Updated 2017 meta: combined GPs and SCG's Opens; data starts from GP Copenhagen/ GP Kobe (around the time when Jund DS was supplanted by Grixis, and bant eldrazi by eldrazi tron) --> i consider this cut-off to be more representative of the actual meta.
In my opinion Grixis DS and Eldrazi tron are one step above the rest of the field, thought the data sample is really limited and the fact that groups of 2 GPs are compressed in the same days clearly doesn't help in having a picture of a better developed metagame (Grixis DS numbers, for example, are affected by its spike around the Charlotte Open).
Due to the difficulties in the eldrazi tron classification, i've made two graphics of the meta suddivision in archetypes, in the first graph eldrazi tron is put togrther with midrange decks, in the second one together with ramp, obviously this change depict two very different metas.
that's interesting. I would argue for a death shadow and temple ban.
Even before I seen this data, I've felt these 2 cards would need to leave together.
Format would be more healthy Imo. Of course this is all speculation. But interesting nonetheless.
I think you just need to hit Temple, not Shadow. Part of the reason Shadow is this popular is because of its matchup with E-Tron. Take away one of its prey and a lot of the rest of the meta can bring down Shadow's numbers. That could be wrong, but I'd rather wait a ban cycle and find out than ban both at once. But Temple has to go.
I don't see any reason to ban Shadow. Temple maybe at some point, but not yet. They are the two best decks in the format probably, but they aren't overwhelming, you can beat thrm, and they don't break the t4 rule.
I really do feel that the t4 rule is the only one that should matter, not some silly meta percentage rule. Know why? If a deck is a quarter of the meta, the rest will adjust to fix it. If BBE and DRS came back, they wouldn't bump anything to winning too FAST. Tron would eat Jund, fast combo would eat Tron, life goes on. If decks are banned for being over represented, the next best deck is found, eventually something has too high a percentage, it gets banned, so on and so forth until what do you know, Nacatl is banned again because
'Zoo is so much faster and more consistent than anything else in the format. It's tier 0.5!'.....because the ban list is like 100 cards and Goyf, Shadow, the Urza lands, Mox Opal, Bolt, and Serum Visions are all banned.
Bans beget bans, and once we go down that road, Wizards would scrap the format before admitting mistakes
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I don't see any reason to ban Shadow. Temple maybe at some point, but not yet. They are the two best decks in the format probably, but they aren't overwhelming, you can beat them, and they don't break the t4 rule.
That has certainly never stopped Wizards in the past, which is incredibly depressing and frustrating.
I think you just need to hit Temple, not Shadow. Part of the reason Shadow is this popular is because of its matchup with E-Tron. Take away one of its prey and a lot of the rest of the meta can bring down Shadow's numbers.
What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.
I think you just need to hit Temple, not Shadow. Part of the reason Shadow is this popular is because of its matchup with E-Tron. Take away one of its prey and a lot of the rest of the meta can bring down Shadow's numbers.
What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.
"Your post doesn't comport with my own anecdotal personal experience so you must have no idea what you're talking about." ROFL.
What basically the 300 best Magic players in the world choose to play at the most important tournament after practicing for weeks is not the health of Modern.
Considering that 37.5% of the tournament has absolutely nothing to do with Modern whatsoever, I would agree that the Pro Tour is mostly useless in regards to determining the health or lack thereof in Modern. One may say that we could just try to compare how people did in the Modern portion (i.e. which decks got the most points in it), but that is adversely affected by the fact that the matchups within the Modern section are heavily affected by how they performed in the Draft portion.
The health of Modern is what people are playing in FNM. Alright. I guess not the FNMs in Grand Rapids, or Kuala Lumpur, or Moscow specifically, no. The health of Modern is what people play in FNMs in general!
Yeah I know you also said Opens and Mtgo, but it's the same thing.
I believe the point was that what matters to players in general is the health at the places they are actually playing. The Pro Tour metagame could be the most warped metagame in the history of the game but if it's not trickling down to the lower level tournaments, players aren't really affected by it.
