Comparing the Community's Predictions with the Pro Tour Top Decks

A few weeks ago I asked the /magictcg and /spikes reddit communities to fill out a survey with their card predictions for Pro Tour Aether Revolt. The idea was to get a sense for just how good we are at identifying the broken cards in a standard format before any tournament results come in.

Well, the results are in. As per the contest rules, I scored each card according to how many top decks (7+ constructed wins) it appeared in, with sideboard-only appearances counting for 0.25. With over 300 entries, here's how things turned out.

The Colored Cards

I asked respondents to select 5 monocolored cards (in any distribution of colors). The chart below shows all the cards with >20 selections on the survey.

The story of Pro Tour Aether Revolt was the complete dismantling of Jeskai CopyCat decks, mostly by Mardu Vehicles, so it’s no surprise that Felidar Guardian is the biggest disappointment here, vastly underperforming its hype. On the other hand, solid answers such as Fatal Push and Shock were as good as advertised.

The biggest breakout card was Rishkar, Peema Renegade, whose value in the BG deck with +1/+1 counters synergy was underestimated by the survey respondents (keep in mind the survey was intentionally closed just prior to the first SCG opens.)

Also of note is the gap between Disallow and Metallic Rebuke. Many people picked the versatile hard counter, and while it did show up in a reasonable number of top decks, the overlooked Metallic Rebuke actually far surpassed Disallow in point value even though it appeared in 1 less maindeck. This is thanks to its frequent inclusion in the sideboard of the deck of the tournament, Mardu Vehicles.

Other notable misses on the survey’s part are Yahenni’s Expertise, Sram’s Expertise, and Herald of Anguish. All appeared to be solid constructed-worthy cards but in the end did not fit into any top decks. Also a miss, though in the other direction: Release the Gremlins. This card showed up in a few Mardu Vehicles lists as a mirror-breaker, but was completely ignored by survey respondents, and is left off the chart above as it garnered just 1 pick in the survey.

The Gold Cards

I asked respondents to select just one gold card. The chart below shows all selections.

No real surprises here. Winding Constrictor turned out to be as solid as it looked (though to be fair, it didn’t really have much competition in its category.)

The Colorless Cards

I asked respondents to select just one colorless card. The chart below shows all selections.

No real surprises here either, even though the community didn’t quite nail the relative prevalence of Walking Ballista, Heart of Kiran, and Aethersphere Harvester, significantly overvaluing the Ballista. All three are clearly solid cards and their relative performance at this Pro Tour likely says more about the particular meta at that event (Mardu Vehicles for days) than it does about the strength of the cards themselves.

So What Does it All Mean?

In my announcement for this contest, you’ll find that part of the motivation behind this particular experiment was to test my belief that “WoTC makes (almost) no obvious development mistakes.” The idea was that the community, with the benefit of hindsight bias and the crowdsourced testing resources of millions, vastly overestimates how “obvious” WoTC’s development mistakes are. With the survey I sought to discover if (1) The community picks would coalesce around some suspected broken cards, and (2) If those cards would truly turn out to be broken.

The answers to these questions appear to be (1) sort of, and (2) no. If any deck is broken in the current standard meta, it is the Mardu Vehicles deck. The predictions of the survey didn’t exactly reflect that, with respondents heavily favoring the more hyped Felidar Guardian and Walking Ballista over the Mardu Vehicles options in those respective categories.

That said… my assertion that WoTC development makes very few obvious mistakes was rather undermined by Sam Stoddard’s admission that development completely missed the Felidar Guardian/Saheeli Rai interaction. Yes, CopyCat fell flat at the Pro Tour so perhaps development dodged a bullet. Or perhaps, like the Aetherworks decks in previous standard, CopyCat will just go into hiding for a while, to burst back into a changed meta that won’t be quite so hostile to it. Either way, the power level of CopyCat is so high that Stoddard’s admission is truly very troubling for those of us, like myself, that are generally sanguine about WoTC RD’s capabilities.

So what does this all mean? Perhaps we need to wait and see. The single-deck-dominated Pro Tour meta is certainly troubling and created one of the worst Top 8 viewing experiences in recent memory. On the other hand, that dominant deck was not CopyCat, and it’s not impossible for a relatively stale Pro Tour metagame to eventually create a diverse standard metagame. Will Mardu Vehicles stay on top now that it’s public enemy number 1? And if it doesn’t, does that just mean that CopyCat is broken after all? I will be very interested to find out.

I hope everyone who participated had fun playing the prediction game and following the Pro Tour. Keep your eyes peeled for future events of this nature for Pro Tour Amonkhet. (Or leave your email address so I can let you know about the next one!)

But Wait, Who Won?

Oh yeah, there’s the little matter of the Japanese Elspeth vs Kiora I promised to send the winner. Congratulations to the winner of the Pro Tour Aether Revolt Metagame Prediction Game: “M” from New York. M had close to the theoretical maximum-scoring ballot. These were the picks of the winning ballot:

Pick 5 Monocolored Cards	Pick 1 Gold Card	Pick 1 Colorless Card
Felidar Guardian, Metallic Rebuke, Fatal Push, Shock, Rishkar, Peema Renegade	Winding Constrictor	Heart of Kiran

Looking at the top-scoring submissions, they all shared many of the same “probably strong” cards. There was a cluster of leaders that established an advantage by picking the undervalued Rishkar, and M opened a gap on the rest of the field by taking Metallic Rebuke over Disallow. As discussed above, the greater splashability of Metallic Rebuke led to its inclusion in many Mardu Vehicles sideboards, pushing it over the top in this Pro Tour.

The only way for M to have improved on the winning submission theoretically would have been to swap Felidar Guardian for Greenbelt Rampager, which would have marginally improved the score by just 1 point.

Here’s what M had to say about his picks:

1. Felidar Guardian. This one was pretty obvious. Give the masses a splinter twin and so shall they go forth and abuse.

2. Metallic Rebuke. Basically a mana leak in most decks, something standard has been clamoring for for quite some time. Probably just a strict upgrade to already played cards like spell shrivel or revolutionary rebuff.

3. Fatal Push. Many a nay-sayer advocated that this was made for modern and legacy, and wouldn't impact standard nearly as much. Well that was obviously wrong. The sheer power level of this card is off the charts, especially against the top tier decks of the current format. Nice spaceship you got there, its a shame if some spartan king shoved it into a pit.

4. Shock. Another obvious pick due to interaction with saheeli-cat combo, however this card overperformed further with double duty as additional fatal push copies in some matchups.

5. Rishkar, Peema Renegade. I'll be honest this is one of my favorite cards in the set. Obvious snake synergies aside, its pure value and mana ramp all in one bundled up package.

6. Winding Constrictor. What happens when you put a hardened scales effect on a 2/3 body for 2 mana? An entire deck archetype thats what. As previously mentioned, its best friends with Rishkar, and also finally gave verdurous gearhulk the spotlight it very much deserved.

7. Heart of Kiran. Ban smuggler's copter they said. Vehicles will be fair again they said. The format will be more diverse they said. I guess there's one downfall: dies to king leonidas?

Congrats to M on his win!

If you're interested in staying in touch and participating in future free games like this one, leave your email address. I'll only use email addresses collected this way to notify you when I create a Pro Tour Prediction Game.