Season 2 of the MPDC League Begins

So Season 2 of the MPDC League officially started today. As I announced previously, this season will be a short, five-week series rather than a full ten-week series, with the hope that this will make it feel less oppressive to try and catch the early front-runners. Splitting up up like this did mean I had to essentially split the end-of-season prizes between the two seasons,  but overall I think this change will be for the best.

I know several people have requested that I make it easier to view and interpret the results from the Scoreboard each week. I'm sure someone better acquainted with Google Forms might be able to edit the spreadsheets to make it easier to read, but unfortunately I don't know of any way of doing this rather than having to manually edit the spreadsheet constantly, which isn't something I have the time to accomplish. The easiest thing to do is just download a copy to your own computer and then edit it in your own spreadsheet software. If someone can provide me with a better solution, I'd be happy to work on improving this.

I also know that many of you would like more posts about how the metagame is shaping up, and that will be something I will be writing about each Monday going forward. Sorry that I wasn't really able to do that last season.

Finally, all of the prizes (except for the 10 tix owed to afreeAk) have been distributed now from the first season. If you're still missing something, please contact me (gwyned at gmail dot com) and let me know.

Thanks so much! Looking forward to a great Season 2. Maybe I'll even get to play soon!

MPDC League Season One Results

The first season of the new MPDC League is now in the books. You can view the results of the final week here, or check out the tabulated totals for the entire season. While these totals are still preliminary while I double-check them for accuracy, it would appear that afreeAk is our Season One Champion! Also, if you don't mind, take a minute and check to see that you received the correct total points.

Joekewwl and I have been trading Emails about the current state of the league, and to that end I have a few ideas for what I would like to try.

First, with approximately 10 weeks between the release of Hour of Devastation and Ixalan, I would like to try two five week leagues rather than a single ten week one. It has been noted that the number of participants has been slowly declining over the past few weeks, and part of the rationale behind that is probably an inability to be able to catch the top players. Resetting the scoreboard more often should help alleviate that.

Second, since Season One ended a week earlier than was originally scheduled, I have an extra booster pack of Hour of Devastation from that week. Rather than throwing it back into the prize pool, I thought it would be great to give it away as a Door Prize to one lucky player who didn't finish in the Top 8 for the Season. I will be announcing the winner of the Door Prize later this week, so keep an eye on this blog, the main MPDC League page, and my Twitter.

Third, speaking of Hour of Devastation, the names of the 1st place players from each week of Season One of the MPDC Leagues will be distributed to Wizards of the Coast this week. I am unsure when these will be distributed to the 1st place winners, but they will automatically appear in your collection once this has happened. Once I have a clear estimate of the timing, I will announce that here.

I believe that's it for today. Thanks to everyone who participated in the league. Get out there and purchase your HOU Commons, because they will be legal for Season 2 of the MPDC League, which starts a week from today!

The Week of August 21st in Standard Pauper

It's been so great seeing so many new players showing up for Monday Pauper Deck Challenge over the past few weeks. We've seen attendance in the high teens, topping out this week at 20 players. While this is a long way from the 40-50 in attendance we've seen in the past, it still seems an encouraging sign that our community is starting to grow again. It also means we played out a Top 8 playoff again this week, giving us 12 decks to consider for this week's state of the metagame in Standard Pauper. Let's take a look at how things have changed since last time.

The Izzet Tempo list has risen to new heights, accounting for five of the eight decks that made Top 4 between our two Standard Pauper events. The deck also captured the trophy for both events, with AfroDwarf winning in SPDC and emerald000 winning in MPDC. The most notable innovation in the deck is the inclusion of more Madness effects, with olstyn's list in particular making use of both Mad Prophet and Reckless Scholar as enablers for Fiery Temper. Overall, nearly half the players in these two events were playing this archetype.

The GB and Sultai Control decks that dominated last season all but disappeared this week, with a lone entry by afreeAk in both events being not only such list to make the playoffs, but the only one that saw any play at all. I'm not sure whether to chalk this up to simple fatigue with the archetype, or a more fundamental shift in the metagame. This is definitely something to keep an eye out for.

Perhaps the most noteworthy entry is a RG Tremors deck played by Ravager1 that took 2nd place in MPDC. This deck is a tokens build looking to deal lots of damage via Impact Tremors. I actually played a very similar list at the end of last season, and overall I think it's definitely one worth exploring in this new metagame.

The rest of the top contenders this week includes a Dimir Control list by rremedio1 utilizing strong Graveyard recursion, a Jund sacrifice list played by cRUMMYdUMMY, and an "all-in" Rakdos Madness list piloted by Storm_blade.

So here are my observations on what I saw this week:

1. It should go without saying, but you should definitely expect to come up against the Izzet Tempo deck early and often, so you're gameplan better include cards that are strong against it. Given its lack of creatures and high number of spells, I would expect permission and card draw to both be important elements of such a strategy.
   
2. Thermo-Alchemist has probably eclipsed Pulse of Murasa as the most important card in the format right now. It's three Toughness makes it difficult to remove early, and when it goes unchecked it's not unreasonable for it to do 10 or more damage in a very short time in the Izzet decklist. And of course, Aura-based removal like Pacifism does very little to stop it.
   
3. White has completely disappeared from the top decks this week, accounting for only two decks between the two events. While some sort of Selenya aggressive build or an Aura-based decklist could be very viable in the metagame right now, these lists have definitely been on the decline, despite the strong support for the latter in Eldritch Moon. 
   
4. Finally, the Emerge deck has likewise faded away, although both Emerge creatures continue to be very important in the metagame. But with all the removal at your disposal, it simply isn't a viable strategy to build your entire strategy around these creatures.

That's it for this week. Also, if you've never checked out MPDC, why not give it a try this week? I encourage you to browse over to PDCMagic.com for all the information and then come join us at 2:00pm EST / 7:00pm GMT in the #MPDC channel.

