General Strategy – Mana Tutors

The Medium Guide to Big Magic Tournaments (part 3)

This is part three of a multiple article series. The first article covered game-play improvements and suggestions. The second article covers some meta decisions about how to do well at tournaments. Part three will cover logistical and financial-ish suggestions. Buckle in kids, this one’s going to be weird.

Which tournament should I play?

The one that you find the most fun! Silly goose! Always have fun playing magic!

Alright, having gotten that out of the way, there are a lot of choices between events nowadays. You can GP or MCQ to try and qual for the MC, or there are plenty of sides that are usually slightly easier and possibly more fun events. For myself, I did rough calculations of what my probability of qualifying for the pro tour is for each type of event (with different assumed win rates) to inform myself of what I should prioritize as a player. Note that these are based on a hyper-geometric calculator with a population size of 1000 that I am drawing from (no replacement) based on my proposed win rate (for a 50% win rate I’d have a population of 500 win and 500 loss) for a number of rounds equal to tournament size and a required number of wins equal to the normal number required (13-2 for a gp for example, x-1-1 for an ptq/mcq, etc). This is not an exhaustive or precise mathematical model; these are just rough rules of thumb that I played with to see if my intuitions were correct. I’m sure someone reading this is already frothing at the mouth to tell me my math is wrong; too late, I already know it’s wrong, please give me my recommended daily serving of salt in the comments below. In the table below are event type (with assumed record required to qualify).

Win %	GP (13-2)	GP PTQ (8-0)	Local PTQ (10-1)	Local PTQ (9-1)
50%	0.35%	0.38%	0.56%	1.04%
55%	1%	0.82%	1.35%	2.3%
60%	2.6%	1.6%	3%	4.6%
66%	7%	3.5%	6.8%	9.5%

This supports what I had already kind of assumed. Small local MCQ’s give the best value. 8 rounder MCQ’s are about comparable to a GP, and the GP MCQ’s where you have to go undefeated give the lowest percentages for actually qualifying.

Come physically prepared to tournaments

Amusingly, some of the more highly respected pros I have played against have been the most flagrant violators of this rule. The biggest borrowers of dice, playmatless, without their own lands or sleeves, often seem to be the gold pros. To be fair, this is probably their third GP this month, and they’ve been travelling nonstop all year, but it still strikes me as very funny.

Limited GPs do not always have sleeves, deckbox, life pads, and lands for you. Increasingly less so than they used to in fact. Sometimes your neighbor grabs all the swamps you need during deck building. Sometimes vendors are out of extra lifepads. I have a main box with two pockets, one for dice, small pens, board guide, and life pads, the other pocket for my deck and sideboard. I always bring my own lands and sleeves in a separate box that I keep on hand for all limited events. If I forgot my own lands, I grab 15 matching lands of each basic land type out of a land box before my event starts. It’s a small edge, but having lands that match is nice, and keeps you from unintentionally giving away info. Being prepared is the polite thing to do, but more importantly it saves a lot of time and hassle later, and can manifest in small edges. For sealed pools be sure to sleeve ANY card that might come into your deck (hence why I bring my own sleeves, I might need 80+ to sleeve what I need to). Look at your pool and if there is a secondary deck you might sleeve up, make sure it is ready to go should you need it. Having your own lands also means you can get your deck sleeved up and even draw some sample hands before deck submission is done; this isn’t necessary, but I find it comforting to see a few sample hands with my newly sleeved deck.

How do GP payouts work?

This is a question that doesn’t really occur to anyone until they’re deep in day two and realize they don’t really know what’s going on. The ever-changing nature of this means that my advice might be out of date already, but I’ll post what I know now.

