somehow i have trouble drawing colcusions from a graph that has 43% of the meta classified as 'other'...
The link quoted has a further breakdown. No other deck had more than 3 copies in the top 100. There were 6 decks each at 2 and 3 copies, the rest at a single copy.
Normandin on Bant Eldrazi
Burton on Burn
Linne on Affinity
Pisano on RG Breach
Solave on Suicide Zoo
Lipp on RG Breach
Pascal on Affinity
Semerau on GW Hatebears
Fun fact: the T8 deck meta is slightly more diverse than the first name meta (2 Affinity, 2 Breach vs 3 Brandons, 2 Ryans).
Together with the Grixis wins mean we are GOOD TO GO.
It's interesting that the lists feels like a step backwards. Rather than try and be the Delver/control hybrid that was gaining popularity, it was back to running Young Pyromancer and Gitaxian Probe. I guess if you want a quicker clock and expect less interaction, that's the better path to take.
Together with the Grixis wins mean we are GOOD TO GO.
It's interesting that the lists feels like a step backwards. Rather than try and be the Delver/control hybrid that was gaining popularity, it was back to running Young Pyromancer and Gitaxian Probe. I guess if you want a quicker clock and expect less interaction, that's the better path to take.
You'll need to understand the context. If you look at the top 32, you'll find no BGx and many Tron and Infect, both which are favourable matchups for Delver. No BGx to ruin the party for Delver there. Still awesome it won through two Burn decks .
It's interesting that the lists feels like a step backwards. Rather than try and be the Delver/control hybrid that was gaining popularity, it was back to running Young Pyromancer and Gitaxian Probe. I guess if you want a quicker clock and expect less interaction, that's the better path to take.
He also run just 4 counters maindeck, instead of the usual 8-9 package. That's bad for the "control" hybrid side of the deck, which I loved.
I play the 20-land hybrid version and love it. I feel it creates much more engaging and enjoyable games. Playing solitaire while trying to count to 20 never appealed to me.
Wish I could have seen GP Guangzhou instead of GP Indy. Congratulations to Brandon for his win, but from a format health perspective, it was not the Modern I wanted to enjoy all weekend. Maybe the next GP and subsequent SCG Opens/Classics will be better.
No wonder Wizards doesn't listen to the masses. (At least LSV and Gaby agreed it was unfair.)
Fair/Unfair was the subject of a FoF, and I came real close to screaming at my monitor that the problem with calling things fair/unfair right now is that overwhelmingly it seems that it's
>fair is anything I have a positive matchup rate against
>unfair is anything I have a negative matchup rate against
The whole thing is really arbitrary and varies based on the individuals inevitably-biased idea of what constitutes fair Magic. At some point it apparently became accepted that BANT ELDRAZI is a fair deck; BANT ELDRAZI, still capable of the occasional TURN 2 TKS TURN 3 REALITY SMASHER curve-out, is a fair deck!
Sometimes it kills me what kind of language is used to talk about Magic, because it just seems perfectly engineered to breed some form of stupidity. I recall LSV having a slip of the tongue and lumping Modern in with eternal formats, you know what that unintentionally adds fuel to the fire to? Those inane requests that Modern have an alternative channel for card influx that sidesteps Standard, something that makes sense for an eternal format but is incompatible with the particular quirk of Modern's design (that only Standard-legal cards can enter the format) that BY DEFINITION MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CALL AN ETERNAL FORMAT.
Now that I've gotten those triggers off the stack, I think it needs to be emphasized, AS IT ALWAYS SHOULD, that everyone is bad at Magic.
Everyone.
Even the people who are good at Magic are bad at it.
...that all being said, I appreciate the intent of the segment, and I actually think it should stay. I just also happen to think it's pretty much a goldmine of garbage opinions to roast and ridicule people over.
Wish I could have seen GP Guangzhou instead of GP Indy. Congratulations to Brandon for his win, but from a format health perspective, it was not the Modern I wanted to enjoy all weekend. Maybe the next GP and subsequent SCG Opens/Classics will be better.
Yeah, that "finale" definitely showcased some of the worst Modern has to offer. Ignore opponent, get good draws, win through whatever they're doing as long as you're faster. But I gotta say, that triple bolt for the win was NASTY!
I'm not really a negative person. Modern is my favorite format. I really don't know how much time does that feeling has left.
I didn't enjoy Top 8, it was really awful to see those Breach decks try to outrace the aggro decks of the format.
I despise Hatebears and i was rooting for it.
Now that we have another Affinity in our sideboards to deal with(Dredge) for the first time in my 5 years as a MTG player i'm considering playing Standard or just go Draft to have some fun.
I think is time to give the format some different aproach. You have to be blind and deaf to not realize Modern is a linear fest where trying to goldsfish is money in the bank.
R&D just have to figure it out, don't ask the community to do their jobs for you. I don't know if it's Twin Unban, Dark Depths, Counterspell reprint whatever it is. There has to be someway to make control decks take down big tournaments.
I'm not really a negative person. Modern is my favorite format. I really don't know how much time does that feeling has left.
I didn't enjoy Top 8, it was really awful to see those Breach decks try to outrace the aggro decks of the format.
I despise Hatebears and i was rooting for it.
Now that we have another Affinity in our sideboards to deal with(Dredge) for the first time in my 5 years as a MTG player i'm considering playing Standard or just go Draft to have some fun.
I think is time to give the format some different aproach. You have to be blind and deaf to not realize Modern is a linear fest where trying to goldsfish is money in the bank.
R&D just have to figure it out, don't ask the community to do their jobs for you. I don't know if it's Twin Unban, Dark Depths, Counterspell reprint whatever it is. There has to be someway to make control decks take down big tournaments.
The level of noninteractive decks is just becoming too much for me too. I don't see how Suicide Zoo can stay around much longer. How many times can it win on turn 3/4 through multiple instances of interaction? Burn has its place, but I really question a format where it is a 1 A/B/C deck. Affinity isn't looking as bad, but I am starting to understand why people can say Mox is an issue. Doesn't help that a lot of players seem to think Grim Flayer is a playable card at this point though…
R&D just have to figure it out, don't ask the community to do their jobs for you. I don't know if it's Twin Unban, Dark Depths, Counterspell reprint whatever it is. There has to be someway to make control decks take down big tournaments.
Why is that a desirable result?
Also, there were 3 "control" decks in the Top 8s at Lille and Guangzhou. Indy was a bit of an outlier, for whatever reason, but I can imagine that there simply weren't a whole lot of Jund/Emeria/Jeskai registered.
R&D just have to figure it out, don't ask the community to do their jobs for you. I don't know if it's Twin Unban, Dark Depths, Counterspell reprint whatever it is. There has to be someway to make control decks take down big tournaments.
Why is that a desirable result?
Also, there were 3 "control" decks in the Top 8s at Lille and Guangzhou. Indy was a bit of an outlier, for whatever reason, but I can imagine that there simply weren't a whole lot of Jund/Emeria/Jeskai registered.
Yeah that sounded kinda selfish and i apologize for making that last statement so boldly.
What i meant was that every big category of player should have the oportunity to win a Grand Prix playing some form of strategy.
In the case of Modern, i put Jund, Abzan, Grixis and those kind of decks in the same bag as Jeskai, which seems to be the defacto best control deck in Modern. To me, there are to pillars, interactive and non interactive. Clearly, i don't recall seeing an interactive deck take down a big tournament since the last absurd powerful cards were banned. Those are DRS, BBE,etc. To me Twin interacted to keep some decks in check, but their gameplan was to put infinite tokens on turn 4, nothing else. If you didn't like to interact well, Twin made you do so by having a more reliable combo.
The level of noninteractive decks is just becoming too much for me too. I don't see how Suicide Zoo can stay around much longer. How many times can it win on turn 3/4 through multiple instances of interaction?
Probably the same as Infect, but with Suicide Zoo, lifegain can help to buy time. Infect has survived playing a similar game as suicide zoo, and a less risky one (one that you don't put yourself on burn range)
No wonder Wizards doesn't listen to the masses. (At least LSV and Gaby agreed it was unfair.)
How is it not a fair deck? It's just an aggro deck with a higher emphasis on pumping the creatures than swarming the board. It's really just a better version of Atarka Red from the previous Standard that's swapped out the tokens for the Death's Shadow synergy, and if we're going to try to claim something like Atarka Red is unfair then we might as well throw the whole definition away.
Fair/Unfair was the subject of a FoF, and I came real close to screaming at my monitor that the problem with calling things fair/unfair right now is that overwhelmingly it seems that it's
>fair is anything I have a positive matchup rate against
>unfair is anything I have a negative matchup rate against
The whole thing is really arbitrary and varies based on the individuals inevitably-biased idea of what constitutes fair Magic. At some point it apparently became accepted that BANT ELDRAZI is a fair deck; BANT ELDRAZI, still capable of the occasional TURN 2 TKS TURN 3 REALITY SMASHER curve-out, is a fair deck!
It is a fair deck. You just cast creatures and attack with them. There's no instant win combos or weird axes of attack; you're basically just playing an aggro deck. Sure, thanks to the accelerants you're able to get ahead with the curve with the creatures, but that's hardly "unfair." I mean, what, are we going to say that Grixis Delver is now unfair because of its possibility of getting turn 2 Tasigur? (I've seen it happen) That sequence of plays you described from Bant Eldrazi isn't unfair, just powerful. Turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Tarmogoyf (or Dark Confidant), turn 3 Liliana is pretty powerful but is similarly "fair."
Unfair is when you're attacking from irregular axes. Scapeshift wants to sacrifice 8 lands and dump 6 Mountains and Valakut into play; that's not playing the game normally at all. Same thing with combos like Splinter Twin (attack with infinite tokens) or gaining infinite life. Having creatures that due to certain synergies are ahead of the curve isn't anything like that. Otherwise we might as well say Wild Nacatl is unfair because oh boy is a 3/3 for one Green mana undercosted.
Unfortunately, whoever came up with the terms fair and unfair didn't seem to consider the fact that "fair" has a rather different meaning in the vernacular which results in confusion. Maybe something like "regular" and "irregular" would have been better.
Sometimes it kills me what kind of language is used to talk about Magic, because it just seems perfectly engineered to breed some form of stupidity. I recall LSV having a slip of the tongue and lumping Modern in with eternal formats, you know what that unintentionally adds fuel to the fire to? Those inane requests that Modern have an alternative channel for card influx that sidesteps Standard, something that makes sense for an eternal format but is incompatible with the particular quirk of Modern's design (that only Standard-legal cards can enter the format) that BY DEFINITION MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CALL AN ETERNAL FORMAT.
How is it "inane" that Modern have an alternative channel? Quite frankly I think the "Standard only" is kind of stupid. It made some sense back then when they weren't printing supplementary products like crazy, but things have changed and it's resulted in the format being deprived of a ton of interesting cards.
I'll agree it's not an Eternal format (though honestly people referring to it doesn't bother me any more than when people say "mainboard" in that it bugs me a little but I also concede it doesn't really matter), however.
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Well if you combine Abzan and Jund in the general "BGx" it's 16%!
But either way, it gives us a great snapshot of this healthy and robust format:
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
In the yard: RUG Delver, Kiki-Chord, Grixis Twin, Mardu Control, Smallpox, Jeskai Control, Jeskai Delver, Assault Loam, Elves, Deathcloud, Eggs, Storm
What exactly is the numerical value of "AirSe" supposed to be?
The link quoted has a further breakdown. No other deck had more than 3 copies in the top 100. There were 6 decks each at 2 and 3 copies, the rest at a single copy.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil16/finals-thomas-hendriks-vs-meciek-berger-2016-08-28
2 decks with pump spells = instagib mode
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Normandin on Bant Eldrazi
Burton on Burn
Linne on Affinity
Pisano on RG Breach
Solave on Suicide Zoo
Lipp on RG Breach
Pascal on Affinity
Semerau on GW Hatebears
Fun fact: the T8 deck meta is slightly more diverse than the first name meta (2 Affinity, 2 Breach vs 3 Brandons, 2 Ryans).
edit: Amulet Scout is 9th at Lille
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
"Healthy and diverse format."
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
It's interesting that the lists feels like a step backwards. Rather than try and be the Delver/control hybrid that was gaining popularity, it was back to running Young Pyromancer and Gitaxian Probe. I guess if you want a quicker clock and expect less interaction, that's the better path to take.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
You'll need to understand the context. If you look at the top 32, you'll find no BGx and many Tron and Infect, both which are favourable matchups for Delver. No BGx to ruin the party for Delver there. Still awesome it won through two Burn decks .
DECKS:
UB Faeries [Midrange/Tempo]
RWUGB Affinity[Aggro]
FAERIES TOO STRONK!!!1111
- Fae Prophecy, 201
5678I play the 20-land hybrid version and love it. I feel it creates much more engaging and enjoyable games. Playing solitaire while trying to count to 20 never appealed to me.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
We're ****ed.
No wonder Wizards doesn't listen to the masses. (At least LSV and Gaby agreed it was unfair.)
Fair/Unfair was the subject of a FoF, and I came real close to screaming at my monitor that the problem with calling things fair/unfair right now is that overwhelmingly it seems that it's
>fair is anything I have a positive matchup rate against
>unfair is anything I have a negative matchup rate against
The whole thing is really arbitrary and varies based on the individuals inevitably-biased idea of what constitutes fair Magic. At some point it apparently became accepted that BANT ELDRAZI is a fair deck; BANT ELDRAZI, still capable of the occasional TURN 2 TKS TURN 3 REALITY SMASHER curve-out, is a fair deck!
Sometimes it kills me what kind of language is used to talk about Magic, because it just seems perfectly engineered to breed some form of stupidity. I recall LSV having a slip of the tongue and lumping Modern in with eternal formats, you know what that unintentionally adds fuel to the fire to? Those inane requests that Modern have an alternative channel for card influx that sidesteps Standard, something that makes sense for an eternal format but is incompatible with the particular quirk of Modern's design (that only Standard-legal cards can enter the format) that BY DEFINITION MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CALL AN ETERNAL FORMAT.
Now that I've gotten those triggers off the stack, I think it needs to be emphasized, AS IT ALWAYS SHOULD, that everyone is bad at Magic.
Everyone.
Even the people who are good at Magic are bad at it.
...that all being said, I appreciate the intent of the segment, and I actually think it should stay. I just also happen to think it's pretty much a goldmine of garbage opinions to roast and ridicule people over.
In the form of MLG montage parodies.
With copious amount of air horn.
Yeah, that "finale" definitely showcased some of the worst Modern has to offer. Ignore opponent, get good draws, win through whatever they're doing as long as you're faster. But I gotta say, that triple bolt for the win was NASTY!
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I didn't enjoy Top 8, it was really awful to see those Breach decks try to outrace the aggro decks of the format.
I despise Hatebears and i was rooting for it.
Now that we have another Affinity in our sideboards to deal with(Dredge) for the first time in my 5 years as a MTG player i'm considering playing Standard or just go Draft to have some fun.
I think is time to give the format some different aproach. You have to be blind and deaf to not realize Modern is a linear fest where trying to goldsfish is money in the bank.
R&D just have to figure it out, don't ask the community to do their jobs for you. I don't know if it's Twin Unban, Dark Depths, Counterspell reprint whatever it is. There has to be someway to make control decks take down big tournaments.
The level of noninteractive decks is just becoming too much for me too. I don't see how Suicide Zoo can stay around much longer. How many times can it win on turn 3/4 through multiple instances of interaction? Burn has its place, but I really question a format where it is a 1 A/B/C deck. Affinity isn't looking as bad, but I am starting to understand why people can say Mox is an issue. Doesn't help that a lot of players seem to think Grim Flayer is a playable card at this point though…
Standard
W.I.P.
EDH
WNorn Tokens
Why is that a desirable result?
Also, there were 3 "control" decks in the Top 8s at Lille and Guangzhou. Indy was a bit of an outlier, for whatever reason, but I can imagine that there simply weren't a whole lot of Jund/Emeria/Jeskai registered.
Yeah that sounded kinda selfish and i apologize for making that last statement so boldly.
What i meant was that every big category of player should have the oportunity to win a Grand Prix playing some form of strategy.
In the case of Modern, i put Jund, Abzan, Grixis and those kind of decks in the same bag as Jeskai, which seems to be the defacto best control deck in Modern. To me, there are to pillars, interactive and non interactive. Clearly, i don't recall seeing an interactive deck take down a big tournament since the last absurd powerful cards were banned. Those are DRS, BBE,etc. To me Twin interacted to keep some decks in check, but their gameplan was to put infinite tokens on turn 4, nothing else. If you didn't like to interact well, Twin made you do so by having a more reliable combo.
Because we want to play Magic: The Gathering, not solitaire.
Unfair is when you're attacking from irregular axes. Scapeshift wants to sacrifice 8 lands and dump 6 Mountains and Valakut into play; that's not playing the game normally at all. Same thing with combos like Splinter Twin (attack with infinite tokens) or gaining infinite life. Having creatures that due to certain synergies are ahead of the curve isn't anything like that. Otherwise we might as well say Wild Nacatl is unfair because oh boy is a 3/3 for one Green mana undercosted.
Unfortunately, whoever came up with the terms fair and unfair didn't seem to consider the fact that "fair" has a rather different meaning in the vernacular which results in confusion. Maybe something like "regular" and "irregular" would have been better.
How is it "inane" that Modern have an alternative channel? Quite frankly I think the "Standard only" is kind of stupid. It made some sense back then when they weren't printing supplementary products like crazy, but things have changed and it's resulted in the format being deprived of a ton of interesting cards.
I'll agree it's not an Eternal format (though honestly people referring to it doesn't bother me any more than when people say "mainboard" in that it bugs me a little but I also concede it doesn't really matter), however.