It's actually really hard to find decks that don't use the graveyard in some way.
Which is ironically the reason we haven't seen that much gravehate yet, I'd say. I wouldn't want to board in Leyline of the Void against a deck like Abzan, since only killing their Tasigurs and removing Souls flashback isn't worth the deckslot. Now if I could run Rest in Peace to also kill Tarmogoyf and the occasional Scavenging Ooze, I'd definitely board in a copy or two, but then my deck needs to be completely graveyard independant. In the same manner, I don't think boarding RIP in against Snapcaster decks is worth it since it's completely reactive against only four cards in their deck.
Isn't there some way to get value out of RIP yourself, making it proactive? That could be really powerful right now.
The thing is, you don't want to play cards in your SB, which are decent at best in some match-ups. Ofc, if you play against a Graveyardbased deck, like Dredgevine, Assault Loam or Reanimator, than the card suddenly becomes a 10/10. But otherwise, often the cards is only a 4/10, which you just don't want in your SB.
That is a big reason, why graveyard hate sees no play atm. It has some uses, but you can't justify those SB slots, since you need them normally for other match-ups. You would rather play something which gives you also value, so something like Ooze or Relic (since it draws you a card).
Overall you can say, that since the Pod ban graveyard based strategies got a boost, but most of those decks still misses something to be Tier 2.
Greetings,
Kathal
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Merfolk seems to have noticeably increased as a percentage of the online meta based on MTGGoldfish stats? Anyone know the cause of that? It's gone up past jund, junk, infect and bloom titan! Actually, the top 10 list there is looking kinda weird overall. Is it just some budget madness as people wait for Modern Masters? Some new metagame weirdness caused by Dragons of Tarkir related to the Grixis Delver surge? Some kind of shift due to the shift from Mardu/Boros burn to Naya burn?
I have no idea what's going on there despite playing on MTGO myself. I haven't noticed extreme changes myself yet. What I do know though is that a GR Tron deck won the PTQ finals on there.
Merfolk seems to have noticeably increased as a percentage of the online meta based on MTGGoldfish stats? Anyone know the cause of that? It's gone up past jund, junk, infect and bloom titan! Actually, the top 10 list there is looking kinda weird overall. Is it just some budget madness as people wait for Modern Masters? Some new metagame weirdness caused by Dragons of Tarkir related to the Grixis Delver surge? Some kind of shift due to the shift from Mardu/Boros burn to Naya burn?
Beware bad metagame data.
Goldfish is one of the worst offenders of the bad metagame data problem, because it only aggregates 4-0 decks and not 3-1 lists. If we look at 4-0/3-1 lists together, we see Merfolk remains at about 2.55% for the past month. This is in line with the MTGO deep dive dataset I work on, which includes both 4-0/3-1 lists but also 2-2 or worse ones: there, Merfolk is at 3.1% for a semi-random sample of dailies over a 1 month period.
That said, Merfolk has a lot more paper success than MTGO success. It's at about 4.1% of the paper metagame, although this number has not changed substantially in the 4/1-5/1 period than from the 3/1-4/1 period (where it was 4.2%).
[quote from="bill_zagoudis »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/603779-healthy-meta?comment=13"]
Personally, I just wish the modern meta had some room for control. Not the UWR "bolt-snap-bolt-swing... oops you're dead" 'control' deck either. I always feel like I'm just playing a glorified burn deck when I play it.
Although is seems to be only data from 4/1/2015 - 5/1/2015.
So are there any changes coming when it comes to classifying the Tier 1 decks? From those stats it looks like you could either kick Infect out of it or include Jund and Grixis Delver in it depending on which way you want to go.
Also did the decrease of Twins numbers coincide with the rise of Grixis Delver or not? Im curious since the deck is supposed to have a good Twin matchup but it's interesting to see if it really reduces the number of Twin decks.
Although is seems to be only data from 4/1/2015 - 5/1/2015.
So are there any changes coming when it comes to classifying the Tier 1 decks? From those stats it looks like you could either kick Infect out of it or include Jund and Grixis Delver in it depending on which way you want to go.
Also did the decrease of Twins numbers coincide with the rise of Grixis Delver or not? Im curious since the deck is supposed to have a good Twin matchup but it's interesting to see if it really reduces the number of Twin decks.
At the beginning of every month, the date range updates to just be the last month of data. This reflects the forum update schedule too. We also update the date range in the middle of the month, but this is generally more inclusive (so until yesterday, it was 3/16 - 4/30 or something similar). One day we will have the resources to convert it into a proper database, but we are still working towards that. FINGERS CROSSED!