However, even disregarding this, the major impact of the Draft section (which has nothing to do with what Modern deck you pick) makes the Pro Tour a very dubious choice of information for the the metagame.
And yet, the Pro Tour has been a massive deciding factor in nearly every ban in the format's history. Bringing Modern back to the PT is probably the most terrifying thing in terms of bans, despite the very correct assessment that overall results are mostly meaningless.
What basically the 300 best Magic players in the world choose to play at the most important tournament after practicing for weeks is not the health of Modern.
Considering that 37.5% of the tournament has absolutely nothing to do with Modern whatsoever, I would agree that the Pro Tour is mostly useless in regards to determining the health or lack thereof in Modern. One may say that we could just try to compare how people did in the Modern portion (i.e. which decks got the most points in it), but that is adversely affected by the fact that the matchups within the Modern section are heavily affected by how they performed in the Draft portion.
I think Holydiva was talking less about inferring from the Pro Tour metagame or results, and more about what the Pro Tour will do to the meta. It isn't that a 300 person tournament (that isn't even fully Modern) will tell us what decks are truly the best.
If you put a group of amazing magic players in a room and tell them to play a deck that will give them the best chance to win a load of money, they won't just pick the best deck. They'll make it.
I think the point was that the Pro Tour will give incentive to them to come up with the most busted deck possible. Those are usually leaps and bounds better than what the rest of us come up with alone, and in our spare time. If such a deck shows up, a lot of the rest of us are going to want to play it, which means it will probably be the Boogeyman of the format, and warp Modern significantly.
That would probably be unhealthy for the metagame.
What basically the 300 best Magic players in the world choose to play at the most important tournament after practicing for weeks is not the health of Modern.
Considering that 37.5% of the tournament has absolutely nothing to do with Modern whatsoever, I would agree that the Pro Tour is mostly useless in regards to determining the health or lack thereof in Modern. One may say that we could just try to compare how people did in the Modern portion (i.e. which decks got the most points in it), but that is adversely affected by the fact that the matchups within the Modern section are heavily affected by how they performed in the Draft portion.
I think Holydiva was talking less about inferring from the Pro Tour metagame or results, and more about what the Pro Tour will do to the meta. It isn't that a 300 person tournament (that isn't even fully Modern) will tell us what decks are truly the best.
If you put a group of amazing magic players in a room and tell them to play a deck that will give them the best chance to win a load of money, they won't just pick the best deck. They'll make it.
I think the point was that the Pro Tour will give incentive to them to come up with the most busted deck possible. Those are usually leaps and bounds better than what the rest of us come up with alone, and in our spare time. If such a deck shows up, a lot of the rest of us are going to want to play it, which means it will probably be the Boogeyman of the format, and warp Modern significantly.
That would probably be unhealthy for the metagame.
I came to post the same thing, but you beat me to it. Instead I'll just clarify one little point. You said "...they won't just pick the best deck. They'll make it." While that's sometimes true, it's also true that they often refine what's already the best or close to the best.
To reiterate, the fact that the Pro Tour is only partially Modern or of a small size don't matter whatsoever. What matters is that people will want to play what the pros play, which has an enormous ripple effect on the format.
Eldratron has a hard time with elves and affinity if they don't get chalice on 1. Heck if I want to ban anything, I'll ban Chalice of the Void. That one card is the only reason EldraTron has a chance against multitude of decks.
But that said, if that does get banned, tons of cheap 1 CMC decks spring back out all over the place. So I rather just keep it around, and keep playing until someone solves the puzzle.
and yet with chalice in etron we still have alot of top tier decks who run a ton of 1cmc cards. I don't see your point.
The point is that it can't just rely on Chalice to autowin games. If these 1CMC decks run rampant and ETron can't stop it, it'll fall out of favor. YOu make it sound like E Tron has zero weakness and can destroy everyone turn 1, 2, and 3. If it can't throw down a Chalice Turn 1, it has an even worse matchup with Burn, Shadow, Elves.
