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Mark “Petrify” Fittipaldi is on his way to making another tournament grand final. After narrowly losing SeatStory Cup to George “Hyped” Maganzini, Petrify is making advancement through the playoffs of WePlay Agility. Currently in the top 8, the compLexity player will make charge for the trophy today.

Ahead of his quarterfinal match, we spoke with Perify on his deck choices, theorycraft thoughts on the meta and his solutions to Artifact’s ailments.

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First off, congratulations on making it to the top 8 of WePlay Agility. How are you feeling going forward?

Thanks! I’m feeling pretty good about my play vs Andy so hopefully I can bring that into the top 8. I think if I play my best I will win, but sometimes I can switch off and play badly.

I want to start by talking a bit about your deck selection. In the group stage, you brought a UB Econ, which isn’t an archetype we’ve really seen before. A few other players had it in their line-ups as well, but talk to me about your thought process behind it.

Nobody had played it before in competitive tournaments so it was pretty cool going for the win. Basically, I didn’t want to bring ramp because everyone was going to play it and it’s a coinflip in the mirror, so I brought an aggressive deck people might not know how to play against. It ended up working out but I think ultimately the deck was pretty bad.

You switched the UB Econ to RG Dark Seer Ramp for the playoffs. Was it because you feel more comfortable on the deck, or is it just stronger than UB?

It was a few things. Firstly I know that Andy was my top 16 opponent and he has a good group of players to prepare with. They would all realize I don’t want to play RG mirrors so they might tech for my aggro decks. So I switched into RG because they did not expect it and I chose one of the decks I thought was best for the mirror. I also think it is much better than UB so if I want to win the tournament I will need to be playing ramp.

I didn’t want to bring ramp [in the group stage] because everyone was going to play it and it’s a coinflip in the mirror.

The Dark Seer tech is relatively new to the Ramp archetype. It was Swim who first brought it to public attention, I believe, and now we see it you running it as well. What’s the reason behind Seer’s inclusion? Is it just the extra mobility, which is also one of Ramp’s notorious flaws?

To be honest I had only played two games with Dark Seer before submitting it. I practiced against it a lot but I kept losing over and over and I thought, “Well if I can’t beat it, I’ll just join it.” I think that it is as you said, the extra mobility really helps. Drawing Ion Shell is extremely bad obviously but it isn’t much worse than a wolf or Ominknight’s signature card in most matchups.

Speaking of Ramp, it’s proven the king of this WePlay meta, which in stark contrast to what we saw at SeatStory Cup, for example. Many viewers, I believe, expected Mono Blue and RB Aggro — and we’ve had that — but nothing comes close to representation %s as Ramp. Why is that?

I think at SeatStory we didn’t have long to develop our decks, like literally 24 hours, so the metagame was very underdeveloped. I also think most people hadn’t figured out how to play against mono blue yet as it was a new quantity. I was about a few seconds away from submitting RG Ramp to SeatStory until Freddybabes talked me out of it. I always thought RG was broken with the new changes because its natural predator of Selemene Storm got culled extremely hard. Naturally, people figured out that RG ramp is pretty broken.

I think I would like to see Selemene’s Favour cost 5 mana and Stars Align changed in some way. They are too good.

I think I would like to see Selemene’s Favour cost 5 mana and Stars Align changed in some way. They are too good.

WePlay Agility has also had the most diverse meta of all Constructed tournaments we’ve had so far. People are theorycrafting new decks like Mono B Control, Mono R is getting attention… Where do you think the meta will go from here? What do you predict to be its next evolution step?

I spent a few days trying to break the meta before playoffs and I couldn’t figure out anything that had a good matchup against Red Green that didn’t completely sacrifice itself to other matchups, so I’m not sure where the meta goes. I think some form of Red Black aggro should be the strongest deck in the game once we shift away from Mono Blue control and At Any Cost becomes less played.

When I interviewed Hoej the last WePlay tournament, he said he was toying with the idea of a tricolor deck, but he decided to stick with RB Aggro. Have you tested any tri-color variations in Constructed? Are they viable or too unstable, given Artifact’s hero color mechanic?

