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Looking back into Magic

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26 Dec 2012 17:05 #140294 by Erik Twice
Oh, I understand that turning your graveyard into a resource is powerful, but that doesn't explain why they print half a dozen "fuck you graveyard decks!" cards every set when you already have twenty awesome cards for that you know?

I'm just mad because collateral damage fucked up my chances of a working Turboland deck (Read: Recurring "Play another turn" effects from the graveyard) and that's sad.


Given the timeline, they seem to have noticed when Dredge was born. I doubt they like the idea of a deck that wants to discard, plays cards from his graveyard and wins by running out of cards.

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03 Jan 2013 21:10 #140688 by Black Barney
Hey CCG players, can someone tell me what the biggest Magic event is that pays cash? I don't intend to play but I'm curious what the highest competitive event is called. It's probably the biggest payout one.

I don't know anything about the Magic competitive scene but I know the following types of events exist:

Standard Premier
Starcity Open Standard
Starcity Invitational Standard
Grand Prix
Standard Platinum
TCGplayer Open 5K
TCGplayer MaxPoint 50K Championship
Maxpoint Grinders
Standard Gold TCQ
Platinum TCQ
Lunatic Moon Convention Championship
SCG Super IQ
TCGplayer Maxpoint Diamond
Pro Tour Dark Ascension
GP - Sunday TMS Platinum Event

holy crap, so many different names for events. It's hard to tell what's what.

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03 Jan 2013 22:03 - 03 Jan 2013 22:04 #140691 by dragonstout
I don't WTF most of that shit is or where you got that list. World Championship is, kind of obviously, the highest competitive event, despite a smaller but much more concentrated prize pool.

Basically, the main types of big events sponsored by Wizards are:
Grand Prix (biggest attendance of any Magic events, open to the public, 46 per year, $30,000 prize pool)
Pro Tour (invitation only, three per year, always a limited format one day and a constructed format the other, $250,000 prize pool)
World Magic Cup (each nation has a WMCQ to qualify for that nation's team, which then compete at the WMQ, $250,000 prize pool)
World Championship (only 16 players, chosen in a variety of ways: every Pro Tour winner, last year's WC winner, top N best performing players from past year in terms of points, etc., $108,000 prize pool)

Of course other tournaments are held by third parties, the biggest ones in the US being the weekly Standard & Legacy $5K Opens held by StarCityGames as well as the once-per-season $75K Invitational that those all lead up to. The largest Vintage and Legacy tournament in the world is in Europe each year at the Bazaar of Moxen.
Last edit: 03 Jan 2013 22:04 by dragonstout.
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03 Jan 2013 23:45 - 03 Jan 2013 23:45 #140693 by Black Barney
Thanks a ton dragon. The list is a comprehensive list of all competitive magic tournaments in the last month or two. I was amazed at how I didn,t know what almost any of it was.

Ok so it sounds like the World Championship and the World Cup are the biggest (those are each only once per year, ya? Do you know when?). The Pro Tour sounds huge too. So in the list above, would that mean the biggest event (in terms of competition) would be the Pro Tour Dark Ascension?

thanks again
Last edit: 03 Jan 2013 23:45 by Black Barney.

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04 Jan 2013 00:11 - 04 Jan 2013 00:17 #140697 by dragonstout
Within the last month or two, yeah, Pro Tour Dark Ascension would be the biggest. All those other ones you mentioned are all third-party sponsored tournaments, mainly sponsored by the big three Magic singles websites: StarCityGames, TCGPlayer, and ChannelFireball.

While the World Championship and World Cup are the most *prestigious* (primarily due to "World" in the title), they are not the largest in terms of attendance, if that's what you care about. As mentioned, the World Championship (which was last year called the Players Championship, and will be changed back to its usual name next year) only has 16 players...but first place got $40,000. First place prize at Pro Tours is the same. First place prize at the Magic World Cup was just $10K.

The Worlds tournaments took place in the fall; this year, both the World Championship and World Cup will be held in the same location on the same weekend, first week of August.

So curious why you're asking these questions.
Last edit: 04 Jan 2013 00:17 by dragonstout.
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04 Jan 2013 01:01 #140699 by Black Barney
I've been looking at decks just for fun and seeing what is prominent and what is not. Winning a standard premier tournament is one thing but when there is a ton of money on the line, typically the quality of competition rises in consequence so I was curious to see which decks were winning the big money events and what the dispersion among decktypes was at these events. Because of the permission of sideboards, people I guess don't have to make strong meta calls which allows the use of a more diversified field of decktypes (or so I hope). That's the random thought I had today which I feel like challenging and seeing if it holds water.

Is the constructed Pro Tour event a standard constructed or is it limited to set or something?

I really appreciate the insight. I know nothing of competitive Magic.

