Can we make fun of the Hollow one deck? Like with Show and Tell in legacy? "Show and derp put Griselchimp into play?"
"Chimp Lore into Hollow Derp play land trigger Bloodchimp?"
Seriously though, with all of the RNG doesn't the deck just play itself? I feel like people would get bored of it after awhile like Scapeshift. Agreed on FotM.
Can we make fun of the Hollow one deck? Like with Show and Tell in legacy? "Show and derp put Griselchimp into play?"
"Chimp Lore into Hollow Derp play land trigger Bloodchimp?"
Seriously though, with all of the RNG doesn't the deck just play itself? I feel like people would get bored of it after awhile like Scapeshift. Agreed on FotM.
Pretty sure people have these types of opinions about any deck they don't play or like. For instance, I think there's a lot more play to Burn than people give it credit for and a LOT LESS play to Pod than people always claim. Pod always seemed like an auto-pilot deck to me. As long as you knew which of your tutor targets were good in what scenarios it was just mechanical. But I recognize that the majority of the Modern playerbase feels the opposite.
Can we make fun of the Hollow one deck? Like with Show and Tell in legacy? "Show and derp put Griselchimp into play?"
"Chimp Lore into Hollow Derp play land trigger Bloodchimp?"
Seriously though, with all of the RNG doesn't the deck just play itself? I feel like people would get bored of it after awhile like Scapeshift. Agreed on FotM.
Pretty sure people have these types of opinions about any deck they don't play or like. For instance, I think there's a lot more play to Burn than people give it credit for and a LOT LESS play to Pod than people always claim. Pod always seemed like an auto-pilot deck to me. As long as you knew which of your tutor targets were good in what scenarios it was just mechanical. But I recognize that the majority of the Modern playerbase feels the opposite.
Agreed. I always had the same feeling about Pod. Once you knew what your deck list was (this took longer for some), the rest seemed fairly elementary. I currently feel the same way about Thoughtseize decks, especially when I see my opponent take the immediate (and not always the strongest) threat out of my hand first every time. Also it seems like my opponent plays as if to signal me that they have no more discard, which sometimes is not true.
When it comes down to it, Competitive players don't care less what you think about their deck. If I had to choose between a GDS deck where I played nearly perfectly for 15 rounds and got 10-5 at a Grand Prix vs. a Hollow One deck where I made the top 8 at 13-2, I'll take the Hollow One deck every time. At FNM, sometimes I'll play a lesser deck (a bit too often, lol), but when you pay $xxxx for a tournament and you're not on that GP Grind, you only have a limited number of chances to succeed.
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
yeah burn doesnt get enough cred. i absolutely hate losing against it, but ive accepted that good burn players are doing more than just casting whatever willy nilly.
good decks will get plenty of free wins with pretty straight forward lines, its when they face adversity in bad matchups or poor draws when the good pilots pull away from the pack.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
The one question lingering on my mind is what exactly happened to affinity? It was like death's shadow decks came flying in and then affinity just kind of vanished. I didn't think that K-command and abrade would be enough to just skew the meta to the point that it isn't a viable deck.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I think luck/variance plays a large part in winning games.
I don't recall affinity being either good or bad in the past year.
Is jund going to be good? Or are people just playing it because of bloodbraid hype?
Why do you think luck and variance are a large part of winning games? Is that in Magic as a whole or Modern specifically? If Modern specifically, how is this affecting player performance at events?
Magic as a whole, at least relative to things like chess. Maybe I've just been playing for too long. But avoiding bad matchups goes a long ways towards winning. You can try to get around this by playing a deck you think will be good in the field, and fine tune the sideboard to help in poor matchups so not all is lost.
Magic as a whole, at least relative to things like chess. Maybe I've just been playing for too long. But avoiding bad matchups goes a long ways towards winning. You can try to get around this by playing a deck you think will be good in the field, and fine tune the sideboard to help in poor matchups so not all is lost.
No arguments here. Magic definitely has higher variance than chess, and it spans across formats. For reference, the all-time best MTG players tend to be in the 60% win-range at major events. The all-time best chess players appear to be at 70%-90% (https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/the-best-players-ever---a-statistical-evaluation), which is almost unheard of in even high-level MTG. I was worried at first you were making a claim about Modern being higher variance/luck than other formats, which we have some strong evidence against in large tournament contexts.
