So I am fully aware that Tier Lists are currently "suspended" as Wizards decided to block access to Data, and are making it harder to track what's going on in the world of competitive MTG.
I wanted to know if anyone has an idea of when we could expect "Tier Lists" to come back - if ever.
The current system is generally fine, but it doesn't allow us to truly determine meta-game percentage as well as a Tier List would.
Currently MTG Goldfish and MTG Top 8 appear to be the best, but even then the data is heavily skewed. Modern Nexus hasn't updated in a long time and something tells me they won't update again anytime soon.
They will be back once somebody wants to make the effort to make such lists on a regular basis. It is as easy as that. Currently nobody wants to do it, and maybe someday someone will start. When that is is of course impossible to predict.
It is not only a matter of writing the list but also having the proper win rates against every deck. Old list had access to data on various aspect on the game namely match up and the like and could easily say without being biased that X deck was the best deck because it had favorable match up against the field.
At the moment I suggest we wait for Dominaria to come out before working on a community tier list since the inclusion of Damping Sphere will most likely hurt the best deck in the current meta (Tron and Storm) and it is also quite strong against Burn and various Zoo list that want to play many 1cmc spell per turn.
The meta game might shift with a return of UWR and Jund even Temur list and GR Ponza might become quite strong.
I think at this point it's basically meaningless within Modern.
The days of Jund, Twin, Pod and Affinity are over, and even those that came after have risen and fallen.
The top decks are only relevant to as far as you go beyond your local.
Maybe Jund is everything around you. Tron? Burn? Dredge? Something from the new crop like Hollow One? Ponza? Or the 'interact now' decks like Infect or Storm?
Oh you wanted to interact?
Bogles.
Nah. I'd rather look over trends, and what to expect of the Established decks. Tier 1 vs 2, is just not worth it anymore.
Tiers were based on data; data we no longer have any meaningful access to. It will not come back until we have numbers which properly represent a deck's foothold in the format. Because that's all Tier lists were; decks categorized by % of people who played them.
i actually prefer it this way, and i agree with wizards decision to make the change.
not that i am averse to netdecking or people wanting to know what the best things going in the format are. i just think that what we were seeing before was too easy to misinterpret.
there was this pervasive assumption that if a deck wasnt being played enough to show up as tier 1, then it wasnt good. which isnt what that information meant - there was only a loose correlation. not to mention the cases where decks that arent actually that good are over represented, which wotc outlined as part of their reasoning when they made the change.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
They will be back once somebody wants to make the effort to make such lists on a regular basis. It is as easy as that. Currently nobody wants to do it, and maybe someday someone will start. When that is is of course impossible to predict.
This is accurate. Since I stopped doing the updates, I've seen at least 5-6 other projects emerge as the "definitive" Modern metagame tierlist. None have lasted longer than a few months as people lose interest and/or lose time.
It would be pretty easy to make a paper tier list right now; there is a LOT of paper tournament data out there. Unfortunately, no one wants to do it anymore.
It is not only a matter of writing the list but also having the proper win rates against every deck. Old list had access to data on various aspect on the game namely match up and the like and could easily say without being biased that X deck was the best deck because it had favorable match up against the field.
The old list, at least the one I made, never said it was ranking best decks in the field by their MWP. It was just the decks you were overwhelmingly likely to encounter (Tier 1) and then those you should expect to face (Tier 2). This naturally has some correlation to performance, but it's obviously not 1:1. That said, there was a respectable correlation between a deck's true MWP in large MTGO datasets and its prevalence. There were a few exceptions to this rule: Lantern, Amulet Bloom, Humans, and a few others were serious sleepers. But for the most part, the best decks were also probably the most-played decks. This doesn't mean that a Tier 1 deck with a greater metagame share is necessarily better than another Tier 1 deck with a lower one. It just means that the Tier 1 decks as a whole probably have much higher MWPs, or closer to 50/50 MWPs, than the Tier 2s and Tier 3s.
There are lots of theoretical counterarguments to this model, but most didn't work out in practice. A great example of this is the dart board analogy, which I heard daily when I ran Nexus. "If a deck is played by everyone, of course it makes T8 and has a high share even if it's conversion rate is crap." I.E. if you throw enough darts at the board, you'll get a bullseye eventually. This was maybe true for a single tournament, but was almost never true over multiple tournaments. People don't just willfully play decks they know are bad on a large and repeated scale over multiple regions/continents.
I actually like the way how the modern metagame is presented right now. It stimulates people to play decks they like and have spent time on building and tuning, not play decks they've seen that beat the rest of the field and trow a bunch of money at it I don't dislike people netdecking, but I do praise people for being part of the growth and evolution of a deck archetype.
Agree. Grouping decks by archtype is a lot more user friendly then grouping them by a tier that changes over time.
