Nice read Lord and some nice decks, i have not been concentrating on std recently due to the tribes and my new love of classic..( i spent a little and got a few good decks)but you have really put some effort in your decks to build to buget and the RED/BLACK being my fav ... as the other reader said not sure about Jund and his friends but defo tier 1.75 :)
The real challenge in casual room is to have counterspells in your hand and not play them...
I would like to be able to do it with drafts, but MTGO doesn't give me access to enough replays. I can only lift four games off of each premiere event. (I can't track every single game of the top eight, which would be at least 14 games, because my sample would biased.) So for me to do a full a series on drafts, I would need to track hundreds of events. That would take an awfully long time.
Possible solutions:
1) Email Wizards and tell them that you want the draft replays to be open to the public.
2) Email Wizards and tell them you want them to commission a study at Pro Tour San Diego. I live in the greater San Diego area, and it would be pretty easy to pull something like this off. But I would need Wizards to be on board.
Surely calling some deck with howling mine and pyromancers ascenscion a netdeck is pushing it a bit. There are lots of interesting things you could do with those cards, and even the pyromancers ascenscion "combo" decks out there are hardly tier-one, are they?
Thanks for the comments and supportive words. A few things:
Paul (aka Winter.Wolf) helped me a lot preparing this article and he deserves a special mentioning. And Paul you don't see our games here because they were test games before the actual test games. You know how my GU deck was looking like when I first built it for example. And no, it wasen't winning at all. These here are the decks I built and the games I played after that preparation phase.
Secondly this edition of Rogue Play came one day later than it's usual day but rest assured it didn't happen because I was lazy or couldn't finish the article on time, but it was rather a decision of the site admin.
@Shard: I'm not underrating Hive Mind; it's just not a card I will ever play. It's only a matter of taste.
@The first anonymous poster: I don't think any of my decks could stand a chance against Jund or any other Tier-1 deck. To be honest, I don't think that any casual deck, regardless of the total money value of it, could stand a chance against any Tier-1 deck. Casual is just another level of Magic.
@Katastrophe: The only time I really felt what I wrote was that feeling of despair against those two planeswalkers while playing my first deck. I wrote the other reactions such as "how rude!" after Day of Judgement, only to make the article a little bit more fun to read.
I will say his tone was sufficiently sarcastic to know he isnt really having a tantrum. Though I also get tinges of annoyance/frustration when I remove planeswalkers from my decks before casual play just to be a good sport, and then first deck i play is loaded with them. Its a mix of the people in casual. I want to have fun just as much as they do. If not playing planeswalkers make them less cranky and me more likely to play a full game then ill do it. But just the pit of the stomach feeling of "just this one match i wish i left my planeswalkers in" is a pain. And "playing dirty" is definition a humorful statement.
And i'll be honest when someone ruins my game plan whether it be by discard, ld, counters, burn, or enchantment removal yeah i have a slight second or two of anger..who wouldnt?
"If I sat down at a draft today and opened Journey to Nowhere..." but the statistics are based on Sealed. A little saddened by the low score on Hookmaster, seeing as it's being considered even in Standard. An interesting read, nevertheless, although you can't really judge cards in a vacuum. Eagerly awaiting the other four (five?) parts in the series.
I love this article! I like analyzing things mathematically myself, but rarely have the time to do so in depth on anything. I really enjoy reading results like this. It would be great to see some numbers on drafts too if that's ever possible - it would give some interesting insights into what types of cards get better & get worse between sealed and draft. Also it'd give more insights into which cards to pick in drafts.
But if you can only just finish giving us all this information on sealed, please do. I'll look forward to reading the rest of it!
Thanks for the Commander-centric posts. As a player that is just getting into Magic Online (especially Commander)I really enjoy reading them.
Please keep the Commander Articles coming. I'd love to read more of your thoughts about best cards that deal with a common aspect in Commander Games, like best graveyard removal cards, or best ways to protect creatures, or best color-combo spells, etc...
Into the Roil is a personal favorite of mine, and most people who take on this deck swap it out, as well as the Alchemists for cards like Ethersworn Shieldmage and Glassdusk Hulk. I utilize the Into the Roils very situationally. To get the extra 2 points in with Parasitic Strix, to save a gargoyle, and a lot of the time I use them to buy myself time to get a little higher up on my landcount. Even a non-kicked Into the Roil on turn 2 to bounce a Borderpost can slow down a lot of the decks out there.
