I am well aware there is a certain stochastic element to this study type of study. Unfortunately, it is unavoidable. But to entirely discount the results because of that is silly.
Hello!
While I am a huge fan of statistics and applied math I see a small problem with this kind of analysis - it assumes a standardized pilot. We have no information about the skill level of the pilots that most likely vary a lot. The cost of the deck might also contribute to a gradient of player skill attributed to the different archetypes. How much of the results is deck and how much player?
I've been playing with the deck, and it seems very good. However the curve is a bit high. You original list has 8 cards at 5cmc. Reaching this is sometimes a pain, and I had plenty of instances of mana screw early on. I didn't want to add more non-basics and get blown away by a ruinblaster, so I tried adding some Veinfire border posts. I initially tried 3, but then settled in on two as the magic number. This has solved almost all of my land issues, as well as making BB easier to cast early game. To make room, I want to 2 each of witch and BSA, which seems like a pretty decent number. Combined with hawks and scullers to eat early removal, you'll usually be able to eat away they hand and board long enough to stick Ajani or one of the fliers, which generally win games in short notice. The discard their hand on a stick works very well using sculler, and I love having thought hemo in the board.
You know ordinarily I hate talking about statistics and whether or not they are significant etc but this is a case of you are just plain wrong. There is NOTHING Naive or wrong with writing an article about statistical analysis that may or may not be 100% accurate. (Name a statistics analysis that is...) It seems rather petty and self-demeaning to put someone down for essentially sharing their thoughts on the meta game. If you don't agree just say so. No need to troll behind anonymity and waste all our time with your rather cynical and pointless point of view.
Never thought a seemingly inocuous opinion on the part of the writer would get such a heated debate. To chime in on this, when I started playing I thought about "graduating" from Swiss to 4-3, then to 8-4. I haven't really won consistently enough on Swiss to make the jump, but following Godot's advice on one of his podcasts I will skip the whole 4-3 class entirely. Swiss really gives more bang for my buck, as I play for fun, not for profit, and from time to time I enter an 8-4 to get slaughtered in hopes of grabbing some fancy rares for my constructed decks.
A days long testing session where the build can vary radically, and we don't know the skill level of the individual players?
The data itself is highly flawed, and there's no reference, nor correction for this. Performing statistical analysis on such data is naive and calling your results statistically significant is irresponsible.
you missed my favorite anti dredge card, ravenous trap.
ive been running 2 compost 4 trap 2 needle in addition to 5 wastes and it goes pretty well against them. you dont even need a trap most of the time if u get a compost down cause you can end up drawing 15 cards eaisly in there turn.
also woot at double deck lists by the whiffy, suck it non penguins lol.
Spaniel posted a really good burn deck on tcgplayer.com, I've been playing it for a bit and I think it's a lot better than the burn deck in this article and it also doesn't run any man lands so it's cheaper.
One slight issue with making those skewings is that I can't just take out Jund from the metagame--I have to put something in to replace it. However, if you simply cut Jund in half and proportionally distributed the rest of the metagame, Jund ironically leapfrogs UWR Control and takes the top spot for all three types of tournaments.
I ought to correct what I said in the article about Naya Lightsaber: it is NOT doing what it was designed to do. That one would have been interesting to analyze further, but oh well.
I agree that competition is probably slightly weaker on average in 4322s and that is one of the major reasons that I think I certain class of player actually has the highest EV in 4322s at the moment. I think the purely mathematical approach leaves out a lot of variable, and I believe a skilled drafter can add collateral value to their drafts reasonably frequently (ie. rare draft a few cards), while still maintaining the "slow bleed".
I have to say that the rare drafting analysis is speculative because it is literally impossible to know what impact a given card will have in a deck - especially early in a draft when you may still switch arhetypes. I have a fair amount of experience and you simply see more money cards in 84 than 43 and more in 43 than swiss. This is because their payout structures support building strong decks more strongly than swiss does. Thus you have a greater opportunity to rare draft in those formats. Whether and how you take those opportunities, and how they effect your long term payout is an entirely different discussion.
Ultimately 8-4s are the best if you are good enough, but a cold or unlucky streak in 8-4 drafts hurts a lot, and you have to have the "means" (pack backlog/tix/$$$) whatever to be able to handle getting nothing back if you end up string together a few 1-1.
**PS - I would gladly boycott 4322s for as long as it took if players could band together and demand a 5322. Any budding community organizers want to take this on?
Yeah card prices can sneak up on you. I know I've built decks week by week picking up a few cards here and there, never realizing the total cost. It's hard when writing articles because ou want players to try your deck and do well with it, but you also dont want it to be too prohibitive costwise.
