@Mod-For the record there was no "banlist discussion". There was a discussion in regards to whether control decks want cantrips. Ponder and Preordain were referenced as they would, of course, be a big part of modern control. The fact that they are banned is irrelevant. We are as far as I can tell allowed to talk about cantrips and how they relate to card draw, deck choice, etc.
This tournament was pretty fantastic. Lots of new cards/decks were shown, and the top 32 has a good mix of decks of every archetype. I have quite a lot to say, so I'll put it in spoilers to avoid stretching out the page.
On Eye's ban
RG Tron is still a deck. So is Eldrazi, just not tier 0. Most people are probably not interested in seeing more Eldrazi, but I find the 20th place Eldrazi Taxes deck interesting: it actually has processors in it, unlike the colorless/UR/UW/RG variants that dominated Eldrazi Winter. It's also a plus for hatebear decks in general, since it gives them a third attacking creature suite to choose from. They now have the option of Restoration Angel + Blade Splicer, Loxodon Smiter + Wilt-Leaf Liege, or Eldrazi.
Overall the format seems to be working out fine with Eye gone. People can, and should, stop *****ing about Tron being unplayable without Eye or losing thousands of dollars on Eldrazi because Eye got banned. For the most part, I don't see such complaints any more, so well done Tron/Eldrazi players. If only the same could be said of Twin...
On AV/Sword
Sword is absent, while AV appeared in the sideboards of Grixis Delver and 4-Color Bring to Light. It also appeared in the main deck of Grixis Control as a 3-of.
AV is proving to be a very tricky beast. People have found a lot of different ways to use the card. For starters, you can play it in the maindeck as a cheap hand refiller, and play lots of disruption to ensure that you can survive 4 turns. Then Grixis Delver showed that you can play it in the SB to out-grind grindy decks, despite the apparent paradox of Delver traditionally being a fast deck and AV being a slow card. The 4-Color Bring to Light deck has it in the SB as a 1-of: sometimes you'll get lucky and suspend it on turn 1, otherwise, it gives you the option of turning Bring to Light into a bad Concentrate/Harmonize while not affecting your later draws much since it's only 1 copy. Earlier back, the Time Warp deck also used AV: the drawback is negligible once you start comboing since you remove a time counter every time you successfully cast a Time Warp effect.
Despite all these creative uses of AV, its main role is still as a 3/4-of maindeck. This is a good thing, since they unbanned AV to help control decks. It's OK if some other decks have some unusual applications for the card, as long as the main beneficiary is control.
On Nahiri
Nahiri turned out to be good after all. She plays differently from other PWs; you don't use her as a way to grind out CA like Ajani, you play her as a 1-card combo that says "you win if this card doesn't take damage for 2 turns". If she does end up taking damage, you can go into plan B of using her like a regular PW, using her -2 to kill threats.
Nahiri is a combo wincon that only requires you to play one dead draw in your deck (Emrakul), and if you happen to draw the dead card, she conveniently provides a way to discard it. I honestly feel that one of the reasons Thopter Sword is underplayed at the moment because Nahiri is a better combo kill:
- Nahiri kills immediately when you -8 her, unlike Thopter Sword which kills over time. Even counting turns spent ticking her up vs making Thopters, Nahiri still comes up ahead.
- If you have 4 Nahiri + 1 Emrakul, you only need to draw 1 copy of your 4 Nahiris, vs say 3 Thopter + 2 Sword where you have to draw 1/3 Thopter and 1/2 Sword. The odds for assembling Thopter Sword are worse, because "assembling" Nahiri just equates to drawing her.
- Nahiri doesn't require too many slots to support her beyond Serum Visions (even that can be skipped, as the RW deck showed), while Thopter Sword frequently plays spells like Muddle the Mixture, Thirst for Knowledge and Gifts Ungiven. The more expensive draw spells you play, the less room you have for expensive but efficient answers like Electrolyze and Cryptic Command. SV also has the advantage of allowing you to cut 1-2 lands.
- Nahiri is disrupted by less stuff. Grave hate doesn't affect her. Taking damage sets you back on Emrakul, but then you can go into plan B with Nahiri, whereas if you lose Sword to grave hate, Thopter Foundry isn't going to do much by itself.
For what it's worth, there are only 2 Nahiri decks in the top 32, but I feel that she's the real deal. She could become the de facto wincon in UWR in the future.
On Abzan Company
There were zero Abzan Company decks in Day 2, which is rather surprising at first glance. This seems to be the result of the metagame being too hostile for it. The most-played deck on Day 2 was RG Tron, a known bad matchup for Company. This sentiment is echoed in Stephen Dykman's T8 profile, where he mentioned that he played Tron because he thought that a lot of people would be on Company. The RG Valakut players also gave Company a run for its money, with a very hateful SB of 3 Anger of the Gods, 2 Grafdigger's Cage and 1 Relic of Progenitus.