I’ll assume that the average GPS is about 1200 people. Assuming these numbers I have observed the following for payouts with the old system. Top 8 is usually X-2 or better, with some X-2’s missing out if the tournament is larger; sometimes X-2-1 sneak in for smaller tournaments. X-3s usually span 9^th-20^th or so, depending on breakers you could get top 16 or top 32 money. X-4’s usually span through the 64’s and past it, so if you have good breakers you should top 64, but with bad breakers you’ll probably be below. With the new flatter payouts as low as ~200^th’ish place I was able to cash with X-5-1 (intentionally drawing the last round in Seattle because we knew we’d be guaranteed prize), with something like 6 X-6 people prizing. Seattle was a larger tournament too, so X-6 might be the standard cutoff for prizes now. The limited portion of GP Vegas similarly put the x-5-1 bracket into the money, while the modern portion payed to x-5 (I know this because friends prized in both of these tournaments). In short, keep playing day two if that 200 bucks is worth it to you and if the tournament is paying that far down. These are mostly guesses, there are calculators out there that might help as well; just don’t rely on them to do breaker math (that’s a whole different article, and one I’m not sure I’m qualified for). Honesty, unless I have a very specific thing to get to, I always play the entirety of a GP day two, previously to collect pro points and mostly to just have fun with other high level players.

When you receive prizes as part of an event, make sure to receive the handout or any other information that you might need. Ask judges if need be; at GPs there is usually a piece of paper they hand out. Wizards pays you via an e-wallet account they make you set up the first time that you receive prize. They will need your account associated with your DCI number to be up to date, or at least have a functional email attached (this was initially an issue with me, as my original DCI had a very dead email associated with it). You will usually receive an email the ~Wednesday the week after the tournament telling you how to setup payment, it can take up to a week longer than this. They’ll want a bank account (I think there are other forms of payment, but this seems easiest) and a blank check to verify. It will usually take 1-2 days for them to verify your account, but then once you are secured you can withdraw the money basically immediately.

Check payouts before you leave

This is similar to some things I said above, but this is worth mentioning again. When I’m playing a magic tournament, I’m pretty much there from beginning to end. This is usually because I am there with friends and will have to wait for them anyway. I have a number of friends with a tendency to go 0-2 drop, or otherwise drop after a loss or two on day two of a GP. The thing about larger tournaments, especially tournaments that Wizards is specifically involved in, is that they tend to pay down further in the standings than you might expect from more local tournaments. RPTQs used to guarantee payouts for nearly every competitor. GP tournaments now pay down to somewhere in the 175-200ish range. This is basically everyone who doesn’t completely bomb on day 2. If you’re playing in side events, make sure you get your promo. In short, just because you’re feeling bad, and grumpy about magic for the day, you should probably at least make sure not to leave free money on the table. Ask a judge if payouts aren’t posted, you just never know.

Be prepared to sleep in adverse conditions

This might only be something that happens to me, but I thought I might as well bring it up. Until very recently I would always fly in and out of San Francisco International, with my flight back being a late flight. My late flight would get delayed until the next morning approximately 50% of the time, resulting in me getting in very early in the morning instead. The thing about getting delayed until the next morning is the wonderful decision to have about a 4 hour period of time where you should be sleeping, but aren’t sure if you want to spring for a hotel. For these absurd overnight delays, I just always operate as if I’m going to get stuck at the airport and always have a travel pillow and blanket with me. They do not take up much space, and they’re a life saver if stranded. If you’re staying at a friend’s place or splitting a hotel, they might not have extra pillows and blankets anyway, so it always helps to have your own for backup. On a similar note: magic players have a tendency to snore. I highly recommend ear plugs to have any chance of sleeping if you are sharing a room. I am also partial to an eye mask, since there will always be a player who has to get up too early and probably make a nuisance of themselves with the windows or lights. The eye mask and earplugs are easy to just stick in a pocket of a backpack and forget about, they take up next to 0 space. In short, if you’re looking to travel on the cheap be prepared to sleep in harsh conditions.

Draft chaff is plentiful

Draft chaff at large tournaments, as well as local game stores, is often left on tables or in designated spots for scavenging. I am often building standard decks for multiple players and have a need for multiple copies of commons/uncommons for standard sets. Similarly, when I was getting back into the game ~6 years ago, I had very little in the way of the commons/uncommons needed to complete my decks. Local shops often carry only a limited supply of chaff. Especially for newer to paper players, or more casual players, where the chaff is more likely to be valuable, I highly recommend being on the lookout for cards headed to the dumpster. They can save a significant amount in tcgplayer mini-purchases and other headaches that add up over time and can be very important for newer players who may not have the resources to fill out the last few pieces of their decks. At Grand Prix these piles can usually be found near the judge stations or land stations or in random piles on tables throughout the tournament hall. Please try not to be a nuisance when going through these piles. Don’t get in the judge’s way, and don’t take cards if it looks like they are marked to be given away for charity. If you find chaff on a table, maybe take the whole pile, keep the pieces you want, and dump the rest off in the designated chaff boxes. Anything to reduce the workload on judges to pick up everyone’s junk is a net positive and I recommend making yourself a boon and not a burden to the judging/event staff.

