Magic Online‘s big year-end celebration has been going on for the last two weeks (by the time this article is published, the celebration will be on its final day). The fact that Classic was chosen by Wizards was a little surprising, but certainly a welcomed decision. As I’ve written on numerous occasions, Classic has undergone a renaissance in the second half of 2011 and the Celebration is the icing on the cake to what has shaped up to be a fabulous year for the format.
With the help of Wizards, Classic has seen a flurry of tournaments, the likes of which have never been replicated. Multiple “scheduled events” have fired each day of the celebration, and on most days (save for Christmas day), three to four events have fired (including at least one with day during which five events fired). Additionally, many of the events fired with greater than the minimum number of participants. Think back to the second quarter of this year where the format could hardly fire five events over the course of three months, and you can see what this means for Classic. The format was even able to fire two Premier Events!
As of writing this article, there have been 28 events (including the two Premier Events) with 36 people qualifying for the Winter Celebration Championship on Jan 7th. The grand prize for the winner of the tournament is four foil “Wishes” of any Classic-Legal set that is draftable, in addition to 33 Mercadian Masques boosters.
Also, the Classic metagame has had a couple of “coming out parties,” namely:
These four cards represented the top four decks of the Celebration, far outpacing the rest of the field. Particularly interesting is the number of appearances of Delver of Secrets (often paired with Snapcaster Mage. These “Fish”-style decks have been the second most successful archetype. I played the deck last month (see UTV # 12) after seeing a similar deck from Cownose, and thought it was pretty good, but I had no idea at the time that it would put up the results that it has thus far. Perhaps I’ll write up a deck tech for the next article, but that’s a story for another day.
The other notable rise in appearances comes from a Legacy port, Affinity. The Classic version of Affinity plays almost like the Sligh decks of yore, as having access to Mishra’s Workshop significantly lowers the casting cost of all the creatures. This deck is able to dump its entire hand on Turn 1 or 2 with little resistance, and Skullclamp provides the deck with all of the card advantage it would need to get to the mid and late game. All the credit goes to themagicman_22, who first piloted the current version of Affinity several weeks back. Its appearance in this Celebration is not too surprising, as many people already have most of the cards for the deck, even if they had never played Classic before. Legacy Affinity was always viewed as a budget deck, and the only cards that those players would need to pick up would be Workshops, Strip Mine and perhaps Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and/or Mana Vault.
The result of the prevalence of those two aforementioned decks plays perhaps the biggest part in why Oath of Druids has seen a resurgence in popularity. In the later stages of the Celebration, it would not be uncommon for someone to only play against Affinity and Oath decks in a scheduled event. With regard to Oath, not only is it a powerful deck that many format standbys enjoy piloting, but even a few Magic “Pros” have been sighted in the events, choosing the deck that has long been considered the best deck in a Power 9-less format. Perhaps the only deck Affinity cannot beat is in fact Oath, especially ShOath decks that pack four Emrakul, the Aeons Torns. Affinity has no way to interact on the stack with an Oath player, and doesn’t have any answers once an Emrakul or Blightsteel Colossus hits the board (except possibly to finish the race that turn).
The last deck to see success is none other than Dredge. Dredge on the whole has done slightly better than Affinity in placing pilots into the money, though many of the results came from earlier in the Celebration when people were not sideboarding as heavily for it. As the metagame has started to get fleshed out, it has become clear that if you play one of the top four decks and your deck has some solid answers in the mainboard for one of the three other leading decks, you can fill your sideboard with seven to eight answers against the decks that cause you the most trouble. This has lead people to side in as many as eight pieces of hate against Dredge and fewer against other top-placing decks towards the end of the Celebration.
So, what does this mean for Classic going forward? It’s a great sign that these events are firing. Many new faces are showing up to the events, and nearly all of them are “real” decks. It will be interesting to see how many of these new faces are likely to stick around and how many are simply playing because it’s the best prize support available right now. Only time will be able to decide that for us. In the meantime, we get to enjoy the attention that Classic is getting and believe that the format will be stronger as a result of the Celebration. Personally, I would like to thank Wizards for providing the community with this wonderful opportunity. I hope Wizards is taking note that Classic is a format with solid support and interest.
As a bonus, here is some video coverage of one of the Scheduled Events that I was able to join despite the busy holiday season and family obligations. I did make some mistakes during these matches, and where I didn’t point them out in the video, here are some plays that I should have done differently in hindsight:
R1G1: Turn 3 I should have kept the Force of Will for a later problematic card, such as the Skullclamp that I was baited into or the Lodestone Golem a couple turns later. On Turn 4, I missed an opportunity to shuffle away the useless Mental Misstep after having revealed it for a Delver, which possibly could’ve netted me a card of higher value.
R1G2: On Turn 11, I probably should have attacked into the unequipped Frogmite with my Snapcaster. By waiting a turn, I not only decided to take the damage, but I allowed my opponent not to mistakenly trade without getting value from the Skullclamp. It probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but seeing that I was one turn away from finding one of my bullet cards against Affinity in Hurkyl’s Recall, it may have allowed me to come back for the win. And with time running awfully short for my opponent, I might have stolen Game 3 due to a time-out.
R3G1: On Turn 4 I missed an opportunity to Brainstorm. Also, on Turn 17 I forgot to crack my fetch land before Brainstorming with Jace, the Mind Sculptor to refresh the top of my library.
Enjoy the games, and I look forward to your comments below.
Decklist
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.DE Round 1
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.DE Round 2
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.DE Round 3
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.DE Round 4
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.enderfall
Clan Magic Eternal
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Your decision-making could use some work. Watching round 1 – Brainstorming EOT when you have a fetchland in hand is usually wrong. Not playing a delver to hold up mental misstep (??) when you are a delver deck is just straight up incorrect.
Hi CSeraph, could you specifically point out when in Round 1 you are referring to when you say that I held up Delver for a misstep? I don’t see any instance where I held up a Delver for a Misstep, except that I did not run my Delver out on turn 1 in game 1 in the face of a potential counter war or an Oath deck, as I didn’t know what deck my opponent was playing at the time. No sense in fighting over a Delver in a meta running wild with Oath of Druids. Nothing is worse than losing simply because you played a one-mana dork and your opponent opens with land, lotus petal, Oath and counter back-up. I may have missed something, but I’m just curious. Thanks.
hoooooly f*** round 4 was funny; what a deck
and so gorgeous how everything was so good against you. The knight actually stops your whole team.
Grizzly bears are terrifying in this format!
it actually made me mad watching this. especially against the affinity deck when you made the slight complaint about not drawing what you needed..dont endstep a brainstorm especially if your not planning on using mana on your turn. you brainstorm on your turn to get 1 card deeper and you had a fetch so you woulda got to shuffle away 2 bad cards and see 4 cards that turn. what you did by not cracking fetchlands and redrawing cards that werent the answer cost you the affinity match.
Brad, Thanks for your note. I guess I’m the only person that has ever thought to themselves, gee if I only had one card… but anyway, if you look just before the videos, I note some instances where I had made a mistake (and not noted it in the video itself). This was something that was suggested a couple weeks back and if you can think of a better way to present this, I’m open to ideas. Sorry that you missed them the first time around.
Cockhorse, yes, round 4 was strange indeed.