I have played for a few years and seen alot, I seen them play cookie cutter decks they got from an article wrong because it was not thier creation.. just because it on a tournament or two.. they think they could go and take the idea and win with it..
The easier the concept the easier the win. And last time I checked Vamps were not an easy type to play in the first place
What milling deck wins by turn 4? I mean, seriously, I'd like to see a decklist.
One of the main reasons I think 95% of all milling decks are ok is that they're SLOW. Too slow to win. And while people are complaining on here that they're non-interactive... At the same time most Zoo decks happen to have no way to interact with the mill deck, many/most mill decks have also given up on having many cards that can interact with creatures. While also not having the abillity to outrace creatures very often.
I'll also note that I love playing against mill decks with my 120 card decks, and my 200 card decks. Which happens sometimes.
People are just nuts. If they play a Hill Giant, then you Terror it, then it's just timmy vs. timmy, fine. If they play Hill Giant and you Counterspell, same net effect but they cry foul. And land destruction decks are usually very weak and easily beaten, but the people who conceed on turn 3 will never learn that, I guess!
Best article yet! (well, since you've stopped bashing Michael J anyway) What asmallchild requested I have to second. A few theoretical 'skewings' would be very informative.
Now if only WoTC customer service would hurry up and get my MtGO working again...
This is a great way to look at the upcoming expansion. I have only recently (since M10) been playing again (after the typical 'many years off') and have really fallen in love with Limited. Your podcast has been immensely helpful, and entertaining - the music makes me smile as I ride the early morning bus to campus.
Also, it makes me really excited to hear about your son playing. I have an almost-five-year-old daughter that has already shown interest in lots of other games, and she likes to look through my piles of Magic cards! She even wishes me luck when I go out to play FNM. I have been considering teaching her some of the basics soon, and by the time she's 'old enough' she should be a lot of fun to take with me. (and her little sister is coming up soon too!)
I am curious when you started teaching Ollie? And if you have any tips on how to ease into the complex rules?
Can't wait to read/hear more about your impressions of Worldwake, and Good Luck at the pre-
In this deck, being able to draw two cards is far more important than being able to draw one. Heck, a significant amount of the time you're going to draw another creature with an enters the battlefield ability, giving you hey, another card (or two).
Also, unlike Rager, you can point Sign in Blood at your opponent to burn them out.
While there are no hard and fast rules about what must appear in MBC, at this time, I like Sign in Blood far more than Rager.
-Alex
EDIT: Additionally, Sign helps you to better recover from the discard in the format. Being able to go even after a Ravenous Rats or recoup some losses from a Probe can go a long way towards keeping you in the game.
Bashing Gladwell, history majors, and mentioning Ivy league books is fun and all, but the idea that was presented in the book is still the same. Do you truly think that you don't make unconcious decisions? I'd love the idea that I don't, but I feel if I'm honest with myself that I do make split second decisions based on the information provided. Cracking the land early or later provides split second judgements, I think the article is pretty valid in that regard.
I can't wait for the hearsay about a professor using Gladwell books as toilet paper, either way the idea presented is the same. Everything else is just an avoidance of the main question.
Thanks for the feedback, I had thought about it, but you see those decks often in casual and I wanted to try something a bit different (though Sanguine Bond decks aren't totally a new idea). As for price it's not terrible, but not as cheap as I would have thought.. some of the cards have gone up since I got em, though in my defense my decks tend to be casual not always budget casual :P
Ok that is much more expensive then I would have guessed, when you have the cards you don't even consider how much they are now, had I realized I would have thrown in a budget try as well
Could any + or - given to the percentages based on the pilot? Not sure if there is a statistical way to measure this, but when you end up with an outlier winning a tournament, it could be the pilot really outplayed the opponents because just based on the cards and these statistics it really shouldn't have won. Or is this just one of those it's better to be lucky with the right meta than a well built deck. I wonder what LSV piloting would add to the %. This is included in Valakut too, I've seen many people just play that deck wrong.
A purely white aggro deck won a GP less than 2 years ago. It was lorwyn block and it was obviously Kithkins. Another kithkins deck won GP Sao Paulo (T2) but that was a fluke as his list was horrible and he must have gotten pretty lucky (the whole top8 was terrible anyway and I'm pretty sure it was the worst GP in terms of top8 last year, and probably last few years).
Oh no!!! You wrote another article!!! =( (vomit!)
I am well aware there is a certain stochastic element to this study type of study. Unfortunately, it is unavoidable. But to entirely discount the results because of that is silly.
Hello!