Pros are still human beings

Famous pros are people. They are not godlike beings with all the answers. They will not automatically beat you at cards. Depending on the tournament you might even be better prepared then they are; this is especially true in specialty formats like Legacy with fewer events in a year. In short, any player is fallible. When you sit down don’t psych yourself out. Just play like anyone else at your local store. Just like anyone else in sealed, assume they don’t have it until you see it. If anything they might be more susceptible to minor bluffs (attack my 2/2 into your 1/3). Just don’t get into your own head, play like normal and you’ll be fine.

Sidenote: people need space and recuperation time. This probably goes for semi-celebrity players as well. If you would like an autograph or to chat try to keep it polite, to the point, and be willing to move along if it isn’t the right time for them. Maybe don’t glomp them while they’re trying to eat their meal between rounds. Also, the very large crowd around Dana Fischer during rounds has been becoming increasingly absurd. I’m not saying Dana isn’t awesome and doesn’t deserve accolades, I’m just saying we should give her some space to play.

What is that cool box?

I mentioned previously that I always use a two compartment box for mtg cards. This box also happens to be pretty cool because it has an alteration from one of my favorite artists in the world. I’m not receiving anything in return here, I just think Grichels does an amazing job and thought I’d mention it here. Also I get asked about this a lot and it’s kind of hard to describe what’s up or where to go without a link. So here you go: link. Also keep in mind that all of these alterations are done by hand by a single hardworking lady. Happy to support her. These are mostly found at renaissance festivals, possibly one near you. The deck boxes come up intermittently, so you might have to check her website every once in awhile. The best time for deck boxes is winter when Grichels is not at any Renaissance festivals. For reference, here is my box for the last 5+ years or so.

That more or less rounds out part 3 of my big tournament series. It primarily covered a lot of smaller talking points or things that have been covered in depth elsewhere. This third installment was dangerously close to an mtg finance article, complete with an ad at the end. Please forgive me.

The Medium Guide to Big Magic Tournaments (part 1)

This is part one of a multiple article series. The first article will cover gameplay improvements and suggestions. Part two will cover some meta decisions about how to do well at tournaments. Part three will cover logistical suggestions.

Over the course of a few years I went from coming back into magic with no cards and on a 5+ year hiatus, to finishing top 16 in Grand Prix tournaments in every format. I haven’t been the best at spiking tournaments, but I have done an above average job of putting myself into a bubble slot to get there. I think my perspective is more interesting because I am not a full time magic player, and I do not necessarily travel or prepare as much as other more entrenched players. I go to about 6-8 mostly local GP’s a year, many local PTQ’s, play almost zero online magic. In short, I don’t have as much play time in any given format as many of my opponents, have a full-time job, don’t spend a ton of money on travel, and am therefore closer to the average mtg player than many higher-level pros. The purpose of this article will be to give several small tips and other edges that I think will help you improve your win percentages in larger tournaments and maybe help with some of the other less talked about aspects of magic. Many of these may be obvious to you, while others might not apply, but hopefully one or two nuggets of wisdom stick and help in your future endeavors.

A draw is a loss

I’m going to start with one of my biggest pet peeves, and a point that I think is often misunderstood by newer players. A DRAW IS A LOSS.

Don’t play to draw, especially in a large tournament, if you can help it. The first reason for this is literal, for the purposes of making day two and for pairings for the rest of the tournament, a draw functions as a loss. It doesn’t help for making day two, it doesn’t help for more pro points, and it only marginally helps with payouts at the end if you get that far. Until/if you get to the final round, then it might act as a “really good tiebreaker” on a loss at best. The second reason you don’t want a draw is because the draws tend to beget more draws. Once you are in the draw bracket at a GP, the only people you will be playing for the remainder of the tournament will also be people that took draws; these are players that probably will not set speed records for decision making and there is an above average chance that they are control players. The reason I am hyperbolic here is because I think the mental shift of considering a draw to be a loss will actively change how you play, usually for the better. By playing as if a draw is literally losing it forces you to change your perspective. You can also take all of this to mean that you should play faster. But I think it would be more precise to say “be mindful of time” and “be more efficient.” The clock system being used in paper magic is different from digital magic, and put constraints on both players very different from those online.

Sidenote: one can take advantage of knowledge of the draw bracket. For example, in legacy the draw bracket is usually dominated by bad miracles players, if you are playing something like post that is 70-30 against miracles, a draw might be an interesting heads up play. I say “bad” miracles players, because miracles is a deck with a lot of decisions and very few win conditions, and it takes a lot of practice to be able to make all of the necessary decisions quickly and the newer players to the deck tend to be glacial; this also applies to UW control in modern, and occasionally to win-conditionless standard decks. Basically, this is always kind of a joke scenario I discuss among friends, and I don’t recommend taking draws early just to try and beat inexperienced control pilots (which might backfire anyway, as they might play you into additional draws).

I have one unintentional draw in my magic career, and that is because of a spirits mirror where we both had worship in play; I was playing lightning fast trying to get to my 2 remaining outs to remove his enchantment (he was out of outs to remove mine). Honestly, it’s my fault for having the card in my sideboard in the first place. By the end of the season we had discovered that often Gideon Jura performed a similar role better (especially against other worship decks), and were using this in the same slot.

There are several reasons I do not draw very often:

I try to get to my seat early to get a clear view of the round timer; being able to see the timer is a good way to be able to steer the speed of the match. My rule of thumb, if your first game looks to be going over the 15 minute mark, try to see how you can speed things up and evaluate how both players’ pacing is going.
Be willing to concede against a control or prison deck game 1 if you are less than 5% to win; this is/was especially key against decks like lantern control in modern (or if both players are on a control mirror in standard), where they are so slow that if you let the games play out all the way the match could be a single game affair. Sometimes if you can see that the match might go very long, it can be best to try to move along so that you have a chance to get to a reasonable game 3 if you win game 2.

Often for decks like lantern the fault of “slowplay” isn’t on the part of the lantern player; rather, their opponent tends to take a longer time to make plays or refuse to concede because they don’t know they are beaten.
- I have seen a local bay area grinder unintentionally draw himself out of top 8 contention on at least 2 occasions because he a) tends to play slower decks, b) is unlucky enough to face opponents that are both slow decision makers and unwilling to concede when effectively beaten, and c) doesn’t call a judge soon enough. This leads us to the next point.

I am ready and willing to call a judge on my opponent for slow-play. You do not have to be rude about this. I usually give my own verbal warning first, something along the lines of “hey, it’s already been 15 minutes this game, let’s both try to play faster so we don’t draw.” After I talk to my opponent and they are still playing slowly I am happy to call a judge to watch our pace of play. This is not a dirty, shameful act, and your opponent does not have any reason to be salty because of this. It is in both players’ best interest to finish a match on time and judges are there to help for just that kind of thing.
My pace of play is slightly above average. This is largely because whenever there is downtime in a game, while someone is shuffling or my opponent is thinking, I am thinking about what my next move(s) will be, and what counter plays I might have to his possible moves. This is also useful for having meaningful bluffs; if you can jam your cards quickly without having to pause to think it makes you much more believable. I will adjust my sideboarding based on how much time is left and if I need to play to win quickly.
I tend to play proactive decks. Obviously this isn’t always correct (unless the format is modern: friends don’t let friends play control in modern) and it isn’t everyone’s style, but boy do I like having time between rounds in a large tournament. I will play a more controlling deck, but only if I have sufficient time to learn the deck thoroughly enough to not draw.

I’m not an over-shuffler. We’ve all sat across from the player who takes 5 minutes shuffling EVERY TIME. Then they spend just as much time shuffling your deck as they did their own. Don’t be that guy. This is a substantial waste of time for both parties no matter how much you feel like you’re controlling your destiny by over-shuffling (you aren’t). 7 riffles is enough to sufficiently randomize; a few more is fine, but please for the sake of us all, don’t overdo it.

