MPDC’s trend of being the most red heavy event was noticed by metagamers this week, who brought out Dark Evocation and its variants in force. The deck has a good game against RDW and Storm Control, thanks to a combination of discard and lifegain. In spite of that, zipstein was able to take his UR Burn deck (based on a modification of the popular Storm Control deck created by kehmesis) to the finals, where it lost to…Dark Evocation. That’s two standard events in a row for Orzhov Blink’s heir apparent. Will the meta change again in reaction to the deck’s success? You can bet on it!
.gif) | Format: Lorwyn Block Constructed Registration Begins: Monday May 26th, 2008 8:30pm EST Structure: 4 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 4 |
I hosted PDC’s Lorwyn Block Constructed event myself this week. The turnout for this event was small, which is mystifying to me since it is one of the most fun formats I have experienced. The eleven who did come out were treated to a fun filled evening of Elementals, Faeries, and most of all Mulldrifters. All of the decks in the Quarterfinals featured the card advantage machine, and three of the decks revolved around the interaction of Mulldrifter with Warren Pilferers. LordSanada’s aptly named Warrendrifter control deck beat redleg’s treefolk based Prune Juice in the finals.
Format: Classic Constructed Registration Begins: Tuesday May 27th, 2008 8:30pm EST Structure: 3 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 8 | |
Tuesday night’s event showed the value of owning an Armadillo Cloak if you are going to play in classic, as a shocking 27% decks that came to the event came armed with four of the pricey enchantments. Given the preponderance of aggro and dearth of control on the average Tuesday night, I can’t say that is a bad call. The winner had one as well, and defeated three burn based decks in single elimination to take the trophy.  | Format: Standard Constructed Registration: Thursday May 29th, 2008 8:30pm EST Structure: 3 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 4 |
In the past, each event had its own season, which would begin and end at the discretion of that event’s host. The PDC Season Alignment Project sought to change that, establishing a common heuristic that helped all the hosts change seasons at the same time. The result was a very exciting buildup period to the World Finals for each event, and then of course the conclusion of each event for one season and a fresh beginning as a new set rolled out, changing the card pool and thereby the metagame for each PDC event. Version 3 messed all this up. SPDC’s world championship was supposed to be this week to correspond with the online release of Shadowmoor next week on June 4th. Unfortunately Wizards came back and said “Oops! We meant June 9th.” Therefore in order to comply with the Season Alignment Project, SPDC’s World Finals for Season 5 was pushed back a week until next Thursday, June 5th. Fortunately, PDC stalwart JPLiberato stepped in and hosted a final pre-worlds event. In a break from the norm, the metagame for the event mirrored that of MPDC, with UR Burn, Dark Elves, White Weenie and Dark Evocation all placing into the quarterfinals. LordSanada got his second trophy of the week, using his White Weenies to defeat the JPLiberato’s UR Burn deck in the finals.
Format: Classic Constructed Registration Begins: Saturday May 31st, 2008 10:30am EST Structure: 6 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 4 | |
Two of the decks that decks Evu defeated on Tuesday in single elimination on his way to the finals were creations of Calathan, a classic deckbuilder of much repute. On Saturday Calathan returned with a tweaked version of his UR Burn deck from Tuesday night. In a field were fewer than a quarter of the players brought Armadillo Cloaks, it was good enough to get him a trophy! The metagame on Saturday instead brought us much more of the Izzet guild, popular in pauper for its power in both control and combo decks. The top four featured two of the Izzet decks including the eventual winner, with White Weenie and Grand Entrance rounding out the single elimination portion of the event.
That is it for last week’s pauper action. Pauper, like the MTGO community at large, continues to suffer the depravations of an underwhelming v3 client, but we are moving forward as a community to brace for what the future has in store for us. Next week the first round of the PDC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS begin, which is going to be very exciting! Join us again next week to find out who came on top to be the WORLD CHAMPIONS!
Bonus Content!!!!
Due to the rigors of Classic Week, this article is a bit behind schedule. So to keep it more timely, I decided to add some BONUS CONTENT! Those of you who want to see what happened in PDC after the end of May, read on...
 | Format: Future Extended Constructed Registration Begins: Sunday June 1st, 2008 2:00pm EST Structure: 4 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 8 |
Stiffdiddypinky finally broke Freed’s longstanding stranglehold on Future Extended gold medals. Unfortunately he used the most feared deck in the format to do it: Affinity. Now Affinity is not the most feared deck in the format because of the deck’s long winning record. Cogs ‘n Stripes has far more trophies, as do Blink and Freed. The reason for the apprehension is fear of what an unrestricted list could do. Affinity is the most heavily controlled deck in the format, featuring the only bannings (Cranial Plating and Disciple of the Vault) and most of the restrictions (the Artifact Lands.) In spite of these limitations, the deck is still finds a consistently high place in the swiss of Future Extended tournaments, and now has its first trophy since the beginning of the season to boot.