While I am a huge fan of statistics and applied math I see a small problem with this kind of analysis - it assumes a standardized pilot. We have no information about the skill level of the pilots that most likely vary a lot. The cost of the deck might also contribute to a gradient of player skill attributed to the different archetypes. How much of the results is deck and how much player?
I've been playing with the deck, and it seems very good. However the curve is a bit high. You original list has 8 cards at 5cmc. Reaching this is sometimes a pain, and I had plenty of instances of mana screw early on. I didn't want to add more non-basics and get blown away by a ruinblaster, so I tried adding some Veinfire border posts. I initially tried 3, but then settled in on two as the magic number. This has solved almost all of my land issues, as well as making BB easier to cast early game. To make room, I want to 2 each of witch and BSA, which seems like a pretty decent number. Combined with hawks and scullers to eat early removal, you'll usually be able to eat away they hand and board long enough to stick Ajani or one of the fliers, which generally win games in short notice. The discard their hand on a stick works very well using sculler, and I love having thought hemo in the board.
You know ordinarily I hate talking about statistics and whether or not they are significant etc but this is a case of you are just plain wrong. There is NOTHING Naive or wrong with writing an article about statistical analysis that may or may not be 100% accurate. (Name a statistics analysis that is...) It seems rather petty and self-demeaning to put someone down for essentially sharing their thoughts on the meta game. If you don't agree just say so. No need to troll behind anonymity and waste all our time with your rather cynical and pointless point of view.
Never thought a seemingly inocuous opinion on the part of the writer would get such a heated debate. To chime in on this, when I started playing I thought about "graduating" from Swiss to 4-3, then to 8-4. I haven't really won consistently enough on Swiss to make the jump, but following Godot's advice on one of his podcasts I will skip the whole 4-3 class entirely. Swiss really gives more bang for my buck, as I play for fun, not for profit, and from time to time I enter an 8-4 to get slaughtered in hopes of grabbing some fancy rares for my constructed decks.
Oh god, you're writing again???? =(
A days long testing session where the build can vary radically, and we don't know the skill level of the individual players?
The data itself is highly flawed, and there's no reference, nor correction for this. Performing statistical analysis on such data is naive and calling your results statistically significant is irresponsible.
you missed my favorite anti dredge card, ravenous trap.
ive been running 2 compost 4 trap 2 needle in addition to 5 wastes and it goes pretty well against them. you dont even need a trap most of the time if u get a compost down cause you can end up drawing 15 cards eaisly in there turn.
also woot at double deck lists by the whiffy, suck it non penguins lol.
Spaniel posted a really good burn deck on tcgplayer.com, I've been playing it for a bit and I think it's a lot better than the burn deck in this article and it also doesn't run any man lands so it's cheaper.
One slight issue with making those skewings is that I can't just take out Jund from the metagame--I have to put something in to replace it. However, if you simply cut Jund in half and proportionally distributed the rest of the metagame, Jund ironically leapfrogs UWR Control and takes the top spot for all three types of tournaments.
I ought to correct what I said in the article about Naya Lightsaber: it is NOT doing what it was designed to do. That one would have been interesting to analyze further, but oh well.
There are some decks running reflecting pools and lots of other nonbasics, so how about price of progress?
I agree that competition is probably slightly weaker on average in 4322s and that is one of the major reasons that I think I certain class of player actually has the highest EV in 4322s at the moment. I think the purely mathematical approach leaves out a lot of variable, and I believe a skilled drafter can add collateral value to their drafts reasonably frequently (ie. rare draft a few cards), while still maintaining the "slow bleed".
I have to say that the rare drafting analysis is speculative because it is literally impossible to know what impact a given card will have in a deck - especially early in a draft when you may still switch arhetypes. I have a fair amount of experience and you simply see more money cards in 84 than 43 and more in 43 than swiss. This is because their payout structures support building strong decks more strongly than swiss does. Thus you have a greater opportunity to rare draft in those formats. Whether and how you take those opportunities, and how they effect your long term payout is an entirely different discussion.
Ultimately 8-4s are the best if you are good enough, but a cold or unlucky streak in 8-4 drafts hurts a lot, and you have to have the "means" (pack backlog/tix/$$$) whatever to be able to handle getting nothing back if you end up string together a few 1-1.
**PS - I would gladly boycott 4322s for as long as it took if players could band together and demand a 5322. Any budding community organizers want to take this on?
Yeah card prices can sneak up on you. I know I've built decks week by week picking up a few cards here and there, never realizing the total cost. It's hard when writing articles because ou want players to try your deck and do well with it, but you also dont want it to be too prohibitive costwise.
I have played for a few years and seen alot, I seen them play cookie cutter decks they got from an article wrong because it was not thier creation.. just because it on a tournament or two.. they think they could go and take the idea and win with it..
