At the end of this Pro-Tour I did something I've never done before and went through every deck with a record better than 6-4 to see which decks looked to be the strongest in the standard portion.
The reason I did this is because it's very easy to look at the top 8 of the tournament and go "Well, red aggro won, so that's the deck. Right?" Which is wrong. While all of the players that made the top 8 had solid standard swiss results (naturally), they didn't have the best standard swiss results. One of them only had 6 wins (out of 10 rounds) in the swiss portion, the 6-0 record in the draft is what got him into the top 8. This is something I don't feel people understand enough. The top 8 says something about what decks are good, but it doesn't say as much as some people seem to think.
For reference: In this evaluation, the lowest I went was decks with total points of 19 or greater (max was 30 points, best earned was 27). I didn't have the time to go through all the 18 point decks and I felt that for now, those with 19 points and above was a decent sample size.
So with that, what I did is averaged the point totals for each deck and counted the number with records better than 6-4. With this evaluation, U/B Control seemed to be the champion of the swiss rounds. It had one deck with a 9-1 record, 27 points and had a total of 12 showings in the players with a 6-3-1 record or better, in total the earned point average for this archetype was 22 points even.
As far as point averages go, technically Green Devotion was the highest with 23.334 points, average. However, it was also was of the least represented decks in the top tiers. This could say a lot and it could say very little, without the deck lists from everyone in the pro tour it's hard to tell. However, G/W Devotion landed in third for highest average point total at 22.6, which could say something. G/R devotion didn't have a deck better than 21 points in the swiss rounds, leaving them as the worst performer in the green devotion family.
Abzan was notably the best performing family of archetypes. The Aggro lists faired best (quick disclaimer, for my evaluation I defined an 'agro' list as one running 4 Fleecemanes and 4 Rakshasas and no clear intent at another strategy), with one deck going 9-1 for 27 points and a second list landing 24 points. Interestingly enough, these lists are very similar (almost the exact same creature base) and as you see the Abzan Aggro lists with less and less points you notice them straying farther and farther away from that build, often allowing their curve to get very close to being more midrange. Again, this could be nothing, but it's worth noting. Abzan Agro was represented by 6 decks. Abzan Control and Midrange both faired well, but not amazing. A clearly control-style Abzan deck made a record of 9-1 and for what it's worth there was also an Abzan control deck in the top 8. However, defining the difference between Abzan Control and Midrange is difficult so I'm just going to leave it at: They were both well represented and did decently. Abzan Midrange did the worst of the family point wise and appeared to be least represented.
Red Agro (I did include those splashing green only for Atarka's Command) faired quite well (our champion deck!) but it was not king in the swiss rounds with an average of 21.75 points and 8 decks representing it. It had no representatives with less than 21 points though!
The deck that performed worse than I expected was the G/R Dragons deck. It only had four representatives in the top decks and averaged 21.25 points, one of the worst.
U/W Heroic made an appearance with two decks in the top decks and a point average of 21.
Esper Control followed up the rear with two decks and a point average of 20.5.
Of course, how much of an archetype made an appearance in the top decks is not a good tell for how good the deck is, because if a deck (say Esper) only had five or six total entrants with that style list and two of them made the top tables, that's pretty good. However if say sixty people showed up with Esper lists and only two made it to the top, that says a lot as well. Same goes for the most represented deck, U/B control.
That was a very quick evaluation and is by no means thorough. Has anyone else evaluated the results? What methods did you use and what conclusions did you come to?
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I called it U/B control still if they only splashed white for Ojutai. I called Esper Control decks that were incorporating more than simply Ojutai. I didn't feel the splash for the single card was enough to have changed the game plan enough to call it Esper Control. Same with Green devotion, where a few splashed red only for Atarka and the Mono-Red Agro decks where they only splashed green for Atarka's Command.
When watching coverage, you'll see they labeled the U/B control decks the same way I did.
One could dig further and see which of these 110 decks navigated Day 2 to a Top 32 or Top 8 finish.
For instance, 3 of the 15 Esper Dragons decks made Top 32 (highest finish 16th). 3 of the 10 Abzan Aggro decks made Top 32 (highest finish 5th). 8 of the 16 Abzan control decks made it to Top 32 (with two in Top 8).
I think that the results from one event should be considered a case of small sample size. But, that doesn't mean that we can't try and take something from them. Something that I think would be very useful is the head-to-head results. I recall seeing tables last year (when mono-black, mono-blue, and UW Control were the top decks) showing head-to-head results, but that data may not be publicly available and would likely be time consuming to mine.
One odd thing to me is that despite landing two decks in the Top 8 at Pro Tour the previous weekend, there were only 3 Green Devotion (two red; one white) decks playing on Day 2 at Providence. GR Dragons seems to have virtually disappeared, but that is not as much of a surprise since it did poorly at Pro Tour.
