On June 24th, MTGO had its first classic Premier Event in over a year. A Classic PE had not been scheduled online since just after Visions was released over a year ago, so it was an event chock-full of great anticipation for the majority of the Classic community.

To understand the Classic metagame - an Eternal format, or one where cards never rotate out - it is a good idea to start by taking a look at the Eternal formats in the paper world. Specifically, looking at the Vintage metagame is a great way to get a feel for how to properly prepare for a Classic tournament. Now, I’m not suggesting that Classic is anywhere near as powerful as Vintage, but nonetheless, there are some good lessons to be learned.

A staple in Extended and Standard, but nowhere to be seen in Vintage

Understanding this will get you closer to understanding Classic

As followers of the Legacy scene will tell you, the 800-lb gorilla in the room was the recently de-errated Flash. As you probably have read about in several articles already, Flash forms with Protean Hulk to form a two card combo that can win in a single turn (albeit with the help of a lot of periphery cards in the library). Once Protean Hulk goes to the graveyard (as a result of Flash putting it briefly in play and then forcing it to be sacrificed) , the Flash player pulls out some combination of cards that ranges from dealing twenty-plus life loss from Disciple Of The Vault, or attacking with an infinite number of Sky Hussar, or making a really big Sutured Ghoul. As recent player-run tournaments had shown, beating Flash was a matter of making sure that you had an answer (or two) in hand for the first and second turn. The easiest way to do so proved to be Leyline Of The Void. Turning off your opponent’s graveyard before they can play a spell will force a deck like Flash to waste valuable time and resources hunting for and removing it. There are a number of other cards such as Stifle, Spell Snare, Duress, Cabal Therapy, Force Spike, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, True Believer (against the more popular Disciple version), Meddling Mage, and Extract (removing a key card, such as the single Arcbound Ravager) that can all be played turn one or two to disrupt Flash. Unlike Legacy, Flash decks can’t hold a full suite of free counters, as only Pact Of Negation and the under-performing-in-combo Disrupting Shoal are online – Daze and Force Of Will are not. Generally, unless the Flash player has an extremely good draw, it is very unlikely they will be able to go off on the first or second turn and have protection for their combo.

You’ll notice something about the above detail – there are no strategies that exist in green or red that will help you against Flash. Really – there are none. You can, if you want, mulligan with Leyline Of The Void in your deck and hope to play it for free - thereby avoiding the mana cost - but that is just about it. To boot, the answers in white are all two mana or more, making it a difficult proposition to run any combination solely comprised of white, green or red. Now, if those color combinations are not very effective against Flash, think about the Extended decks that also would then have a poor game against the deck - Boros Deck Wins, Goblins, and R/G Zoo, to name some popular ones. Even Skullclamp and Aether Vial-packed Affinity (which is Classic-legal) will do very poorly against Flash, unless it also remembers to keep some answers in the deck.

Depending on your mindset, people generally fall into two different camps when a deck like Flash is around. They will feel like the format (or deck) is degenerate, or they will feel that the combo simply forces the metagame to close off a certain number of decks. The real question becomes how many decks remain viable when a deck like Flash is around.

Not enough decks were running the free Flash hoser.

Now, unfortunately the event crashed un-recoverably after the top 4, but the top 8 in swiss were:

What that metagame essentially broke down into was exactly what one would expect – Aggro (Affinty, Goblins, Zoo, Boros) beating Control (Fish, MonoBlack, Scepter), in turn beating Combo (Flash), and back to Combo beating Aggro. There were some aberrations in there – it is notable that I saw several decks capable of running Leyline of the Void not using it. Due to Flash-based combo numbering only twelve out of seventy decks, this ensured that the much more rampant creature-based strategies would be the victor in the majority of rounds one and two, clearing out control and letting whatever Flash decks survived the first couple of rounds have a nearly-free ride at the end with the remaining aggro decks.

To this point, I’ve exhausted more time and space explaining Classic Flash application than I care to, considering how much has already been written on the subject. However, it is a nice segue into the discussing the Classic format itself, as well as its differences from other formats.