You are going to make mistakes

Unfun facts. You are going to punt important matches, you are going to make bad deck choices, you might mis-register your deck, be late for a round, or draw yourself into 9^th (I just did this at a recent CFB legacy 3k), or misread an opponent and get beaten on a bluff. It is all your fault and you might feel bad about it.

I have found that the best thing for me is to acknowledge the mistakes, find the parts that you did not do wrong, and then kindly and gently (not forcefully, if that makes sense) shelve it and put it behind you as best you can. You brain will try to focus on the bad more than the good, and the only thing you can do is try to acknowledge it and move along. Similarly, you must trust the man on the ground. Looking back at video footage with future knowledge might make it easy to be down on yourself, but it is important to realize what you knew at the time. I unnecessarily gave Jeremy Dezani a 3 outer to beat me in game 3 of a legacy GP win-and-in. It bothered me immensely for a day or two, but eventually I had to calmly recognize that I made a mistake, and that is ok. This is doubly true mid-tournament, where it is very easy to go on tilt and cause additional losses. I think this is also important for team events. You’ve chosen your teammates beforehand, they will make mistakes and that is ok, just try to help each other out as best you can. My friends and I have a saying we will yell at each other when someone tilts mid-tournament: “new round new tournament!” This doesn’t really make sense, but it is a reminder that each round is an independent entity, and there is no reason to go in with baggage from previous rounds.

Don’t always do the same thing

I provide a lot of heuristics, as do various other authors, for what one should do in specific situations.

These are great as general rules, but there are always times to improvise. I’ve been told by a few different storm opponents that I am difficult to play against; largely because when they present a difficult situation I will react differently or at least think it through each time. Many players, especially playing against a complicated combo deck like storm, will always do X. For example, some people will always counter the dark ritual, while others refuse to. Your opponent can take advantage of this, especially if they have played against you multiple times. If you always counter the ritual they can try to bait your counterspells with rituals. If you never counter they know they can just go off with ritual into duress. When you are playing a match you are building a narrative with your opponent. Maybe they have an overrun effect in sealed that they showed you the first game, and now they know you have to respect that overrun for the rest of the match. Similarly, I will often attack my 2/2 into their 0/3 early in a game/match. They either call my “bluff” and block, in which case I might be able to make the same play later and get them with a combat trick on a more important creature, or they give me free damage. Whatever way you do it, always keep in mind you are giving and receiving information from your opponent about what level you are on, how willing you are to bluff, and how you are most likely to respond to any given situation.

It is usually correct to jam, especially in limited

It is very common for midlevel players (grinders, I consider myself to fit this description) to want to play around everything. Maybe you are playing against standard control and want to play around turn two syncopate, or you don’t want to lose to overcome in sealed from the green deck. I think it is an important skill in magic to be able to realize what could happen that would make things go wrong. Maybe they have force of will, maybe you can get blown out by a combat trick, maybe they kill you when you let them untap in modern. However, knowing something can go wrong is not the same as acting like they always have it. I usually have a rough idea of what they might be able to do to stop me and what the percentages are based on card % and how they’ve been acting in the game. It is often correct, knowing the risks, to just make the proactive play.

In sealed if I know that my all out attack to put them dead in two turns loses to a threaten effect, I will jam because a) they have to put threaten in their deck, and b) they might have wrath of god or something much worse waiting to get you dead if you give them extra time. I tend to play magic like Doyle Brunson plays poker: loose-aggressive. It is usually worth it to push your advantage rather than give them time to catch up. This is important for control players as well. Sometimes snapcaster mage’s job is to be ambush viper so that you can actually end the game against a combo opponent. This also depends on the level of your opponent. If they are a good player, they might be enticing you with a position of weakness instead of actively being weak, trying to get you to over commit into a sweeper. Basically, what I am trying to say is that most players, especially at the grand prix level, are on level 1. They probably are not bluffing, their obvious tells are actually tells, and they probably don’t have it. Of course, this is susceptible to how you read your opponent. I once lost a match against Dan Ward because I made an aggressive attack into him game one, thinking there’s no way he is main-decking threaten because that card is bad. Turns out he was and I was immediately punished.

