Current Deck Prevalence, Separate from Placings

[Scott]

I was thinking about which decks are the most common to meet in a tournament, and it's probably true that a lot of it lines up to top placings, and I know from observation and other people's accounts that Patriot, Team America, Elves, DnT, Esperblade, Sneak & Show are not only some of the most-seen decks in Top Xs, but also played by a lot of people.

What about decks that don't often place but are really common in tournaments though? Or decks that are seeming underplayed, getting placings, despite low representation?

I'm talking about both big tournaments and little local ones. Of course, this would be rough anecdotal aggregation drawn from different worldwide locations (unless there's some resource that lists deck types from the top to bottom of tournaments that I'm unaware of).

For instance, from what I've seen, even though Affinity, Burn, Maverick, Merfolk, are seen as lower tier in varying degrees, I've played against them a ton, so I have to be prepared. And the opposite, it seems like some players have never faced off against Miracles or Imperial Painter despite their success. I'm curious what other people have noticed.

[twndomn]

SCG Oakland from 2013, Affinity did place 3rd, same event, Doomsday finished 9th.
Burn also finished 12th in Orlando for 2014.

Therefore, they do finish high, you just didn't look hard enough.

Some decks people are still trying to make it work: Enchantress, Stasis.

Real life tournament has card availability issue. Loam decks need Tabernacle. Not enough people get over the learning curve of Doomsday and Miracle.

[Scott]

SCG Oakland from 2013, Affinity did place 3rd, same event, Doomsday finished 9th.
Burn also finished 12th in Orlando for 2014.

Therefore, they do finish high, you just didn't look hard enough.

You misunderstand me, or I didn't specify clearly enough. I know that Affinity and Burn are capable of placing high and have done so. I've probably faced those two decks as often as I've faced Patriot or Sneak & Show though, and they seem to have a lower place:play ratio, that's all.

[TheArchitect]

SCG Oakland from 2013, Affinity did place 3rd, same event, Doomsday finished 9th.
Burn also finished 12th in Orlando for 2014.

Therefore, they do finish high, you just didn't look hard enough.

Some decks people are still trying to make it work: Enchantress, Stasis.

Real life tournament has card availability issue. Loam decks need Tabernacle. Not enough people get over the learning curve of Doomsday and Miracle.

I dont think hes saying the decks never place. His point is that those decks are probably almost as played as the "tier 1 deck", they just happen to not place as often so they arent as considered when preparing for a tournement.

An anecdotal example, the legacy tournament I was at I played, goblins, burn, bant, reanimator, meathooks and then split with esperblade. It was a 30$ event with 40 people but (from what I remember) in the room there was 1 UWR tempo, 1 team america, 2 Canadian thresh, 2 UWx blade control, 1 miracles (me) and 0 Sneak/show for "good decks" while there was 2 pox, 3 reanimtor, 4 maverick/junk, 3 Burn, 3 UR burn, 3 storm, 2 omnicience, 2 nic fit. Not exactly what you expect when you look at nothing but graphs on TC or whatever.


I think it is important to consider the prevalence of all decks in a meta, not just the "top decks". You might not see some of these decks/players make the top tables often, but if your playing say, thresh, and 25% of the decks in your area are Nic fit, MUD, turbo eldrazi or dredge you dont have ways to beat those decks, you wont see the top tables either.

[alphastryk]

Yeah, a field breakdown like SCG used to do with 'Too Much Information' (example: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/23733_Legacy_Week_Too_MuchInformation.html) would be great for this, but you need decklist info for every player in a tournament to even get started.

[Koby]

You basically need data like this:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27309-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Inc-Sunday-January-12-2014-10-entry&p=781568#post781568
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27086-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Sunday-12-22-2013-20-25-2x-ea-non-blue-dual-fetch&p=776492#post776492
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26824-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Inc-Sunday-November-10-2013-10-entry&p=767587#post767587
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26660-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-GPT-for-DC-Sunday-10-13-2013-20-25-staples-for-prize&p=757959#post757959
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26519-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Inc-Sunday-September-8-2013-10-entry&p=750406#post750406
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26341-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Sunday-08-04-2013-20-25-duals-staples&p=742288#post742288

Which taken together with the final standings (if available) can track all the decks, and their relative performance. If you have Match win totals, it helps even more. Lacking that, you can calculate # of rounds, and assign arbitrary but relative "scores" and find the performance of all the decks in the tournament in hindsight.