No format that includes this card can be the same as one that doesn't.

What all this means is that bringing your best Extended deck to the tournament (and possibly trying to improve it with the better selections the cardpool offers) doesn’t make it a correct metagame choice. To the contrary, it actually shows a lack of metagaming. Even though Wizards banned the heck out of some very good Affinity cards in Extended that you can play in Classic (Vial, Disciple and Skullclamp) doesn’t necessarily make Affinity a great choice. You need to consider that as an aggro deck in Classic, you have to be able to deal with combos that can go off before you can put together your turn three or four win. This means forsaking something like a playset of Welding Jar and instead running four Duress. If you are running Goblins, you may have to sacrifice some speed and add black mana and Cabal Therapy to the mix. If you are playing Rock, you may have to forego the early card and mana advantage you’d normally rather have and mulligan a couple times into a Leyline of the Void. Having a single Duress available may not cut it against a range of Classic combo decks, including Flash, TEPS, Sensei Sensei, 1-Land Belcher and Worldgorger Dragon. Reactive control decks should seek to use Disrupting Shoal, perhaps giving up their early Counterbalance to counter that crucial 2-mana spell. It appeared as if many people walked into the 3x hoping for an easy prize without scouting the little Classic information available. I certainly think the results support that conclusion. Three Flash decks made it in from the twelve available, and zero Affinity and zero Goblin decks were in the Top 8.

After playing for the seven rounds and personally making the top eight of the tournament, I was hoping to get a lot more in the way of interviews with some of the top participants. Sadly, I was only able to get four before the unfortunate crash corrupted the Top 4, and many people left. However, I think their opinions as finalists in the first Classic event in quite some time are definitely worth the read.

ENDIR - Playing ZOO

dangerlinto: How long have you been playing Classic?
Endir: Eight rounds... and one of them was an I.D... so Seven rounds. : )
dangerlinto: Haha! So first time, then?
Endir: I tried a Classic 8-man queue - I won 2-0 first round - then I had to drop due to a friend wanting to leave. I used an all-Extended deck then.
dangerlinto: What did you change for this event?
Endir: I was playing Gifts Rock then. Now I'm playing Boros
dangerlinto: How is playing in Classic different from other formats?
Endir: It's much faster. So many Flashes, Affinity, etc..
dangerlinto: What card would you most like to see online for Classic that isn't available now?
Endir: Survival Of The Fittest, Recurring Nightmare, Wall Of Blossoms, and Aluren
dangerlinto: Nice picks, but we are going to be getting those when Tempest block eventually comes online... anything from Ice Age or before?
Endir: Mana Drain.
dangerlinto: Anything else you'd like to say about the Classic event?
Endir: I'd like to thank the_bestdude for lending me "a few" cards{s}
dangerlinto: Thanks Endir, and well done.
 

Arcmage84 - Fish

dangerlinto: How long have you been playing Classic?
Arcmage84: I only play it here and there, but since the format was created.
dangerlinto: Do you find the format engaging?
Arcmage84: I like using the Classic card pool, but it's a little too broken for me to play all the time.
dangerlinto: What do you think is "broken" about Classic?
Arcmage84: Turn two wins from Flash and some shortly thereafter from other combo decks
dangerlinto: Was that something you planned for?
Arcmage84: Yeah, I wanted something that had turn one and two answers for Flash as well as having decent matchups with Affinity, Boros and Goblins.
dangerlinto: Do you think Classic is any more expensive to get into than Extended?
Arcmage84: Some Classic decks are cheaper than some Extended decks; the average one seems more expensive I'd guess.
dangerlinto: What card would you most like to see online for Classic that isn't available now?
Arcmage84: Force Of Will.
dangerlinto: Thanks Arcmage84 and good work.

