yeah I suck at speaking but I'm gunna get better, the uhms are just not to sure and passing time I think, i'll watch that, I really want to keep the 1 blessing, with 4 brainstorm and ways to find brainstorms in the deck, I'm sure I could burry a blessing, and if I can't, well I can cunning wish for krosan reclimation which I will be doing when we get yawgmoth's will
well one thing but its kind of a good and a bad thing.
Since you are doing it while you play there are a lot of ummm's and uhhhh's and the like. This is not the best commetary.
However we do get your initial reactions and get to hear your thought processes as you play which is better than trying to remember why you did what and commentate a replay.
I would say stick with what you are doing but try to avoid so many pauses.
Also, if Gaea's Blessing is so important..which you said you would deck yourself without it in your library, is there a way to run two? maybe take out one thoughtseize?
I really like this deck. I have been wanting to put together the standard version of this deck, but do not currently have the funds for it. Ajanis, Elspeths, and Baneslayers, oh my! I just priced this one out and with the cards I already have it is extremely reasonable.
Good article. As for Godot's question, I think it is up to us to determine how to correctly interpret this data. That doesn't make it worthless, but instead debatable as to its implications. He's not saying go and pick Crypt Ripper higher than Hideous or Disfigure. It's not as simple as a pick order. The data is especially complex given that each color is different and drafted/valued differently. Given the popularity of black, I understand Crypt Ripper topping this list to mean that the person who is deepest in black (ie someone who can use Crypt Ripper well) is most likely to win the draft. This confirms what we already know about black. How can that help you win more? Figure it out :)
"Note: Just because Hideous End appears lower on this list than Crypt Ripper does not mean Hideous End is a worse card. The statistical tests only check to see whether we can say with certain degrees of confidence that there was a correlation between playing that card and winning or losing the game. To infer whether one card had a greater or lesser correlation, I would have to run a difference in means test between those two cards. Given that this requires an A versus B set up and that I tracked more than 100 cards in this study, it would be impossible to test every card against every other card. Thus, you will not see any difference in means tests in these articles unless otherwise noted."
So, no, I'm not saying that Crypt Ripper is inherently better than Hideous End. It could be, but I don't know--I would need to gather a ton more data, maybe ten times more than what I have here. The results I present are only from a sample of 1000+ players. Some cards are bound to rank higher than others even they aren't better in the long run.
What Paul said, that has got to be one of the best/funniest/most interesting decks you have ever build. I am surprised and delighted that you are capable of making such decks within such a budget! Well done! :)
I think that's a reasonable analysis. Since sealed is often slower than draft, green's big fatties can shine more, and blue has more time to get going with Windrider Eels and maybe a Living Tsunami. Those guys have been great for me in sealed, as have all of the Baloths. I had one deck with the common, the uncommon, and the mythic rare one, plus a Sphinx of Jwar Island - that was the release event I won. Even Roil Elemental is better in sealed, you may find yourself up against more decks that are low on removal enough for him to survive. I still ran Savage Silhouette and Vines of Vastwood with him to make sure, though!
I'm using this data when building decks, drafting, and making in-play decisions. The building decks part should be obvious, as I gathered this data from sealed pools. Using this during drafting is a bit more controversial, but I don't think that the differences between sealed and limited are that great except for in the places where it obviously is (Soul Stair Expedition, for example). I avoid discussing this in articles because I understand that would incite a riot. Eventually, I would like to test the differences between the results of sealed events with draft events and see whether there actually is much of a difference at all. Finally, it's good to know what is a threat to me and what isn't when I'm making in-play decisions, especially when it comes to removal.
