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Metagame Report: Pod Leads the Field with 15%
March 22, 2012
After watching Moneyball a couple days ago, I was inspired to create some stats for Magic the Gathering. So, I gathered data from the Magic Online results page to see what the Standard metagame looked like.
Here’s what I found.
Wolf Run White Wins a Big Standard Tournament
March 15, 2012
Michael Dye won last weekend’s Starcitygames Standard Open in Dallas with an interesting take on the Wolf Run Ramp archetype. Along with red and green, he played white to take advantage of Day of Judgment, Elesh Norn, and Gideon Jura. Also, he cut Sphere of the Suns and played Viridian Emissary instead.
He rounded out the deck with a couple 1-ofs and 2-ofs including Mimic Vat, Wurmcoil Engine, Beast Within, Thrun, Red Sun’s Zenith, Karn Liberated, Garruk Relentless, and Strangleroot Geist.
Check out his decklist below.
Junkwalkers, a Fun Deck with 15 Planeswalkers
March 13, 2012
Junkwalkers is the latest rogue deck to do well in a big high-profile Standard tournament. David Palmer piloted this green/white/black deck to a second place finish this past weekend at the Starcitygames Standard Open in Dallas, Texas.
With a name like Junkwalkers, you know the deck has a lot of planeswalkers. David played six different planeswalkers. In total, his deck has a whopping 15 planeswalkers including 3 Liliana of the Veil, 3 Garruk Relentless, and 3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad.
To protect his mythic rares, he has some removal, sweepers, and a full set of Lingering Souls.
Check out his decklist below.
UW Delver, Still a Very Good Deck for Standard
March 12, 2012
UW Delver hasn’t received a lot of press since Dark Ascension was released. Dark Ascension spawned a good number of new decks and players love new decks, so much of the attention was turned away from older decks.
But make no mistake, UW Delver is still a top deck even though it barely got anything from Dark Ascension.
Matt Costa took the deck to a top eight finish at Pro Tour Dark Ascension. Then, he won Grand Prix Baltimore. This tournament was three weekends ago, but just yesterday someone went 4-0 in a Daily Event on Magic Online with Costa’s exact list.
Check out his decklist below.
Havengul Lich Infinite Mana Combo Deck
March 8, 2012
Over the last couple of days, rinazina from Magic Online has done well in two Daily Events with a funky looking Grixis Havengul Lich Combo deck.
His deck uses Havengul Lich, Heartless Summoning, and Priest of Urabrask to generate infinite mana. With Havengul Lich and Heartless Summoning on the battlefield, Priest of Urabrask costs 1R to cast from the graveyard with Havengul Lich’s ability.
It enters the battlefield and adds RRR to your mana pool, so you get a profit of one red mana. Then, it dies because of Heartless Summoning’s -1/-1 ability so you can recast it again from the graveyard.
You can do this process a bunch of times to generate a lot of mana and then kill your opponent with a big Devil’s Play. The more common kill condition is actually Perilous Myr because it’s more flexible. With this artifact creature in the graveyard and Havengul Lich and Heartless Summoning on the board, everytime you spend one mana, you can deal two damage to a creature or player.
Check out his decklist below.
UB Zombies Goes Undefeated in a Grand Prix with Over 1,500 Players
March 5, 2012
Richard Parker made a case for UB Zombies not only being a tier one deck, but the best deck, by dominating the 1,505 player field in Grand Prix Lille this past weekend.
With only one bye, he won 12 matches in a row before intentionally drawing twice to reach the top eight. Then, he swept the elimination rounds to win the tournament.
Check out his decklist below.
Naya Pod Update with Sideboard Plans
February 27, 2012
Last month, I started testing Naya Pod with Dark Ascension cards on Magic Workstation. It was testing well so I was excited to try out the deck on Magic Online.
So far, I’ve been happy with its performance. I’ve won 15 booster packs in 20 matches and my win rate is 70%.
The core of the deck is the same, but I did make some changes to make the deck better for the metagame.
Here’s my latest decklist.
5-Color Reanimator (70% Win Rate at Pro Tour Dark Ascension)
February 25, 2012
So far, Dark Ascension looks like a great success. It changed up the Standard environment without introducing cards that are too powerful.
Because of the set, new archetypes have gotten a big upgrade. Zombies is now a contender. Birthing Pod is having a resurgence because of the undying mechanic. BW Tokens arrived as a new deck. Delver players found a new way to build the deck by adding Lingering Souls and Drogskol Captain.
Also, don’t forget about reanimator decks. With Faithless Looting and Tracker’s Instincts from Dark Ascension, you get two great cards that dig into your library to find Unburial Rites and put powerful fatties in your graveyard.
Hall of Famer Raphael Levy and other players put these two cards to work along with Mulch from Innistrad and created a reanimator deck that did very well at Pro Tour Dark Ascension. The four people who played the deck went a combined 24-9-1 for a 70% win rate.
The deck is named Frites, which is short for French Rites. Check out the decklist below.
BW Tokens Deck by a Hall of Fame Player
February 21, 2012
Black/White (BW) Tokens was less than 5% of the metagame at Pro Tour Dark Ascension so I figured many people would put away their Ratchet Bombs. BW Tokens looked like it had a favorable matchup against Delver decks and those decks showed up a lot on Magic Online.
Honor of the Pure or Intangible Virtue plus Midnight Haunting or Lingering Souls can take down two flipped Delvers. The 2/2 Spirit tokens are also great at trading with Drogskol Captain and Geist of Saint Traft. I found a decklist from the Pro Tour played by Hall of Famer, Rob Dougherty. He did well in the Standard rounds with a 7-2-1 record so I tried out his deck.
Check out Rob’s deck tech video and decklist below.
Mono Black Zombies Almost Gets Top 8 in a 636 Player Field
February 18, 2012
Steve Walsh barely missed out the top eight of last weekend’s Starcitygames Standard Open in Cincinnati. Out of 636 players, he had to settle for ninth place because his tiebreakers were short by a miniscule .0358%.
He played an interesting Zombie deck with Altar’s Reap for card draw and Phyrexian Obliterator as the main four-drop. I’ve been testing the deck and it has performed well.
Check out his decklist below.
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