MTGO April 2017 Power 9 Challenge

diophan

We had 55 people register for the April Power 9 Challenge. Congratulations to Jazza for winning with Foundry Inspector Shops! There were some innovative lists in the Top 8, including desolutionist's and KeeperX's.

Jazza - Inspector Shops
desolutionist - DPS with Mentor
UnrestrictBrainstorm - Jeskai Mentor
Hitogoroshi80 - White Eldrazi
Smmenen - Jeskai Mentor
Trakklo - Punishing Oath
Lexor19 - Ravager Shops
KeeperX - Monored Hate

Top 16 Decklists: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-premier-2017-04-30

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Looking at the winrates, we see that well-tuned, successful decks from before the restrictions were able to do well (mentor, white eldrazi, and ravager shops). Whether these decks will remain on top of the post-restriction meta or if we will see more tuned versions of other decks emerge will be something to watch for moving forwards.

Link to the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGnDSL8L9uvnKGqJWM8qRda_bGZ2itdqoZO7J44l89Q/edit?usp=sharing

Note that subarchetype data is inaccurate/depreciated. If anyone looks themselves up on the googledoc and notices inaccurate tags please let me know. I spent quite a bit longer watching replays because it was harder to tell the FOW decks apart from each other. Thanks to Matt for inputting the results and helping to decide on archetypes.

p3temangus

As always, this analysis is above and beyond the call!

Smmenen

Nice Job Ryan! It would be great to do a comparison of this metagame with the last few months.

Unfortunately, I lost the die roll in the top 8, despite being the higher seed (2nd seed). Really wish MTGO would match paper magic's Top 8 play/draw rule.

Mentor felt as strong as ever. Not having to compete on the Gush axis I think potentially makes Mentor stronger, since now you don't have to have all these bad cards in the Shop matchup.

I ended up going 3-1 in the daily tonight with a completely different Mentor deck (PO Mentor) as well (losing round 4 only on a strategic error).

brianpk80

@Smmenen

I confess that I had a Tundra Wasted in a Landstill match and my first thought was, "They need to unrestrict Gush, immediately."

jstacko

Any idea when deck lists will be up?

arj

Are the decklists anywhere?

Chase_Dagger

@diophan Thanks so much for doing this once again!

@arj

Here's the Red List, Congrats KeeperX!
https://twitter.com/johngofett/status/858501531162730496

Also I now feel obligated to yell DON'T RESTRICT MENTOR whenever its performance is mentioned. Seems this sort of behaviour is what gets results, I'm sorry it's come to this.

enderfall

Results aren't posted yet (as of the time of this post), but I suggest everyone simply bookmark this page: http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/deck-lists-magic-online-products-game-info

It contains all of the decklists for all MTGO tournaments (that they feel the need to release data for).

nucleosynth

Decks for the top16 are now posted:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-premier-2017-04-30

@enderfall

The results are up.

I lost to Trakkalo in the Swiss but got my revenge in top 8. The Punishing Oath deck is actually really good. I also played against (and defeated) KeeperX in the Swiss. When I saw his name, I expected Keeper and I just got blown out in game 1 by way of Magus of the Moon and Null Rod.

Monastery Mentor had gone a long way for me yesterday; when Storming wasn't an option it was Mentor, but if they wanted to deal with Mentor, I went with Tendrils. It was a good combo.

I would have played Paradoxical Mentor, but I expected Stony Silence to have a presence. I played Rituals to try and bypass that weakness.

revengeanceful

@desolutionist That list looks sweet. Any changes you would make (main or sideboard) based on the event?

ravager101

lost my win and in with pitch dredge. deck is still great, restricting probe was actually good for the deck since it forced me to play more mindbreak traps (which are much better in this slower metagame)

arj

@desolutionist how is it playing rituals without mental misstep?

nedleeds

@arj he's got 6 Duress effects might just try to plow through them at sorcery speed, in Storm sometimes you want to start the Misstep fight on your turn anyway to bait additional storm. Vs. Thorns you have a reasonable chance to disrupt a weak hand on the play. Nice to see a deck that's outside the Thorns vs. Missteps duality.

"when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" - Crovax

arj

@nedleeds Agree that it is an interesting list. I've played a lot of storm but stopped playing ritual when misstep was introduced. The tempo difference is just huge. That it also takes duress is just icing in the cake for them.

Macdeath

@arj Misstep can definitely break some storm hands apart but it isn't like it just wins you the game or anything even remotely similar.
1- None of the ritual bombs you really want to stop cost 1 mana (unless you want to count ancestral).
2- Dark ritual decks have such a density of 1 mana spells that they can easily bait your missteps out and resolve their key 1 mana setup spell.
3- The deck is broken enough that it can easily go through multiple missteps with other counters and still win.
4- Misstep will only buy you time and you will need more disruption to back it up. (IE missteping a duress won't do you much good if you don't have more counters to stop the threats).
5- Long ago wizards printed a card called Defense grid.

Ritual decks still have a favorable blue matchup, the only real problem for them are decks like white eldrazi and to a lesser extent workshops. Back in 2011, Misstep didn't make the deck go away (nor mindbreak trap, nor flusterstorm for that matter), lodestone golem and friends did.

@arj

I'll have more to say on the list later tonight but Misstep is just one of those things you have to play around... it's really not that bad to have a Ritual mistepped if you have a backup plan; but usually they just trade with Duress and before Ritual was always a -1 for the storm deck and now it breaks even; that's not that bad. And then you figure on playing around Flusterstorm by going for Mentor or Necro... and if they Misstep your Ritual while Mentor is in play, then it doesn't matter. And I opted to play Kambals rather than Defense Grids because they simultaneously deal with Misstep and improve the combo matchup.i also expected mana based to be bigger so defense grid would
Be less effective

arj

I've been playing paradox storm recently and got hit by misstep quite bad, but maybe its a bit easier to bait misstep with this deck.

One thought is maybe going 3 mentor and 2 tendrils. I love playing mini tendrils, and with kambul in the sideboard this plan could be much easier to achive.

@revengeanceful said in MTGO April 2017 Power 9 Challenge:

@desolutionist That list looks sweet. Any changes you would make (main or sideboard) based on the event?

You'll notice the changes I made to the sideboard immediately following the event:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/632905#online

Jace, Vryn will be in the maindeck over Desire and Twister.

Islandswamp

I tried that punishing oath deck for a short time and it was miserable for me, but I've seen it work well for people. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that I wasn't playing against the decks where punishing fire was good, I don't know. Every time I had Loam in hand I seemed to be facing decks that it was too slow against, and the vast majority of my wins came from just landing an early Oath (which made me question why I wasn't just running one of my older lists).

The top eight seemed really interesting though. I liked some of what was going on.