Okay, I got through by email to one of the other two guys I found on the internet who actually ran an "Ultimate Standard" tournament, Chingsung Chang. He was posting his results on gatheringmagic.com but never posted the final results, sensing a lack of interest. As expected, Academy stomped on everything. Here were his results:
North Bracket:
Rnd 1: Academy over Veggie Ponza, Goblin Bidding over Doran, Heartbeat over Necro, Sabre Bargain over 5cc
Rnd 2: Academy over Sabre Bargain, Goblin Bidding over Heartbeat
Rnd 3: Academy over Goblin Bidding
South Bracket:
Rnd 1: Affinity over Heezy Street, Napster over Psychatog, Dragonstorm over Replenish, CMU Blue over Cunning Wake
Rnd 2: Affinity over CMU Blue, Napster over Dragonstorm
Rnd 3: Affinity over Napster
East Bracket
Rnd 1: Faeries over UB Madness, Angry Hermit over BG Elves, Covetous Wildfire over Rec/Sur, Ghazi-Glare over Deadguy Red
Rnd 2: Ghazi-Glare over Faeries, Angry Hermit over Covetous Wildfire
Rnd 3: Angry Hermit over Ghazi-Glare
West Bracket:
Rnd 1: Boros Bushwacker over Jund, Mythic Conscription over Pros Bloom, Astral Slide over My Fires, Dralnu du Louvre over UW Control
Rnd 2: Boros Bushwacker over Dralnu du Louvre, Mythic Conscription over Astral Slide
Rnd 3: Mythic Conscription over Boros Bushwacker
Semi-Finals: Academy over Affinity, Mythic Conscription over Angry Hermit
Finals: Academy over Mythic Conscription
So I think we can retire Academy as the best deck of all time, removing it from future tournaments. The next one I run will have Memory Jar as the deck to beat, and we'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, if anyone knows how to get through to Peter Jahn, I'd love to hear his final results.
Mythic Conscription really surprised me. My friend played the deck for quite a while so I have some ideas about it. It takes a lot of mulligans since it is essentially a really loose definition of a "combo" deck. You can have amazing hands, but there are somewhat weak hands too (ie. that would lose to Jund at that time). Very interesting that it made it that far. I don't think it is as consistent of a deck as many other decks though.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Except Affinity is much faster and stronger than Caw-Blade
Tempered Steel was also a strong deck when Caw-Blade was around
A hyper aggressive deck is faster than an aggro-control deck? You don't say.
Stronger also means literally nothing.
If Tempered Steel were a deck then we would have had a very different standard format. It was a very good block deck and a mediocre standard deck.
I know magic-league has bring your own T2 tournaments. I'm wondering if we can set up the same thing with maybe some restrictions on how far back we can go (obviously tolarian academy.deck would destroy).
1. Have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
2. Stubbornly argue for at least 1 page of posts.
3. Regurgitate things you read on Starcitygames or Channelfireball.
4. Hate all netdeckers
5. Claim your 2nd place FNM deck broke the format and Delver is not even that good.
6. Tell everybody that MBC is coming back every time a new black card is released.
While I wouldn't call it the strongest standard deck ever, Randy Buehler's draw-go deck from 1999 Worlds deserves inclusions in such tournaments. That deck actually had a better standard record than Kai Budde's famous Wildfire deck, as did Jakub Slemr's mono-black control and Jamie Parke's sped red.
Competitive Magic didn't start in 1996. I am curious where decks from 1994-1995 would fall in the ranks. It was before the initial power-level of the game came down but there were also much fewer cards to choose from, especially combo enablers.
Competitive Magic didn't start in 1996. I am curious where decks from 1994-1995 would fall in the ranks. It was before the initial power-level of the game came down but there were also much fewer cards to choose from, especially combo enablers.
Bertrand Lestree's deck looks like solid aggro; Zak Dolan's seems a little bizarre.
As far as combo goes, Alpha/Beta/Unlimited would have excelled at that if not for the limited list. 4x Moxen, Lotus, Time Walk, etc would put even standard Academy to shame. You could consistently win on the first turn. I've fooled around with unrestricted original set decks on Apprentice and they're ridiculous. So it's not quite correct to claim power creep for Magic. Combo started out as king, was suppressed by restrictions, and only later returned to prominence.
I've made proxies of the 1994 and 1995 world champion decks. The 1994 one is okay, but the 1995 one is terrible. The main difference with these decks is they are actually pretty slow. Games go very long, chipping away at life 1 or 2 points at a time. The creatures were not very strong, even though the 1994 deck has some banned cards.
I'm going on record right now and stating that before the end of 2012 we will see foil dual lands in booster packs (The real, Alpha dual lands). You can quote me on that.
Having not played much in the last 15 years I was very interested in what this fellow had to say. I expect that most of you probably don't need to google 20 cards every time a deck (e.g. Caw Blade) is mentioned but I'm still trying to catch up with thousands of cards that I've never heard of.
I don't know much of anything about modern Type 2 but I like what I've heard about the format. Constantly cycling out old sets seems like a great way to keep the game feeling fresh and to keep a handle on the game.
In contrast (and even though I'm a Type 1 kind of guy all the way) I have always felt that Magic was a fundamentally broken game. I don't know what they were thinking when they made the power nine. There weren't any restricted cards in the original rulebook. Playing 4 Black Lotus and 4 of each Mox was possible - and a terrible way to design the game no matter how you slice it.
Related to this - I think that restricted cards are bad for the game as well. There's already an element of luck involved in a 60 card deck construction that limits you to 4 of each. When you further restrict the card to 1 per deck then that card is no longer something you count on getting. It might be a perfect fit for your concept but it's a stretch to call it a part of your strategy.
I wish Type 1 was different. I've given thought to a revised set with different card-backs but it might be easier to just ban the bad cards. Then the people who own the bad cards get mad... I can imagine spending a lot of money on a Mox just to wake up the next day and find that it's been banned from all official formats.
Yeah, it's a little bit stupid, like debating who's the best guitar player of all time.
That's silly, it is obviously Doc Watson.
Wrong, it's Shawn Lane.
I'm learning a lot in this thread as well, as I only started playing about a month before Worldwake was released. While I've heard of pretty much all the mentioned cards due to my EDH addiction, I'd never studied their prior standard decks. Although I'd heard of the dominance of Affinity, Faeries and Necropotence, I hadn't heard about how broken Tolarian Academy was in standard back then.
I had never heard about the standard academy deck either....i'm glad i was never around for that...and affinity.
I think you need to look at standard legal decks of their time, but utilize the Legacy Ban List. That would seem like a fair way to judge decks across the time of Magic, as the ban list has the most unfair cards on it...and if its not fair for Legacy, it surely shouldn't be fair in comparing standard decks across time.
I can't comment on Affinity or Faeries as I wasn't playing at the time, but Jund certainly had times of dominance, even though it wasn't unbeatable. A lot of times it was just un-fun to play against, because the decks goal was to 2-for-1 the opponent every turn. Caw Blade was a different sort of boogeyman, because people disliked jace so much, and he interacted so well with squadron hawk...and then you threw in SFM for extra fun.
While I think using the legacy banlist could make the decks more competitive with one another, it isn't as informative. Memory Jar and Tolarian Academy are the strongest standard decks in history and should be represented as such.
Related to this - I think that restricted cards are bad for the game as well. There's already an element of luck involved in a 60 card deck construction that limits you to 4 of each. When you further restrict the card to 1 per deck then that card is no longer something you count on getting. It might be a perfect fit for your concept but it's a stretch to call it a part of your strategy.
I wish Type 1 was different. I've given thought to a revised set with different card-backs but it might be easier to just ban the bad cards. Then the people who own the bad cards get mad... I can imagine spending a lot of money on a Mox just to wake up the next day and find that it's been banned from all official formats.
That's what the Legacy format (Formerly 1.5) is for. It maintains a banned list, which is honestly pretty short all things considered. Since there's no restrictions, Legacy is the only format where you can play a full play set of many older powerful cards. Brainstorm, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond etc.
Academy and memory jar didn't see play together in standard. There was no such deck in standard, ever, and in vintage its hardly that overbearing, since both are restricted.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
I'm learning a lot in this thread as well, as I only started playing about a month before Worldwake was released. While I've heard of pretty much all the mentioned cards due to my EDH addiction, I'd never studied their prior standard decks. Although I'd heard of the dominance of Affinity, Faeries and Necropotence, I hadn't heard about how broken Tolarian Academy was in standard back then.
...not only is the total number of players expanding very quickly, but at the same time a greater and greater number of those players are being pushed to only desire a small subset of the available cards. These combined forces drastically increase demand for those cards and cause the values of just those specific cards to often balloon out of proportion.
having built academy on cockatrice, what a deck. if they're not running counters, you're going to win, since there's so many ways to keep digging and digging and digging and untapping academy.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
Okay, I got through by email to one of the other two guys I found on the internet who actually ran an "Ultimate Standard" tournament, Chingsung Chang. He was posting his results on gatheringmagic.com but never posted the final results, sensing a lack of interest. As expected, Academy stomped on everything. Here were his results:
North Bracket:
Rnd 1: Academy over Veggie Ponza, Goblin Bidding over Doran, Heartbeat over Necro, Sabre Bargain over 5cc
Rnd 2: Academy over Sabre Bargain, Goblin Bidding over Heartbeat
Rnd 3: Academy over Goblin Bidding
South Bracket:
Rnd 1: Affinity over Heezy Street, Napster over Psychatog, Dragonstorm over Replenish, CMU Blue over Cunning Wake
Rnd 2: Affinity over CMU Blue, Napster over Dragonstorm
Rnd 3: Affinity over Napster
East Bracket
Rnd 1: Faeries over UB Madness, Angry Hermit over BG Elves, Covetous Wildfire over Rec/Sur, Ghazi-Glare over Deadguy Red
Rnd 2: Ghazi-Glare over Faeries, Angry Hermit over Covetous Wildfire
Rnd 3: Angry Hermit over Ghazi-Glare
West Bracket:
Rnd 1: Boros Bushwacker over Jund, Mythic Conscription over Pros Bloom, Astral Slide over My Fires, Dralnu du Louvre over UW Control
Rnd 2: Boros Bushwacker over Dralnu du Louvre, Mythic Conscription over Astral Slide
Rnd 3: Mythic Conscription over Boros Bushwacker
Semi-Finals: Academy over Affinity, Mythic Conscription over Angry Hermit
Finals: Academy over Mythic Conscription
So I think we can retire Academy as the best deck of all time, removing it from future tournaments. The next one I run will have Memory Jar as the deck to beat, and we'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, if anyone knows how to get through to Peter Jahn, I'd love to hear his final results.
While I understand the limitations of time and effort, a single elimination tournament is almost meaningless for this sort of determination. Does anyone really think Mythic Conscription is the 2nd strongest Standard deck (in a vacuum) of all time?
Mythic is actually a pretty damn good deck. But I take your point, no single tournament is a big enough sample size to prove anything, really. Even having done several of these tournaments now, there's a different winner every time, and the matchups play a big part in who survives the gauntlet. Since we don't have the ability to run 10,000 simulations of these tournaments, it's the best we can do to answer a fairly silly but still entertaining question. Aside from combo vs combo, magic is an interactive game - there's never a deck that beats everything. But there is probably a top tier, and that's what I enjoy musing about.
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=10023
North Bracket:
Rnd 1: Academy over Veggie Ponza, Goblin Bidding over Doran, Heartbeat over Necro, Sabre Bargain over 5cc
Rnd 2: Academy over Sabre Bargain, Goblin Bidding over Heartbeat
Rnd 3: Academy over Goblin Bidding
South Bracket:
Rnd 1: Affinity over Heezy Street, Napster over Psychatog, Dragonstorm over Replenish, CMU Blue over Cunning Wake
Rnd 2: Affinity over CMU Blue, Napster over Dragonstorm
Rnd 3: Affinity over Napster
East Bracket
Rnd 1: Faeries over UB Madness, Angry Hermit over BG Elves, Covetous Wildfire over Rec/Sur, Ghazi-Glare over Deadguy Red
Rnd 2: Ghazi-Glare over Faeries, Angry Hermit over Covetous Wildfire
Rnd 3: Angry Hermit over Ghazi-Glare
West Bracket:
Rnd 1: Boros Bushwacker over Jund, Mythic Conscription over Pros Bloom, Astral Slide over My Fires, Dralnu du Louvre over UW Control
Rnd 2: Boros Bushwacker over Dralnu du Louvre, Mythic Conscription over Astral Slide
Rnd 3: Mythic Conscription over Boros Bushwacker
Semi-Finals: Academy over Affinity, Mythic Conscription over Angry Hermit
Finals: Academy over Mythic Conscription
So I think we can retire Academy as the best deck of all time, removing it from future tournaments. The next one I run will have Memory Jar as the deck to beat, and we'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, if anyone knows how to get through to Peter Jahn, I'd love to hear his final results.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)There was an extended PTQ the one week that Jar was legal in extended before the emergency ban.
What an ugly mess that was.
A hyper aggressive deck is faster than an aggro-control deck? You don't say.
Stronger also means literally nothing.
If Tempered Steel were a deck then we would have had a very different standard format. It was a very good block deck and a mediocre standard deck.
I know magic-league has bring your own T2 tournaments. I'm wondering if we can set up the same thing with maybe some restrictions on how far back we can go (obviously tolarian academy.deck would destroy).
http://magic-league.com/decks/archive/34/bring_your_own_t2.html
1. Have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
2. Stubbornly argue for at least 1 page of posts.
3. Regurgitate things you read on Starcitygames or Channelfireball.
4. Hate all netdeckers
5. Claim your 2nd place FNM deck broke the format and Delver is not even that good.
6. Tell everybody that MBC is coming back every time a new black card is released.
1994 World Champ decks: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/feature/226zakdiary
1995 World Champ decks: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/25e
Every English card ever printed: 99.02%
Arabian Nights through Lorwyn: Complete
Alpha: 94.2% Beta: 95.0%
Unlimited through M10: Complete
Bertrand Lestree's deck looks like solid aggro; Zak Dolan's seems a little bizarre.
As far as combo goes, Alpha/Beta/Unlimited would have excelled at that if not for the limited list. 4x Moxen, Lotus, Time Walk, etc would put even standard Academy to shame. You could consistently win on the first turn. I've fooled around with unrestricted original set decks on Apprentice and they're ridiculous. So it's not quite correct to claim power creep for Magic. Combo started out as king, was suppressed by restrictions, and only later returned to prominence.
from Rath Cycle era.
Or
"Prosperous Bloom" from Mirage Block era.
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/td/207
Having not played much in the last 15 years I was very interested in what this fellow had to say. I expect that most of you probably don't need to google 20 cards every time a deck (e.g. Caw Blade) is mentioned but I'm still trying to catch up with thousands of cards that I've never heard of.
I don't know much of anything about modern Type 2 but I like what I've heard about the format. Constantly cycling out old sets seems like a great way to keep the game feeling fresh and to keep a handle on the game.
In contrast (and even though I'm a Type 1 kind of guy all the way) I have always felt that Magic was a fundamentally broken game. I don't know what they were thinking when they made the power nine. There weren't any restricted cards in the original rulebook. Playing 4 Black Lotus and 4 of each Mox was possible - and a terrible way to design the game no matter how you slice it.
Related to this - I think that restricted cards are bad for the game as well. There's already an element of luck involved in a 60 card deck construction that limits you to 4 of each. When you further restrict the card to 1 per deck then that card is no longer something you count on getting. It might be a perfect fit for your concept but it's a stretch to call it a part of your strategy.
I wish Type 1 was different. I've given thought to a revised set with different card-backs but it might be easier to just ban the bad cards. Then the people who own the bad cards get mad... I can imagine spending a lot of money on a Mox just to wake up the next day and find that it's been banned from all official formats.
Wrong, it's Shawn Lane.
I'm learning a lot in this thread as well, as I only started playing about a month before Worldwake was released. While I've heard of pretty much all the mentioned cards due to my EDH addiction, I'd never studied their prior standard decks. Although I'd heard of the dominance of Affinity, Faeries and Necropotence, I hadn't heard about how broken Tolarian Academy was in standard back then.
GGG [Primer] Omnath, Big Green Beatstick Machine GGG
I think you need to look at standard legal decks of their time, but utilize the Legacy Ban List. That would seem like a fair way to judge decks across the time of Magic, as the ban list has the most unfair cards on it...and if its not fair for Legacy, it surely shouldn't be fair in comparing standard decks across time.
I can't comment on Affinity or Faeries as I wasn't playing at the time, but Jund certainly had times of dominance, even though it wasn't unbeatable. A lot of times it was just un-fun to play against, because the decks goal was to 2-for-1 the opponent every turn. Caw Blade was a different sort of boogeyman, because people disliked jace so much, and he interacted so well with squadron hawk...and then you threw in SFM for extra fun.
WBG Karador GBW
R Daretti R
RG Omnath GR
WRG Modern Burn GRW
WB Modern Tokens BW
DCI Rules Advisor as of 5/18/2015
That's what the Legacy format (Formerly 1.5) is for. It maintains a banned list, which is honestly pretty short all things considered. Since there's no restrictions, Legacy is the only format where you can play a full play set of many older powerful cards. Brainstorm, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond etc.
Academy and memory jar didn't see play together in standard. There was no such deck in standard, ever, and in vintage its hardly that overbearing, since both are restricted.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/td/207
If you're digging learning about the bogey-men of Standards of yore, you might dig this recent article from the Wizards site.
While I understand the limitations of time and effort, a single elimination tournament is almost meaningless for this sort of determination. Does anyone really think Mythic Conscription is the 2nd strongest Standard deck (in a vacuum) of all time?
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
Affinity 2
Everything else is just a poser in comparison.
Those two decks were so off the charts that...well...you just had to live through it to understand.
Yeah...those were the good old days.