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Big Toothy Grins and Being Shot Down in FlamesBy Stefan Preiml on November 1st, 2005 · Filed in Extended (Type 1.x) · 20 Comments
What we can learn from Pro Tour Los Angeles? Pro Tour Los Angeles is over now and it's time to draw some conclusions from it for the coming PTQ Season. This Pro Tour probably had the most diverse format ever with almost 50 different archetypes trying their luck and skills on day one, and all of them even having a little chance. In the end the biggest winners of this Pro Tour can be said to be our old friend Psychatog and the color Red. Not to mention that Ravnica itself did the best it could to warp the format and it sure did. Big City Fever You just can't deny that the Ravnica lands made possible what almost noone had thought half a year before: multicolor is back and also splashes for all kinds of cards to enhence certain matchups are easy to accomplish and that only with 40% of the power of Ravnica Dual lands. It could almost be said that Extended is mono-color free, if there weren't a little village on the west coast of Gaul ... oops. Wrong Story. The Point is, Red tries to defend itself from the multicolor, but even that color can't turn down Sacred Foundries and the might of probably the best burn spell in years, Lightning Helix. Try building a mono-colored deck in this format and you have to be able to dodge the guys from the mental instituation trying to catch you. Diversity As said before, this Pro Tour and the Extended format overall probably has the most diverse format ever with almost 50 different decks played and some more playable decks like Angel.dec judging from some PTQs already held. From those 50, 16 Archetypes still made it into the Top 32 (see below) if you still make a difference between Boros and Red Deck Wins. Still the Top 8 seems a little odd. We have three decks playing Psychatog. Three "Deck Wins", Heartbeat Combo, and Scepter Chant. I think thats a little odd as the Top 8 only statistically decides how to utilize the Tog best and what fireworks make the most torched enemy. But the essence of this format just make it fun. You can play almost anything succesfully if you put enough work into it.
Top 32 and their Decks:
It looks like our friend the bad Psychatog just found a new friend who's laughing as into the camera as evilly as the Tog smiles. His name is Golgari Grave-Troll. Together with the already frequently, although mostly in another deck, used Deep Analysis, Tog has found a new peak in its profession of generating card advantage. And even when this guy isn't around, the dredge mechanic seems to work overtime generating card advantage through the combination of cycling lands and the engine card Life from the Loam or recurring removal named Darkblast if there are still blockers left for a flying, trampling Psychatog. Yup, Tog is back, big style. And you even don't have to rely on the dredge mechanic to make him good as Antoine Ruel proved. His Psychatog build is pretty old-fashioned, sporting all kinds of draw, removal and permission and winning the tour despite all kinds of dredge shenanigans. This should be enough to know that the Tog is a force to be reckoned with in the coming PTQ Season. Also Madness, that otherwise only showed little success, seems to be fond of our grinning man now playing some heavy Black parts for him and spot removal. This transformation seems to be a natural fit as both Blue and Green dual lands share Black as an ally. Easy access to Black colors comes via fetchlands which enhance graveyard-oriented tactics. Jump in the Fire Sometimes those who are said to be dead just live on without anyone noticing. In this case RDW still lives in two versions despite everyone saying that a near mono Red and fast burn deck can't exist anymore with the loss of Jackal Pup, Mogg Fanatic, Cursed Scroll, Wasteland, and Rishadan Port. Although there were already some small hints that some teams where brewing on such a strategy, the success that this deck was able to accomplish in Los Angeles is still remarkable IMHO. The Brothers Red Deck Wins and Boros Deck Wins could be said to have profited the most from their respective dual land, Sacred Foundry, since in field where everybody expected Goblins to be a hot shot and therefore packing some red hate that mostly comes in the form of enchantments they now had easy access to removal for that card type, Disenchant. Not to mention, of course, that Blue's heavy anti-Red artillery, Chill and Douse, just rotated out of the format. Hatecrimes? Guess what's missing in the Top 32: Goblins and Affinity. These two archetypes made up more than a quarter of the field but only where able to place two Affinities in the upper parts of the rankings, and the only Goblins you could see having some success are Legionnaires. The preemptive bannings of AEther Vial and Disciple of the Vault seem to have the effect they were supposed to have. These two decks where lowered from their elevated position in power to a normal level and thanks to their reputation of the best and most played decks got eaten alive by the sideboards of the other players. But, was there realy so much hate in the sideboards that Affinity and Goblins didn't have a chance at all? The opinions about this should go far apart. That Kataki, War's Wage would be heavily played due to its potential to annihilate Affinity single handedly was known by everyone since the card got printed. A situation that Affinity had enough time to prepare for IMHO. That Goblins would be weakend due to the loss of AEther Vial was also no secret, but that is not necessarily the reason why it only had so little success in this tournament. The Extended Format is chock full of burn and Black removal spells, not really a friendly environment for our little red men. The Major Problem with such a diverse field like Los Angeles and Columbus had is to make efficient sideboard strategies for your deck, that help you not only against certain archetypes, but having cards that help you to improve your game against certain strategies that multiple decks share. For example, a very common sideboard card against Goblins is Engineered Plague. Goblins pretty much the only realy competitive tribal deck in Extended, so Engineered Plague is very effective against Goblins, but does very little against other decks, and in this format you don't realy want to dedicate three to four sideboard cards for a single matchup. A better strategy would be to board Hideous Laughter if you are low on creature count or just pin-point removal like Smother or Last Gasp. These three cards have a more significant effect on other creature decks and don't rely on that the other decks has a tribal strategy. Now we have to find out what cards are useful against multiple decks. For this we first have to examine what mechanics are heavily used. Easy to see is that graveyard recursion is on all time high sporting decks that use Life from the Loam and Gifts Ungiven/Nostalgic Dreams as engines. Next we can find out what Psychatog, Grim Lavamancer, Wild Mongrel and Isochron Scepter have in common. Correct, they all have activated abilities. Thanks to the huge amount of Fetch and Dual Lands played this weekend, anything that looks like non-basic landhate can also be seen as possible sideboard tech, especially if there are decks like Balancing Tings running around. Lastly we should have an eye on Orim's Chant, a whole slew of burn spells to the dome and Brain Freeze. Here's a list of sideboard cards you should keep in mind for the upcoming PTQ Season:
Spoiler:
Conclusion Pro Tour Los Angeles 2005 was a tournament full of innovations and new insights into this format that should be a helpful guide for the coming PTQ season and also for years to come. The only thing I have left to say is to wish everybody who will participate in PTQs in the season: good look. Credits: Writing: chaosof99; Banner & Images: ILoveAtogs; Editing: Goblinboy By Stefan Preiml on November 1st, 2005 · Filed in Extended (Type 1.x) · 20 Comments About Stefan PreimlI was born in a small town in southern Austria and went there to school till I was 14. Then I transfered into a technical school in carinthias capitol Klagenfurt making my "Matura" (A-Level Exam) at the age of 19. I'm currently studying Informatics at the University of Klagenfurt. I started playing Magic in the summer of 2003 after some friends from school played in the school and I played a small scale CCG about The Simpsons before. |
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