Pro Tour victories shape your LGS meta (Or: ALL HAIL CHAINWHIRLER!)

[CardAgain Sweater]

Another Pro Tour finished, another dominant showing for Red; this time the card of the weekend was Goblin Chainwhirler, with 28 copies in the decks of the top 8 - that's right, 7 decks were red or red-black (and red-black was heavy in red, black mostly for scrapheap and unlicensed disintegration) and all decks in the top 8 running red had a playset of chainwhirlers.

How do you see this affecting your local meta? Pro Tour standouts always have an impact.

Was red already a dominant archtype at your FNMs? What about WU control (teferi or approach, which is almost the same deck)? Will more red decks push them out as a weak matchup, or make WU control more appealing?

What are you poor token / go wide people gonna do about chainwhirlers in droves? Green stompy is also hurt by the llanowar elf killing goblin, if the mono green deck doesn't start fast.

Anyhoo, I thought it would be interesting to hear the thoughts of others who watched the Pro Tour, find out how it might change things at various local metas.

[Mnemosyne]

Another Pro Tour finished, another dominant showing for Red; this time the card of the weekend was Goblin Chainwhirler, with 28 copies in the decks of the top 8 - that's right, 7 decks were red or red-black (and red-black was heavy in red, black mostly for scrapheap and unlicensed disintegration) and all decks in the top 8 running red had a playset of chainwhirlers.

How do you see this affecting your local meta? Pro Tour standouts always have an impact.

Was red already a dominant archtype at your FNMs? What about WU control (teferi or approach, which is almost the same deck)? Will more red decks push them out as a weak matchup, or make WU control more appealing?

What are you poor token / go wide people gonna do about chainwhirlers in droves? Green stompy is also hurt by the llanowar elf killing goblin, if the mono green deck doesn't start fast.

Anyhoo, I thought it would be interesting to hear the thoughts of others who watched the Pro Tour, find out how it might change things at various local metas.

I am not surprised this has happened. I also am a little sad that standard is being dominated by a single deck. Radkos is just a reiteration of the mono-red deck utilising Scrapheap Scrounger and the powerful Unlicensed Disintegration.

Mono-Red/Rakdos was 7/8 of the top 8 - Esper control being the only other deck.

I can't help but feel Goblin Chainwhirler should be banned. (Not because it is overly powerful) but because of the support it gets, from the deck's structure.

Turn 1-2 you attack in Bomat Courier twice, and then put Scrapheap Scrounger into play.
Turn 3 you use Unlicensed Disintegration, maybe, to remove a threat, deal 3 damage. (3 exiled cards with Bomat if you attacked) and with scrapheap Scrounger that is (8 damage in total from turn 1-3)
Fourth turn, maybe you get triple red and a dual land, you send in Bomat Courier, maybe not, you don't worry if Scrapheap Scrounger dies because you can sacrifice Bomat Courier and discard your hand for 3-4 cards and then reanimate Scrapheap Scrounger, later. You play Goblin Chainwhirler in your second main-phase, and your opponent takes 1 damage from the ETB and then if Scrapheap was blocked by let us say Steel Leaf Champion that's 3 damage marked and Chainwhirler adds the 1 damage needed to kill it, which isn't direct.
You then follow up with a turn 5 Rekindling Phoenix or Glorybringer and that is a board state that is hard to beat.

The Blazing Volley effect, is a little too punishing for other archetypes, servo, vampire, merfolk, or general token decks, to be feasible.
This is a reason why Rampaging Ferocidon was banned pre-dominaria.

Either this is the solution, or the format needs to be reset and Kaladesh/Amonkhet needs to rotate out ASAP. We could wait until M19, but I sincerely doubt anything will change, between now and then. It is a little telling when the oldest set is still represented in every major deck. (Bomat Courier, Scrapheap Scrounger, Torrential Gearhulk, Heart of Kiran, Unlicensed Disintegration, Chandra, Torch of Defiance)

That is my thoughts on this, anyway.

[robort]

My Hill of beans or opinion so to speak.....

It is sort of like watching the NBA Finals same ol' same ol' . Just getting stale again, and it will stay stale again until rotation comes along. Even then I don't think that will change the staleness of where Standard is "again". You go to your local Standard Showdown or FNM at your local LGS and guess what? You are going to see this staleness as well.

I admit I wasn't playing before 2011 Core Set so I don't know much about the Standard environment before that.
But you want "new" people to coming in the game, enjoying themselves, getting good friendships, and et-cetra.
It won't happen as much when things like the "same" or almost the "same" deck making the top 8 with 7 decks.
A Boring, stale snooozefest.. ZZZZZZZZ

I am going to guess at my LGS standard started shrinking at the Takir era and for a good while now standard isn't played at FNM anymore there. It does have Modern, Draft and Commander though. Everything consitantly fires, hasn't slowed down, doesn't get stale and I constantly see new players coming in. Yet Standard Showdown does fire but not with the same plethora of people they get with those other 3 formats. Before previous rotation my LGS had where you could play Standard Showdown for free just because of the staleness. Yet odd that people still brought this staleness to a "free" event where even the prize pool was small.

Is there or could there be something done about all this besides banning? of course but I ranted long enough. So it is what it is and it may never ever change.

[TheWakaEmu117]

I don't necessarily think that the pro tour accurately portrays the meta as it really is. After all it is a competition and people are playing to win so they are going to play what they think the best deck is. I think that the pro tour more represents what is tier 1 competitively, what are the best decks. I think that it is true yes you are going to see a lot of those decks at your local meta and many may in fact be dominated by that, but there is a huge variety of tier 2 decks that are playable.

I think this meta has only been shaped by chainwhirler because there is a prominet red deck aggro deck. I think if Kaladesh/Aether Revolt had rotated when they orginally were we would have this problem. Its the same problem we had back when BFZ and SOI blocks were in with kaladesh. they weren't supposed to so you had a lot of busted decks (Marvel, and vehicals Im looking at you). I think once Rotation comes in the fall the meta isn't going to warp around chainwhirler as much as it is Teferi and Karn. I think banning chainwhirler this early wouldn't be helpful since the Red decks are going to lose like 60% of the deck, heart of kiran, bomat courier, hazoret, glorybringer, scrapheap scrounger, ahn crop crasher ect ect. I think that red will be okay but other decks like steelleaf stompy, will be a lot better. I don't even think that U/W is going to be great after rotation because it also loses a lot of its big pieces.

I think standard is a great learning enviroment for new players since they don't have to worry about tons and tons of cards they need to worry about when playing modern. My friend I play with the most only has standard cards right now and we play pretty casually how ever he gets pissed if my deck isn't standard legal because his deck won't be able to scale with that power level of the super good causal cards I want play. now yes these cards are super busted and built of good modern cards and stuff but thats on me.

I think standard is gonna suck a bit till rotation. thats just they way it is right know. hopefully we get back on track with a rotation schedule and then we wont have to worry about standard being bad.

[Firegriff]

We probably will not see it, but a well made enrage deck could tap into the damage chainwhirler deals out.  Bellowing Aegisaur would be a good card on the field, but needs ramp help to get there.