Examining Grand Prix: Providence (Mostly Day 2)

[Master Shake]

Hey everyone, I post some of my articles here, this is no exception.

http://www.gatheringmagic.com/examining-grand-prix-providence/

In this article I do what a few writers did, which is look at the results of the GP, I talk a bit about the top 8 and winning list, but I spend a lot more time looking at the day two metagame breakdown, becuase I feel that has a lot more to offer.

Take a look at it, it has pie charts.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Interesting article, it was a good read. I do wish we had access to the day one decklists and breakdowns, though.

[2nd_lawl]

nice article sir

[Koby]

Nice analysis of the metagame!

Also, I like pies.

[dahcmai]

ooooo pies.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

You should have named this article blueberry pie.

[DragoFireheart]

So that information is showing us that U/W Landstill, Zoo, and Merfolk are the three top decks (in representation) at the moment? Merfolk beats over half the decks + Landstill, Zoo beats Merfolk and random stuff, Landstill beats some Zoo variants and random stuff?

[sdematt]

Anyone have a link to the match he played against AJ Kerrigan? I want to see Beta duals :P

-Matt

[Master Shake]

So that information is showing us that U/W Landstill, Zoo, and Merfolk are the three top decks (in representation) at the moment? Merfolk beats over half the decks + Landstill, Zoo beats Merfolk and random stuff, Landstill beats some Zoo variants and random stuff?

That essentially seemed to be the state of the metagame as of the Grand Prix, and we're likely not that far off of that at the moment.

This coincides with my opinion that, regrettably, Merfolk is the best deck in the format at this time.

It is worth nothing the poor numbers that Ubg put up compared to what was commonly expected.

And one more fleeting though, it isn't so much that there are random decks, there are very well defined archetypes running around, U/W isn't just good against random decks, but is good against the Natural Order decks, the decks that are trying to leverage on Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf, the new builds are a lot stronger against storm.

Zoo is mostly good against Merfolk, Ubg and Affinity, but that last one can go either way.

And then Yes, Merfolk beats decks with Islands and some decks without them.

Dredge has a good game one against the field, that's important.

[Master Shake]

Anyone have a link to the match he played against AJ Kerrigan? I want to see Beta duals :P

-Matt

http://mtghunter.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/aj-kerrigan-vs-james-rynkiewicz/

Apparently the link I was using stopped working, sorry about that.

[Koby]

I just want to be clear -

Is Merfolk the most successful deck from the GP in terms of popularity vs performance? We know it was very popular (20%! Holy Copycat Batman!), but did it's overall performance in T64 mark it the best performing archetype?

[Master Shake]

I just want to be clear -

Is Merfolk the most successful deck from the GP in terms of popularity vs performance? We know it was very popular (20%! Holy Copycat Batman!), but did it's overall performance in T64 mark it the best performing archetype?

I didn't have access to the top 64 lists, so I can only present the data that was available. Apparently Star City has a hold of the decklists and last year the top 64 lists from Columbus were not released so it was up to the community to patch together the top 64 themselves.

From the data that I've seen, I would have to imagine that Merfolk did quite well in day two considering that a sizable portion of the metagame was a favorable match, but I can't state anything definitively, as much as I would like to.