Season 12 Top 16 Player Showcase
16 players remain in the VML, battling it out for a Regional Championship invite and a spot in the VML Invitational. With Bloomburrow releasing in a few weeks, Standard will rotate and shake things up next season. I asked players about their favorite and least favorite cards that’ll rotate out.
Nora Martin
Nora is looking to repeat her top 8 placement from Season 8. She’s played many different decks this season, bringing Dimir Midrange this week against Amy Altman on Boros Convoke.
How do you feel about your match this week?
Medium-bad. I don’t have much of a shot in game 1 against the nuts from my opponent, even on the play. In general 1 for 1ing Boros is not a winning strategy and this deck is all about trading resources. Sometimes Boros can have consistency issues that Dimir is happy to take advantage of though.
What does your testing process look like?
I like to play a single match of the specific matchup I want to test and record both perspectives, and then immediately afterwards review the video and discuss with my testing partner why what happened in the game happened, and how things could’ve been different through card selection and decision making. I’ll usually do this process 2-3 times in a testing session.
What cards or decks are you saddest to see rotate with Bloomburrow?
Analyst and Slogurk for sure. Hopefully we get some different combo decks to replace them in the coming format.
Worldwaker2
This is Worldwaker2’s first VML season. They went 5-2 in Division 1 with a myriad of decks. This week they’re playing Azorius Control versus TheMightyLinguine on Esper Midrange.
Why did you choose your deck this week?
My opponent this week, TheMightyLinguine, has a history of heavily biasing her deck choice trying to predict what her opponent will pick. As the season has gone on, that’s been more and more my approach too. Given that, my goal going into deck selection was as follows:
– Look at my deck choice history and re-evaluate what patterns I might be conveying.
– Analyze Linguine’s history to get an idea of what decks she could pull from.
– Given that she and I are on the same testing team, weave in my intuition about what she might choose into my theory without over-indexing on it.
– Bother my roommate Ryan about the matchup and my anxieties as much as possible. She’s a fantastic player (and one of my closest friends) who I’m super lucky to have as a roommate, and her counsel was invaluable over every step in the following process.
My deck choice was pretty varied over the course of the season, but I did have a slight bias towards graveyard decks, especially Analyst. I think in testing, I’d also shared an affinity towards those kinds of decks to the team. So while I didn’t expect Linguine to over-index on that, I expected her to be very ready for that kind of matchup, and probably not pick a deck weak into either Analyst or Legends.
As for her history, I noticed that she primarily chose to play midrange decks. Esper seemed to be the most common default when trying to lean more in on metagaming an opponent with a predictable pattern, and she saw a lot of success doing so. She tended to almost completely avoid combo and control decks, however demonstrated that aggro was in her range last week against Amy. Over the 4 seasons she’s played in, this trend has stayed pretty consistent.
With this information, I set up a matrix in google sheets, crossing each deck that I could play against each deck I thought could be feasible for her to play, and at each intersection, noted how favorable I felt like the matchup would be. It was nowhere near a perfect measure, since I haven’t played all the matchups, but it was useful to have a visual to organize my thoughts. There were many decks in Linguine’s range, but the ones I thought most likely would be either Convoke (or a similar aggro deck), or Esper Midrange. So I wanted to choose something that could handle Esper & Aggro well, and still compete against the other decks that I thought were in her range.
At first, I was leaning towards 5c Legends. It was the most rawly powerful deck in my range, and when you don’t know what your opponent will do, going with comfort and power is good. However, I thought I could do better than that. Legends had two weaknesses: a bad Convoke matchup, and the fact that Linguine would probably be ready for a graveyard deck. With that in mind, another deck stood out to me: Talia Bael’s UW Control. A take on Control playing many more creatures, Talia’s deck boasted a strong Esper matchup in a metagame where that was rare. Both myself and my teammate Amy had piloted that list to get wins earlier in the season, against opponents who we knew would play Esper. I wasn’t sure Linguine would, but the deck didn’t look poor vs any of her other possible decks, so it seemed like a solid all-around pick, with high upside if she went Esper.
With that decision made, I reached out to Talia herself, to get her opinions and advice. She provided a lot of insight on the nuances of the deck, and how I could tune it based on what I expected to see. With her counsel, I finalized some small tweaks to the deck, and submitted.
How do you feel about your matchup?
