legacy archetype challenging.
In Modern and Standard, Mullen has targeted specific movements in the metagame, such as showing up with Dredge or Simic Mass Manipulation. While Mullen has a preference for not just proactive but aggressive strategies – he has the best representation of the Burn archetype among the Players’ Championship – he has demonstrated a flexible range in 2019.
2019 Vital Stats
- 58% Overall Game Win Rate, 63% Overall Match Win Rate
- 58% Modern Open Win Rate
- 53% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 60% Standard Open Win Rate
- 56% Classic Win Rate
- 62% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 55% Conversion rate
- 60% Day 1 Win Rate, 54% Day 2 Win Rate, 48% Top 8 Win Rate
Coming in last of our Players of the Year race competitors, Jonathan Hobbs might not come to mind as one of the players to watch out in this field of sixteen, but he has put up a tremendous resume just over the course of 2019, with four Open Top 8s and one Invitational Top 8, with no obvious statistical weaknesses in his game.
Hobbs has demonstrated a preference in Standard towards controlling or bigger midrange strategies, such as his Bant Midrange take early in 2019 or two Top 8 finishes with Esper Control.
Recently in Modern, Hobbs has moved from Humans to Death’s Shadow, which he used in his last Top 8 finish. Hobbs is in the top third of the Players’ Championship in terms of his Standard performance, but his Legacy performance is a Temur Delver deck at Syracuse. We expect Hobbs to remain proactively slanted in his approach to the tournament.
2019 Vital Stats
- 61% Overall Game Win Rate, 68% Overall Match Win Rate
- 58% Modern Open Win Rate
- 57% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 65% Standard Open Win Rate
- 56% Classic Win Rate
- 50% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 69% Conversion rate
- 60% Day 1 Win Rate, 64% Day 2 Win Rate, 58% Top 8 Win Rate
Season One Point Leaders
#1 Abe Corrigan
Abe Corrigan was the first point leader to lock in a spot at the Players’ Championship at the end of Season One.
Corrigan kicked off Season One by being on the winning team with Ironworks at SCG Columbus, then won a Standard Classic at SCG Dallas.
Recently, Corrigan is coming off winning Grand Prix Richmond with a Sultai Sacrifice deck, shortly before the Oko, Thief of Crowns ban. Corrigan has shown over the year to be an exacting player who tends to play the absolutely best strategy.
His win rate across multiple formats is incredibly strong, especially in Standard, a format where many of the Team Lotus Box players have excelled. Corrigan’s only slippage in the SCG Tour this year was in his Top 8 performance, which appears to be fixed following his excellent performance at Grand Prix Richmond. Corrigan is without a doubt in the top third of players at this tournament, if not in the top three.
2019 Vital Stats
- 61% Overall Game Win Rate, 67% Overall Match Win Rate
- 59% Modern Open Win Rate
- 67% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 67% Standard Open Win Rate
- 73% Classic Win Rate
- 43% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 82% Conversion rate
- 64% Day 1 Win Rate, 56% Day 2 Win Rate, 33% Top 8 Win Rate
#2 Oliver Tomajko
Tomajko was the second point leader in Season One, but he has continued to play throughout the rest of the year, to put up one of the best years among all the Players’ Championship players.
With the most games played among all the players in the Players’ Championship, Tomajko has posted a minimum 60% win rate across all three formats in the Championship. He has the best conversion rate among these sixteen players, missing only one Day 2 of an Open he entered – with his nearest competition over 10% behind him.
Across multiple formats, he’s shown himself to be versatile and proactive, although he has a known affection for Dredge in Modern. Tending towards playing the absolute best deck in any format he’s in and by the numbers, Tomajko would be our pick to win this entire tournament.
2019 Vital Stats
- 64% Overall Game Win Rate, 72% Overall Match Win Rate
- 66% Modern Open Win Rate
- 60% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 63% Standard Open Win Rate
- 82% Classic Win Rate
- 51% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 93% Conversion rate
- 66% Day 1 Win Rate, 63% Day 2 Win Rate, 53% Top 8 Win Rate
#3 Matthew Dilks
Another part of “Team AmuLIT”, Dilks punched his ticket for the Players’ Championship as the third point leader in Season One of the SCG Tour.
Dilks has had a somewhat inconsistent year on the Tour: he has done tremendously well in Modern where there is no one better, fared well in Legacy, and floundered in Standard where there is no one worse.