Why do you think luck and variance are a large part of winning games? Is that in Magic as a whole or Modern specifically? If Modern specifically, how is this affecting player performance at events?
Have you done any calculations for how much luck plays into modern or mtg in general? Would it just be ~100%-(a great player's winrate)? Maybe add a couple percentage points for the occasional misplay?
It would be interesting to tease out the luck differences from say Hollow Chimp and Bogles (perceived low skill and luckbased decks) vs Lantern and Shadow (perceived high skill low luckbased decks). I'm not entirely sure how it would be done but there has to be a difference, right?
Why do you think luck and variance are a large part of winning games? Is that in Magic as a whole or Modern specifically? If Modern specifically, how is this affecting player performance at events?
Have you done any calculations for how much luck plays into modern or mtg in general? Would it just be ~100%-(a great player's winrate)? Maybe add a couple percentage points for the occasional misplay?
It would be interesting to tease out the luck differences from say Hollow Chimp and Bogles (perceived low skill and luckbased decks) vs Lantern and Shadow (perceived high skill low luckbased decks). I'm not entirely sure how it would be done but there has to be a difference, right?
that would be waaaaaaay too simplistic of an approach. it assumes the wins were all due to skill, and the losses due to luck. i know some people love to believe that their wins are because of skill, but luck wins you as many games as it loses. this is true even at the pro level.
there are also cases where skilled players get outplayed by other skilled players, or lucky events happening at different moments even within a single game. not to mention the natural advantage gained from one decks strategy being innately good versus another, which includes card choices even before a single game is played.
good players win more, and becomes especially evident over a large series of games/matches.
as for how hard a deck is to pilot i think looking at weighted decision trees over a series of games is a decent approach.
that would involve an extensive analysis though, for the most part players can intuit the difficulty of a deck by playing it and seeing how hard it was to find a winning line of play.
there is also something to be said about players gravitating towards certain strategies because they intuitively understand certain aspects of it better. which makes 'difficulty' concept partially relative.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
This is likely only feasible with my particular build of UB Faeries, but I get a ton of mileage against Hollow One (and aggro in general) with Sword of War and Peace. Our local affinity player picked up BR Hollow One last week and steamrolled FNM and our Saturday tournament, with me being his only loss in both events. Bitterblossom was key, as well as Vendillion Clique . Without being able to cheese me with the Phoenix and lack of trample, I was able to stabilize and eventually take over board control. It was harrowing realizing that most of my removal suite was effectively worthless (notable exception with Murderous Cut), but it felt really good being able to come out on top when everything else was being cut down in fairly short order.
Planeswalker packages in Mono-white Devotion/Nykthos decks get worse, I guess. You can bolt out a Gideon of the Trials with a Leyline of Sanctity out.
So basically no change.
Actually, technically you'll be able to split Electrolyze-type cards between your opponent and their Planeswalker, or between two Planeswalkers. Technically an improvement to those cards.
It's weird though, is every single damage spell with "target player" getting errata for "or target planeswalker"? Are new burn spells going to have "or target planeswalker"? Going to be very confusing for newer players when they start playing modern and their opponent casts lighting bolt which doesn't say "target planeswalker" and targets their planeswalker.
From what I've seen on the MTG Arena beta coverage, where this seems to have already been implemented, we'll be getting something similar to the Alpha wording of Lightning Bolt:
"Deal 3 damage to any target"
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Modern Decks: UBG Lantern Control GBU BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
It's weird though, is every single damage spell with "target player" getting errata for "or target planeswalker"? Are new burn spells going to have "or target planeswalker"? Going to be very confusing for newer players when they start playing modern and their opponent casts lighting bolt which doesn't say "target planeswalker" and targets their planeswalker.
From what I've seen on the MTG Arena beta coverage, where this seems to have already been implemented, we'll be getting something similar to the Alpha wording of Lightning Bolt:
It's weird though, is every single damage spell with "target player" getting errata for "or target planeswalker"? Are new burn spells going to have "or target planeswalker"? Going to be very confusing for newer players when they start playing modern and their opponent casts lighting bolt which doesn't say "target planeswalker" and targets their planeswalker.