If your goal is to spend $10, try Classic. First you said your goal was to be casual. Then you defined casual as low-budget, but certainly not low-power. Awesome, I think I agree. But then you wrote "So... I will be playing Standard." Why Standard? Standard is needlessly expensive. You can buy lots of awesome cards that just rotated for a lot less than what they used to cost. But good job winning Standard on $10, because that's hard.
Are you really getting upset during your games? You once described playing enchantment removal as 'dirty'. Like what? Blowing up someone's permanents is a pretty clean play. Do you really consider Day of Judgement 'rude'? Did you actually get mad when the opposing black mage made you discard your demon? This is the Internet, I can't read your tone. I think you're being a good sport, but you're describing yourself like you're a timmy throwing a tantrum. Kind of weird.
5 red fireballs for showing an example of how to use counters and discard in the casual room without making people flip out. I think you accomplished your goal of playing three solid-yet-casual decks very well.
my comment 2 comments ago may seem really negative, but I'm actually thrilled to see real statistics applied to magic limited, just wish it were more targeted to draft.
"Equilibrium - A (7th)
Very good card in Commander. This lets you reuse 187 creatures like Trinket Mage or Venser, Shaper Savant. Also it can be stupid with something like Mulldrifter which can be evoked, the sacrifice trigger put on the stack first, then bounce it to your hand. This draws you two cards and you get to keep Mulldrifter for four mana."
Equilibrium doesn't work like that. It triggers when you play a creature SPELL, not when the creature enters play. Thus, the mulldrifter is still on the stack and you have to bounce something else already in play with it.
As such, it's nowhere near as good as you thought it was.
This analysis also ignores any biasing done during deck-building. For example, some allies might show good impact on win rates because they're ONLY played in ally decks, but are terrible cards otherwise.
hmm, so don't care about sealed, totally different format. In any case alot of what's being tracked here is what GOOD players play vs what BAD players play, so for example all players know to play journey in any deck whenever they can support the one white mana, alot of BAD players don't understand how good and solid steppe lynx is, so he winds up in a winner's deck more often than journey is able to create an upset of a bad player over a better player. The data isn't useless of course its just alot more complicated than simply being able to say this card is better than that, ill still take journey over lynx in any draft, if for no other reason steppe is more likely to wheel, also journey is just flat out better.
Also if you're including post board games, where cliff threader wasnt in the main youre going to get skewed results, since his text will read "this creature is unblockable" for his 2 mana cost, if you only include game 1's or games where he was in the maindeck you'd get alot different results, and again different conclusions for draft.
Ideally I could see every card in their deck and do an extremely large-n. But MTGO won't let me. Unless Wizards wants to hire a statistician for the summer...
Could you provide a link to the "8-4 Top 10 List" article?
It's too bad you can't see the players' hands. Ideally we'd want to know the correlation between DRAWING a particular card and winning the game, not just casting it. Case in point: Bold Defense basically says "win the game" when you pay 7 mana, so it's generally worth holding until that point. This skews the data though, because you can't tell how many games were lost with Bold Defense stuck in hand.
Thanks for doing this, though. Coupled with the infamous "8-4 Top 10 List" from 2 weeks ago, I'm very curious as to how an ideal ranking system could be established.
So, no, Blood Seeker (53%) isn't doing well just because it is a black card. It's not statistically significant either, so I just tack it up to randomness.
Small-n studies are bad, which is why I indicated statistically significant results where applicable. You can trust those (with differing degrees) of confidence.
Really enjoyed reading this, and definitely looking forward to the rest of the series. (My guess as to why there's a correlation between Blood Seeker hitting play and winning is that if you're playing Blood Seeker, you're probably pretty heavy into black, because nobody splashes for Blood Seeker. If you're pretty heavy into black, you're in a good spot because black is leaps and bounds better than other colors in Zen limited. (Or is it?))
Nice read Lord and some nice decks, i have not been concentrating on std recently due to the tribes and my new love of classic..( i spent a little and got a few good decks)but you have really put some effort in your decks to build to buget and the RED/BLACK being my fav ... as the other reader said not sure about Jund and his friends but defo tier 1.75 :)
The real challenge in casual room is to have counterspells in your hand and not play them...