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Top8 Norwegain Vintage Nationals 2003
Winner Norwegain Vintage Nationals 2006
Finalist Vintage Open at Arcon 2013
Finalist Modern Open at Arcon 2013
Winner Sweden Vintage Nationals at Eternalkungen Sweden 2013
Top8 Norwegian Legacy Nationals 2014
Winner Vintage Open at Arcon 2014
Top8 Legacy Open at Arcon 2014
Top4 Legacy Open at Arcon 2015
Winner Modern Open at Arcon 2015
Finalist Norwegian Legacy Nationals 2016
Winner Vintage Open at Arcon 2016
I like it the way it is now. Making it easier for people to find the kind of decks they like and also showing the majority of decks in each archetype. My only wish is that they would do this with the deck creation thread as well. This would make it simpler to use both for older users and newer users in finding more well known decks and unknown decks they might end up being interested in.
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Standard: No Time
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
If you are going to put Humans, and DS at tier 3, then yeah I would question that site. :]
The thing with Death's Shadow is that you are basically killing yourself to play something that dies. It's a cheese strat at best.
to be honest you pretty much threw away any credibility at being able to assess deck strength with this statement.
i dont think you can reasonably ask people to explain why they disagree when you offer no explanation on how you came to this list in the first place. you outlined a loose criteria for each tier, but then immediately contradict yourself by placing jund and tron as tier 1. jund has no bad matchups? its bad matchup is tron. the other supposed tier 1 deck.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
If you are going to put Humans, and DS at tier 3, then yeah I would question that site. :]
I think DS is tier 3 and Human is tier 2 at best. Tron,Jund,Eldrazi and Affinity are the better decks in this list.
The thing with Death's Shadow is that you are basically killing yourself to play something that dies. It's a cheese strat at best.
Human isn't tier 1, I think there was a moment when it was a tier 1 deck but with recent meta shift it's not tier 1, I would maybe agree on tier 2 (they are probably better than affinity and quite on par with Eldrazi)
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This would what my tier list would look like in terms of power ranking
Tier 1
GTron
Jund
Tier 2
Eldrazi
Scapeshift
Mardu Pyromancer
Humans
Dredge
Tier 3
Affinity (Kolaghan's command really hurt affinity,also is the deck that most player tend to side a lot of hate against)
Junk
Red Deck Win
UR Breach
Grishoalbrand
Ad Nauseam
Boggle
Grixis Control
UWR Tempo
Infect
Storm
Death's Shadow (Blue Version might be ranked higher)
GR Ponza
Taking Turns
Tier 4
Knightfall
Esper Control
UW Control (Grixis is simply a better control deck, Esper is also stronger with Discards. Obviously UW gets a better match up against tron game 1)
4c Saheeli
Living End
Hollow One
Green Devotion
Death and Taxes
Kiki Chords/Creature Toolbox
Ascendancy Storm
Tier 5
Emeria Control
Merfolk
Blue Moon without Breach
Martyr Proc
Soul Sister
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Decks are ordered by strength in each tier.
Tier 1 = Decks that are really strong have no real bad match up.
Tier 2 = Decks that are really consistent, some can win game 1 for free.
Tier 3 = Decks that are good but better decks can do similar things better. (Also note most control decks are tier 3 since they are hurt by the meta)
Tier 4 = Mostly worst combo decks,Death and Taxes feels more like a nuisance than a real threat.
Tier 5 = Decks that are still VIABLE but a lot weaker compared to other decks being played.
Now this list is my personal opinion, I did based it off some info I could gather but like I said match up are so different from decks to deck that obviously a Tier 5 deck could beat a Tier 3 deck (Soul Sister vs Red Deck Win). Also a tier 3 deck can win a big event (Boggle quite recently)
If you have anything to say against my list simply suggest fix and explained them.
If this gets traction we could start a thread building a community tier list.
I feel your list of decks and explanation of tiers is quite childlike you did not add any suggestion to them nor reasoning. Also you did not add common decks into the format either just adding random ones. Biggest thing is you say RDW, but are you including burn into this or just a random red deck wins. what about mono red goblins? where is zoo? You mention UW control and state both esper and grixis are better while only grixis gets on your list. If your going to make a list of tiers with decks attached i would suggest adding at least all the ones currently in established section with reasoning on it.
Tier 1 = Decks that are really strong have no real bad match up.
Tier 2 = Decks that are really consistent, some can win game 1 for free.
Tier 3 = Decks that are good but better decks can do similar things better. (Also note most control decks are tier 3 since they are hurt by the meta)
Tier 4 = Mostly worst combo decks,Death and Taxes feels more like a nuisance than a real threat.
Tier 5 = Decks that are still VIABLE but a lot weaker compared to other decks being played.
I feel it's more like this with Tier decks once you stop paying attention to the popularity contest and wonder what makes a deck good vs others.
Tier 1 = Deck that are usually super consistent and have little to no bad matchup's. Affinity is tier 1 as every deck needs a sb answer to it in the modern meta game. This deck usually wins G1 then just needs to win again in g2 or g3. It forces decks to either have answers for it or to lose. Some people don't pack the SB hate for this hoping to dodge it.