This is a very loose heuristic, and one that gets me in trouble if followed without thinking. My win percentage for modern horizons has been significantly lower than other limited sets because I tend to play more aggressively. The problem is that modern horizons has many more powerful cards than most sets, and there are more ways to be punished for loose play. There are also many more modal cards that might otherwise be so-so such as stirring address. Basically what I am trying to say is don’t be too meek, each of use will lose games to being too loose or too defensive, but I would rather be on the too loose side, at least then I have time to get lunch. I play like an ape and get rewarded, and do best with decks that reward this behavior (Legacy show and tell). This isn’t for everyone. At a minimum however I think it is a useful skill to know all the ways that a thing could go wrong, know exactly what decision you are making, and then make the loose/aggressive decision anyway. Inaction is just as dangerous as pushing, and giving your opponent extra time is always a risk.

Thus ends this particular week’s ramblings. Tune in soon for part two of this article, detailing higher level meta decisions and other tournament prep notes.

The medium guide to metagames

Every time something new happens in magic, the community goes through a predictable cycle finding out what the best decks are, and content creators spend a great deal of time shouting from the rooftops what the best decks, how you should build them, and how you should sideboard with them. I intend to similarly yell advice at you in future articles. First, however, let’s break down what the cycle is, and find some ways to take advantage of this cycle.

I am reminded of one of the best magic articles of all time, which still gives an excellent description of how magic players act in groups. If you haven’t given “information cascades in magic” a read, I highly recommend doing so. If you don’t know what “ghost dad” is, don’t worry about it, just insert the name of a bad deck that people love to play and will defend to the death (think of the rock or merfolk in modern). We have significantly more information about deck percentages, meta percentages, and conversion rates, but much of the information regarding how players tend to follow blindly is still very evident in tournament magic.

Ok, so we’ve got this cool new format due to cards either entering or leaving a format. Usually it’s because a new set just came into standard (War most recently), but maybe it’s because a set just came into modern (horizons), or maybe they just implemented the London mulligan rule AND IT’S RAINING GRISELBRANDS! BAN THE DREDGE MECHANIC!

Take a deep breath. Things are probably going to be fine. Here’s a simple timeline of any given first month of standard:

Week 1: Many show up with THE DECK that everyone is afraid of (nexus of fate, rw angels, bant flash, esper control), it generally does not go well for them. The good aggro decks (mono red/white) probably win the first tournament of the cycle or are heavily represented. Something like 10 different decks are represented in the top 16; 8/10 will never be spoken of again.
Week 2: Now that we know aggro is good and brews are bad, fewer people show up with aggro and the true midrange deck of the format emerges (gb/bug midrange). Aggro dies to a wave of life gain and sweepers.
Week 3: The midrange arms race begins. Decks become tuned and start cutting obviously bad cards. Opponents are now set to grind mode (esper midrange, gw tokens). By the end of the week an unexpected hero emerges to dumpster midrange (mono blue); this hero probably has a bad time against aggro.
Week 4: The midrange arms race has reached its peak. Ramp decks come out of the woodwork (gates, ug ramp) to tron themselves all over midrange decks. Control might be part of this arms race, depending on how they match up against hate cards.
Week 5-bored: If the format is healthy, the balance of aggro->midrange->midranger->combo->control->aggro will cycle indefinitely, probably with no more than 3-4 decks in tier 1. If the format is bad, everyone is playing rb vehicles because the midrange decks are killing too fast to be taken advantage of by bigger decks. The best deck is probably a midrange deck with either a transformative/strong sideboard, a combo finish, or is more aggressive than it has any right to be while still grinding.

If your format of choice is modern, double the amount of time and replace the word “midrange” with “combo.” If your format of choice is Legacy, quadruple the amount of time and remember that “midrange” in this context means “fair blue deck.” If your format of choice is Vintage, octuple the time, replace your 4 non-restricted list flex slots with the cool new planeswalker(s)/draw engine, rename your deck if your draw engine changed or was restricted, and call it a day.

Based on the assumptions from our week by week breakdown, we can draw a few conclusions. This all assumes that the goal is to maximize win rate; an obvious assumption, but not always a true one. This also assumes one can switch decks with some regularity; this is true even less often, but we can address that a little later.