I would like to be able to do it with drafts, but MTGO doesn't give me access to enough replays. I can only lift four games off of each premiere event. (I can't track every single game of the top eight, which would be at least 14 games, because my sample would biased.) So for me to do a full a series on drafts, I would need to track hundreds of events. That would take an awfully long time.
Possible solutions:
1) Email Wizards and tell them that you want the draft replays to be open to the public.
2) Email Wizards and tell them you want them to commission a study at Pro Tour San Diego. I live in the greater San Diego area, and it would be pretty easy to pull something like this off. But I would need Wizards to be on board.
Surely calling some deck with howling mine and pyromancers ascenscion a netdeck is pushing it a bit. There are lots of interesting things you could do with those cards, and even the pyromancers ascenscion "combo" decks out there are hardly tier-one, are they?
Thanks for the comments and supportive words. A few things:
Paul (aka Winter.Wolf) helped me a lot preparing this article and he deserves a special mentioning. And Paul you don't see our games here because they were test games before the actual test games. You know how my GU deck was looking like when I first built it for example. And no, it wasen't winning at all. These here are the decks I built and the games I played after that preparation phase.
Secondly this edition of Rogue Play came one day later than it's usual day but rest assured it didn't happen because I was lazy or couldn't finish the article on time, but it was rather a decision of the site admin.
@Shard: I'm not underrating Hive Mind; it's just not a card I will ever play. It's only a matter of taste.
@The first anonymous poster: I don't think any of my decks could stand a chance against Jund or any other Tier-1 deck. To be honest, I don't think that any casual deck, regardless of the total money value of it, could stand a chance against any Tier-1 deck. Casual is just another level of Magic.
@Katastrophe: The only time I really felt what I wrote was that feeling of despair against those two planeswalkers while playing my first deck. I wrote the other reactions such as "how rude!" after Day of Judgement, only to make the article a little bit more fun to read.
LE
I will say his tone was sufficiently sarcastic to know he isnt really having a tantrum. Though I also get tinges of annoyance/frustration when I remove planeswalkers from my decks before casual play just to be a good sport, and then first deck i play is loaded with them. Its a mix of the people in casual. I want to have fun just as much as they do. If not playing planeswalkers make them less cranky and me more likely to play a full game then ill do it. But just the pit of the stomach feeling of "just this one match i wish i left my planeswalkers in" is a pain. And "playing dirty" is definition a humorful statement.
And i'll be honest when someone ruins my game plan whether it be by discard, ld, counters, burn, or enchantment removal yeah i have a slight second or two of anger..who wouldnt?
wait, so steppe lynx is good in sealed? who knew!
"If I sat down at a draft today and opened Journey to Nowhere..." but the statistics are based on Sealed. A little saddened by the low score on Hookmaster, seeing as it's being considered even in Standard. An interesting read, nevertheless, although you can't really judge cards in a vacuum. Eagerly awaiting the other four (five?) parts in the series.
I love this article! I like analyzing things mathematically myself, but rarely have the time to do so in depth on anything. I really enjoy reading results like this. It would be great to see some numbers on drafts too if that's ever possible - it would give some interesting insights into what types of cards get better & get worse between sealed and draft. Also it'd give more insights into which cards to pick in drafts.
But if you can only just finish giving us all this information on sealed, please do. I'll look forward to reading the rest of it!
Oh duh Eastern Standard Time.
Thanks for the Commander-centric posts. As a player that is just getting into Magic Online (especially Commander)I really enjoy reading them.
Please keep the Commander Articles coming. I'd love to read more of your thoughts about best cards that deal with a common aspect in Commander Games, like best graveyard removal cards, or best ways to protect creatures, or best color-combo spells, etc...
Keep up the good work.
What time zone are you using when you say 1 is the cutoff?
It's been decided i guess and i won! woot! Thanks puremtgo.com!!!
Into the Roil is a personal favorite of mine, and most people who take on this deck swap it out, as well as the Alchemists for cards like Ethersworn Shieldmage and Glassdusk Hulk. I utilize the Into the Roils very situationally. To get the extra 2 points in with Parasitic Strix, to save a gargoyle, and a lot of the time I use them to buy myself time to get a little higher up on my landcount. Even a non-kicked Into the Roil on turn 2 to bounce a Borderpost can slow down a lot of the decks out there.
If your goal is to spend $10, try Classic. First you said your goal was to be casual. Then you defined casual as low-budget, but certainly not low-power. Awesome, I think I agree. But then you wrote "So... I will be playing Standard." Why Standard? Standard is needlessly expensive. You can buy lots of awesome cards that just rotated for a lot less than what they used to cost. But good job winning Standard on $10, because that's hard.
Are you really getting upset during your games? You once described playing enchantment removal as 'dirty'. Like what? Blowing up someone's permanents is a pretty clean play. Do you really consider Day of Judgement 'rude'? Did you actually get mad when the opposing black mage made you discard your demon? This is the Internet, I can't read your tone. I think you're being a good sport, but you're describing yourself like you're a timmy throwing a tantrum. Kind of weird.
5 red fireballs for showing an example of how to use counters and discard in the casual room without making people flip out. I think you accomplished your goal of playing three solid-yet-casual decks very well.
my comment 2 comments ago may seem really negative, but I'm actually thrilled to see real statistics applied to magic limited, just wish it were more targeted to draft.
"Equilibrium - A (7th)
Very good card in Commander. This lets you reuse 187 creatures like Trinket Mage or Venser, Shaper Savant. Also it can be stupid with something like Mulldrifter which can be evoked, the sacrifice trigger put on the stack first, then bounce it to your hand. This draws you two cards and you get to keep Mulldrifter for four mana."
Equilibrium doesn't work like that. It triggers when you play a creature SPELL, not when the creature enters play. Thus, the mulldrifter is still on the stack and you have to bounce something else already in play with it.
As such, it's nowhere near as good as you thought it was.
This analysis also ignores any biasing done during deck-building. For example, some allies might show good impact on win rates because they're ONLY played in ally decks, but are terrible cards otherwise.
hmm, so don't care about sealed, totally different format. In any case alot of what's being tracked here is what GOOD players play vs what BAD players play, so for example all players know to play journey in any deck whenever they can support the one white mana, alot of BAD players don't understand how good and solid steppe lynx is, so he winds up in a winner's deck more often than journey is able to create an upset of a bad player over a better player. The data isn't useless of course its just alot more complicated than simply being able to say this card is better than that, ill still take journey over lynx in any draft, if for no other reason steppe is more likely to wheel, also journey is just flat out better.
Also if you're including post board games, where cliff threader wasnt in the main youre going to get skewed results, since his text will read "this creature is unblockable" for his 2 mana cost, if you only include game 1's or games where he was in the maindeck you'd get alot different results, and again different conclusions for draft.
Ideally I could see every card in their deck and do an extremely large-n. But MTGO won't let me. Unless Wizards wants to hire a statistician for the summer...
Could you provide a link to the "8-4 Top 10 List" article?
It's too bad you can't see the players' hands. Ideally we'd want to know the correlation between DRAWING a particular card and winning the game, not just casting it. Case in point: Bold Defense basically says "win the game" when you pay 7 mana, so it's generally worth holding until that point. This skews the data though, because you can't tell how many games were lost with Bold Defense stuck in hand.
Thanks for doing this, though. Coupled with the infamous "8-4 Top 10 List" from 2 weeks ago, I'm very curious as to how an ideal ranking system could be established.
Not to spoil anything, but...
Plains: 52%
Island: 48%
Swamp: 51%
Mountain: 51%
Fores: 46%
(None is statistically significant.)
So, no, Blood Seeker (53%) isn't doing well just because it is a black card. It's not statistically significant either, so I just tack it up to randomness.
Small-n studies are bad, which is why I indicated statistically significant results where applicable. You can trust those (with differing degrees) of confidence.
Really enjoyed reading this, and definitely looking forward to the rest of the series. (My guess as to why there's a correlation between Blood Seeker hitting play and winning is that if you're playing Blood Seeker, you're probably pretty heavy into black, because nobody splashes for Blood Seeker. If you're pretty heavy into black, you're in a good spot because black is leaps and bounds better than other colors in Zen limited. (Or is it?))
Sorry to disappoint.
Depends on the feedback. Compiling the data is extremely costly, and I don't have much to write about outside of that.