Example: Vines of Vastwood (and, as my data for Magic 2010 increases, Giant Growth) greatly improves a player's chances of winning. From what I'm seeing, I explain this based on the fact that it often steals wins at the end of games and also helps remove extremely large creatures. Consequently, when people attack at suspicious times, I am more than willing to find out if they have Vines. If they don't, then I have successfully called their bluff. And if they do, I'm still better off having removed that Vines from their hand than having to face it later on in the game.
ok i can kind of understand...Crypt Ripper in a vacuum, would be good. Probably the best common black creature as far as actually getting the win...but its by far the best black card. I refuse to believe anything other than hideous end or the more splashable disfigure is the best black common.
I have been playing Soul stair in almost all of my black decks and it has been excellent. I think it functions the way we wish Ior Ruin Expedition would function in this format. Black has several excellent targets for return, obivously Crypt Ripper and Nighthawk but also Gatkeeper and Scorpion. Having it on the table will even change how opponents play against you. Nobody is blocking your Gatekeeper with Souls stair sitting there to return him and swinging into the Scorpion also becomes undesirable. And lets face it returning your bomb creatures and making your opponent deal with them again is almost and auto win.
I am not saying it is a first pick card but I usually pick them up tenth or later and it is a great form of card advantage for a cheap price. Sure it is a terrible topdeck late and sometimes it just gives your opponent a target for thier sanctifiers but more often then not it is great. Try them out you won't be disappointed.
Again I'm left wondering how we can take this data and apply it to our approach to Zendikar limited, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. Having done this research, how is it going to impact *your* approach to Zendikar draft or Zendikar sealed?
Will it impact your approach to draft at all? The data doesn't translate directly into draft picks, where you would be quite incorrect to take the mana-intensive Crypt Ripper over Hideous End or even Disfigure early.
Does it help build a sealed pool? Maybe it can contribute to some final card decisions, but once you have chosen your colors, the percentage differences between Hideous End, Disfigure, Crypt Ripper, and Sell-Sword don't matter, you are going to play them all if you play black.
If the only actionable takeaway is to inform (loosely) some bottom-end slot choices in sealed, is this kind of data mining and processing worth the effort? (I say "loosely" because even in those cases, the data is still looking at win percentage when resolved, not which card is "better.")
As it is, this little snippet from one of the WotC newsletters still tells me more about how to approach Zen drafting than any conclusions drawn from your series (I think this was already quoted in one of the other article comments, but it bears repeating):
Magic Online Factoid
Top 10 first picks of 8-4 ZEN draft winners:
1. Hideous End
2. Burst Lightning
3. Vampire Nighthawk
4. Journey to Nowhere
5. Marsh Casualties
6. Disfigure
7. Plated Geopede
8. Trusty Machete
9. Malakir Bloodwitch
10. Kor Skyfisher
The first four common picks are the top removal spells in the colors with removal. Crypt Ripper is great in heavy black, but the recipe for drafting success is not to pick your high-ranking cards first, but to pick removal, bombs, and efficiently-costed creatures first.
I absolutely respect and admire the work you have put into this series, don't get me wrong. I agree that Wizards should release the mounds of data they have on Limited so that players like yourself who are quite willing to work the data into articles have something meaty to work with. In the meantime, is there anything we can actually do with this info besides find it interesting? Which I do, and perhaps "that's interesting" makes this worth the effort, but of course, the Spike in me wants to *do* something with it!
You mention some discussions going on about what people thought would do on black. Which message boards are you using? Do you have a link to the thread?
I was thinking of doing something very similar, analyzing which cards were played in order to see what cards might be best.
I don't have the patience you have though and could never go through the replays by hand.
So being a programmer, I wrote some code that would save replay information for every game and match for every round of a tournament, including the full game play log of every card played and attack made, etc.
I've gotten that code working. MTGO crashes once in a while when playing back so many replays, but with a little human intervention I'm able to gather a complete event.
Now I just have to get off my lazy butt and analyze the data and present it.
I even thought about making this automated and providing a website that would have all the data for all the events with running statistics, but again, my lazy butt hasn't been motivated to do so yet. Also, I'm not really a statistician so I'd probably mess up the stats some how.