They just did a double ban in Vintage because of the duopoly of that format. But there Mentor and Workshops were what? 80% combined? Here Eldrazi and GDS is what? Just over 30% according to TheMoonShield's data? Maybe 35% across a few variants? What have other decks been at that have previously gotten the Banhammer? I think it's a good idea to think about percentage of the field, but even 15% doesn't exactly come off as oppressive. Especially if there's a bit of variations on a theme as opposed to a specific build. Maybe that's the risk of the PT? Some of the variants fall away as players coalesce around a clear favorite.
EDIT: What's the appropriate target meta-game share for top-tier decks? How many should there be? Probably 1 or 2 per archetype? What about the combined Tier 1 percentage of the field?
They just did a double ban in Vintage because of the duopoly of that format. But there Mentor and Workshops were what? 80% combined? Here Eldrazi and GDS is what? Just over 30% according to TheMoonShield's data? Maybe 35% across a few variants?
We have no idea what the true numbers are because Wizards has cut off any meaningful data to the public (that was already pretty thin to begin with). What we do know is that GDS and ETron have consistently high Day 2 numbers at basically every event for the past several months. We have no idea where the true numbers lie, but decks have been banned for less in the past.
They just did a double ban in Vintage because of the duopoly of that format. But there Mentor and Workshops were what? 80% combined? Here Eldrazi and GDS is what? Just over 30% according to TheMoonShield's data? Maybe 35% across a few variants? What have other decks been at that have previously gotten the Banhammer? I think it's a good idea to think about percentage of the field, but even 15% doesn't exactly come off as oppressive. Especially if there's a bit of variations on a theme as opposed to a specific build. Maybe that's the risk of the PT? Some of the variants fall away as players coalesce around a clear favorite.
EDIT: What's the appropriate target meta-game share for top-tier decks? How many should there be? Probably 1 or 2 per archetype? What about the combined Tier 1 percentage of the field?
Sadly, when Twin was banned, the combined meta game percentages of all the URx Twin builds only came out to about 11.5%, which (as far as I know) has been the lowest meta share of any deck banned for being too good in Wizards's eyes. Hopefully since then they've decided that 10-11% is a reasonable meta share, but I'd imagine that 10-11% is the soft cap for any deck, and that if a deck's meta share consistently stays at or beyond 12% for too long Wizards will start eyeing the ban hammer.
This is just speculation though since the only deck I know of that was nerfed after hitting 15% (Miracles) relied on SDT, and I could only imagine that WotC was looking for any reason to ban SDT just for logistical reasons. I'd be surprised if they knew a deck had steadily risen to 15% and they didn't hit something out of it
but i think almost every deck has the potential to spike a modern tournament.
Outside of Eldrazi Winter, this has been true for essentially every time in all of Modern's history, and is not really indicative of format health in of itself.
I think you just need to hit Temple, not Shadow. Part of the reason Shadow is this popular is because of its matchup with E-Tron. Take away one of its prey and a lot of the rest of the meta can bring down Shadow's numbers.
What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.
"Your post doesn't comport with my own anecdotal personal experience so you must have no idea what you're talking about." ROFL.
Go ask on the ET forum if ET is prey to GDS. Seriously.
I think you just need to hit Temple, not Shadow. Part of the reason Shadow is this popular is because of its matchup with E-Tron. Take away one of its prey and a lot of the rest of the meta can bring down Shadow's numbers.
What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.
"Your post doesn't comport with my own anecdotal personal experience so you must have no idea what you're talking about." ROFL.
Go ask on the ET forum if ET is prey to GDS. Seriously.
why would i ask 20 biased people when i can instead rely on actual data?
Eldrazi Tron wrecks GDS, like it's gotta be 65>35. How people can claim its 50/50 is crazy. The conditions that need to be met by Eldrazi Tron are way less restrictive than GDS.
