Earlier today I asked a question on Twitter that I think
needs to be discussed in greater than 140 characters. The question was “Knowing
what you know now, which PT from the past would you go back to play and have
the highest EV?” I had a certain one in mind that I think is best, but I received
many responses and I wanted to cover them here.
The “Time Travel to a PT” has been an interesting thought
experiment of mine for several years. There are many ways that you can exploit
your knowledge gap to gain an edge at these past tournaments. The most obvious
way is to just play the deck that won the tournament. If I went to PT Paris
with Caw Blade, I would have a very good shot of making the money. But the best
team in the world also had Caw Blade for the PT, so it would be a stretch to
say I would be a favorite to beat all of them.
Another way to exploit the knowledge gap is to travel to a
time where players just weren’t as good. The first PT didn’t require anything
other than a phone call to qualify. Early limited PTs are notorious for just an
elite few players actually knowing how to draft.
The best way to exploit the knowledge would be to play a
deck that is absolutely head and shoulders better than the rest that no one
else has. This has actually happened a couple of times, and leads to some of
the better scenarios.
I’ve ranked the top options here, with some explanation on
each.
6. Worlds 2010 – Any Worlds would be very difficult to get
an edge in because of the nature of the multiple formats. 2010 was mentioned
because you could play Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, TMS, and no one really did.
However, instead of Batterskull or Sword of Feast and Famine you would be
limited to Sword of Body and Mind. This might be good enough, and I’m sure
playing some games against the winning UB lists you could tell quickly if this
was a good idea.
5. Any Limited PT before Tempest –This includes LA 96,
Atlanta 96, LA 97, and NY 97. I can’t really say first hand that people were
bad at limited before this, and it might be tough going back to a time when
sets were designed differently, but I think 20 years of draft theory would help
immensely in these tournaments. Maybe not Atlanta since it was sealed deck, but
I included it the same. Tempest release
coincided with a pretty sick run of limited PT winners that might be difficult
to get through, even with the extra experience: Matt Place (R&D member),
Jon Finkel, Dirk Baberowski, Steve OMS (All HoF), with a down tournament of
Trevor Blackwell winnings before Michael Pustilnik and Kai Budde. Limited is
quite a difficult thing to get an edge on, so I would advise against trying
these.
4. PT Austin 2009 – More recent PTs have the problem of
being split format, so even if you show up to Austin with Thepths (truly the best deck of the format and
for the PT), you would still need to know something about ZZZ draft. I’d say playing
Thepths optimally would guarantee a top 50 finish, and if you manage to 4-2 or
better the draft you could top 8 and probably easily win the PT. This is a good
choice.
3. PT 1 – Play Necro (any build is good enough). Play
against a weak field. You could probably top 8 this with several different
decks, given the leaps that deck construction theory has gone through since
then. Only a couple of factors keep it from being the top spot: the Paris
Mulligan rule had not been implemented yet, so more variance, and judging was
still poor, so you could just get cheated and not be able to do anything about
it (probably a risk for any PT before 2000 based on what I’ve heard over the
years). Also the prize money wasn’t as large as the later PTs.
2. PT Chicago 1999 – Bob Maher won with Oath of Druids
defeated Free-Spell Necro in the Finals. Both of these decks are pretty good,
but not as good as fully powered Illusions-Donate.
I’m not sure you always win the PT,
since Duress and Unmask were widely played, but you probably win more often
than not.
1. PT Los Angeles 2005 – Sometimes I think about it, and I’m
surprised it took two months for Dredge to be the best deck, but some of the PT
lists were pretty close. Billy Moreno made the finals on the strength of dredge,
and Craig Jones was undefeated day one with a similar list. Kenji’s Dredgeatog
list from the top 8 wasn’t really a dredge deck but it recognized some of the
broken aspects of the mechanic. However, none of these decks were Friggorid.
There also wasn’t any graveyard hate available since Leyline of the Void wasn’t
printed until the next set. I think the Ichorid deck would top 8 99+% of the
time, and win the tournament 95% of the time. This is the best bet. All of the
deck lists for the tournament are available on the coverage site, so if you
want to prove me wrong you just have to play 2000 matches or so.
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