If your interested perhaps we can talk more about what techniques you've used to analyze what was played and any ideas you might have for fun stats and how to measure them. We could do it in a message board thread so that others could chime in.
Even if you test Crypt Ripper against only black cards, the result still comes out as significant to 95%. I agree that black cards are getting a coattail effect from other good black cards. The question, of course, is which of the black cards is making all of the other ones better. And, either way you test it, Crypt Ripper seems to be doing favorable things.
well, you also have to remember that in sealed, you are probably going up against a lot of other black and red decks. Against those decks, Crypt Ripper is really good, because it doesn't die to Hideous End and it can pump up out of burn range of a lot of the red removal spells. It kills nearly every creature in any of those colors. So of course it is good there. Disfigure is probably lower because it gets played in so many more games. If your mana is bad, then you aren't going to be able to play a Hideous End, but you are going to be able to play Disfigure in every game that you play. Surrakar Marauder is going to be bad because everyone else is playing black, so he is really just a 2/1 for 2. Here is another example, Bog Tatters still clocks in at 52%, even though it is a terrible card. But if everyone is playing black, then it is decent. Not as good as a Crypt Ripper because it dies to every removal spell in the format, but decent nonetheless.
Once again I think the results of this study are murky at best. In an early sealed event 6/8 of the top 8 decks were playing black, black is just a better color than the others in the set, so what comes out on top here? The black commons that cannot be splashed well, meaning that the players who played them played mid to heavy black and therefore probably opened a good black pool and so had a better chance of succeeding in sealed. Hagra croc is a filler black card, once again something that you only play because you have alot of other good black, so once again not so surprising to see it high on the list, soul stair is certianly great in sealed, in draft much less so since games tend to be alot shorter, same thing goes for the mosquito, marauder is artificially low because people in sealed scrounge for playables and play their scrabblers and pumas more than in draft, and play black if they can, scorpion is better in draft because of the high number of tuned aggro decks in draft vs sealed where it shines holding off a pile of offenders, though not amazingly better, I still think people overvalue it, Im not surprised to see blood seeker so low, as he really isnt that good (though that draft where he stopped me from recovering with my conq pledge he was pretty dang annoying) Still great to see these articles, even if I'm even less convinced of the data's usefulness.
Those are good points. I think however that the timing of the event could be a lot worse. The 27th is a Sunday so some of us will probably be out of town. Xmas isn't the greatest time to hold a mass appeal event, unless they are counting on the low turn out for the holidays.
1. I know it makes sense to choose the expensive ones as prizes. But I thought it would be helpful for readers to have a guide about which expensive ones have the most utility. My aim here wasn't for speculation/reselling value, but for casual play tips (as per my column's goal).
2. I do already acknowledge in my article that this tournament will cause a price drop. That said, I think you might be exaggerating the extent of the drop.
I think it's great you took the time to write about the most expensive avatars, which would normally make sense to choose as prizes. The thing though is that the only reason these things are worth anything to begin with is their rarity. What happens when you dump several hundred (maybe even thousand) of each of these into the system? I'd expect the tournament to near max out on players, and if everyone who wins at least three avatars and doesn't play vanguard logically chooses one of the angels to resell you are looking at a market crash on avatar prices.
The prices are going to crash, and crash HARD, especially since Vanguard is essentially a dead format. Ya MTGO traders has prices listed, but who even buys these things? You're looking at creating an enormous supply with no demand - not good for the prices. If anything I'd sell all my avatars before the tourney and rebuy them at 1/10 the price once the thing is over. The only way prices don't crash is if not that many people play in the tournament...considering it's free and most people have a Momir lying around...not looking good for avatar prices.
yeah I suck at speaking but I'm gunna get better, the uhms are just not to sure and passing time I think, i'll watch that, I really want to keep the 1 blessing, with 4 brainstorm and ways to find brainstorms in the deck, I'm sure I could burry a blessing, and if I can't, well I can cunning wish for krosan reclimation which I will be doing when we get yawgmoth's will
well one thing but its kind of a good and a bad thing.
Since you are doing it while you play there are a lot of ummm's and uhhhh's and the like. This is not the best commetary.
However we do get your initial reactions and get to hear your thought processes as you play which is better than trying to remember why you did what and commentate a replay.
I would say stick with what you are doing but try to avoid so many pauses.
Also, if Gaea's Blessing is so important..which you said you would deck yourself without it in your library, is there a way to run two? maybe take out one thoughtseize?
I really like this deck. I have been wanting to put together the standard version of this deck, but do not currently have the funds for it. Ajanis, Elspeths, and Baneslayers, oh my! I just priced this one out and with the cards I already have it is extremely reasonable.
Good article. As for Godot's question, I think it is up to us to determine how to correctly interpret this data. That doesn't make it worthless, but instead debatable as to its implications. He's not saying go and pick Crypt Ripper higher than Hideous or Disfigure. It's not as simple as a pick order. The data is especially complex given that each color is different and drafted/valued differently. Given the popularity of black, I understand Crypt Ripper topping this list to mean that the person who is deepest in black (ie someone who can use Crypt Ripper well) is most likely to win the draft. This confirms what we already know about black. How can that help you win more? Figure it out :)
I am looking for suggestions guys on how to improve them!
Hey
have you tried a trinisphere post-board? tinker and tutors should let you find one reasonably easily
The SGC certainly is a win if you get to untap. Much better choice than the Master of the Wild Hunt IMO.
From the article:
"Note: Just because Hideous End appears lower on this list than Crypt Ripper does not mean Hideous End is a worse card. The statistical tests only check to see whether we can say with certain degrees of confidence that there was a correlation between playing that card and winning or losing the game. To infer whether one card had a greater or lesser correlation, I would have to run a difference in means test between those two cards. Given that this requires an A versus B set up and that I tracked more than 100 cards in this study, it would be impossible to test every card against every other card. Thus, you will not see any difference in means tests in these articles unless otherwise noted."
So, no, I'm not saying that Crypt Ripper is inherently better than Hideous End. It could be, but I don't know--I would need to gather a ton more data, maybe ten times more than what I have here. The results I present are only from a sample of 1000+ players. Some cards are bound to rank higher than others even they aren't better in the long run.
What Paul said, that has got to be one of the best/funniest/most interesting decks you have ever build. I am surprised and delighted that you are capable of making such decks within such a budget! Well done! :)
I think that's a reasonable analysis. Since sealed is often slower than draft, green's big fatties can shine more, and blue has more time to get going with Windrider Eels and maybe a Living Tsunami. Those guys have been great for me in sealed, as have all of the Baloths. I had one deck with the common, the uncommon, and the mythic rare one, plus a Sphinx of Jwar Island - that was the release event I won. Even Roil Elemental is better in sealed, you may find yourself up against more decks that are low on removal enough for him to survive. I still ran Savage Silhouette and Vines of Vastwood with him to make sure, though!
I'm using this data when building decks, drafting, and making in-play decisions. The building decks part should be obvious, as I gathered this data from sealed pools. Using this during drafting is a bit more controversial, but I don't think that the differences between sealed and limited are that great except for in the places where it obviously is (Soul Stair Expedition, for example). I avoid discussing this in articles because I understand that would incite a riot. Eventually, I would like to test the differences between the results of sealed events with draft events and see whether there actually is much of a difference at all. Finally, it's good to know what is a threat to me and what isn't when I'm making in-play decisions, especially when it comes to removal.
Example: Vines of Vastwood (and, as my data for Magic 2010 increases, Giant Growth) greatly improves a player's chances of winning. From what I'm seeing, I explain this based on the fact that it often steals wins at the end of games and also helps remove extremely large creatures. Consequently, when people attack at suspicious times, I am more than willing to find out if they have Vines. If they don't, then I have successfully called their bluff. And if they do, I'm still better off having removed that Vines from their hand than having to face it later on in the game.
ok i can kind of understand...Crypt Ripper in a vacuum, would be good. Probably the best common black creature as far as actually getting the win...but its by far the best black card. I refuse to believe anything other than hideous end or the more splashable disfigure is the best black common.
Happy Holidays to you!
I have been playing Soul stair in almost all of my black decks and it has been excellent. I think it functions the way we wish Ior Ruin Expedition would function in this format. Black has several excellent targets for return, obivously Crypt Ripper and Nighthawk but also Gatkeeper and Scorpion. Having it on the table will even change how opponents play against you. Nobody is blocking your Gatekeeper with Souls stair sitting there to return him and swinging into the Scorpion also becomes undesirable. And lets face it returning your bomb creatures and making your opponent deal with them again is almost and auto win.
I am not saying it is a first pick card but I usually pick them up tenth or later and it is a great form of card advantage for a cheap price. Sure it is a terrible topdeck late and sometimes it just gives your opponent a target for thier sanctifiers but more often then not it is great. Try them out you won't be disappointed.
Again I'm left wondering how we can take this data and apply it to our approach to Zendikar limited, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. Having done this research, how is it going to impact *your* approach to Zendikar draft or Zendikar sealed?
Will it impact your approach to draft at all? The data doesn't translate directly into draft picks, where you would be quite incorrect to take the mana-intensive Crypt Ripper over Hideous End or even Disfigure early.
Does it help build a sealed pool? Maybe it can contribute to some final card decisions, but once you have chosen your colors, the percentage differences between Hideous End, Disfigure, Crypt Ripper, and Sell-Sword don't matter, you are going to play them all if you play black.
If the only actionable takeaway is to inform (loosely) some bottom-end slot choices in sealed, is this kind of data mining and processing worth the effort? (I say "loosely" because even in those cases, the data is still looking at win percentage when resolved, not which card is "better.")
As it is, this little snippet from one of the WotC newsletters still tells me more about how to approach Zen drafting than any conclusions drawn from your series (I think this was already quoted in one of the other article comments, but it bears repeating):
Magic Online Factoid
Top 10 first picks of 8-4 ZEN draft winners:
1. Hideous End
2. Burst Lightning
3. Vampire Nighthawk
4. Journey to Nowhere
5. Marsh Casualties
6. Disfigure
7. Plated Geopede
8. Trusty Machete
9. Malakir Bloodwitch
10. Kor Skyfisher
The first four common picks are the top removal spells in the colors with removal. Crypt Ripper is great in heavy black, but the recipe for drafting success is not to pick your high-ranking cards first, but to pick removal, bombs, and efficiently-costed creatures first.
I absolutely respect and admire the work you have put into this series, don't get me wrong. I agree that Wizards should release the mounds of data they have on Limited so that players like yourself who are quite willing to work the data into articles have something meaty to work with. In the meantime, is there anything we can actually do with this info besides find it interesting? Which I do, and perhaps "that's interesting" makes this worth the effort, but of course, the Spike in me wants to *do* something with it!
Email me. williamspaniel@gmail.com
I forgot to log in, so here's my rating :)
Hiya
I found your articles very interesting.
You mention some discussions going on about what people thought would do on black. Which message boards are you using? Do you have a link to the thread?
I was thinking of doing something very similar, analyzing which cards were played in order to see what cards might be best.
I don't have the patience you have though and could never go through the replays by hand.
So being a programmer, I wrote some code that would save replay information for every game and match for every round of a tournament, including the full game play log of every card played and attack made, etc.
I've gotten that code working. MTGO crashes once in a while when playing back so many replays, but with a little human intervention I'm able to gather a complete event.
Now I just have to get off my lazy butt and analyze the data and present it.
