Alright so I haven't been on mtgtop8 in a while because we have been out of modern season for a while and I am in university and things are picking up, but when I went there today what I saw bothered me slightly. The current breakdown has aggro at 50% that, IMO, is way to high for any of the one categories. When you look at it Burn, Delver, and Affinity are all hyper aggressive strategies that generally do the same types of things. When you look at control and see that it makes up 17% of the meta I get the feeling that it is really being neglected by WOTC. When is the last time that wizards really printed a card (besides snapcaster) that is a 4 of in any modern control deck? I think that there needs to be a push by wizards to support a more balanced meta in modern. I think they can do that by simply reprinting a card like counterspell. Albeit counterspell would probably see play in scapeshift, twin, and delver it would certainly give control more appeal to players. It seems like every time wizards releases new cards that could see play in control they purposely attempt to decrease the power level just enough to make it unplayable. If you look at a format like legacy there is a much more even balance between the archetypes 38% aggro, 37% control, 24% combo. I think such a breakdown would be healthy for any format especially modern. Hopefully wizards can do something to fix this because I think it is unhealthy for a format to be so skewed to one type of play-style/archetype
MTG Top 8 is not a reliable source for archetype classification. I remember them counting RG Tron as a Control deck.
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
Alright so I haven't been on mtgtop8 in a while because we have been out of modern season for a while and I am in university and things are picking up, but when I went there today what I saw bothered me slightly. The current breakdown has aggro at 50% that, IMO, is way to high for any of the one categories. When you look at it Burn, Delver, and Affinity are all hyper aggressive strategies that generally do the same types of things. When you look at control and see that it makes up 17% of the meta I get the feeling that it is really being neglected by WOTC. When is the last time that wizards really printed a card (besides snapcaster) that is a 4 of in any modern control deck? I think that there needs to be a push by wizards to support a more balanced meta in modern. I think they can do that by simply reprinting a card like counterspell. Albeit counterspell would probably see play in scapeshift, twin, and delver it would certainly give control more appeal to players. It seems like every time wizards releases new cards that could see play in control they purposely attempt to decrease the power level just enough to make it unplayable. If you look at a format like legacy there is a much more even balance between the archetypes 38% aggro, 37% control, 24% combo. I think such a breakdown would be healthy for any format especially modern. Hopefully wizards can do something to fix this because I think it is unhealthy for a format to be so skewed to one type of play-style/archetype
MTG Top 8 is not a reliable source for archetype classification. I remember them counting RG Tron as a Control deck.
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
Yes, and I wasn't disputing that. I was just saying that MTGTop8 is a bad source. Since they only have 3 categories of decks, they have to count Jund as aggro when it is Midrange and Tempo Twin as combo when it is primarily Midrange. Control is underepresented, but please use a different source.
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
I'm not going to get into all the reasons as to why MTG Top 8 is a crap source. But I will just say this.
Since 10/22, they have added 3 paper events to their dataset.
Since 10/22, we have added 19 to our dataset (and I didn't even update it today).
That alone should be more than enough information to assess the comprehensiveness of their "metagame" stats.
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
I'm not going to get into all the reasons as to why MTG Top 8 is a crap source. But I will just say this.
Since 10/22, they have added 3 paper events to their dataset.
Since 10/22, we have added 19 to our dataset (and I didn't even update it today).
That alone should be more than enough information to assess the comprehensiveness of their "metagame" stats.
Ok so I just used the MTGO and paper data here and I calculated the percent for each category - aggro 37.84%, control 10.81%, combo 30.16% - they don't add up to 100 because I only looked at decks with over 1% total share because those are the decks that you are likely to see in a real meta at any given time the others are questionable. P.S. I included jund in control even though I'm not sure I would really call it a control deck sometimes.
While the format being dominated by burn and delver isn't great, I am happy that some different decks are getting the spotlight instead of pod, jund, junk, or twins. Personally I am fine with this meta because Patriot (my favorite) seems to have decent match ups against both.
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Commander: UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre 1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl BG Meren's grinder
While the format being dominated by burn and delver isn't great, I am happy that some different decks are getting the spotlight instead of pod, jund, junk, or twins. Personally I am fine with this meta because Patriot (my favorite) seems to have decent match ups against both.
I play UWR control and I also do very well against the popular decks right now I just think it would be better to have a stronger representation of different archetypes
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
I'm not going to get into all the reasons as to why MTG Top 8 is a crap source. But I will just say this.
Since 10/22, they have added 3 paper events to their dataset.
Since 10/22, we have added 19 to our dataset (and I didn't even update it today).
That alone should be more than enough information to assess the comprehensiveness of their "metagame" stats.
Ok so I just used the MTGO and paper data here and I calculated the percent for each category - aggro 37.84%, control 10.81%, combo 30.16% - they don't add up to 100 because I only looked at decks with over 1% total share because those are the decks that you are likely to see in a real meta at any given time the others are questionable. P.S. I included jund in control even though I'm not sure I would really call it a control deck sometimes.
that because pure combo doesn't exist anymore (in large part). In a rock paper scissor system if scissor (combo) doesn't exist, rock (control) never wins, instead we have now rocks with pointy edge (control deck with combo finisher, like shift).
- L
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"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
I'm not going to get into all the reasons as to why MTG Top 8 is a crap source. But I will just say this.
Since 10/22, they have added 3 paper events to their dataset.
Since 10/22, we have added 19 to our dataset (and I didn't even update it today).
That alone should be more than enough information to assess the comprehensiveness of their "metagame" stats.
Ok so I just used the MTGO and paper data here and I calculated the percent for each category - aggro 37.84%, control 10.81%, combo 30.16% - they don't add up to 100 because I only looked at decks with over 1% total share because those are the decks that you are likely to see in a real meta at any given time the others are questionable. P.S. I included jund in control even though I'm not sure I would really call it a control deck sometimes.
that because pure combo doesn't exist anymore (in large part). In a rock paper scissor system if scissor (combo) doesn't exist, rock (control) never wins, instead we have now rocks with pointy edge (control deck with combo finisher, like shift).
- L
I don't really know if there are that many control decks that have combo finishes - twin is a combo deck, scapeshift is a combo decks with control elements but it is very much a combo, ascendancy storm is combo, the only combo/control decks I can think of off the top of my head that are any good are kiki-jiki UWR and UW tron/Mono U tron and they represent a very small portion of the meta.
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
I'm not going to get into all the reasons as to why MTG Top 8 is a crap source. But I will just say this.
Since 10/22, they have added 3 paper events to their dataset.
Since 10/22, we have added 19 to our dataset (and I didn't even update it today).
That alone should be more than enough information to assess the comprehensiveness of their "metagame" stats.
Ok so I just used the MTGO and paper data here and I calculated the percent for each category - aggro 37.84%, control 10.81%, combo 30.16% - they don't add up to 100 because I only looked at decks with over 1% total share because those are the decks that you are likely to see in a real meta at any given time the others are questionable. P.S. I included jund in control even though I'm not sure I would really call it a control deck sometimes.
that because pure combo doesn't exist anymore (in large part). In a rock paper scissor system if scissor (combo) doesn't exist, rock (control) never wins, instead we have now rocks with pointy edge (control deck with combo finisher, like shift).
- L
I don't really know if there are that many control decks that have combo finishes - twin is a combo deck, scapeshift is a combo decks with control elements but it is very much a combo, ascendancy storm is combo, the only combo/control decks I can think of off the top of my head that are any good are kiki-jiki UWR and UW tron/Mono U tron and they represent a very small portion of the meta.
I meant real combo a la legacy (i.e. TES ANT Belcher S&T). In modern i see Ascendancy and PA storm or kiki pod maybe; and the feared ascendancy is doing its job mostly if not only in standard while PA can be taken to the top only by Finkel or Budde and Kiki pod is off the radar right now.
You can't really say that twin or shift are the real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on...
- L
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"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
that because pure combo doesn't exist anymore (in large part). In a rock paper scissor system if scissor (combo) doesn't exist, rock (control) never wins, instead we have now rocks with pointy edge (control deck with combo finisher, like shift).
People need to stop this idea of "control beats combo beats aggro beats control." This kind of simplistic rock-paper-scissors mentality is just false. Maybe that's how it once was, but that's been a gross oversimplification for a long time, if not outright false.
Control doesn't beat combo. Particular kinds of control deck beat particular kinds of combo. Meanwhile, particular kinds of combo beat particular kinds of control decks.
Not to mention the high number of decks that don't really fit into those three categories, like midrange. You can't have a Rock-Paper-Scissors idea when you also have to deal with things like Table and Cup in the mix.
I meant real combo a la legacy (i.e. TES ANT Belcher S&T). In modern i see Ascendancy and PA storm or kiki pod maybe; and the feared ascendancy is doing its job mostly if not only in standard while PA can be taken to the top only by Finkel or Budde and Kiki pod is off the radar right now.
You can't really say that twin or shift are the real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on...
And I can't say those decks you just listed are the "real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on." Those are good against some control decks and bad against some control decks.
For example, let's take Show and Tell. I'm not sure if it's necessarily favored against Miracles (the biggest control deck), but it sure as heck isn't disfavored against it. Meanwhile, it's absolutely awful against Death & Taxes, the second most popular control deck (that MTG Top 8 laughably misclassifies as "aggro").
Meanwhile, Belcher's weakness isn't control decks. It's any deck running Force of Will. Lands and the aforementioned Death & Taxes are control decks that Belcher walks right over. Miracles is decent against it, but again because it's running Force of Will; it's not really better than something like UWR Delver (hardly a control deck) in this department.
Again, we need to get over this inaccurate idea of a rock-paper-scissors meta based around control, combo, and aggro because it's simply outdated.
that because pure combo doesn't exist anymore (in large part). In a rock paper scissor system if scissor (combo) doesn't exist, rock (control) never wins, instead we have now rocks with pointy edge (control deck with combo finisher, like shift).
People need to stop this idea of "control beats combo beats aggro beats control." This kind of simplistic rock-paper-scissors mentality is just false. Maybe that's how it once was, but that's been a gross oversimplification for a long time, if not outright false.
Control doesn't beat combo. Particular kinds of control deck beat particular kinds of combo. Meanwhile, particular kinds of combo beat particular kinds of control decks.
Not to mention the high number of decks that don't really fit into those three categories, like midrange. You can't have a Rock-Paper-Scissors idea when you also have to deal with things like Table and Cup in the mix.
I meant real combo a la legacy (i.e. TES ANT Belcher S&T). In modern i see Ascendancy and PA storm or kiki pod maybe; and the feared ascendancy is doing its job mostly if not only in standard while PA can be taken to the top only by Finkel or Budde and Kiki pod is off the radar right now.
You can't really say that twin or shift are the real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on...
And I can't say those decks you just listed are the "real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on." Those are good against some control decks and bad against some control decks.
For example, let's take Show and Tell. I'm not sure if it's necessarily favored against Miracles (the biggest control deck), but it sure as heck isn't disfavored against it. Meanwhile, it's absolutely awful against Death & Taxes, the second most popular control deck (that MTG Top 8 laughably misclassifies as "aggro").
Meanwhile, Belcher's weakness isn't control decks. It's any deck running Force of Will. Lands and the aforementioned Death & Taxes are control decks that Belcher walks right over. Miracles is decent against it, but again because it's running Force of Will; it's not really better than something like UWR Delver (hardly a control deck) in this department.
Again, we need to get over this inaccurate idea of a rock-paper-scissors meta based around control, combo, and aggro because it's simply outdated.
I had your exactly same point, particular control beat particular combo, pure combo and not midrange/control deck with combo finishes.
The first poster used the three terms, labelling Jund as control for example, i used them for that reason; i know that doesn't have much sense right now and that was the point of my post...
And tbh all the deck are rolled over by belcher G1
- L
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"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
If anyone is curious, here's how the card count broke down from SCG Col for the T16
20 Dragon's Claw
Open question to all. What do you think it means when such a narrow sideboard card gets played in such a large quantity? I mean, this card is really only good against Burn. Kind of like Rule of Law against Storm in that sense. You wouldn't expect 20 Rule of Law in ANY Top 16, even before 2013, when Seething Song was still around. But we just saw 20 Dragon's Claw, an equally narrow SB card, in this tournament.
For reference, 5 decks played Dragon's Claw in the SB. 1 mono-red Burn, 4 UR Delver.
If anyone is curious, here's how the card count broke down from SCG Col for the T16
20 Dragon's Claw
Open question to all. What do you think it means when such a narrow sideboard card gets played in such a large quantity? I mean, this card is really only good against Burn. Kind of like Rule of Law against Storm in that sense. You wouldn't expect 20 Rule of Law in ANY Top 16, even before 2013, when Seething Song was still around. But we just saw 20 Dragon's Claw, an equally narrow SB card, in this tournament.
For reference, 5 decks played Dragon's Claw in the SB. 1 mono-red Burn, 4 UR Delver.
I don't think this is a big issue. We see the same thing on MTGO, where Claw is a top 5 most-played card, but the majority of Claws are getting played in the Delver and Burn sideboards, not in other decks. Now, if every deck used the card, that might be a Dredge issue, where you either play a certain group of hate cards or lose to a certain deck. But that's not what we have seen so far. Instead, we see a small subset of polarized decks (Burn/Delver) playing the card that is good against one of those polarized decks. So barring some change in the Claw distribution, I'm not super worried.
If anyone is curious, here's how the card count broke down from SCG Col for the T16
20 Dragon's Claw
Open question to all. What do you think it means when such a narrow sideboard card gets played in such a large quantity? I mean, this card is really only good against Burn. Kind of like Rule of Law against Storm in that sense. You wouldn't expect 20 Rule of Law in ANY Top 16, even before 2013, when Seething Song was still around. But we just saw 20 Dragon's Claw, an equally narrow SB card, in this tournament.
For reference, 5 decks played Dragon's Claw in the SB. 1 mono-red Burn, 4 UR Delver.
What's more bizarre are the 12 Celestial Purges, a card I recall as being a sideboard 1-2-of instead of a 3-4-of.
Metagame update! This includes a number of events from last week in both paper and MTGO. As usual, it does not include events before KTK was legalized, even if some of those events (from 9/21 through 10/2) will ultimately be considered in the MTGS forum update in a few months. It also includes probably 1-2 events that were from earlier in the period (mid-October), so changes in the metagame don't necessarily reflect events from the last week alone.
MTGO:10/2 - 11/8
1. UR Delver (16%)
2. Burn (14.5%)
3. Affinity (7%)
4. Melira Pod (7%)
5. Scapeshift (6%)
6. Bogles (3.5%)
7. Merfolk (3%)
8. Amulet of Vigor (2.5%)
9. UR Twin (2.5%)
10. UWR Control (2.5%)
This week, we see a small drop in Delver (and some of those might be shifts to RUG and UWR Delver). We also see a much more noticeable drop in Burn by a full 2% points. We see a parallel rise in Bogles and Melira Pod by .5% each, which probably has something to do with the small Burn dip. Looking at individual cards, this is probably because many of the Delver decks continue to run Dragon's Claw out of the board, which undoubtedly worsens Burn's matchup against MTGO's most-played deck.
Paper: 9/27 - 11/10
1. UR Delver (11.5%)
2. Burn (10%)
3. Affinity (7.5%)
4. Melira Pod (5%)
5. UR Twin (4.5%)
6. Scapeshift (4.5%)
7. Jund (4%)
8. UWR Control (3.5%)
9. Merfolk (3.5%)
10. UWR Midrange (3.5%)
The big news this week is UR Delver surpassing Burn as the most-played paper deck. Also, BG Rock falls out of the top 10 completely with basically 0 showings in the last week. Jund also takes a .75% drop from the week before, something that should come as no surprise to anyone watching this format.
It doesn't look like much is going to stop UR Delver's rise to the top, but the reversal of the Burn rise is interesting in its own right. All I have to say is, Thank Urza that we have GP Madrid this weekend.
What's more bizarre are the 12 Celestial Purges, a card I recall as being a sideboard 1-2-of instead of a 3-4-of.
Remember that that's the top 16. 12 Purges would be say 6/16 decks (probably most of the white decks... not sure on their numbers) running it as a 2 of.
The paper meta looks really solid, to me. The MTGO is a little skewed though.
Only because the paper meta shifts slowly. When UR delver gets 3-4 top 8s in Madrid it will be cancer all over again. Unless everyone is maindecking clasm, chalice of the void, helix and such.
The paper meta looks really solid, to me. The MTGO is a little skewed though.
Only because the paper meta shifts slowly. When UR delver gets 3-4 top 8s in Madrid it will be cancer all over again. Unless everyone is maindecking clasm, chalice of the void, helix and such.
And that's the big question: Can the metagame handle the rise of Burn and Delver on its own? If it can, we're good. If it can't, there will probably be a banning or two. As Rosewater says, "The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
Approximately 60% of my store played UR Delver last night, of about thirty players. Of six people I spoke to who had just switched, two were former Affinity players, one had played Pod, one had played WUR Midrange, one had played Twin, and one had played BGw Rock. There has been a big drop in diversity in my local meta.
Approximately 60% of my store played UR Delver last night, of about thirty players. Of six people I spoke to who had just switched, two were former Affinity players, one had played Pod, one had played WUR Midrange, one had played Twin, and one had played BGw Rock. There has been a big drop in diversity in my local meta.
It's not just your local meta, Here is a post I put together for another forum...
Time to bring some real data to this arguement. Simply look here.
You will see that there is (currently) 1 deck that sees ssignifanctly more play than the rest, UR aggro, and 3 decks that see at least half as much play as UR aggro. There are another 9 decks that see about 1/4 the play as UR aggro, and another 2 dozen odd decks that see about 1/8 as much play as UR aggro. So...
Tier : num of decks
1 : 1
2 : 3
3 : 9
The format didn't use to look this way. Prior to the reprinting of ancestral recal, we had 3 tier one decks with similar amounts of play (pod, affinity, and exarch) with about 5 decks that see half as much play, and 12 decks that see about 1/4 as much play as a teir one deck. So...
Tier : num of decks
1 : 3
2 : 5
3 : 12
Conclusion: Deck diversity seems to have gone down between January 1, 2014 and now.
So, now lets look along a different axis. How diverse is the actual pool of cards being used. Source
In the last two weeks of modern play, the top 6 non land cards seeing play are all blue and red. Of the top 10 most played spells in modern, only 1 isn't in UR. of the top 13 most played cards in modern, 12 are blue or red. The fourteenth most played card is white. There are no Green or black spells in the top 15. Stats (two color cards count for .5 points for each of their colors)
Color : Num of cards
W : 2
U : 9
B : 0
R : 4
G : 0
Since january 1, 2014, however the stats are very different. Stats (two color cards count for .5 points for each of their colors)
W : 2
U : 6.5
B : 2.5
R : 1.5
G : 2.5
Conclusion: Card diversity seems to have gone down in modern.
So, since the printing of treasure cruise, both deck diversity and card diversity in modern have gone down. It seems foolish to argue that treasure cruise has been good for the format.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
I immediately discount any argument based on MTG Top 8 stats. That site has a woefully incomplete dataset and any conclusions drawn from it are highly suspect.
Both GP Madrid and the paper metagame leading into Madrid suggest that Modern is fine. MTGO had some serious warpage occurring for a while, but I believe that should reverse following the GP. MTGO is hardly known for setting, or unsetting, big metagame trends.
I immediately discount any argument based on MTG Top 8 stats. That site has a woefully incomplete dataset and any conclusions drawn from it are highly suspect.
Both GP Madrid and the paper metagame leading into Madrid suggest that Modern is fine. MTGO had some serious warpage occurring for a while, but I believe that should reverse following the GP. MTGO is hardly known for setting, or unsetting, big metagame trends.
What Database do you recommend I use?
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
I immediately discount any argument based on MTG Top 8 stats. That site has a woefully incomplete dataset and any conclusions drawn from it are highly suspect.
Both GP Madrid and the paper metagame leading into Madrid suggest that Modern is fine. MTGO had some serious warpage occurring for a while, but I believe that should reverse following the GP. MTGO is hardly known for setting, or unsetting, big metagame trends.
What Database do you recommend I use?
The most complete dataset I know of is ours, which you can find in my signature. It tracks the most paper events of any I know. But it's just a spreadsheet, not a database, so it doesn't have the actual decklists in it; it's just decklist classifications. If you can get past that, it's got the most data for the most complete picture of the paper metagame. MTGDecks is pretty close, but they always miss decks here and there (not to mention some wild misclassifications).
For online events, I thought that MTGO goldfish did all 4-0/3-1 decks, but it turns out they just do 4-0 ones. Our dataset also does the 3-1 decks alongside the 4-0 ones.
We made our dataset specifically because all the other tools had some incomprehensible oversights (no 3-1 decks), terrible deck classifications (inconsistencies galore with UWR Midrange vs. UWR Control, BG Rock vs. Junk vs. BGw Souls, etc.), or a lack of events (e.g. no one except us and TCDecks gets the Japanese events). I honestly wish someone else just did this for us with a better software, but if they won't, then we have to.
It lumps all urzatron decks into one category, but that would only increase the percentage of control decks meaning that it would support my hypothesis further that control is under appreciated.
Yes, and I wasn't disputing that. I was just saying that MTGTop8 is a bad source. Since they only have 3 categories of decks, they have to count Jund as aggro when it is Midrange and Tempo Twin as combo when it is primarily Midrange. Control is underepresented, but please use a different source.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I'm not going to get into all the reasons as to why MTG Top 8 is a crap source. But I will just say this.
Since 10/22, they have added 3 paper events to their dataset.
Since 10/22, we have added 19 to our dataset (and I didn't even update it today).
That alone should be more than enough information to assess the comprehensiveness of their "metagame" stats.
Ok so I just used the MTGO and paper data here and I calculated the percent for each category - aggro 37.84%, control 10.81%, combo 30.16% - they don't add up to 100 because I only looked at decks with over 1% total share because those are the decks that you are likely to see in a real meta at any given time the others are questionable. P.S. I included jund in control even though I'm not sure I would really call it a control deck sometimes.
UBG Tasigur, the lab enabler UR Planeswalker Control
UBRW Breya's personal box of combos BRW Vampire beats, by Dre
1 Karn, where all lands are command towers UBR Inalla's Venser lock
UBRGW Atog Atog contraption tribal WUB Xur's second chance
UGW Derivi, bird tribal R Brother's Yamazaki
BRG Prosh, the scourge of multiplayer GW Capt. Sisay's Deck Dumping Service
UB All Your Spells do Belong to Me UG Tapioca Pearl
BG Meren's grinder
I play UWR control and I also do very well against the popular decks right now I just think it would be better to have a stronger representation of different archetypes
that because pure combo doesn't exist anymore (in large part). In a rock paper scissor system if scissor (combo) doesn't exist, rock (control) never wins, instead we have now rocks with pointy edge (control deck with combo finisher, like shift).
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
I don't really know if there are that many control decks that have combo finishes - twin is a combo deck, scapeshift is a combo decks with control elements but it is very much a combo, ascendancy storm is combo, the only combo/control decks I can think of off the top of my head that are any good are kiki-jiki UWR and UW tron/Mono U tron and they represent a very small portion of the meta.
I meant real combo a la legacy (i.e. TES ANT Belcher S&T). In modern i see Ascendancy and PA storm or kiki pod maybe; and the feared ascendancy is doing its job mostly if not only in standard while PA can be taken to the top only by Finkel or Budde and Kiki pod is off the radar right now.
You can't really say that twin or shift are the real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on...
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
Control doesn't beat combo. Particular kinds of control deck beat particular kinds of combo. Meanwhile, particular kinds of combo beat particular kinds of control decks.
Not to mention the high number of decks that don't really fit into those three categories, like midrange. You can't have a Rock-Paper-Scissors idea when you also have to deal with things like Table and Cup in the mix.
And I can't say those decks you just listed are the "real combo decks which control decks tend to predate on." Those are good against some control decks and bad against some control decks.
For example, let's take Show and Tell. I'm not sure if it's necessarily favored against Miracles (the biggest control deck), but it sure as heck isn't disfavored against it. Meanwhile, it's absolutely awful against Death & Taxes, the second most popular control deck (that MTG Top 8 laughably misclassifies as "aggro").
Meanwhile, Belcher's weakness isn't control decks. It's any deck running Force of Will. Lands and the aforementioned Death & Taxes are control decks that Belcher walks right over. Miracles is decent against it, but again because it's running Force of Will; it's not really better than something like UWR Delver (hardly a control deck) in this department.
Again, we need to get over this inaccurate idea of a rock-paper-scissors meta based around control, combo, and aggro because it's simply outdated.
I had your exactly same point, particular control beat particular combo, pure combo and not midrange/control deck with combo finishes.
The first poster used the three terms, labelling Jund as control for example, i used them for that reason; i know that doesn't have much sense right now and that was the point of my post...
And tbh all the deck are rolled over by belcher G1
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
40 Scalding Tarn
36 Lightning Bolt
31 Mountain
30 Island
28 Steam Vents
24 Gitaxian Probe
24 Serum Visions
23 Monastery Swiftspear
23 Treasure Cruise
21 Remand
20 Dragon's Claw
17 Snapcaster Mage
16 Arid Mesa
16 Delver of Secrets
16 Young Pyromancer
15 Flooded Strand
15 Goblin Guide
15 Lightning Helix
13 Wooded Foothills
12 Celestial Purge
12 Eidolon of the Great Revel
12 Lava Spike
12 Rift Bolt
12 Skullcrack
11 Dispel
11 Electrolyze
11 Searing Blaze
11 Spell Snare
11 Thought Scour
11 Vendilion Clique
10 Dig Through Time
10 Mana Leak
10 Spellskite
9 Combust
9 Cryptic Command
9 Spell Pierce
9 Stomping Ground
9 Vapor Snag
8 Boros Charm
8 Gemstone Mine
8 Gut Shot
8 Misty Rainforest
8 Path to Exile
8 Pyroclasm
8 Relic of Progenitus
8 Sacred Foundry
8 Sleight of Hand
8 Smash to Smithereens
7 Anger of the Gods
7 Counterflux
7 Destructive Revelry
7 Negate
7 Pillar of Flame
7 Restoration Angel
7 Sulfur Falls
7 Wear
6 Blood Moon
6 Bloodstained Mire
6 Electrickery
6 Engineered Explosives
6 Forked Bolt
6 Grim Lavamancer
6 Polluted Delta
6 Shard Volley
6 Volcanic Fallout
5 Ancient Grudge
5 Breeding Pool
5 Forest
5 Hallowed Fountain
5 Magma Spray
5 Swan Song
5 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Amulet of Vigor
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Cerulean Wisps
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Cranial Plating
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Deceiver Exarch
4 Expedition Map
4 Galvanic Blast
4 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Glittering Wish
4 Gruul Turf
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
4 Karn Liberated
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Manamorphose
4 Mox Opal
4 Nature's Claim
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Oblivion Stone
4 Ornithopter
4 Primeval Titan
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Scapeshift
4 Seal of Primordium
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Shattering Spree
4 Signal Pest
4 Simic Growth Chamber
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Splinter Twin
4 Summer Bloom
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Timely Reinforcements
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
4 Vault Skirge
4 Windswept Heath
3 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
3 Batterskull
3 Deflecting Palm
3 Etched Champion
3 Faithless Looting
3 Firespout
3 Ghost Quarter
3 Glimmervoid
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Hive Mind
3 Leyline of Punishment
3 Mutagenic Growth
3 Mutavault
3 Obstinate Baloth
3 Searing Blood
3 Shatterstorm
3 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Springleaf Drum
3 Tectonic Edge
3 Thoughtcast
3 Thoughtseize
3 Tolaria West
2 Ancient Tomb
2 Aven Mindcensor
2 Burst Lightning
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Choke
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Flames of the Blood Hand
2 Flashfreeze
2 Ghostfire Blade
2 Keranos, God of Storms
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Memnite
2 Molten Rain
2 Pact of Negation
2 Peer Through Depths
2 Pestermite
2 Plains
2 Platinum Angel
2 Repeal
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Steel Overseer
2 Stony Silence
2 Supreme Verdict
2 Temple of Mystery
2 Tendo Ice Bridge
2 Torpor Orb
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
2 Vexing Devil
2 Whipflare
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Ajani Vengeant
1 Arc Trail
1 Boros Garrison
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Dismember
1 Echoing Truth
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Flame Slash
1 Flesh
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Illness in the Ranks
1 Inferno Titan
1 Khalni Garden
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Noxious Revival
1 Radiant Fountain
1 Ray of Revelation
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Scarscale Ritual
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Shadow of Doubt
1 Shivan Reef
1 Slayers' Stronghold
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Sundering Titan
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Temple Garden
1 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Vesuva
1 Vexing Shusher
1 Welding Jar
For reference, 5 decks played Dragon's Claw in the SB. 1 mono-red Burn, 4 UR Delver.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
I don't think this is a big issue. We see the same thing on MTGO, where Claw is a top 5 most-played card, but the majority of Claws are getting played in the Delver and Burn sideboards, not in other decks. Now, if every deck used the card, that might be a Dredge issue, where you either play a certain group of hate cards or lose to a certain deck. But that's not what we have seen so far. Instead, we see a small subset of polarized decks (Burn/Delver) playing the card that is good against one of those polarized decks. So barring some change in the Claw distribution, I'm not super worried.
What's more bizarre are the 12 Celestial Purges, a card I recall as being a sideboard 1-2-of instead of a 3-4-of.
MTGO:10/2 - 11/8
1. UR Delver (16%)
2. Burn (14.5%)
3. Affinity (7%)
4. Melira Pod (7%)
5. Scapeshift (6%)
6. Bogles (3.5%)
7. Merfolk (3%)
8. Amulet of Vigor (2.5%)
9. UR Twin (2.5%)
10. UWR Control (2.5%)
This week, we see a small drop in Delver (and some of those might be shifts to RUG and UWR Delver). We also see a much more noticeable drop in Burn by a full 2% points. We see a parallel rise in Bogles and Melira Pod by .5% each, which probably has something to do with the small Burn dip. Looking at individual cards, this is probably because many of the Delver decks continue to run Dragon's Claw out of the board, which undoubtedly worsens Burn's matchup against MTGO's most-played deck.
Paper: 9/27 - 11/10
1. UR Delver (11.5%)
2. Burn (10%)
3. Affinity (7.5%)
4. Melira Pod (5%)
5. UR Twin (4.5%)
6. Scapeshift (4.5%)
7. Jund (4%)
8. UWR Control (3.5%)
9. Merfolk (3.5%)
10. UWR Midrange (3.5%)
The big news this week is UR Delver surpassing Burn as the most-played paper deck. Also, BG Rock falls out of the top 10 completely with basically 0 showings in the last week. Jund also takes a .75% drop from the week before, something that should come as no surprise to anyone watching this format.
It doesn't look like much is going to stop UR Delver's rise to the top, but the reversal of the Burn rise is interesting in its own right. All I have to say is, Thank Urza that we have GP Madrid this weekend.
Remember that that's the top 16. 12 Purges would be say 6/16 decks (probably most of the white decks... not sure on their numbers) running it as a 2 of.
Only because the paper meta shifts slowly. When UR delver gets 3-4 top 8s in Madrid it will be cancer all over again. Unless everyone is maindecking clasm, chalice of the void, helix and such.
And that's the big question: Can the metagame handle the rise of Burn and Delver on its own? If it can, we're good. If it can't, there will probably be a banning or two. As Rosewater says, "The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
Modern: GW Hatebears/midrange, WGU Knightfall/evolution midrange stuff
Standard: nope
Legacy: W Death & Taxes
EDH (not Commander!): W Avacyn, Angel of Hope, GR Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, WGB Anafenza, the Foremost, WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator
Approximately 60% of my store played UR Delver last night, of about thirty players. Of six people I spoke to who had just switched, two were former Affinity players, one had played Pod, one had played WUR Midrange, one had played Twin, and one had played BGw Rock. There has been a big drop in diversity in my local meta.
UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU's prison: blue is the new orange is the new black.
Mizzix Of The Izmagnus : wheels on fire... rolling down the road...
BSidisi, Undead VizierB: Bis zum Erbrechen
GTitiania, Protector Of ArgothG: Protecting Argoth, by blowing it up!
GYisan, The Wanderer BardG: Gradus Ad Elfball.
Duel EDH: Yisan & Titania.
In Progress: Grand Arbiter Augustin IV duel; Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Doomsday.
- Manite
Both GP Madrid and the paper metagame leading into Madrid suggest that Modern is fine. MTGO had some serious warpage occurring for a while, but I believe that should reverse following the GP. MTGO is hardly known for setting, or unsetting, big metagame trends.
- Manite
The most complete dataset I know of is ours, which you can find in my signature. It tracks the most paper events of any I know. But it's just a spreadsheet, not a database, so it doesn't have the actual decklists in it; it's just decklist classifications. If you can get past that, it's got the most data for the most complete picture of the paper metagame. MTGDecks is pretty close, but they always miss decks here and there (not to mention some wild misclassifications).
For online events, I thought that MTGO goldfish did all 4-0/3-1 decks, but it turns out they just do 4-0 ones. Our dataset also does the 3-1 decks alongside the 4-0 ones.
We made our dataset specifically because all the other tools had some incomprehensible oversights (no 3-1 decks), terrible deck classifications (inconsistencies galore with UWR Midrange vs. UWR Control, BG Rock vs. Junk vs. BGw Souls, etc.), or a lack of events (e.g. no one except us and TCDecks gets the Japanese events). I honestly wish someone else just did this for us with a better software, but if they won't, then we have to.