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04 Jan 2013 16:52 - 04 Jan 2013 16:54 #140740 by dragonstout
So something to be warned about when looking at decklists for I think every single one of the above mentioned events except for Grand Prix: they are all mixed format, i.e. partly sealed deck, partly draft, and partly a constructed format. The constructed format is either Standard, Modern, or Block Constructed for the high-level events; there are no Legacy Pro Tours, though there are Legacy Grand Prix. Anyway, the mixed format means that if you go the coverage website, you'll see a "Top 8", and you'll be able to see their decklists. But the thing is, the top 8 is decided by their performance in Limited, too, so those are not necessarily the top 8 performing decks at all. However, usually on the same main coverage page, you can find a list of "undefeated decks" or whatever and get a much bigger list of the top decks for that day in Modern/Standard/whatever.

For the most up-to-date top decks, the StarCityGames tournaments are by far the best barometer, being every week and not being as one-shot as the Pro Tours, which sometimes encourages weird flukes. Wizards has acknowledged that it is the SCG $5Ks that have been causing them difficulty with Standard lately, as the frequency of these events has accelerated the solving of the metagame, whereas with just the pro tours driving things, there weren't these chances to incrementally and communally improve these decks from week to week.

The StarCityGames tournaments are also by far the best ones to watch for the Legacy metagame, which is IMHO by far the most fun metagame to explore.

Knowledge of the meta is just as important as it's always been; sideboards can only go so far in letting your deck handle everything, and are usually very specialized for the meta. In Legacy, however, the meta is so ridiculously diverse that it's mostly pointless to build for a specific meta. Modern currently is in an unusual situation with its meta: the combo decks are very diverse; as a result, however, and due to the lack of a catch-all combo solution like Force of Will, it is much harder for the "fair" decks to have good sideboard answers for all the different combos they might face. This has slimmed the field of fair decks way down to the point where despite the diverse combo meta, there is still only one enormously dominant fair deck, Jund.

I don't follow the Standard meta much at all; all I know is that Thragtusk is the currently dominant card.
Last edit: 04 Jan 2013 16:54 by dragonstout.
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04 Jan 2013 18:52 #140748 by Black Barney
Is that the regenerating troll that is hexproof and legendary?

Thanks for the well-informed post. Answers a bunch of unanswered questions I had in my head (when images of Thor Hemsworth aren't dancing around in there as Pete has mentionned).

You,re right that the winners of Pro Tours seems to be weird flukes sometimes. For instance, the winning decks of the really well-attended tournaments are often like 600-700 dollar decks whereas the winner of a pro Tour deck is often like 200 bucks. I guess that's because of the differing formats. It`s neat that Wizard`s meta is being solved so often since it puts way more pressure on their game designers and playtesters. Keeping up a rich competitive environment is a heck of a challenge.

From my brief perusal of top decks, I saw that Jund was like the 3rd most popular whereas Bant Control and BR Zombies were more popular in terms of top 8 finishes. Not sure if that says anything. I don't know if there is a decktype that is strong meta against those three decks along with that pesky Selesnya or something. I wonder if that's a viable strategy.

I didn,t know you could find a reliable source of 'undefeated' decks that are strong against everything. That's interesting.

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04 Jan 2013 19:24 #140756 by dragonstout
I think there's a bit of miscommunication going on...

When I was talking about the dominance of Jund, I was talking about Modern specifically. Bant Control and BR Zombies are both Standard decks; I wasn't even aware Jund was a big player in Standard right now.

The price of a deck is largely related to how narrow the cards in the deck are; narrow decks are cheaper, broader decks are more expensive. As a result, something like Jund is really expensive, as it just plays generically very powerful cards like Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant that LOTS of decks want, whereas something like Affinity is cheaper because the cards it plays aren't played in any other decks. I haven't noticed a special difference between the prices of Pro Tour-winners and GP-winners, but if the price difference you claim exists, my hypothesis would be that it's because people are more likely to debut unusual decks at a PT to get an edge over everyone else, and those unusual decks are both more narrow and sometimes use "undiscovered" cards. Whereas at your more regular tournaments people will play the more reliable decks.

The "undefeated decks" I refer to are never strong against everything; they just happened to beat everything they played against that day. What I was referring to is something like this, from the coverage of the most recent pro tour:
www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.a...rage/ptrtr12/welcome
If you look at the links, there is a "Top 8 Decklists" link and a "Top Modern Decklists, 18 Points or better" link right below it. It's the second that is a more reliable indicator of the top Modern decks. They used to list the records of each of those decks, now it looks like they just give everything that did better than a certain cutoff. If you scroll down a little further, you'll find a "Modern Metagame breakdown" link that also demonstrates how many of a particular were playing on day 1 vs. how many of those decks did well enough to continue to day 2.

As for Thragtusk: magiccards.info is your friend whenever you want to look up a card. Thrun the Last Troll is the guy you're thinking of.

I'm going down the rabbit hole a bit in these posts, but it sounds like you want to peer into the rabbit hole too!
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04 Jan 2013 19:27 - 04 Jan 2013 19:30 #140757 by Bull Nakano

brutally efficient. the equivalent of 3-5 cards vs. an aggro deck.

Sometimes you see decks topping at ptqs that would never top at PTs or GPs because of the play skill high level pros have vs. PTQ finalists. Also some PT decks are good that day only.
Last edit: 04 Jan 2013 19:30 by Bull Nakano.
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