Tier 2 = Similar to Tier 1, but the overall win percentage goes down by a small margin. They have usually the same to a bit lower power level then tier 1. Usually this tier has the best time against tier 1 decks. Usually a bit easier to hate out of the meta. Living End i would say is tier 2 in the middle and based on the meta dips towards 3 or 1. The fact is Living end has a unique strategy and the ability to be highly consistent with a strong plan b of casting creatures that most decks can't keep up with. It also can play a weird control game based on the version of GY hate people play. It's more consistent then dredge with less mulligans needed as well.
Tier 3 = The power level of these decks has a drop off compared to tier 1 and 2, but are able to sb more effectively as they know the top decks and have a easier time meta gaming against them. Soul sisters has been a tier 3 deck at best nothing more or less. The deck has the possibility of turn 3-4 kills not that rarely. When i used to play it frequently i beat top tier decks that were considered a bad matchup for me. The deck is a aggro deck at it's core using lifegain to hold the opponent at bay while you go critical mass. The problem is a fully optimized soul sisters deck is significantly more expensive then a budget version that most people commonly play.
Tier 4 = Mostly decks that are either rouge decks or are wildly inconsistent combo deck, but have powerful play that win on the spot or the next turn. Evolution Ooze Combo Pitch the Griselbrand, Borborygmos Enraged, Lotleth Troll, Spike Feeder to gy usually win on the spot When you have necrotic Ooze out. The deck is super fun to watch, but very easy to hate out and very inconsistent as it relys on two things drawning both land and creatures while maintaining a life total of 8 or more at all times.
Tier 5 = Usually these decks are from people who accidentally bought there Standard deck or pauper deck for a modern night at the lgs. These decks are usually very weak to other common strategy's like removal or counters and it blows there game plan out of the water. Usually i would say these sections are reserved for the budget deck of a budget deck. GW Presence of Gond Combo Presence of Gond + Midnight Guard = Inf 1/1 green elf. The combo is done at sorcery speed making it super weak to counters and removal. Also note that none of the elves get haste so have to wait till next turn to attack.
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Standard: No Time
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
The thing with your list is that you have way more tiers than lists usually do, and your distinction criteria isn't clear. You give a rather vague description that can encompass a lot of different decks depending on personal opinion. On top of that, how good/bad a matchup is depends on a lot of factors. You can tweak lists to be better in certain matchups, or players might be better at the deck and edge out a few points. For instance, I think people actually do agree that Reid Duke top 8ing the last PT with Abzan was a matter of how good Reid is with GB rather than the deck being well positioned. Or, for example, you said Affinity is a tier 3 and yet it's consistently putting up results still (it top 8'd the SCG event on the weekend).
It's far better to encompass the list from tournament results and meta percentages. Like Ken used to do, you compile day 2 numbers, top 8 results, and meta shares, and do it across several platforms (MTGO, GPs, PTs, SCG Opens, etc.). You get a depiction of what the field is playing, because realistically the field is playing what they think is good and that approximates well. If you could get perfect percentages for deck win percentages then it would work out well, but you realistically can't.
To give an example, I completely disagree Affinity is a tier 3 deck. Sure, it has problems, but that doesn't make it bad. In fact, it exactly fits your tier 2 criteria (it's quite consistent and steals a lot of game 1s). You might be an underdog to Jund, sure, but it's not like it's 90-10, it's more like 55-45 or 60-40.
Don't get me wrong, people on this forum can be occasionally aggressive. But you seem to fundamentally misunderstand a number of archetypes based on your comments and that makes it hard to take what you say seriously. "Death's Shadow decks are bad", calling Ascendancy Storm a recent development, forgetting that Ponza just took down a PT event, calling RDW a burn deck with some creatures added -- those are all head scratching.
In my experience, there are basically two ways to do a tier list that will be a) widely accepted and b) largely accurate. Those two ways are:
1. Prevalence-based tiering from a large dataset of MTGO and paper T8s, T16s, T32s, and Day 2s, appropriately weighted by event size/profile.
2. Performance-based tiering from a large dataset of tracked MWPs.
Option 1 describes what you are likely to encounter at any given event, but not necessarily what the best decks are. There is a strong correlation between prevalence and performance but it's not absolute and there are always exceptions. Prevalence-based tiering, however, gives a very good idea of how you should build sideboards and prepare for matchups because it shows what decks tend to win events.
Option 2 describes what decks are the winningest in Modern, but not what you are likely to face. The highest MWP decks might have a small sample size and therefore not be translatable across the whole format. Or they have a suitably large sample but are generally unknown. This list might guide you towards what deck to play, but wouldn't help much with preparing to beat an expected field.
Option 1 is still something we can create today, even with the lack of MTGO data. We still have enough Challenges/PTQs from MTGO to shore up a gigantic paper dataset of local, regional, and national events from SCG to GP to Face2Face to Hareruya to everything else in between. The only thing that prevents people from doing this is lack of time/interest, or perhaps a genuine ignorance of where to find these results. But Option 1 is doable. Option 2, however, is generally not possible because we lack the kind of data needed to make this project statistically significant.
How do the tiers break down in these two options? You can do it many ways, but generally speaking, here is how most people I have encountered online would interpret and define them:
Prevalence-based tiering definitions
Tier 0: Format-dominant deck. You will play this deck multiple times in a tournament and must beat it. It often has a share greater than most of the other Tier 1 decks combined. If a Tier 0 deck exists, you should play it or play to beat it.
