Colin Chilbert
5/8/2012 11:03:00 AM
Greetings!
So our first large Legacy event with Avacyn Restored is in the books with SCG: Providence this past weekend. Did Avacyn Restored live up to the hype? Did the dreaded Brainstorm/miracle interaction overwhelm the format like so many people believe? Did
Cavern of Souls grab a blue mage by the hips and proceed to repeatedly knee them in the junk? All will be revealed! There are a number of things that came to mind looking over the results of the tournament. It's drawn some interesting conclusions for Avacyn Restored and its impact on the format.
First, let's take a look at the Top 8 decks:
1. Aggro Loam
2.
Birthing Pod Rock
3. Elves
4. Goblins
5. UR Delver
6. Canadian Threshold (RUG Delver)
7. Esper Stone-blade
8. Death and Taxes (Monowhite Aether Vial)
A few things immediately pop up when looking at this Top 8. Aggro Loam won? Goblins in the Top 4?
Birthing Pod?! This tournament clearly demonstrated the openness of the format, with eight different decks in the elimination rounds yet nary a Maverick deck in sight. That is awesome to me, and speaks volumes about the viability of so many decks. Granted there were some major players that made it far with Canadian Threshold and Esper Stone-blade representing the tier one, but beyond that it looks like an archetype representation of the Island of Misfit Toys. Many of these decks have been written off at one point or another or cast off into obscurity, or we haven't seen anything like it before at all like
Birthing Pod. I think it's great that they're getting some time in the spotlight and taking some of those coveted Top 8 spots away from decks that are used to getting them.
Outside the wide assortment of decks in the Top 8, we also have the Top 32 decklists for reference. This helps shed light on the results a bit better and provides us greater perspective of the tournament.
- No blue decks in the Top 4. I'm rather pleased to see this, as it proves that the format isn't solely dominated by blue decks. There were really only two dedicated blue decks in the Top 8, as UR Delver is really just a glorified burn deck. Looking over the rest of the Top 8, the matchups for blue decks look rather difficult as well. I'm not surprised that the results came as they did because of this, although I don't think we can expect to see these types of results consistently. Just because blue was limited in the Top 8 doesn't mean it didn't perform well; there were plenty of blue decks scattered throughout the rest of the Top 32.
- Maverick didn't place in the Top 8 and its best placing was 13th, but still had five showings in the Top 32. Not incredible by any means, but the deck showed up. However given its recent string of solid performances and its positive blue matchups, it's surprising that it didn't place better. I suppose this is because it got caught off guard by the top decks that did place well, but then again didn't everyone else? I wouldn't be worried about Maverick's performance here, and the deck will be back on top soon enough.
- Sneak and Show only had a single showing in the Top 32 with a 20th place finish. I highlighted Sneak Attack to be the breakout deck as a result of Avacyn Restored and the addition of Griselbrand. Apparently everyone else got that memo as well, as there were a number of decks running Karakas in the Top 32, which poses a problem for Sneak Attack. I don't know how common the deck was at the tournament, but it isn't a coincidence the deck didn't perform well given what was sitting in the Top 32. It's tough to win when there's such an elegant solution to your win condition, so I imagine the Sneak Attack players will have to adapt further to combat this to consistently perform well. However I don't believe this tournament is an indicator of the future success of the deck, and I still believe it will gain the most from Avacyn Restored out of any deck.
- Goblins placing in the Top 4. This was the other deck that I felt would gain the most from Avacyn Restored in the form of Cavern of Souls. Seems like it did because it happened to place through a field of blue decks and other difficulties. Here's the list:
I personally know Nick from previously living in upstate New York for the bulk of my life, and he's played Goblins for a long time and has mastered the deck. Obviously knowing the deck well has its merits and likely played a factor in his performance, but I believe the deck was well-positioned to make a statement regardless.
Cavern of Souls is such an upgrade for that deck that it was inevitable it'd do well, and I'm glad he was able to see success with it right off the bat.
I'm not a huge fan of all the choices in his decklist (such as only two Cavern of Souls), but for the most part the deck accomplishes what it needs to. There's a plethora of removal for the creature decks, and Caverns is still present to rip through blue. Nick also ran the black splash that I mentioned last week might be necessary to get the deck over the hump, and it gave him
Warren Weirding,
Perish,
Cabal Therapy, and the ability to cast
Leyline of the Void. They're all pretty relevant for the deck's tougher matchups, and I imagine black will likely be the splash of choice in Goblins given the strength it provides. Another interesting interaction is
Chalice of the Void and
Cavern of Souls, which allow the deck to safely use Chalice without the fear of countering their cards.
So take those results in and digest them. For the most part, odds are this tournament was a bit of an anomaly in the respect that blue and Maverick under-performed. There's a high probability the next one will see better results from at least one of them, but it is nice that there was a change of pace for once.
But now that we've seen what the top tables shook out to look like, what exactly did Avacyn Restored do here? Going through the Top 32 decks, here's a breakdown of what showed up:
5
Cavern of Souls total (Seen in Goblins and Welder Mud)
8
Thunderous Wrath total (Seen in three UR Delver lists)
4
Temporal Mastery total (Seen in two Canadian Threshold lists)
4
Griselbrand total (Seen in Sneak Attack)
These numbers aren't groundbreaking, but aren't bad either as eight decks ran something from the set, which is pretty good given how long it took Dark Ascension to sink in with the format. So let's use this breakdown and examine it further. I'm going to omit
Griselbrand here because I've already covered this to death, but the rest offer some fresh insight. I had a few predictions regarding some of these cards between last week's article and my article covering the spoiler, so it'll be interesting to see what was right and what was wrong.
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Cavern of Souls: Goblins has already been established as a home for
Cavern of Souls, that much has always been obvious. But I admittedly missed the potential it had in a deck like Welder Mud. Check out this innovative decklist that got Top 16:
Mud decks have always been fringe players hanging on inconsistent success; sometimes they dominate tournaments, sometimes they flop like fish out of water. I think a large factor into this was because the nature of the deck. They often rely on a single threat to resolve due to the conditional mana of
Grim Monolith and
City of Traitors and fragility of the rest of the manabase, and if the threat got countered the deck could find itself in trouble.
Cavern of Souls is a terrific solution to help it against issues like this. Being able to safely resolve
Metalworker or
Goblin Welder puts enormous pressure on the opponent to find removal quickly or else be buried under the advantage they provide. People could point to the fact that Cavern will only be beneficial for a single creature in this deck due to the array of creature types, but since this deck often wins off the back of a single creature, using Cavern to name a single creature and resolve it can easily be the difference between winning and losing.
Although I believe
Cavern of Souls will prove to be great for tribal decks and have other neat applications in decks such as Welder Mud, I will mention that I drew a large flop in my prediction of it in Maverick. I believed Maverick decks would adopt it to further punish blue players. Yet not a single one ran it, leading me to assume it was no more than a cute trick against an already favorable matchup. It's possible it could see play later on, but perhaps it simply isn't necessary for them.
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Thunderous Wrath: I was actually surprised by the number of
Thunderous Wrath sitting at the upper tables. I didn't think the card was bad, but also didn't believe it would be consistent enough to see play. Yet there it was in three UR Delver decks including Dave Shiels' Top 8 deck. Although for what it's worth, Dave was quoted as saying, “The one
Thunderous Wrath I played was the only one. It could not have been worse.” This isn't exactly a cryptic message, and leads me to believe the card simply turned opening hands into mulligans and without
Brainstorm is far too inconsistent. For the others running
Thunderous Wrath they might've liked it, but I don't think
Brainstorm alone can solve the issues it brings to that deck. It'll likely continue to see play, but I have a feeling we should side with Dave (and technically me too!) and probably eschew it from our decks.
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Temporal Mastery: For all the hype, all the craze, all the outrage, we get four total slots, seen in two Canadian Threshold lists placed 16th and 29th respectively. This doesn't quite scream “broken” like the masses claimed it would. Although those performances are certainly respectable, they don't accurately reflect the craze
Temporal Mastery garnered, nor do they really seem to be a huge upgrade given the number of other Canadian Threshold lists that placed similarly. For what you potentially gain by living the dream with repeated turns of Delvers beating, you lose something else that was relevant to the deck's plan. I don't think this loss was worth running
Temporal Mastery here, even as a two-of, to potentially gain an advantage provided the situation is right. Between the setup required both on Top of the deck and in your board state, it isn't as good as other slots for this deck. As I mentioned last week, a card like
Temporal Mastery needs to be heavily catered around to really get an advantage with it, and this likely isn't the deck to get that out of it.
That said I believe my prediction was accurate that it's overrated, at least for now. Perhaps some brew that resembles the Stone-blade list I provided last week can pop up and sneak into a Top 8. Until then though, I'm in the camp that this card is another cute trick that probably won't make the final cut.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the opening weekend of Avacyn Restored. It made a splash in a few decks, both expected and unexpected, and I look forward to seeing its evolution in the format. However, given the tremendous hype surrounding the miracles and outcry over their interaction with
Brainstorm, this weekend can almost viewed as a disappointment as it was expected they would do really well. These cards aren't really at fault as it's rather difficult to hit those lofty expectations, but the hype was so overwhelming that I believe it created the mentality that they would be insane. After seeing the results from Providence, I'm glad we can all be brought back down to earth.
Despite that, I think my feelings regarding the miracles might be a bit premature. This was only the first weekend after all. Dark Ascension took roughly six weeks to make a dent in the format, so if we're discussing Avacyn Restored at this length with only a single weekend under its belt, it's possible things could open wide for the set over the next month or so. I'm really excited to see what new things can pop up as brewing potential is very high, and still have hope that the miracles can
Dispel my negative connotations.
I'm about to head on a flight to Barcelona to dip my toes into the waters of the Pro Tour, so you can expect to hear something from me soon from the Legacy perspective of professional Magic! Here's to hoping I can play Block as well as I can play
High Tide.
Until next time and thanks for reading!
Colin Chilbert
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