Taste Like Crab: Analyzing the Nationals Results

While I may have failed to grind into nationals, being in Minneapolis for the weekend gave me a chance to see how Standard was shaping up at the highest level.

Going into the event, I was planning on playing Jund in some grinders, since the deck was performing well against all the more popular decks and had the largest ability to punish poor play from my opponents. However, after a couple losses to variance and to James Seelhoff with Valakut, I was forced to sit on the sidelines for the main event.

The event itself was quite a shock to the format. Not only did the top 8 contain 7 different decks, but the Dredgevine deck that put 2 copies into top 8 wasn’t even on most people’s radar before last weekend. The top 8 decks can be found here

Listed in order of final standing:
1. Josh Utter-Leyton: Mythic Conscription
2. Anthony Eason: Mono-Red
3. Conrad Kolos: Mono-Green Ramp
4. David Ochoa: Dredgevine
5. Eric Froehlich: Naya Destructive Force
6. Tim Sussino: Pyromancer’s Ascension
7. Gerard Fabiano: UW Control
8. Brad Nelson: Dredgevine

What do these decks have in common that made them successful? The quality that strikes me the most about these decks is that, with the exception of the lone UW deck, none of these decks have more than a minimal ability to interact with their opponent. For example, the Dredgevine deck has 24 lands and 36 creatures. Of those, only the lone Sedraxis Alchemist does anything to affect your opponent. Every other card in the deck is purely focused toward its goal. The winning Conscription deck had 4 Mana Leak and 4 Jace, but in this deck those are used more to protect what the deck is trying to do instead of to disrupt your opponent’s plan. Other than that, we’re looking at 3 All is Dust + Ulamog from the Mono-Green deck, Mana Leak from the Pyromancer deck, burn spells from the mono-red deck (and every bolt that targets a creature doesn’t go to the dome), and Path/O-Ring/D Force from the Destructive Force deck.

None of the top 8 decks are insanely powerful or do anything that can be considered “broken” when compared to the truly broken linear decks like affinity, so why did these strategies rise to the top? For starters, the diversity of the format itself is a large part of it. Compared to last year, when Reflecting Pool pretty much dominated the event, with 31 copies in the top 8, this format is much more open. There are decks trying to dump cards into their own graveyard, decks trying to make 1 gigantic creature and attack you with it, decks trying to take infinite turns, and decks trying to just point as many burn spells at your face as possible. That doesn’t even include the entire top 8.

Such diverse strategies are pretty tough to fight against. You either have to be playing very generic answers like Mana Leak or Maelstrom Pulse, which are too weak or slow to be truly effective, or you have to hope to be faster than your opponent, which is a pretty awkward situation to be in. That Condemn or Terminate is going to look pretty terrible sitting in your hand when your opponent plays a Pyromancer’s Ascension on 2, but that Oblivion Ring is far too slow to be able to beat a Sovereigns of Lost Alara.

The question now becomes “What strategy should we employ in such a format?” You can try to play your own non-interactive deck and try to be as fast as possible, but that certainly shouldn’t be the only option. As for topping the linear strategies, I (as much as I hate to admit it) actually believe Kurtis had the right idea with his Frosty the Snowman deck. Although his actual list was far from perfect, his deck was able to adapt to whatever his opponent was doing and simply go bigger than they did. While it’s true that the deck is also not highly interactive, instead of trying to go for the fastest possible kill, it presents threats that are pretty much impossible to stop while still being able to quickly finish off your opponent once you start playing bombs. The titans are particularly powerful in the fact that they are almost impossible to answer effectively assuming you build your deck to utilize them correctly, and 5 frost titans are pretty good at ending the game.

Alternatively, if you do want to play a control deck, I would recommend not trying to answer every spell that your opponents could play. It simply isn’t possible to pack enough creature removal, counterspells, and graveyard hate into a deck and be able to draw what you need. What I would recommend is trying to attack your opponent’s ability to play spells. The UW control deck that top 8’d had 4 copies of spreading seas alongside 3 Tectonic Edge and a whopping 4 Meddling Mage in the sideboard. Likewise, Destructive Force is pretty good at making it impossible for your opponents to do anything.

Though the format is almost at an end, there are still several weeks of FNM level events before the rotation, so there’s plenty of time to brew up something interesting to battle with. I’m not yet sure what I’ll be sleeving up for the next event, but I’d guess it’ll have some number of titans in it.
But don’t be surprised if Crab People start to take over your local events.