Tier 1: Must-beat decks you need a SB and MD plan for. If you can't beat these decks, you should probably play something else. You can play these and win.
Tier 2: Competitive decks that you might face at a major event. Know how to play against them, don't be surprised to face them. You can play these and win.
Tier 3: Niche decks that you are unlikely to face and probably have some underlying metagame weakness that is holding them back. Don't play these decks unless you can address that underlying weakness.
Tier 4: Decks that are not viable in the current metagame due to unfixable weaknesses or other options being plain better.
Performance-based tiering definitions
Tier 0: Best deck(s) in Modern with no other competition. All matches are 50/50+ except for 1-2 Tier 3 exceptions.
Tier 1: Winningest decks in Modern. These decks tend to average 50/50+ across the board with few/no matches worse than 45/55.
Tier 2: Viable decks in Modern. These decks also tend to average 50/50+ across the board but they have more polarizing matches in the 40/60 range.
Tier 3: Playable decks that have better alternatives. These decks tend to average <50% MWP across the board but have some standout matches that might make them good meta calls.
Tier 4: Weak decks that have unfavorable matchup spectrums. These decks average <45% MWP across all games with few matches better than 55/45.
Everyone is going to tweak those numbers and definitions a bit to fit their own personal preferences, but the general theme and pattern of those tiers (and their relation to one another) wouldn't change. The theme throughout all of this is objective standards. Tier creators need to have an objective, transparent, preferably data-driven method of tiering their decks and defending those tiers. If that is lacking or perceived as lacking, there will be pushback and disagreement. Tiers also need to pass the qualitative "sniff test" of Modern. If random decks with few recent tournament finishes (e.g. Infect) are in the same tier as decks that show up in multiple major T8s (e.g. Affinity), that suggests there are some fundamental problems with the tiering system. None of this is to say that any tiering system proposed here or elsewhere is good or bad. It is just to give some guidance on what most players will look for in accepting a tiering system.
outside of a results oriented model stuff starts to get too subjective. you could probably find something useful if you surveyed a large sample of modern players asking them what they believe are the decks to beat -- even then you would need to find this huge group and be able to survey them on a regular basis.
just a lot of effort all around. unless someone is generous enough to dedicate themselves to the project i dont see a standardized list appearing any time soon. the best modern players can do is use their experiences and the limited number of results they see or search out to craft their own vision of the metagame and plan accordingly. which is a skill in of itself.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
We are giving you things to think about, you just simply choose to see what you want in the post. Instead of trying to figure out what we could do to improve it, you simply ignored and just saw we were attacking you. So let's try to calmly address all the issues.
1. Your list has no sources for information. We need to know where the data is coming from. Ken's old list showed what events it was coming from and had metrics for which share of the amalgamation came from which source. We want full disclosure on how the numbers are achieved. A few GP/SCG Opens doesn't really show enough data to support things, especially since the banlist change invalidates old data.
2. A tier list has to be objective in some way. It's either designed by aggregating MWP or by aggregating meta share. When you say "I think deck X is in tier Y", that's a problem. You don't get to make those decisions, not if you want others to accept your tier list. The only thing we accept are cold hard facts, which are the numbers. You can decide on what percentage makes the cutoff for tiers, but then all decks get placed into tiers automatically by such a cutoff.
3. You gave some really poor definitions of why decks are where they are or even describing decks. You say Ponza is bad because it never won, but it did. Decks don't even have to win either, they just have to place well. A top 8 is realistically the same as a GP win. You describe Burn as a burn deck plus 12 creatures, which is really the wrong thing to call it if it has that many creatures. Even Ascendancy Storm is being listed as a new thing, it died out shortly after the card was printed, but I absolutely remember it being a thing until Treasure Cruise got banned.
4. You skip over a lot of decks and then say that it has 30 decks. A tier list should encompass everything there's data to support. Mono U Tron is something I'm surprised to not see, same with Elves, but Ascendancy Storm is on the list? I don't know where you found data that had Ascendancy Storm on it to support being able to classify it objectively (I'd like to know if you did, it's possible I'm wrong and just haven't seen that data). This sort of suggests the same problem 2 addresses, which is the objectivity of your list. It needs to just show raw data and let people form their own conclusions from it. To decide what decks do or don't make the list from your own opinion is the wrong way to go about it.
If you're gonna make a list, you need to sort out all of these issues. It needs to be objective and have more data that is sourced. Not until the conclusions are drawn objectively can we take the list seriously.
Don't get me wrong, people on this forum can be occasionally aggressive. But you seem to fundamentally misunderstand a number of archetypes based on your comments and that makes it hard to take what you say seriously. "Death's Shadow decks are bad", calling Ascendancy Storm a recent development, forgetting that Ponza just took down a PT event, calling RDW a burn deck with some creatures added -- those are all head scratching.
What have you written that bring anything new to the last 4 post just calling ***** on my list. Write one yourself or give fix.
