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Pro Tour Magic Origins: By the Numbers

by SaffronOlive // Aug 3, 2015

Another Pro Tour weekend has come and gone and this was certainly a good one. While closing out the weekend on a mulligan to three in game five of the finals was anti-climatic, there were some great plays, players, decks and cards on display all weekend long from Vancouver. Heading into the weekend I was worried that we might be in for an endless stream of Abzan mirrors, but it turns out my fears were overblown. Mono-Red Aggro was the most featured deck of the tournament and while it is far from my favorite deck to watch on camera, at least the matches didn't take too long to finish.

One of the most important aspects of every Pro Tour is that it sets the metagame moving forward. Decks that end up seeing play at SCG Opens, Grand Prix and even Friday Night Magics are often heavily influenced by what the pros played at the last Pro Tour. Unfortunately, because Pro Tour are split formats (with six rounds of limited and eight round of constructed), it isn't all that simple to figure out what decks performed the best — you can't just look at the top eight or sixteen. It's very possible that very good decks miss the top eight because of poor draft performances, or relatively under-performing decks make the top eight because a player goes 6-0 over the course of the two drafts.

As a result, we really need to dig into the numbers and look behind the curtain to figure out which decks performed well and which performed poorly at Pro Tour Magic Origins. Let's get to digging.

Important Numbers

Number of players at Pro Tour Magic Origins: 391
Number of players who made day two: 245
Field wide conversion rate (percentage of players who made day two): 62.66
Number of players who finished with 24-27 points: 20
Percentage of field that finished with 24-27 points: 5.11%
Number of players who finished with 21-23 points: 32
Percentage of the field who finished with 21-23 points: 8.18%
Number of players who finished with between 18-20 points: 37
Percent of players who finished with 18-20 points: 9.46 %
Total number of players who finished with 6+ wins: 89
Percentage of player who finished with 6+ wins: 22.76 %

Definitions

Here are the definitions of the table headings you'll see below.

Number of Day One Players: How many players showed up to Pro Tour Magic Origins with a given deck.
Number of Day Two Players: The number of players on a given deck who managed to go 4-4 or better on day one and come back for day two of the tournament.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of day one players who made day two (a lacking statistic since this does not take into account limited records).
Number of Players 24-27 Points: How many players with a given deck managed between eight and nine match wins over the ten rounds of constructed.
Percentage: Percentage of day one players on a given deck who ended up winning eight or nine matches.
Number of Players 21-23 Points: How many players with a given deck managed seven match wins over the ten rounds of constructed.
Percentage: Percentage of day one players on a given deck who ended up winning seven matches.
Number of Players 18-20 Points: How many players with a given deck managed six match wins over the ten rounds of constructed.
Percentage: Percentage of day one players on a given deck who ended up winning seven matches.
Total 6-4 or Better: How many player with a given deck managed six or more match wins over the ten rounds of constructed.
Percentage: Percentage of day one players on a given deck who ended up winning six or more matches.

Green/Red Devotion

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
59	38	64.41%	0	0%	8	13.59%	8	13.59%	16	27.12%

It is a bit of a surprise that GR Devotion unseated Abzan, Mono-Red Aggro and other usual suspects as the most played deck of the weekend. Unsurprisingly, GR Devotion had a middling performance in a field full of bad matchups. One thing the deck lacked this weekend was a premium finish. Yes, Paul Jackson made the top eight playing GR Devotion, but this was more about his sterling limited record than his good-but-not-great constructed performance. As far as players finishing with six or seven wins, GR Devotion came in just barely better than average. 22.76 percent of the day one field ended up with at least six wins in Standard and 27.12 percent of the GR Devotion player did the same.

Another way to look at it is that GR Devotion was a bad choice for a field full of Mono-Red Aggro and UR Ensoul Artifact (as admitted by Brad Nelson, who called it his worst job of PT metagaming ever), but still managed to put up a slightly better than average performance. This speaks to the power level of the strategy; even when it is the wrong choice it can still win matches based on brute strength alone.

All in all, GR Devotion should be happy with its slightly-above-average performance considering how hostile the #PTOrigins field was for the archetype.

