A few weekends ago we saw the best of the best battle for the title of World Champion and the opportunity to see a new face on a Magic card.
When the dust settled, former World Champion Javier Dominguez regained the title. Javier fought tooth and nail, ultimately winning with a Dimir Demons deck that, according to Frank Karsten's data, had a putrid 44% win rate.
Javier is on another level and has been the best, or one of the best, for years. Between Javier, Seth, Simon, and JED, it's hard to say who's "the best" at the moment, but there's no need to figure that out. We can just enjoy the show they keep putting on for us.
Javier's win invoked a lot of emotions from me. I can't help but want to compete when I see players at Worlds. I've been on the stage before. I've started 3-0 at Worlds in draft multiple times and always ended up with a middling finish that never converted my strong starts. It's hard to do well at such a high-profile event.
His win also rubs me the wrong way in that these great players devote their time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears to this game, yet they aren't Hall of Famers. They're not able to take even a small break from the game because they have to keep playing and battling to stay on the Tour. Meanwhile, we have Hall of Fame tags on coverage that props up players who played in a time when their hard work was highlighted. These players deserve their recognition, but so do their peers. In Javier's case, he'd easily fall within the top 10 players who would get into the Hall of Fame if it were revamped today. At this point, he'd be in the top 5 with Seth.
If Jon, Kai, Paulo, LSV, Huey, and the list goes on were not playing at their level, many of us, myself included, would not have been inspired to pursue excellence in this silly little game we call Magic. As time goes on, I'd like to see my friends and peers who have earned the honor receive that recognition.
Back to Worlds, though.
The Standard portion looked, for lack of a better term, sloppy. Javier's deck looked legitimately bad to me. The Doomsday Excruciator package looked lackluster. He'd often be in a tight game, draw the Demon, and not cast it because it forced him to have a Jace in his bottom six cards or would kill him.
Outside of that package, the deck looked great. I'd love to see the deck tuned in a way that didn't rely on that package and forced more of its midrange elements.
My favorite deck of the event, though I'm not even sure it's built completely optimally, was Kai Budde's Dimir Midrange.
This deck looked well-positioned, and Kaito looked nothing short of spectacular. In fact, the only reason I wouldn't want to play Unholy Annex in this Standard format is because of how good Kaito, Bane of Nightmares looked.
Tishana's Tidebinder looked bad every time I saw it, so I'd like to move away from that, add a third Kaito, and potentially find another solid two-mana creature to play one or two copies.
Regardless, Kai's run in his current life situation is nothing short of inspiring. I have my own health struggles, and I've thought it probably means I can't compete at the level I'd want to anymore, but seeing him compete at a world-class level with a worse circumstance makes me think about what I can accomplish. Kai's career has been nothing short of iconic. He truly is the GOAT.
I had a minute to talk to Sam Pardee who admitted before the tournament he should have registered this UB deck, as he thought it was strong. It wasn't completely fleshed out until the last day, and he didn't want to switch from the GB Midrange he'd been working on alongside Seth.
When I said the tournament looked sloppy, it was because decks like Seth's GB Midrange didn't look that well-tuned. Maybe it was but for a different expected metagame. Regardless, we now have an idea of what the metagame looks like, and Standard is far from solved.
The decks I'm most interested in tuning are both versions of UB Midrange. Nothing else stands out to me. Red, played only by Quinn Tonole, had a 100% win rate. He was the only pilot, had no losses in Swiss, and ran into Marcio's GB midrange, the one deck in the field he was probably a bit disadvantaged against.
Quinn's deck looked excellent for the tournament, but it's a one-trick pony that will be easy to push out in a more known metagame where you can prepare to play against this archetype. Quinn said his success against midrange was largely because they cannibalized each other by playing cards like Unholy Annex, which was a bad card against him, even though it's great in mirrors.
Quinn recognized this hole in the field and played a fantastic deck to line up for Worlds. But your tournaments at home, and games on Arena ladder, players will be much better prepared for Mono Red, especially now, as it will be a larger part of the metagame which will force the midrange decks to respect and react to it.
Quinn played great every game I watched, and really highlighted to me how awesome this year's Worlds was. New up and coming stars, playing against some of the best to ever do it, battling for the most coveted titles in Magic, Player of the Year and of course, Magic's World Champion. Really excited to see how the new guard rises to the occasion in the upcoming years.
As usual, Worlds lit the fire in me, which was already slightly lit by my recent commitment to near-daily streaming. I'm planning to book a Magic trip to Atlanta to play the Standard "GP," and we'll see how I'm feeling after that. I plan to focus more on Standard in the coming months, especially with Foundations around the corner.
Maybe I'll share thoughts on the Universes Beyond announcement next week, but for now, I'm going to enjoy a new Standard format and everything else Magic has to offer.
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