Classic results are in and we got 8 distinct decks in the T8. For those who have stronger opinions about linear decks than most people have about politics, interactive finishes include Jund in 2nd, a sweet prison toolbox deck in 5th, and Jeskai in 8th. The Classic had 187 players. The Open had 818. Big events, diverse results, everything is viable, Modern is amazing.
The second-to-last game was the really bad one. Storm player kept a 1-lander against Ponza on the draw?? WOOOOW.
Not necessarily that bad a decision. He had Serum Visions, and between his regular turn 1 draw, Serum Visions draw, double scry, and turn 2 draw, he had about an 85% chance of drawing another land by his second turn by my calculations. So even if the opponent had turn 2 Stone Rain, which they did, he had a very good chance of drawing another land.
Granted, 1 mana isn't enough to do much in Storm, but if he had some more cantrips (I couldn't see his hand so I'm not sure if he did) then he likely would've been in a decent position even against a turn 2 Stone Rain.
The Storm player in the finals definitely suffered from oversideboarding-dysphoria, where you think you are sideboarding good cards, but you really aren't. Why on Earth did you need Pyromancer Ascension against the Ponza deck?
I imagine it makes it so it's less mana intensive to go off. Ascension, once online (and shouldn't be too terribly tough to do so) makes copies for free, rather than trying to use single-digit reducers. It also allows the Storm player to play cantrips as they see fit to guarantee land drops, rather than be forced to hold them for storm count.
Decks with strong conversion from the day 2 meta to top32 in Dallas Open:
Eldrazi - 5 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
Storm - 5 out of 7 day 2 decks made top 32
Company - 4 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
Decks with weak conversion from the day 2 meta to top32 in Dallas Open:
Burn - 1 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
Tron - 1 out of 5 day 2 decks made top 32
Hexproof - 1 out of 4 day 2 decks made top 32
Jund - 2 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
woulda been cool to see the day 1 metagame breakdown. just to see what people were bringing to the party.
also i gotta admit that im not too excited at having a land destruction deck being popular. dont really have the cards to move into 2 colors, and there is only so much i can do to insulate myself.
guess i just gotta eat it for a while
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
After this weekend's events I want to make a couple of observations I've made:
1) BBE was the most impactful unabn. There seems to be a significant change in the results of Jund (MOCS, Open, Trio GP, Classic). We hadn't seen these kind of results in months. BBE also gave a significant push to GR Ponza (Open, performing much better online).
2) Jace seems to have a non-significant impact. Moving away from the first weeks of play, the last 2 5-0 MODO lists don't have Jace among the top 10 most played cards. There doesn't seem to be any change in the results of Jeskai Control pre and post unban. If anything, because people are trying more control decks (with less success), Jeskai is in a down-swing. UW had constant decent results but nothing overwhelming and this is still the case. Decent results (top 8 Open) but nothing impressive (only 1 deck in day 2).
3) As a result of the format experimenting, several fast decks that had fallen out of favor have found space to occupy (i.e. Infect), which is great for the diversity of the format. Same goes for Storm, which was definitely in a downward trend, but during the first very large event in a new open wide format, it managed to do very very well.
4) Grixis Shadow got hit hard. Did well in the GP Trio, but we don't know exactly how well. Did VERY poorly in the Open.
Overall, midrange is back, control is exactly where it was, format is very diverse, and has viable strategies in every type of deck, aggro, midrange, control, combo, prison, tempo.
I'm happy with the results because, you know, they confirm my predictions. BBE was and is really good and has put Jund back into the spotlight, among other RG decks. BBE is a 3/4-of in so many decks now. Free spells are good, who would have known?
Jace is not extremely present, because he's not a turn-four play, as I always thought. It's the play once Jeskai established some control. It's played post supreme verdict with counter / removal protection. That's what I've claimed all along. I've watched Jim Davis play it like this all week-end. Once it's at that stage of the game, it's just sick. It's a one-card swiss army knife. The main thing holding it back is just how ridiculously expensive the full Jeskai deck is. No wonder storm, burn, eldrazi decks are much more played, plus fringer decks like ponza.
(It doesn't help that the last two master sets have almost entirely avoided Jeskai cards outside of Jace.)
I'm currently building four-colors pyromancer myself. Deck looks sweet, well-rounded and consistent. Plus, I had 95% of the cards already.
I look forward to casting Blood Moon on Turn 2 against you! The amount of people cramming every color for more value into their decks is really what's responsible for Ponza's success right now, haha.
(It doesn't help that the last two master sets have almost entirely avoided Jeskai cards outside of Jace.)
Hmm?
Verdict, Path, Bolt, Electrolyze, Cryptic, Helix, the counters are (outside of Spell Snare) a dime a dozen, Sphinx Rev, all have recent reprints.
I did this in the Prices thread, there are like 5 cards that have not been recently reprinted including sideboard.
I think it's mostly pain about two cards - manlands and snapcaster. Mythic rarity did very little to help snappy's price tag and now it is more expensive than ever. WOTC should not have mythics in masters sets.
Yeah, and thats fair. Collonade was the only 'money' card that I had to have, not including Runed Halo and Shattering Spree in the side, but to say the last 2 sets have avoided UWR staples, is just not right.
Snaps, when there was nobody on Blue, was cheap. Same as Bob who is approaching $100, and Noble, likely on the same path to absurdity.
Yeah, and thats fair. Collonade was the only 'money' card that I had to have, not including Runed Halo and Shattering Spree in the side, but to say the last 2 sets have avoided UWR staples, is just not right.
Snaps, when there was nobody on Blue, was cheap. Same as Bob who is approaching $100, and Noble, likely on the same path to absurdity.
Yeah I'm kicking myself for having sold my playset last year when I found a place to live that was a bit more expensive than originally planned lol. I bring up the mythic factor because I think we can look at goblin guide as a great example. It's a very powerful card, had one print run prior to its masters appearance, saw play in a perennial tier 1 modern deck, and hovered around $35. Now it's just under $20 because a rare printing significantly increased supply. Hell the sole reason I am building burn now is because of that. I just can't justify spending over $30 on a piece of cardboard. That's where I draw a line.
Interestingly, I actually think the return of decks like Storm and Infect is a result of Jund's impact on the meta. Jund has become the midrange deck to beat the other midrange decks but as a result it's chock full of midrangey cards that aren't great in the fast linear matchups (BBE, Kolaghans command, arguably scooze and Bob) and decks like Storm and counters Company are able to capitalize where they once struggled against the heavier disruption and faster clock of the deaths shadow decks. It's actually somewhat of a testament to how adaptable the modern metagame is that while BBE certainly puts pressure on other midrange decks to beat Jund, it makes Jund weaker to some of the matchups those decks it pushes out would normally beat. I see it more likely now that Jund and Shadow will wax and wane depending on the meta versus BBE just being strictly better than shadow. I would have absolutely rather played Traverse than Jund at that SCG event in retrospect and I think that's a positive sign for the deck moving forward.
After this weekend's events I want to make a couple of observations I've made:
1) BBE was the most impactful unabn. There seems to be a significant change in the results of Jund (MOCS, Open, Trio GP, Classic). We hadn't seen these kind of results in months. BBE also gave a significant push to GR Ponza (Open, performing much better online).
2) Jace seems to have a non-significant impact. Moving away from the first weeks of play, the last 2 5-0 MODO lists don't have Jace among the top 10 most played cards. There doesn't seem to be any change in the results of Jeskai Control pre and post unban. If anything, because people are trying more control decks (with less success), Jeskai is in a down-swing. UW had constant decent results but nothing overwhelming and this is still the case. Decent results (top 8 Open) but nothing impressive (only 1 deck in day 2).
3) As a result of the format experimenting, several fast decks that had fallen out of favor have found space to occupy (i.e. Infect), which is great for the diversity of the format. Same goes for Storm, which was definitely in a downward trend, but during the first very large event in a new open wide format, it managed to do very very well.
4) Grixis Shadow got hit hard. Did well in the GP Trio, but we don't know exactly how well. Did VERY poorly in the Open.
Overall, midrange is back, control is exactly where it was, format is very diverse, and has viable strategies in every type of deck, aggro, midrange, control, combo, prison, tempo.
The diversity is really a hallmark of Modern right now.
Top 16 when combined (there was ties in the classic)
Dredge
Jund 3
Burn
Storm 4
UR Prison (WTF IS THIS its from the Classic)
Humans 3
UWR Queller
Titan Shift
Infect 2
Hollow One 2
GDS
Ponza
UW Control
GBTron
Eldrazi Tron
Bogles
Colourless Eldrazi
UG Eldrazi
UWR Control
GW Counters Company
4C Pyro (DeCandio with another top 16)
Honestly the format is all over the place.
Watching jim Davis on jeskai also highlighted how exhausting and difficult it is to play slow control decks like that.
This is really true too. Every game you sit down to is acceptance of the fact you are in for a grind.
I meant the expensive ones. The deck is close to 1500$ now, IIRC.
In the Jeskai deck (I used the first one that came up on goldfish) cards that are more than $10 for a playset:
Snapcaster Mage, Spell Queller, Vendillion Clique, Jace, Path to Exile, Cryptic Command, Flooded Strand, Hallowed Fountain, Scalding Tarn, Steam Vents, Engineered Explosives, a bunch of other 1 of SB cards and Celestial Collonade. Literally the only one that hasn't been reprinted or in a set that recently was in standard is collonade.