So the questions going in to the Season Finale next week are; will Freed return to dominance? Will Affinity push it out of first place? Will the 187 decks (like Orzhov Blink and WURCogs) find a way to adapt and return to dominance in the meta? We will see next week!
Format: Standard Constructed Registration Begins: Monday June 2nd, 2008 1:30pm EST Structure: 3 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 8 | |
Stiffdiddypinky, not satisfied with one trophy for this week, decided to go 2 for 2 and take home the World Championship trophy on Monday night as well! Stiff’s weapon of choice on Monday was White Weenie, which has had its fair share of trophies over the last season and was the victor of Season 4 SPDC Worlds as well. It is little changed from that incarnation, since the base of the deck comes from Time Spiral block. The surprise in the MPDC Championship came from White Weenie’s opponent in the finals on Monday. Elves have been lurking about the top tables all season long in various forms, always accompanied by some other color – White for Elven Ambush, Blue for Elven Melody, Black for Dark Elves. On Monday yogev_ezra showed that green needed no help to make it to the finals, piloting a monogreen Elves! deck through a nightmare Storm Control matchup before being out aggro’d by stiffdiddypinky in the finals.
| | Format: Lorwyn Block Constructed Registration Begins: Monday June 2nd, 2008 8:30pm EST Structure: 4 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 4 |
It was a mad dash to qualify for Worlds this week at the BPDC. Because of the event’s short season, qualification is open to anyone who makes the quarterfinals of the event, instead of using the point based system prevalent in other tournaments. Monday night’s tournament saw two new qualifiers Skeletoy and Flekov face off in the finals. Flekov’s Red Elemental Wins deck emerged victorious over Skeletoy’s Aetherbraider deck to claim the last trophy before the BPDC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS next week!
Format: Classic Constructed Registration Begins: Tuesday June 3rd, 2008 8:30pm EST Structure: 3 Rounds of Swiss followed by Single Elimination Top 8 | |
Tuesday night continued TPDC’s odd trend of groupthink, with the Weeknight Classic Players mostly abandoning their Armadillo Cloaks for pauper’s other favorite use of Plains and Forests – Saprolings. Saps never really took off outside of PDC because its strategy of overextending does not mesh well of the abundant supply of cheap, effective mass removal available outside the common card pool. They were the terror of standard for an entire season however, racking up win after win in an environment where only one or two mass removal spells could be found. After the Rotation of Ravnica block Saprolings where consigned to older formats, where spells like Echoing Truth and Crypt Rats helped keep them in check. They are still a potent threat in the right metagame however. Enough paupers must have thought the time was right on Tuesday, as 25% of the contestants brought some form of fungus infestation. None of the saprolings made it past the quarterfinals though. Instead PDC artist Lost Symphonies’ Classic Orzhov Blink faced off against x_Force_of_Will_x's R/G Thresher, with the aggro deck winning in an upset against the life-gaining control deck.
And that's it for this first installment of This Week in PDC! Next week will bring many more exciting developments. Who will reign victorious in the SPDC and UPDC Championships? What casual format will MPDC host? Will Shadowmoor have an immediate impact on Classic events? Tune in again next week to find out!
6 Comments
I liked the article, both content and format. If you're up to it, this seems like a very solid weekly
More PDC exposure, yeah baby! A good and necesarry overview of the multitude of events running around. If you liked this, visit PDCmagic.com/articles for more indepth looks at the meta's of the different events.
Good Job Khira
I think this series of articles could be improved with suggestions about possibly strong decks in the metagame for each event.
As the creator of Thresher, it was originally a mid-range Aggro deck, but FoW's version is more aggressive, and less controlling. While not pure aggro, it is closer to that end of the spectrum than the original list.
-Alex
Nice job, I am looking forward to this as a regular feature (hint hint!) :) .
Thanks for including links to the metagame and event posts as well - that should make it very easy for a new user to dive in.
One editing note - you have both TPDC events as 8.08, but of course the more recent one was 8.09.
Good article Khirareq, a nice overview of recent PDC events.
just to quickly comment on TPDC 8.08, I would actually consider RG Thresher to be classified as AC-Midrange and to be the favorite in the O-Blink matchup.
Fabulous article! I love what you've done with the place!