Welcome back to the much delayed and final 3CB – Metagaming article. For those of you who have forgotten about my last two articles, I invite you to read them before you start on this one.

In this final article of the Metagaming miniseries, we’ll be metagaming against our metagaming. We’ll be looking at our final choices, and seeing if there are any cards we can play that might increase our odds. Finally, I’ll look at the results from 3CB #3, and we’ll see how I did with the choices I made.

Without a lot of jabbering, let’s get to it! First up is looking at what everyone else is playing.

PART 4: ADJUSTING YOUR CHOICES TO OTHER PLAYERS

STEP A: ANALYZING THE ANALYSIS

In the past two articles, I told you about the way that I metagame for XCB. We’ve gone through the entire process, and it’s really not hard once you wrap your mind around it. But I’ve got bad news – we’re not done just yet. It seems as though we may have forgotten a little fact.

This simple fact is that all of the analysis we just did will, in one form or another, be done by other players. They may not come up with the same preliminary decklists, but many of them will, and many will say, "Isochron Scepter is probably the best for the current metagame." and then end their thought process here.

Take it one step further than that. If most of the people playing XCB with you seem like smart people, then they'll come up with the same information you did, and come up with the same deck you did. That means you need to metagame against the good players from this week. I know this sounds strange, but if you know what your preliminary deck choice will be to beat the meta last round, and you know people are basing their choices around that information too, then why not base your deck around the choices that you know they will make?

In essence, it comes down to this: You want to play Scepter. Other people will be playing Scepter too. What does well against Scepter AND Tabernacle?

STEP B: LOOK BACK AT PREVIOUS WORK AND EXPAND

Let's look at the decks we already have built, and see if any other decks warrant inclusion.

Dust Bowl is good against Tabernacle and City of Traitors, which is what Isochron Scepter needs to fuel its mana production. This is a powerful choice against Scepter decks and Tabernacle decks. I'm still concerned about its power against the rest of the field, however. It’s not good against a majority of strategies – any creature strategies drop this deck, and while Factory is a good card, it’s no Steel Golem.

Isochron vs Isochron means you'll be getting a tie. A tie is better than a loss, but it’s safe to say that you can do better than this.

The Baloth deck is surprisingly good against Isochron Scepter, due to Oxidize. Still, it doesn't do well against many other strategies. It could be useful, but there are better decks to be had in this current meta. I’m also concerned that Oxidize doesn’t help me against enchantments. It’s a one trick pony, and it’s a bit too narrow for my liking.

Aura of Silence is great vs Isochron Scepter because of Aura’s sacrifice ability, and it goes 2-2 vs TET, since it can’t keep Treasure Hunter alive with The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale in play. It also goes 3-3 against any Workshop decks. I think it's safe to assume that an Aura player going first has a great chance of at least getting 3 points each game. That's not bad.

The Vindicate deck is powerful here, vs Isochron Scepter and Tabernacle. I like this deck much more than the Baloth deck, because Vindicate is such a powerful card – you really can’t miss with Vindicate.

Out of all these decks, the Vindicate deck and the Silence deck are the decks I believe are the most powerful, considering we want to be able to do well against the entire metagame, as well as the most prominent decks. Let’s discuss some other strategies that might be effective, and see if these decks can be updated to do better against the field.

We can assume that since the field is going to have a medium-sized contingent of Isochron Scepter decks, and since it is 3CB, that many players will be playing low-cost spells (including Black Lotus); it may be a good idea to run a control card that will increase spell cost. Increasing spell costs not only shuts down Isochron Scepter; it also shuts down later game strategies and gives you an edge when playing first.

There are two major cards that are worth thinking about here:

AND

The major problem with Trinisphere is that you have to use it in a Mishra’s Workshop deck. That limits your options for creatures, and you lose to The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale… if you play creatures. The problem with Sphere of Resistance is that you don’t have a lot of quality cards to play with it. It’s hard to come up with a good creature to play with Sphere, and so your choices are kind of limited.

Going back to Trinisphere – what if you didn’t have to play a creature? If a non-creature card had some of the same qualities as one of the best 3-cost artifact creatures (Steel Golem), but didn’t get run-over by Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, then that might be worth running.

Let’s try out a Trinisphere deck in addition to the decks we already have, and see what happens.

STEP C: PICKING A DECK... AGAIN

VS

VS

It's here where I like to take a look at the decks in terms of how I feel they'll do against the rest of the field, not the two to five specific decks that we've been talking about for the last few sections. Assigning each deck some Pros and Cons is a good way to take a look at specific problems and strengths each deck has.

From this point, it's a personal opinion. What deck do you believe will win this week's 3CB between these two decks? We’ve created 3 different decks that can work against the predicted metagame, and all of them will probably be able to do well – the question is, which one do you like the most?

For me, I picked....

Aura of Silence. Its ability to run over Isochron Scepter and cut down a lot of decks in the first few turns makes it a stellar deck. In my opinion, this deck has the highest chance of winning me 3CB this round.

Does this confuse you? We’ve brought it down to three decks, I’ve done all this analysis, and now I’m going to just pick a deck? Which is the stronger deck? Which deck was the strongest?

Here’s the thing to keep in mind, above all – XCB is a game. It’s for fun. If you aren’t having fun with the analysis, then stop analyzing. I stopped at a level I was confident with. If you want to continue to analyze and run test matches and pick decks based on overall guessed-strength, then do that, and good luck with it. You are a braver soul than I.

Phew! That’s it, we’re done! I’ve picked a deck, and I’m ready for everyone else to send in their decks. That was the process I went through to choose the deck that I played in 3CB Round #2. Now, let’s go ahead and check out the results for that round, and see how things turned out.

PART 5: FINISHING THE GAME
SCORES, CRITIQUE, AND NEXT WEEK’S ANALYSIS

This is the fruition of your hard work at metagaming. Understanding last week’s information correctly is the key to winning the next round of Magic. The question remains, however: was our analysis right? Did we make correct assumptions?

Decklists by Player

Placement Chart by Player Number