I have tested a few tri-color decks, mostly splashing green for the ramp spells but it was always underwhelming. It just becomes really hard to cast your spells a lot of the time especially if you are against a removal heavy deck. For instance if you splash green for ramp spells and they gank your green hero, you are stuck with unplayable green cards. I think in the future, with expansions, 3-color decks will open up a lot of possibilities so I am excited for that.

You’re playing either Swim or Lumi next round [Swim won 2-1 vs. Lumi in the quarter final and is Petrify’s next opponent], and both of them have interesting deck techs. Swim is bringing Mono U with Outworld Devourer, which is considered the worst hero in the game. Lumi, on the other hand, is sticking to his favorite UG Storm, in a meta where it’s considered a dead deck because of the nerfed Gust.

What do you think of each those player’s tech choices?

I think Outworld Devourer is fine, he’s not a super bad hero. His spell is very disruptive to Ramp as it can interrupt your Stars Align into Time of Triumph combos, and his ability is very relevant in a mono blue deck. UG Storm, I think, is fairly bad still. It has a good matchup vs. Red Green but even then it can fizzle and underperform, so I don’t like it.

Who do you prefer to play?

At the time of writing this I am playing against Swim which I’m happy with. Swim puts in a lot of hard work into Artifact so he deserves his chance. I beat him in a close series at SeatStory so it will hopefully be some good games.

Who of the other players so far have impressed you and has a shot at reaching the final?

I think MaggoGx has been the most impressive player, he is an extremely talented person at any card game he plays, if I wasn’t on the same side of the bracket as him I’d like to see him reach the final. I also think MyGoodMate has been impressive, he has played very well in all his games.

I think it was an unfortunate series of circumstances that lead to Artifact getting a tonne of hate.

I want to touch on an ill topic, which is Artifact’s dying numbers. If you hop to the subreddit, you’ll read a different theory and “fix” suggestion every day. Some say it’s the economy, other that it’s the complexity. Some will say the game is just not good enough, or casual enough, or that it still lacks a true progression and skill system. And in a video, your teammate Freddybabes suggested it’s a little bit of everything.

Where do you stand on the matter? Is there a single solution to Artifact’s problem or does the game maybe need the GWENT treatment (only better): an overhaul?

I think there is no single solution to Artifact’s problems. The core gameplay is fantastic and every patch makes it even better. People will complain about RNG like arrows for the entirety of Artifact’s existence but I think eventually people will start realizing that the arrows and creep RNG isn’t influential. I think it was an unfortunate series of circumstances that lead to it getting a tonne of hate.

The main thing I would like to see is a true progression and skill system; they are undoubtedly working on this so it’s just a matter of time. The GWENT treatment would be disastrous, the game doesn’t need a rework at all.

My own recent theory is that Valve made the mistake of creating an echochamber of pro players during this year-long closed beta and isolated themselves from what could’ve been valuable community-wide feedback. Do you think there’s something to that theory?

I don’t think there is something to that really. There was such a wide range of people in the closed beta all with very different opinions. At least when I was added into there people will have debates every day about different things. For instance I was very much of the opinion that draft mode should not have duplicate heroes in it except starter heroes, but lots of people were against that. My point is there was no echochamber. I do think having a wide open beta with lots of people in it would have maybe changed things quicker and would have certainly been beneficial, but I can’t say for certain if that was the main problem.

How receptive to feedback would you say was Valve during the beta? Besides card balance, what was changed or introduced based on players’ feedback?

I would say they were quite receptive if there were compelling enough points one way or another. I think a problem was we didn’t know what was going to be put out on launch. For instance most of us assumed a progression/ladder system would be there at launch and wasn’t in the closed beta because there’s not much point having one there. Personally if I had have known there was no real progression outside of ‘perfect runs’, I would have said something.

As far as changes to things other than card balance based off of feedback, I think a bit changed. One example that springs to mind was how many packs players draft. There was long discussions over what the correct number of packs we should be drafting from is. Lots of quality of life changes were suggested too that were implemented, and of course bug fixes. Overall, I can speak to the fact that the dev team in the game is made of brilliant, extremely nice people and very hard working people. I have absolute faith in them to get the game in a very good spot. I was questioned heavily very early on in the MTGA beta for vehemently defending the developers decisions of that game and MTGA managed to turn it around beyond belief, I have even more faith in the Artifact team so I am excited for the future.

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