Today I’m going to be talking about Canadian Nationals, what it means to me, and what I believe the metagame will be like. For part 1, I’m going to be giving you the story that details why I started playing Magic and why Nationals is so special to me. In Part 2, I’m going to go through the most current tournament results to try and give you an idea of the upcoming metagame at Nationals this year.

Part 1:

Canadian Nationals has always been my absolute favourite tournament of the year, each and every year. It’s always been a great tournament because it gets all of the best players from across Canada in one room, all fighting for the right to represent Canada at Worlds. Nationals was the first large tournament I competed in, the first large tournament I enjoyed success at, and the tournament that ignited my love for the game.

In fact, Nationals was the reason I picked up playing Magic in the first place. Their was a time, long ago, when I was a young, dedicated, Yu-Gi-Oh player. I had qualified to play in the Yu-Gi-Oh National Championship multiple times, but it was in Toronto every year and the prizing was always cards, cameras, laptops, and other unexciting things; no one from Alberta ever went. When I got word that Magic’s Nationals was going to be in Calgary, my home town, I immediately picked up Magic in hopes of being able to play in it. I had been playing Yu-Gi-Oh for quite some time before hand, and understood concepts like card-advantage, tempo, proper shuffling, and net-decking.

I learned to play Magic on the kitchen table of my friends the Kevis brothers’ house. To start, we each chose a color and made decks out of the Kevis’ old cards. The older brother, Jeremy, had played before and chose blue, the younger brother, Ricky, chose green, and I, luckily, chose red. At the time, I had no idea that red was the best possible color I could have chosen, I just thought the art on the cards looked the coolest, and the first rare I ever open in a pack was [card]Shivan Dragon[/card], which was my favourite card. In preparation for Nationals, I scoured the Nationals coverage from other countries, looking for a Mono Red list, and settled on the red deck that cost the least, the only expensive card being Chrome Mox. Before playing the Grinders for Nationals, I had literally only played a single FNM and a release event for 9th edition. 13 years only, and armed with only a basic understanding of the rules of the game, an inexpensive Mono Red deck and determination, I  came to Canadian Nationals with the intention of grinding in.

I had a great 3-0 (1 bye) start to my first grinder, but that was short lived as I then proceeded to receive a match loss, eliminating me from the grinder, for having cards in my deckbox that weren’t in my sideboard or maindeck. The cards not in the deck were un-sleeved, and the maindeck and sideboard were sleeved, so it was pretty clear I wasn’t using them, and I had no other deckboxes for the cards on me, but I was in the wrong nonetheless. Lesson learned. The next grinder I was on tilt, and lost in the first round to the mirror. At this point, I was extremely discouraged, and ready to give up, but my friend Jeremy had just started another grinder, and I had enough money for one more, so I decided to give it one last shot. In this one the stars aligned, and I just couldn’t lose. I even ended up beating a White Weenie opponent who landed a Circle of Protection Red because he never got more than 2 lands.

Once qualified for Nationals, I was on top of the world. In my mind, I had achieved my goal, and was just there to enjoy the ride. The only problem was that I didn’t know what drafting was, so once I managed to qualify, some of my Yu-Gi-Oh friends that also played Magic then had to proceed to explain to me how to draft. In Yu-Gi-Oh there is no such thing as drafting. Due to my limited experience with Magic, I had no idea what was good in limited. I thought [card]Uproot[/card] was the absolute nuts, becausecards like it were excellent in Yu-Gi-Oh, and was surprised to get so many of them. I knew I was bad, and by the second draft I realized that drafting a legitimate deck was futile. In light of this, I decided to just rare draft, and ended up a happy 13 year old, with about 10 rares from a single draft. Needless to say, I didn’t win a single game of limited at Nationals that year.

At the end of the Nationals that year I finished 2-10. Yes, I played out every single round they would let me play, and I had a blast doing it. The funny thing is that years later a judge, and friend of mine, Gavin Duggan, was talking about people who loved to play the game, and mention a kid who played out Nationals completely even though he had no shot at making top 8 after round 4, and I was proud to tell him that kid was me!

My initial experience at Canadian Nationals way back then will always have a special place in my heart, and ever since then, Nationals has always been the most important tournament for me each year. Since that initial experience with Nationals, I’ve always had a drive to qualify for it, and do the best that I possibly can.

Part 2:

Lately I’ve been spending a whole lot of time preparing for Canadian Nationals by drafting online and in real life, testing, reading articles, and reading tournament coverage.  Leading up to Nats this year, there is a whole lot of information to process in order to predict the upcoming standard metagame. Well over half the Nationals have been completed, as well as some Starcity Games tournaments, and the TCG Player tournament. With all of these tournaments to consider, each with their own slightly different metagame, it can be daunting to predict what’s to come at Canadian Nationals.

This past weekend their was 4 large standard tournaments to consider. The 4 tournaments being German Nationals, Spanish Nationals, the Starcity Games Richmond Open, and the TCG Player 75k Championship. Here is a list of the decks that made top 8 of each tournament in order of finish (for German Nationals, a list of the decks with no more than 1 loss), as well as a table with the combined number of each deck that showed up.

I bunched Mono Red and Goblins together as Mono Red. They both have the same game plan of beating down with creatures early on, and finishing the opponent off with burn, and have essentially the same matchups against the field.

The thing that immediately grabs my attention is seeing 6 Mono Red decks show up, especially considering the 7 CawBlade decks, which generally are a tough matchup for Mon Red. The thing you have to notice, though, is that 4 out of 6 of them showed up at German Nationals, and at that event not even 1 CawBlade deck appeared out of the top 9 decks. Due to the lack of CawBlade to keep Mono Red in check, mono Red was able to go rampant at German Nationals.

It’s also worth noting that 6 out of 7 of the CawBlade decks are from the American tournaments. I believe a big reason for that is because a lot of the top American pros played CawBlade to strong finish at American Nationals. Big names behind CawBlade include LSV, David Ochoa, and Owen Thurtenwald, all of whom finished in the top 8. Also, for the Starcity tournament you have to consider that Starcity events are always heavily populated by CawBlade, partly because Gerry T and Edgar Flores run the show week after week.

Another oddity is Splinter Twin being the 3rd most played archetype. However, all 4 of the Splinter Twin decks are from Spanish Nationals. Maybe they know something we don’t.

I believe that the metagame is a Rock-Paper-Scissors Metagame at the moment. I believe rock, paper, and scissors will be Cawblade as rock, RUG Pod, UB, and other decks geared to beat Cawblade, as paper, and Mono Red and Goblins as Scissors.

The key for picking the correct deck for Nationals will be to predict which of the three will be most played, and then choosing an archetype that beats the most played archetype. The big question, then, is whether or not Canadian Nationals will be heavily populated with CawBlade like the American metagame, or more like the German and Spanish Nationals, with almost no CawBlade tables near the top tables. Personally, I believe the Canadian metagame will be similar to the American metagame, and will have a lot of CawBlade players in the field.

Either way, going into Nationals you should definitely be prepared for all three of the major groups of decks. Know your game plan against these decks, practice against them, and know how to sideboard against them. As you know, I am extremely excited for Nationals this year, and I can’t wait to see all the familiar faces out east, and compete in my favourite tournament of the year. Good luck to all those of you who are qualified for Nationals, as well as those of you who are trying to grind in, and thanks for reading!

Francis Toussaint