Just look at the decks on paper. If you were playing yourself and had decent skill with both decks, it's easy to see how lopsided the matchup is.
Eldrazi Tron wrecks GDS, like it's gotta be 65>35. How people can claim its 50/50 is crazy. The conditions that need to be met by Eldrazi Tron are way less restrictive than GDS.
Just look at the decks on paper. If you were playing yourself and had decent skill with both decks, it's easy to see how lopsided the matchup is.
Nope. Like gkourou says it's close to 50/50. It might swing 55/45 one way or the other depending on the build/sideboard options and how tailored each deck is to the matchup.
It's an interesting microcosm of this forum to see across just a few posts one person claiming GDS "preys on" ET, while another says ET "wrecks" GDS. So yeah.
What have other decks been at that have previously gotten the Banhammer?
The most important number, if not the deciding one, is the GP Top8 %. We know that 13% is fine and +19% is bannable, at least for the diversity criteria.
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Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.
"Your post doesn't comport with my own anecdotal personal experience so you must have no idea what you're talking about." ROFL.
Go ask on the ET forum if ET is prey to GDS. Seriously.
why would i ask 20 biased people when i can instead rely on actual data?
I don't have data from >100 games, but I can easily tell you that I would rather play Grixis Shadow than any control or midrange deck when I am up against Eldra Tron. (matchup seems about even to me, though and if they go turn 1 relic of progenitus life is very hard)
Edit: you are both kind of right.
Eldra Tron pushes people away from playing Control or Midrange decks and into playing Shadow, because it's better vs it than playing any other control or midrange deck. That's the reason why Eldrazi Temple should be hit, since it warps the format that way.
But the matchup still is about even.
I have no doubt in my mind that temple should be banned, but if its hit without death shadow wouldn't death shadow dominate even more?
It's an interesting microcosm of this forum to see across just a few posts one person claiming GDS "preys on" ET, while another says ET "wrecks" GDS. So yeah.
That's the game in general. People just develop "feelings" about matchups and metagames. Little of it is based on actual reality, especially given how high variance is in the game. It takes thousands of games to really say one way or another.
It seems to be that Fatal Push more or less made most creature reliant decks (without Shadow) obsolete. That is likely the reason that Eldrazi Tron is so well positioned next to RG Valakut, removal doesn't really hurt these decks. I really don't understand why people see a Rock/Paper/Scissors metagame as a bad thing, that's how Modern (or any format really) has always been. There is always a bigger fish that will prey on any given archetype.
Also if youre just sick of it and want to beat Eldrazi there are plenty of options out there, just not many options that involve midrange or control, which is how it should be. Aggro/Combo > Ramp > Midrange/Control > Aggro/Combo, not so sure whats hard to get about that.
BTW @all the control/blue players who hate Eldrazi Tron. Just rock UR Breach or Blue Moon. Blood Moon, Spreading Seas and a fast clock beats Eldrazi and you still have game against the rest of the field. You just don't get to use Path or Push.
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Modern Decks
RG BBE Ponza UX Eldrazi Tron UR Jace Breach
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Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
I really do feel that the t4 rule is the only one that should matter, not some silly meta percentage rule. Know why? If a deck is a quarter of the meta, the rest will adjust to fix it. If BBE and DRS came back, they wouldn't bump anything to winning too FAST. Tron would eat Jund, fast combo would eat Tron, life goes on. If decks are banned for being over represented, the next best deck is found, eventually something has too high a percentage, it gets banned, so on and so forth until what do you know, Nacatl is banned again because
'Zoo is so much faster and more consistent than anything else in the format. It's tier 0.5!'.....because the ban list is like 100 cards and Goyf, Shadow, the Urza lands, Mox Opal, Bolt, and Serum Visions are all banned.
