126 players came out to battle in the VFW near Waterbury, CT for The Mana Drain Open 17. First and foremost I want to thank Ray for putting on the event. This was my first TMD Open, and despite losing the last 3 rounds I had a blast the entire day. In addition, Ray sent me the decklists and round results in a convenient format so I could get this post up in a timely manner. Also a huge congratulations to Will Magrann for taking down the tournament and keeping the title.
Ray's report can be found here: http://themanadrain.com/topic/544/tmd-open-17-official-tournament-organzier-report
Top 16 Decklists:
- Will Magrann - Ravager TKS Shops
- Craig Masley - Grixis Therapy
- Bernie Parisi - Jeskai Mentor
- David Nunez - Doomsday
- Nick DiJohn - Eldrazi Shops
- David Ata - Ravager TKS Shops
- Micah Greenbaum - Jeskai Mentor
- John Lafreniere - Eldrazi Tribal
- Andrew Markiton - Ravager TKS Shops
- Keith Seals - Ravager TKS Shops
- JP Kohler - Helm Oath
- Rich Shay - Grixis Therapy
- Kenan Diab - Thalia Tribal
- Andy Probasco - Thalia Tribal
- Chris Kelsey - Ravager TKS Shops
- Will Dayton - Ravager TKS Shops
Metagame Breakdown:
Note that Other includes Goblins, Elves, 5C Humans, 5C Hatebears, Cerebral Assassin, and Dark Times. Big Blue includes various Vault/Key decks and Painter. Hard Control includes Standstill and assorted other Mana Drain decks. Combo includes DPS, Belcher, and 2 Card Monte.
The most prominent narrative, for me, is the gush vs. thorn narrative. It should be unsurprising that when a much higher percentage of gush decks are Grixis Therapy (located under the pyromancer subarchetype), that thorns improve against the gush archetype. From my personal experience, the grixis therapy matchup against thorn is slightly unfavored, and also very difficult to play correctly.
Another surprising point is how poorly dredge did last Saturday. I don't have an immediate explanation for this, since looking at the lists it does not appear like dredge hate was more common.
If anyone is interested, here is a link to the googledoc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UVf8_jxWEtSNsD68O7999A_3SvQdpV32byFSykXy5po/edit?usp=sharing
Please let me know if I have made any errors typing up or classifying decklists.
Edit: Made several corrections to the decklists. Hopefully those are 100% accurate now.