ImperfectBeing - Flash

Some classic folks just plain like the bah-roken.

mikeman29 - Countertop Flash

dangerlinto: How long have you been playing Classic?
mikeman29: I started testing for Classic profusely about a week before the event, when it first was posted in the PE room (as with prismatic 3x). I've fooled around in a couple player-run tournaments, but I wouldn't consider myself a "dedicated" Classic fan.
dangerlinto: What tools did you use to prepare, other than the Classic Player Run Events?
mikeman29: I watched a couple of the classic tournies, but I figured that because of Flash it would be a rough translation of (paper) Legacy and GP-Colombus, minus Goblins. And I tested primarily with Little_Shaves
dangerlinto: Do you find the format engaging?
mikeman29: Define engaging.
dangerlinto: Engaging, meaning the format has something to offer to you as a challenge and remains fun to play.
mikeman29: Well, I don't think it was a "challenge" due to how prepared me and Shaves were (he got some bad breaks and finished 23rd). I definitely think it's a format with a lot of potential and I would play in another tournament.
dangerlinto: So you think most of the rest of the field was unprepared?
mikeman29: Very. Especially for the transformative sideboard
dangerlinto: Yes - the transformative sideboard was a good choice
mikeman29: I had Counterbalance and Top, similar to Steve Sadin's Flash list (GP Columbus), but there was some amount of hate that I managed to fight through.
dangerlinto: How is playing in Classic different from other formats?
mikeman29: Besides the Flash matchup, it's not too different interactive-wise, but it's a lot faster and the decks are obviously better because of the bigger card pool. The Mirage tutors and Visions Vampiric Tutor make it extremely Flash-oriented, and combo becomes the deck to beat, which the majority of the time isn't the case in Extended and Standard - at least not for a long time.
dangerlinto: What card would you most like to see online for Classic that isn't available now?
mikeman29: hmmm - Give me a minute on that one - for the health of the format, probably Daze, but there are a lot cards I'm looking forward too, such as Survival of the Fittest and Aluren.
dangerlinto: Any picks from before Mirage block?
mikeman29: Force of Will.
dangerlinto: Thank you so very much mikeman, and well done.

I found these interviews very enlightening. From the very beginning of the tournament, mikeman29 was playing the deck to beat. The decklist he ran was pretty close to perfect for taking care of the dearth of Extended decks and the Sulfur Elementals he could bring in from the sideboard plus the lone Pyroclasm (which he can tutor for) gave him a good game against Fish decks, the main hate for Flash decks. Once two Sulfur Elementals are in play, it is lights out for Fish decks - almost all their creatures are white and none have a toughness over two.

I agreed highly with mikeman’s interpretation of the field. It was mostly unprepared for the nuances of the Classic metagame. Playing a Flash deck, I only ran into Leyline Of The Void once. Look at that Flash list again; just a couple of bounce cards for Leylines. Usually, Flash has to tutor for them. And if Flash is tutoring for bounce cards, that means it is not tutoring for Hulk or Flash. That often buys you enough time to either win the game with your aggro beats, or setup your control deck to either rip their hand to shreds or prevent them from going off. In the player run events, Leyline of the Void is so prevalent that it simply discourages any thought of playing graveyard-based combo. That did not seem to be the case at the Premier Event.

Interestingly, Force of Will and Daze appeared on the interviewee lists of cards they’d like to see. As the Classic card pool grows, the number of incredibly fast combos is only going to increase. Adding free counters to the mix generally gives control the time it needs to combat those combos. After all, if your opponent can combo out on turn two, Counterspell is only effective 50% of the time – when you get two mana before they do. But with free counters, you can buy yourself some time at the expense of a card or a land drop and keep combo in check. The problem lies in the timing. If Force of Will and Daze were in this tournament, surely the Flash decklists would have matched those of the Legacy GP, where Force of Will and Daze were used in Flash lists to the opposite effect to keep the control decks shut down. However, with some foresight with upcoming Classic releases, it’s only a matter of time before other fast combos (Doomsday, Aluren, Survival of the Fittest and Oath of Druids to name a few) will make the kind of free countering that holds the Legacy and especially Vintage metagame together necessary.

I sincerely hope everyone enjoyed the Classic event, and I also hope to see you all out soon playing more Classic games, drafting more Classic sets and participating in more Classic events. I expect that as more sets come online (and with the Extended rotation of 2008), I’ll be seeing a lot more of you in the upcoming years.