Since Worldwake has become legal on MTGO, I’ve done something fairly foolish: I’ve tried to play my old pre-Worldwake Standard deck, without making a single update.
Mostly, I did it to see how long I could continue the streak I was on; my Sligh-style Red deck had been on quite a tear for me. I was rocking about 75-80% wins in the two-person queues, producing quite a fantastic EV. It was basically my first experience running a cash cow in queues, and I was trying to milk it while I could. Sadly, though, I never had enough free time in any single block to be able to fee comfortable entering a ZZW draft to pick up some new cards, and the prices of so many of them are so hyper-inflated right now, I just didn’t feel like playing along just yet.
So, of course, particularly after lists from the PT started coming out, I found myself getting destroyed.
Sometimes, I’d come incredibly close — a land-drop away from winning in game 3, for example — but generally I was just getting smashed.
I know, of course, that when the environment shifts, even without a rotation out, that things can be radically different. I was just hoping that people wouldn’t have the cards to make it happen yet. But, for the most part, they did. I guess I’m going to have to wait until I’ve had the chance to get in some drafts before I touch Constructed again. As much as I loathe MTGO (it really is a shockingly poor platform), grad school life has me busy enough that I can’t really find time to regularly play without it. Boo hiss. Live games have the potential for being so much more productive, but these days, my ability to make live games happen is severely hampered.
The “Actual” Standard Top 8
I’ve gone through the “actual” Top 8 in these mixed format affairs many times. Call me a dinosaur, but I still deeply prefer single-format Pro Tours. To me, what a Pro Tour used to be was the measure of a format. A lot of that is lost with mixed format events. Worlds and Nationals were mixed format in ways I enjoyed: in general they were, within the confines of randomness that shuffling cards constrains us, an attempt to find the top players in the game. Pro Tours, conversely, were a quest in knowledge. Dave Price, for example, might not have been the best player at that long-ago Pro Tour LA, but he was one of the few people that had the insight into what mattered in a format. Losing the single-format Pro Tour and relegating them to Grand Prix is a real shame to me. Pro Tour prize support drives a level of exploration that Grands Prix don’t really get, in general; the relative stakes are just so much less.
So, delving into the realities of what was successful at a Pro Tour is really quite a task. You need to unravel a lot of data. As I’ve done in the past, I’m here to show everyone the results of that examination.
If we were to listen to Wizards of the Coast, this would be the Top 8 Standard players in the event:
1. Scott-Vargas, Luis [USA] 30 Boss Naya
2. Ross, Tom [USA] 27 Boss Naya
3. Senyuz, Aras [TUR] 27 White(/Green) Beats
4. Chen, Jeffrey [USA] 27 Vampires
5. Vidugiris, Gaudenis [USA] 27 “Mythic” Bant
6. Chapin, Patrick [USA] 25 “Chapin” UW Control
7. Wescoe, Craig [USA] 24 Tricked Out WW
8. Kanis, Jeroen [NLD] 24 Red Blitz
While this is heartening for me (Go, USA!), it’s also not quite accurate. It is, by the nature of certain elements, very close.
If we go through an examination of the resistance that a lot of the players had to fight against, we can get a better sense of things. For some players (like Chapin and LSV), there are simply no other players at the same record to need to compare them with. But for those duking it out for 2nd through 5th, or 7th through 15th, this matters a smidge.
Putting a weight on the players who are below 18 (6-4 record) is quite useful. The DCI does this with tiebreakers in tournaments so as to not unduly punish players who happened to play against a less skilled player. I’ve chosen to arbitrarily give those players a weight of 14 points (just below a 5-5 record). If you play with the weighting, here, you’ll find that the results don’t change much, unless you are doing it radically. Some weights will result in Craig Wescoe and Bertil Elfgren switching between 7th and 8th, but otherwise, they don’t do that much to the end results.
1. Scott-Vargas, Luis – “Boss” Naya
2. Ross, Tom – “Boss” Naya
3. Senyuz, Aras – White/(Green) beats
4. Vidugiris, Gaudenis — “Mythic” Bant
5. Chen, Jeffrey – Vampires
6. Chapin, Patrick – Chapin UW
7. Wescoe, Craig – Tricked-Out WW
8. Elfgren, Bertil – Jund
9. Ford, Jason – Jund
10. Malin, Antti — WW
11. Nassif, Gabriel — Chapin UW
12. Kanis, Jeroen – Red
13. Nakamura, Hajime – Jund
14. King, Stephen — Jund
15 Shiraishi, Tomomi – Jund
The changeovers are not too incredibly crazy, in this case. Gaudenis Vidugiris and Jeffrey Chen swap places for 4th and 5th. Jeroen Kanis shifts from 8th to 12th, and Bertil Elfgren moves up from 9th to 8th, swapping out an aggressive Goblin Guide deck for another Jund deck.
