StarCityGames.com Open Series: Denver

The Standard portion of SCG: Denver just finished a few minutes ago, and B/R Vampires has won it. This marks 2 SCG Opens in a row that Vampires has placed first. Of the Top 8, only 3 decks were U/W Vampires. Further breakdown after the break.

First, and something I consider fairly notable, the deck that I lost to yesterday, the U/W Caw-Blade one, yea, that was the one that just placed 3rd in today's event. It was the only Caw-Blade deck to make it into the Top 4, so I want to say congratulations to Matt Motchkavitz!

Now, on to the tournament itself.

Here are the final placings:
1st: B/R Vampires
2nd: R Kuldotha Rebirth
3rd: U/W Caw-Blade
4th: R Red Deck Wins
5th: Caw-Blade
6th: Caw-Blade
7th: Splinter Twin
8th: Mono Red

Here is the first place Vampires deck:

B/R Vampires
Creatures - 26 4 Bloodghast 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir 4 Kalastria Highborn 3 Manic Vandal 4 Pulse Tracker 4 Vampire Lacerator 3 Viscera Seer Instants - 11 3 Dismember 4 Go for the Throat 4 Lightning Bolt	Lands - 23 4 Blackcleave Cliffs 4 Dragonskull Summit 4 Lavaclaw Reaches 3 Marsh Flats 2 Verdant Catacombs 6 Swamp	Sideboard: 2 Skinrender 3 Dark Tutelage 3 Act of Aggression 2 Crush 1 Doom Blade 4 Arc Trail

One very important note is that he is not running Dark Tutelage in the main board. This helps a lot against first game matches against Caw-Blade, where a Dark Tutelage is often a dead card, likewise the main deck Go for the Throats are able to hit Germ tokens. This deck is very much aimed at killing Caw-Blade decks, and it does an excellent job at it.

One final note, just because this tournament posted only 3 Caw-Blades in the Top 8 does not mean that the Standard format has suddenly gotten healthier. You should notice that almost all of the decks that made it into the Top 8 were decks that were specifically aimed at destroying the new variants of Caw-Blade. Caw-Blade players have been busy making their own decks beat other Caw-Blade decks which inherently makes them worse off against these outside decks aiming to take them down. Meanwhile, my friend Matt made it into the Top 8 by keeping the main deck anti-creature hate that has kept Caw-Blade on top of the format for so long (Also his maindeck Luminarch Ascensions are pretty sick). Caw-Blade players will realize that only 20-30% of tournament players are showing up with Caw-Blade decks, there is really no reason to make your main deck inherently weak to 80% of the decks that you will face just to help your game 1 against a small percentage of decks.

Also, realize that this Open Series had no byes. Caw-Blade players are typically able to skip the first few rounds of a tournament with their byes, thus shifting the percentages of decks that you will face at each round. Without those, I believe a lot of Caw-Blade decks were simply knocked out early because they had to face random aggro decks while their main deck was tuned specifically to beat a deck they were unlikely to even face. You've gotta meta game the meta game.

Thanks for reading!