The Monday Mulligan #7: Changes And Infestations

As most of you probably know, the host of the first season, dzejkej, will no longer be hosting Monday night standard. Instead, a triumvirate consisting of myself, stiffdiddypinky and dzejkej will be MPDCs hosting team this season. In two days, I'll have my hosting inauguration when I will host 2.02. I've gotten familiar with the software and the hosting duties last Monday, so don't worry, I'll worry for you.

In lieu of the new season and team, we've shed some much needed light on the rules for the first season and changed them where we found it necessary. The rules were blantantly copied from Polyjak when MPDC began and have never been adapted.

The following rules have been changed that you should know about, with a short explanation from me:

• Season points are awarded upon event finish and won/loss matches. For 10 points for first place, 7 points for second, 4 for top 4 and 2 for top 8 on top of 3 points for every win and 1 point for every loss.

This is a big change. First off, the difference between a win and a loss has been widened by one point, you will now get three points for a win, instead of two. On top of that that, reaching the play-offs will give you between two and ten bonus points, which is the main difference between this and last season's Season Points. The point for a loss has been kept as an attendance reward. Also note that the points awarded for submitting your deck list have been removed, which leads us to the next change:

• Players are required to post their deck lists before the next MPDC event or forfeit points earned in this event. Posting your list can be done either in Gatherling or as a reply to the event thread.

Yes, that is harsh. One of the virtues of the PDC community is it's transparency. Decks, meta-game and strategies are all public. But this can only remain true if everyone submits their creations when they attend. A downside of this is that new players may not know about this or don't know how to post and forfeit their points. That is why I added a "New Player FAQ" and a "Gatherling/Deck Entry FAQ" to the event thread, so people have easy access to this information.

This rule will go in affect with MPDC 2.02 (next Monday), but I urge the players that haven't done this to enter their lists for last Monday.

• Cut-off for the Championship is 18 players (for a top 8). The invited players should pre-register themselves on the Championship event thread. The highest ranked players that don't get an invite at first, but have less than 10 points less than the lowest of the eighteen players can be invited to fill up the eighteen Championship slots.

This way, the Championship has a more "elite" feel to it than when 32 players are invited. Filling up the slots is only for people with a minor points difference. Pre-registration is used, so the attending numbers and players are known before the event starts (so the slots can be filled and other players invited).

• Latecommers can be registrated only in the first 20 minutes of round 1, they won't receive any points nor byes and won't be paired the first round, unless decided so by the host.

This is only logical: you are on time and get paired, or you are within the "match-loss delay limit" (20 minutes) and start in round two.

• The off-topic discussion prohibition in the mpdc channel has been removed. It is still prohibited to post anything in the mpdccom channel except registrations, results and drops.

Wasn't enforced anyways. More discussions during the tourney please! Just please, please: no drama like in other PREs.

• Should MPDC start an hour earlier than it does at this moment? This would result in registration starting at 7pm GMT (6pm after DST correction), an hour earlier wherever you live. I skimmed the map and the only countries in Europe that have GMT as it's timezone are Portugal and the UK, everything else is GMT +1 or +more. This change would result in more sleep for a great deal of the participants (and the host).

This isn't a change yet, so let your voice be heard here.

• At the end of this month, Europe goes daylight savings time. This means the new starting time for MPDC will be 7 pm GMT to correct for this. This will not change the starting time wherever you live (in Europe, but for the US too I think).
• This Seasons Championships (Worlds) will be held the Monday before the Shadowmoor release events on MTGO (RL release date is 2nd May, 2008, the standard delay for MTGO is 3-4 weeks). Final date will be posted when known. Try and keep this date free if you want to cash in your invite.

These aren't changes, but you should make note anyway.

I will post the Gatherling entry for the event (which I would have edited to include at least all decknames and colors), so you can browse the meta yourselves. The play-offs and metagame paragraphs will list the archetypes that were played (aggro, control, etc.) and how many. A deck that played in the finals will appear in the quarter-, semi- and finals part as well as the metagame part.

Gatherling Metagame Breakdown

Play-offs:
Finals - Control (2)
Semi-Finals - Control (4)
Quarter-Finals - Control (4), Aggro-Control (1), Aggro (3)

Metagame:
Aggro - 8
Control: - 9
Aggro-Control: - 4
Mid-range: - 0
Unclassifiable - 1

Discussion:
Biohazard Alert! We have a fungus infestation with 3! (or is that 6?) Dreamspore Rock decks taking second, and both semi-finals placings. One of these decks splashed for blue, what for is sadly unkown because of the lack of a list, the other two where just green/black pre-MOR lists. Three top places is almost unheard of for a deck that has impacted the meta so little. If we look at the decks they faced, things start getting clearer: they played three mirrors, three aggro matchups and two experimental Morningtide infused lists. Expecially the mirror-matches got them into the play-offs, distributing the points amongst themselves.

The event itself was won by Buldogg333 with Storm Control (duh?), but only after his Rock opponent dropped because of a crash. He was the only Storm player to succeed, leaving three others behind. The rest of the control bracket consisted of two Kingdrifter decks and a Fertilid based Harvest deck.

More interesting are the aggro(-control) decks, where we see the most changes out of Morningtide. One of the top eight places were taken by such a list: an aggro-control deck based around playing Elementals on the cheap with Smokebraider, but also abusing evoke with Blink. Consider it an Elemental Blinkdrifter variant, with red. Morningtide gave it the Elemental Banneret, Seething Pathblazer and Sunflare Shaman to seriously make use of Elementals. The other two places were taken by RDW and Goblins, both without Morningtide. MOR does contain some nice cards for these decks, like Shard Volley (maby in suicide RDW) and Mudbutton Clanger.

A Kithkin based WW deck was also present, starring Serra Kithkin, but not much else is known. Maby if it does make the top and Gatherling has Morningtide enabled we shall see more. A Rogues list reared its head, with Madness/Rogue synergy, and a Blinkdrifter deck with an one drop changeling were played.

Season Rankings

These are the top eighteen players that would be invited to the Chamionship if it would be held next week.

1 , Buldogg333 , 23
2 , SerraGodFather , 20
3 , Smurff , 15
4 , stiffdiddypinky , 15
5 , Jmason , 12
6 , Boin , 10
7 , ZeroFusion , 10
8 , riealan , 7
9 , NavyDoc , 7
10 , Zouily , 6
11 , kehmesis , 6
12 , Janked , 5
13 , RaiserUK , 5
14 , SypherSun , 5
15 , Marduk4526 , 5
16 , cruzing2001 , 5
17 , Colakim3 , 4
18 , LostSymphonies , 4

Power Rankings

Power Rankings are used to determine seeding of the players attending the season Championship. Power Rankings are intended to provide a snapshot of the strongest players through the course of the Alt season. These Rankings take into account both the player's rate success and the sample size over which that success occurs. The Power Ranking raw scores award 10 points for 1st, 7 points for 2nd, 4 points for 3rd-4th, 2 points for 5th-8th (if the event has a Top 8), and 0 points for missing the cut. The resulting rankings range from 0 (this player never makes the Top 4/Top 8) to 10 (this player wins every event).

Rank , Name , PowerRanking
1 , Buldogg333 , 10
2 , SerraGodFather , 7
3 , Smurff , 4
4 , stiffdiddypinky , 4

Dreamspore Rock, as piloted by stiffdiddypinky at MPDC 1.14

Creatures
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Deathspore Thallid
4 Dreamspoiler Witches
4 Essence Warden
4 Mulldrifter
4 Phyrexian Rager
2 Thallid Germinator

Spells
4 Sprout Swarm
2 Grim Harvest
2 Mystical Teachings
1 Faerie Trickery
1 Nameless Inversion

Lands
9 Forest
7 Swamp
4 Island
4 Terramorphic Expanse

SIDEBOARD
4 Distress
4 Penumbra Spider
4 Terror
3 Martyr of Bones

Discussion:
The spiritual evolution of Ravnica Standards Prison Yard and Timespiral Blocks Fungal Teachings, this deck does one thing and one thing only: Hammer down on aggro-decks. With Deathspore Thallid, Dreamspoiler Witches and Essence Wardens as four-offs, it can pick off endless amounts small creatures starting around turn four by casting instants on it's opponents turn and pointing their Witches at your creatures or via de ritual sacrifice of fungus. Repeatably chump-blocking with saps and throwing them at your creatures after gives this deck a positive track-record against aggro. Last seasons prime aggro deck, WW, is typically a good matchup, but WW can get the goddraw and just overrun Rock before it can set up its defenses. After board, the matchup worsens because WW can bring in Sunlances to kill Witches and Fungi and Zealot il-Vec, which kills them too if there isn't a spore or instant in sight. RDW is tougher because it has reach, even if you kill all their creatures, the damage has been done and a couple of burn spells finish you off, if the RDW player can keep Warden off the table.

With recurring threats such as Sprout Swarm and Grim Harvest in combination with Dreamspore it can pick off multiple creatures, but also pose real threats against opposing control decks. These cards are slow but can lead to a huge attrition difference between the Spore player and the opponent.

The problem with this is that most control decks have very efficient answers against these: counterspells and discard can both handle Swarm very good and Harvest can be answered by your own Harvest, Martyr of Bones or Fearie Trickery. All these answers are commonly played in top decks like Illusions, Storm and Grimdrifter variants. This means that while those decks are largly uneffected by Rocks main gameplan (killing your small creatures) because they win either with a protected big threat, multiple big creatures or recurring their threats endlessly, those decks do have answers for Rock.

To combat these problems, most players have opted to run blue for either Mulldrifter or Teachings or both. This way they gain a lot of CA and these can find your main engines Harvest and Swarm, even after discard. Because of Teachings this deck can also cut down on the engines and run some more tutor-targets, such as a singleton terror for big creatures.

From the board most lists get some combination of Penumbra Spider to block WWs creatures, Distress to remove Storms winconditions, Mire Boa to pose a hard to remove threat against Grimdrifter decks and Martyr of Bones as a Harvest/Teachings/Blink foil.

I think this deck hasn't seen enough work to be effective in the current meta. I think it does have a chance, but not in this form. I suggest a combination of Grimdrifter and Rock, probably without the red (four colors could be done, look at Kingdrifter, and now you have green for colorfixing). This could abuse both the Witches/Thallid creature destruction engine and the Mulldrifter/Harvest CA engine. Fertillid could come out to play to give you a big mana-boost to be able to support Harvest/Swarm better. Some way to survive Storm after it sides out the Storm and goes countercontrol on your buttocks should be a neccesity too.

Going into a fourth color gives you red for Skred or white for Blink, and coming really close to Kingdrifters first incarnation. I'm really excited about the prospects for this deck, but it probably won't be on the level of WW, Storm or Illusions.This deck needs a lot of tinkering before it is effective in anything other than aggro matchups.

Previous decks:
Lorwyn Season
Red Deck Wins
Storm Control
New Tricks and Grimdrifter
Use UR Illusion
GW Changelings

So what do you think about the changes with Morningtide and those made to the event structure? Don't forget to vote on the MPDC startingtime changes. Wish me luck when I'm hosting next Monday and hopefully, see you then!