A quick glance at the data — first the 27 pointers:
Ross, Tom – 182 = 14 + 18 + 14 + 24 + 24 + 18 + 14 + 21 + 21 + 14
Senyuz, Aras – 174 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 21 + 24 + 18 + 27
Vidugiris, Gaudenis – 171 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 30 + 14 + 18 + 14 + 14 + 21
Chen, Jeffrey – 157 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 27
Then, those with 24 points:
Wescoe, Craig – 185 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 21 + 24 + 22 + 21 + 19 + 18
Elfgren, Bertil – 184 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 21 + 14 + 24 + 18 + 14 + 21 + 30
Ford, Jason – 181 = 14 + 14 + 18 + 14 + 27 + 18 + 21 + 27 + 14 + 14
Malin, Antti – 174 = 14 + 14 + 19 + 21 + 14 + 14 + 21 + 18 + 18 + 21
Nassif, Gabriel – 168 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 21 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 21 + 24
Kanis, Jeroen – 164 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 21 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 21 + 24
Nakamura, Hajime – 161 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 27 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 14 + 18
King, Stephen – 151 = 14 + 21 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 14
Shiraishi, Tomomi – 148 = 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 14 + 14 + 18 + 14 + 14
It’s pretty clear, for example, that Craig Wescoe and Bertil Elfgren had drastically more strong resistance than Tomomi Shiraishi. Of Shiraishi’s opponents, only two had records at 6-4 or better (and they were both 6-4), whereas Wescoe and Elfgren both had half (or more) with such records, and several with far better than that.
So, with all of that said, here is a quick recap of the “Real” Standard Top 8:
“Really” 8th
Creatures (16)
Lands (21)
Spells (23)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 2 Forest
- 3 Mountain
- 3 Terminate
- 2 Garruk Wildspeaker
- 4 Blightning
- 4 Maelstrom Pulse
- 1 Bituminous Blast
Sideboard
“Really” 7th
Creatures (20)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (13)
Spells (23)
“Really” 6th
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (19)
Spells (36)
“Really” 5th
Creatures (20)
- 4 Vampire Nocturnus
- 3 Bloodghast
- 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
- 3 Malakir Bloodwitch
- 3 Vampire Hexmage
- 3 Kalastria Highborn
Lands (23)
Spells (13)
Sideboard
“Really” 4th
Creatures (30)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Rafiq of the Many
- 4 Rhox War Monk
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Thornling
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 2 Rampaging Baloths
Lands (27)
Spells (3)
Sideboard
“Really” 3rd
Creatures (24)
- 4 Knight of the White Orchid
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 4 Emeria Angel
- 4 Steppe Lynx
- 4 Kor Firewalker
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (18)
Spells (16)
“Really” 2nd
Creatures (26)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Dauntless Escort
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 1 Scute Mob
- 2 Stoneforge Mystic
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (15)
Spells (17)
“Really” 1st
Creatures (25)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 1 Scute Mob
- 2 Stoneforge Mystic
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (15)
Spells (17)
The Rise of the Auteur (Or Success Lies in Innovation)
This event had one of the better attempts at doing an archetype breakdown, but I still found it leaving a smidge to be desired. Rather than just recreate that data (something one could attempt to do with the Top 70-something), I’m instead going to reorganize it into some subcategories.
If you do a reorganization of the data, something incredibly productive emerges. Among the most successful decks of the event, the big decks were not merely variants on an archetype, but rather, decks that very clearly all came from the same source. Whether collaboratively built, or coming from a single discoverer, within broader archetypes, these decks were the high performers within the archetype. This is much like what happened with Rubin “Zoo,” the midrange Naya deck that Ben Rubin is largely credited with — the particular sub-archetype was so wildly more successful than its larger category, it overwhelms it. Let’s look at some examples.
