Interview with Bigbee, MPDC Season 27 Worlds Event Winner

Hello Bigbee, and congrats on taking down the MPDC Worlds Event last Monday !

1- Could you please introduce yourself ?
Hello, my MTG Online screen name is BigBee. I think that I'm a MTG Online (or even MTG) antifan.

2- For how long have you been playing magic, both on paper and online?

I started while Torment was around. I started more competitive play when Scourge was released. I had access to good white and blue cards, like Wrath of God, Decree of Justice, Eternal Dragon, Exalted Angel and Cunning Wish. That was a Standard deck, I also played  Extended using No Stick deck (Isochron Scepter + Orim's Chant) until Ravnica Release, I decided not to buy 10 Shocklands to my Extended deck just to play FNM once a week and maybe 2-3 bigger events in a year. I bought a MTG Online account, but I made a wrong decision to play Extended instead of Standard or Block. So I stopped playing. I came back when WotC released Return to Ravnica and started playing Standard Pauper. I discovered that they started printing cards at Mythic rarity (=> nice move, WotC => shame on you, mtg players, that you allowed that to happen).

3- What is your favorite archetype / player profile and for what reasons?

My favourite deck type is Control, especially UW. For what reason?  It Usually had good mass removal and realistic, working win strategy. I mentioned some UW cards earlier. Unfortunately MTG has changed. Mostly, I miss Counterspell in Standard and Modern, not this funny latest counterspells. But they sadly slowed the game down, introducing Planeswalkers in order to make children happy when they put loyalty counters using random stone or dry dog or cat excrements as found in sandbox.

4- For that reason, could you please explain us how you came to play that wonderful winning WW Tokens build?
  - Did you use MyGalaxy's list or did you bring in some additions, and wich ones?

I really chose that deck as an opposite to my likings. Why? Because I think that WX is the best choice because of protection spells and a legion of flying creatures. We can insert R in the place of X, but it looks very boring. So I chose to insert 2nd W. Did I prepare? Of course... I downloaded this deck 5 minutes before start and borrowed 2 cards. I copied whole MyGalaxy deck. There was even no sideboarding plan here.

5-  Could you please give us a few hints on How to play this list depending on the matchups you've been facing during the event (sorry, results are not uploaded yet on Gatherling)?

Hmm, looks like you trust that I can play using this WW tokens deck. Can we just load a picture of a dog from meme : "I have no idea what I'm doing"?

Adner :  "Better not..." But here it is, or something as close as possible...

There you go !

It looks like the whole thing is built around tokens and flyers. You just need to take care about main Scouring Sands or Festergloom. Sometimes you have to play risk and cast more tokens. You can't be afraid to attack, but sometimes attacking too fast ends very bad. There are no good tips. You need some experience, I didn't have a lot of it.

First Top 8 game was against MyGalaxy. The Swarm and boost worked as expected in the first game. In game two I think I hesitated in the most important part and made an awkward attacking move with too few creatures. At the end of this game MyGalaxy kept too few untapped blockers and I topdecked a boost card.

Second match was against Black. Opponent caught me with a sideboarded festergloom. In game 3 I was lucky and I flooded him with creatures before he was able to cast any treat.
In final I was able to stop RDW in game 1. In game 2 I cast 3 Sungrace Pegasus and protected them. I also exiled growing Satyr Hoplite from the game. Sumarrizing this incredibly short description of Top 8 games, I was very lucky. I made some mistakes playing against MyGalaxy. I played well against JorgeJacoh and Carnuz but this deck just kept me away from doing something wrong.

But it's not the right dog....

Ok it's this one doggy !

6- We've sadly witnessed a significantly decreasing attendance this season for both SPDC and MPDC, what are your thoughts and explanations about that?

There could be many reasons.

1- Poor meta, some players told us that they didn't play in last season because of Mill, now I think it can be the same. Some people claim that Treasure Cruise is overpowered and meta-ruining, but I rather think that meta is impacted by White, with too many protection spells making heroic creatures the biggest threat. It is easier to create a deck that can beat control deck (Izzet) than chord of white flyers with 20 possible protection spells.

2- European players' opportunities to play are lowered when event ends at 3 a.m. Also sometimes Americans are not able to join. I tried to discuss this on PDC Forums but there was no answer. It looked like nobody cares and did not mind discussing their hobby, which is playing those events. I understand that there is no way to solve it, but let's not keep eyes closed on that problem.

3-WotC "good" decisions are making people angry. Releasing and pushing customers on bugged client in time when Blizzard introduced a wellbuilt and solid one was brilliant. The fact is that frustrated people won't leave to have fun. They, for sure, will stay, you have one heart that can be damaged by stress caused by 10 disconnects ;-) I also like Minotaur-Voyage Ends bug. It's hilarious. So both first concerns can be a problem, but I think that third is the main reason. Also, we get nothing by buying an MTG Online account.

7- Your homemade Simic build took down an event and did good in others this season, why did you quit playing it ?

Simic is fun to play. The Peel of Reality + Mnemonic Wall combo can be an answer to protection spells. However, there are no easy matchups and there are a lot of extremely bad ones. Your wins are confined like urinary stones... It can be little frustrating when you are paired unlucky.

8- Did you like Season 27 's metagame evolution with Khans and the riddance of Ethereal armor? What were the most important shifts in the metagame this season from your point of view?

At the end of last season I was playing with WB anti Ethereal Armor, so I didn't miss it in this season. I don't like this meta because of the fact that creating a new deck is difficult. This also can be the reason why we don't see new players, because of very high building skills-demanding meta. Important shifts? I'm not a regular player. I play from time to time. I saw that Izzet brought something new.

9- Season 28 is about to start with the Fate Reforged release online, so what deckbuilding ideas do you have in mind at the moment? Could new archetypes make their way to success ? Wich already well settled archetypes will benefit the most from this new set?

I didn't even read the new spoiler yet, so I don't have a clue.

10- Final question : There are many STD Pauper resources online, what could we do as a community (inside and outside the MTGO clan) to keep our beloved format thriving in the future?

Communication and chat are the most important when it comes to Clan. Clan chat is not working, because there's no information about someone writing a message.
Inside clan? It will be a really pessimistic and harsh answer : there's nothing we can do but just wait for implementation of that feature. Without it we can just dissolve clan... Talking about Standard Pauper Community, for sure we need new players.

I sometimes try to advertise MPDC and SPDC on new players. Not often. They play Standard Pauper in Just for Fun and don't know that such a thing, like PRE, exists. Some of them are very happy about links and some of them treat it like a spam. There are a lot of more ways bringing players to Standard Pauper and that needs to be discussed. But who will and where will that take place?

Thanks for your time, mate. I'm very glad we could make this interview since it's the first time we were given to take you out of your silent and hidden community devotion. See you next season, Bigbee !