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The reason I did this is because it's very easy to look at the top 8 of the tournament and go "Well, red aggro won, so that's the deck. Right?" Which is wrong. While all of the players that made the top 8 had solid standard swiss results (naturally), they didn't have the best standard swiss results. One of them only had 6 wins (out of 10 rounds) in the swiss portion, the 6-0 record in the draft is what got him into the top 8. This is something I don't feel people understand enough. The top 8 says something about what decks are good, but it doesn't say as much as some people seem to think.
For reference: In this evaluation, the lowest I went was decks with total points of 19 or greater (max was 30 points, best earned was 27). I didn't have the time to go through all the 18 point decks and I felt that for now, those with 19 points and above was a decent sample size.
So with that, what I did is averaged the point totals for each deck and counted the number with records better than 6-4. With this evaluation, U/B Control seemed to be the champion of the swiss rounds. It had one deck with a 9-1 record, 27 points and had a total of 12 showings in the players with a 6-3-1 record or better, in total the earned point average for this archetype was 22 points even.
As far as point averages go, technically Green Devotion was the highest with 23.334 points, average. However, it was also was of the least represented decks in the top tiers. This could say a lot and it could say very little, without the deck lists from everyone in the pro tour it's hard to tell. However, G/W Devotion landed in third for highest average point total at 22.6, which could say something. G/R devotion didn't have a deck better than 21 points in the swiss rounds, leaving them as the worst performer in the green devotion family.
Abzan was notably the best performing family of archetypes. The Aggro lists faired best (quick disclaimer, for my evaluation I defined an 'agro' list as one running 4 Fleecemanes and 4 Rakshasas and no clear intent at another strategy), with one deck going 9-1 for 27 points and a second list landing 24 points. Interestingly enough, these lists are very similar (almost the exact same creature base) and as you see the Abzan Aggro lists with less and less points you notice them straying farther and farther away from that build, often allowing their curve to get very close to being more midrange. Again, this could be nothing, but it's worth noting. Abzan Agro was represented by 6 decks. Abzan Control and Midrange both faired well, but not amazing. A clearly control-style Abzan deck made a record of 9-1 and for what it's worth there was also an Abzan control deck in the top 8. However, defining the difference between Abzan Control and Midrange is difficult so I'm just going to leave it at: They were both well represented and did decently. Abzan Midrange did the worst of the family point wise and appeared to be least represented.
Red Agro (I did include those splashing green only for Atarka's Command) faired quite well (our champion deck!) but it was not king in the swiss rounds with an average of 21.75 points and 8 decks representing it. It had no representatives with less than 21 points though!
The deck that performed worse than I expected was the G/R Dragons deck. It only had four representatives in the top decks and averaged 21.25 points, one of the worst.
U/W Heroic made an appearance with two decks in the top decks and a point average of 21.
Esper Control followed up the rear with two decks and a point average of 20.5.
Of course, how much of an archetype made an appearance in the top decks is not a good tell for how good the deck is, because if a deck (say Esper) only had five or six total entrants with that style list and two of them made the top tables, that's pretty good. However if say sixty people showed up with Esper lists and only two made it to the top, that says a lot as well. Same goes for the most represented deck, U/B control.
That was a very quick evaluation and is by no means thorough. Has anyone else evaluated the results? What methods did you use and what conclusions did you come to?
When watching coverage, you'll see they labeled the U/B control decks the same way I did.
Abzan Control – 16
Esper Dragons – 15
Atarka Red – 11
Abzan Aggro – 10
G/R Aggro – 7
Jeskai Tokens – 6
Sultai Reanimator – 6
Mono Red Aggro – 4
Jeskai Aggro – 4
U/B Control – 4
U/W Control – 2
Bant Heroic – 2
Jeskai Heroic – 2
G/R Devotion – 2
Bant Midrange – 2
Mardu Midrange – 2
Mardu Dragons – 2
U/G Morph – 1
Temur Aggro – 1
Jund Midrange – 1
Esper Control – 1
G/W Devotion – 1
G/R Dragons – 1
G/R Bees – 1
Jeskai Dragons – 1
G/W Aggro – 1
U/R Control – 1
Naya Collected Company – 1
Abzan Reanimator – 1
R/B Devotion – 1
One could dig further and see which of these 110 decks navigated Day 2 to a Top 32 or Top 8 finish.
For instance, 3 of the 15 Esper Dragons decks made Top 32 (highest finish 16th). 3 of the 10 Abzan Aggro decks made Top 32 (highest finish 5th). 8 of the 16 Abzan control decks made it to Top 32 (with two in Top 8).
I think that the results from one event should be considered a case of small sample size. But, that doesn't mean that we can't try and take something from them. Something that I think would be very useful is the head-to-head results. I recall seeing tables last year (when mono-black, mono-blue, and UW Control were the top decks) showing head-to-head results, but that data may not be publicly available and would likely be time consuming to mine.
One odd thing to me is that despite landing two decks in the Top 8 at Pro Tour the previous weekend, there were only 3 Green Devotion (two red; one white) decks playing on Day 2 at Providence. GR Dragons seems to have virtually disappeared, but that is not as much of a surprise since it did poorly at Pro Tour.