I’ll start with a quick introduction for those of you who don’t know me: I used to be a professional Magic player, traveling all over the world to play in tournaments and I always made sure I had fanatically and thoroughly play-tested the format of each tournament. While I am still qualified for the World Championships in Memphis, the days of heavy preparation are over, mainly because of school obligations (gotta set my priorities) and because many Dutch friends had quit pro Magic.

So how will I choose my deck for the Standard portion of the World Championships if I don’t have much time to play-test existing decks or to build new decks? Well, one thing I learned from writing the weekly 'Online Tech' column for magicthegathering.com (during 2006 and 2007) is that you can extract a lot of useful data from Top 8 decklists of Magic tournaments. And a short while back I happened to randomly stumble upon a great source of data.

It happened when I was looking for event schedule information of the World Championships on magicthegathering.com. That website had been redesigned lately and while the Planeswalker intro movie is cool, the redesigned website initially felt like a maze where it’ll take you at least 5 minutes to find the information that you’re looking for. The good part about that was that while browsing the website (frantically opening new screens in the hope that it may contain the information that you’re seeking) you may randomly find something unrelated yet useful - and that’s what happened when I saw the 'Decks of the Week' feature of the Thursday 'Daily activity' on 'Daily MTG', here and here, and here. It contains Top 8 decklists of the Standard State Championships and Magic Online Standard Premier Events.

I’m quite experienced in analyzing such data and I can do it rather quickly, so I figured I might as well analyze all of it, to get a good feel of the Standard metagame and to learn which decks came out on top in those Standard tournaments. I use the following system to rank the decks: a 1^st or 2^nd place deck gets 5 points; a 3^rd or 4^th place deck gets 4 points; and a 5^th-8^th place deck gets 3 points. This way, decks that make Top 8s very often get a lot of points and decks that keep on winning in the Top8 also get more points. Eventually I add them all up and use them to calculate a popularity percentage. I subsequently calculate a weighed average that takes into account contemporariness and amount of decklists available for each data source.

I had done all of that mainly for myself, in order to aid my deck decision for the World Championships. But I figured that all of this data analysis might prove to be useful for other players as well, so that’s why I am posting it here on Manamaze.com as well. Here are the results of all decks with weighed average percentage at least 1%, sorted by weighed average percentage:

So that’s loads of Faeries, a lot of white-based aggro decks (Kithkin, Red-White Aggro, and White-Black Tokens Aggro add up to 21%), a decent amount of 5-Color Cruel Control decks, and a decent amount of red-based aggro decks (Red Deck Wins and Blightning Deck Wins add up to 14%). Furthermore, there are lots of other viable decks, which indicates that the format is still wide open and friendly to original rogue strategies.

One deck clearly stands out as the deck to beat: Faeries, with a whopping popularity percentage of 30%. Faeries makes amazing use out of Bitterblossom, all its cards are highly synergetic, and it has proven itself in previous formats already. I personally enjoy playing a deck like Faeries which does everything at instant speed, since that keeps the opponent guessing. It is nigh impossible to play around Cryptic Command, Mistbound Clique, Agony Warp, and Scion of Oona all at the same time, so there’s a good chance your opponent may play around a card you don’t have in hand and walk right into a card you are holding. I like that feeling of being in control. As I’m perfectly comfortable playing Faeries, I quickly made the decision that I will play the deck that (according to the above results) is currently the 'best' deck in Standard in the World Championships.

But what about the individual card choices? How do I choose my exact 75 cards? Well, we still have this ridiculous amount of data. So far we had only considered deck archetypes, but we can also zoom in on all the Faeries decklists that are available and construct an 'average' decklist. If we construct a deck that is as close as possible to the 'average' Faerie deck, then we won’t have anything particularly innovative or special, but it will definitely not be a bad version and hopefully at least close to optimal. I’m just going to have to trust the wisdom of the crowds (that is, 82 Top 8 decklists) when I haven’t been able to test sufficiently myself.

This is the result of me data-mining all decklists via Excel and calculating averages:

As such, the deck that I’ve sleeved up and that I’m taking to Memphis is currently:

5 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Secluded Glen
4 Sunken Ruins
2 Swamp
4 Underground River
(25 lands)
4 Mistbound Clique
4 Scion of Oona
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Sower of Temptation
4 Bitterblossom
(19 creatures)
4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command
2 Remove Soul
2 Thoughtseize
1 Terror
1 Broken Ambitions
1 Ponder
1 Jace Beleren
(16 spells)
Sideboard:
3 Infest
2 Thoughtseize
2 Flashfreeze
1 Negate
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Peppersmoke
1 Jace Beleren
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 open, undecided slots

As you can see, it is as close as possible to the averages that I calculated, including random hits such as 1 Ponder. But I love such one-ofs, since they’ll give me more options during the games and they’ll confuse my opponents. I just added a fourth Scion of Oona and cut a Vendilion Clique based on personal preferences. Now let’s hope this works out. I do think that everyone at the World Championships will be gunning for Faeries and everyone will have built or chosen their decks with a Faerie-heavy metagame in mind. Therefore, I am just hoping for a decent 4-2 or 3-3 record; I don’t have anything special deck-wise to expect any better.

If you are more of a person that likes to root for underdogs and you are looking for an unexpected deck that will surprise people with its performance, then my guess is that you should keep an eye out for White-Black Tokens. Almost no one played it in the States Championships, yet it has been picking up steam online. That’s the sign of a new, innovative and competitive deck that can hold its ground and that is still under the radar. Also, from what I’ve heard, it should beat Faeries more than 50% of the time, which is important. Here is a representative White-Black Tokens decklist, courtesy of Magic Online player kazuhiko:

4 Caves of Koilos
3 Fetid Heath
2 Mutavault
4 Plains
3 Reflecting Pool
4 Swamp
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow
2 Windbrisk Heights
(24 lands)
1 Cloudgoat Ranger
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Murderous Redcap
4 Tidehollow Sculler
(11 creatures)
2 Ajani Goldmane
4 Bitterblossom
3 Glorious Anthem
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Profane Command
4 Spectral Procession
4 Thoughtseize
3 Unmake
(25 other spells)
Sideboard:
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Mind Shatter
3 Story Circle
3 Wispmare
3 Wrath of God

This is not your ordinary Kithkin deck with a black splash. This deck focuses on token generators (Spectral Procesion, Bitterblossom, and Cloudgoat Ranger) along with cards that boost all your creatures (Glorious Anthem and Ajani Goldmane). That synergy is clearly very effective and can overwhelm your opponent quickly with lots of 2/2 flying tokens. The deck is rounded out with solid good-stuff cards, such as Kitchen Finks, Tidehollow Sculler, Oblivion Ring and Thoughtseize. Those cards saw quite some play even in Extended, so they must be some of the best available cards in Standard. There are enough dual lands to make for a stable mana base, although I’m wondering why the above deck doesn’t play a 4^th Fetid Heath.

Hope you enjoyed my metagame and deck analysis. I initially did all of this for myself in order to make a better informed deck choice for the World Championships. Since I afterwards figured that it may be to others as well, I copied it to Manamaze.com. I’ll be back after Worlds with some thoughts on the Extended PTQ format.

-Frank Karsten