Recently Dilks has been branching out from his exclusive play of Amulet Titan into other archetypes like Eldrazi Tron – a good choice considering how the Simic Urza deck has been developed by Team Lotus Box.
Dilks has also played Turbo Depths in Legacy, another deck that features lands and a toolbox approach to beating its opponent. Dilks’s choices in Standard over the past year have included an Izzet spell-based deck and a Mono-Red Aggro deck; this begs the question of where he could move in a Standard format where aggressive strategies have not been very successful? Wherever he ends up, shoring up his performance in Standard is going to be key for him in this tournament.
2019 Vital Stats
- 58% Overall Game Win Rate, 64% Overall Match Win Rate
- 67% Modern Open Win Rate
- 59% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 37% Standard Open Win Rate
- 61% Classic Win Rate
- 45% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 75% Conversion rate
- 62% Day 1 Win Rate, 52% Day 2 Win Rate, 42% Top 8 Win Rate
Season One Invitational Winner
Collin Rountree
As one of the players from Dallas and the first Invitational winner of the SCG Tour in 2019, Rountree has less data than we would hope to work with – but that’s what happens when you win a grueling, three day multi-format marathon of Magic.
While Rountree is unknown on the SCG Tour for Legacy, he has put up tremendous results outside the SCG Tour in the format where he has Top 8’d both Grand Prix Niagara Falls and Grand Prix Atlanta with Death & Taxes and Azorius Control, respectively.
In Modern, Rountree ran over the Season One Invitational with Humans before finishing the Top 8 with Esper Control in Standard. Rountree’s time in Standard is extremely impressive.
While there’s some glaring weaknesses in his statistics, such as his win rate against other competitors, we expect those to be flipped by the end of the tournament. Rountree is an extremely strong contender for the tournament and despite his lack of presence on the SCG Tour, he is not going into this multi-format tournament cold.
2019 Vital Stats
- 58% Overall Game Win Rate, 64% Overall Match Win Rate
- 57% Modern Open Win Rate
- 67% Standard Open Win Rate
- 56% Classic Win Rate
- 38% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 67% Conversion rate
- 63% Day 1 Win Rate, 40% Day 2 Win Rate, 69% Top 8 Win Rate
Season Two Point Leaders
#1 Jeremy Bertarioni
Jeremy Bertarioni is a bit of a wild card in the Players’ Championship. He’s shown a preference for more controlling strategies, if we were to look at 2019 at the whole, where he’s registered Azorius Control in Modern multiple times and played a Gates Fires of Invention list at the Team Open in Philadelphia before joining most of Lotus Box in registering the Simic Urza deck that put four members of Lotus Box into the Top 8 of Atlanta.
All in all, Bertarioni has solid numbers, though he trails Lotus Box members in Standard performance and might be soft in Legacy. Bertarioni has a significant opportunity to separate from the pack in this competition that will be up to him to seize.
All in all, Bertarioni has solid numbers, though he trails Lotus Box members in Standard performance and might be soft in Legacy.
Bertarioni has a significant opportunity to separate from the pack in this competition that will be up to him to seize.
2019 Vital Stats
- 57% Overall Game Win Rate, 62% Overall Match Win Rate
- 60% Modern Open Win Rate
- 49% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 53% Standard Open Win Rate
- 58% Classic Win Rate
- 43% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 58% Conversion rate
- 58% Day 1 Win Rate, 56% Day 2 Win Rate, 50% Top 8 Win Rate
#2 Zan Syed
The captain of Team Lotus Box, Zan Syed was the second point leader in Season Two to punch his ticket to the Players’ Championship.
From a statistics perspective, Syed has been an all around solid performer, doing well in Standard and Modern and well enough in Legacy. Syed also had an extremely respectable conversion rate to Day 2s, where he performed well and then did even better when he Top 8’d the tournament, rising to meet his competition.
Syed has one weak spot though: facing other Players’ Championship contenders, where he is the weakest of the contenders this weekend, excepting Collin Rountree, who has a third of the game results that Syed has.
Clock management is also something Syed will have as a soft spot: he has the highest unintentional draws of any of the Players’ Championship contenders.
Among the formats, Syed has been a consistent champion of Urza midrange strategies in Modern but will also build decks to attack various format metagames, or sometimes play the best deck: he’s a difficult player to pin down to an archetype.
