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Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica: Day Two Wrap Up

by SaffronOlive // Nov 11, 2018

Day one of Pro Tours are mostly about finding out what decks the pros brought to the event, and yesterday we talked about how the Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica metagame was diverse, but not especially spicy. On the second day of a Pro Tour we start to get a glimpse of what decks are performing well. Our plan for today is pretty simple: we'll start off by looking at the day two meta and the conversion rates for decks between day one and day two, then we'll wrap things up with the deck lists for the top eight decks. If you're looking for all of the sweet deck lists and a full breakdown of performance, make sure to check back tomorrow when we'll have the full picture (and a bunch more deck lists) from Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica.

The Meta

You can see the full metagame breakdown over on the mothership.

So what can we learn from the day two metagame breakdown from Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica? First, it's important to point out that the baseline conversion rate is 63% (meaning 63% of all the players on day one made it to day two), so in general, decks with percentages above 63% performed well and decks below 63% performed poorly. This said, the picture is somewhat complicated by the limited portion. In theory someone could do well in constructed and horrible in draft and miss day two, or someone could go 3-0 in limited and 1-4 in Standard and still make day two. Still, even with this limitation, delving into the metagame still gives us some interesting information.

First, out of the popular decks at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, Selesnaya Tokens and Mono-White Weenie performed best on day one, although in a fairly small sample size.
On the other hand, the worst deck on day one at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica was everyone's favorite ultra-budget option Mono-Blue Tempo with only 43% of its 16 day one players making the cut.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversion rates is how average most decks performed. Out of the 10 most played deck at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, seven performed within 6% of the 63% baseline. Often we have more clear winners (decks with 75% or even 80% conversion rates) and losers (decks at 55% or less in terms of conversion), but at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, most of the heavily -layed decks are performing, more or less, average.
The good news is that the day two metagame backs up the day one metagame: Standard is quite diverse and it's looking very likely that we'll leave Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica Standard without knowing what Standard deck is the best, which is great news for players over the next couple of months. It looks like we'll have many playable decks through the winter as we head towards the release of Ravnica Allegiance.
On the other hand, the one piece of bad news is we didn't see anything new at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica. While there were a few sweet decks played by one or two players like Rainbow Lich, GR Dinosaurs, Naya Ramp, and Sultai Control, most of those decks didn't make the cut to day two. While there's still a Jund Midrange deck and a Sultai Midrange deck in the running, Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica will probably go down as the least spicy Pro Tour of all time. As such, don't expect to see many (or even any) crazy off the wall lists this weekend. Instead we'll be looking for well-tuned versions of some of the most popular decks in Standard.

Deck Tech Decks

For Dimir Control, the most interesting aspect is the main deck copy of Detection Tower as a way to deal with Carnage Tyrant and the very not-control looking Dive Down as a way to protect Thief of Sanity. Thief of Sanity is an amazingly powerful card if you can get in a hit or two with it; the value it generates often spirals the game out of control. So even though seeing Dive Down in control is counter-intuitive, if your play is to go to town with Thief of Sanity, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Rainbow Lich is a super sweet deck, but unfortunately it faltered on the Pro Tour stage with both of its two players dropping out on day one. Still, if you're looking for some updates the deck, Moment of Cravings are key to keeping up with all of the aggro decks that have recently risen in popularity.

White Weenie has been increasing in popularity in Standard, but the ChannelFireball build has an interesting innovation with Ajani's Pridemate in the two-mana slot over more commonly played fliers like Remorseful Cleric or Silverbeak Griffin. While the deck isn't built around gaining life, when you consider that a 2/2 for two is surprisingly fine in White Weenie. The deck has one-mana lifelinkers in Legion's Landing and Healer's Hawk to grow Ajani's Pridemate on turn two and Leonin Vanguard to consistently grow Ajani's Pridemate over the long game.

Top Eight Decks

Here are the Top 8 decks from Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica. We have 4x Red-White Aggro, 1x Boros Aggro, 1x White Weenie, 1x Izzet Drakes, and 1x Jeskai Control.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today! While Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica hasn't been the spiciest of Pro Tours, we've seen some insane games of Magic, with more on the horizon tomorrow! Speaking of tomorrow, we'll be back with one final wrap up, this time with access to all of the decklists, so make sure to check it out! Until then, enjoy the rest of the Pro Tour, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.