After this weekend's events I want to make a couple of observations I've made:
1) BBE was the most impactful unabn. There seems to be a significant change in the results of Jund (MOCS, Open, Trio GP, Classic). We hadn't seen these kind of results in months. BBE also gave a significant push to GR Ponza (Open, performing much better online).
2) Jace seems to have a non-significant impact. Moving away from the first weeks of play, the last 2 5-0 MODO lists don't have Jace among the top 10 most played cards. There doesn't seem to be any change in the results of Jeskai Control pre and post unban. If anything, because people are trying more control decks (with less success), Jeskai is in a down-swing. UW had constant decent results but nothing overwhelming and this is still the case. Decent results (top 8 Open) but nothing impressive (only 1 deck in day 2).
3) As a result of the format experimenting, several fast decks that had fallen out of favor have found space to occupy (i.e. Infect), which is great for the diversity of the format. Same goes for Storm, which was definitely in a downward trend, but during the first very large event in a new open wide format, it managed to do very very well.
4) Grixis Shadow got hit hard. Did well in the GP Trio, but we don't know exactly how well. Did VERY poorly in the Open.
Overall, midrange is back, control is exactly where it was, format is very diverse, and has viable strategies in every type of deck, aggro, midrange, control, combo, prison, tempo.
yeah this pretty much lines up with what i see. although i am dubious about grixis shadow actually being pushed out
thing is i still think GDS is an amazing deck. there was this divergence as shadow players decided between staying grixis, or move into jund or 4c to adopt traverse. add to this the over dramatic response to the unbannings, and im not entirely sure if GDS is actually bad now or if people think its bad now, so they decided to stop playing it.
mtgo data is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from, and there havent been many tournament results. for instance its easy to look at the Day 2 metagame breakdown of SCG Dallas and think it did poorly - but without knowing how many people actually showed up with the deck we cant really make that conclusion.
like we see storm as having the most copies going into day 2. does that mean that storm was a particularly large portion of the field, or that it just had a good conversion rate?
if storm is so popular, you know what beats the hell out of storm? grixis death shadow. so i dunno. im reserving judgement for the moment.
also. does anyone know what has been holding Young Pyromancer back all this time? the mardu shell is has only recently become popular, but i feel like im seeing YP showing up more and more. YP saw little play even when Gitaxian Probe was legal, and those cards are like made for eachother.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
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Granted, 1 mana isn't enough to do much in Storm, but if he had some more cantrips (I couldn't see his hand so I'm not sure if he did) then he likely would've been in a decent position even against a turn 2 Stone Rain.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Eldrazi - 5 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
Storm - 5 out of 7 day 2 decks made top 32
Company - 4 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
Decks with weak conversion from the day 2 meta to top32 in Dallas Open:
Burn - 1 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
Tron - 1 out of 5 day 2 decks made top 32
Hexproof - 1 out of 4 day 2 decks made top 32
Jund - 2 out of 6 day 2 decks made top 32
UWRUWR Delver/Lynx TempoUWR-------UWRUWR Midrange GeistUWR-------UWRUWR Nahiri ControlUWR-------UWRUWR SaheeliUWR
BGRJund / Jund ShadowBGR-------BGWAbzan / Abzan ShadowBGW
Commander (Leviathan/MTGO): UWGeist of Saint TraftUW
also i gotta admit that im not too excited at having a land destruction deck being popular. dont really have the cards to move into 2 colors, and there is only so much i can do to insulate myself.
guess i just gotta eat it for a while
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)1) BBE was the most impactful unabn. There seems to be a significant change in the results of Jund (MOCS, Open, Trio GP, Classic). We hadn't seen these kind of results in months. BBE also gave a significant push to GR Ponza (Open, performing much better online).
2) Jace seems to have a non-significant impact. Moving away from the first weeks of play, the last 2 5-0 MODO lists don't have Jace among the top 10 most played cards. There doesn't seem to be any change in the results of Jeskai Control pre and post unban. If anything, because people are trying more control decks (with less success), Jeskai is in a down-swing. UW had constant decent results but nothing overwhelming and this is still the case. Decent results (top 8 Open) but nothing impressive (only 1 deck in day 2).
3) As a result of the format experimenting, several fast decks that had fallen out of favor have found space to occupy (i.e. Infect), which is great for the diversity of the format. Same goes for Storm, which was definitely in a downward trend, but during the first very large event in a new open wide format, it managed to do very very well.
4) Grixis Shadow got hit hard. Did well in the GP Trio, but we don't know exactly how well. Did VERY poorly in the Open.
Overall, midrange is back, control is exactly where it was, format is very diverse, and has viable strategies in every type of deck, aggro, midrange, control, combo, prison, tempo.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
Jace is not extremely present, because he's not a turn-four play, as I always thought. It's the play once Jeskai established some control. It's played post supreme verdict with counter / removal protection. That's what I've claimed all along. I've watched Jim Davis play it like this all week-end. Once it's at that stage of the game, it's just sick. It's a one-card swiss army knife. The main thing holding it back is just how ridiculously expensive the full Jeskai deck is. No wonder storm, burn, eldrazi decks are much more played, plus fringer decks like ponza.