1………Scott-Vargas, Luis [USA] ………”Boss” Naya………30
2………Ross, Tom [USA] ………”Boss” Naya………27
……….Coqueiro, Rafael [BRA] ………”Boss” Naya………21
……….Stark, Ben [USA] ………”Boss” Naya………21
……….Raney, Tom [USA] ………”Boss” Naya………21
……….Yukuhiro, Ken [JPN] ………Naya………21
……….da Rosa, Paulo Vitor [BRA] ………”Boss” Naya………18
……….Landale, Tim [USA] ………Naya Ramp………18
This result is actually fairly incredible. Zoo/Naya had 22 players in San Diego, but only two of those decks with winning records were not “Boss” Naya. If you’re going to be playing a deck along these lines, you’d better have something really compelling going on if you choose to play anything other than Tom “The Boss” Ross’s love child.
Bant
4………Vidugiris, Gaudenis [USA] ………”Mythic” Bant………27
……….Black, Samuel [USA] ………”Mythic” Bant………21
……….Gardner, Daniel [ENG] ………Bant………21
……….Stone, Dennis [BEL] ………Bant………21
……….Higa, Hiroto [JPN] ………Bant………19
……….Gendron Dupont, Charles [USA] ………Bant………18
……….Ecker, Danny [DEU] ………Bant………18
Here, thirty players came to town with Bant. Not only did the Zvi Mowshowitz designed “Mythic” Bant deck put down better results, but a bigger percentage of its players succeeded with the deck (50% as compared to 19%). Zvi’s deck does represent a sad moment for Constructed in another way, the huge portion of rares. Zvi named his deck “Mythic” as a way of commenting on the sheer number of rares in the deck; the deck is all rares, except for basic lands, 1 Sejiri Steppe, and the Rhox War Monks. If it were me, I might have called it “Moneybags” Bant (or Richie Rich Bant, or Scrooge McDuck Bant, or Trump Bant, or Bill Gates Bant, or… well, you get the picture); Zvi told me the deck cost him $600 to put together, averaging out to over nine dollars a non-basic land card. Yikes.
Blue/(X) Control
6………Chapin, Patrick [USA] ………Chapin UW………25
11………Nassif, Gabriel [FRA] ………Chapin UW………24
*………Viaene, Niels [BEL] ………Open the Vaults UW………22
……….Herberholz, Mark [USA] ………Chapin UW………21
……….Mori, Katsuhiro [JPN] ………Time Sieve………18
……….Gordon, Hamish [NZL] ………USA Control………18
……….Grimaldi, Davide [ITA] ………Grixis………18
And here we have the Blue-based control contingent. Again, we see the domination of the work of a particular version of a deck. Here, it is shockingly impressive; eighty-eight decks were some form of Blue-based control. Only seven of them saw any representation within the 6-4-Plus Club. Of those seven, not only were three of them Chapin’s deck, but it also was the best performing of the entirety of the broad super-archetype.
In a way, these decks are a testament to the hard work put up by their authors. I can’t speak for Tom Ross deck, but both Zvi and Patrick tell me that these decks were, essentially, discovered by each of them. Of course, all of them, certainly, talked to people, tested with people, heard other people’s opinions; almost never is anything found in a total vacuum. At the same time, much like Stanley Kubrick or Wes Anderson get input from their Directory of Photography or an Executive Producer, or what-have-you, at the end of the day, the “Directed by” credit is given to them. So it is, it seems, with these two decks (and perhaps Ross’s) as well.
Outside of these examples of the “auteur,” so-to-speak, we also have a less dramatic example of how innovation springs up in the form of some of the more heavily played archetypes of the event. Jund, for example, was easily the most heavily played deck of the event, with over 25% of the 413 players choosing to play it, and all other archetypes doing no better than under 10%. Yet, Jund (and Vampires, and everything else from former archetypes) had the opportunity to adapt and grow. Some of the things that came out of this growth were particularly noteworthy.