NEVER ONCE DID I SAY, that my list was the only superior truth. I'VE SAID. MYSELF. That mtg list are hard and quite useless to make since they can't never show any real truth. I'VE ALSO SAID! If you want to fix it do it. Now all you bunch of baddies out there just came and said wow bad list dude and left without bringing any help. I said my list isn't perfect you can simply comment fix and we will do something with the community to make it great.
Seriously I'm out of this forum.
My point was not to say "Whoa, bad list dude." It was to highlight that you're saying some wild things and then asking people to use your strange ranking as a starting point. For example, let's say we'd like to rank fruit. I'll share my list below; it won't be 100% accurate but others can correct me.
1. Cherries - best flavor of PopTarts
2. Broccoli - very healthy
3. Peaches - because they're great in apple pie
4. Grapes - they're a new fruit, but really delicious
5. Pumpkin - you're crazy if you think pumpkin is better than this, it's only good as a coffee flavor
Do you think anyone is actually going to contribute to my list? They'll probably just ignore me or at best provide helpful advice like "You're saying inaccurate things in #5" or "I don't think you understand what broccoli is".
Since unban the list look something like this in order of appearance based on top 16
11 5c Humans
9 Affinity
8 Hollow One
8 Blue Moon (breach)
6 U/W Control
5 Scapeshift
5 Burn
5 Storm
5 Jund
5 GTron
4 Dredge
4 Bogles
4 Grixis Death's Shadow
3 Eldrazi
3 Ad Nauseam
Adding MTGTOP8 into the mix got me the last list that people disliked so now that you see data and the list in this order you'll probably enjoy it more.
Note that Grixis Death's Shadow is still low.
Again this is MTGTOP8 tier list based on a lot more data including some local event and mtgo:
Tier 1
GTron
Jund
Tier 2
Eldrazi
Affinity
Tier 3
Red Deck Wins (12-14 creature burn)
UW Control
Humans
Death's Shadow
GR Ponza
Hollow One
If anyone reply aggressively I'll ignore them.
I've long and long again page on a way to show you a list if you not happy with it go win a tourney and change it.
Walk, i appreciate the effort, but you gotta see how lists like these just cant be taken seriously. if you gotta sit here and argue to convince like a total of 3 people - do you honestly believe that it is a resource that people can rely on?
sites like mtgtop8 and mtggoldfish have been around forever, but its acknowledged that their information isnt entirely accurate. its partially the premise of this entire thread, and was pointed out in the very first post.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
The event and deck N is smaller than I would like, but it's a very transparent dataset that mostly lines up with our general understanding of the format. The author also updates it semi-regularly, at least so far. We'll see if it goes the way of the dozen other Modern metagame projects before it. I disagree with the cutoffs, tier definitions, and event pool, but the methodology is mostly sound and I'd rather draw conclusions from this transparent data than a largely subjective evaluation of the format.
jund, hollow one, humans, and storm gets a head nod from me. disregarding the tiers, the list itself paints a picture that lines up with what ive been seeing.
thanks for the share.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Yeah the data Ken posted from that spreadsheet is better. Something more concrete to work off of. I agree that it has some obvious flaws with it but we need to start somewhere. You need to be transparent in how the data is collected and aggregated. Ken's list was great, but it was a ton of work, more than people are probably willing to do.
So I am fully aware that Tier Lists are currently "suspended" as Wizards decided to block access to Data, and are making it harder to track what's going on in the world of competitive MTG.
I wanted to know if anyone has an idea of when we could expect "Tier Lists" to come back - if ever.
The current system is generally fine, but it doesn't allow us to truly determine meta-game percentage as well as a Tier List would.
Currently MTG Goldfish and MTG Top 8 appear to be the best, but even then the data is heavily skewed. Modern Nexus hasn't updated in a long time and something tells me they won't update again anytime soon.
Thoughts / suggestions?
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company
It is not only a matter of writing the list but also having the proper win rates against every deck. Old list had access to data on various aspect on the game namely match up and the like and could easily say without being biased that X deck was the best deck because it had favorable match up against the field.
At the moment I suggest we wait for Dominaria to come out before working on a community tier list since the inclusion of Damping Sphere will most likely hurt the best deck in the current meta (Tron and Storm) and it is also quite strong against Burn and various Zoo list that want to play many 1cmc spell per turn.
The meta game might shift with a return of UWR and Jund even Temur list and GR Ponza might become quite strong.
A clear winner after Dominaria might be Humans.
The days of Jund, Twin, Pod and Affinity are over, and even those that came after have risen and fallen.
The top decks are only relevant to as far as you go beyond your local.
Maybe Jund is everything around you. Tron? Burn? Dredge? Something from the new crop like Hollow One? Ponza? Or the 'interact now' decks like Infect or Storm?
Oh you wanted to interact?
Bogles.
Nah. I'd rather look over trends, and what to expect of the Established decks. Tier 1 vs 2, is just not worth it anymore.
