ROME, ITALY - As the dust settles around the Colosseum (that's where Worlds was held, right?) Magic players all around the planet frantically refresh their facebooks, twitters and dailymtgs hoping to be among the first to peruse the winning deck lists.  For most, the inevitable Jund vs. Anti-Jund clash was already written in stone.  The only unknown for most followers of competitive magic was whether it would end up being 'Jund vs Jund' or 'Jund vs Anti-Jund'.   Of course, the deck's pilots and their respective home countries wished upon a star that their particular Jund build would reign supreme and that lady luck would invariably smile down upon them in particular.

[caption id="attachment_5828" align="alignright" width="106" caption="Though this blog offers the average Spike a bit of the Spikish sustenance he so desperately craves, the average article is designed to give a more unique perspective on the game."][/caption]

In the end, the savage forces of Jund were quelled by the deck built specifically to beat them back.   Surprisingly absent were the big American names of Magic as it was Austria vs. Portugal in the final match.  It was a World's concluded with an anticlimactic Anti-Jund crushing of Jund between two players who were, before that moment, known to only the innermost sanctum of MTG pro players.

Competitive Magic and I have had a rocky relationship.  If you've spent any time reading the articles in the Gathering Magic archive, you'll know that this blog has never been a super-spike-destroy-all-opposition-keeping-up-with-the-latest-decklist type of medium.  To me, competitive Magic is at once excruciatingly appealing and also hopelessly irrelevant.  While many of us have technically played magic for a decade or more, if you're honest with yourself, you'll probably agree that your complete understanding of the game didn't congeal until much more recently.  So for me, this most recent World's was the first that I could have watched and 1) known every card on the table; 2) understood and anticipated the meta and 3) felt as though I could have built/piloted either deck in the championship round without incident.  Unfortunately, this new-found perspective didn't better my opinion of competitive MTG, in fact, it reaffirmed my worst fears Magic as an emulous sport.

[caption id="attachment_5838" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Chess' ranking system can easily determine who is undisputedly "the best"."][/caption]

The object of any "World Championship" is supposedly to determine whom the best player in the world is.  Many games are very good at figuring this out.  Chess is dominated by undisputed masters who are almost never beaten by someone with a lower rank.  Bobby Fischer used to set up 25 games with 25 unique players and win all of the matches.  Competitive Magic is nothing like chess.  Magic is much more akin to Baseball.  Baseball has a season of 162 three-hour games and it's "World Championship" consists of seven games spread out over more than two weeks.  If any team wins more than 65% of these games they are considered "the best in the world".   Like baseball, Magic consists of a very long "season" and pro players earn their way into a world championship series through a point system based on wins.  Unlike baseball though, players with a lot of pro games under their belt are given "byes" for sometimes 50% of any given event they attend.  Attend enough of these events and even players with only a moderate amount of skill will invariably win 40% of the time and end up earning enough "pro points" to make it to World's.  Competitive Magic is based more on attendance than anything else.  And unfortunately for most of us, traveling to Japan, South America and Europe all in one season just isn't an option.  Imagine if baseball teams could "skip" games and your team wasn't able to make it to all of their matches while the Yankees always played a complete season.  Which team do you think would have the wins necessary to make it to the playoffs?

[caption id="attachment_5840" align="alignright" width="250" caption="The paper, rock, scissors phenomenon is in full effect both in WoW and MTG."][/caption]

Competitive Magic is also comparable to World of Warcraft in the sense that you're all given the same opportunity to use the same game pieces.  Anyone can get to level 60 and get the same set of Epic armor.  Likewise, everyone has access to a Jund deck or an Anti-Jund deck and those who have made it to world's can probably pilot the deck almost as well as the next guy at worlds.  Many different "builds" emerge but it becomes quite clear which one (or hopefully two) builds are the best.   Once a deck has dominated for long enough, an "anti-deck" emerges.  Usually this deck is weak against most other builds but utterly dominates "the deck of the day", in this case- Jund.  It's similar to the age old fantasy equation- (Warrior > Mage,  Mage > Rogue,  Rogue  >Warrior).  In the end you simply roll the deck of the day, or the antidote to the deck of the day, cross your fingers and hope you play the right opponents.  If everyone is rolling the same decks, and most of these people aren't making glaring "mistakes" at the world's level the only variable left to play itself out is luck.

My point?  Magic is a game in which you will never know, nor will there ever be a "best player in the world".  While Magic is very good about separating good players from poor ones.  It has never been very good at separating the merely good from the truly great.  When the runner-up at worlds is playing, card for card, the same Jund deck you've rolled with for the past six months, your perspective on competitive Magic shifts.  You think to yourself-  "I could both build, and play that deck just as well as he probably did."  My point isn't that I am some sort of Magic God (though the more I think about it...).  It's simply that an MTG blogger from Seattle, WA could have gone to worlds and gotten second place with a dime-a-dozen Jund deck, a tiny bit of luck and a plane ticket.  I don't know about you but that notion cheapens the idea of a Magic the Gathering  "World Championship" just a tad.  When I watch Ichiro Suzuki play baseball, I never think to myself "heck, I could do just as well..."  But as I watched the MTG world championship, live at 7:30AM PST last weekend, I did.  While I respect the winner's ability to "analyze the meta" it didn't take a genius to anticipate Jund as the dominant deck of the day and subsequently, play anti-Jund.

[caption id="attachment_5842" align="alignleft" width="151" caption="Best in the World? Nah. One of the best? Most definitely."][/caption]

While the pro tour isn't a great way to find the best player in the world, it is good at determining the best decks in the world, for the time.  But I could have saved everyone the effort and fanfare by handing you the Jund / Anti-Jund decklists three months ago.   The Pro Circuit is also an effective engine for seeing cards that might otherwise never see play.  Would Goblin Ruinblaster be as popular as it is without Jund?  Great Sable Stag?  Celestial Purge?  A playset of each card can be found in the winning deck this year.  Many of the innovations we all take for granted were debuted and honed on the Pro circuit stage.  But today, MTGO coupled with other online communities like this one beat them to the punch.  A highly visible competitive Magic scene gives us something to aspire to, to follow as players and to speculate about as commentators.  Hell, would this article even exist if it hadn't been for Worlds?  It's a great marketing tool and it gives Kelly Reid over at Quiet Speculation a reason to buy 35 copies of Emeria Angel when a Top 16 deck stumbles upon a random combo. (much love Kelly)

Unlike many other games, there will never again be a godlike figure in Magic the Gathering, winning every game he or she plays.  The Pro Tour consists of the best players in the world but on any given Sunday, any one of them could be the Champion.  Congratulations André Coimbra.  You are one of the best in the world.