Inter-Deck Numbers

1 - Copies of Rogue's Passage found in Team Mighty Lucks (Ari Lax, Brad Nelson, Gerry Thompson, BBD, etc) GR Devotion list. While it might not tap for green to cast Elvish Mystic on turn one, Rogue's Passage seems like a great low-opportunity cost way to break open board stalls in games when you don't draw Dragonlord Atarka.
3 (or 0) - The number of copies of Shaman of Forgotten Ways found in GR Devotion at #PTOrigins. Almost all members of The Mighty Lucks went with three, but the rest of the field left the powerful but fragile ramp spell out of their decks all together.
3 - Trail of Mystery in the sideboard of the Mighty Lucks brew.

Mono Red Aggro

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
54	35	64.81%	4	7.4%	4	7.4%	11	20.37%	16	35.18%

Mono-Red Aggro is certainly one of the winners coming out of Pro Tour Magic Origins. While taking down the title doesn't mean much from a data-driven perspective — it's possible (and almost happened with Matt Sperling's Abzan Control) for a deck that under-performed in general to sneak into the top eight and spike the title — Joel Larsson deserves congratulations for his strong performance. Over the course of the weekend, Mono-Red Aggro performed well at almost every data point. It came in nearly 50 percent better than expected in giving players seven and eight win finishes, and its 35.18 percent number of good finishes (6 wins or better) is almost 75 percent better than the field's expectation of 22.78 percent.

In fact, discounting decks that were played by five or less players on day one, Mono-Red Aggro is far and away the second best performing deck of #PTOrigins. Someone on Twitter said that we are in for a "red summer" and it seems likely they are right. The power-level of the current Mono-Red Aggro build is far higher than we have seen in recent Standards thanks to the additions from Magic Origins. Our current Standard's lack of a Kor Firewalker or Timely Reinforcements to really punish all-in aggro strategies only reinforces this. Even Drown in Sorrow isn't always good enough thanks to the prowess on Monastery Swiftspear and Abbot of Kheral Keep. As such, I expect to see a lot of Mono-Red Aggro both in paper and on Magic Online over the next couple months.

Inter-Deck Numbers

4 - Copies of Stoke the Flames, Exquisite Firecraft and Abbot of Kher Keep in all of the best performing Mono-Red Aggro decks. If you are planning on playing this deck over the summer, these twelve slots are set in stone regardless of how the meta shifts around you.
2 - Copies of Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh in the Mono-Red Aggro deck played by several players including Frank Karsten and Rich Hoaen. While she wasn't universally adapted (and many of the best performing Mono-Red Aggro players left her out of their 75 all together), the fact that some very good players came out in support of the much maligned flip-walker does offer at least a glimmer of hope moving forward.

Abzan Control

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
47	30	63.83%	3	6.38%	1	2.12%	4	8.51%	8	17.02%

Now I should make it clear right from the start that determining which decks are classified as Abzan Control and which are Abzan Aggro is more of an art than a science. Typically I call decks with some number of Elspeth, Sun's Champion and four copies of Courser of Kruphix Control, so for the purposes of our analysis I included the decks played by Yamamoto and Takahasi in the Control group, even though Abzan Megamorph (which wasn't included in the metagame breakdowns) is probably a more precise heading.

By most measures, Abzan Control was the second worst performing of the five most played decks at Pro Tour Magic Origins. The only place it came in above-average is in the number of top tier finishes (8 wins or more), and even by this metric its 6.38 percent isn't that far above the 5.11 percent posted by the field-at-large. When you consider that 22.76 percent of day one players at #PTOrigins ended up with at least six wins in constructed, Abzan Control's 17.02 percent rate is especially discouraging.

On a more personal level, one of the strange twists of the weekend for me was that by Sunday, I found myself actively rooting for the Siege Rhino deck. To me the Abzan Control deck isn't evil; it's just boring and played out. On the other hand, Mono-Red Aggro represents everything that is wrong with Magic for me. So somehow during the top eight, Siege Rhino was the good guy. Plus, Matt Sperling deserves some props for riding one of the worst performing decks at #PTOrigins all the way to the semis making his performance even more impressive.

Inter-Deck Numbers

1.75 - Average number of main deck Languish in the eight Abzan decks that finished with six or more wins.
1 - Number of Abzan Control players (Adam Jansen) who played more main deck copies of Tragic Arrogance (2) than Languish (1).
2 - The average number of Nissa, Vastwood Seer among the Abzan Control deck in our sample. It is worth noting that the best performing Abzan Control build (Matt Sperling) was the only one to run three copies of the flip-walker.

