Initial Technology: Decks That Can’t Win Tournaments
Posted by Luis Scott-Vargas
April 5, 2009 | 
16 comments
by Luis Scott-Vargas
I would say I was inspired to write about this subject, but inspired isn't quite a strong enough word. I was talking to my friend (Potes on the forums) as we walked his dog, and he mentioned that he was planning to blog on this very topic. This got us to talking about it in-depth, and it was such an interesting discussion that I quickly "shotgunned" it for my article this week. So I wholeheartedly stole the topic, for the benefit of the greater good (our audience here on Channelfireball). I figure that's enough of a disclaimer, so lets get to the article!
As this Extended season winds to a close, I find it interesting to see how many people choose to play decks that cannot win tournaments. Since the tournaments in question are PTQs, winning the tournament is really the only goal for most of the participants. Every other prize offered pales in comparison to qualifying for the Pro Tour, so making Top 8 and losing can be a bitter pill to swallow.
So when I say "decks that can't win tournaments", I mean don't mean decks that literally can't win a tournament, I mean decks that have innate weaknesses that make winning a Top 8 difficult, much less making Top 8. I will be using this Extended season for most of my examples, since by now most people are well-versed in the decks, but the ideas here should aid in deck selection for any format.
The most important determination of whether or not a deck has what it takes is power level. It may seem obvious that playing a powerful deck is ideal, but how does this explain the dozens of midrange Rock-style decks that people tend to play, much less decks like Burn or Bant. Even our own GerryT endorsed Slide, a deck I am now convinced is very unlikely to win a PTQ. As Gerry said himself, a skilled Faeries player can be difficult for Slide to overcome, and with Faeries taking more PTQ slots than any other deck (by far) it seems kind of foolish to play a deck that would have trouble defeating the current end boss of the season. Slide is a really good example of a deck that can cruise to Top 8 based on reasonable pairing in the Swiss, but will have trouble finishing 1st. Most PTQs tend to be 7 or 8 rounds, and it isn't unreasonable for a good Slide player to face two Faeries decks in the Swiss and go something like 1-1, while beating all the Zoo-type decks. After all, Slide is very good at murdering creature decks like Zoo, Bant, Rock, even Elves, and those are always well-represented at PTQs. The problem is that Slide doesn't do anything that powerful. It can control the board against most creature threats, but Riptide Lab is difficult for it to beat in the long game, and Slide always goes to the long game. Life from the Loam is a legitimately powerful strategy, but it doesn't fuel anything too absurd in the Slide deck. Slide is just another Rock deck, albeit with slightly different tools.
Pure power level isn't the only determination of whether a deck is good of course, since there are a number of powerful decks that have similar trouble winning tournament. Both TEPS and Elves are quite powerful, easily capable of winning by turn 3 if undisrupted. Elves has a potential turn 2 kill, and TEPS can even kill on turn one, even though it is much less likely (both were accomplished in the tournaments I won with said decks, of course). Still, Faeries is always there at the end of the line, waiting to destroy the unfortunate combo player. In this case, these decks don't lack the necessary power, but are too vulnerable to hate. Both TEPS and Elves are extremely linear strategies, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Linear decks tend to ignore most of the opponents cards, but can easily fall prey to specific cards targeted at beating them. TEPS is the best example of this, as TEPS blanks basically everything most decks do. The storm player doesn't care about a single card their Zoo opponent plays game 1, with the possible exception of Gaddock Teeg. Burn, Wild Nacatl, and Jitte don't matter until they actually deal the finishing blow, and way more often than not TEPS will be first across the finish line. This all completely changes for sideboarded games, as Zoo gets to bring in cards that target the TEPS deck, and all of a sudden TEPS is quite a dog. Rule of Law, Ethersworn Canonist, Pyrostatic Pillar and Gaddock Teeg all make it nearly impossible for TEPS to win if they stay in play, so the single-mindedness that was such an advantage game one is now a horrible disadvantage.
Still, I won a Grand Prix with TEPS this year, so why am I saying it is now not the choice to win a simple PTQ? The difference is that when I played TEPS at GP Los Angeles, it was much less of a known quantity. People weren't sideboarding sufficiently to beat it, and some of the sideboard hate they did have was quite ineffective (most Faeries decks were on Stifle instead of Trickbind, and Gigadrowse + Pact of Negation trumped that plan fairly well). Instead of winning a good amount of Game Ones and having to deal with a bunch of sideboard hate, I won a bunch of Game Ones and then won a bunch of Game Twos. The same was true with Elves in Berlin, where everyone who wasn't playing Elves was almost wholly unprepared for the onslaught of green men. Almost every person who knew Elves was good chose to play the deck, meaning that everyone else just didn't have enough sideboard / maindeck hate to deal with it. When I started this article I didn't mean to just use all the decks I played in the past six months as examples, but they do fit quite well.
Now that the season is almost over (we still have a PTQ here in Sacramento next week), Elves and TEPS are in everyone's gauntlet. You don't get any free wins anymore, and the linear nature of these decks is their biggest weakness. I don't mean to say that linear strategies are inherently flawed, just that they usually have easily exploitable weaknesses. The key with them is to play them when these weaknesses are not being adequately dealt with, and that is generally not going to be the end of the season. Sometimes the hate dies down for a particular strategy, and it can see an end of the season revival, but I don't see that happening in this case. In particular, Elves loses to so many of the cards Faeries plays anyway (Explosives, Spellstutter Sprite, Jitte) that the chances of these cards vanishing from the format is nil.
A linear and not powerful deck is kind of the worst of both worlds, since it gets all the vulnerability of being single-minded without the benefit that usually follows. Burn is the best example here, since it is the exact kind of deck that shows up at most events and almost never wins. The strategy of all burn spells plus Mountains is a classic one, but really lacks when it comes to the results department. Burn was actually the deck that spurred our discussion in the first place, since Potes lost to the burn deck while playing for Top 8 of a PTQ. He was annoyed partly because he felt that Burn just could not win the tournament, which is naturally what led to our discussion (Burn did not in fact win the PTQ).
It is probably clear where I am going with all this, since I keep mentioning Faeries. As it turns out, Faeries is the best deck for a reason. It can and does win tournaments with regularity, because it is the right combination of power and versatility.
Ancestral Visions, Cryptic Command, Riptide Laboratory and Vedalken Shackles all combine to ensure Faeries can lock up the late game with powerful and repeatable effects.
Mana Leak, Spell Snare, Engineered Explosives and to some extent Tarmogoyf all provide some measure of early defense to make sure that Fae gets to the aforementioned late game.
Furthermore, there is no single card or set of cards that just destroy Faeries. The lack of a silver bullet makes it very difficult to slay this particular werewolf, and that is exactly what you should be looking for in a deck. I don't mean to say that Faeries is the only deck you should consider, since Zoo is perfectly capable of winning tournaments as well. Naya Zoo is even designed to cause Faeries trouble, since even though no individual card destroys Faeries, playing hard to deal with threats like Wooly Thoctar does try and take advantage of the constraints Faeries has. Thoctar dodges Spell Snare and Spellstutter Sprite quite adeptly, a fact im sure Saito was well aware of when he sleeved up his Zoo deck in Singapore.
Moving back from Extended, I want to generalize these points so they can be applied to any format.
-A winning deck needs to be above all powerful, but power alone will not suffice. Linear decks often are powerful enough, but need to be well positioned to be successful. The presence of too much targeted hate can often defeat even the most powerful of linear decks. The only times this isn't true, there usually is a big problem. Anyone remember Affinity in Mirrodin Block or Standard?
-Decks that are unlikely to win the tournament are midrange (often green) with an abundance of removal. Any board control deck is going to suffer at the hands of a true control deck, a process that is repeated over and over again with any format. I used to be a fan of Loxodon Hierarch type decks myself, and guess what? I didn't win at the Pro Tour level. Midrange decks designed to pummel aggro may work during the Swiss at a PTQ, but you will usually meet your demise during the Top 8 to someone playing a real control deck. I learned my lesson the hard way, playing these sorts of midrange decks as recently as PT Hollywood in 2008. My Loxodon Warhammer plus Chameleon Colossus deck did well enough until I played against a bunch of Reveillark decks, which completely annihilated me. Turns out that a control deck with Cryptic Command and Reveillark is better than a control deck with Cloudthresher and Primal Command. I understand why people are drawn to decks like this, but all I can offer is my advice to put down the Finks and pick up Vendilion Cliques while there is still time.
I know this article only scratches the surface of this topic, but it is certainly a good start. Let me know what you think in the forums, as I am interested in continuing the discussion there! Feel free to tell me why I am wrong, as decks other than Faeries or Zoo have in fact won tournaments, even though I think that is just less likely than not. I know it is anecdotal, but our PTQ Top 8 here from yesterday featured two blue decks (Faeries and Tezzeret) and six non-blue decks (TEPS, RGW Loam, two Naya Zoo, Doran, and Sea Stompy) and the two blue decks met in the finals, with Tezzeret beating Faeries (Channelfireball’s own David Ochoa was the unfortunate runner-up).
LSV
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About This Author
Luis Scott-Vargas
LSV is the current record holder for most wins in the Swiss portion of a Pro Tour after his perfect 16-0 run at Pro Tour San Diego 2010, and has the highest lifetime match win percentage among all current pro-level players. His other accomplishments include a win at Pro Tour&hellip
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Swap says: April 6, 2009 @ 5:12 am
The better you are in Magic the better is your deck choice, this explains why poeple are running “bad decks” or “decks that can’t win” they are just not good enough or don’t have the knowledge gaind from previous seasons to pick the right deck in the right field.
dan says: April 6, 2009 @ 6:42 am
Unfortunatly most people choose decks via there play skill or wallet size. A good player can bring fairies to a PTQ and have no shot at winning in the mirror vs. a highly skilled fairies pilot.
Ulf says: April 6, 2009 @ 8:28 am
Well it’s really interesting what you say because we had PTQ Vienna yesterday (i’m from Austria btw)
My colleges tested about one month long for it and my favourite was Loam Rock as i won a few tournaments on Magic League with it.
I know that you cant compare M-L tournaments with a PTQ for example, so i still made no decision what i’m really going to play at Sunday.
Last week there was a PTQ in Germany an the winner was Domain Zoo, which i played in the last season, a friend of mine mentioned, that this build would be the better option because Loam is always good to make Top 8 but could never win a Tournament! He used exactly the same words like you.
In fact i played Domain Zoo an went 1-3-0 Drop as i faced 1 TEPS (which i won), and 1 Dark Bant + 2 Faries (which i lost)!
There were 109 participants at the PTQ and guess who finished first?
Loam Rock^^
so thats what i call a bad beat xD
so long cheerz and good luck for future tournaments
Stan says: April 6, 2009 @ 10:19 am
I think I can attest to what you’re saying. I have played Slide in the last two PTQs and Top 8′d both of them with roughly the same list each time. The first time there were 5 other Zoo decks in the Top 8 but I lost since I wasn’t playing an optimal list. This last one I met my playtesting partner in the Semifinals and he obviously knew how my deck worked as well as I did and crushed me with Faeries… but lost to the other Slide deck in the finals.
Jon Lewis says: April 6, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
Dan makes the biggest point as to why people who may know better don’t play control. They just don’t know how and/or are unwilling to play the mirror match all day long. The assumption that playing control because it has a higher chance of winning the entire tournament is predicated on the fact that they are good enough to get there on merit independant of deck choice, which is most likely NOT the case.
In your case Luis, the choice is obvious; if you’re one of the best technical players in the room, then you play the deck that let’s you outplay anyone. This mindset will gravitate most players to play control or combo, and the best players will choose not only the deck that they can use to outplay their opponents with, but also the deck that is the best positioned as far as what the metagame dictates.
So going back to the original point, I think people play decks like Burn, AIR, or even Affinity because they really don’t think they can BEAT anyone, but they know their deck is powerful enough to win on its own. If you get on a roll, then the deck can carry you sometimes. I’m not syaing that this mindset is correct, i’m just saying that it explains why people do what they do.
And as far as board control decks go, they are just inferior versions of blue control decks most of the time. Only if you are really just planning on playing aggro all day would such a deck make sense. The way I see it, people play mid-range because they want to play “control”, but they are losing to aggro decks in the format and then convert to playing board control with some sort of anti-control/anti-combo plan that usually doesn’t work. The only recent environment I can think of where that was really the case was Affinity/Goblins/Elf and Nail Standard that was so perverted by Skullclamp that true control was totally unviable. Elf and Nail was the board control deck that had the tools to keep the other Clamp decks in check.
Anyway, nice article. I’m probably picking up my Cryptics for Regionals…
Kenneth says: April 6, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
Your’s and Web’s articles this week are two of the best articles I’ve read in a long time.
joshua says: April 7, 2009 @ 10:55 am
While I agree with much of your article, especially about playing elves, teps, and burn towards the end of the season, I disagree when you say that fae is the best deck to sleeve up for the last set of ptq’s, and that there is no weapon that just beats fae. I’ve been playing a life from the loam list for most of the season, and the only thing that I lose to with any consistancy is teps. I actually consider fae to be a very soft matchup because they don’t do anything effectual in any sort of timely manner whatsoever. In the matches I lose to fae, it mostly comes down to my abyssmal draws against their best draws. I’ve beaten fae players after they resolve three ancestral visions. It’s just that unfair.
While I agree that a very good fae player has a very high likelihood of winning a ptq, and zoo is a monster atm…, I wholeheartedly believe that this weekend (specifically in Brooklyn, NY) you’ll see a loam deck take the envelope.
/crosses fingers
r4nd0m1z3r says: April 7, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
excellent article. this is talking strategy on the top level, and I love it. thx a bunch, gj!
chosenlgAKAmydeckispimper says: April 8, 2009 @ 1:05 am
Your arguably one of the best players in Magic Today. How many hours do you spend playing magic a week?
Austin says: April 8, 2009 @ 10:08 am
I’m a new player of about 4 months. I piloted your version of B/W tokens to a top 4 finish at a small event in south carolina. I won $100 bucks, thanks.
Jack says: April 8, 2009 @ 10:16 am
I’m not sure about your assesment of the current version (gerryT) of Elves, because I wouldn’t call the deck linear. I played Elves and placed 2nd in the largest PTQ of the season, and even though I didnt win the PTQ (in fact i was the first loser,) I did learn a lot about the deck and the way that it works. As It turned out I comboed a grand total of 7 times on the day. Most of my games were won with a raw dogged mirror entity, or nettle sentinel beatdown (sometimes even a morphed birchelore.) I found that the best cards in the deck were wirewood symbiote, wirewood hivemaster, herald and glimpse of nature because of their ability to diversify your threat base and remove your vulnerabilities to EE via card advantage or token generation (virtual card advantage.)
Elves is a hard deck to play. There are so many possible strategies from which to chose and a mistake will cost you the game. However, Elves can and has won a PTQ (could have won 2)as well as a gp and a pt. It is particularly powerful on the PTQ circut because people percieve it as being linear when in fact it is much more complex.
xiko says: April 8, 2009 @ 10:44 am
The problem is when you know you dont got the skill to pilot faeries to a win, so I played naya.
Good article and please, do keep the discussion.
TwoDuck says: April 8, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
Great article. While it seems like a simple concept, it is definitely one that a lot of people miss.
To me, you can sum this article up with one mantra: Figure out what deck the best players will be playing, then learn how to play and win with it, or learn how to beat it (w/o sacrificing too much against other decks.)
I realize this is simplistic, but am I missing something with this statement?
jesse says: April 11, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
to beat a skilled player all you need to due is “bluff the Lotus.”
I like your blog and I agree with everything that you stated in it, but you didn’t talk about bant aggro. I would like to know what your thoughts were about bant aggro.
Falkor says: April 12, 2009 @ 12:57 am
I agree with Dan.
I often play decks like Zoo that I have the time, money, energy, and cards to play, instead of building, testing, and playing either linear strategies like Elves! or TEPS or more controlling builds like Faeries.
I also think there are many players at a PTQ that are playing for the joy of playing, like an FNM, rather than a legitimate shot at the Pro Tour. Although you see less of these types of players at a PTQ than an FNM, this does not change the fact that there is a lot of dead money in Magic. I should know, since I am definitely one of them.
Incomplete testing, insufficient time and funds to access all cards required to complete a highly competitive deck, a goal aside from winning the PTQ — these are all reasons why everyone who sleeves up a deck does not have a chance to win a PTQ.
On a side note, it is really nice to actually read a lot of your thought process as you play Magic. It definitely helps me with my own play decisions.
Pingback Five With Flores » Part Two, Who Wants a Loxodon Hierarch? says: May 1, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
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