The easier the concept the easier the win. And last time I checked Vamps were not an easy type to play in the first place
What milling deck wins by turn 4? I mean, seriously, I'd like to see a decklist.
One of the main reasons I think 95% of all milling decks are ok is that they're SLOW. Too slow to win. And while people are complaining on here that they're non-interactive... At the same time most Zoo decks happen to have no way to interact with the mill deck, many/most mill decks have also given up on having many cards that can interact with creatures. While also not having the abillity to outrace creatures very often.
I'll also note that I love playing against mill decks with my 120 card decks, and my 200 card decks. Which happens sometimes.
People are just nuts. If they play a Hill Giant, then you Terror it, then it's just timmy vs. timmy, fine. If they play Hill Giant and you Counterspell, same net effect but they cry foul. And land destruction decks are usually very weak and easily beaten, but the people who conceed on turn 3 will never learn that, I guess!
Best article yet! (well, since you've stopped bashing Michael J anyway) What asmallchild requested I have to second. A few theoretical 'skewings' would be very informative.
Now if only WoTC customer service would hurry up and get my MtGO working again...
This is a great way to look at the upcoming expansion. I have only recently (since M10) been playing again (after the typical 'many years off') and have really fallen in love with Limited. Your podcast has been immensely helpful, and entertaining - the music makes me smile as I ride the early morning bus to campus.
Also, it makes me really excited to hear about your son playing. I have an almost-five-year-old daughter that has already shown interest in lots of other games, and she likes to look through my piles of Magic cards! She even wishes me luck when I go out to play FNM. I have been considering teaching her some of the basics soon, and by the time she's 'old enough' she should be a lot of fun to take with me. (and her little sister is coming up soon too!)
I am curious when you started teaching Ollie? And if you have any tips on how to ease into the complex rules?
Can't wait to read/hear more about your impressions of Worldwake, and Good Luck at the pre-
These articles keep getting more interesting each time. Keep it up!
In this deck, being able to draw two cards is far more important than being able to draw one. Heck, a significant amount of the time you're going to draw another creature with an enters the battlefield ability, giving you hey, another card (or two).
Also, unlike Rager, you can point Sign in Blood at your opponent to burn them out.
While there are no hard and fast rules about what must appear in MBC, at this time, I like Sign in Blood far more than Rager.
-Alex
EDIT: Additionally, Sign helps you to better recover from the discard in the format. Being able to go even after a Ravenous Rats or recoup some losses from a Probe can go a long way towards keeping you in the game.
Bashing Gladwell, history majors, and mentioning Ivy league books is fun and all, but the idea that was presented in the book is still the same. Do you truly think that you don't make unconcious decisions? I'd love the idea that I don't, but I feel if I'm honest with myself that I do make split second decisions based on the information provided. Cracking the land early or later provides split second judgements, I think the article is pretty valid in that regard.
I can't wait for the hearsay about a professor using Gladwell books as toilet paper, either way the idea presented is the same. Everything else is just an avoidance of the main question.
Thanks for the feedback, I had thought about it, but you see those decks often in casual and I wanted to try something a bit different (though Sanguine Bond decks aren't totally a new idea). As for price it's not terrible, but not as cheap as I would have thought.. some of the cards have gone up since I got em, though in my defense my decks tend to be casual not always budget casual :P
Divinity - $15
Solemn - $9 (wow when did those go up?)
Nighthawk - $1.6
Kokusho - $4.50
Animate - $2.25
Beseech - $.24
Damnation - $27
Oubliette - $.06
Arena - $3
Polluted - $.7
Bond - $1.2
Tendrils - $.2
Coffers - $18
Leechridden - $.1
Terramorphic - $.15
Urborg - $20.25
Urborg - .05
Total - $103.3
Ok that is much more expensive then I would have guessed, when you have the cards you don't even consider how much they are now, had I realized I would have thrown in a budget try as well
Could any + or - given to the percentages based on the pilot? Not sure if there is a statistical way to measure this, but when you end up with an outlier winning a tournament, it could be the pilot really outplayed the opponents because just based on the cards and these statistics it really shouldn't have won. Or is this just one of those it's better to be lucky with the right meta than a well built deck. I wonder what LSV piloting would add to the %. This is included in Valakut too, I've seen many people just play that deck wrong.
A purely white aggro deck won a GP less than 2 years ago. It was lorwyn block and it was obviously Kithkins. Another kithkins deck won GP Sao Paulo (T2) but that was a fluke as his list was horrible and he must have gotten pretty lucky (the whole top8 was terrible anyway and I'm pretty sure it was the worst GP in terms of top8 last year, and probably last few years).