[Article] February Metagame Breakdown

[Dr. Sylvan]

February Metagame Breakdown

[Vegeta2711]

Nice article as always and thanks for the plug for me and my primer.  

[Womprax]

Especially Womprax, the morphling.de slave.

<3

[Jacob Orlove]

Nice, but I can't wait for next months. We all know why.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Think I should quote my semi-ranting bafflement from the tourney forum for that one? :)

Thank goodness for that Denver tournament putting in three Keepers and a Hulk to the pool. As of now, the best decks for "March" (by which I mean mostly late-breaking February results) are Keeper, Hulk, Landstill, Rector, Charbelcher (in that order).

[rvs]

Phil, as always good work.

Maybe it's more interesting to also report from high-level tournaments, rather than just the size of the player pool. For instance, metagames that feature around 70% of powered / semi-powered decks.
You'd get a much larger sample rate in terms of cards and archetypes, which is a lot better for detecting trends. It would also solve the problem of a random T8 like the one at Duelmen.

Just a thought...

[Dr. Sylvan]

Trouble is it'd be hard to verify that. I mean, if the TO records it all, that'd be cool to know, but even if we can get that (and since typically three of forty decklists are missing, I don't have absolute confidence in this), we run into proxy tournaments. Then everyone is Powered/semi-Powered, but it doesn't mean jack about the quality of the player pool. Additionally, small tournaments are distorted by a small handful of regular attendees that others can metagame against in a way that won't be indicative of a broader, larger tournament. Finally, it's hard to guarantee an indicative Top 8 after less than six or seven rounds. People might just get totally lucky with their matchups, leading to weird results.

So as much as I'd like to blot that white weenie deck from the record books with a deluge of other tournaments, it just isn't a viable plan.