Aether Revolt PTR

[ladof]

So I was watching the Pro Tour on Twitch (I've never really watched 'professional' Magic before, just had some time and saw it up.) Does it always come down to three or so decks and who gets the better draws? I would have thought there would have been a lot more variety, but it was pretty much mardu vehicles, BG constrictor and jund aggro. It got boring pretty quickly (although watching someone screw up an attack to lose the round but come back to win the match was fun.)

If that's the pro scene, it's really no wonder why FNM is so repetitive, since most of the players at my LGS couldn't build an original deck that was at all viable if their life depended on it.

[Bob_the_Sniper]

The announcers mentioned at some point that Mardu Vehicles, BG Constrictor, and Copycat each have about %20 of the metagame right now. This has actually been more interesting than some other Pro Tours that I have seen where there are two archetypes (An amazing deck and the deck made to counter it). In general most of the Metagame for all the formats can boil down to 3 to 5 top decks that will likely do the best, it is the nature of the beast. Modern has Affinity, Jund, and Bant Eldrazi right now.

Professional level magic becomes less about brewing and more about how you pilot a really good deck and play the interactions with your opponent.

[ladof]

That makes me sad for some reason.

Also, I meant to ask, who is Twoo and why should I have an opinion on him? Twitch chat was livid one way or the other about him.

[robort]

There you have it 6 out 8 were Mardu Vehicles. No brewing, no creativity. Someone came up with the idea of Mardu Vehicles and tested it while everyone else used the idea because they couldn't come up with squat. Now FNM numbers will dwindle because people also copy Mardu Vehicles thinking they are "entitled" to win because hey why not, it was topped 6th decks out of 8 in the pro tour. LGS will suffer because of supply and demand. Nobody wants to buy any of the other cards because they don't lead into the "entitled" to win category. So why bother to brew, be creative, and have fun when your "entitled" to win.
Here is who played what for top 8.
SMITH, DONALD - MARDU VEHICLES
SAJGALIK, EDUARDO - MARDU VEHICLES
LIU, YUCHEN - MARDU VEHICLES
KSANDR, JAN - BLACK-GREEN DELIRIUM
JUZA, MARTIN - JUND ENERGY AGGRO
ESPER BERTHOUD, LUCAS - MARDU VEHICLES
DAMO DA ROSA, PAULO VITOR - MARDU VEHICLES
CARVALHO, MARCIO - MARDU VEHICLES

Twoo is basically a silver pro with a youtube channel. Has decent things to say and his opinions at least to me are way overrated.
He also doesn't like desolator mage.

[KouriNick]

I think watching the pro-tour to decide what deck is best for your local game store is a lot like watching the Superbowl to decide what plays you should try during a pick-up game with friends. The Magic pro-tour is a very meta-specific event, and for this one the "talk of the town" was the Saheli Copy Cat deck (http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/769336-jeskai-copycat-saheeli-felidar). Everything I've read has said the pro's all used that as their yard-stick. If a deck could beat it regularly, they'd keep testing it, and if not, they'd try something else. Turns out, Mardu vehicles is very good against Copy-Cat, as well as against a lot of other decks. Therefore, it did great overall.

Now, if something like U/B control is very popular at your LGS, then blindly playing Vehicles is probably a bad idea, since all the removal in U/B control makes it a very hard matchup for Vehicles. However, at the pro-tour, nobody played U/B control because it isn't great against Copy Cat, and anyone who did play it was weeded out by all the Copy Cat players.

As for your original question ladof, more often than not the top 8 usually boil down to 2-4 dominant decks that usually reflect the meta of the event itself. Whether it's Mardu Vehicles here, Bant CoCo, Green/White Tokens, or Caw Blade. The decks that are best for that particular event will float to the top.

Another great example is the Modern GP  in Dallas 2016. I know GP's are very different than the pro tour, and I also know Modern is VERY different than standard, but Skred Red won that GP... Skred has been a deck forever, and NOBODY would call it a tier one deck. However, it has particularly good matchups against Dredge and Infect (pre-bannings), which were the decks to beat at that Event. Since Skred made easy work of those decks, by the time he made it to day 2, the field was mostly Dredge and Infect, so he came out on top.

I think too often we jump to the idea that if the pro's play it, it's the best, when really it's more like, "if the pro's play it, it's a good deck to play against other pros"

[Mnemosyne]

Hey, you guys watch any of the Pittsburg GP? An unsurprising result, but at least Mardu Vehicles lost to an unorthodox GB counters.

[ladof]

Nope. Got bored watching Mardu Vehicles and GB counters battle in the last one, so I just gave up watching pro magic. Just once I'd love to see some random guy drop into the top 8 with a mill deck or something.