On Affinity
There were 2 Affinity decks on Day 2 and 1 in T32. This seems puzzling, considering that Affinity has always been tier 1 even during Eldrazi Winter, and is favored against Tron. I'm going to chalk this one up to luck - even good decks will have cold streaks. I don't think that there is anything wrong with the format (e.g. too much SB hate) or the deck that kept it from breaking T16/T8, just bad luck from too few people choosing to play it, or not being paired against the right matchups, or bad breakers. I mean, if you track Cody Kowalski's (17th place Affinity) performance, he started Day 2 at 8-1 (already an accomplishment to begin with), then beat Jund, lost to Jund, beat an unknown deck, beat RG Valakut, lost to Kiki Chord, then lost to BG Infect. He finished in the middle of the pack of 33-pointers.
In the same weekend, Affinity T8ed MKM Series Frankfurt*. You'd do well to remember that a deck's tiering is not determined by a single event; if a tier 1 deck failed to perform at one event, try looking at Europe, Asia, or the Democratic People's Republic of MTGO before concluding that it's bad in the format now.
From now on now complaining about control, in how bad spot it is how bad blue color is and so on please. This SCG open shows that control is absolutely viable as is blue as a color and none of them needs any help.
Not really. Nahiri is a R/W card lol. Blue didn't get better because of it, one specific (blue) deck did. It doesn't do anything for blue itself or for Sultai, UW, Grixis, UR, etc.
Note that these are raw and unedited, so you'll probably have to click around to find them. They should also be putting up videos of each individual round on their YouTube page fairly soon, for easier access at finding what you want.
Note that these are raw and unedited, so you'll probably have to click around to find them. They should also be putting up videos of each individual round on their YouTube page fairly soon, for easier access at finding what you want.
In addition to those, I really like the way mtgcoverage.com breaks things down. It will take a few days (up to a week sometimes) after an event for them to edit and post, but it's worth the wait.
On Eye's ban
Overall the format seems to be working out fine with Eye gone. People can, and should, stop *****ing about Tron being unplayable without Eye or losing thousands of dollars on Eldrazi because Eye got banned. For the most part, I don't see such complaints any more, so well done Tron/Eldrazi players. If only the same could be said of Twin...
AV is proving to be a very tricky beast. People have found a lot of different ways to use the card. For starters, you can play it in the maindeck as a cheap hand refiller, and play lots of disruption to ensure that you can survive 4 turns. Then Grixis Delver showed that you can play it in the SB to out-grind grindy decks, despite the apparent paradox of Delver traditionally being a fast deck and AV being a slow card. The 4-Color Bring to Light deck has it in the SB as a 1-of: sometimes you'll get lucky and suspend it on turn 1, otherwise, it gives you the option of turning Bring to Light into a bad Concentrate/Harmonize while not affecting your later draws much since it's only 1 copy. Earlier back, the Time Warp deck also used AV: the drawback is negligible once you start comboing since you remove a time counter every time you successfully cast a Time Warp effect.
Despite all these creative uses of AV, its main role is still as a 3/4-of maindeck. This is a good thing, since they unbanned AV to help control decks. It's OK if some other decks have some unusual applications for the card, as long as the main beneficiary is control.
Nahiri is a combo wincon that only requires you to play one dead draw in your deck (Emrakul), and if you happen to draw the dead card, she conveniently provides a way to discard it. I honestly feel that one of the reasons Thopter Sword is underplayed at the moment because Nahiri is a better combo kill:
- Nahiri kills immediately when you -8 her, unlike Thopter Sword which kills over time. Even counting turns spent ticking her up vs making Thopters, Nahiri still comes up ahead.
- If you have 4 Nahiri + 1 Emrakul, you only need to draw 1 copy of your 4 Nahiris, vs say 3 Thopter + 2 Sword where you have to draw 1/3 Thopter and 1/2 Sword. The odds for assembling Thopter Sword are worse, because "assembling" Nahiri just equates to drawing her.
- Nahiri doesn't require too many slots to support her beyond Serum Visions (even that can be skipped, as the RW deck showed), while Thopter Sword frequently plays spells like Muddle the Mixture, Thirst for Knowledge and Gifts Ungiven. The more expensive draw spells you play, the less room you have for expensive but efficient answers like Electrolyze and Cryptic Command. SV also has the advantage of allowing you to cut 1-2 lands.
- Nahiri is disrupted by less stuff. Grave hate doesn't affect her. Taking damage sets you back on Emrakul, but then you can go into plan B with Nahiri, whereas if you lose Sword to grave hate, Thopter Foundry isn't going to do much by itself.
For what it's worth, there are only 2 Nahiri decks in the top 32, but I feel that she's the real deal. She could become the de facto wincon in UWR in the future.
In the same weekend, Affinity T8ed MKM Series Frankfurt*. You'd do well to remember that a deck's tiering is not determined by a single event; if a tier 1 deck failed to perform at one event, try looking at Europe, Asia, or the Democratic People's Republic of MTGO before concluding that it's bad in the format now.
*Side note: an RG Eldrazi deck T8ed this event.
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Big Johnny.
Not really. Nahiri is a R/W card lol. Blue didn't get better because of it, one specific (blue) deck did. It doesn't do anything for blue itself or for Sultai, UW, Grixis, UR, etc.
Not complaining, I'm just saying.
http://twitch.tv/scglive/profile
Note that these are raw and unedited, so you'll probably have to click around to find them. They should also be putting up videos of each individual round on their YouTube page fairly soon, for easier access at finding what you want.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero