Man, I've been busy these last two weeks... August in Spain is meant for holidays. People stop working and dedicate their time to more serious activities, such as laying on the beach...

For my part, I planned to be a complete Magic freak and spend that time testing for the Onslaught Block PTQ season, or maybe writing some more articles for this site about MWC and Zombie Bidding. I was even trying to convince some of my teammates to join me at Grand Prix: London (though we had no byes and few, if any, hopes of making day 2). But how deluded I was! On August 15^th, I got a call from my boss:

"Fernando? We have three straight projects in China on the next two weeks..."

Geez. I work for an international clothing company that opens shops in quite a lot of countries (but not the United States... Yet), and I am one of the persons who installs the computer systems on those shops. So I'm actually traveling more than a Pro on the gravy train. Three straight new shops in China meant a two-week paid journey to Asia. Bye bye, playtesting! Bye bye, new articles!

Anyway, I now planned on becoming a Magic travelling freak, so I checked if there were any major tournament in China during those two weeks. And there were! Two PTQs that I could attend. I wanted to write a report on playing a PTQ in a country where I'd have to play in silence, as few Chinese speak English, and I myself can speak only a little Chinese - enough to ask"Where is the bathroom...?" but quite a ways from"Damage on the stack...?"

So I journeyed to the Far East with my R/W deck and hopes of returning home with an invite...

Two weeks and too much work after, I'm back. The quantity of hours spent either flying or waiting at airports, altogether with the few hours of sleep (I just can't sleep in planes) were enough to damage my already-fragile neck, and I spent most of my time in China working or resting at the hotel. To make things worse, I encountered some unexpected problems that made me have to work extra days, utterly destroying my chances of attending any tournament in China. But I managed to draft (and win!) against some Chinese player at a local shop in Chingdao, southeast of Beijing, and also bought some cards at bargain prices (well, compared to the prices in Spain anyway). So all was not lost.

Back at my office, having indefinitely postponed my holidays, I decided to start working on my Zombie Bidding article... But first, I wanted to check the Sideboard coverage of Grand Prix: London, with all those juicy Day 2 decks wanting to be analyzed - and I found out the job was already done! Rune Horvik, how could you? At least, if the"deck stats" becomes a regular feature from now on, I'll be able to say"I was the first to do this."

Well, even though the stats are there, someone still has to analyze them. So here are my thoughts on how the metagame evolved for Grand Prix: London.

The most important shift in the Block Constructed metagame is the appearance of blue and the demise of black. Blue/White has come out strong, and positioned itself as a potential Tier 1 deck. The deck is good, although right now there is no"standard" build, and the matchup against Goblins depends a little too much on that second-turn Silver Knight. (Well, Mario Pascoli went 6-1 in the Swiss against Goblins before losing to Diego Ostrovich - but sometimes Pros just do those things...).

Anyway, U/W is very strong; forty U/W decks showed up, and fourteen of them - a total of 35% - made day 2.

MWC is also quite dependent on an early Silver Knight to protect itself against Goblins, and has a bad matchup against R/W, mainly due to those pesky Decree of Annihilations. U/W is also a bad matchup - and given that it seems to have problems against two out of the three Tier One decks, I'd place the deck in a"Tier 1.5" position. Even so, seven out of fifty-three MWC decks, or 13.21%, made day 2.

The rise of U/W Control comes at the same time as the demise of one of the Tier 1.5 decks at previous events: Zombie Bidding, just as happened with Beasts before, is no longer a good choice. Of the fifty-six Zombie Bidding decks that entered Grand Prix: London, only one of them made day 2. (The percentage is a quite disheartening 1.78%.) If you'll think about it, the matchup against Goblins is bad enough, but add in a new control deck that can actually counter the Patriarch's Biddings, and you have a dead deck.

But if you really want to make back the money you spent on your Biddings, you still have a chance: There were thirty Goblin Bidding decks at London, and eight of them (26.6%) made day 2. The deck has a nice shot against MWC and R/W, the Zombie matchup is still good, and, after sideboarding, it has some chances against straight Goblin decks. It's still a strong tier 2, but it's worth a try.

As everybody knows, you have to be ready for Goblins when you play Onslaught Block - and so much hate has changed the way they're played, as I already explained in a previous article. Maybe that's why only eight out of a hundred and two Goblin players (7.8%) advanced to the second day... It seems that the strength of Goblins is in numbers, both in and out of the game. Anyway, even the Mighty Budde chose Goblins, so stay alert! Goblin Piledrivers and Goblin Warchiefs will still be there, ready to kick your butt if you're not fast enough. And given the chance, they'll still take the whole event, like they did in London...

And what of Bad Form, the Goblin-killing deck that did so well at Detroit? Well, given the rise of U/W Control, Bad Form is a risky choice. Against Goblins, you practically have a bye... But against control, you have few chances in the first game, and after sideboarding you're depending on trying to mana-screw decks that pack four Eternal Dragons. But three people out of thirteen (23.3%) advanced to Day 2, so the deck is still playable.

As for R/W, the evolution of the deck has followed a kind of"tidal" pattern*. At Detroit, players were reducing their reliance on Astral Slide - which is not that good against Goblins - and playing more Wing Shards and Silver Knights, the R/W decks in London did just the opposite, playing three (and sometimes four) copies of Astral Slide and moving the Shards (and sometimes Gempalm Incinerators) to the sideboard. Why? Well, the Slide is not that bad against Goblins (which should be the best matchup for R/W, even after you take out the Incinerators), and it turns out that it's quite good in the mirror. And if you pretend to play R/W in any upcoming tournament, you'd better be putting a lot of practice in the mirror... You'll find plenty of them. While it's the deck that put the most players into at day 2 (twenty out of a hundred and eleven), it had less overall success than U/W control, which managed a better qualifying percentage. (R/W Control only put 18.02% of the people who played it into Day Two.)

So what should you play at your next PTQ? The answer is the usual: Pick a deck you're comfortable with, probably the one that best suits your style. Just make sure that you practice a lot against those decks:

Tier 1: W/R control, U/W Control, Goblins.
Tier 1.5: MWC, Mono red control, Goblin Bidding, Bad Form
Tier 2: Zombie Bidding, Beasts, Veggies Decks.

As for me, I'll keep practicing, and hoping to get to as many PTQs as possible, and maybe even to Pro Tour: Genova.... If I'm not sent to China again.

Fernando Rosal
Team Red Dragon M:TG

* - I just wanted to say"Tidal" in one of my articles. I really enjoyed Fallen Empires, and I miss the Homarids...Remember the Homarids? Those prawn-looking things? God, they were so bad... And what about Orcs? They're supposed to be stronger than goblins... And Thrulls... what was a Thrull supposed to be, exactly? In the pictures, they were a strange cross between zombies and aberrations...

Well, never mind. I was just getting nostalgic.