Spirits
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
not that i am averse to netdecking or people wanting to know what the best things going in the format are. i just think that what we were seeing before was too easy to misinterpret.
there was this pervasive assumption that if a deck wasnt being played enough to show up as tier 1, then it wasnt good. which isnt what that information meant - there was only a loose correlation. not to mention the cases where decks that arent actually that good are over represented, which wotc outlined as part of their reasoning when they made the change.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)This is accurate. Since I stopped doing the updates, I've seen at least 5-6 other projects emerge as the "definitive" Modern metagame tierlist. None have lasted longer than a few months as people lose interest and/or lose time.
It would be pretty easy to make a paper tier list right now; there is a LOT of paper tournament data out there. Unfortunately, no one wants to do it anymore.
The old list, at least the one I made, never said it was ranking best decks in the field by their MWP. It was just the decks you were overwhelmingly likely to encounter (Tier 1) and then those you should expect to face (Tier 2). This naturally has some correlation to performance, but it's obviously not 1:1. That said, there was a respectable correlation between a deck's true MWP in large MTGO datasets and its prevalence. There were a few exceptions to this rule: Lantern, Amulet Bloom, Humans, and a few others were serious sleepers. But for the most part, the best decks were also probably the most-played decks. This doesn't mean that a Tier 1 deck with a greater metagame share is necessarily better than another Tier 1 deck with a lower one. It just means that the Tier 1 decks as a whole probably have much higher MWPs, or closer to 50/50 MWPs, than the Tier 2s and Tier 3s.
There are lots of theoretical counterarguments to this model, but most didn't work out in practice. A great example of this is the dart board analogy, which I heard daily when I ran Nexus. "If a deck is played by everyone, of course it makes T8 and has a high share even if it's conversion rate is crap." I.E. if you throw enough darts at the board, you'll get a bullseye eventually. This was maybe true for a single tournament, but was almost never true over multiple tournaments. People don't just willfully play decks they know are bad on a large and repeated scale over multiple regions/continents.
Modern: WUBRG Humans - GBW Traverse - GWU Knightfall - GRW Bushwhacker Zoo -
Agree. Grouping decks by archtype is a lot more user friendly then grouping them by a tier that changes over time.
Winner Norwegain Vintage Nationals 2006
Finalist Vintage Open at Arcon 2013
Finalist Modern Open at Arcon 2013
Winner Sweden Vintage Nationals at Eternalkungen Sweden 2013
Top8 Norwegian Legacy Nationals 2014
Winner Vintage Open at Arcon 2014
Top8 Legacy Open at Arcon 2014
Top4 Legacy Open at Arcon 2015
Winner Modern Open at Arcon 2015
Finalist Norwegian Legacy Nationals 2016
Winner Vintage Open at Arcon 2016
Spirits
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
to be honest you pretty much threw away any credibility at being able to assess deck strength with this statement.
i dont think you can reasonably ask people to explain why they disagree when you offer no explanation on how you came to this list in the first place. you outlined a loose criteria for each tier, but then immediately contradict yourself by placing jund and tron as tier 1. jund has no bad matchups? its bad matchup is tron. the other supposed tier 1 deck.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I feel your list of decks and explanation of tiers is quite childlike you did not add any suggestion to them nor reasoning. Also you did not add common decks into the format either just adding random ones. Biggest thing is you say RDW, but are you including burn into this or just a random red deck wins. what about mono red goblins? where is zoo? You mention UW control and state both esper and grixis are better while only grixis gets on your list. If your going to make a list of tiers with decks attached i would suggest adding at least all the ones currently in established section with reasoning on it.
I feel it's more like this with Tier decks once you stop paying attention to the popularity contest and wonder what makes a deck good vs others.
Tier 1 = Deck that are usually super consistent and have little to no bad matchup's.
Affinity is tier 1 as every deck needs a sb answer to it in the modern meta game. This deck usually wins G1 then just needs to win again in g2 or g3. It forces decks to either have answers for it or to lose. Some people don't pack the SB hate for this hoping to dodge it.
Tier 2 = Similar to Tier 1, but the overall win percentage goes down by a small margin. They have usually the same to a bit lower power level then tier 1. Usually this tier has the best time against tier 1 decks. Usually a bit easier to hate out of the meta.
Living End i would say is tier 2 in the middle and based on the meta dips towards 3 or 1. The fact is Living end has a unique strategy and the ability to be highly consistent with a strong plan b of casting creatures that most decks can't keep up with. It also can play a weird control game based on the version of GY hate people play. It's more consistent then dredge with less mulligans needed as well.
Tier 3 = The power level of these decks has a drop off compared to tier 1 and 2, but are able to sb more effectively as they know the top decks and have a easier time meta gaming against them.
Soul sisters has been a tier 3 deck at best nothing more or less. The deck has the possibility of turn 3-4 kills not that rarely. When i used to play it frequently i beat top tier decks that were considered a bad matchup for me. The deck is a aggro deck at it's core using lifegain to hold the opponent at bay while you go critical mass. The problem is a fully optimized soul sisters deck is significantly more expensive then a budget version that most people commonly play.
Tier 4 = Mostly decks that are either rouge decks or are wildly inconsistent combo deck, but have powerful play that win on the spot or the next turn.
