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I played in Grand Prix Toronto. Despite the fact I didn't day two, I felt I learned a lot about the format.
Scars sealed comes down to one key component. There are a LOT of bombs, and because you only need a couple cards in a color to play it everyone runs theirs. You will always have face new bombs every round and the relative quality of theirs against yours is so high variance between games the more important factor is trying to have answers for theirs in your deck. There are four types of bombs you have to consider: enchantments, large creatures, non-creature artifacts and artifact creatures. Sometimes you don't have answers to one category, but if you can it is worth looking at stretching your mana to gain the ability to answer them.
At GP Toronto my misbuild was not splashing Green for a Sylvok Replica and Horizon Spellbomb. My deck was stacked with creature removal but only had one Shatter and all of my losses came to non-creature artifacts and enchantments. In actual game play saving your removal for the best targets is much more important than in other formats. While things like Galvanic Blast or Grasp of Darkness are fine to use early as they won't kill a Horde-Smelter Dragon anyways, being aware of what answers you have to bombs and saving them is very important. Unless you are going to die to their random creature, think before you Turn to Slag or Shatter it.
When facing a lack of answers, as always the best answer is aggression. Poison requires a minimum of 8 infect creatures to function and possibly more depending on your proliferate support and pump effects. Hyper aggressive metalcraft decks can work, but they tend to fall apart much more against the heavy removal pools you will eventually run into without access to some bomb to finish the job. There's definitely a balance to be found between a terrible mana base and having answers, but if you only need one or two off color lands due to Myr or Horizon Spellbomb it is worth it.
Moving on to draft, saying that I'm still working on it would be an understatement. The last one I ended up Bant poison which is more miserable than it sounds. I've learned that the Myr aren't as good as everyone thinks they are but you often want one and that Untamed Might is better than every other infect common, but that is about it.
As for Standard I'm still very interested in the concept of an aggressive deck in this format. Currently things are starting to inbreed around six mana creatures, and its about time some one drops put them back in their place. The main problem with the Green decks is the weakness to Pyroclasm, and the Red decks have too low of a threat density against spot removal and can't generate a good curve. The White aggressive options don't have these issues. Student of Warfare jumps to a 3/3 and Steppe Lynx can be managed around dying to 2 damage, and those are only two of your actual options for one drops. That said, the color doesn't really have depth in the support spell department. One solution is to splash blue for counters and having the deck play similar to Paul Rietzl's deck from Amsterdam. Brave the Elements can be used to trump the creature swarms of the Green decks and also as additional counter magic as the removal suite of most decks moves away from Day of Judgment. The other option would be Boros. You gain better removal for their early mana accelerants and reach, but your mana gets distinctly worse as you have a stronger commitment to Red and less good fixing. Here are some very preliminary lists for each.
"WWu"
Emeria Angel is a very strong end game, teaming up with Colonnade to fly over Avengers, Titans, and creatures. Molten-tail Masticore is another reasonable option I have not explored that provides reach. Mana Leak makes the cut over Unified Will as you don't have the mana creatures the Green deck does to boost the count against Lotus Cobras and Treespeakers. Kor Skyfisher is a bit awkward with Celestial Colonnade, but it lives through Pyroclasm and as with Emeria Angel flying is very strong. Elite Vanguard is by far the worst card in the deck, but without a one drop your clock can fall flat.
"Boros"
- (58)
- 4 Steppe Lynx
- 4 Student of Warfare
- 4 Goblin Guide
- 4 Kor Skyfisher
- 4 Plated Geopede
- 2 Stoneforge Mystic
- 4 Burst Lightning
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 2 Adventuring Gear
- 2 Staggershock
- 4 Arid Mesa
- 4 Marsh Flats
- 4 Scalding Tarn
- 4 Evolving Wilds
- 5 Plains
- 3 Mountain
Your creatures are more fragile and burn out faster and you lose the man land end game, but the burn makes it so that never happens.
Following up on a line from my states article, I want to discuss the concept of generic metagaming. People often refer think of metagaming as a case-specific action where the most important aspect is knowing current trends. While you can't properly metagame for an event without a solid understanding of the format, there are overall trends thant can been utilized as a basis for where to start when approaching each event.
First off, how much does everyone know about the "best" decks? Have there been previous tournaments laying out this format as in a PTQ season or is this event early on or the first like States? In a unknown format, the best option is usually to aim to be the beatdown either with actual aggression or a combo. Early on decks tend to be less focused and more inconsistent, two things fast decks punish. Control is also fundamentally flawed in an unknown format. The whole concept of a good control deck is having the proper answers to gain tempo or card advantage against their threats. How can you have the proper answers when you don't know what threats you are going to play against? The one exception is if you can minimize the specific answers in your deck thus limiting dead draws or have an end game so strong that you only need to target a small portion of threats that prevent you from reaching it.
Look back and see the actually good control decks at Pro Tours the past few year, which tend to be undefined. Teachings got to minimize specific answers, Reveillark had the option to play the beatdown and had an absolutely unbeatable end game, and UW, Cruel, and block 5C all were going into heavily defined formats. All the other productive decks were aggressive.
The same applies to broad formats as opposed to narrow ones. It is hard for control to keep up with several different angles of attack at once, while not every deck will have answers for your specific strategy. Broad formats are often characteristic of large card pools, meaning the threats are often too efficient for the generic answers. Combo decks also get better as the hate gets stretched thin. GP Columbus showcased this, with only one pure control deck in top eight.
Your deck should also have a high power level in an open format. You will play against random decks you have not prepared for and you want to be able to run them over with pure card quality and ignore what they are doing. This is an extension of the issues with control above. If you line up your cards or plan with theirs and can easily come up trumped by anything other than direct answers it will not end well.
In defined formats the opposite is true. A properly tuned control deck just gains incremental value every turn and it takes something drastically wrong like Faeries to not be able to get into a position where you are favored against the majority of the field. While you won't be able to build for everything, you can exploit the weaknesses of the most played decks most of the rounds.
One other thing to consider is how many wins you need to reach your goal in the tournament. At a PTQ, you have to not only have to win at least 85% of your swiss matches but you have to win three more in the top 8 to get to the real prize. At a PT winning 75% of your matches is a very good finish and two thirds puts you into top 50. At a PT, you can afford a bad match up even against one big deck and if you are looking for only a solid finish can sacrifice on power level for consistency. A deck that wins a PTQ is most likely going to have very good overall matchups and a high power level relative to the format. Barring a massive skill disparity you need variance on your side, and putting it in the hands of dodging a major deck or your opponents not having good opening hands is not where you want to be.
A good example of this was Reveillark at PT Hollywood. While it was going to lose to all the Fae players, it could afford the three or four losses as it was so stacked against everything else. This also explains why good control decks tend to put up proportionally large numbers of wins to top eights. Even if some of the players fall to random threats along the way, the top end of the spectrum is flooded the proven good decks that the others are prepared for.
In Limited, a similar concept applies. When people grade decks after the draft they often will scale according to wins, but even before the draft starts various strategies can be graded as such. While obviously anyone can draft the "removal, bombs, and under costed guys" in almost any color combo and coast to a PTQ win, the better option is to push luck in your direction. Often times there are a lot of more linear draft strategies that produce high variance results. While in a large event like a PT you might be very happy with a 2-1 record and just want to have an above average deck, in a PTQ every record other than 3-0 is the same as 0-3. In a PTQ top 8 I would much rather have the deck that comes together and smashes everyone half of the time and doesn't come together the other half than the deck that wins 70% of its matches. While sometimes you can just drift into a deck like this as the cards you need all come rather late and you can adjust if you see them early, other times it takes a concerted effort. If you are in a PTQ top 8, don't be afraid to force an archetype you know will have a dramatically higher chance of winning out.
In Sealed, the main factor the varies your deck building from event to event is the number of round. More rounds will filter the final rounds towards the bomb heavy decks, meaning you have to either try to maximize power level usually at the cost of consistency or build an aggressive deck that capitalizes on the people who try to do this. With less rounds you most likely won't have to play against quite as powerful decks, meaning consistency will be rewarded. It also is worth considering the player base of the event you are in. A seven round pre-release event is going to play out a lot differently than a seven round PTQ. When your opponents are bad their decks will be much shakier and you want to capitalize on this by just being more consistent than they are.
Mike Flores may have had one of the best tips I've seen in a long time in his last article: "We Build for ONE Tournament". While his intent was not exactly the same, the point remains. Much like a single game, each event has a different set up and end game. Be aware of consistent trends and don't lose track of your actual goal.