Aggro is almost always best in week one when people are trying to brew; this is repeated ad nauseum and hardly worth going into. Basically just be wary of the dangers of doing cool things during week one when everyone knows to burn you out. There’s also an argument for bringing the thing that beats aggro week one, especially if there is a midrange deck well-tuned for doing this from last season (g/b midrange); this assumes that something actually beats aggro, which is not always the case (mono blue of pre-war).

Week two is when you’re likely to play against the remnants of aggro and the up and coming midrange deck; now is probably the time to be going over the top. Week two is also when the rules of engagement start to become defined; this season it’s the hunt for the best planeswalker deck, last season it was a race to see who could draw the most cards, preferably with hydroid krasis, before that it basically a matter of finding the best deck that could contain aggro (golgari, thanks to find // finality).

Week three is deep into arms race territory; now is probably the time to zag and try to do something that abuses midrange decks: combos, ramping, mono blue, etc. Previously this was around the time when the pro tour took place. This is no longer necessarily the case, so it is harder to find a single event to answer the simple question: what am best deck?

By the time week 4 hits there’s usually a pretty good idea of what the “best deck” is, if it exists. The best deck often checks more than one of the archetype boxes. If it’s the best aggro deck and the best midrange deck, it’s probably busted (rb vehicles); if it’s the best midrange deck and the best combo deck (4c command the dreadhorde?), probably not a bad choice. This standard season there are an unreasonable number of decks that have an excellent fair plan backed up by a combo finish. Command the Dreadhorde, bolas’s citadel, and bontu all allow a player to win in a position where they are significantly behind on board. This is somewhat unique to just-before-rotation cycles and older formats, usually the deck that best interacts while still enacting its own consistent game-plan is the best deck (think phoenix decks in modern).

I’ve pretty much laid out how level 0 and 1 work out for the first month of a cycle. The level 0 solution to metagames is: play aggro, then play midrange, then tune midrange to be midrange-ier (in many ways control is the midrange-iest midrange of all), then keep tuning midrange to actually win once we’ve found the midrange-iest deck. Level 0 is the safest bet and will probably give you the most consistent good-but-not-winning-the-tournament results. The level 1 solution is one step faster than level 0; play midrange, then make it durdlier, then find a combo or trump, then probably go to aggro or combo to finish out the season and punish durdlers; in short, try to be one step ahead of the level 0 players. Level 1 is mostly likely to win or very quickly lose you the tournament; i.e. playing to the winner’s meta. Level 1, if you can manage it, is where you’re supposed to be if the goal is to spike a tournament; I usually end up somewhere in level 0 and as a result I have a ton of top 16s. Just don’t be on level 2; don’t play ramp/durdly midrange versus a sea of aggro, and don’t play aggro into slightly more interactive aggro decks.

If you don’t have the ability or desire to repeatedly swap decks, that’s fine, we can use these results to select 1 or 2 decks in a cycle that let you keep playing magic without continuously changing things. In general, if you can only get one deck, and the goal is to minimize win-rate, you should probably pick up an aggro deck. Aggro decks are cheaper, good week 1 and week 4+ and usually aren’t too awful in the bad weeks, as you can always catch a stumbling opponent.

If you have access to multiple decks, but not all the decks, I would still recommend having an aggro deck for the start of any given season, followed by the most obvious midrange deck with a good endgame and tools to break up combo (duress, spell pierce) and aggro (shock, cry of the carnarium). For the last 6+ months or so this would mean carrying around mono white or red, coupled with gb/bug midrange or drakes. No matter the meta, one of these two decks will be close to correct, and they persist across different metagames with minimal changes; naturally the gb midrange deck will run you up a pretty penny, especially if you had to buy Hydroid Krasis at the wrong time, but it is a reasonable long term investment given how long it has been a player in the format.

Anyway, after all that rambling there should probably be a conclusion. Metagame cycles are predictable and magic players follow information cascades in a repeatable fashion. Doing what everyone else is doing will give good but not great results but takes significantly less effort; being one step ahead of the cycle is ideal, but only comes with a great deal of testing work and is very punishing if misjudged. This applies to all magic formats (including limited), but that will take further discussion in the future.
Good luck out there!