You know...these MTGO stats have me checking the size on my tin foil hat....
We know they don't release all 5-0?
We know they cherry pick or (at best) it's random?
Is it too far to think that with Wizards hiding data from MTGO, and not releasing all the info...are they trying to shape meta perceptions?
Thats why i can only assume the meta looks good on perception, they could be hiding that Shadow decks are 2/3rds of the 5-0 records on MTGO, which would point to a deck thats beyond broken
I'm pretty sure AF said recently that the published 5-0s are randomly selected. And a random selection, over a large enough sample size, will approximate the true data.
but how could they be random when they reflect a decently accurate picture of the meta game?
if they where random wouldn't there be tier 3 decks in the top?
and when top was banned in legacy it showed why on mtg goldfish by its meta share? care to explain that?
In that chart GDS neatly fits in halfway between aggro-control and control-aggro as it has properties found in both descriptions. So in essence to argue whether it is a more jund style midrange deck or more of a "protect the queen" blue delver deck is pointless; it is a hybrid of the two.
In before people start arguing about the different strategies in magic(card games). You should all see this informative graph.
The only problem I have with this is I think his lategame/earlygame timings are all wrong. Combo is not a midgame strategy. The point of combo is to be faster than aggro, it just seems like it's slower because all the fastest combos have been banned. Still, decks like Cheeri0s and Grishoalbrand can win on turn 2, UR Battle Rage and Infect can win on turn 3. Combo is definitely an early game strategy. Along with that, he has Control as a midgame strategy, when it's clearly a late game strat.
but how could they be random when they reflect a decently accurate picture of the meta game?
if they where random wouldn't there be tier 3 decks in the top?
and when top was banned in legacy it showed why on mtg goldfish by its meta share? care to explain that?
There are generally 30-40 5-0s per day on mtgo. Just as an example, there were exactly 37 yesterday. If you take a random 10 point sample of that, it's true that you won't necessarily have an accurate representation of that day. However, if you take random 10 point samples every day for a month, your data will start to come closer to approximating the true statistics.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
If UW Control can dodge the big mana matchups, it looks like a favorable deck choice.
UW does not lose to the big mana decks except maybe Titanshift, which I haven't played enough to have much of an opinion on. Amulet Titan is also dicey once Cavern is online, but that's barely Tier 3. Ceremonious Rejection has totally changed the Tron matchups though, especially with 4 Seas and your Tec Edge/Quarter split. You really can just counter everything Gx Tron does while simultaneously shutting down their lands. E-Tron is closer but feels around 45-55, with that -5% edge going to E-Tron when they get nutty Temple openers.
I always forget that UW Control beats up on Eldrazi, especially with supreme verdict
I imagine the traditional tron matchups are still bad, unless rejection is a huge boon there, too
Tron has not been that bad for control since the eye ban. The main thing that killed you was the eventual emrakul. Now the worse thing that can happen is if you are caught with your pants down and tgey turn 3 karn you or if they cast newlamog early enough to keep you off cryptic. Now with the combination of rejections, and stony silence for game 2 and 3 the match is pretty even because you have a spell that is both great against the threats or slowing down engine and a pernament that shuts off the decks velocity, consistency, and some of its answers.
Misstep is only good against a few of the top decks but would help out Ux control immensely, and elf would help revitalize the dying Jund archetype
You know there's nothing going on in Modern ban/unban land when Misstep is on someone's radar. The card is super duper busted and disproportionately helps unfair strategies. What do all the following Modern regulatory spells have in common: Push, Path, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Bolt. Yeah, I'll pass on Misstep. I swear, people who suggest this don't seem to have experienced that card in action.
It's a doubly perplexing suggestion with DS doing so well. Can you even imagine the DS mirror when 50% of the format is playing Misstep DS decks? Dear god. I'd rather we go back to the Twin conversation than entertain Misstep conversation.
I normally agree with just about everything you say, but in this case I am going to have to respectfully disagree. I think you are overestimating the card.
DS mirrors with Misstep would play out more or less the same as these mirrors already do with players trading resources via Thoughtseize, Inquisition, Fatal Push, ect. The main difference is that turn 1 Thoughtseize can now be countered on the draw. Is this really that much different?
Also please tell me which unfair strategies would run Misstep? Here are the decks that would most likely not play it: Burn, Affinity, UR Storm, Counters Company, Goryo's Vengeance, Cheerios, Gx Tron, Eldrazi Tron, Dredge, Ironworks Combo, Infect, RW Prison
Remember in legacy Misstep actually pushed combo out of the format. The decks that ran it were mostly aggro-control or pure control strategies.
So please back up your argument that it would "disproportionately helps unfair strategies" when in legacy it actually did the opposite.
Modern lacks the syrgenies that made misstep great in fair decks. Even though misstep is insanely powerful it is still a situational answer that can be a dead card and control does not need more of that. In legacy you had fow and brainstorm to mitigate the situational nature of card when you did not need it while having it for the situations that you did. In modern the decks that will benefit the most are the decks that win through casting more spells per turn or decks trying to protect something vulnerable to commonly played 1 mana answers. Such decks include grixis death's shadow, infect, cheerios, and jeskai saheeli to name a few. Outside of tempo based strategies like shadow or controling combo decks like copycat mm would just help more unfair decks. Control would just sit there with their mm in hand bbeing great sometimes while completely dead at others with no way to shuffle it away or pitch it for a beneficial effect.
'Our current method for presenting decklists for Magic Online Leagues is to randomly select ten of the top-performing decklists per format per day. Starting July 10, we will be reducing the total number of top decklists being presented per day from ten to five, and each of these decklists will be randomly selected with the caveat that each list will be at least ten cards different from every other list.'
'With all that said, the way we've been presenting decklists from Magic Online is particularly prone to pushing metagames toward becoming homogenous or "solved" extremely quickly. Since we have been presenting a random selection of top-performing decks, even if a deck doesn't have a particularly high win rate, it can appear to be extremely dominant if it's widely played. With only this information, it's not possible to disentangle win percentage and metagame percentage. This can lead, and at times has led, to feedback cycles where a deck appears more dominant than it would otherwise, which leads to an even greater percentage of play.'
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.
Well then...More cryptic shenanigans from WotC! I think it would be funny if it gets to the point where they don't have 5 different decks that each differ by at least 10 cards. Would they just throw in some 4-1 lists and not tell us? They just say "top performing", not necessarily undefeated.
Hope the meta is never that bad, but still, it'd be funny.
If you don't know that wizards looks to purposefully obfuscate metadata you haven't been paying attention. Now they are acknowledging the conflation of prevalence and power when it comes to how players and 3rd party websites view the data they are willing to release. This is exactly why I have said that our metadata is flawed in the recent past and that tier listings create a facade of power backed by the players willingness to believe in that facade. Don't get me wrong, I know some decks will be better than other and in general, this is shown by how many people play the deck, but after wizard's opened the format up through bans the gap in power between tiers shrank an enormous amount.
With the limited data we have the tier lists can't keep up with a meta in flux from new cards and player trends. This is going to get worse with the new changes. I personally don't mind this because I, like wizards, don't like a solved meta. I know many people disagree with this but I feel like these people must face the reality of what wizards wants and that wizards calls the shots.
Before I was harsh on Sheridan's work and I want to acknowledge how accurate and beneficial it has been to the community. I just feel that wizards has opened the format up with bans and it's not like it was in the twin/pod/delver era where there is a distinct class of decks above the rest and with less and less data to work with tiers can be dangerous illusions with data as patchy as what we have.
All data is valuable of course but it loses it's value or even has negative value when it is not considered in the appropriate context. I personally think the current context in which we can evaluate results for decks is abysmal and that online data has been perverting metadata with its incomplete nature.
With the "must differ by at least 10 cards" caveat in the 5 per day published results, what we will see is an ever-shifting list of decks capable of going 5-0 against a random field of which we know there are easily 100. Good luck getting concrete rankings in performance with that. My advice to people is to play decks they know very well and have a positive matchup with as many of the top 10 decks as possible. Bonus points for guessing a trend due to new cards or flavour of the month and spiking with a rogue deck. I think this is great, play what you want, you have practically endless choices!
'Our current method for presenting decklists for Magic Online Leagues is to randomly select ten of the top-performing decklists per format per day. Starting July 10, we will be reducing the total number of top decklists being presented per day from ten to five, and each of these decklists will be randomly selected with the caveat that each list will be at least ten cards different from every other list.'
'With all that said, the way we've been presenting decklists from Magic Online is particularly prone to pushing metagames toward becoming homogenous or "solved" extremely quickly. Since we have been presenting a random selection of top-performing decks, even if a deck doesn't have a particularly high win rate, it can appear to be extremely dominant if it's widely played. With only this information, it's not possible to disentangle win percentage and metagame percentage. This can lead, and at times has led, to feedback cycles where a deck appears more dominant than it would otherwise, which leads to an even greater percentage of play.'
They would rather have the blind leading the blind through a sea of confusion and chaos than take the time to properly manage their formats. Awesome.
Ok. Say goodbye to Metagame Analysis. This is a bad WOTC move.
That was my instinctual reaction too. But it's fairly obvious that by taking away the PT and making this change, they simply want the format to stay fresh, diverse, and "unsolved" for as long as possible. I actually think in the grand scheme of things it's a good sign that WOTC wants a format that isn't solved for players to land and enjoy. It demonstrates a desire to continue to support the format.
A lot of us who post here fancy ourselves "competitive" Modern players to various degrees so we always want as much information as possible, but if you take a step back this can be seen as a positive.
Ok. Say goodbye to Metagame Analysis. This is a bad WOTC move.
That was my instinctual reaction too. But it's fairly obvious that by taking away the PT and making this change, they simply want the format to stay fresh, diverse, and "unsolved" for as long as possible. I actually think in the grand scheme of things it's a good sign that WOTC wants a format that isn't solved for players to land and enjoy. It demonstrates a desire to continue to support the format.
A lot of us who post here fancy ourselves "competitive" Modern players to various degrees so we always want as much information as possible, but if you take a step back this can be seen as a positive.
When games in Modern are often decided by the top 10 cards of each player's library or the huge impact of specific sideboard cards in limited capacity, I can't see how this is in any way a good thing. Unless you REALLY want to try and make Horse Tribal happen at your local FNM.
Use Websites like this and reddit to find little tweaks in decks, WotC can't control what the community does/says, only what they know about winrates, let's be honest.
We have 1 UW Control, 1 Grixis Shadow, 1 Living End, 1 Burn, 1 Affinity.
Results going forward will be almost entirely meaningless. It was already fairly meaningless after the cease and desist for Goldfish, but now it's actively contrived and purposefully separated from what is actually happening on MTGO.
We have 1 UW Control, 1 Grixis Shadow, 1 Living End, 1 Burn, 1 Affinity.
Results going forward will be almost entirely meaningless. It was already fairly meaningless after the cease and desist for Goldfish, but now it's actively contrived and purposefully separated from what is actually happening on MTGO.
Sad but true. At least we still get the lists from MOCS, PTQs and Challengues... right??
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern:WU WU Control | WBG Abzan Company Frontier:UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
Ok. Say goodbye to Metagame Analysis. This is a bad WOTC move.
That was my instinctual reaction too. But it's fairly obvious that by taking away the PT and making this change, they simply want the format to stay fresh, diverse, and "unsolved" for as long as possible. I actually think in the grand scheme of things it's a good sign that WOTC wants a format that isn't solved for players to land and enjoy. It demonstrates a desire to continue to support the format.
A lot of us who post here fancy ourselves "competitive" Modern players to various degrees so we always want as much information as possible, but if you take a step back this can be seen as a positive.
When games in Modern are often decided by the top 10 cards of each player's library or the huge impact of specific sideboard cards in limited capacity, I can't see how this is in any way a good thing. Unless you REALLY want to try and make Horse Tribal happen at your local FNM.
You're failing to understand his point. I fail to see how spouting the same format bashing rhetoric about the top 10 cards of your deck in any way relates to this decision. How does this affect the variant nature of modern? I feel like it's a weak segue to sandwich in a jab at modern and dodge an infraction.
Guess what? Wizards DOES want horse tribal to happen at FNM and that's why twin is banned. Wizards cares about the format because it doesn't want the spike driven online feedback loop to push a decks metashares into a noxious and bannable range, when they know the true winrate is acceptable. And they don't want us to know everything because it will lead to solved format more quickly and then it will be harder or impossible to achieve their goal of having standard cards impact modern regularly and ultimately lead to more bans so they can achieve the aforementioned goal. You don't like it but that is the truth.
We have 1 UW Control, 1 Grixis Shadow, 1 Living End, 1 Burn, 1 Affinity.
Results going forward will be almost entirely meaningless. It was already fairly meaningless after the cease and desist for Goldfish, but now it's actively contrived and purposefully separated from what is actually happening on MTGO.
Sad but true. At least we still get the lists from MOCS, PTQs and Challengues... right??
Let's not forget that they space GPs 3-4 months apart and run multiple events on a single weekend, despite having enough events to fairly evenly spread them out nearly once a month for a year. Minimizes information, maximizes unpredictability.
This is awful, and the exact opposite direction they should have gone in. They say there's a problem with public perception causing a feedback loop that makes decks become overplayed despite their winrates, and I agree, I've been saying exactly that in here for months. The solution isn't to obfuscate the data even further, though, that's only going to make the problem worse! Now, we have no usable data to analyze the meta at all, so what's going to drive the meta is going to be entirely the content writers on sites like SCG and CFB. Instead, they should have released all the 5-0s along with their winrate statistics. Let us analyze and come up with plans to attack the metagame. Without useable meta statistics, we're all going to be flailing in the dark.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Ok. Say goodbye to Metagame Analysis. This is a bad WOTC move.
That was my instinctual reaction too. But it's fairly obvious that by taking away the PT and making this change, they simply want the format to stay fresh, diverse, and "unsolved" for as long as possible. I actually think in the grand scheme of things it's a good sign that WOTC wants a format that isn't solved for players to land and enjoy. It demonstrates a desire to continue to support the format.
A lot of us who post here fancy ourselves "competitive" Modern players to various degrees so we always want as much information as possible, but if you take a step back this can be seen as a positive.
When games in Modern are often decided by the top 10 cards of each player's library or the huge impact of specific sideboard cards in limited capacity, I can't see how this is in any way a good thing. Unless you REALLY want to try and make Horse Tribal happen at your local FNM.
You're failing to understand his point. I fail to see how spouting the same format bashing rhetoric about the top 10 cards of your deck in any way relates to this decision. How does this affect the variant nature of modern? I feel like it's a weak segue to sandwich in a jab at modern and dodge an infraction.
Guess what? Wizards DOES want horse tribal to happen at FNM and that's why twin is banned. Wizards cares about the format because it doesn't want the spike driven online feedback loop to push a decks metashares into a noxious and bannable range, when they know the true winrate is acceptable. And they don't want us to know everything because it will lead to solved format more quickly and then it will be harder or impossible to achieve their goal of having standard cards impact modern regularly and ultimately lead to more bans so they can achieve the aforementioned goal. You don't like it but that is the truth.
You know how you avoid solved formats? By printing cards to impact those formats every 3 months, NOT by artificially concealing information. This is an exercise in laziness on their part, not insight. They should instead by innovating more cards to impact eternal formats than simply shutting the door on information-gathering. We get hundreds of new cards every three months, and if more of them were actually playable, and not trashy limited fodder or overpriced, underpowered Standard fodder, we would never have solved formats. We don't have the luxury of Legacy and Vintage, who have access to supplemental products, we have to and can only get new cards through Standard. So instead of helping us with new cards, they simply shut off our information valve. It doesn't actually solve anything, it just slows down our progress enough to make it seem like they've done something positive for our format.
This is typical of their lazy and disconnected management style.
They would rather have the blind leading the blind through a sea of confusion and chaos than take the time to properly manage their formats. Awesome.
I don't understand why you feel WotC is obligated to provide perfect information about the MTGO formats and results.
Anyway, I look at the SSG deck database for Modern Opens, as so anyone who finishes well in those will have run the gauntlet across two days of high level competition.
They would rather have the blind leading the blind through a sea of confusion and chaos than take the time to properly manage their formats. Awesome.
I don't understand why you feel WotC is obligated to provide perfect information about the MTGO formats and results.
Anyway, I look at the SSG deck database for Modern Opens, as so anyone who finishes well in those will have run the gauntlet across two days of high level competition.
We (I don't know if I speak for everyone, but at least a collective amount of some people) don't really care about Wizards providing the data themselves, but they have, in the past, already suppressed and halted any third party person from collecting and displaying that data. They have then taken action to prevent that data from being able to be collected through their software. So not only are they not giving us information, they are preventing us from accessing it, compiling it, and analyzing it on our own. They would rather us be in the dark than actually know what is going on in our formats.
The thing about relying on events is that they are very few and far between. There is much less statistical significance provided in any one event, and by the time you have a meaningful amount of data, nearly a year has gone by, several new sets have come out, older builds of the deck are no longer relevant, etc. This is exactly what they want and it's a lazy excuse for "format management."
but how could they be random when they reflect a decently accurate picture of the meta game?
if they where random wouldn't there be tier 3 decks in the top?
and when top was banned in legacy it showed why on mtg goldfish by its meta share? care to explain that?
decks playing:
none
I approve this message as it proves my point lol.
U Merfolk
UB Tezzerator
UB Mill
That's pretty cool. Thanks!
There are generally 30-40 5-0s per day on mtgo. Just as an example, there were exactly 37 yesterday. If you take a random 10 point sample of that, it's true that you won't necessarily have an accurate representation of that day. However, if you take random 10 point samples every day for a month, your data will start to come closer to approximating the true statistics.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Tron has not been that bad for control since the eye ban. The main thing that killed you was the eventual emrakul. Now the worse thing that can happen is if you are caught with your pants down and tgey turn 3 karn you or if they cast newlamog early enough to keep you off cryptic. Now with the combination of rejections, and stony silence for game 2 and 3 the match is pretty even because you have a spell that is both great against the threats or slowing down engine and a pernament that shuts off the decks velocity, consistency, and some of its answers.
Modern lacks the syrgenies that made misstep great in fair decks. Even though misstep is insanely powerful it is still a situational answer that can be a dead card and control does not need more of that. In legacy you had fow and brainstorm to mitigate the situational nature of card when you did not need it while having it for the situations that you did. In modern the decks that will benefit the most are the decks that win through casting more spells per turn or decks trying to protect something vulnerable to commonly played 1 mana answers. Such decks include grixis death's shadow, infect, cheerios, and jeskai saheeli to name a few. Outside of tempo based strategies like shadow or controling combo decks like copycat mm would just help more unfair decks. Control would just sit there with their mm in hand bbeing great sometimes while completely dead at others with no way to shuffle it away or pitch it for a beneficial effect.
'Our current method for presenting decklists for Magic Online Leagues is to randomly select ten of the top-performing decklists per format per day. Starting July 10, we will be reducing the total number of top decklists being presented per day from ten to five, and each of these decklists will be randomly selected with the caveat that each list will be at least ten cards different from every other list.'
'With all that said, the way we've been presenting decklists from Magic Online is particularly prone to pushing metagames toward becoming homogenous or "solved" extremely quickly. Since we have been presenting a random selection of top-performing decks, even if a deck doesn't have a particularly high win rate, it can appear to be extremely dominant if it's widely played. With only this information, it's not possible to disentangle win percentage and metagame percentage. This can lead, and at times has led, to feedback cycles where a deck appears more dominant than it would otherwise, which leads to an even greater percentage of play.'
Hope the meta is never that bad, but still, it'd be funny.
With the limited data we have the tier lists can't keep up with a meta in flux from new cards and player trends. This is going to get worse with the new changes. I personally don't mind this because I, like wizards, don't like a solved meta. I know many people disagree with this but I feel like these people must face the reality of what wizards wants and that wizards calls the shots.
Before I was harsh on Sheridan's work and I want to acknowledge how accurate and beneficial it has been to the community. I just feel that wizards has opened the format up with bans and it's not like it was in the twin/pod/delver era where there is a distinct class of decks above the rest and with less and less data to work with tiers can be dangerous illusions with data as patchy as what we have.
All data is valuable of course but it loses it's value or even has negative value when it is not considered in the appropriate context. I personally think the current context in which we can evaluate results for decks is abysmal and that online data has been perverting metadata with its incomplete nature.
With the "must differ by at least 10 cards" caveat in the 5 per day published results, what we will see is an ever-shifting list of decks capable of going 5-0 against a random field of which we know there are easily 100. Good luck getting concrete rankings in performance with that. My advice to people is to play decks they know very well and have a positive matchup with as many of the top 10 decks as possible. Bonus points for guessing a trend due to new cards or flavour of the month and spiking with a rogue deck. I think this is great, play what you want, you have practically endless choices!
edit: grammar and clarity
U Merfolk
UB Tezzerator
UB Mill
They can't prohibit the pros and forums from finding the consensus best decks.
Really aggravated by wotc making this move
They would rather have the blind leading the blind through a sea of confusion and chaos than take the time to properly manage their formats. Awesome.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
A lot of us who post here fancy ourselves "competitive" Modern players to various degrees so we always want as much information as possible, but if you take a step back this can be seen as a positive.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Very frustrated since I like researching little tweaks on decks
When games in Modern are often decided by the top 10 cards of each player's library or the huge impact of specific sideboard cards in limited capacity, I can't see how this is in any way a good thing. Unless you REALLY want to try and make Horse Tribal happen at your local FNM.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
U Merfolk
UB Tezzerator
UB Mill
Results going forward will be almost entirely meaningless. It was already fairly meaningless after the cease and desist for Goldfish, but now it's actively contrived and purposefully separated from what is actually happening on MTGO.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Frontier: UBR Grixis Control | BRG Jund Delirium
You're failing to understand his point. I fail to see how spouting the same format bashing rhetoric about the top 10 cards of your deck in any way relates to this decision. How does this affect the variant nature of modern? I feel like it's a weak segue to sandwich in a jab at modern and dodge an infraction.
Guess what? Wizards DOES want horse tribal to happen at FNM and that's why twin is banned. Wizards cares about the format because it doesn't want the spike driven online feedback loop to push a decks metashares into a noxious and bannable range, when they know the true winrate is acceptable. And they don't want us to know everything because it will lead to solved format more quickly and then it will be harder or impossible to achieve their goal of having standard cards impact modern regularly and ultimately lead to more bans so they can achieve the aforementioned goal. You don't like it but that is the truth.
U Merfolk
UB Tezzerator
UB Mill
Let's not forget that they space GPs 3-4 months apart and run multiple events on a single weekend, despite having enough events to fairly evenly spread them out nearly once a month for a year. Minimizes information, maximizes unpredictability.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
You know how you avoid solved formats? By printing cards to impact those formats every 3 months, NOT by artificially concealing information. This is an exercise in laziness on their part, not insight. They should instead by innovating more cards to impact eternal formats than simply shutting the door on information-gathering. We get hundreds of new cards every three months, and if more of them were actually playable, and not trashy limited fodder or overpriced, underpowered Standard fodder, we would never have solved formats. We don't have the luxury of Legacy and Vintage, who have access to supplemental products, we have to and can only get new cards through Standard. So instead of helping us with new cards, they simply shut off our information valve. It doesn't actually solve anything, it just slows down our progress enough to make it seem like they've done something positive for our format.
This is typical of their lazy and disconnected management style.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I'm gonna fire off some tweets on this one later lol!
Spirits
I don't understand why you feel WotC is obligated to provide perfect information about the MTGO formats and results.
Anyway, I look at the SSG deck database for Modern Opens, as so anyone who finishes well in those will have run the gauntlet across two days of high level competition.
We (I don't know if I speak for everyone, but at least a collective amount of some people) don't really care about Wizards providing the data themselves, but they have, in the past, already suppressed and halted any third party person from collecting and displaying that data. They have then taken action to prevent that data from being able to be collected through their software. So not only are they not giving us information, they are preventing us from accessing it, compiling it, and analyzing it on our own. They would rather us be in the dark than actually know what is going on in our formats.
The thing about relying on events is that they are very few and far between. There is much less statistical significance provided in any one event, and by the time you have a meaningful amount of data, nearly a year has gone by, several new sets have come out, older builds of the deck are no longer relevant, etc. This is exactly what they want and it's a lazy excuse for "format management."
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate