Certainly, but I think something must account for Humans showing.
Was it seeing a burn out period and was always good?
We have not had a top8 like this since early 2018.
It just further shows that Modern is cyclical, and decks, if left out of the radar for too long, can have surprise showings, because people tend to "forget" about them. This has been shown during several years with the rise and fall of several decks like burn, dredge, grixis shadow, tron etc.
i think people were too quick to write off humans, especially when bant spirits showed up and some labeled it as some better successor.
a resurgence was inevitable, and i predicted as much back when UR phoenix and GDS started gaining traction a few months back. spirits was soundly suppressed, and with kci out of the way (an oddly poor matchup for humans), the deck was poised to return since it is somewhat better to decent against phoenix's spell based xerox and a natural counter to GDS (as proven in early 2018).
i cant say i expected such a presence at the MC, but it makes sense.
Private Mod Note
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I'm not too concerned about Meddling Mage being the effect that "breaks" or overly abuses the new open decklist policy. For one, there's no way to know how many of those Humans decks in the top standings got there on Modern records vs. Limited records. It's very hard to make performance conclusions until we break the standings down by format. For instance, I can tell you that all but three players (Loveman, Zhu, Kvartek) were 3-0 at the end of the first day of Limited. This impacts final standings and apparent deck performance. Second, even if Humans gets a boost from Mage being better, other interactive decks get at least as much of a boost by being able to mulligan dead hands/cards in G1. This is a big reason that Ux decks have been better online since the change.
T8 appears to be the following from the standings: https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/2019MC2/round-16-standings
1. Titanshift (Thien Nguyen)
2. Humans (Eli Loveman)
3. G Tron (Alex Hayne)
4. Humans (BBD)
5. G Tron (Adrian Zhu)
6. Humans (Chris Kvartek)
7. UR Phoenix (Javier Dominguez)
8. Experimental Affinity (Matt Sperling)
That 8th place spot was hotly contested, with 7 others vying for it and missing on breakers. Humans still seems to be a clear winner, with over-representation in a few different brackets.
So the most represented decks are ones that took best advantage of new Mulligan rule (Tron) and best advantage of opponent decklists (Humans). And another Phoenix, because why not!
I mean we already knew there will be no bans until after Modern Horizons. These results tell us nothing and changed nothing on that front.
Oh also this doesn't include any War of the Spark Cards either. So yeah this changes nothing. I think the idea is before and after get some data points for London Mulligan before made for Modern Cards in Horizons and 37 new Walkers showing up in War of the Spark.
So the most represented decks are ones that took best advantage of new Mulligan rule (Tron) and best advantage of opponent decklists (Humans). And another Phoenix, because why not!
Except dredge was also on that list of decks likely to break the mulligan rule in half, yet none made top 8. Tron comprised 15% of the meta and was also a good deck pre-mulligan ruling. Same with humans, which honestly I think people talked themselves out of playing. It had a rough KCI matchup because of maindeck EE, that's about it. Yet post-KCI ban not many people tried to play it, at least in my area.
The top 8 has some of the decks that have been around the top of the format. The only thing that really surprised me is the lack of grixis shadow. I figured one would make it, though I've yet to see actual constructed-only records. Its certainly possible people bombed in the limited portion.
So the most represented decks are ones that took best advantage of new Mulligan rule (Tron) and best advantage of opponent decklists (Humans). And another Phoenix, because why not!
Except dredge was also on that list of decks likely to break the mulligan rule in half, yet none made top 8. Tron comprised 15% of the meta and was also a good deck pre-mulligan ruling. Same with humans, which honestly I think people talked themselves out of playing. It had a rough KCI matchup because of maindeck EE, that's about it. Yet post-KCI ban not many people tried to play it, at least in my area.
The top 8 has some of the decks that have been around the top of the format. The only thing that really surprised me is the lack of grixis shadow. I figured one would make it, though I've yet to see actual constructed-only records. Its certainly possible people bombed in the limited portion.
The most played card in the event was Surgical Extraction, with many many copies Main Deck. I believe the amount of UW and even some Esper decks kicked around, while Humans is a match up that does not favour GDS, was enough to push it down.
That said as you mention, limited could have done weird things.
This looked like a bad tournament to bring gds at all, to be honest. Great deck just a poor choice.
Izzet Phoenix still continues to do really well though, it feels like its always in the top 8 of something. Faithless looting wasn't looking broken, its just another great card.
It still feels like midrange decks feel lost in the shuffle of modern as a whole though.
