Yes many cat players pivoted to Mardu, it's the only other deck in the format and with no time to prep you have to jam the objectively best deck.
Where this gets into trouble is that I don't see very many of those players - especially the ones that cashed, pivoting back away from Mardu now that they have the deck built and there still isn't a good natural predator. GB constrictor is a lot worse when suddenly you have no gearhulks and no ballistas you can draw into because they got Dispossess'd, and By Force is pretty much a one-sided Shatterstorm. The mono-black aggro list was cute, but mardu is looking a lot like the old jund midrange lists from modern - there's nothing inherently broken, it's just that the deck is inherently better than its competition at every stage of the game, and removing one piece (or even lots of pieces) can't really affect that.
Dispossess isn't a good card against BG Constrictor. Extraction effects are terrible in midrange mirrors.
The results from Atlanta only look bad if you didn't go to the event, didn't bother to look past the top 8, and refuse to consider the impact of the emergency ban on the metagame. At the event, there were a ton of reasonable decks in Day 1 and Day 2; my buddy barely missed Day 2 with a 5-4 finish and he played against nine different decks in nine rounds. I personally only played Mardu thrice in 13 rounds, whereas I played some variation on BGx Midrange seven times. I was by the top tables deep into Day 2, and while Mardu was the most-represented deck, you had plenty of Delirium and Torrential Gearhulk control decks slinging away. The Mardu decks just managed to convert in the last couple of rounds as a group -- and what other result would you expect from the most-tuned and longest-tenured of the format's emerging best decks?
This result is basically meaningless.
The result is meaningless if you take it in a vacuum. The people that could afford to switch to mardu did and got paid. The people that couldn't buy the deck brewed and likely scrubbed out. This is a deck with no natural predators, has phenomenal aggro potential that can win games on turn 4-5, stifling midgame clog, and a brutal inevitability that control players could only dream of. It is likely favored againt any deck in a 3-game match simply because it has tools for anything and everything - and if the pilot is good the tools they really need will be mainboard.
If there were any deck that could pose a serious challenge for Mardu from being tier 0 (defined at least in this case by being favored in every matchup except the mirror) we would have seen something. Instead we got cute mono-black """aggro""" with 4 mana 3/2's, an old delirium deck from when Nissa's Renewal was seeing competitive play for reasons that defy explanation, and a bad token deck that might be able to go as wide as mardu but can never actually leverage that into a non-losing board state.
Standard's dead. What remains to be seens is if it can be resuscitated - and if we don't see a turnaround at rotation everyone should think long and hard if this is the time to cash out before the game goes under.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
The Delirium deck is very good, and favored against Mardu's preboard configuration. It's 50/50 postboard because the walker plan is a very good sideboard juke from Mardu. Delirium was all over the top tables despite being outdated and still needing work since the loss of Emrakul as the closer. It's been around for a while, but it still hasn't gotten the tuning that Mardu has.
Frankly I'm not convinced you're being objective about this, suffice to say that it's way too early to say "Standard is dead."
The result is meaningless if you take it in a vacuum. The people that could afford to switch to mardu did and got paid. The people that couldn't buy the deck brewed and likely scrubbed out. This is a deck with no natural predators, has phenomenal aggro potential that can win games on turn 4-5, stifling midgame clog, and a brutal inevitability that control players could only dream of. It is likely favored againt any deck in a 3-game match simply because it has tools for anything and everything - and if the pilot is good the tools they really need will be mainboard.
If there were any deck that could pose a serious challenge for Mardu from being tier 0 (defined at least in this case by being favored in every matchup except the mirror) we would have seen something. Instead we got cute mono-black """aggro""" with 4 mana 3/2's, an old delirium deck from when Nissa's Renewal was seeing competitive play for reasons that defy explanation, and a bad token deck that might be able to go as wide as mardu but can never actually leverage that into a non-losing board state.
Standard's dead. What remains to be seens is if it can be resuscitated - and if we don't see a turnaround at rotation everyone should think long and hard if this is the time to cash out before the game goes under.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
Frankly I'm not convinced you're being objective about this, suffice to say that it's way too early to say "Standard is dead."
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB