While I argue that your counter example doesn't actually correct the sample bias. I think we can agree that "Card was drawn" is a much more relevant way to score the matches than "Card was played". This is especially relevant to the issue we're discussing.
I most definitely do not admit that. No methodology is perfect. The big difference here is that we can rigorously find errors because the assumptions are all laid out. You can't do that with informal analysis.
And, by the way, Makindi Shieldmate got a 50%--so much for it looking like a bomb.
Actually, the name of the article is misleading, you tell you'll explore the format, and you only talk about a deck.
A good starting point would rather be talk about the format, the meta, how it evolves, and then only about specific decklists.
That U/G version with slimes and shamblers is *NO* fun to play against. I got destroyed by it in the Casual room of all places. Then the guy got bent by my "nice net deck" comment... too funny.
Then you admit that this test shows nothing, it doesn't show how you should draft or build your deck at all.
It's not coincidence that makes tuktuk grunts so good, it's your methodology. By your statistics iona would undoubtedly be the best card ever when it's not even playable. Makandi shieldmate may look like a bomb when it's a mediocre blocker. To have meaningful results you need to look at how many times you win when you draw a certain card and in which archetypes/matchups. You can't do that, so please refrain from making any analysis before you can. It looks like a lot of wasted effort.
I don't suggest you continue this series until you tell us what conclusions we can actually draw from the data. I have learned virtually nothing from these results, whereas other conventional limited articles on this site have valuable insight.
I believe you misunderstood my comment. I do not hate Spreading Seas itself. I hate Enchant Lands on the principle that they really don't do what I want them to do. A few rise above. Seas doesn't quite make it in my mind but the use of 7 of them in a deck to cut your Opponent's mana is funny if somewhat less effective perhaps than using inefficient yet more final land destruction. I dislike the card for its bad quality not because it upsets me to see it played. Now that said clearly it is good in the meta you are talking about because you proved that with your 2mans.
Notice the out of stock part. That is why the listed price is lower. Chalice recent rose in price and the foils were not available so traders didn't raise them to match.
The fact that Oath is a one card combo in a metagame like classic and that it only takes 5-6 slots of your deck to win make it desirable.
I think there are a lot of factors pushing up the price.
1. its a teir 1 rare that needs 4 copys.
2. nostalgia
3. even casual players want this card for multiplayer and other strange less cuthroat magic.
4. nothing else in the set even comes close to the power level this card brings to tournament classic, its kind of like mox diamond in stronghold, except that there are more then just volraths stronghold in exodus for players to want to get for classic.
5. the release events were pretty poor in terms of turnout, and im sure that the available drafts wont fire at a huge clip.
I know those cant explain why it's so high when nobody is firing classic events, but they paint a good picture for its 2nd place status. We still have until april for people to open these up, once we get into urzas saga i believe that all tempest block teir 1 legacy and vintage singles will start a medoric rise in price. If you think oath is expensive now, wait until a pack of exodus has not been opened up for 5 months and all of a sudden something is printed that makes it a dominate stratgie instead of a teir 1 strat.
And by the way, having played oath for the last 3 weeks im not quite sure why this card is as high as it is. Yes it is an extremly good deck but I have personaly lost matches to a huge array of the metagame and watched others lose too. If we can start firing classic events i believe the meta game that exists will bring down the price of oath as people will see that its not worth 220 bucks when you can still lose your entry to the event with the deck.
just my 2 cents on the why.
@Felorin: Slot Machine Magic is indeed an appropriate name for Momir, good thinking.
@Paul: I don't blame you for hating Spreading Seas; I don't think any of my opponents felt differently during or after the games.
@ArchGenius: You are right and I can "smell" a new Vore deck coming towards us. Spreading Seas, Convincing Mirage, Mold Shambler, Acidic Slime... Can a new generation Blue/Green Land Denial replace the old Red/Blue Land Denial? We'll see that.
i went 3-3 in momir, had fun, nothing crazy, did lose a match because of hoverguard, top deck have you, i had it won. btw, the dude i was playing kept yelling at me to give him back one of his guys. idk what he was smoking
It occurred to me that if two non-flyers are pressuring you, then you would much rather have the Crypt Ripper than the Disfigure. So this problem (at least in the Crypt Ripper/Disfigure dyad) isn't as pervasive as it might have seemed.
I think the values of the red cards are a lot different in draft, where you can try for & sometimes achieve a mono-red deck, as opposed to sealed where you almost never will (and even if you do, the card quality will be lower than in a mono-red draft).
In particular, Spire Barrage is a lot more valuable when you can go mono-red. Also you have better chances of picking them up in multiples in a draft, where anybody not mono-red will probably pass them. Zektar Shrine Expedition becomes more valuable in draft also, as you're more likely to have enough critical mass of burn spells to make burning someone out viable. Molten Ravager probably goes up a little as well, since when you can afford to pump you'll be pumping it higher. Also since more of the damage in draft is dealt by 1-3 drops, having a 0/4 wall on turn three may be more relevant in draft than in sealed. Goblin Shortcutter and Plated Geopede might go up a bit in draft vs. sealed too.
I am really enjoying the series, but I'd love to see similar analysis done for draft someday as well!
Don't even get me started on Momir. I convinced two of my friends to play in the tourney with me. Neither of them have ever played Momir before and really only play Magic to draft. How did they do? One went 3-3 and the other went 4-2. How did I do? I went 1-5 and I only got the 1 because I was the person in last place that got the 6th round bye. What an embarrassment. I can count on one hand the number of fliers I pulled the entire day. Granted I did pull off the best play in Momir in round 4. The turn three Sesaya which I flipped next turn and started dropping Autochron Wurms.
@Felorin, don't you hate how that thing keeps scrolling? Man I wish they would fix that. I was trying to check the progress of all the people I knew in the tourney, but I didn't have the patience to keep trying to scroll as MTGO fights me.
I think the original poster's point is that with Disfigure, you buy yourself an extra turn, but will still most likely lose unless you get another top deck. With the Crypt Ripper, you can't avoid or postpone a loss, so you concede without playing the Ripper.
Concessions are potential problems, but I don't see why someone in that situation would concede after playing Disfigure but before playing Crypt Ripper.
Again, just because a card appears at the top of a list does not make it the "best" card in the color. That requires a different test, which I only do where noted. It takes a lot more than a coincidence for Tuktuk Grunts to do that well but actually have a value worth less than 50%. So maybe you should reevaluate your opinion of the card. ;)
"You've used a very detailed time-consuming statistical analysis"
Whoa there, in what way is this detailed?
While I argue that your counter example doesn't actually correct the sample bias. I think we can agree that "Card was drawn" is a much more relevant way to score the matches than "Card was played". This is especially relevant to the issue we're discussing.
I most definitely do not admit that. No methodology is perfect. The big difference here is that we can rigorously find errors because the assumptions are all laid out. You can't do that with informal analysis.
And, by the way, Makindi Shieldmate got a 50%--so much for it looking like a bomb.
Actually, the name of the article is misleading, you tell you'll explore the format, and you only talk about a deck.
A good starting point would rather be talk about the format, the meta, how it evolves, and then only about specific decklists.
well it kind of fails as a net deck at this point in time...its certainly not well known enough for it to be considered a net-deck
That U/G version with slimes and shamblers is *NO* fun to play against. I got destroyed by it in the Casual room of all places. Then the guy got bent by my "nice net deck" comment... too funny.
Then you admit that this test shows nothing, it doesn't show how you should draft or build your deck at all.
It's not coincidence that makes tuktuk grunts so good, it's your methodology. By your statistics iona would undoubtedly be the best card ever when it's not even playable. Makandi shieldmate may look like a bomb when it's a mediocre blocker. To have meaningful results you need to look at how many times you win when you draw a certain card and in which archetypes/matchups. You can't do that, so please refrain from making any analysis before you can. It looks like a lot of wasted effort.
I don't suggest you continue this series until you tell us what conclusions we can actually draw from the data. I have learned virtually nothing from these results, whereas other conventional limited articles on this site have valuable insight.
I believe you misunderstood my comment. I do not hate Spreading Seas itself. I hate Enchant Lands on the principle that they really don't do what I want them to do. A few rise above. Seas doesn't quite make it in my mind but the use of 7 of them in a deck to cut your Opponent's mana is funny if somewhat less effective perhaps than using inefficient yet more final land destruction. I dislike the card for its bad quality not because it upsets me to see it played. Now that said clearly it is good in the meta you are talking about because you proved that with your 2mans.
Notice the out of stock part. That is why the listed price is lower. Chalice recent rose in price and the foils were not available so traders didn't raise them to match.
that actually sounds quite fun there....i would prbably play standard again with something like that.
Foil price
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/MRD_Chalice_of_the_Void_f.html
Didn't you hear? Foils are harder to move and sell for less than their counterparts.
Don't believe me?
http://www.mtgotraders.com/store/MRD_Chalice_of_the_Void.html
The fact that Oath is a one card combo in a metagame like classic and that it only takes 5-6 slots of your deck to win make it desirable.
I think there are a lot of factors pushing up the price.
1. its a teir 1 rare that needs 4 copys.
2. nostalgia
3. even casual players want this card for multiplayer and other strange less cuthroat magic.
4. nothing else in the set even comes close to the power level this card brings to tournament classic, its kind of like mox diamond in stronghold, except that there are more then just volraths stronghold in exodus for players to want to get for classic.
5. the release events were pretty poor in terms of turnout, and im sure that the available drafts wont fire at a huge clip.
I know those cant explain why it's so high when nobody is firing classic events, but they paint a good picture for its 2nd place status. We still have until april for people to open these up, once we get into urzas saga i believe that all tempest block teir 1 legacy and vintage singles will start a medoric rise in price. If you think oath is expensive now, wait until a pack of exodus has not been opened up for 5 months and all of a sudden something is printed that makes it a dominate stratgie instead of a teir 1 strat.
And by the way, having played oath for the last 3 weeks im not quite sure why this card is as high as it is. Yes it is an extremly good deck but I have personaly lost matches to a huge array of the metagame and watched others lose too. If we can start firing classic events i believe the meta game that exists will bring down the price of oath as people will see that its not worth 220 bucks when you can still lose your entry to the event with the deck.
just my 2 cents on the why.
p.s. I'm really glad my play set is foil :)
Happy new years!
Thanks for the comments guys.
@Felorin: Slot Machine Magic is indeed an appropriate name for Momir, good thinking.
@Paul: I don't blame you for hating Spreading Seas; I don't think any of my opponents felt differently during or after the games.
@ArchGenius: You are right and I can "smell" a new Vore deck coming towards us. Spreading Seas, Convincing Mirage, Mold Shambler, Acidic Slime... Can a new generation Blue/Green Land Denial replace the old Red/Blue Land Denial? We'll see that.
Thanks again for the comments.
LE
i went 3-3 in momir, had fun, nothing crazy, did lose a match because of hoverguard, top deck have you, i had it won. btw, the dude i was playing kept yelling at me to give him back one of his guys. idk what he was smoking
It occurred to me that if two non-flyers are pressuring you, then you would much rather have the Crypt Ripper than the Disfigure. So this problem (at least in the Crypt Ripper/Disfigure dyad) isn't as pervasive as it might have seemed.
I think the values of the red cards are a lot different in draft, where you can try for & sometimes achieve a mono-red deck, as opposed to sealed where you almost never will (and even if you do, the card quality will be lower than in a mono-red draft).
In particular, Spire Barrage is a lot more valuable when you can go mono-red. Also you have better chances of picking them up in multiples in a draft, where anybody not mono-red will probably pass them. Zektar Shrine Expedition becomes more valuable in draft also, as you're more likely to have enough critical mass of burn spells to make burning someone out viable. Molten Ravager probably goes up a little as well, since when you can afford to pump you'll be pumping it higher. Also since more of the damage in draft is dealt by 1-3 drops, having a 0/4 wall on turn three may be more relevant in draft than in sealed. Goblin Shortcutter and Plated Geopede might go up a bit in draft vs. sealed too.
I am really enjoying the series, but I'd love to see similar analysis done for draft someday as well!
Lol that the Chacarron Macarron crazyness has only just now surfaced over there.
Don't even get me started on Momir. I convinced two of my friends to play in the tourney with me. Neither of them have ever played Momir before and really only play Magic to draft. How did they do? One went 3-3 and the other went 4-2. How did I do? I went 1-5 and I only got the 1 because I was the person in last place that got the 6th round bye. What an embarrassment. I can count on one hand the number of fliers I pulled the entire day. Granted I did pull off the best play in Momir in round 4. The turn three Sesaya which I flipped next turn and started dropping Autochron Wurms.
@Felorin, don't you hate how that thing keeps scrolling? Man I wish they would fix that. I was trying to check the progress of all the people I knew in the tourney, but I didn't have the patience to keep trying to scroll as MTGO fights me.
very nice article.
It's strange that blue is now the color of pseudo-land destruction due mainly to the fact that so few decks play blue.
Oh okay. That's a fair point--though at least Disfigure in this case isn't a guaranteed loss.
I think the original poster's point is that with Disfigure, you buy yourself an extra turn, but will still most likely lose unless you get another top deck. With the Crypt Ripper, you can't avoid or postpone a loss, so you concede without playing the Ripper.
Concessions are potential problems, but I don't see why someone in that situation would concede after playing Disfigure but before playing Crypt Ripper.
I have discussed this in the other comments, and you are right. In the future, I hope to correct for this. However, it will take a lot of work.
Again, just because a card appears at the top of a list does not make it the "best" card in the color. That requires a different test, which I only do where noted. It takes a lot more than a coincidence for Tuktuk Grunts to do that well but actually have a value worth less than 50%. So maybe you should reevaluate your opinion of the card. ;)