Evolution Ooze Combo Pitch the Griselbrand, Borborygmos Enraged, Lotleth Troll, Spike Feeder to gy usually win on the spot When you have necrotic Ooze out. The deck is super fun to watch, but very easy to hate out and very inconsistent as it relys on two things drawning both land and creatures while maintaining a life total of 8 or more at all times.
Tier 5 = Usually these decks are from people who accidentally bought there Standard deck or pauper deck for a modern night at the lgs. These decks are usually very weak to other common strategy's like removal or counters and it blows there game plan out of the water. Usually i would say these sections are reserved for the budget deck of a budget deck.
GW Presence of Gond Combo Presence of Gond + Midnight Guard = Inf 1/1 green elf. The combo is done at sorcery speed making it super weak to counters and removal. Also note that none of the elves get haste so have to wait till next turn to attack.
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
It's far better to encompass the list from tournament results and meta percentages. Like Ken used to do, you compile day 2 numbers, top 8 results, and meta shares, and do it across several platforms (MTGO, GPs, PTs, SCG Opens, etc.). You get a depiction of what the field is playing, because realistically the field is playing what they think is good and that approximates well. If you could get perfect percentages for deck win percentages then it would work out well, but you realistically can't.
To give an example, I completely disagree Affinity is a tier 3 deck. Sure, it has problems, but that doesn't make it bad. In fact, it exactly fits your tier 2 criteria (it's quite consistent and steals a lot of game 1s). You might be an underdog to Jund, sure, but it's not like it's 90-10, it's more like 55-45 or 60-40.
Grixis Death's Shadow, Jund, UW Tron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Counters Company, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Living End, Infect, Merfolk, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, Amulet, Bogles, Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, Lantern, Mardu Pyromancer
1. Prevalence-based tiering from a large dataset of MTGO and paper T8s, T16s, T32s, and Day 2s, appropriately weighted by event size/profile.
2. Performance-based tiering from a large dataset of tracked MWPs.
Option 1 describes what you are likely to encounter at any given event, but not necessarily what the best decks are. There is a strong correlation between prevalence and performance but it's not absolute and there are always exceptions. Prevalence-based tiering, however, gives a very good idea of how you should build sideboards and prepare for matchups because it shows what decks tend to win events.
Option 2 describes what decks are the winningest in Modern, but not what you are likely to face. The highest MWP decks might have a small sample size and therefore not be translatable across the whole format. Or they have a suitably large sample but are generally unknown. This list might guide you towards what deck to play, but wouldn't help much with preparing to beat an expected field.
Option 1 is still something we can create today, even with the lack of MTGO data. We still have enough Challenges/PTQs from MTGO to shore up a gigantic paper dataset of local, regional, and national events from SCG to GP to Face2Face to Hareruya to everything else in between. The only thing that prevents people from doing this is lack of time/interest, or perhaps a genuine ignorance of where to find these results. But Option 1 is doable. Option 2, however, is generally not possible because we lack the kind of data needed to make this project statistically significant.
How do the tiers break down in these two options? You can do it many ways, but generally speaking, here is how most people I have encountered online would interpret and define them:
Prevalence-based tiering definitions
Tier 0: Format-dominant deck. You will play this deck multiple times in a tournament and must beat it. It often has a share greater than most of the other Tier 1 decks combined. If a Tier 0 deck exists, you should play it or play to beat it.
Tier 1: Must-beat decks you need a SB and MD plan for. If you can't beat these decks, you should probably play something else. You can play these and win.
Tier 2: Competitive decks that you might face at a major event. Know how to play against them, don't be surprised to face them. You can play these and win.
Tier 3: Niche decks that you are unlikely to face and probably have some underlying metagame weakness that is holding them back. Don't play these decks unless you can address that underlying weakness.
Tier 4: Decks that are not viable in the current metagame due to unfixable weaknesses or other options being plain better.
Performance-based tiering definitions
Tier 0: Best deck(s) in Modern with no other competition. All matches are 50/50+ except for 1-2 Tier 3 exceptions.
Tier 1: Winningest decks in Modern. These decks tend to average 50/50+ across the board with few/no matches worse than 45/55.
Tier 2: Viable decks in Modern. These decks also tend to average 50/50+ across the board but they have more polarizing matches in the 40/60 range.
Tier 3: Playable decks that have better alternatives. These decks tend to average <50% MWP across the board but have some standout matches that might make them good meta calls.
Tier 4: Weak decks that have unfavorable matchup spectrums. These decks average <45% MWP across all games with few matches better than 55/45.
Everyone is going to tweak those numbers and definitions a bit to fit their own personal preferences, but the general theme and pattern of those tiers (and their relation to one another) wouldn't change. The theme throughout all of this is objective standards. Tier creators need to have an objective, transparent, preferably data-driven method of tiering their decks and defending those tiers. If that is lacking or perceived as lacking, there will be pushback and disagreement. Tiers also need to pass the qualitative "sniff test" of Modern. If random decks with few recent tournament finishes (e.g. Infect) are in the same tier as decks that show up in multiple major T8s (e.g. Affinity), that suggests there are some fundamental problems with the tiering system. None of this is to say that any tiering system proposed here or elsewhere is good or bad. It is just to give some guidance on what most players will look for in accepting a tiering system.
just a lot of effort all around. unless someone is generous enough to dedicate themselves to the project i dont see a standardized list appearing any time soon. the best modern players can do is use their experiences and the limited number of results they see or search out to craft their own vision of the metagame and plan accordingly. which is a skill in of itself.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)1. Your list has no sources for information. We need to know where the data is coming from. Ken's old list showed what events it was coming from and had metrics for which share of the amalgamation came from which source. We want full disclosure on how the numbers are achieved. A few GP/SCG Opens doesn't really show enough data to support things, especially since the banlist change invalidates old data.