From what I've seen on the MTG Arena beta coverage, where this seems to have already been implemented, we'll be getting something similar to the Alpha wording of Lightning Bolt:
"Deal 3 damage to any target"
When does this go live?
well @Shodai said maro indicated with Dominaria, i dont have a source though.
lightning bolt reprint confirmed for dominaria!
just kidding.
really though the interaction like never comes up, and if it does i dont see it likely being a determining factor in a game. its not like burn players are sitting there gnashing their teeth playing against an opponent with leyline and thinking - 'gah! if i could only kill their planeswalker!'
buddy i think you got bigger problems
though this no longer means that leyline + gideon3 is the hardlock against them. rejoice!
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
that would be waaaaaaay too simplistic of an approach. it assumes the wins were all due to skill, and the losses due to luck. i know some people love to believe that their wins are because of skill, but luck wins you as many games as it loses. this is true even at the pro level.
there are also cases where skilled players get outplayed by other skilled players, or lucky events happening at different moments even within a single game. not to mention the natural advantage gained from one decks strategy being innately good versus another, which includes card choices even before a single game is played.
good players win more, and becomes especially evident over a large series of games/matches.
as for how hard a deck is to pilot i think looking at weighted decision trees over a series of games is a decent approach.
that would involve an extensive analysis though, for the most part players can intuit the difficulty of a deck by playing it and seeing how hard it was to find a winning line of play.
there is also something to be said about players gravitating towards certain strategies because they intuitively understand certain aspects of it better. which makes 'difficulty' concept partially relative.
I think luck is a zero sum game in the long run otherwise some players would naturally be luckier than others. Great players going against other great players certainly puts some strain on using MWP to determine luck in MTG.
I wonder if calculating complexity and interactivity of each card and then summing them up in a deck would bear any meaningful results. Like for example lava spike is a low complexity and low interactivity card while lightning bolt is much higher in both categories and Bogles most interactive card is a normal creature with lowish complexity and moderate interactivity. Hollow Derp actively tries to increase randomness so I dunno how that fits into calculations. Summing up the parts of decks could reveal inner complexity and interactivity which, I assume, help the more skilled player in winning.
To be clear I'm not putting burn in the same category as Bogles. I personally think Burn is middle of the pack in complexity and interactivity.
Intuition is important in the beginning but the best players put in tons of reps to be as good as they are. Or at least I hope lol.
This popped into my head because of the rise of Hollow One and Bogles. Do we really want to see these decks across from us every few matches or consistently at the top tables?
It's weird though, is every single damage spell with "target player" getting errata for "or target planeswalker"? Are new burn spells going to have "or target planeswalker"? Going to be very confusing for newer players when they start playing modern and their opponent casts lighting bolt which doesn't say "target planeswalker" and targets their planeswalker.
From what I've seen on the MTG Arena beta coverage, where this seems to have already been implemented, we'll be getting something similar to the Alpha wording of Lightning Bolt:
"Deal 3 damage to any target"
When does this go live?
well @Shodai said maro indicated with Dominaria, i dont have a source though.
lightning bolt reprint confirmed for dominaria!
just kidding.
really though the interaction like never comes up, and if it does i dont see it likely being a determining factor in a game. its not like burn players are sitting there gnashing their teeth playing against an opponent with leyline and thinking - 'gah! if i could only kill their planeswalker!'
buddy i think you got bigger problems
though this no longer means that leyline + gideon3 is the hardlock against them. rejoice!
Don't forget RW prison is a deck. ATM leyline protects planeswalkers vs damage spells, which does come up against decks other than burn (jeskai, jund, lantern control, dredge, mardu pyromancer, etc. ).
I think luck is a zero sum game in the long run otherwise some players would naturally be luckier than others. Great players going against other great players certainly puts some strain on using MWP to determine luck in MTG.
I wonder if calculating complexity and interactivity of each card and then summing them up in a deck would bear any meaningful results. Like for example lava spike is a low complexity and low interactivity card while lightning bolt is much higher in both categories and Bogles most interactive card is a normal creature with lowish complexity and moderate interactivity. Hollow Derp actively tries to increase randomness so I dunno how that fits into calculations. Summing up the parts of decks could reveal inner complexity and interactivity which, I assume, help the more skilled player in winning.
To be clear I'm not putting burn in the same category as Bogles. I personally think Burn is middle of the pack in complexity and interactivity.
Intuition is important in the beginning but the best players put in tons of reps to be as good as they are. Or at least I hope lol.
