All B/R update speculation.

[Julian23]

Decks that lost in the Top16, that I remember:

Miracles (Johannes Gutbrod, lost to Burn with Firecraft)
BUG Delver (Claudio Morelli, lost to me on Elves)
ANT (Eduardo Shimizu, lost to Thomas Mechin on Miracles)
Food Chain
BUG/4c Delver

I don't remember the rest.

/edit:
Infect ( Simon Drochon, lost to Anders on Miracles)

[Barook]

Decks that lost in the Top16, that I remember:

Miracles (Johannes Gutbrod, lost to Burn with Firecraft)
BUG Delver (Claudio Morelli, lost to me on Elves)
ANT (Eduardo Shimizu, lost to Thomas Mechin on Miracles)
Food Chain
BUG/4c Delver

I don't remember the rest.

/edit:
Infect ( Simon Drochon, lost to Anders on Miracles)

How did Gutbrod not get into Top 8 when he's #3 according to points? Thiesen Anders is also #12, despite being in the Top 8? That list is kinda nonsensical.

[Julian23]

You posted the Top16 after Swiss. We played Top16 playoffs, not Top8 playoffs.

[Fjaulnir]

Also FYI, 17th place was Andrea Mengucci as the highest ranked 21pt player. So it was a clean cutoff at 7-1-1 / noone fell out of top 16 based on tie breakers. That's always good in my book!

[Tittliewinks22]

Eternal Weekend results: 448 players

Metagame breakdown:



8,5% Miracle decks total

The finals? Predict Miracle mirror. Lovely.

What's the difference between BUG Midrange and BUG control? Is it just a way to under-represent a deck with a few card differences to make it take up a smaller pie share?

[Admiral_Arzar]

What's the difference between BUG Midrange and BUG control? Is it just a way to under-represent a deck with a few card differences to make it take up a smaller pie share?

My assumption is that one refers to Shardless BUG while the other refers to the new TNN and Leovold builds that are more like Bant in structure. This could be incorrect though.

EDIT: I am assuming for the sake of argument that not enough people play BUG Landstill for it to be a factor.

[Megadeus]

I'm not surprised by BUG being 16+% of the meta. I am however surprised at miracles being under 10%

[Sloshthedark]

What's the difference between BUG Midrange and BUG control? Is it just a way to under-represent a deck with a few card differences to make it take up a smaller pie share?

you have to assume Grixis Control, Bug Control and Bug Midrage to be a mess, it's hard to draw lines if you want to put every deck somewhere, there is no 4c category and I don't believe there was only 1 Grixis Delver either

[Lemnear]

I'm not surprised by BUG being 16+% of the meta. I am however surprised at miracles being under 10%

Maybe its due to the Eldrazi matchup, Leovold & TNN being en vogue or the sheer pricetag why so many questionable deckchoices were made. I can also imagine that the deck tilts too many players over a long Tournament day to actually use it in such live tournaments. Pure speculation here on this end.

It amuses me that the deck once again massively outperforms its Competition despite the VERY hostile metagame/sideboarding across the room (judging from the lists seen and metagame data).

A personal question for the folks there and maybe Julian in particular: What has happened that the metagame has seemingly become soft to Elves? Is it tied to running DRS/AD/Leo itself, but woven into the own Symbiote/Visionary/Glimpse/GSZ engine to grind out other BGx decks, or is it part of a greater metagame shift?

[Gheizen64]

Was Food Chain the biggest conversion deck? 2% into 2 spots in T16 ? Or was miracle still higher.

[Julian23]

Just remembered, there was also Post Eldrazi in the Top16. He lost to Jan Lenger on Elves.

@Lemnear: from the top of my head there's 3 reasons why Elves does quite well:

#1: Delver is playing an all-time-low of mass removal.
#2: Death & Taxes is still much more popular than it really should be in the current meta. I think the deck is good, but it's the biggest bubble waiting to burst right now.
#3: Many players are very unfamiliar about their deck's matchup with Elves. I don't wanna go into detail for now, but several of my opponents committed huge strategic (let alone tactical) blunders.

[Whitefaces]

Yeah, agree with what Julian said, Elves really preys on fair decks and there was so much BUG at the event. I was the Bant player and lost to Elves in the quarters (though G3 I mulled to 5 and got BS locked on one land so it wasn't much of a game).

I think people aren't giving the Miracles pilots enough credit either. Yes the deck is great, but people are really fighting it now, there wasn't that many at the top tables (I think I only saw one other player that didn't make T16 who Anders beat in the win and in). Thomas, Anders and Johannes are fantastic players (Anuraag and Bob at EE6 too), it's not just the deck being OP. Fwiw I didn't play Miracles once in the 11 rounds too.

[Megadeus]

Just remembered, there was also Post Eldrazi in the Top16. He lost to Jan Lenger on Elves.

@Lemnear: from the top of my head there's 3 reasons why Elves does quite well:

#1: Delver is playing an all-time-low of mass removal.
#2: Death & Taxes is still much more popular than it really should be in the current meta. I think the deck is good, but it's the biggest bubble waiting to burst right now.
#3: Many players are very unfamiliar about their deck's matchup with Elves. I don't wanna go into detail for now, but several of my opponents committed huge strategic (let alone tactical) blunders.

I feel like 2 can be attributed to the fact that it's a relatively cheap tier deck. I don't think it's a bubble that will burst soon for that reason. Even if it's slightly worse in the meta, it's still a good deck and can be tuned to some events for certain metas unlike when the budget go to was dredge and you didn't have many real ways to tune the deck for different metas.

3 I can see that. I know I used to have 2-3 locals on elves basically every week and got incredibly familiar with the match-up, but it's not represented at all for various reasons (fuck you cast Perish). It's also a tricky deck to understand what to attempt to interact with especially if you haven't played against it much as well as the intricate timing that goes into killing certain things in response to certain cards cast or certain triggers on the stack to attempt to pigeon hole an elves player to reduce the amount of mana they can create or number of cards they can draw. It's just not something people can easily pick up on without playing the deck often.

[maharis]

Last three major events have all been won by Miracles. Two had Miracles mirrors in the finals. There were 8 Miracles decks out of 69 day 2 decks in Worcester and 4 made top 16.

Hurl this deck into the sun already.

[CptHaddock]

Last three major events have all been won by Miracles. Two had Miracles mirrors in the finals. There were 8 Miracles decks out of 69 day 2 decks in Worcester and 4 made top 16.

Hurl this deck into the sun already.

But didn't you hear about this "new" control deck which is basically 4x ponder/brainstorm, 4x drs and 4x decay? Format is actually fantastic.

[btm10]

Last three major events have all been won by Miracles. Two had Miracles mirrors in the finals. There were 8 Miracles decks out of 69 day 2 decks in Worcester and 4 made top 16.

Hurl this deck into the sun already.

This is fantastic news. The only thing that would've been better is another Miracles mirror in the finals. Miracles is putting every other deck to shame in terms of top 8 conversion as a function of meta share, and at this point is even doing the best at converting top 8s into trophies. I doubt we'll see anything banned (because yet again we have a deck that might maybe be 55% against Miracles with flawless play while being noticeably worse against the nonsense fraction of the field), but playing anything other than Miracles is rapidly becoming indefensible from a competitive standpoint.

[Megadeus]

Last three major events have all been won by Miracles. Two had Miracles mirrors in the finals. There were 8 Miracles decks out of 69 day 2 decks in Worcester and 4 made top 16.

Hurl this deck into the sun already.

All I can do is laugh at this point

[Barook]

Eli Kassis immediately calling for a ban of Top after winning the latest SCG Legacy Tour with Miracles.

Our guy!

As for bitching about Miracles, at least do a bit more productive and take your arguments to Twitter and bitch at @mtgaaron @Wizards_Help - if enough people complain, then maybe something finally changes.

[CutthroatCasual]

Eli Kassis immediately calling for a ban of Top after winning the latest SCG Legacy Tour with Miracles.

Our guy!

As for bitching about Miracles, at least do a bit more productive and take your arguments to Twitter and bitch at @mtgaaron @Wizards_Help - if enough people complain, then maybe something finally changes.

In the same breath he said that Daze should be banned along with Ancient Tomb (if Top was banned). Take that for what it's worth.

[Gheizen64]

I swear if something get banned and it's not a blue card this game is a joke.

Well it already is, but even more.