total
Affinity 52
Fringe* 51
Burn 44
Jund 39
Eldrazi* 38
Delver* 31
Titan Breach 30
Gx Tron* 27
Elves 22
Abzan Company 20
Bant Company 14
Goryo’s Vengeance 14
RW Prison 12
8Rack 11
Ad Nauseam 10
Scapeshift 7
Abzan 6
Jeskai Control 4

Playing Affinity still ends up being higher value than all the fringe decks put together. I think it’s safe to say Affinity, Burn, Jund and Eldrazi would be the tier 1 decks there. This actually backs up the decision yo had made early on in the article as that same list matches yours exactly.

It’s the most basic form of weighting and one I frequently use, so I thought it could be interesting for others.

That’s an interesting insight.

I definitely would love to read more on that

Wallace,

I definitely agree with you, an earlier version of the article went more heavily into this discussion. I’m of the opinion that Top 8 Conversion rate to win does matter, Patrick Chapin’s old articles on this subject are the basis for my beliefs.

There’s a theory that there are “Top 8 decks” and “finals decks” and there are a couple ways to distinguish between the two. I would call Burn a top 8 deck, along with Affinity. Both have won events, of course, but some value comes from the opponent already knowing you are on Burn/Affinity. Think of the opening hands that seem fine, but are unkeepable against those archetypes. Those types of decks definitely lose value in the Top 8 (a little bit, but value lost nonetheless).

Jund has always been a “solid against everything, great against nothing” deck. There has been continued discussion that Jund is a great deck to reach the top 8 with, but difficult to win the event with. Maybe we have a future article topic here. Thanks for your thoughts!

I played in the San Diego regionals. Narrowly missed top 8 with my sultai midrange deck.

There was over 40 tron players at the event. Possibly over 50.

At the top 20 tables (40 players) round 7 I saw 13 tron players.
This was after 2 6-0 tron players got dq for collusion.

The amount of variance in Magic makes me very wary of applying much significance to results as opposed to things like Day1->Day2 conversion. We’re effectively drawing conclusions from a three round single elimination event, when the real conclusions come from getting into that event. It’s a shame that we don’t have more data from regionals; something like X-2 and better decks or the whole field.

Also, 3rd/4th and 5th-8th should be weighted the same, IMO. The only difference is initial seeding in the T8.