Syed’s nimble command of multiple formats and deck archetypes is going to be a challenge for other competitors in the Players’ Championship.
2019 Vital Stats
- 60% Overall Game Win Rate, 67% Overall Match Win Rate
- 60% Modern Open Win Rate
- 53% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 61% Standard Open Win Rate
- 53% Classic Win Rate
- 48% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 73% Conversion rate
- 61% Day 1 Win Rate, 58% Day 2 Win Rate, 64% Top 8 Win Rate
#3 Harlan Firer
Harlan Firer was the last Point Leader to make the cut after Season Two of the SCG Tour. Ever since Modern Horizons has been released, Firer has been a proponent of the Urza, High Lord Artificer – though Firer has stuck to Four-Color Whirza builds over the midrange Simic Urza builds that Team Lotus Box has championed.
Outside of that preference in Modern though, Firer has shown an impressive range, playing Mono-Red Aggro and Bant Midrange in Standard and any non-combo oriented Legacy deck.
Firer is also one of those few Players’ Championship competitors like Jonathan Hobbs where his performance improves as the competition gets harder in the second day of an Open and is in the top third of conversion to Day 2s.
Firer demonstrated a proficiency across multiple formats in 2019, which bodes well for him across the Players’ Championship mixed structure.
2019 Vital Stats
- 60% Overall Game Win Rate, 72% Overall Match Win Rate
- 60% Modern Open Win Rate
- 67% Legacy Open Win Rate
- 67% Standard Open Win Rate
- 54% Classic Win Rate
- 50% Win Rate against other Players Championship competitors
- 73% Conversion rate
- 60% Day 1 Win Rate, 68% Day 2 Win Rate, 50% Top 8 Win Rate
Season Two Invitational Winner
Chris Barone
Chris Barone will be a dark horse in this competition in the truest sense of the word. The majority of the data we have on Barone as a player comes from his dominant performance in the Season Two Invitational at SCG CON Winter, where Barone dual-wielded Humans in Modern and Mono-Black Aggro in Pioneer against his peers.
Unfortunately for Barone, that Mono-Black Aggro deck is not legal in Pioneer anymore after losing Smuggler’s Copter and Pioneer is not a format being played at the Players’ Championship.
Barone has a very small amount of data but what we have is extremely strong, as he won 90% of his games in the Top 8 of the Season Two Invitational.
What Barone will choose in Legacy and Standard will be a mystery, but given his other deck choices, we would predict it’s something aggressively slanted. (His other significant event, a Classic run, also featured Humans in Modern.)
2019 Vital Stats
- 68% Classic Win Rate
- 90% Top 8 Win Rate
Reigning Players’ Champion
Joe Lossett is the reigning Players’ Champion, and as such we also don’t have a lot of data collected from his time on the 2019 SCG Tour.
Lossett should be well known to fans of the Tour, but if you’re new to viewing, know that Lossett has been a Legacy control specialist and Mono-Green Tron aficionado in Modern.
Lossett won the Players’ Championship in 2016 and has held the title as the event went on hiatus until this year. As a west coast-based player, Lossett dabbled in Opens, attending four individual ones, but has been under no pressure to bank points in 2019 or participate in the race for the Players’ Championship.
Now he faces fifteen challengers to the crown, and his beloved Miracles deck has lost its key piece of Sensei’s Divining Top to a ban in the intervening years between Players’ Championships, leaving Lossett to return to his Stoneblade roots, we expect.
While we don’t have a lot to tell us about the strength of Lossett to the field and he hasn’t reached the elimination rounds of an Open this year, we advise you to not underestimate this veteran of the SCG Tour.
2019 Vital Stats
- 56% Overall Game Win Rate, 59% Overall Match Win Rate
- 58% Modern Open Win Rate
- 54% Standard Open Win Rate
- 57% Classic Win Rate
- 25% Conversion rate
- 56% Day 1 Win Rate, 60% Day 2 Win Rate
Looking Forward
All those trophies and past performances however are no guarantee to how someone will actually fare at the Players’ Championship.
Data is not destiny. The culmination of countless hours of preparation and play are coming to a head at this Players’ Championship.
Tune in to Twitch.tv/starcitygames for all the action as these players battle it out for fortune and glory!