It's a lot of busy work; but that's reverse engineering for you.

[PirateKing]

A friend went to a large 100+ tournament with Imperial Painter, got paired up against Dredge, Team America and Burn, I think he said of the 5 rounds he played, 1 was a blue deck. All his REBs were dead for most of his tournament. Sounded good going in though.

[alphastryk]

You basically need data like this:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27309-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Inc-Sunday-January-12-2014-10-entry&p=781568#post781568
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27086-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Sunday-12-22-2013-20-25-2x-ea-non-blue-dual-fetch&p=776492#post776492
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26824-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Inc-Sunday-November-10-2013-10-entry&p=767587#post767587
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26660-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-GPT-for-DC-Sunday-10-13-2013-20-25-staples-for-prize&p=757959#post757959
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26519-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Inc-Sunday-September-8-2013-10-entry&p=750406#post750406
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26341-Los-Angeles-CA-Knight-Ware-Sunday-08-04-2013-20-25-duals-staples&p=742288#post742288

Which taken together with the final standings (if available) can track all the decks, and their relative performance. If you have Match win totals, it helps even more. Lacking that, you can calculate # of rounds, and assign arbitrary but relative "scores" and find the performance of all the decks in the tournament in hindsight.

It's a lot of busy work; but that's reverse engineering for you.

Right - if there was an easy source for this information, maybe we could do the legwork, but TOs for large events would need to post decklists somewhere, and I don't see that happening.

[Megadeus]

Right - if there was an easy source for this information, maybe we could do the legwork, but TOs for large events would need to post decklists somewhere, and I don't see that happening.

It could be possible if people HAD to register their deck list online. That would horribly inconvenient for players, and bad because you couldn't make last minute changes easily unless they made some sort of mobile app or something. It isn't an impossible thing to do, but I doubt it would ever happen.

[JPoJohnson]

A friend went to a large 100+ tournament with Imperial Painter, got paired up against Dredge, Team America and Burn, I think he said of the 5 rounds he played, 1 was a blue deck. All his REBs were dead for most of his tournament. Sounded good going in though.

Did he never land Painter or something...? :p


Last GPT that I went to I was matched against: Stoneblade, Merfolk, TES, Stoneblade, Elves, Goblins
I was running TES

[Megadeus]

Last SCG Event I went to I faced, UR Delver, Hypergenesis, Mono U SnT, Affinity, Grixis Pyromancer, Tin Fins, Goblins, RUG Delver, and my final opponent who drew with me, afterwards said that he was on 5 Color Opposition Tokens. Maybe I just got lucky facing all of these different match ups, but this is why I love large events.

[Manipulato]

Last 5 Round turney in munich I got paired against:
Round 1: Imperial Painter
Round 2: Punishing Jund
Round 3: BGW Junk
Round 4: UWR Delver
Round 5: Mono W Staxx prison deck

So, not only typically Tier 1 decks :wink:
Most of the time if you play constantly on the high tables you will get paired against the typically Tier 1 decks, but if you lose 1 or 2 matches you often meet some Tier 2 or less played decks.

[syfilisx]

Two last local tournaments:
1. Death & Taxes, 2. Rug Delver, 3. Forgemaster MUD, 4. TES 5. Esper Blade 6. Dark Maverick
and
1. Monored Sneak Attack, 2. Burn, 3. Merfolk budget build. 4. UWr Miracles
and one other I 4-0:ed
1. Burn, 2. Dark Maverick, 3. Jund, 4. Bug Delver. I was on Dreadstill, so I guess I was the tier 2 deck that can ruin your tournament here.

First being GPT that drawed more and pretty serious people and second being a LGS event, both in central Finland.

[joemauer]

Most of the time if you play constantly on the high tables you will get paired against the typically Tier 1 decks, but if you lose 1 or 2 matches you often meet some Tier 2 or less played decks.
This is pretty spot on. You will see less blue decks(and other tier decks) the more you lose in a tourney.

Also, the first round or two can be challenging. You have to sometimes pray that you don't face some random glass cannon. No matter how good Death and Taxes is, facing Belcher in the first round can screw up your whole tournament.

[uncletiggy]

I believe burn belcher and affinty are the three biggest offenders in the classification you are going for. If you can dodge them in the first two rounds chances are you wont see them later on at an open. On the flip side they are aggressive and can catch people of gaurd and unprepared.