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By: PiDave, Dave
Aug 24 2011 8:24am
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This article is about MPDC, a Player Run Event organized by the PDC Community for the MTGO Community at large. The format is Pauper Standard, one of the most rapidly changing formats around. It has a very lively metagame and lots of incredibly talented players and deckbuilders. You can find all the info you need to participate to this series of events in the MPDC Season 13 Master Document and in the MPDC Player Primer, the latter being an incredibly thorough guide written by the event host himself, gwyned. MPDC is sponsored by players themselves and mtgotraders.com, which also brings you this very article. If you're interested in past articles on this topic you should find them all here. Have a nice read!

Hello everyone and welcome back once again to the weekly MPDC Metagame update! I hope you enjoyed your summer at least as much as I enjoyed mine: I've been busy with multiple formats on MTGO and had a ton of fun. Here we are, revitalized from such a break and ready to crunch data for the new Pauper Standard with 100% more M12. The new core set features many new aggressive creatures, especially with the return of the Bloodthirst keyword: this mechanic will hopefully bring some fresh air in the metagame, enabling deckbuilders to focus on more aggressive strategies. The fact that M12 also brought us back both Incinerate and Shock should make for a Red-heavy Season 14. Let's take a look at the results of the first event:

Gatherling Entry -- Winning Missing deck thread on pdcmagic.com

Congratulations to milegyenanevem for his victory! His Burn deck is a distilled pain machine, packing an impressive amount of direct damage spells (24!) alongside a full complement of Wellsprings (both Ichor Wellspring and Mycosynth Wellspring) and just four Perilous Myrs as creatures. Yahmes ended in 2nd place with Esper Control; the deck is still the same from last season, except perhaps the 3 Porcelain Legionnaires in the maindeck. In the Top4 we have Kranz, with an interesting White Weenie build that sports Gideon's Lawkeeper and Guardians' Pledge, and pk23 with his new URW brew: Bloodthirst Control. The Top8 is completed by gwyned with a new TurtleDog variant that puts Aven Fleetwing and Incinerate to good use, simonson with MonoG Infect, theorangemitten with MetalHawk and win_somnia with Boros Landfall.

This week's spotlight goes to the most M12-packed deck, pk23's Bloodthirst Control:

 

Bloodthirst Control
Top 4 by pk23 in MPDC 14.01 (6-1)
Creatures
4 Perilous Myr
3 Porcelain Legionnaire
3 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Spire Monitor
11 cards

Other Spells
4 Blood Ogre
4 Gorehorn Minotaurs
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
3 Foresee
3 Preordain
3 Staggershock
1 Mysteries of the Deep
18 cards
Lands
11 Mountain
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Island
1 Plains
23 cards

Searing Blaze

 

The list is an evolution of 3 Colors Control and even though it can actually be considered a control deck it packs quite a big punch: the new Bloodthirst commons are probably some of the most aggressive Red creatures printed so far. Both Gorehorn Minotaurs and Blood Ogre are way over the curve when cast with the bloodthirst trigger and the deck has many ways to ensure they are. The selection of direct damage spells is quite interesting: while Lightning Bolt is an obvious auto-include, Staggershock is preferred to the less expensive Shock for its ability to kill two birds with one lightning and Searing Blaze overcomes Incinerate in terms of trigger efficiency: while the newly reprinted spell still has a very good power-to-cost ratio it simply cannot measure to the excellent synergy with Bloodthirst that a landfalled Searing Blaze provides. Play a Land, bust that Kor Skyfisher while dealing the opponent 3 damages, cast Blood Ogre as a 3/3 first-striker. Anyway, both creatures are also quite mana-intensive, pushing the curve of the deck toward an average cost of 2.70. The rest of the creature package also helps in that regard, since just the four Perilous Myrs are below 2 CMC, while Sea Gate Oracles and Spire Monitor are 3 and 5 CMC respectively. Porcelain Legionnaire can be considered to be half an exception, thanks to its White Phybrid mana.

As you can see from the graph, the curve follows the typical bell-shaped path of Control decks, however a Turn 2 Porcelain Legionnaire into a Turn 3 triggered Blood Ogre is a very aggressive, very plausible play. Anyway, the first-strike ability of these two creatures can be effectively used during defensive play while waiting to lay enough mana to be able to cast a burn-triggered Gorehorn Minotaurs.

The most notable absence of the deck is Kor Skyfisher: there's no synergy in the deck for the white flyer aside from Sea Gate Oracle. To make up for the lessened draw capabilities a singleton Mysteries of the Deep has been added in place of a Foresee, lowering the count of the latter to a total of three; three is also the number of Preordains in the list. I was wondering why there are no Ponders in the deck, then I realized that Preordain works better when searching for a particular card and so it can help better than Ponder to fix the mana. Let me elaborate: your opening hand is Island, Plains, Blood Ogre, Sea Gate Oracle, Lightning Bolt, Porcelain Legionnaire and Preordain; it seems a snap-keeper to me, even though there are no mountains in it. Exchange the draw spell with Ponder and I'll think about keeping it for a while. Remember that while you see the first three cards of the deck with Ponder, the optional shuffling effect doesn't mean you're actually digging in your library: in fact you're randomly rearranging it and if the card you're searching for is not in the first three cards of your library before you Ponder, the possibilities of you drawing that card after the shuffle are exactly the same. Preordain can dig just two cards, but they're gone until the next time you shuffle the library, effectively upping your chances to draw the relevant card.


ColorPie: Spells inside, lands outside.

The mana base is a little faster than 3CC's by just one less tapland but its main focus is actually find the needed colors while thinning the library to enhance the quality of each draw, probably to make up for the missing Kor Skyfishers, while consistently enabling landfall triggers for Searing Blaze and Mysteries of the Deep.

In the end the deck is a very nice mix of aggression and control and it seems to me that it can be easily adapted toward one stance or the other within its sideboard choices.

Talking about that: the sideboard is heavily bent toward lifegain with a full set of Lone Missionary and two Sylvok Lifestaffs. The rest of the sideboard doesn't seem to be geared against a definite meta but it packs the kind of generic answers that can help against control (Negate), infect (Incinerate) and mass attackers like Kuldotha Red or Bant Tokens (Seismic Shudder). I expect it to evolve as well during the next few events.

New features time! I present you with the Top Ten most used cards of this week's Top8 and the Basic Land Usage:

Red spell wins! Lightning Bolt is by far the most used spell while Kor Skyfisher and Squadron Hawk are tied for most used creature. I included both Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds in this list, but I wonder whether they belong or not. Let me know what you think about this! The basic land pie chart is also interesting: Black seems to have been all but forgotten while Red overcomes even White. I wonder if the time has come for a RB Bloodthirst deck to make its appearance.

And on this new pair of bombshells, I'm out!
See you next week!
--Dave

5 Comments

oh! by Rotdog at Wed, 08/24/2011 - 10:23
Rotdog's picture

Great statistics update as always!
As i mentioned it earlier on MPDC forum its really terrifying that i fell asleeep after 4th round after winning first 3 with a 2-0 then i got a screw versus pk23 and got a tech loss against gwyned( though hadn't played mirror which i wanted badly. Its Really nice that my idea of TurtleDog deck is alive and competitive. Hope to be with you next time.

apaulogy's picture
5

Are those Excel graphs?

I really wish I had time for one of these. I even have an Esper deck: Just in case an opportunity presents itself.

Meanwhile, I play it in the casual room. Just to annoy people. It is so good at generating card advantage.

Another good article, sir.

Thanks for the feedback! by PiDave at Wed, 08/24/2011 - 13:37
PiDave's picture

Thanks for the feedback! They're actually made with Google Charts and some scripting magic. ;)

Awesome Sauce by Copperfield at Wed, 08/24/2011 - 19:24
Copperfield's picture
5

Dude, everything about this new seasons' series is better than the already-stellar stuff you were presenting last time. Everything! In particular, I really like the card-counting at the bottom. It makes perfect sense with such a small card pool to count how many copies of a particular card is being used in the metagame, including cards that are taken for granted like Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds. It proves just how much their absence will be felt next season.

Keep up the good work! I'm off MODO for an indefinite period of time, but will keep coming back to see what I'm missing so I'm still up to date if/when I return.

Thank you! :) You just added by PiDave at Thu, 08/25/2011 - 12:00
PiDave's picture

Thank you! :)

You just added one more reason for me to keep up with this series. Hope to see you online soon!