2. A tier list has to be objective in some way. It's either designed by aggregating MWP or by aggregating meta share. When you say "I think deck X is in tier Y", that's a problem. You don't get to make those decisions, not if you want others to accept your tier list. The only thing we accept are cold hard facts, which are the numbers. You can decide on what percentage makes the cutoff for tiers, but then all decks get placed into tiers automatically by such a cutoff.
3. You gave some really poor definitions of why decks are where they are or even describing decks. You say Ponza is bad because it never won, but it did. Decks don't even have to win either, they just have to place well. A top 8 is realistically the same as a GP win. You describe Burn as a burn deck plus 12 creatures, which is really the wrong thing to call it if it has that many creatures. Even Ascendancy Storm is being listed as a new thing, it died out shortly after the card was printed, but I absolutely remember it being a thing until Treasure Cruise got banned.
4. You skip over a lot of decks and then say that it has 30 decks. A tier list should encompass everything there's data to support. Mono U Tron is something I'm surprised to not see, same with Elves, but Ascendancy Storm is on the list? I don't know where you found data that had Ascendancy Storm on it to support being able to classify it objectively (I'd like to know if you did, it's possible I'm wrong and just haven't seen that data). This sort of suggests the same problem 2 addresses, which is the objectivity of your list. It needs to just show raw data and let people form their own conclusions from it. To decide what decks do or don't make the list from your own opinion is the wrong way to go about it.
If you're gonna make a list, you need to sort out all of these issues. It needs to be objective and have more data that is sourced. Not until the conclusions are drawn objectively can we take the list seriously.
Grixis Death's Shadow, Jund, UW Tron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Counters Company, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Living End, Infect, Merfolk, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, Amulet, Bogles, Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, Lantern, Mardu Pyromancer
My point was not to say "Whoa, bad list dude." It was to highlight that you're saying some wild things and then asking people to use your strange ranking as a starting point. For example, let's say we'd like to rank fruit. I'll share my list below; it won't be 100% accurate but others can correct me.
1. Cherries - best flavor of PopTarts
2. Broccoli - very healthy
3. Peaches - because they're great in apple pie
4. Grapes - they're a new fruit, but really delicious
5. Pumpkin - you're crazy if you think pumpkin is better than this, it's only good as a coffee flavor
Do you think anyone is actually going to contribute to my list? They'll probably just ignore me or at best provide helpful advice like "You're saying inaccurate things in #5" or "I don't think you understand what broccoli is".
11 5c Humans
9 Affinity
8 Hollow One
8 Blue Moon (breach)
6 U/W Control
5 Scapeshift
5 Burn
5 Storm
5 Jund
5 GTron
4 Dredge
4 Bogles
4 Grixis Death's Shadow
3 Eldrazi
3 Ad Nauseam
Adding MTGTOP8 into the mix got me the last list that people disliked so now that you see data and the list in this order you'll probably enjoy it more.
Note that Grixis Death's Shadow is still low.
Again this is MTGTOP8 tier list based on a lot more data including some local event and mtgo:
Tier 1
GTron
Jund
Tier 2
Eldrazi
Affinity
Tier 3
Red Deck Wins (12-14 creature burn)
UW Control
Humans
Death's Shadow
GR Ponza
Hollow One
If anyone reply aggressively I'll ignore them.
I've long and long again page on a way to show you a list if you not happy with it go win a tourney and change it.
This is the part that people have a disconnect with. When you put the top performing decks at lower tiers of play, the logic doesnt work out.
Spirits
sites like mtgtop8 and mtggoldfish have been around forever, but its acknowledged that their information isnt entirely accurate. its partially the premise of this entire thread, and was pointed out in the very first post.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSedG2Mt1SivUMZa1Wpuz9itycmn800iAwBNIF6xgwVfsc9RKI66uSbTKkB-wRr7tjv9lDkPpz3HKKA/pubhtml
The event and deck N is smaller than I would like, but it's a very transparent dataset that mostly lines up with our general understanding of the format. The author also updates it semi-regularly, at least so far. We'll see if it goes the way of the dozen other Modern metagame projects before it. I disagree with the cutoffs, tier definitions, and event pool, but the methodology is mostly sound and I'd rather draw conclusions from this transparent data than a largely subjective evaluation of the format.
Spirits
thanks for the share.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Grixis Death's Shadow, Jund, UW Tron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Counters Company, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Living End, Infect, Merfolk, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, Amulet, Bogles, Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, Lantern, Mardu Pyromancer