Blue/Red Ensoul Artifact

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
33	28	84.85%	7	21.21%	7	21.21%	2	6.06%	16	48.49%

UR Ensoul Artifact was without a doubt the best deck at Pro Tour Magic Origins and it wasn't particularly close. Check out this chart that shows just how far above-average the deck was at every data point.

Data Point	Field at Large	UR Ensoul	Percent Gained
Conversion Rate	62.66%	84.85%	22.19%
8 or 9 Wins	5.11%	21.21%	16.1%
7 Wins	8.18%	21.21%	13.03%
6 Wins	9.46%	6.06%	-3.3%
Total 6 Wins or Better	22.76%	48.49%	25.73%

As you can see, the only data point where UR Ensoul Artifact performed worse than expected is at exactly six wins, and this isn't because the deck was bad a getting players to six wins, but because it was very, very good at getting player to seven, eight and nine wins (thereby moving players out of the six-win group). In fact, if you were trying to pick a deck for #PTOrigins and had to choose between ra andom, field-average deck and UR Ensoul Artifact, picking up the scissors would have tripled your chances of getting at least seven wins.

After Pro Tour Paris, the coming out party of the format-breaking Caw Blade, Brian Kibler began his article by stating "1st, 6th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 16th. Those are the top finishes of players running Caw-Blade at PT Paris." While that is impressive, if he was writing about UR Ensoul Artifact at #PTOrigins the article would start: "2nd, 7th, 11th, 19th, 22nd, 35th, 36th, 46th, 52nd, 56th, 64th. Those are the top finishes of players running UR Ensoul Artifact at PT Origins." So why aren't we talking about a Caw Blade-esque performance from UR Ensoul Artifact? Mostly because almost everyone who played the deck forgot how to draft on day one. In fact, the seven players who picked up eight or nine constructed match wins with the deck combined to win only 33.33 percent of their limited matches on day one, and this is including a 3-0 performance from Scott Lipp (who then proceeded to 0-3 this day two draft). If we drop Lipp as an outlier, the combo of Efro, McClain, Farning, Hayne, Perez, and Weitz went 4-14 over the first three round of #PTOrigins, good for a laughable 22.22 MWP. If this group had merely drafted below-average instead of abysmally, we could easily have had four or five UR Ensoul Artifact decks in the top 8.

Inter-Deck Numbers

4 - Copies of Ensoul Artifact and Shrapnel Blast. We just talked about how Mono-Red Aggro gets eight four-damage burn spells, well UR Ensoul Artifact gets eight five-damage burn spells. These cards are the reason to play the deck.
6 - Total number of Keeper of the Lens found in the top performing UR Ensoul Artifact lists.

Blue/Black Control

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
31	20	64.51%	0	0%	1	3.22%	3	9.68%	4	12.9%

Sultai Control

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
25	10	40%	0	0%	1	4%	1	4%	2	8%

It really did not matter if you splashed green or not, this was not the weekend for UBx Control (Sultai, UB) and unfortunately this doesn't seem likely to change before the release of Battle for Zendikar. Exquisite Firecraft takes the Mono-Red Aggro matchup from bad to nearly unwinnable and handling turn two Ensoul Artifact on Darksteel Citadel and EOT Shrapnel Blast isn't easy either.

While the straight UB version fared slightly better, both control builds put only about half the expected number of players into the 6 wins or better group, and both laid goose eggs when it came to top-of-the-line (8 or 9 win) finishes. I think Shaheen Soorani captured the feelings of control players everywhere (including myself) with this string of Tweets during yesterday's top eight:

Abzan Rally

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
24	14	58.53%	0	0%	0	0%	4	16.67%	4	16.67

So I think it's fair to label Rally one of the biggest busts of Pro Tour Magic Origins. Comboing off on turns five, six or seven isn't very good in a format when you'll often be dead on turn four. Rally decks put up below-average numbers at every point on the curve starting with a lacking conversion rate and continuing through constructed finishes. Out of Rally's 24 players, not a single one managed to hit seven wins in constructed and only 16.67 percent managed six, putting it significantly below the field average of 22.76 percent.