This popped into my head because of the rise of Hollow One and Bogles. Do we really want to see these decks across from us every few matches or consistently at the top tables?
there are just too many moving parts imo. its the reason that, as far as i know, no one has attempted to create/use a standardized method to assess the difficulty of decks, or judge how much variance plays a role in a certain decks success. for instance how would categorize events where a player actively attempts to put themselves in a position to get lucky - and then do. identifying potential outs is a pretty common occurrence when in a bad position.
if i understand correctly, it looks like you are assuming that skilled players always play more difficult or complex decks. which is most definitely not true. some pros like to play decks that include a number of decisions over a long game to hopefully leverage their play skill, but plenty of others play decks that are powerful or consistent because they deemed it the best avenue to winning.
for instance the recent MOCS tournament won by boggles. the MOCS is an invitational tournament so the baseline skill of the players is higher than it would be otherwise, yet multiple players chose to sleeve up boggles because it employs a strategy that is strong against jund - which ended up being the most played deck at the event. are these players less skilled because of their choice?
assigning values to cards sorta makes sense, but i have no clue how you would even attempt to create a comprehensive system. the card effects are so varied that you would have to create an enormous list of assumptions that people would have to agree on in order to take your results seriously.
so the magic community falls back on generalizations like 'linear', or 'reactive'. which goes back to my comment about intuition. people can grasp what you mean by these terms just by seeing a decks strategy play out or by eyeballing a decklist. the unfortunate side effect of this is that certain decks or their pilots dont get enough credit when they do play skillfully.
at the end of the day though you have to ask yourself: what does it matter? i say let people play the decks they enjoy. any deck that becomes too good, by whatever metric, should get the same treatment.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Don't forget RW prison is a deck. ATM leyline protects planeswalkers vs damage spells, which does come up against decks other than burn (jeskai, jund, lantern control, dredge, mardu pyromancer, etc. ).
fair enough. i made that statement based on personal experience, so maybe the interaction does come up more often.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I tried to quantify interactivity by evaluating every card in a deck and how many modes it has that interact with an opponent's cards. For instance, a card like Ethereal Armor gets 0 points as it doesn't interact at all barring absurd corner cases. Path/Push gets 1 point for targeting just creatures. Bolt gets 2 for targeting creatures and planeswalkers. Negate would get 5 for all card types it can hit. I haven't re-tested this system recently, but it was a good first attempt at objetively quantifying a very subjective topic.
Don't forget RW prison is a deck. ATM leyline protects planeswalkers vs damage spells, which does come up against decks other than burn (jeskai, jund, lantern control, dredge, mardu pyromancer, etc. ).
fair enough. i made that statement based on personal experience, so maybe the interaction does come up more often.
Well, let me clarify. I don't think the situation will be common. It's still a very niche scenario especially since mardu planeswalker and/or Sun and Moon are generally rare decks. (maybe 2-3 people total at a major event piloting these decks).
Out of 100 matches... you might play 2-3 decks that would be impacted by this change. And that would be on the high end.
"Chimp Lore into Hollow Derp play land trigger Bloodchimp?"
Seriously though, with all of the RNG doesn't the deck just play itself? I feel like people would get bored of it after awhile like Scapeshift. Agreed on FotM.
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
Agreed. I always had the same feeling about Pod. Once you knew what your deck list was (this took longer for some), the rest seemed fairly elementary. I currently feel the same way about Thoughtseize decks, especially when I see my opponent take the immediate (and not always the strongest) threat out of my hand first every time. Also it seems like my opponent plays as if to signal me that they have no more discard, which sometimes is not true.
When it comes down to it, Competitive players don't care less what you think about their deck. If I had to choose between a GDS deck where I played nearly perfectly for 15 rounds and got 10-5 at a Grand Prix vs. a Hollow One deck where I made the top 8 at 13-2, I'll take the Hollow One deck every time. At FNM, sometimes I'll play a lesser deck (a bit too often, lol), but when you pay $xxxx for a tournament and you're not on that GP Grind, you only have a limited number of chances to succeed.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)good decks will get plenty of free wins with pretty straight forward lines, its when they face adversity in bad matchups or poor draws when the good pilots pull away from the pack.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I don't recall affinity being either good or bad in the past year.
Is jund going to be good? Or are people just playing it because of bloodbraid hype?
Why do you think luck and variance are a large part of winning games? Is that in Magic as a whole or Modern specifically? If Modern specifically, how is this affecting player performance at events?
Spirits
No arguments here. