You're not wrong at all. It's a very linear, very consistent deck that minimizes decisions made (even if there are a ton) and is laser focused on it's end game goal happening as quickly as possible.
Nicely done all around! I think your advise on not just grinding gps and lcqs is right on the nose. Back when it was PTQs only, that was (I think) a sure route to burn out. One thing about presentation, you come off a little nervous in the intro, speeding up your words and again doing it a little at the end. I feel like you really hit your stride in the middle when you talked about the GP and the deck list. Maybe do some relaxation before you do these? Just my 2 cents.
Hello there,
I was wondering about writing an article about EV too but after writing about 4000 words I just discarded that idea. You have a nice overview here but there are few things I'd probably mention in your article.
EV is actually Expected Value and it is something that is used most commonly in poker I'd assume or at least that's where I learned about it. EV equals to EV = (W%*$W) – (L%*$L), with W% being win percentage and $W being what you win, L% loss percentage, $L money you lose. You can give easy examples with coin flips for this.
Anyway what I originally wanted to say is that you omitted Friendly Sealed Leagues. If you don't buy additional packs this is by far the best way to gain value if you are not so good player or little bit above the average. (above average actually means that you are quite high over 50% actually, since the overall rating of players on MODO is actually quite high, it is over 1650 for sure while IRL you have many players with lower win percentage than 50% actually). I mean you don't need an EV calculator for this. If you know what record you can possibly get at premier event like this (which also means bigger competition) you know that you will get positive EV or not. If you top 4 the EV gets really high.
As for Flashback drafts and such it depends on the payout. the ones that are 150/100 are in general really bad. When Zendikar was around it was even worse even though in reality the EV during a longer period of time was actually higher than the 150/100 (you were getting 30 each time for a win, while here you got 50, but in the case of ZEN you got two attempt to get your 3 wins, which was rather easy to do). With KTK the EV was really high if you could win, but 2-1 meant getting 70PP for 120PP draft. Not sure how it would be depending on the rating but that was really worth grinding (but I also grinded KTK the most). The 3x RAV also is good in terms 'it doesn't have negative EV' if you can break even in competitive leagues. Those events are for fun though so people just play them, not usually grind them. It's just a nice bonus if you get some PP out of that.
Also Premier events have huge EV, not sure what goatbots says on that matter. PTQs and such were always good but only for those with good win percentage. But Format Challenges are more or less good for everyone on MODO (meaning having 50%+ win%). So far even if you go 3-3 you often get your entry back. With 4-2 you can get 10 chests which is a lot!
Usually the 8-4 drafts were the best for grinding since other queues didn't even paid for the draft for some and the winner either got 6 packs or was still 2 tix short for another event. The old draft queues were good usually though because they still used 6-2-2-2 structure but the overal skill level of the players was lower since the good ones stuck to current sets since that is what they needed to play in competitive events etc.
The Hamtastic Award race is against oneself. You do it 10 times, then again another 10 times, and so on. AJ and Generalissimo are marching toward the third iteration. Three other players have already reached the first.
Just to be clear, the lockout for combos, any combo, is already in place – it has always been since the beginning of the lockout rule (albeit I sometimes forget to check if there was a combo in the undefeated deck). For instance, when a top player ends undefeated with a reanimator deck, they get Entomb, Exhume and Animate Dead all locked out for 5 registrations.
What we're discussing here is the idea of extending the lockout, in some particular cases, to non-top-players too. In fact, what we're discussing here doesn't influence you in the least (unless you plummet in the leaderboard in the next months).
Thank you. But... there's a race? I was aiming for the 10 different tribes award. If there is a race for total tribes played, at this point there's no way I can beat AJ or Generalissimo
Ok, I guess I understand what you're saying, and I have to agree with it.
But still, it feels a bit unfair if I can't play the combo even if I change tribes, but like you mentioned, some packages are played regardless of tribe, and those are OK. I mean, I played against a Camel deck (not 100% sure on the tribe) that was actually a Restore Balance deck with camels that were never cast. There was nothing tribal about that deck, only a restore balance deck with 20 dead cards...
If you want to implement that lockout with combos, I won't opose or even disagree with it. But if that's the case, then maybe something should be done about those packages that get played regardless of tribe (Natural Order, Dark Depths, Helm of Obedience, Restore Balance and Living End)
The problem is definitely the combo, not the shell. It's actually more unfair to lockout, say, Kor once you used Breakfast Combo in a Kor deck, when you could want to play a perfectly fair Kor equipment deck that has almost nothing in common with the Breakfast shell.
And I totally want to discourage a plan where a player keeps moving the same power combo from tribe to tribe to circumvent the lockout. We can already see it with combo packages like Dark Depths or Helm of Obedience, or even an entire shell like Restore Balance or Living End. I'm not stopping this kind of thing, but I certainly won't let it spread too easily. It again creates a feeling of "no matter the tribe, it's always the same outcome" with most players. Power combos having definite homes at least reinforces the idea that the tribe matters.
I never said you were the one to want it banned, but you know some players complained about the deck and said it was too powerful.
And of course usually players will play the best shell for a deck. I never said differently. But I can play the combo in a different deck... Like I said before, I even have a control deck assembled that plans on winning with the combo, but I have just 1 cephalid and 1 kor, so I doubt I will win on turn 2. That deck would never be a reason for the players to complain.
Right now I'm aiming at the Hamtastic Award, so I'm trying new tribes and decks. And I like the combo, so i'm trying it in different tribes. That's why I want to separate the combo from the deck in this discussion.
In the end, what I meant was that if that deck is in a tribe that gets lockedout, should you also lockout the combo enabler?
I understand your argument and I agree that most players would only play the best shell of the combo. I just want to know if I should stop deckbuilding and testing decks that might lockout all the other decks I'm building.
There's no ban in sight. I never talked about bans here.
This said, it's not one tribe, it's three tribes: Kor, Wizard, Cleric. Of course Human would do too.
And your argument is, honestly, weird: why assume players would ever play a combo in a shell that doesn't help the combo as much as possible? Of course a Wurm or Angel deck with a Cephalid Illusionist package crammed in there is bad. But who would ever play that? Assuming that people would play a powerful combo card in anything less than the best way is a thought that leads nowhere and is defeated by facts: the progression clearly shows the opposite. You have to look at a combo card within its best possible shell, not in a vacuum, because it won't be played in a vacuum. Channel is bad in a deck where everything requires colored mana. Earthcraft is bad in a deck with no creatures.
The Cephalid combo is a strong combo because it's played in the right way. To neutralize it, even temporarily like we're discussing here, you need to take one piece away. Cephalid Illusionist is the only piece of the combo that's not easily replaceable (also, it's a card you only use within the combo, because it's pretty useless without something targeting it at will). Therefore that's the card that gets locked out. Not banned, locked out.
What I meant was that the power of the combo is not necessarily the power of the deck.
The UW Wizard Cephalid might be strong, but the same cephalid shell in a tribe without access to counters and/or search for the pieces is not that good. Even if it could be capable of a turn 2 kill, it would lose a lot of consistency. A deck that's already an all-in strategy losing consistency is not good.
I was asking this because some people talk about banning cephalid, but apart from a single tribe, is it that strong? Specially when you can get locked out?
I would also like to understand why a known combo that has been around for several years, is now worthy of ban talks, when it couldn't put up results before...
One question though. In your opinion, is the deck too good, or is the combo too good?
I'm not exactly sure who are you asking. In my (Kuma) opinion, the deck is not too good. I tracked all its accomplishments to show that.
As a general rule, though, we don't want players to keep ending undefeated in consecutive format weeks with the same deck, because the goal is to keep attracting new players, and an environment where you see the same outcome every time is not attractive. Usually, those players are top players, so that's why the lockout exists. Usually, players who aren't top players become top players soon enough if they keep winning, which is what happened with you. So the issue sorts itself.
I wondered if a handful of very well-known endgame combos (Breakfast, Aluren, dredge, etc) should be locked out even when it's a non-top player using them. The rationale for not doing it is that the non-top player has the right to use all the means top players used to become top players. The rationale for doing it is that there's a window where a non-top player is almost a top player, leaderboard-wise, but not quite, so they're allowed to do things a top player is not, while feeling like a top player "breaking the rules" to all other non-top players.
Only Cephalid Illusionist would be locked.
"Combo" is shorthand for "endgame combo". Most of the cards in MTG combo with each other. Most of those combos don't cause the game to end.
I know your pain, you really need the Goblin Caves in order to protect yourself, but 3 mana can be very hard to get to and sometimes is just a little too slow.
Prizes are actually 240 play points for three wins and 80 Play points for 2 wins
You're not wrong at all. It's a very linear, very consistent deck that minimizes decisions made (even if there are a ton) and is laser focused on it's end game goal happening as quickly as possible.
I was also disappointed with the no change update. I was hoping that we would start to get something close to French Commander by now.
Baral is the best budget deck on the market, I just don't find it very interesting to play.
Nicely done all around! I think your advise on not just grinding gps and lcqs is right on the nose. Back when it was PTQs only, that was (I think) a sure route to burn out. One thing about presentation, you come off a little nervous in the intro, speeding up your words and again doing it a little at the end. I feel like you really hit your stride in the middle when you talked about the GP and the deck list. Maybe do some relaxation before you do these? Just my 2 cents.
Hello there,
I was wondering about writing an article about EV too but after writing about 4000 words I just discarded that idea. You have a nice overview here but there are few things I'd probably mention in your article.
EV is actually Expected Value and it is something that is used most commonly in poker I'd assume or at least that's where I learned about it. EV equals to EV = (W%*$W) – (L%*$L), with W% being win percentage and $W being what you win, L% loss percentage, $L money you lose. You can give easy examples with coin flips for this.
Anyway what I originally wanted to say is that you omitted Friendly Sealed Leagues. If you don't buy additional packs this is by far the best way to gain value if you are not so good player or little bit above the average. (above average actually means that you are quite high over 50% actually, since the overall rating of players on MODO is actually quite high, it is over 1650 for sure while IRL you have many players with lower win percentage than 50% actually). I mean you don't need an EV calculator for this. If you know what record you can possibly get at premier event like this (which also means bigger competition) you know that you will get positive EV or not. If you top 4 the EV gets really high.
As for Flashback drafts and such it depends on the payout. the ones that are 150/100 are in general really bad. When Zendikar was around it was even worse even though in reality the EV during a longer period of time was actually higher than the 150/100 (you were getting 30 each time for a win, while here you got 50, but in the case of ZEN you got two attempt to get your 3 wins, which was rather easy to do). With KTK the EV was really high if you could win, but 2-1 meant getting 70PP for 120PP draft. Not sure how it would be depending on the rating but that was really worth grinding (but I also grinded KTK the most). The 3x RAV also is good in terms 'it doesn't have negative EV' if you can break even in competitive leagues. Those events are for fun though so people just play them, not usually grind them. It's just a nice bonus if you get some PP out of that.
Also Premier events have huge EV, not sure what goatbots says on that matter. PTQs and such were always good but only for those with good win percentage. But Format Challenges are more or less good for everyone on MODO (meaning having 50%+ win%). So far even if you go 3-3 you often get your entry back. With 4-2 you can get 10 chests which is a lot!
Usually the 8-4 drafts were the best for grinding since other queues didn't even paid for the draft for some and the winner either got 6 packs or was still 2 tix short for another event. The old draft queues were good usually though because they still used 6-2-2-2 structure but the overal skill level of the players was lower since the good ones stuck to current sets since that is what they needed to play in competitive events etc.
retitled, thank you.
Which section is this in?
There seems to be a mistake in the article - the description for "Game Restart Bug Fixed" in "In the News" doesn't really match the title.
I should be more careful how funny I try to be. :p Anyway glad it's still around.
I know we are talking about non-top players. I just mentioned the other combos for consistency.
Just because it doesn't affect me directly, doesn't mean I can't think about it. I love tribal and I love democracy, so here I am.
3 wins: 240 Play Points
2 wins: 80 Play Points
The Hamtastic Award race is against oneself. You do it 10 times, then again another 10 times, and so on. AJ and Generalissimo are marching toward the third iteration. Three other players have already reached the first.
Just to be clear, the lockout for combos, any combo, is already in place – it has always been since the beginning of the lockout rule (albeit I sometimes forget to check if there was a combo in the undefeated deck). For instance, when a top player ends undefeated with a reanimator deck, they get Entomb, Exhume and Animate Dead all locked out for 5 registrations.
What we're discussing here is the idea of extending the lockout, in some particular cases, to non-top-players too. In fact, what we're discussing here doesn't influence you in the least (unless you plummet in the leaderboard in the next months).
WotC want to have scouting in mtg, they changed the rule from "not allowed" to "allowed" in the rules documents.
Thank you. But... there's a race? I was aiming for the 10 different tribes award. If there is a race for total tribes played, at this point there's no way I can beat AJ or Generalissimo
Ok, I guess I understand what you're saying, and I have to agree with it.
But still, it feels a bit unfair if I can't play the combo even if I change tribes, but like you mentioned, some packages are played regardless of tribe, and those are OK. I mean, I played against a Camel deck (not 100% sure on the tribe) that was actually a Restore Balance deck with camels that were never cast. There was nothing tribal about that deck, only a restore balance deck with 20 dead cards...
If you want to implement that lockout with combos, I won't opose or even disagree with it. But if that's the case, then maybe something should be done about those packages that get played regardless of tribe (Natural Order, Dark Depths, Helm of Obedience, Restore Balance and Living End)
The problem is definitely the combo, not the shell. It's actually more unfair to lockout, say, Kor once you used Breakfast Combo in a Kor deck, when you could want to play a perfectly fair Kor equipment deck that has almost nothing in common with the Breakfast shell.
And I totally want to discourage a plan where a player keeps moving the same power combo from tribe to tribe to circumvent the lockout. We can already see it with combo packages like Dark Depths or Helm of Obedience, or even an entire shell like Restore Balance or Living End. I'm not stopping this kind of thing, but I certainly won't let it spread too easily. It again creates a feeling of "no matter the tribe, it's always the same outcome" with most players. Power combos having definite homes at least reinforces the idea that the tribe matters.
Good luck with the Hamtastic Award race, as I understand it the competition is usually pretty tough.
I never said you were the one to want it banned, but you know some players complained about the deck and said it was too powerful.
And of course usually players will play the best shell for a deck. I never said differently. But I can play the combo in a different deck... Like I said before, I even have a control deck assembled that plans on winning with the combo, but I have just 1 cephalid and 1 kor, so I doubt I will win on turn 2. That deck would never be a reason for the players to complain.
Right now I'm aiming at the Hamtastic Award, so I'm trying new tribes and decks. And I like the combo, so i'm trying it in different tribes. That's why I want to separate the combo from the deck in this discussion.
In the end, what I meant was that if that deck is in a tribe that gets lockedout, should you also lockout the combo enabler?
I understand your argument and I agree that most players would only play the best shell of the combo. I just want to know if I should stop deckbuilding and testing decks that might lockout all the other decks I'm building.
There's no ban in sight. I never talked about bans here.
This said, it's not one tribe, it's three tribes: Kor, Wizard, Cleric. Of course Human would do too.
And your argument is, honestly, weird: why assume players would ever play a combo in a shell that doesn't help the combo as much as possible? Of course a Wurm or Angel deck with a Cephalid Illusionist package crammed in there is bad. But who would ever play that? Assuming that people would play a powerful combo card in anything less than the best way is a thought that leads nowhere and is defeated by facts: the progression clearly shows the opposite. You have to look at a combo card within its best possible shell, not in a vacuum, because it won't be played in a vacuum. Channel is bad in a deck where everything requires colored mana. Earthcraft is bad in a deck with no creatures.
The Cephalid combo is a strong combo because it's played in the right way. To neutralize it, even temporarily like we're discussing here, you need to take one piece away. Cephalid Illusionist is the only piece of the combo that's not easily replaceable (also, it's a card you only use within the combo, because it's pretty useless without something targeting it at will). Therefore that's the card that gets locked out. Not banned, locked out.
What I meant was that the power of the combo is not necessarily the power of the deck.
The UW Wizard Cephalid might be strong, but the same cephalid shell in a tribe without access to counters and/or search for the pieces is not that good. Even if it could be capable of a turn 2 kill, it would lose a lot of consistency. A deck that's already an all-in strategy losing consistency is not good.
I was asking this because some people talk about banning cephalid, but apart from a single tribe, is it that strong? Specially when you can get locked out?
I would also like to understand why a known combo that has been around for several years, is now worthy of ban talks, when it couldn't put up results before...
One question though. In your opinion, is the deck too good, or is the combo too good?
I'm not exactly sure who are you asking. In my (Kuma) opinion, the deck is not too good. I tracked all its accomplishments to show that.
As a general rule, though, we don't want players to keep ending undefeated in consecutive format weeks with the same deck, because the goal is to keep attracting new players, and an environment where you see the same outcome every time is not attractive. Usually, those players are top players, so that's why the lockout exists. Usually, players who aren't top players become top players soon enough if they keep winning, which is what happened with you. So the issue sorts itself.
I wondered if a handful of very well-known endgame combos (Breakfast, Aluren, dredge, etc) should be locked out even when it's a non-top player using them. The rationale for not doing it is that the non-top player has the right to use all the means top players used to become top players. The rationale for doing it is that there's a window where a non-top player is almost a top player, leaderboard-wise, but not quite, so they're allowed to do things a top player is not, while feeling like a top player "breaking the rules" to all other non-top players.
Only Cephalid Illusionist would be locked.
"Combo" is shorthand for "endgame combo". Most of the cards in MTG combo with each other. Most of those combos don't cause the game to end.
I know your pain, you really need the Goblin Caves in order to protect yourself, but 3 mana can be very hard to get to and sometimes is just a little too slow.
Happy to be of service. :)