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Main » Articles » Breaking Down GP Lille and New Jersey

Breaking Down GP Lille and New Jersey

Jeff Hoogland
Posted on October 31, 2018
 Reddit

We are a month into this Standard format and I have to say it is the most fun I have had playing Magic in a long time. This format is quite possibly the best format I have ever played in a TCG to date. That being said, up until this past weekend, we had not had any major Standard events.

For those who might be new to Magic, this is a big deal because generally the first big Open, Grand Prix, or Pro Tour in a new format sets the stage for what is going to be popular moving forward. With this in mind, let's dive into the results of both Grand Prix Lille and Grand Prix New Jersey and see what we can learn.

For Grand Prix Lille, we have access to the Top 37 deck lists because this is where the record 11-3-1 went down to. At a glance, these 37 deck lists turn into the following breakdown:

As someone who has been playing a good deal of Standard for the last month, these top three decks were not much of a surprise to me. They were all known entities from Magic Online Leagues and smaller events that put up additional results as expected.

If we look a little deeper than the raw number of each archetype in the Top 32, we can gain a bit of information about the performance of the more popular decks. While we do not know the exact starting distribution of decks in a Grand Prix, we do have information of the distribution of decks at the start of day two of this GP:

We can compare these starting day 2 numbers to the final standings of decks to gauge how well each archetype performed at the event:

Hopefully the first few columns have fairly obvious meaning. The fifth column which I have called "Performance Rating" is simply a ratio of column 3 compared to column 4. A deck that has the same percentage of top finishes compared to its day 2 percentage will be 100%. Anything above 100% indicates a deck likely overperformed and anything under 100% is under performing.

Looking at these numbers, it looks like Green-Black and Jeskai both had fairly average weekends. The real story of GP Lille looks to be the Izzet Phoenix Deck though:

Izzet Phoenix | Guilds Standard | Arne Huschenbeth

While this deck was a known entity from online events, its performance in Lille is really impressive. Turning an ~8% day two representation into ~18% of top finishes is very good.

If we turn our eyes to the other Grand Prix that happened this weekend on the other side of the world, we get data that looks a bit different. As of my writing this, there are currently 31 decks posted from New Jersey with the following breakdown:

While Jeskai Control is more strongly represented in these finishes, both Golgari and Izzet Phoenix posted far worse results. Filling out the difference in New Jersey are iterations of different White based midrange decks with either a Red or Green splash. Why were these White midrange decks so successful? I think the answer is this key hate card:

Tocatli Honor Guard

Golgari was one of the most represented decks in New Jersey just like Lille. Golgari is especially soft to Honor Guard because in addition to a majority of their creatures having enter the battlefield effects, four of their pieces of removal are Ravenous Chupacabra which Honor Guard shuts off.

Just how much did Golgari underperform by? Let's look doing a similar comparison as above:

Golgari performed pretty poorly. In fact, it was the worst performing of the decks that had two or more copies in the Top 32 of the Grand Prix. Looking at the performances of other top decks, I would venture to guess that Golgari's lack of success could likely be due to the White based midrange decks featuring Tocatli Honor Guard preying on them.

Comparing the results from both GPs though, the real story of the weekend looks to be Jeskai Control. It performed slightly above average in Lille and put up truly great numbers in New Jersey. Looking at all of the various iterations of Jeskai Control, there does not seem to be a clear consensus among the successful lists of what is optimal. There are variations not only in what threats the different lists are playing, but also the suite of answers they feature.

To compare, let's look at the winning list from Grand Prix New Jersey:

Jeskai Control | Guilds Standard | Eli Kassis

This list is looking to leverage the combination of Azor's Gateway flipping to make a large amount of mana for a lethal copy of Explosion.

Just outside the Top 8 of GP Lille in 9th place is an interesting variation of Jeskai featuring four main deck copies of Rekindling Phoenix:

Jeskai Control | Guilds Standard | Francesco Giorgio, 9th Place GP Lille

Phoenix seems like a great tool for both pressuring planeswalkers against decks like Golgari as well as simply closing out the game once you take over.

Finally, compare these lists to a list from the Top 8 of GP Lille that was even more threat-dense featuring four copies of Crackling Drake for closing out games:

Jeskai Control | Guilds Standard | Florian Trotte, 5th Place GP Lille

I think this might be my favorite of the Jeskai iterations I have seen. Crackling Drake gives us the ability to close when we need to and it is a threat that is not a terrible draw in the control mirror because it draws a card when it comes into play. Drake also works well with the lifelink half of Deafening Clarion to allow us to stabilize our life total against aggressive decks as well.

Before I wrap up for today, I would be remiss if I did not point out a new archetype that popped up in 35th place at GP Lille:

Naya Ramp | Guilds Standard | Sandro Bernabe, 35th Place GP Lille

I'm not quite sure what to make of this deck. At a glance, I would assume that its success was due in large part to the prevalence of Golgari. This deck goes larger than any midrange deck can, especially with three main deck copies of Star of Extinction for cleaning up not only creatures, but also planeswalkers. The four copies of Carnage Tyrant and two copies of Banefire in the board also look to be terrifying for most Blue based control decks to play through.

That being said, the lack of early interaction this deck is playing likely means it will have a hard time against anything remotely aggressive if it does not draw Deafening Clarion early. That being said, there is also a very real chance that the three main deck copies of Pelakka Wurm go a long way toward stabilizing both the board and life total.

Wrapping Up

Normally the first weekend of large events like this really defines Standard. It sets up the villains we are looking to beat for the next few months and gives us some idea of what decks might be good for attacking them. This time around, I do not feel like that has happened though. Golgari, while powerful, is definitely beatable as the slew of White based midrange decks in New Jersey showed.

It is possible based on the results of this weekend that Jeskai Control will become the deck to beat moving forward, but it is too early to tell if it will become the lasting boogieman of the format or simply have a different archetype form to attack it at a critical angle.

What have you thought of Standard so far? Is there a specific deck you are enjoying? Is there a specific deck you hate playing against? Let me know in a comment below!

Cheers,

-Jeff Hoogland

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, analysis, decklist, jeff hoogland, guilds standard, 10312018, gp lille, gp new jersey

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