The big change is probably going to be Jund moving up. Our forums won't update until Wednesday, which gives me a few days to check the events that don't get published until Monday/Tuesday. The Japanese events from last week, for instance, won't typically go up until Tuesday. We also might get some straggling SCG events from this weekend.
Two small changes have also affected how decks are classified. Before this coming update, decks were classified based on their prevalence relative to the average of the other sets. But now, instead of a strict average, it's going to be the upper edge of the confidence interval constructed around that average. This makes it less likely that flavor-of-the-month decks get pushed in. For instance, the average prevalence on MTGO right now is about 1.1%. But the upper limit of the confidence interval is 1.2%. This small difference, seemingly not important, makes the tiering a bit more precise.
The second change is that the sheet no longer uses the strict prevalence numbers from SCG Baltimore Day 2, which was the last major paper event but happened months ago. Instead, it adjusts all those numbers based on their current metagame trends. So many of the Day 2 metagame #s have gone down, which makes sense given how the metagame has shifted away from the kind of polarization we saw at SCG Baltimore. For instance, before the adjustment applied, the Day 2 # for Abzan was 18% or something similar. But now it's 12%. This is an extrapolation in the absence of other major paper events, and we will thankfully get some new data in June.
I don't like how much of the meta BGx midrange decks are... we need to come up with some more anti-midrange strategies. In this case, it seems like the answer might be ramp, since BGx isn't as weak to combo as midrange is supposed to be due to it's discard suite. Are there any other good ramp decks that could be improved/tweaked to fight midrange besides Tron decks? We have gotten some new cards that help with ramp after all in the most recent set, with Atarka's Command and Explosive Vegetation? Maybe a naya ramp hatebearish deck that curves into Sigarda, Host of Herons?
I don't like how much of the meta BGx midrange decks are... we need to come up with some more anti-midrange strategies. In this case, it seems like the answer might be ramp, since BGx isn't as weak to combo as midrange is supposed to be due to it's discard suite. Are there any other good ramp decks that could be improved/tweaked to fight midrange besides Tron decks? We have gotten some new cards that help with ramp after all in the most recent set, with Atarka's Command and Explosive Vegetation?
You could try RUG Midrange. You get to annoy them with your own goyfs and you also have access to Obstinate Baloth.
Although is seems to be only data from 4/1/2015 - 5/1/2015.
So are there any changes coming when it comes to classifying the Tier 1 decks? From those stats it looks like you could either kick Infect out of it or include Jund and Grixis Delver in it depending on which way you want to go.
Also did the decrease of Twins numbers coincide with the rise of Grixis Delver or not? Im curious since the deck is supposed to have a good Twin matchup but it's interesting to see if it really reduces the number of Twin decks.
At the beginning of every month, the date range updates to just be the last month of data. This reflects the forum update schedule too. We also update the date range in the middle of the month, but this is generally more inclusive (so until yesterday, it was 3/16 - 4/30 or something similar). One day we will have the resources to convert it into a proper database, but we are still working towards that. FINGERS CROSSED!
The big change is probably going to be Jund moving up. Our forums won't update until Wednesday, which gives me a few days to check the events that don't get published until Monday/Tuesday. The Japanese events from last week, for instance, won't typically go up until Tuesday. We also might get some straggling SCG events from this weekend.
Two small changes have also affected how decks are classified. Before this coming update, decks were classified based on their prevalence relative to the average of the other sets. But now, instead of a strict average, it's going to be the upper edge of the confidence interval constructed around that average. This makes it less likely that flavor-of-the-month decks get pushed in. For instance, the average prevalence on MTGO right now is about 1.1%. But the upper limit of the confidence interval is 1.2%. This small difference, seemingly not important, makes the tiering a bit more precise.
The second change is that the sheet no longer uses the strict prevalence numbers from SCG Baltimore Day 2, which was the last major paper event but happened months ago. Instead, it adjusts all those numbers based on their current metagame trends. So many of the Day 2 metagame #s have gone down, which makes sense given how the metagame has shifted away from the kind of polarization we saw at SCG Baltimore. For instance, before the adjustment applied, the Day 2 # for Abzan was 18% or something similar. But now it's 12%. This is an extrapolation in the absence of other major paper events, and we will thankfully get some new data in June.
Oh when did you change that? Wasn't the data range the time between the ban announcements before?
Secondly
"The Mad Statistician" is really a fitting title for you. Every time I read posts like this from you where you go deep on number stuff Im reminded that Im working in the retail business and I have no idea what you are talking about
And lastly
Hurray Jund probably takes it rightful place again. What a glorious time.
Shodai, LEH? Where are you?
The big takeaways:
-Jund is moving up to tier 1
-Grixis Delver is not moving up to tier 1 yet
-Tier 2 has some decks moving in (e.g. Esper Mentor) and out (e.g. Living End)
-Developing Competitive will be the new home for Elves and Podless Pod
Feel free to discuss, give feedback on, and generally reflect on the upcoming changes before they get pushed out to the site!
The big takeaways:
-Jund is moving up to tier 1
-Grixis Delver is not moving up to tier 1 yet
-Tier 2 has some decks moving in (e.g. Esper Mentor) and out (e.g. Living End)
-Developing Competitive will be the new home for Elves and Podless Pod
Feel free to discuss, give feedback on, and generally reflect on the upcoming changes before they get pushed out to the site!
The 2 current best control decks have a combined metashare of 2.3% or if you are generous and include Scapeshift it's 4.6%. That's worse than I expected, really no improvement at all.
And considering how good control in Standard is, I don't see us getting any good new cards for it. I could whine about unbans, but these won't happen anyway because everyone is too scared of Twin. So all in all it's looking pretty grim for all control players.
I don't like how much of the meta BGx midrange decks are... we need to come up with some more anti-midrange strategies. In this case, it seems like the answer might be ramp, since BGx isn't as weak to combo as midrange is supposed to be due to it's discard suite. Are there any other good ramp decks that could be improved/tweaked to fight midrange besides Tron decks? We have gotten some new cards that help with ramp after all in the most recent set, with Atarka's Command and Explosive Vegetation? Maybe a naya ramp hatebearish deck that curves into Sigarda, Host of Herons?
My answer right now is simply to go bigger. I am working on a Black/White control deck with 4 maindeck Blood Barons of Vizkopa, 4 Lingering Souls, 3 Sorin Solemn Visitors, 3 maindeck Wraths of Gods, and a bunch of removal spells (Victim of Night, Path to Exile, Murderous Cut, Dismember) and it is pretty strong against BGx.
Forums are being updated! This update reflects the 4/1 - 5/1 period and shows the Modern metagame for the past month. My Modern Nexus article, Modern Metagame Breakdown: 4/1-5/1 , covers the whole metagame and gives some context and details behind the broader metagame picture. You can also check the Nexus Top Decks page on the site itself, if you are interested in the raw data behind the update, or to see the different tiers in table form.
Looking at our subforums on MTGS, here's a summary of all the changes made in the past update:
TIER 1
-Jund promoted from Tier 2
TIER 2
-Jund promoted to Tier 1
-UWR Midrange and Esper Mentor Midrange promoted from Developing Competitive
-Living End moved to Developing Competitive
DEVELOPING COMPETITIVE
-UWR Midrange and Esper Mentor Midrange promoted to Tier 2
-Living End moved to Developing Competitive from Tier 2
-Elves and Podless Pod promoted to Developing Competitive from Deck Creation
DECK CREATION
-Grixis Control stickied
-Elves and Podless Pod moved to Developing Competitive
For more information on any deck's move, you can check out the deck thread itself; I always post a few sentences explaining its move. Note that these explanations will be posted between 11 CST and 1 CST, so if you check them right away after this post is live you won't see them yet.
If anyone has any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to post them here or PM me. Try not to discuss them in the deck threads themselves, as this tends to distract from deck development. Also, before you post, I strongly encourage you to check out the deck threads for the individual explanations, or the Modern Metagame Breakdown article for more details.
Jund's return to prominence bodes well for blue control. When playing a control deck I'd rather deal with Lava Spikes (Lighting Bolt) than Lingering Souls any day.
I don't like how much of the meta BGx midrange decks are... we need to come up with some more anti-midrange strategies. In this case, it seems like the answer might be ramp, since BGx isn't as weak to combo as midrange is supposed to be due to it's discard suite. Are there any other good ramp decks that could be improved/tweaked to fight midrange besides Tron decks? We have gotten some new cards that help with ramp after all in the most recent set, with Atarka's Command and Explosive Vegetation? Maybe a naya ramp hatebearish deck that curves into Sigarda, Host of Herons?
Try the new Podless Pod deck, it's pretty favorable against BGx.
I would not call this a podless pod. The comparison is hurting....
I don't like how much of the meta BGx midrange decks are... we need to come up with some more anti-midrange strategies. In this case, it seems like the answer might be ramp, since BGx isn't as weak to combo as midrange is supposed to be due to it's discard suite. Are there any other good ramp decks that could be improved/tweaked to fight midrange besides Tron decks? We have gotten some new cards that help with ramp after all in the most recent set, with Atarka's Command and Explosive Vegetation? Maybe a naya ramp hatebearish deck that curves into Sigarda, Host of Herons?
Try the new Podless Pod deck, it's pretty favorable against BGx.
I would not call this a podless pod. The comparison is hurting....
I would not call this a podless pod. The comparison is hurting....
Why wouldn't you call it that? The only difference between it and the more midrangey/value Pod lists from before the ban are Goyfs and, well, the lack of Pod. Otherwise, the shell is remarkably similar and the play style isn't that dissimilar.
I would not call this a podless pod. The comparison is hurting....
Why wouldn't you call it that? The only difference between it and the more midrangey/value Pod lists from before the ban are Goyfs and, well, the lack of Pod. Otherwise, the shell is remarkably similar and the play style isn't that dissimilar.
Names that would better suit this deck, Little Kid Abzan, Abzan Liege, Wilted Abzan, Liege Rhino, Hateless Hatebears.
Which is ironically the reason we haven't seen that much gravehate yet, I'd say. I wouldn't want to board in Leyline of the Void against a deck like Abzan, since only killing their Tasigurs and removing Souls flashback isn't worth the deckslot. Now if I could run Rest in Peace to also kill Tarmogoyf and the occasional Scavenging Ooze, I'd definitely board in a copy or two, but then my deck needs to be completely graveyard independant. In the same manner, I don't think boarding RIP in against Snapcaster decks is worth it since it's completely reactive against only four cards in their deck.
Isn't there some way to get value out of RIP yourself, making it proactive? That could be really powerful right now.
That is a big reason, why graveyard hate sees no play atm. It has some uses, but you can't justify those SB slots, since you need them normally for other match-ups. You would rather play something which gives you also value, so something like Ooze or Relic (since it draws you a card).
Overall you can say, that since the Pod ban graveyard based strategies got a boost, but most of those decks still misses something to be Tier 2.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Beware bad metagame data.
Goldfish is one of the worst offenders of the bad metagame data problem, because it only aggregates 4-0 decks and not 3-1 lists. If we look at 4-0/3-1 lists together, we see Merfolk remains at about 2.55% for the past month. This is in line with the MTGO deep dive dataset I work on, which includes both 4-0/3-1 lists but also 2-2 or worse ones: there, Merfolk is at 3.1% for a semi-random sample of dailies over a 1 month period.
That said, Merfolk has a lot more paper success than MTGO success. It's at about 4.1% of the paper metagame, although this number has not changed substantially in the 4/1-5/1 period than from the 3/1-4/1 period (where it was 4.2%).
Burn is control? At least that is how I play it.
BEEEES!
Rabble Red
Modern
Burn
Infect
1. Burn (9.6%)
2. Junk (9.2%)
3. UR Twin (9.2%)
4. Affinity (7.3%)
5. Grixis Delver (4.5%)
6. Infect (4.4%)
7. Jund (4.1%)
8. RG Tron (3%)
9. Amulet Bloom (2.8%)
10. Abzan Liege (2.7%)
Although is seems to be only data from 4/1/2015 - 5/1/2015.
So are there any changes coming when it comes to classifying the Tier 1 decks? From those stats it looks like you could either kick Infect out of it or include Jund and Grixis Delver in it depending on which way you want to go.
Also did the decrease of Twins numbers coincide with the rise of Grixis Delver or not? Im curious since the deck is supposed to have a good Twin matchup but it's interesting to see if it really reduces the number of Twin decks.
At the beginning of every month, the date range updates to just be the last month of data. This reflects the forum update schedule too. We also update the date range in the middle of the month, but this is generally more inclusive (so until yesterday, it was 3/16 - 4/30 or something similar). One day we will have the resources to convert it into a proper database, but we are still working towards that. FINGERS CROSSED!
The big change is probably going to be Jund moving up. Our forums won't update until Wednesday, which gives me a few days to check the events that don't get published until Monday/Tuesday. The Japanese events from last week, for instance, won't typically go up until Tuesday. We also might get some straggling SCG events from this weekend.
Two small changes have also affected how decks are classified. Before this coming update, decks were classified based on their prevalence relative to the average of the other sets. But now, instead of a strict average, it's going to be the upper edge of the confidence interval constructed around that average. This makes it less likely that flavor-of-the-month decks get pushed in. For instance, the average prevalence on MTGO right now is about 1.1%. But the upper limit of the confidence interval is 1.2%. This small difference, seemingly not important, makes the tiering a bit more precise.
The second change is that the sheet no longer uses the strict prevalence numbers from SCG Baltimore Day 2, which was the last major paper event but happened months ago. Instead, it adjusts all those numbers based on their current metagame trends. So many of the Day 2 metagame #s have gone down, which makes sense given how the metagame has shifted away from the kind of polarization we saw at SCG Baltimore. For instance, before the adjustment applied, the Day 2 # for Abzan was 18% or something similar. But now it's 12%. This is an extrapolation in the absence of other major paper events, and we will thankfully get some new data in June.
Oh when did you change that? Wasn't the data range the time between the ban announcements before?
Secondly
"The Mad Statistician" is really a fitting title for you. Every time I read posts like this from you where you go deep on number stuff Im reminded that Im working in the retail business and I have no idea what you are talking about
And lastly
Hurray Jund probably takes it rightful place again. What a glorious time.
Shodai, LEH? Where are you?
http://modernnexus.com/modern-metagame-breakdown-41-51/
The big takeaways:
-Jund is moving up to tier 1
-Grixis Delver is not moving up to tier 1 yet
-Tier 2 has some decks moving in (e.g. Esper Mentor) and out (e.g. Living End)
-Developing Competitive will be the new home for Elves and Podless Pod
Feel free to discuss, give feedback on, and generally reflect on the upcoming changes before they get pushed out to the site!
The 2 current best control decks have a combined metashare of 2.3% or if you are generous and include Scapeshift it's 4.6%. That's worse than I expected, really no improvement at all.
And considering how good control in Standard is, I don't see us getting any good new cards for it. I could whine about unbans, but these won't happen anyway because everyone is too scared of Twin. So all in all it's looking pretty grim for all control players.
My answer right now is simply to go bigger. I am working on a Black/White control deck with 4 maindeck Blood Barons of Vizkopa, 4 Lingering Souls, 3 Sorin Solemn Visitors, 3 maindeck Wraths of Gods, and a bunch of removal spells (Victim of Night, Path to Exile, Murderous Cut, Dismember) and it is pretty strong against BGx.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Forums are being updated! This update reflects the 4/1 - 5/1 period and shows the Modern metagame for the past month. My Modern Nexus article, Modern Metagame Breakdown: 4/1-5/1 , covers the whole metagame and gives some context and details behind the broader metagame picture. You can also check the Nexus Top Decks page on the site itself, if you are interested in the raw data behind the update, or to see the different tiers in table form.
Looking at our subforums on MTGS, here's a summary of all the changes made in the past update:
TIER 1
-Jund promoted from Tier 2
TIER 2
-Jund promoted to Tier 1
-UWR Midrange and Esper Mentor Midrange promoted from Developing Competitive
-Living End moved to Developing Competitive
DEVELOPING COMPETITIVE
-UWR Midrange and Esper Mentor Midrange promoted to Tier 2
-Living End moved to Developing Competitive from Tier 2
-Elves and Podless Pod promoted to Developing Competitive from Deck Creation
DECK CREATION
-Grixis Control stickied
-Elves and Podless Pod moved to Developing Competitive
For more information on any deck's move, you can check out the deck thread itself; I always post a few sentences explaining its move. Note that these explanations will be posted between 11 CST and 1 CST, so if you check them right away after this post is live you won't see them yet.
If anyone has any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to post them here or PM me. Try not to discuss them in the deck threads themselves, as this tends to distract from deck development. Also, before you post, I strongly encourage you to check out the deck threads for the individual explanations, or the Modern Metagame Breakdown article for more details.
WURUWr Stoneblade
Modern
WRGNaya Zoo Company
I would not call this a podless pod. The comparison is hurting....
Got there, boys!
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
I call it GWx Company.
DECKS:
UB Faeries [Midrange/Tempo]
RWUGB Affinity[Aggro]
FAERIES TOO STRONK!!!1111
- Fae Prophecy, 201
5678Why wouldn't you call it that? The only difference between it and the more midrangey/value Pod lists from before the ban are Goyfs and, well, the lack of Pod. Otherwise, the shell is remarkably similar and the play style isn't that dissimilar.
Which deck are you talking about? I'm talking about this one and its variants:
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=84358
I have a list together and just started testing not long ago
I've never played the deck, but does it have enough raw power even if the only graveyard hate is Scavenging Ooze?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.