As most of you who play Standard Constructed in any type of competitive setting already know, the meta-game of standard is constantly shifting to some degree. Knowing which decks are hot and which are not at a given moment helps us make decisions when we are brewing up something new, tweaking an established archetype, or even just selecting which particular net-deck we want to pilot at the next tournament.
I realize for many of you none of this post will be new or particularly useful information, if that's the case please bear with me so that perhaps this thread can benefit from your experience, knowledge, and opinions as it goes on so as to help each other and newcomers to standard competitive play understand and better prepare for tournament play.
What is a Gauntlet?
In this context a gauntlet is a trial or obstacle course, not a metal glove such as the Gauntlet of Power. This gauntlet should consist of decks, specifically the "hot" decks that are dominating the current standard meta-game. For instance, at the time of this first post, decks like Mono-Black Devotion, Mono-Blue Devotion, U/W and Esper Control Decks, and probably R/G Aggro or Devotion decks to name a few.
Why build a Gauntlet?
To test against. Especially if you are brewing up your own deck ideas. Obviously the importance of a gauntlet will depend on your local meta-game. It becomes less important I suppose if most of the people you play against seem to consistently bring their own self-brews. In my experience at least half the people are playing a net deck or some variation of one. You want to test your deck, whether it's your own creation or an adaptation of someone else's proven deck against as many of the common archetypes as you can because those decks or at least somewhat similar decks are probably what your going to face most of the time in a tournament.
How does it help me?
Numerous ways. First and foremost it tests your deck's build and lets you know right off the bat the feasibility of your deck. What's the point of a deck that pretty much always crushes White Weenie and Red Deck Wins but get's annihilated both pre and post sideboard against Mono-Black, Mono-Blue, and control decks? What are you more likely to face a greater number of at your next tournament? Playing several games (both pre and post sideboard) against the dominant archetypes gives us an idea about the matches we can win, our deck's relative strength against each one, which cards and which plays are working and which ones aren't against each archetype, and helps us make better decisions on when to mulligan and what to sideboard in and out.
It also can help us tune our decks. Which cards seem dead in our hand sometimes? Against who? Say you setup a five deck gauntlet and out of those 5 decks a card seems dead or makes you groan when you top deck it against 3 of those 5 match-ups? In the other 2 it seems so awesome? Maybe there is a better card for your main deck? Maybe that card sits in the sideboard until game 2 against the decks it actually does something for you.
This may seem basic, but something as basic as this often doesn't become apparent or obvious until after some testing.
OK, how do I determine what to include in my gauntlet?
Aha! Now we're getting to the meat of what I'd like this thread to be about. There are some pretty obvious resources like the most recent winning decklists at http://www.starcitygames.com. Then there is your local tournaments, what are the people who took the top spots playing? A lot of them probably won't have any problem talking about their deck with you, especially after the tournament.
Remember the whole idea is to be better prepared for what you are most likely to face and to have an idea on how to shape your play and strategy against the most commonly played archetypes. Your gauntlet needs to change as new "good" archetypes show up and as some archetypes fade away. This is what I'd like to see for this thread is people sharing their ideas of good decks to add to a gauntlet and how some decks may have morphed. Of course test results of any deck against a gauntlet would be welcome too.
Oh yeah, use proxies as needed, my testing buddy and I typically just take basic land cards and write the necessary information on them as a quick and dirty proxy. Also, you may want to expand the sideboard of gauntlet decks to more than the normal 15 cards.
So, I've built my gauntlet how do I use it?
Play your deck against all of the decks in the gauntlet. I'd recommend at least 5 games each, two pre-board and 3 post-board. Obviously the ideal scenario is to do this with a buddy who also plays Magic at a comparable skill-level (or better), but playing both decks against each other by your lonesome is preferable to no testing at all. Just be mindful not to "cheat" due to your knowledge of both decks' hand, and especially not in favor of the deck you are testing. Cheating in favor of the gauntlet deck can actually help as a sort of simulation of a player with superior skill or knowledge predicting your potential plays.
Also, it might be helpful to take notes. Things like on what turn did significant changes in a game happened or if a particular card(s) seemed impotent in your hand for all of or most of the game. Depending on your attention to detail and how deep you want to go even recording your starting draw to see what kind of draws seem to work better against certain archetypes can end up being useful in making mulligan decisions on game day. Noting things like, "I lost every game I didn't have black mana available by turn 3 against mono-blue" can help with mulligan decisions, the order we play our lands, and perhaps prompt us to take another look at our mana base to make sure we are playing enough black sources.
Then we can tune and test again to make sure the change achieves the desired results, hopefully without negatively impacting our match-up against the other gauntlet decks.
I hope this was informative and helpful to some of you out there and for those that this was already common knowledge if you have any helpful tips, tricks, or advice feel free to add or even correct or improve on what I've laid out. My next post will include five decks I think should be in everyone's gauntlet for the current meta-game.
