A crowd of 515 players entered the tournament on Friday, but only 320 of them (62%) stayed enrolled after reaching a 4-4 or better record—the requirement to qualify for the second day. Theoretically, someone could have gone 1-4 in Modern and stayed alive on the back of a 3-0 draft record, while another player might have been 3-2 in Modern and eliminated due to an 0-3 draft. Nevertheless, there is an obvious correlation between a good Modern deck and making Day Two.
While I wish we could draw big conclusions from the Day 2 conversion rates, this doesn't seem to be possible. Yesterday, the five most popular archetypes were Tron, Izzet Phoenix, Humans, W/U Control, and Dredge, in that order. Today, the picture is exactly the same. Here are the raw numbers.
Archetype | Day 1 players | Day 1% | Day 2 players | Day 2 % | Conversion |
Tron | 75 | 14.6% | 41 | 12.8% | 54.7% |
Izzet Phoenix | 62 | 12.0% | 39 | 12.2% | 62.9% |
Humans | 53 | 10.3% | 31 | 9.7% | 58.5% |
W/U Control | 38 | 7.4% | 24 | 7.5% | 63.2% |
Dredge | 32 | 6.2% | 21 | 6.6% | 65.6% |
Hardened Scales | 25 | 4.9% | 19 | 5.9% | 76.0% |
Grixis Shadow | 30 | 5.8% | 17 | 5.3% | 56.7% |
Eldrazi variants | 25 | 4.9% | 17 | 5.3% | 68.0% |
Amulet Titan | 21 | 4.1% | 12 | 3.8% | 57.1% |
The Rock | 17 | 3.3% | 12 | 3.8% | 70.6% |
Whir Prison | 14 | 2.7% | 11 | 3.4% | 78.6% |
Burn | 14 | 2.7% | 9 | 2.8% | 64.3% |
R/G Valakut | 10 | 1.9% | 7 | 2.2% | 70.0% |
Ad Nauseam | 8 | 1.6% | 6 | 1.9% | 75.0% |
Esper Control | 16 | 3.1% | 5 | 1.6% | 31.3% |
Affinity | 8 | 1.6% | 5 | 1.6% | 62.5% |
Infect | 8 | 1.6% | 5 | 1.6% | 62.5% |
Jund | 5 | 1.0% | 4 | 1.3% | 80.0% |
Bogles | 5 | 1.0% | 3 | 0.9% | 60.0% |
Other | 49 | 9.5% | 32 | 10.0% | 65.3% |
The last column displays the Day 2 conversion rate, which represents the percentage of players who made Day 2 with a certain type of deck.
Among archetypes with 5 or more pilots, the best conversion rates were for Hardened Scales and Whir Prison, at 76% and 79% respectively. That's well above the global average of 62%. Mox Opal and Ancient Stirrings are still among the best cards in Modern.
In the "Other" category, it's notable that both Lantern players advanced, both Vannifar Pod advanced, and both Cheerios players all advanced. There's definitely some spice in Day 2.
Among archetypes with 5 or more pilots, the worst conversion rates were for Tron and Esper Control, at 54.7% and 31.3% respectively. So the big story is that Tron, despite being the most popular archetype, put a below-average number of players in Day 2. It's likely that Tron had a target on its head and faced plenty of opponents who were prepared with sideboard cards such as Damping Sphere. Esper Control also didn't fare well, which is surprising because the sole undefeated player, Olivier Ruel, was playing that archetype.
But since an 8-0 player is counted in the same way as a 4-4 player, the Day 2 conversion rates remain a somewhat muddy statistic. At the end of the Swiss, we'll have the win rates of all archetypes in the Modern rounds, which should be more informative.