No deck in the format is great against Esper – it’s the kind of deck that always has game no matter what. However, my UW Control deck is much better positioned than most. I can play the creature game with a threat that trumps all of her threats – Dust Animus. I also have sweepers to reset the board when I fall behind, which she does not. Her spells are cheaper than mine, so she can get under me, but if I can stabilize and hit my lands, I gain a massive advantage.
Linguine’s list is also heavily tuned to beat graveyard decks. In the maindeck she’s playing the full 4 Tishana’s Tidebinders and Lord Skitters, effective tools versus those decks but not as potent against me. Additionally, her board is also skewed more towards those matchups. While nowhere near backbreaking for her by itself, I think this bias does give me a notable additional edge, as those cards are not nearly as effective in this matchup.
That’s all to say, I feel very well positioned going into this match. Esper is a strong deck and Linguine has plenty of experience piloting it, so the result is nowhere near set in stone, but I think I’m as prepared as I could be.
What cards are you happiest to see rotate with Bloomburrow?
The Wandering Emperor – The card has always felt kind of like just good stuff soup the card, powerful and flexible but not super interesting.
Trilands – the Capenna trilands felt like they made every multi-color deck feel kind of samey, and made building their manabases both really complicated, but also good enough that you could build very un-optimally and the difference would be minor at best. With them goes Domain, a deck I bear no grudge against but also that I didn’t find very interesting.
CliffBoyardee
Cliff is playing in their second VML season, looking to win this one after losing the finals last season. They’re on Orzhov Midrange, a deck combining the black threats from Golgari such as Caustic Bronco and Graveyard Trespasser with the white midrange cards of Esper like Wedding Announcement and Wandering Emperor, facing Feather on Dimir Midrange.
What does your testing process look like?
I haven’t had a bunch of time for standard lately but generally I’ve just been taking some of the top decks and running them through the ladder.
What cards are you happiest to see rotate?
SMELL YA LATER RAFFINE!
What cards are you saddest to see rotate?
I’m gonna really miss my heavy hitter control cards like Wandering Emperor and Memory Deluge.
Renz
Renz is playing her first season, finishing Division 12 with a 5-2 record. She mostly played Domain Ramp and Gruul Aggro, but has played Golgari Midrange every match in the playoffs. Her opponent is Jason Ye on 5 Color Slogurk.
How did you start playing Magic?
I started playing Magic in 1st year high school. There was a school fair happening and we stopped by this one booth where this guy was selling old trading cards. Just so happens that some of my buddies back then knew how to play so we built my deck right then and there on the spot. I forgot the entire content of the deck, but I remember vividly that it had a playset of Thornweald Archers.
What was your hardest match this season?
Everyone I played with this season were all top-notch competition and all gave me a hard time but if I had to choose one, I would say it is my Top 32 match. G3 my opponent was just stuck on 3 lands, but G1 and G2 really could have gone either way.
What does the VML mean to you?
For me, it is a safe and inclusive avenue to play against folks who are of the marginalized gender. As someone who’s just almost one year into transitioning, the VML has been a genuinely great place for me to meet folks like me and connect with them even outside the confines of the online tournament. For example, it was so cool meeting IRL at RC Dallas people I met/know through VML for the first time.
Mythic Mikaela
Mikaela is the most experienced VML player in top 16, playing in all 12 seasons. This season she’s played a variety of decks and chose Esper Midrange against Paige Smith’s Temur Analyst deck.
How did you get involved with the VML?
I knew a lot of the people organizing it so it was a no brainer to join
What does the VML mean to you?
It’s just a really wonderful community that has been wonderful for forming friendships and connections in the Magic world.
What cards are you happiest to see rotate?
Memory Deluge, I like the card but I think I’m ready to be done seeing it
Talia Bael
This is Talia’s fourth season, making playoffs every time. She’s played Azorius Control most weeks and brought it again this week versus Ashley Fairchild on 4 Color Analyst
Why did you choose your deck this week?
I chose control with 4 Tidebinders because I’m broadly comfortable with Control and I believed Tidebinder to be an exceptionally strong card against Ashley’s spread.
What cards are you happiest to see rotate?
I will be so happy to see Raffine go, it has forced Standard to be about racing and hyper efficient removal for the entire time I’ve been playing competitively.
What cards are you saddest to see rotate?
I’ll be sad to lose Memory Deluge and The Wandering Emperor, having that fork has made control unusually smooth to play but it’ll be fun to work out what it looks like next!