(It doesn't help that the last two master sets have almost entirely avoided Jeskai cards outside of Jace.)
I'm currently building four-colors pyromancer myself. Deck looks sweet, well-rounded and consistent. Plus, I had 95% of the cards already.
There are a million, I counted, Modern decks that are miserable to play against. I always take less time than my opponents, when I play Turns. :[
Spirits
Hmm?
Verdict, Path, Bolt, Electrolyze, Cryptic, Helix, the counters are (outside of Spell Snare) a dime a dozen, Sphinx Rev, all have recent reprints.
I did this in the Prices thread, there are like 5 cards that have not been recently reprinted including sideboard.
Spirits
I think it's mostly pain about two cards - manlands and snapcaster. Mythic rarity did very little to help snappy's price tag and now it is more expensive than ever. WOTC should not have mythics in masters sets.
Snaps, when there was nobody on Blue, was cheap. Same as Bob who is approaching $100, and Noble, likely on the same path to absurdity.
Spirits
Yeah I'm kicking myself for having sold my playset last year when I found a place to live that was a bit more expensive than originally planned lol. I bring up the mythic factor because I think we can look at goblin guide as a great example. It's a very powerful card, had one print run prior to its masters appearance, saw play in a perennial tier 1 modern deck, and hovered around $35. Now it's just under $20 because a rare printing significantly increased supply. Hell the sole reason I am building burn now is because of that. I just can't justify spending over $30 on a piece of cardboard. That's where I draw a line.
The diversity is really a hallmark of Modern right now.
Open.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/deckshow.php?event_ID=47&t[T2]=28&start_date=2018-03-10&end_date=2018-03-10&state=TX&city=Dallas&order_1=finish&order_2=last_name&limit=8&t_num=1&action=Show+Decks
Classic.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=28&start_date=2018-03-11&end_date=2018-03-11&event_ID=36&city=Dallas&state=TX&t_num=1&order_1=finish&order_2=last_name&limit=8&start_num=0&start_num=0&limit=limit
Top 16 when combined (there was ties in the classic)
Dredge
Jund 3
Burn
Storm 4
UR Prison (WTF IS THIS its from the Classic)
Humans 3
UWR Queller
Titan Shift
Infect 2
Hollow One 2
GDS
Ponza
UW Control
GBTron
Eldrazi Tron
Bogles
Colourless Eldrazi
UG Eldrazi
UWR Control
GW Counters Company
4C Pyro (DeCandio with another top 16)
Honestly the format is all over the place.
This is really true too. Every game you sit down to is acceptance of the fact you are in for a grind.
Spirits
You missed island, mountain and plains.
I meant the expensive ones. The deck is close to 1500$ now, IIRC.
Jace keeps falling though lol
Spirits
In the Jeskai deck (I used the first one that came up on goldfish) cards that are more than $10 for a playset:
Snapcaster Mage, Spell Queller, Vendillion Clique, Jace, Path to Exile, Cryptic Command, Flooded Strand, Hallowed Fountain, Scalding Tarn, Steam Vents, Engineered Explosives, a bunch of other 1 of SB cards and Celestial Collonade. Literally the only one that hasn't been reprinted or in a set that recently was in standard is collonade.
Jund's going to be running 2 less maindeck removal when it gets figured out, I think. Jund in 2015 ran about 14 creatures in the main, with 3x 4 drops
Jund decks are going to react and evolve to people adapting, I think too many players are just focusing on every single cascade mattering.
yeah this pretty much lines up with what i see. although i am dubious about grixis shadow actually being pushed out
thing is i still think GDS is an amazing deck. there was this divergence as shadow players decided between staying grixis, or move into jund or 4c to adopt traverse. add to this the over dramatic response to the unbannings, and im not entirely sure if GDS is actually bad now or if people think its bad now, so they decided to stop playing it.
mtgo data is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from, and there havent been many tournament results. for instance its easy to look at the Day 2 metagame breakdown of SCG Dallas and think it did poorly - but without knowing how many people actually showed up with the deck we cant really make that conclusion.
like we see storm as having the most copies going into day 2. does that mean that storm was a particularly large portion of the field, or that it just had a good conversion rate?
if storm is so popular, you know what beats the hell out of storm? grixis death shadow. so i dunno. im reserving judgement for the moment.
also. does anyone know what has been holding Young Pyromancer back all this time? the mardu shell is has only recently become popular, but i feel like im seeing YP showing up more and more. YP saw little play even when Gitaxian Probe was legal, and those cards are like made for eachother.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)