Hi, all -

For any of you who might be waiting for the second half of"heading back to the schools of Magic", I have some bad news - some folks took exception to the format and flow of the first one, and I guess they were loud enough to catch the ear of the powers that be. I'd still recommend you read the original doc if you want some info about the Theory of Deck speed, as it was written there.

http://web.archive.org/web/19990427205611/thedojo.com/school/schooldex.html

Despite what you might have read over on Brainburst the other week, this doc still has plenty of valid points to make - it's just that the examples used are of cards that are out-of-date. I'm flattered that Brainburst is paying attention enough to me to slam my efforts (and on Premium, no less!) if not by name, by example.

Anyways, as the title of this piece suggests, it's time to talk about Nationals and some of the statistics from that tournament. I saw Geordie do some highlighting of some of the specifics the other day, but I'm going to the raw numbers - as totaled by a PERL script I ran against the complete decklists Wizards posted (hmm - looks like they've taken it down since).

Let's begin with the numbers of basic lands used by the 200 competitors:

1249 Island
711 Forest
473 Swamp
184 Mountain
38 Plains

I swear I'm not making this up.

As you can see, the environment isn't exactly"balanced" - sure, we all knew that. What's surprising is the extremity of the skew - the average deck at Nationals contained over seven islands and 0.19 plains.

When we look at the distribution of nonbasics, we naturally see a fixation on the same colors, at the top of list:

327 Yavimaya Coast
274 Salt Marsh
245 Underground River
177 Karplusan Forest
140 Shivan Reef
107 Cephalid Coliseum

Why did this happen? Partly for the same reasons of the blue skew at Grand Prix: Denver: FOF is legal still, and mana control is nearly nonexistent*, Repulse is still the next-most-popular end-step card, counters are the most reliable way to stop someone from playing their game, and Fire/Ice is still amazing in the early game vs. small or mana critters.

Of course, the blue numbers at Nationals are even more extreme than in Invasion block. Why is this?

The biggest reason most people would think of would probably be Kai's win at German Nationals the week before US Nats. He took Psychatog and adapted for the early game by including Force Spike. Perhaps as a result, over one in every three American players was using 'Tog in one form or another.

That's not to say that all these people are sheep or anything; it doesn't take much looking nowadays to see that in addition to all of its control and card-drawing elements, blue has one of the best kill mechanisms (the Tog) and the best"reset button" (Upheaval).

(And mana control - you want that? Well, here, we have Opposition for you....)

Here's a listing of the top non-creature spells used that weekend:

446 Circular Logic
435 Counterspell
415 Fact or Fiction
258 Deep Analysis
250 Repulse
223 Memory Lapse
188 Fire/Ice
165 Upheaval
163 Squirrel Nest
147 Call of the Herd

That's correct - you need to go down nine places before you see a nonblue card, and six of the top seven cards are blue instants, or split card instants in the case of fire and ICE. Deep Analysis is sorcery speed card-drawing that is made popular by such decks as Deep Dog, which is an update of U/G madness. The Ninth place card is Squirrel Nest, which is the latest in a long line of green things that have become"honorary blue cards."

Okay, lets take a glance at the most common creatures used at Nats:

364 Wild Mongrel
260 Merfolk Looter
259 Psychatog
244 Nightscape Familiar
210 Basking Rootwalla
196 Birds of Paradise
177 Flametongue Kavu
155 Arrogant Wurm
120 Llanowar Elves

Wild Mongrel is at the top of the list because he goes into everything with forests: R/G, U/G, B/G, you name it. He's also the prime enabler card for Circular Logic, which was the most popular noncreature, just barely beating out Counterspell and Fact or Fiction. I hear counters for one blue are good. (Don't bother telling me it's not a hard counter, people; for all intents are purposes, it is.)

Back to the Mongrel. The doggy is so popular we had to read through some stuff on Magicthegathering.com the other month that said green would never again get this good. To quote Randy B:"We set out to make green good: mission accomplished."

Um, yeah. Neat.

The next thing I want to here from Randy is:"Well, we really set out to make counterspells, bounce, and card-drawing good: Mission Accomplished."

Seriously though, I wonder what the Future-Future-League (R&D's tourney format where they play Type II as it will exist over eighteen months in the future) looked like in 2000 or so. Were they able to predict this island-fixation and just didn't care, or did they actually think White Weenie would tempt the top players with Devoted Caretaker and Divine Sacrament?

Granted, they can't take Kai into account two years in advance. The guy's a machine - Ender Wiggin with cardboard, or maybe The Mule, screwing up Hari Seldon's plans.** Maybe Nats would have been more diverse without his posting to Brainburst a few days beforehand. We'll never know.

What about sideboard cards from Nationals? Predictably, there's one card at the top:

372 Gainsay
208 Ghastly Demise
143 Duress
110 Slay
107 Engineered Plague

The rest seem to make sense. Seems like more of those Duress' should have been main, though...

Okay, so what can be done about all this? Not a flying bit of jack. The format is set to change a bit in less than a month, and then in November or so Invasion block leaves, taking Fact or Fiction and Repulse with it. (Good freaking riddance.)

Flametongue will be out as well - maybe that absence will make more kinds of creature decks viable, and these will able to serve as a counterbalance (get it? COUNTERbalance? sigh) to the control decks. I'm not holding my breath, though - seems like Roar of the Wurm makes plenty of creatures irrelevant, too.

...Which brings us to Quiet Speculation. I'm having trouble deciding if it's just another in a line of blue"crutch" cards, or if it qualifies as a Cudgel, perhaps an Uzi. I'm thinking somewhere in between the last two - yes, it's really that good. Any card that makes Catalyst Stone a must-play in OBC has got to be good. Okay, Wizards - I get the message; I'll play with the damn Stone.

One thing to be said of OBC, though - when playing this format, I'm much less afraid that I'm going to lose to some overpowered instant during my end step. Granted, Cunning Wish (the"smart" one) is going to cause headaches, but the smaller card pool means less broken sideboard cards to search for. It's still looking like a blue, blue world, though. And our beloved green is helping the bad guys...

Is this the way things were meant to be?

Tune in next time for some more OBC testing impressions -

cheers,

joel

* - Mana control still exists, yes. It's just that it's presently either blue (Opposition) or it's impossibly overcosted given the counter-heavy environment - Wildfire, Epicenter.

** - Reference 1: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Reference 2: Asimov's Foundation Series.