The End of Season 33 for Standard Pauper

I ended up delaying this blog post one day so that I could see the results from SPDC 33 WORLDS, which was rescheduled to yesterday after low attendance on its regularly scheduled day. But with that event now complete, I have the opportunity to look at what happened in the capstone event of Season 33 of Standard Pauper.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Sultai Control was the big winner of the event, with emerald000 taking the gold trophy in MPDC and AfroDwarf doing the same in SPDC. In fact, these two decks were identical, save for a few differences in the Sideboard. All in all this archetype accounted for half of the eight decks that made it into the playoff rounds of these two events. The next archetype was the Enchaments deck, which afreeAk piloted to Top 4 in MPDC and 2nd place in SPDC. So that leaves the final two decks, which consisted of an Air Support deck run by littlefield and a Boros build by Paranoid_Android. So what are the takeaways as we head into next season?

1. Sultai remains the deck to beat, with its powerful sacrifice and recursion strategies, with Pulse of Murasa continuing to be one of the cornerstones of that deck.
   
2. The Enchantments deck has proven to be very consistent, and looks to be getting at least a few strong additions from Eldritch Moon. This will definitely be a deck to watch out for next season.
   
3. Aggro strategies are still quite feasible, but they have to be blisteringly fast in order to quickly overwhelm the more dominant Control archetypes. Air Support, Boros, and the Orzhov Aggro deck have all shown they can contend with Sultai.
   
4. None of the existing archetypes have a strangle-hold on the metagame, which means there should be plenty of room for new decks (or variations on existing ones) to rise to the top. 

I personally can't wait to see what surprises Eldritch Moon has in store for us. As I wrote a while back, it looks to be one of the better sets we've had at Common in a long time. Next season is certainly shaping up to be a good one!

The Week of July 17th in Standard Pauper

I had the misfortune of being without Internet (despite reassurances to the contrary) since Tuesday night, so once again I am not only posting this late, but have had very little opportunity to work on my set review. Such is life. Fortunately, after this weekend I will be back in my normal routine, and should be able to catch up on time lost. But enough excuses.

This week was the final week of Standard Pauper tournaments before the end of season capstone events tomorrow and Monday. So what happened this week in our metagame?

This week the typical GB Control build was completely eclipsed by the Sultai version. While it only accounted for three of the eight winning decklists, it did take the gold trophy in both events, piloted by the excellent Forli. cRUMMYdUMMY's aggressive Orzhov deck made another appearance, as did BW Allies, Boros, and Bant Vessels, along with a new Rakdos build by rremedio1. By sheer weight of its victories, the Sultai Control deck looks to be the deck to play in our capstone event, but if you chose to pilot it, make sure you have a solid gameplan for the mirror. Let's see, what else?

1. The Pulse of Murasa count was down to 16, but a full playset was included in every deck with access to Green. That particular card continues to be one of the cornerstones of the format.
   
2. Half of the winning decklists were playing three colors, with only Evolving Wilds plus either Vessel of Nascency or Pilgrim's Eye for fixing. While obviously more difficult with the loss of the come-into-play-tapped Dual Lands, three color mana bases are still quite possible within the format.
   
3. Paranoid_Android and afreeAk tied for Season Points in MPDC, earning an average of 6 points per event. Both of them will receive a booster pack of Eldritch Moon for their achievement. It certainly is worth your time to play in every event and post your decklist each week!
   
4. Speaking of afreeAk, he was also testing a new Naya build designed to utilize tokens in combination with Impact Tremors as well as recurring Auras that looked quite interesting. It seems a tricky strategy to pull off, but one that might be quite rewarding. Definitely something to consider!

And that's what happened this week in Standard Pauper. I look forward to seeing many of you this coming week for the last event of the season!

Standard Pauper Double League Loser's Bracket Finals

The Standard Pauper Double League is finally at an end, with the Finals of Phase 2 scheduled to play in just about an hour from when I am writing this. Overall I have been delighted with how the league turned out, with over 60 players participating representing a wide variety of decks.

Today I want to bring you the finals of the so-called Losers' Bracket, where afreeAk and Cyrulean competed to see who would get to compete in the final match of Phase 2. afreeAk is playing his Izzet Prowess build. While I don't have his decklist, it appears to be very similar to the list which he used to earn the first place trophy from MPDC 31.09. Cyrulean is playing White Weenie, and while once again I don't have his list, presumably it looks very similar to morphlling's winning list from MPDC 31.12.

So without further ado, here is the match:

As I mentioned above, the Finals of Phase 2 is scheduled for later this evening, and I will be online to make sure I capture it for a forthcoming article over at PureMTGO. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed for more information about when that article will be available. See you next time!

Standard Pauper Double League Video by Bobgar

Hard to believe, but this week is the final week of Swiss rounds in Phase 2 of the Standard Pauper Double League. With only 30 players in the second phase, all of the 4-1s or better will qualify for the Top 8, along with two other players with a 3-2 record. From what I've heard, Izzet variants continue to be the most popular archetype, but other top contenders are Azorius and Rakdos, along with a sprinkling of others.

Today, I want to highlight the excellent videos produced by Bobgar, otherwise known as Kevin Kohler, of his matches in Phase 2 of the League. You can find his channel here, along with a playlist here of all his matches in Phase 2. This week, he recorded his match against afreeAk, both of whom are playing Izzet and were 4-0 going into this week. Check out his video below:

Thanks so much Bobgar for recording your matches, and congrats to afreeAk for being the only player to go 5-0 in the Double League. Over the next few weeks, I'll have lots more to report back as the Double League comes to a close. Thanks for reading.

And as a reminder, if you have suggestions on content for this blog, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks so much!