Granted this is only one event but i am on record as stating fair decks get better because of the mulligan rule as they can mull to hate. While i do understand decks like dredge which can mold a better hand may get explosive, mulling to a decent hand with surgical just seems like the play against any grave based deck. Honestly surprised at the number of humans decks but having access to melding mage and thalia to combat phoenix does seem relevant.
Private Mod Note
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Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
This looked like a bad tournament to bring gds at all, to be honest. Great deck just a poor choice.
Izzet Phoenix still continues to do really well though, it feels like its always in the top 8 of something. Faithless looting wasn't looking broken, its just another great card.
It still feels like midrange decks feel lost in the shuffle of modern as a whole though.
Yeah, trying to walk the tight rope that is answers, threats, and resilience, I just cannot see it as a reliable path in a large enough data set. I saw a tweet that had Jund at this event as 12-10 as a 'good' record. 50/50 decks are great for balance, but as a 'winning' option? I'll take one of the 60% win rate decks please.
Phoenix is a good deck, I'm surprised at the lack of conversion, but again, mixed tournament, who knows the real results, and Surgical was again being played more than any single card.
Yeah 12-10 assuming that is all Modern and not Draft or whatever.
Still not surprised about Midrange or Control not showing up its been rough for midrange for awhile and Control depends more on tuning for the Meta. Though Control should be quite happy if Humans rises back to the Top.
As to Control, it looked like it was doing better than average.
Hopefully we get data tomorrow.
Having your opponent's decklist probably helps with that too. You know whether or not a removal-heavy hand is the nuts or an essential mull-to-4, or whether that slow hand of lands and cantrips is great for your late game control mirror. Seems like it will artificially boost the performance in a setting which virtually nobody plays in.
Benefit or not, I absolutely hate the idea of handing my decklist to an opponent and hope this never gets implemented for real in events that matter.
EV does a great job of breaking down these stats and giving confidence intervals, including a sweet matchup matrix where N was big enough. A true data hero would be able to combine these results with matchup results from recent GP to get a really comprehensive picture of Modern in early 2019, but I don't have the bandwidth to handle this project right now.
Some takeaways from the data:
1. Stirrings, Looting, and non-Stirrings/Looting decks had about comparable performance.
2. All of the most-played decks appear to have statistically similar performance (all around +/- 50%) except...
3. ...Humans may have overperformed with an average MWP of 54% with a lower end of that MWP confidence interval at 49% and...
4. ...GDS may have underperformed with an average MWP of 45% with an upper end of that MWP confidence interval at 51.9%.
5. Ad Nauseam had the best MWP (admittedly, with a smaller matchup N) at 59.4% (n=69).
6. The following decks exceeded the 50%+ MWP average: UR Phoenix, Humans, UW Control, Dredge, Hardened Scales, BG Rock, Whir Prison, Ad Nauseam.
7. The following decks fell short of the 50%+ MWP average: Gx Tron, GDS, Eldrazi, Amulet Titan, Burn, Affinity, Infect, Esper Control.
8. Dredge is probably favored against Humans, averaging 70% MWP (N=30 matches) with a lower CI of 54%.
9. All other matchup calculations suffer from small N and a wide CI; it's hard to draw conclusions from them.
I look forward to more analysis as people get more time with the results.
Generally it looks like the london mullugan was a sucess and didn't break to much, but I do notice the lower than normal land counts in most of the top 8 decks. Now that they have real results data have wotc said if they are still pleased with it and intend to fully adopt it yet?
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
Am I the only one excited about the Red Eldrazi deck Mark Jacobson piloted? I think there is a lot of potential to tune and polish that deck (not a fan of the Blood Moon plan personally).
Was it seeing a burn out period and was always good?
We have not had a top8 like this since early 2018.
Spirits
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
a resurgence was inevitable, and i predicted as much back when UR phoenix and GDS started gaining traction a few months back. spirits was soundly suppressed, and with kci out of the way (an oddly poor matchup for humans), the deck was poised to return since it is somewhat better to decent against phoenix's spell based xerox and a natural counter to GDS (as proven in early 2018).
i cant say i expected such a presence at the MC, but it makes sense.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)T8 appears to be the following from the standings: https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/2019MC2/round-16-standings
1. Titanshift (Thien Nguyen)
2. Humans (Eli Loveman)
3. G Tron (Alex Hayne)
4. Humans (BBD)
5. G Tron (Adrian Zhu)
6. Humans (Chris Kvartek)
7. UR Phoenix (Javier Dominguez)
8. Experimental Affinity (Matt Sperling)
That 8th place spot was hotly contested, with 7 others vying for it and missing on breakers. Humans still seems to be a clear winner, with over-representation in a few different brackets.
Also, scratch one Gx Tron from the top standings. If founded at the end of an investigation, this would be a significant blow to a major Magic name:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/2019MC2/round-16-disqualification-2019-04-27
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Oh also this doesn't include any War of the Spark Cards either. So yeah this changes nothing. I think the idea is before and after get some data points for London Mulligan before made for Modern Cards in Horizons and 37 new Walkers showing up in War of the Spark.
Except dredge was also on that list of decks likely to break the mulligan rule in half, yet none made top 8. Tron comprised 15% of the meta and was also a good deck pre-mulligan ruling. Same with humans, which honestly I think people talked themselves out of playing. It had a rough KCI matchup because of maindeck EE, that's about it. Yet post-KCI ban not many people tried to play it, at least in my area.
The top 8 has some of the decks that have been around the top of the format. The only thing that really surprised me is the lack of grixis shadow. I figured one would make it, though I've yet to see actual constructed-only records. Its certainly possible people bombed in the limited portion.
The most played card in the event was Surgical Extraction, with many many copies Main Deck. I believe the amount of UW and even some Esper decks kicked around, while Humans is a match up that does not favour GDS, was enough to push it down.
That said as you mention, limited could have done weird things.
Spirits
Izzet Phoenix still continues to do really well though, it feels like its always in the top 8 of something. Faithless looting wasn't looking broken, its just another great card.
It still feels like midrange decks feel lost in the shuffle of modern as a whole though.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
Yeah, trying to walk the tight rope that is answers, threats, and resilience, I just cannot see it as a reliable path in a large enough data set. I saw a tweet that had Jund at this event as 12-10 as a 'good' record. 50/50 decks are great for balance, but as a 'winning' option? I'll take one of the 60% win rate decks please.
Phoenix is a good deck, I'm surprised at the lack of conversion, but again, mixed tournament, who knows the real results, and Surgical was again being played more than any single card.
Spirits
Izzet is the better fair deck
Still not surprised about Midrange or Control not showing up its been rough for midrange for awhile and Control depends more on tuning for the Meta. Though Control should be quite happy if Humans rises back to the Top.
Magics twitter/writers community convincing people Phoenix is fair is kind of like that famous quote.
'The greatest trick the Devil ever played is convincing the world he doesn't exist.'
As to Control, it looked like it was doing better than average.
Hopefully we get data tomorrow.
Spirits
Having your opponent's decklist probably helps with that too. You know whether or not a removal-heavy hand is the nuts or an essential mull-to-4, or whether that slow hand of lands and cantrips is great for your late game control mirror. Seems like it will artificially boost the performance in a setting which virtually nobody plays in.
Benefit or not, I absolutely hate the idea of handing my decklist to an opponent and hope this never gets implemented for real in events that matter.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Good start to the data here courtesy of elvish_visionary, one of my favorite Reddit posters:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/bi515r/mc_london_archetype_win_percentages/
EV does a great job of breaking down these stats and giving confidence intervals, including a sweet matchup matrix where N was big enough. A true data hero would be able to combine these results with matchup results from recent GP to get a really comprehensive picture of Modern in early 2019, but I don't have the bandwidth to handle this project right now.
Some takeaways from the data:
1. Stirrings, Looting, and non-Stirrings/Looting decks had about comparable performance.
2. All of the most-played decks appear to have statistically similar performance (all around +/- 50%) except...
3. ...Humans may have overperformed with an average MWP of 54% with a lower end of that MWP confidence interval at 49% and...
4. ...GDS may have underperformed with an average MWP of 45% with an upper end of that MWP confidence interval at 51.9%.
5. Ad Nauseam had the best MWP (admittedly, with a smaller matchup N) at 59.4% (n=69).
6. The following decks exceeded the 50%+ MWP average: UR Phoenix, Humans, UW Control, Dredge, Hardened Scales, BG Rock, Whir Prison, Ad Nauseam.
7. The following decks fell short of the 50%+ MWP average: Gx Tron, GDS, Eldrazi, Amulet Titan, Burn, Affinity, Infect, Esper Control.
8. Dredge is probably favored against Humans, averaging 70% MWP (N=30 matches) with a lower CI of 54%.
9. All other matchup calculations suffer from small N and a wide CI; it's hard to draw conclusions from them.
I look forward to more analysis as people get more time with the results.
Out of 26 decks, Phoenix and Humans leading the pack at 5 and 4 copies respectively.
1 guy repping Jund, what a hero.
Logan nettles on jund. He and reid seem to hate trophy in that deck.
Humans really good, too. So many people talked bad about that deck once spirits arrived as a top deck.