Jund
8………Elfgren, Bertil [SWE] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………24
9………Ford, Jason [USA] ………Jund (Leech) (2 man)………24
13………Nakamura, Hajime [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………24
14………King, Stephen [USA] ………Jund (Leech) (2 man)………24
15………Shiraishi, Tomomi [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (3 man)………24
……….Noorlander, Niels [NLD] ………Jund (Leech) (3 man)………22
*………Boggemes, Kyle [USA] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………22
*………Görtzen, Simon [DEU] ………Jund (Leech) (6 man)………22
……….Kitayama, Masaya [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………21
……….Long, Noah [CAN] ………Jund (Leech) (3 man)………21
……….Bucher, Manuel [CHE] ………Jund (Leech) (3 man)………21
……….Nakano, Yoshitaka [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (3 man)………21
……….Turtenwald, Owen [USA] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………21
……….Yasooka, Shouta [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………21
……….Ziesche, Sebastian [DEU] ………Jund (Leech) (6 man)………21
……….Aintrazi, Ali [USA] ………Jund (NO Leech) (5 man)………21
*………Ikawa, Yoshihiko [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………19
……….Nakamura, Shuuhei [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………19
……….Cormier, Francis [CAN] ………Jund (NO Leech) (4 man)………19
……….Shackett, Thomas [USA] ………Jund (Leech) (3 man)………18
……….Kludka, Petr [CZE] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………18
……….Hirabayashi, Kazuya [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………18
……….Akaike, You [JPN] ………Jund (Leech) (4 man)………18
……….Wallendorf, Jonas [DEU] ………Jund (Leech) (6 man)………18
……….Saitou, Tomoharu [JPN] ………Jund (NO Leech) (4 man)………18
There is a lot about this that is amazingly enlightening.
24 out of the 112 players who came with Jund came without Putrid Leeches. In many ways, the argument in the past about Leech/No Leech revolved around what would be more powerful in the mirror. The other question, about what would be more powerful against other decks, was less important, as the deck expected to be able to overpower in those matchups. Of course, with the introduction of Worldwake, it seems clear that the No Leech contingent’s failure to address the “other decks” question was a real, actual issue.
With 21% of Jund players being No Leech players, about five of the twenty-five Jund players should be No Leech Jund. Only three were. Further, they were definitely in the lower end of the spectrum, with only one player managing to get seven match wins.
An interesting question that came out of Worldwake was how important the various man-lands were going to be in Standard, and it is particularly apparent that they have a huge value in Jund. All of the winning-record Jund decks used them (though, of course, there is the question of whether anyone didn’t), and all of them seemed to make extensive use of them. The man-lands give an extra bit of ability to fight against mana screw, and make mana flood less dangerous. It remains unclear how many is the “proper” amount to use; two was the most successful number overall, and yet six was played by the eventual winner. More time will tell, I’m sure…
Vampires
5………Chen, Jeffrey [USA] ………Vampires (Highborn)………27
……….Batarseh, Sammy [USA] ………Vampires………22
……….Yurchick, Adam [USA] ………Vampire (Highborn)………21
……….Kesteloo, Peter [NLD] ………Vampires (Highborn)………18
……….Lax, Ari [USA] ………Vampires (Highborn)………18
Here, we have a breakdown of the fortunate five Vampires players (out of 33) who managed to make the cut to a winning record. Again, like Jund and man-lands, we really don’t know how many of the 28 lists that we don’t have access to didn’t play Kalastria Highborn, but it is clear that most of the successful decks did. Unfortunately, we can’t really get much more out of that…
White(/x) Decks
3………Senyuz, Aras [TUR] ………Knighty White………27
7………Wescoe, Craig [USA] ………Tricked-Out WW*………24
10………Malin, Antti [FIN] ………WW*………24
……….Peebles-Mundy, Benjamin [USA] ………WW………21
……….Künzler, Matthias [CHE] ………WW………21
……….Ho, Jun Feng Jack [SGP] ………WW(/g)*………21
……….Satou, Rin [JPN] ………WW/g………21
……….Phillips, Cedric [USA] ………WW………18
……….Schwarz, Sascha [DEU] ………WW………18
……….Kolos, John [USA] ………WW*………18
……….Veigel, Cameron [AUS] ………WW………18
……….Bohny, Nico [CHE] ………Knighty White………18
……….Lybaert, Marijn [BEL] ………Knighty White(/g)………18
* indicates the presence of Stoneforge Mystic
Again, this data is hard to parse. Given the archetype listings from WotC, anything from 41 to 47 people might have been playing decks that I’m lumping into this super-archetype, and without the decklists in front of me, I can’t really know.
It does seem as though Stoneforge Mystic is tied to a slight degree of higher success (21.75 vs. 20 MW), but it’s still pretty close. The archetype that I’m dubbing “Knighty White” are those base-White decks that feature Knight of the Reliquary, typically as their only real spell-based nod to Green. Some of these decks are closer to Midrange Beatdown than to pure Beatdown, but overall, they all employ the same strategy: put down critters and attack with ‘em. I do find it very interesting that Stoneforge Mystic decks make up nearly half of the decks with seven math wins or more in the super-archetype, but make up only one of six of the desk with less than that.
The Rest
Of course, there were other decks that made Day 2. They break down as follows:
Goblin Guide Decks:
13………Kanis, Jeroen [NLD] ………Red………24
……….Rietzl, Paul [USA] ………Boros………21
……….Allouchery, Gonzague [FRA] ………Red………18
……….Adebo Diaz, Juan Carlo [ESP] ………Barely Boros………18
……….Lundquist, Benjamin [USA] ………Barely Boros………18
Junk Decks (woohoo!):
……….Beasley, Orrin [USA] ………Junk………21
……….Blohon, Lucas [CZE] ………Junk………21
……….Zatlkaj, Matej [SVK] ………Junk………21
*………Gräfensteiner, Daniel [DEU] ………Junk………19
……….Juza, Martin [CZE] ………Junk………18
The last deck:
……….Corbett, Justin [USA] ………Valakut Ramp………19
Sadly, with these three archetypes, there is almost nothing that we can use to talk about them in terms of differentiating from each other. The most dramatic is certainly the revelation that the 20 Red-based decks that weren’t Boros (i.e., Red and Barely Boros) placed four decks in the winners bracket. Further, there were only four Barely Boros decks, and two of them cracked into the win bracket. Comparatively, Boros was played by eight, and only one cracked into the win bracket. Of course, all of this is complicated by the concern that we’re not quite sure exactly how Bill Stark and Rashad Miller were classifying things. If I’m reading them properly, in total, then this analysis is correct. If not, it might just be better to say, “28 Goblin Guide decks were played, and five made it to 18 MW or greater.”
Junk and Valakut Ramp have even less to work with. Only five players played Valakut Ramp, so one making it to 18 MW is a conversion rate that seems pretty common for the tournament. Junk had 18 players, so its five successful players is about a 27% conversion rate. Either way, given that the expected success of Any Player playing a random deck was 18%, Junk can be said to be noteworthy in its success, and Valakut Ramp is about on par.
Compare this to particular specific archetypes like RUW Control, which had a conversion rate of 3.8% or Cruel Control, with 7.1%. Clearly, these are decks you didn’t want to be playing, if you were hoping to do well. Worse yet, though were decks like Eldrazi Green, Turbo Fog, Summoning Trap, Runeflare Trap, Polymorph, or Warp World, which had a 0% conversion rate.
Epilogue
I know that I personally find the results of this Pro Tour exciting. It’s exciting to see people from the past that I like, like Zvi Mowshowitz and Craig Wescoe, making some impact in the realm of Constructed Magic yet again. Zvi is widely known for a whole slew of decks, but Wescoe is less well-known, despite his work on the design of Free-Spell Necro, the powerhouse that nearly made Brian Davis a Pro Tour Champion until he was vanquished by Hall of Famer, Bob Maher, Jr. in Chicago. For me, it was also exciting to see Gaudenis Vidugiris do as well as he did in the Constructed portion.
I did nearly zero work on this event. Unlike previous events, grad school has just been putting on enough pressure that I almost feel lucky I wasn’t qualified, because I absolutely would have been unable to sufficiently prepare for it. And believe me, “I’m glad I wasn’t qualified” is not a phrase you’re likely to ever hear from my mouth again.
It was exciting to see Kyle Boggemes land such a great finish, and it was exciting to see LSV make the longest winning streak I’m aware of in PT history. On one level, I’m sad to not see him make it the whole way, and end 19-0 for the event, but on another level, a small part of me is glad that he didn’t, if only because there can still be a struggle to achieve that mark; Everest is still there.
Once I get the time, I’m excited to actually get to Worldwake drafting. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll have to find some cheap Worldwake cards if I’m hoping to rock the two-man queues anytime soon. Hopefully, the prices will drop soon enough, and I’ll only have the god awful program itself to gripe about.
In any case, I hope you find the data I’ve pulled out useful. I’m excited to see what is going to happen to Standard as it is more explored. And you can bet that I have ideas about where to go from here…
Until next time…