I even thought about making this automated and providing a website that would have all the data for all the events with running statistics, but again, my lazy butt hasn't been motivated to do so yet. Also, I'm not really a statistician so I'd probably mess up the stats some how.
If your interested perhaps we can talk more about what techniques you've used to analyze what was played and any ideas you might have for fun stats and how to measure them. We could do it in a message board thread so that others could chime in.
Nice articles by the way. Congrats :)
Even if you test Crypt Ripper against only black cards, the result still comes out as significant to 95%. I agree that black cards are getting a coattail effect from other good black cards. The question, of course, is which of the black cards is making all of the other ones better. And, either way you test it, Crypt Ripper seems to be doing favorable things.
That's a really good explanation for Surrakar Marauder. I will be sure to mention it in the red article.
well, you also have to remember that in sealed, you are probably going up against a lot of other black and red decks. Against those decks, Crypt Ripper is really good, because it doesn't die to Hideous End and it can pump up out of burn range of a lot of the red removal spells. It kills nearly every creature in any of those colors. So of course it is good there. Disfigure is probably lower because it gets played in so many more games. If your mana is bad, then you aren't going to be able to play a Hideous End, but you are going to be able to play Disfigure in every game that you play. Surrakar Marauder is going to be bad because everyone else is playing black, so he is really just a 2/1 for 2. Here is another example, Bog Tatters still clocks in at 52%, even though it is a terrible card. But if everyone is playing black, then it is decent. Not as good as a Crypt Ripper because it dies to every removal spell in the format, but decent nonetheless.
Once again I think the results of this study are murky at best. In an early sealed event 6/8 of the top 8 decks were playing black, black is just a better color than the others in the set, so what comes out on top here? The black commons that cannot be splashed well, meaning that the players who played them played mid to heavy black and therefore probably opened a good black pool and so had a better chance of succeeding in sealed. Hagra croc is a filler black card, once again something that you only play because you have alot of other good black, so once again not so surprising to see it high on the list, soul stair is certianly great in sealed, in draft much less so since games tend to be alot shorter, same thing goes for the mosquito, marauder is artificially low because people in sealed scrounge for playables and play their scrabblers and pumas more than in draft, and play black if they can, scorpion is better in draft because of the high number of tuned aggro decks in draft vs sealed where it shines holding off a pile of offenders, though not amazingly better, I still think people overvalue it, Im not surprised to see blood seeker so low, as he really isnt that good (though that draft where he stopped me from recovering with my conq pledge he was pretty dang annoying) Still great to see these articles, even if I'm even less convinced of the data's usefulness.
Those are good points. I think however that the timing of the event could be a lot worse. The 27th is a Sunday so some of us will probably be out of town. Xmas isn't the greatest time to hold a mass appeal event, unless they are counting on the low turn out for the holidays.
1. I know it makes sense to choose the expensive ones as prizes. But I thought it would be helpful for readers to have a guide about which expensive ones have the most utility. My aim here wasn't for speculation/reselling value, but for casual play tips (as per my column's goal).
2. I do already acknowledge in my article that this tournament will cause a price drop. That said, I think you might be exaggerating the extent of the drop.
I think it's great you took the time to write about the most expensive avatars, which would normally make sense to choose as prizes. The thing though is that the only reason these things are worth anything to begin with is their rarity. What happens when you dump several hundred (maybe even thousand) of each of these into the system? I'd expect the tournament to near max out on players, and if everyone who wins at least three avatars and doesn't play vanguard logically chooses one of the angels to resell you are looking at a market crash on avatar prices.
The prices are going to crash, and crash HARD, especially since Vanguard is essentially a dead format. Ya MTGO traders has prices listed, but who even buys these things? You're looking at creating an enormous supply with no demand - not good for the prices. If anything I'd sell all my avatars before the tourney and rebuy them at 1/10 the price once the thing is over. The only way prices don't crash is if not that many people play in the tournament...considering it's free and most people have a Momir lying around...not looking good for avatar prices.