Moving forward, the big problem for Rally is that the breakout decks of the Pro Tour (which will likely be heavily played both in paper and on Magic Online over the coming weeks) seem like absolutely abysmal matchups. I'm guessing Rally's time to shine is over. It was fun for the two weeks it lasted.

Jeskai

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
17	10	58.82%	1	5.88%	3	17.65%	0	0%	4	23.53%

While Jeskai actually performed reasonably well coming in slightly above average by the numbers, I can't help but think Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is one of the big losers of the weekend. Not only did he miss the top eight completely (while Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh made it in), but he didn't really get much camera time over the course of the weekend. Any potential for a $50 price tag is gone, and prices have started to fall over the past couple days, most significantly on Magic Online where he is currently about half of the price he was on Friday. This is good news for players who have yet to pick up their copies; prices should start to normalize shortly and picking up $100 play sets a month or two for now is not out of the question.

Atarka Red

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
15	5	33.33	0	0%	1	6.07%%	1	6.07%	2	13.33%

Abzan Aggro

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
9	7	77.78%	0	0%	0	0%	0	0%	0	0%

Jeskai Tokens

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
7	4	57.14%	0	0%	0	0%	0	0%	0	0%

Here we have the three worst decks out of the ten most played at Pro Tour Magic Origins. Based on these results, Atarka Red is clearly not the right Red Aggro deck moving forward. Access to Exquisite Firecraft makes splashing green for Atarka's Command far less appealing, especially when you are forced to transform yourself from a pain-free to an extremely painful manabase. In the pre-Pro Tour meta, running four copies of Mana Confluence wasn't a major concern for Atarka Red since it was the fastest deck in the format. Now taking one damage to cast your turn one Zurgo Bellstriker is a huge deal with Shrapnel Blast and Exquisite Firecraft running around. If you are looking to play Red Aggro, forget the green; instead of making your deck better by splashing, you're actually making it worse.

Abzan Aggro and Jeskai Tokens were both no-shows in the six wins or better group, so it's really hard to write much about them other than to say they obviously didn't perform well at Pro Tour Magic Origins. However, one of my favorite fun facts from #PTOrigins is that there were actually more main deck Nyx-Fleece Rams than Fleecemane Lions in decks that managed at least six match wins in constructed.

Blue/White Heroic

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

# Players Day One	# Player Day Two	Conversion Rate	# 24-27 Points	Percentage	# 21-23 Points	Percentage	#18-20 Points	Percentage	Total 6-4 or Better	Percentage
7	4	57.14%	1	14.29%	1	14.29%	0	0%	2	28.57%

The last deck with enough day one players to qualify for our breakdown, UW Heroic actually had a pretty good weekend considering the small sample size. Two of its seven players ended up getting at least seven match wins in Standard, which is enough to give the deck a five percent above average 6-or-more win percentage. At the same time, when you're dealing with only four players on day two, a couple of games here or there is the difference between having a great weekend and having a poor weekend so I wouldn't read too much into it.

Either way, UW Heroic will cease to exist come October when the namesake mechanic rotates along with the rest of Theros block. If something similar is to survive, it will likely be built around prowess. Whether or not this will be good enough to keep the archetype in the top tiers of Standard remains to be seen, so if you are a fan of the strategy, get your fill over the summer while you still can.

Other Decks (Less than 5 Day One Players)

Goblins - 80 percent of the five Goblin players made day two and 40 percent ended up with a 6-4 or better record in constructed. While the sample size is obviously small, the numbers are good enough to suggest that the deck is worth exploring further, although the fact that none of the major teams decided to run the deck is not encouraging.
Esper Dragons - The deck put half of its four players into day two and both ended up 6-4 or better.
Sidisi Whip - Only started with four players, lost an unknown number heading into day two (only decks with two or more player qualify for the day two metagame breakdown), and none finished 6-4 or better. Sounds like a bad weekend to me.
GW Enchantress/Constellation - Heading into the weekend I was rooting hard for Starfield of Nyx and we got there... kind of. Only three players decided to run GW Enchantress, but all of them managed to make it to day two. Better yet, 66.67 percent ended up garnering at least seven match win in the constructed portion of the event. If these numbers meant anything (which they don't, because the sample size is so small) I'd be able to call GW Enchantress the best deck at Pro Tour Magic Origins. Oh, what they hell. GW ENCHANTRESS WAS THE BEST DECK AT #PTORIGINS!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!