Bans beget bans, and once we go down that road, Wizards would scrap the format before admitting mistakes
That has certainly never stopped Wizards in the past, which is incredibly depressing and frustrating.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
What a bunch of nonsense. ET is Shadow's prey? Do you really believe that? That matchup is close to 50/50, and I actually feel slightly favored tbh. Not sure why you'd post about things like this when you have no idea what you are talking about.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
I believe the point was that what matters to players in general is the health at the places they are actually playing. The Pro Tour metagame could be the most warped metagame in the history of the game but if it's not trickling down to the lower level tournaments, players aren't really affected by it.
However, even disregarding this, the major impact of the Draft section (which has nothing to do with what Modern deck you pick) makes the Pro Tour a very dubious choice of information for the the metagame.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I think Holydiva was talking less about inferring from the Pro Tour metagame or results, and more about what the Pro Tour will do to the meta. It isn't that a 300 person tournament (that isn't even fully Modern) will tell us what decks are truly the best.
If you put a group of amazing magic players in a room and tell them to play a deck that will give them the best chance to win a load of money, they won't just pick the best deck. They'll make it.
I think the point was that the Pro Tour will give incentive to them to come up with the most busted deck possible. Those are usually leaps and bounds better than what the rest of us come up with alone, and in our spare time. If such a deck shows up, a lot of the rest of us are going to want to play it, which means it will probably be the Boogeyman of the format, and warp Modern significantly.
That would probably be unhealthy for the metagame.
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
To reiterate, the fact that the Pro Tour is only partially Modern or of a small size don't matter whatsoever. What matters is that people will want to play what the pros play, which has an enormous ripple effect on the format.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
The point is that it can't just rely on Chalice to autowin games. If these 1CMC decks run rampant and ETron can't stop it, it'll fall out of favor. YOu make it sound like E Tron has zero weakness and can destroy everyone turn 1, 2, and 3. If it can't throw down a Chalice Turn 1, it has an even worse matchup with Burn, Shadow, Elves.
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
EDIT: What's the appropriate target meta-game share for top-tier decks? How many should there be? Probably 1 or 2 per archetype? What about the combined Tier 1 percentage of the field?
We have no idea what the true numbers are because Wizards has cut off any meaningful data to the public (that was already pretty thin to begin with). What we do know is that GDS and ETron have consistently high Day 2 numbers at basically every event for the past several months. We have no idea where the true numbers lie, but decks have been banned for less in the past.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
This is just speculation though since the only deck I know of that was nerfed after hitting 15% (Miracles) relied on SDT, and I could only imagine that WotC was looking for any reason to ban SDT just for logistical reasons. I'd be surprised if they knew a deck had steadily risen to 15% and they didn't hit something out of it
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
Outside of Eldrazi Winter, this has been true for essentially every time in all of Modern's history, and is not really indicative of format health in of itself.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Go ask on the ET forum if ET is prey to GDS. Seriously.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Just look at the decks on paper. If you were playing yourself and had decent skill with both decks, it's easy to see how lopsided the matchup is.
Nope. Like gkourou says it's close to 50/50. It might swing 55/45 one way or the other depending on the build/sideboard options and how tailored each deck is to the matchup.
It's an interesting microcosm of this forum to see across just a few posts one person claiming GDS "preys on" ET, while another says ET "wrecks" GDS. So yeah.
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
I have no doubt in my mind that temple should be banned, but if its hit without death shadow wouldn't death shadow dominate even more?
I almost feel like they would both have to go.
decks playing:
none
That's the game in general. People just develop "feelings" about matchups and metagames. Little of it is based on actual reality, especially given how high variance is in the game. It takes thousands of games to really say one way or another.
Also if youre just sick of it and want to beat Eldrazi there are plenty of options out there, just not many options that involve midrange or control, which is how it should be. Aggro/Combo > Ramp > Midrange/Control > Aggro/Combo, not so sure whats hard to get about that.
BTW @all the control/blue players who hate Eldrazi Tron. Just rock UR Breach or Blue Moon. Blood Moon, Spreading Seas and a fast clock beats Eldrazi and you still have game against the rest of the field. You just don't get to use Path or Push.
RG BBE Ponza
UX Eldrazi Tron
UR Jace Breach