Guys the ban in this case is not for the %, is just because this general is not balanced for a 20pv format. There aren't Queen Marchesa or Prossh to discuss; a general that can kill with a Logic Knot can't be legal.
It's really easy. And everyone that say the opposite are just deceivers.
Whether or not a card was designed for a format is irrelevant. If something is not oppressive it is not banworthy. We are playing a competitive format, not an "I don't like the idea of this" format.
I think that looking at the % of top 8's number is better than nothing, but a poor way to examine deck usage and dominance. I give a lot more weight to decks that (a) place higher in the top 8's, and (b) place in larger tournaments.
For example, if you compare the big 4 decks (Vial, Titania, Geist, Zurgo) and assign:
5 points for 1st place, 3 points for 2nd place, 2 points for 3rd-4th, 1 point for 5th-8th
9x for a *** tournament, 4x for **, 1x for *
(these numbers sort of model prize payouts, i.e. larger prizes for better finishes and larger prizes for bigger tournaments)
...you see:
Geist 204 points in 31 placings (6.6 points per placing)
Titania 211 points in 33 placings (6.4 points per placing)
Vial 396 points in 31 placings (12.8 points per placing)
Zurgo 143 points in 28 placings (5.1 points per placing)
One of these things is not like the other...
If you don't like my fancy math, you can also consider:
Geist: 8 wins, 4 second, 11 third/fourth, 8 fifth/eighth
Titania: 3 wins, 5 second, 9 third/fourth, 16 fifth/eighth
Vial: 14 wins, 6 second, 5 third/fourth, 6 fifth/eighth
Zurgo: 5 wins, 4 second, 8 third/fourth, 11 fifth/eighth
Let's look at this one more way. In a top 8 of a tournament, we know the winner has won 3 matches, 2nd place has won 2 matches, and 3rd/4th place have won 1 match. And we know 1st place lost 0 matches and everyone else lost 1 match. So here are the records within a top 8:
Geist looks to be closing the gap here on Vial, though its success was mostly in smaller tournaments whereas Vial succeeded in larger ones against presumably better top 8's. That's why I like my very first analysis best. But I think this is pretty telling too.
The reason no one complains about Titania is because she doesn't dominate. Her top 8's are overwhelmingly in the middle or bottom of the top 8.
Honestly the only argument I can see for ignoring Vial's dominance is something along the lines of: only the most competitive and rich players have adopted Vial so quickly and its dominance is as much a factor of their skill/experience/competitiveness as it is the strength of the card.
I hear Queen Marchesa has a great matchup against it. Prossh just won a tournament against it, as did Breya. So why not let people try and pickup those decks to combat Vial? Is Duel Commander really bound to be the format everything is solved by bans because people are unwilling to change decks? (this is an honest question)
Queen marchesa does not have a very good match up, we had most of the people who use to play her switch decks because they couldn't beat Vial. Also, the Prossh that won the tournament split the prize without playing because he knew he had a bad match up.
I stuck with queen marchesa since she was spoiled and played almost nothing else (and zurgo to test against her) and my current list is somewhere around a 70% winrate against vial/kraum.. But this is using colors with a shtload of instant speed spot removal. I can't exactly say queen marchesa speaks for the rest of the cast's chances against vial, but yeah she can be beaten, and it can be done on a regular basis.
I do think however that banning vial in the long run might make other unbans easier. I mean can you imagine dig through time with vial legal? Not that i'm sure DTT deserves an unban to begin with. Just saying vial being banned might help facilitate taking other things out of the banlist.
I don't think anyone is going to try and reasonably argue that Vial isn't dominant. But is a few months long enough for people to master playing with and more importantly against the deck? If a format is healthy people will learn to adjust and play against Vial in time, if the format is not healthy Vial will be removed. It's all a matter of time, and I don't think enough time has passed.
I think that looking at the % of top 8's number is better than nothing, but a poor way to examine deck usage and dominance. I give a lot more weight to decks that (a) place higher in the top 8's, and (b) place in larger tournaments.
For example, if you compare the big 4 decks (Vial, Titania, Geist, Zurgo) and assign:
5 points for 1st place, 3 points for 2nd place, 2 points for 3rd-4th, 1 point for 5th-8th
9x for a *** tournament, 4x for **, 1x for *
(these numbers sort of model prize payouts, i.e. larger prizes for better finishes and larger prizes for bigger tournaments)
...you see:
Geist 204 points in 31 placings (6.6 points per placing)
Titania 211 points in 33 placings (6.4 points per placing)
Vial 396 points in 31 placings (12.8 points per placing)
Zurgo 143 points in 28 placings (5.1 points per placing)
One of these things is not like the other...
If you don't like my fancy math, you can also consider:
Geist: 8 wins, 4 second, 11 third/fourth, 8 fifth/eighth
Titania: 3 wins, 5 second, 9 third/fourth, 16 fifth/eighth
Vial: 14 wins, 6 second, 5 third/fourth, 6 fifth/eighth
Zurgo: 5 wins, 4 second, 8 third/fourth, 11 fifth/eighth
Let's look at this one more way. In a top 8 of a tournament, we know the winner has won 3 matches, 2nd place has won 2 matches, and 3rd/4th place have won 1 match. And we know 1st place lost 0 matches and everyone else lost 1 match. So here are the records within a top 8:
Geist looks to be closing the gap here on Vial, though its success was mostly in smaller tournaments whereas Vial succeeded in larger ones against presumably better top 8's. That's why I like my very first analysis best. But I think this is pretty telling too.
The reason no one complains about Titania is because she doesn't dominate. Her top 8's are overwhelmingly in the middle or bottom of the top 8.
Honestly the only argument I can see for ignoring Vial's dominance is something along the lines of: only the most competitive and rich players have adopted Vial so quickly and its dominance is as much a factor of their skill/experience/competitiveness as it is the strength of the card.
I'm liking the point system. Somewhere along the line a distinction has to be made between top 8, top 4, top 2, and winners to have a clearer picture of what the true tier 1 decks are. Whether or not these numbers are enough to warrant a ban is another issue entirely though.
So, I just wrote for half an hour and MTG Salvation ate my post before it was published... sigh. Let's see if I can recall what I wrote
yujipooji Good to know Queen Marchesa has a good matchup against Vial. I felt that it was very hard to beat Marchesa in my testing. Keranos also feels a matchup that's hard because we have a lot of dead draws (creature removal) and if Keranos resolves Vial can only deal damage via free spells. Kraum's very important to resolve just because of haste and that he survives Keranos' bolt. Fells a 50/50 match for me at best.
Jivanmukta it's been a while since I distributed so many upvoted for someone. I agree with everything you said. Managing a banlist shouldn't be about what we THINK is unfair, but what actually is. It was my main complaint last year, and if they changed that policy, I'm happy.
balangaz good to know that Prossh vs Vial tournament was like that. I could never have guessed it just by looking at the Top 8. It's very hard to understand a tournament's history just by looking at the Top 8, which leads me to:
mikel123 thanks a lot for taking your time to compile that data, it's amazing. It's quite clear Vial dominates at the Top spots, which is something only taking this deeper look can show. This is great and exactly what we need more in the future!
That said, I feel we should be very careful on analysing Top 8 data. It's hard to understand how a tournament played out just by looking at the Top 8. The Prossh vs Vial example above is great, but there are other broad examples we should be looking at too. In one of the parts of your post you talk about Top 8 victories, but in my understanding a lot of Duel Commander tournaments are Swiss-only. So assuming that Top 8's were actually played out is not a given. In fact, there are a lot of factors that can make a deck end up 2nd or 5th. Opponent match is a very weird thing. ID'ing is another. If you look carefully you'll see there's a recent big tournament where 2 Vial players split in the finals. MTGTOP8 shows them both as 1st places. So if you're counting them both, it could look like Vial actually won 2 tournaments, and it didn't. Although with a big data scope this margin of errors are very reduced, they can still tell a bit of a wrong story and we should be careful. Imagine if the Prossh vs Vial tournament was posted like the double-Vial-win. We'd have yet another Vial on 1st place that actually wasn't there (although I think Vial-Vial was an actual Top8 single-elim and Prossh-Vial was a Swiss-only)
Tournament position can be hard to read, depend on meta calls, opponent match, etc. So while I think your data crunch makes Vial's dominance in the top spots clear, we should thread carefully on understanding that consistency of Top 8s is a great measure for a deck, since it shows it's well prepared for the meta as a whole. Being 1st, 2nd or 5th depends on a bunch of things.
You know how Pro Player's value greatly their Top 16-32 in ProTours, because it shows consistency? There's a common knowledge that making a PT Top 8 requires perfect metagaming and a bit of luck. But But if you look at the Top 16-32, you'll always see those great consistent Pro Players there. I think this can be applied here too, at least because we lack the kind of deep data analysis that only a Top 8 listing can't give.
I don't know if you remember the Big Data Project I had last year. It would be very good to actually have that kind of data because it counted every single match in a tournament, so it was quite easier to tell stories and understand a deck's dominance against the field or against certain archetypes. It also would've made easier to understand what decks have good matchups against Vial, if any. No one was giving me data, and I was swamped with work and doubtful if the format would even survive the 20 life change, so I gave it up. But I still think we need this kind of data analysis to understand the format, so thank you again for that.
I don't think anyone is going to try and reasonably argue that Vial isn't dominant. But is a few months long enough for people to master playing with and more importantly against the deck? If a format is healthy people will learn to adjust and play against Vial in time, if the format is not healthy Vial will be removed. It's all a matter of time, and I don't think enough time has passed.
That's my main point here too. I think the format's still too young, and Vial a young deck, for it to be banned this way. If Vial keeps this level of dominance, then it's quite clear in 3 months it will be gone. I just love that the DC is not taking rushed decisions or even bending themselves to player whinings. Let the format have a little breathing room. If this dominance proves itself real, then act. We shouldn't act before that.
(do you realize that if you click "last month" on MTGTOP8 Vial has 27% of the Top 8's? Crazy hahahaha. The scope is VERY little, so it actually means nothing - 4 out of 15 decks - but that's the kind of dominance we should be afraid of. If it keeps these numbers, it's sure to go)
I hear Queen Marchesa has a great matchup against it. Prossh just won a tournament against it, as did Breya. So why not let people try and pickup those decks to combat Vial? Is Duel Commander really bound to be the format everything is solved by bans because people are unwilling to change decks? (this is an honest question)
Queen marchesa does not have a very good match up, we had most of the people who use to play her switch decks because they couldn't beat Vial. Also, the Prossh that won the tournament split the prize without playing because he knew he had a bad match up.
When I sleeved up my vial I played the Prossh guy and after him losing 9 to 1 his words were "I think I may need to change a lot in here, or change commanders"... but he won on mtgtop 8 so it's ok.
That said, I feel we should be very careful on analysing Top 8 data. It's hard to understand how a tournament played out just by looking at the Top 8.
They played just for fun, 2-0 to vial izi.
In my data, I actually gave the win to Prossh and the second place to Vial. And I did not give out two first-places to Vial, they got first and second. So the situation is worse than my numbers show and I am *under* estimating the strength of Vial.
In general I'm sympathetic to the limitations of data, but that is not an excuse to throw up your hands and say we'll never know the truth. I put far more stock into results and analysis than I put in people's subjective impressions of things.
In one of the parts of your post you talk about Top 8 victories, but in my understanding a lot of Duel Commander tournaments are Swiss-only. So assuming that Top 8's were actually played out is not a given.
Mathematically, the top 8 that comes out of swiss rounds is far more predictive of deck strength than the top 8 that comes out of single-elimination. In other words, I am *under* estimating the strength of Vial by assuming single-elimination top 8's.
understanding that consistency of Top 8s is a great measure for a deck, since it shows it's well prepared for the meta as a whole.
Great, yes. But far better is to incorporate more information, and we have that additional information from MTGTop8. So why not use it?
You know how Pro Player's value greatly their Top 16-32 in ProTours, because it shows consistency? There's a common knowledge that making a PT Top 8 requires perfect metagaming and a bit of luck. But But if you look at the Top 16-32, you'll always see those great consistent Pro Players there.
Making a top 8 does not require perfect metagaming, and it certainly requires a lot more than "a bit" of luck. If it only required "a bit" of luck, you would see the same top 8 every other tournament. The fact is, it takes an enormous amount of luck (even if you're perfectly prepared and play perfectly) and that is why you'll never see another Jon Finkel or Kai Budde or Wayne Gretzky or Babe Ruth. Top 16-32 takes less luck than top 8, so I get why someone would look to that metric rather than top 8's. And I would generally agree that # of top 32's is a better metric for judging a player than # of top 8's.
People are saying Vial is 11%? From what meta? a 4 month meta that had Vial for 2 months?
People, Vial was only a viable commander in the middle of the 4 months you people are getting data from, if you get data for the last two months it surpasses 20%, just do the math, get the data from december and january, and then tell me about "11%".
He is not 11% TODAY, he is way way over, hitting close to 30% dominance, that is wildly over what is healthy for the format. He has already been proved to be way too strong, he will get axed that is sure, not even questionable about his ban in the next announcement, but if that is inevitable, why not just do it now?
People are saying Vial is 11%? From what meta? a 4 month meta that had Vial for 2 months?
People, Vial was only a viable commander in the middle of the 4 months you people are getting data from, if you get data for the last two months it surpasses 20%, just do the math, get the data from december and january, and then tell me about "11%".
He is not 11% TODAY, he is way way over, hitting close to 30% dominance, that is wildly over what is healthy for the format. He has already been proved to be way too strong, he will get axed that is sure, not even questionable about his ban in the next announcement, but if that is inevitable, why not just do it now?
I think the reasoning here is that the format is still adjusting to the 20 life change. It's possible that Vial's Dominance is due to people not properly adjusting their decks to a 20 life change. For example, maybe people should be playing way more life gain in their decks. A year from now the meta could potentially look drastically different. Maybe some obscure older legends that were considered bad at 30 life like Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen are really good now. Why not? She gains life, Survives the bolt test, aggressively pumps creatures. I think the community needs to figure out what works and what doesn't work in 20 life before we start banning stuff.
I don't get why people call it a 4 month meta if the format as a whole is just 2 months old. I also can't believe people take the "Last Month" category seriously on MTGTOP8 since it's just 15 decks. Sure, that 27% there is scary, but does it really mean anything we can rely on? Would you really ban anything based on 15 decks?
mikel123 I'm not sure if you felt contested by my post, but far from it. Sorry if it looked that way. I'll always be behind numbers when it comes to banlist management, so that data crunch of yours seems very clear on Vial's dominance, as I stated in my post. You did read I complimented you on it right?
I was talking about Top 8 so we would disconsider your calculations regarding Top 8 Single-elim wins. That's the only data I don't think we should consider because it's not a given that it's right.
Also, what I was saying about Swiss vs Single-elim is that decks like Titania may be at 5th position, but that could mean a lot of things. Maybe they were 5th because of Opp. Match. Maybe in a single-elim they'd placed better, etc. It's not about Vial's strength, but about other decks'. After your number it's hard to even try to contest Vial's win-rate. All I'm saying is that there's a bunch of data that seems conclusive but isn't. Of course, it's the data we have so it's always good to make good use of it.
I really don't know if you were aware of my Data initiative last year, but I was compiling tournaments full data, match by match, to gather info about match-win of each deck against each other deck. I'd be willing to start that again, but I'd need a db specialist help in order to make something to manage that database in an easier way than what I could do.
When I sleeved up my vial I played the Prossh guy and after him losing 9 to 1 his words were "I think I may need to change a lot in here, or change commanders"... but he won on mtgtop 8 so it's ok.
balangaz good to know that Prossh vs Vial tournament was like that. I could never have guessed it just by looking at the Top 8. It's very hard to understand a tournament's history just by looking at the Top 8
I would happily forgo the third or fourth colour(s) and just play a Rakdos burn deck if we just banned the partner aspect
We had some people testing it and founding it not being as oppressive as the Grixis version is. I was expecting VStF getting banned as a partner so people were given this option to play with still.
I would happily forgo the third or fourth colour(s) and just play a Rakdos burn deck if we just banned the partner aspect
We had some people testing it and founding it not being as oppressive as the Grixis version is. I was expecting VStF getting banned as a partner so people were given this option to play with still.
I feel adding a "banned as partner" category on the banlist only makes it clunkier and less friendly to understand. Doing that just to be able to play rakdos Vial seems much ado about nothing.
I would happily forgo the third or fourth colour(s) and just play a Rakdos burn deck if we just banned the partner aspect
We had some people testing it and founding it not being as oppressive as the Grixis version is. I was expecting VStF getting banned as a partner so people were given this option to play with still.
That sounds pretty fair
We thought about it as an elegant solution, instead of just banning more commanders. Also it wouldn't make people that invested on him feel 'that' bad.
It's a little clunky in a way, but it's also how I assumed the partner mechanic would work when I first saw it. I think it makes total sense to require Partner commanders to precisely match colors, i.e. you can use Akiri and Bruse but not Akiri and Tymna.
Partner is unfortunately a pretty overpowered mechanic, giving users both card quality (more colors) and quantity (being able to replay commanders with individual commander taxes). The legacy card pool has too many ways to help 4c players fix their mana and not nearly enough ways to punish them for it.
It's not the Partners ability, but Vial itself, if you take partners from the others they become unplayable, because they are freaking weak when compared to other legends. Partner is the only way the others become playable, if you take partner out, Vial continues to be playable and the other 14 are dead, if you just hammer him, all 14 are playable and none of them combined is meta shifting. None of them combined even got close to 5% of the meta, partner is NOT a broken mechanic on the commanders that are available, Vial is, because his ability is made specifically to fight multiplayer + 40LP, the others are totally okay. Having an extra card is a huge bonus, but it is not so huge if the extra card is like, some close to vanilla high cost creature for example.
It's not the Partners ability, but Vial itself, if you take partners from the others they become unplayable, because they are freaking weak when compared to other legends. Partner is the only way the others become playable, if you take partner out, Vial continues to be playable and the other 14 are dead, if you just hammer him, all 14 are playable and none of them combined is meta shifting. None of them combined even got close to 5% of the meta, partner is NOT a broken mechanic on the commanders that are available, Vial is, because his ability is made specifically to fight multiplayer + 40LP, the others are totally okay. Having an extra card is a huge bonus, but it is not so huge if the extra card is like, some close to vanilla high cost creature for example.
Good point. It's not really a viable option. Just applying the rule to VS alone would be even messier
yujipooji Good to know Queen Marchesa has a good matchup against Vial. I felt that it was very hard to beat Marchesa in my testing. Keranos also feels a matchup that's hard because we have a lot of dead draws (creature removal) and if Keranos resolves Vial can only deal damage via free spells. Kraum's very important to resolve just because of haste and that he survives Keranos' bolt. Fells a 50/50 match for me at best.
Yeah man I'm glad too. A lot of people dropped queen march and I've been playtesting on my own up until recently (THANK YOU BLINKETTO). That positive matchup vs vial took a lot of work though. For one, I now mainboard circle of protection: red. Luckily the matchups against non-vial decks are also quite good. I mean if I found a way, I wouldn't be shocked if other decks find ways to adjust as well. Seriously though, I'd be lying if I said that Vial's numbers since the few months he was released shouldn't cause worry if and only if this trend continues to the next announcement.
LOL that's the thing about Keranos. We're shifting towards a more creature-oriented format, and from a deckbuilding standpoint, having a chunk of dead cards against him is collateral damage that has to be taken like a champ. I'm just lucky mardu colors has outs like council's judgment and nahiri's second ability. Freaking indestructible enchantment commanders.
Yeah, Keranos also packs Blood Moon, which can be a beating. Playing CoP:Red seems very frigging smart in this meta. Deals with a lot of threats these days, even Bruse and Breya, in a sense. I will steal that tech if I play UW in the future.
The thing about that collateral is that Keranos thrives on card advantage, as the great draw go that it is. So it seems like a good choice in a Vial meta.
Chill could also be good against Zurgo or Vial. Making him pay 5 for Vial, 7 for Kraum, 2 for that Fireblast, 6 for Fiery Confluence seems very good. Not in Keranos, but UW or Jace or Jenara.
Whether or not a card was designed for a format is irrelevant. If something is not oppressive it is not banworthy. We are playing a competitive format, not an "I don't like the idea of this" format.
I think that looking at the % of top 8's number is better than nothing, but a poor way to examine deck usage and dominance. I give a lot more weight to decks that (a) place higher in the top 8's, and (b) place in larger tournaments.
For example, if you compare the big 4 decks (Vial, Titania, Geist, Zurgo) and assign:
5 points for 1st place, 3 points for 2nd place, 2 points for 3rd-4th, 1 point for 5th-8th
9x for a *** tournament, 4x for **, 1x for *
(these numbers sort of model prize payouts, i.e. larger prizes for better finishes and larger prizes for bigger tournaments)
...you see:
Geist 204 points in 31 placings (6.6 points per placing)
Titania 211 points in 33 placings (6.4 points per placing)
Vial 396 points in 31 placings (12.8 points per placing)
Zurgo 143 points in 28 placings (5.1 points per placing)
One of these things is not like the other...
If you don't like my fancy math, you can also consider:
Geist: 8 wins, 4 second, 11 third/fourth, 8 fifth/eighth
Titania: 3 wins, 5 second, 9 third/fourth, 16 fifth/eighth
Vial: 14 wins, 6 second, 5 third/fourth, 6 fifth/eighth
Zurgo: 5 wins, 4 second, 8 third/fourth, 11 fifth/eighth
Let's look at this one more way. In a top 8 of a tournament, we know the winner has won 3 matches, 2nd place has won 2 matches, and 3rd/4th place have won 1 match. And we know 1st place lost 0 matches and everyone else lost 1 match. So here are the records within a top 8:
Geist: 43-23 (65% win)
Titania: 28-30 (48% win)
Vial: 59-17 (78% win)
Zurgo 31-23 (57% win)
Geist looks to be closing the gap here on Vial, though its success was mostly in smaller tournaments whereas Vial succeeded in larger ones against presumably better top 8's. That's why I like my very first analysis best. But I think this is pretty telling too.
The reason no one complains about Titania is because she doesn't dominate. Her top 8's are overwhelmingly in the middle or bottom of the top 8.
Honestly the only argument I can see for ignoring Vial's dominance is something along the lines of: only the most competitive and rich players have adopted Vial so quickly and its dominance is as much a factor of their skill/experience/competitiveness as it is the strength of the card.
I stuck with queen marchesa since she was spoiled and played almost nothing else (and zurgo to test against her) and my current list is somewhere around a 70% winrate against vial/kraum.. But this is using colors with a shtload of instant speed spot removal. I can't exactly say queen marchesa speaks for the rest of the cast's chances against vial, but yeah she can be beaten, and it can be done on a regular basis.
I do think however that banning vial in the long run might make other unbans easier. I mean can you imagine dig through time with vial legal? Not that i'm sure DTT deserves an unban to begin with. Just saying vial being banned might help facilitate taking other things out of the banlist.
I'm liking the point system. Somewhere along the line a distinction has to be made between top 8, top 4, top 2, and winners to have a clearer picture of what the true tier 1 decks are. Whether or not these numbers are enough to warrant a ban is another issue entirely though.
yujipooji Good to know Queen Marchesa has a good matchup against Vial. I felt that it was very hard to beat Marchesa in my testing. Keranos also feels a matchup that's hard because we have a lot of dead draws (creature removal) and if Keranos resolves Vial can only deal damage via free spells. Kraum's very important to resolve just because of haste and that he survives Keranos' bolt. Fells a 50/50 match for me at best.
Jivanmukta it's been a while since I distributed so many upvoted for someone. I agree with everything you said. Managing a banlist shouldn't be about what we THINK is unfair, but what actually is. It was my main complaint last year, and if they changed that policy, I'm happy.
balangaz good to know that Prossh vs Vial tournament was like that. I could never have guessed it just by looking at the Top 8. It's very hard to understand a tournament's history just by looking at the Top 8, which leads me to:
mikel123 thanks a lot for taking your time to compile that data, it's amazing. It's quite clear Vial dominates at the Top spots, which is something only taking this deeper look can show. This is great and exactly what we need more in the future!
That said, I feel we should be very careful on analysing Top 8 data. It's hard to understand how a tournament played out just by looking at the Top 8. The Prossh vs Vial example above is great, but there are other broad examples we should be looking at too. In one of the parts of your post you talk about Top 8 victories, but in my understanding a lot of Duel Commander tournaments are Swiss-only. So assuming that Top 8's were actually played out is not a given. In fact, there are a lot of factors that can make a deck end up 2nd or 5th. Opponent match is a very weird thing. ID'ing is another. If you look carefully you'll see there's a recent big tournament where 2 Vial players split in the finals. MTGTOP8 shows them both as 1st places. So if you're counting them both, it could look like Vial actually won 2 tournaments, and it didn't. Although with a big data scope this margin of errors are very reduced, they can still tell a bit of a wrong story and we should be careful. Imagine if the Prossh vs Vial tournament was posted like the double-Vial-win. We'd have yet another Vial on 1st place that actually wasn't there (although I think Vial-Vial was an actual Top8 single-elim and Prossh-Vial was a Swiss-only)
Tournament position can be hard to read, depend on meta calls, opponent match, etc. So while I think your data crunch makes Vial's dominance in the top spots clear, we should thread carefully on understanding that consistency of Top 8s is a great measure for a deck, since it shows it's well prepared for the meta as a whole. Being 1st, 2nd or 5th depends on a bunch of things.
You know how Pro Player's value greatly their Top 16-32 in ProTours, because it shows consistency? There's a common knowledge that making a PT Top 8 requires perfect metagaming and a bit of luck. But But if you look at the Top 16-32, you'll always see those great consistent Pro Players there. I think this can be applied here too, at least because we lack the kind of deep data analysis that only a Top 8 listing can't give.
I don't know if you remember the Big Data Project I had last year. It would be very good to actually have that kind of data because it counted every single match in a tournament, so it was quite easier to tell stories and understand a deck's dominance against the field or against certain archetypes. It also would've made easier to understand what decks have good matchups against Vial, if any. No one was giving me data, and I was swamped with work and doubtful if the format would even survive the 20 life change, so I gave it up. But I still think we need this kind of data analysis to understand the format, so thank you again for that.
That's my main point here too. I think the format's still too young, and Vial a young deck, for it to be banned this way. If Vial keeps this level of dominance, then it's quite clear in 3 months it will be gone. I just love that the DC is not taking rushed decisions or even bending themselves to player whinings. Let the format have a little breathing room. If this dominance proves itself real, then act. We shouldn't act before that.
(do you realize that if you click "last month" on MTGTOP8 Vial has 27% of the Top 8's? Crazy hahahaha. The scope is VERY little, so it actually means nothing - 4 out of 15 decks - but that's the kind of dominance we should be afraid of. If it keeps these numbers, it's sure to go)
They played just for fun, 2-0 to vial izi.
When I sleeved up my vial I played the Prossh guy and after him losing 9 to 1 his words were "I think I may need to change a lot in here, or change commanders"... but he won on mtgtop 8 so it's ok.
In general I'm sympathetic to the limitations of data, but that is not an excuse to throw up your hands and say we'll never know the truth. I put far more stock into results and analysis than I put in people's subjective impressions of things.
Mathematically, the top 8 that comes out of swiss rounds is far more predictive of deck strength than the top 8 that comes out of single-elimination. In other words, I am *under* estimating the strength of Vial by assuming single-elimination top 8's.
Great, yes. But far better is to incorporate more information, and we have that additional information from MTGTop8. So why not use it?
Making a top 8 does not require perfect metagaming, and it certainly requires a lot more than "a bit" of luck. If it only required "a bit" of luck, you would see the same top 8 every other tournament. The fact is, it takes an enormous amount of luck (even if you're perfectly prepared and play perfectly) and that is why you'll never see another Jon Finkel or Kai Budde or Wayne Gretzky or Babe Ruth. Top 16-32 takes less luck than top 8, so I get why someone would look to that metric rather than top 8's. And I would generally agree that # of top 32's is a better metric for judging a player than # of top 8's.
People, Vial was only a viable commander in the middle of the 4 months you people are getting data from, if you get data for the last two months it surpasses 20%, just do the math, get the data from december and january, and then tell me about "11%".
He is not 11% TODAY, he is way way over, hitting close to 30% dominance, that is wildly over what is healthy for the format. He has already been proved to be way too strong, he will get axed that is sure, not even questionable about his ban in the next announcement, but if that is inevitable, why not just do it now?
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
I don't get why people call it a 4 month meta if the format as a whole is just 2 months old. I also can't believe people take the "Last Month" category seriously on MTGTOP8 since it's just 15 decks. Sure, that 27% there is scary, but does it really mean anything we can rely on? Would you really ban anything based on 15 decks?
mikel123 I'm not sure if you felt contested by my post, but far from it. Sorry if it looked that way. I'll always be behind numbers when it comes to banlist management, so that data crunch of yours seems very clear on Vial's dominance, as I stated in my post. You did read I complimented you on it right?
I was talking about Top 8 so we would disconsider your calculations regarding Top 8 Single-elim wins. That's the only data I don't think we should consider because it's not a given that it's right.
Also, what I was saying about Swiss vs Single-elim is that decks like Titania may be at 5th position, but that could mean a lot of things. Maybe they were 5th because of Opp. Match. Maybe in a single-elim they'd placed better, etc. It's not about Vial's strength, but about other decks'. After your number it's hard to even try to contest Vial's win-rate. All I'm saying is that there's a bunch of data that seems conclusive but isn't. Of course, it's the data we have so it's always good to make good use of it.
I really don't know if you were aware of my Data initiative last year, but I was compiling tournaments full data, match by match, to gather info about match-win of each deck against each other deck. I'd be willing to start that again, but I'd need a db specialist help in order to make something to manage that database in an easier way than what I could do.
Do you even read, bro?
And yeah, Breya needs a ban too.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
We had some people testing it and founding it not being as oppressive as the Grixis version is. I was expecting VStF getting banned as a partner so people were given this option to play with still.
That sounds pretty fair
We thought about it as an elegant solution, instead of just banning more commanders. Also it wouldn't make people that invested on him feel 'that' bad.
Partner is unfortunately a pretty overpowered mechanic, giving users both card quality (more colors) and quantity (being able to replay commanders with individual commander taxes). The legacy card pool has too many ways to help 4c players fix their mana and not nearly enough ways to punish them for it.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
Yeah man I'm glad too. A lot of people dropped queen march and I've been playtesting on my own up until recently (THANK YOU BLINKETTO). That positive matchup vs vial took a lot of work though. For one, I now mainboard circle of protection: red. Luckily the matchups against non-vial decks are also quite good. I mean if I found a way, I wouldn't be shocked if other decks find ways to adjust as well. Seriously though, I'd be lying if I said that Vial's numbers since the few months he was released shouldn't cause worry if and only if this trend continues to the next announcement.
LOL that's the thing about Keranos. We're shifting towards a more creature-oriented format, and from a deckbuilding standpoint, having a chunk of dead cards against him is collateral damage that has to be taken like a champ. I'm just lucky mardu colors has outs like council's judgment and nahiri's second ability. Freaking indestructible enchantment commanders.
The thing about that collateral is that Keranos thrives on card advantage, as the great draw go that it is. So it seems like a good choice in a Vial meta.
Chill could also be good against Zurgo or Vial. Making him pay 5 for Vial, 7 for Kraum, 2 for that Fireblast, 6 for Fiery Confluence seems very good. Not in Keranos, but UW or Jace or Jenara.
totally fair card, that Vial Smasher, glad we get another 3 months of it