Before we begin, a quick explanation:
I love writing, I always have and always will.
After playing Magic since around Ice Age (I'm not sure if that's when
the set actually came out, but those are the packs I remember opening
as a twelve-year old), dodging back and forth between playing and not
playing (phasing in and out for different blocks), I finally decided to
follow Magic and take it more seriously, following my inaugural
discovery of the Pro Tour. Ever since, reading much of the wonderful
content that is around about Magic - thanks to the open-ended nature of
the internet - I've wanted to write about the game, especially
considering my final year of school stops me from playing a lot of
Magic.
So after ducking in and out of various formats, and seeing different decks evolve (I was around for the Ravager Winter and then popped back to playing again when Meloku was destroying people),
as well as experiencing the game on different levels, I discovered Time
Spiral, Teferi and the Pro Tour, and I was hooked, professional level
Magic was my professed sport of choice.
So, after Magic being a bit dull these days, and me personally having no idea how
much Extended will change leading up to PT Valencia, I have today
decided to focus upon the upcoming World Championships, specifically
the Standard format, providing not a breakdown, but what I hope will be
a small insight into Standard and playing Magic in general.
The one interesting thing I've noted about Worlds, is that the player who wins Worlds is (often) the one with an innovative take on Standard. Of course, they have to draft and battle their way through Worlds' other days, but in the end, it is Standard that determines which member of the Top 8 will emerge as World Champion, and most of the successful World Champions have been
either innovative players or have had innovative decks.
Let's trace Worlds Top 8's from 1999, following this trend:
In 1999, Kai Budde destroys everyone with the "German Dragon," abusing Grim
Monolith and City of Traitors before Tinker was even around, bashing
face and wrecking dreams with a mono-red control(?) deck driven by the
power of the Urza Block artifacts. Innovative? Clearly.
Next comes Finkel's win in 2000 in Brussels, playing another mono-coloured
artifact based deck, the ever popular Tinker, which only resulted in the
mirror match due to Maher being part of Finkel's testing team (or at
least being privvy to the existance of the deck). The power of the deck
carried on to Extended, continuing to beat-face until the deck's
namesake was finally banned.
In 2001 Tom Van De Logt wrecks a bunch of people by adapting his Red-Black Aggro deck to the metagame perfectly, Plague Spitter tech huh?
Breaking the trend are World's '02 and '03 which result in two mirror matches,
attesting to the bias of the Standard format at the time. I'm sure
someone would've liked to innovate, but 'Tog and 'Wake were too good to
pass up, it seems. Although to be fair, Zink and Carlos fought excellently with their decks, clear deserving winners, and this should not be seen as criticism for playing a "tier one" deck, as they clearly played the best deck, the best!
Onward to 2004 sees Dutch WonderKid Julien
Nuijtien wreck a field of Affinity with his GW Slide deck, which
although known, was not considered an optimal choice for the field.
2005 saw Ghazi-Glare burst onto the scene, taking the World by storm and
projecting Mori into the limelight of the professional Magic scene,
cementing his place as one of the world's leading deck designers.
And finally, 2007 sees Mihara deliver the kill, time and time again with the
notorious combo deck, Dragonstorm, that until 10th, was the deck to
beat in Standard.
While this does not encompass all
of the existing World Championships, the trend is incredibly easy to
see, and it seems plausible to say that this year's World Champ will
walk away from New York with an innovating new take on the Standard
format.
However, along with all this comes the innovations of
the deck's pilot also, as it is not always the deck that is good
enough. A perfect example of this would be Mihara's win, who won not
entirely on a non-existant deck (Dragonstorm was popular in Standard
before Mihara's win) but by playing with the deck in a way no one else
had (EOT Gigadrowse you, one Hellkite at a time thanks!).
So, what's the point of all this? Why re-cap eight or so years of past
events? The point is to start you all thinking about Standard, as the
upcoming World Championships will prove to be a new format's initial
stomping ground. While Lorywn and the Ravnica Block rotation will warp
the format in ways no one will expect, it's not an entirely bad thing
to mull over.
However, the basic point here is to remind you all to
innovate as deck designers or players, finding the niche in a format
between what's good and what you play well with.
Can you play Mono Blue Pickles well enough to bring it to victory?
Can you break Seismic Assault without Life from the Loam?
Do you see a combo no one else sees?
Are cards being underrated?
Can I change my play style to adapt to this deck's weaknessess?
Can I personalize a deck enough to fit my own playstyle, maximizing my chances to win with it?
Can I play a deck I'm comfortable with, while not always the 'optimal' deck?
Can I adapt and accept the metagame accordingly?
All
these and many more little questions lie admist a future Standard
format, and your Road to Worlds may well be determined by not
what you do, but what you don't do. Hopefully this brief history lesson
will encourage you to look that little bit further each time you pick up
your 75 card weapon of choice.
Until next time, Cheers.
Julian Carr (apprentice/young and hopeful MTG writer)Feedback welcome and encouraged!
