I rearrange the ideas behind What I think that bring us to win:
We have weekly t1 sanctioned ( rel2 at least ) huge tourneys with a field extremely various consisting both of good decks ( but netdecked as usual ) and both good decks "morphed" by the singles players to his own ideas TAKEN from the good netdecks. We have a good "aggro-not-so-powered" number of decks too that rise the typologies of "decks to expect and face to win".
Players here tend NOT to change and swap the typology of the deck played util now for other new monsters so easily. They prefer to change and tune what they are playing to face the new monsters
(if possible of course)
I tend to see that the tourneys in America/NorthEurope are less frequents and with a numeric mean of players a bit lower ( excluding Dulmen and Waterbury and a few other random great events ). So the type of decks to face in yours tourney are lower in number and typology. You can easily adjust the side to face 4 or 5 of them and beign sure to cover a great percentage of the possible opponents.
The problem of adapting a netlist or a good deck to what is "unexpected" in a large field as GENcon is ONE of the greatest things to solve to TRY to win such an event.
What we ( Italians ) found in Barcelona is a gigantic but similar "mainframe" with a lot of pieces easily recognaizable and dominable ONLY thaks to the ability to face a lot of different decks at once born and developed in our country "for necessity" . Our real life turneys are a little "mirror" of what we faced in barcelona. We were more used than the other people to "see through this glass".
These kind of things bring us to an higher level compared to the great majority of the people that came to GENcon. We are used to face a lot more than Slavery, HUlk, 4C-C and FCG and one or two Belcher or Draw7.dec.
So "our" real life decks, tuned during these months to face "almost everything" in a large field, performed better ( coupled with a good experience and personal ability of the specific player ) than some exasperated and/or usual-tier1-decklists, unable to
"deal with something at some moment for some reasons"I'm almost sure to know the reasons behind the top8 of the day 4 ( sunday ), during which a lot of MUD and other decks placed in the top8.
Thursday there were only 4 italians. 2 of them top8ed with decks equipped to face those muds, that IMHO, are really strong if noone expect A LOT of them as instead happened during these tourneys.
Friday and Saturday there 14 italians. A lot of them top8ed. with the same decks.
Sunday noone of them played the tourney because we sleeped until afternoon.
This fact let a lot of MUD to win even after 4 days of scouting. A lot of the people are totally unprepared to this deck even during day 4.
It can be hilarious to read but it is almost true: excluding the players that won a lot against MUD, MUD would come back to win.
The really good fact to underline should be that in a "metagame" so much filled with MW.dec, the only good combo decks that were played, did indeed top8 ( Dargon and TPS ). I think that it should be time to clear some of the bad preconcept about these decks. The results done until now bring them in the "winning category" with other TopDecks.
@Jacob is totally right. I think that until now top player chosen to play and win with Control Decks for some respectable reasons. The tendency, at least here in Italy, is different. We have top players with hard-on for control, aggro-control decks and top players fallen in love for combo decks too. I' sad that not so many among the usual good players worked a lot on Aggro, Hybrid-Aggro strategies to rise a bit the winning rate of those decks. Madness', Mask's and Affinity's decks are the only ones that sometimes ( too few times IMHO ) entered in the top8 and did well. If some more Good players would work around them to improve those decks in some new directions, I think that the metagame would be more exciting and difficult to predict.
I appreciated a lot the work that "Siral" here on TMD and both "Sauron" and "Grimmy" did at our Affinity deck. It has a lot of "I win" cards even if the deck some times had to use that damn Attack Phase. It won a lot against control and can "race" against combo with a bit of luck.
If some other good players would work on different decks, I think that we should began to fear even the Attack Phase and not only the Opponent's-EoT-Brokeness..
Maxx.
"Frost" have been far-sighted with his choice.
It is a "deck to beat" even if he was the only one to play it among all the players.
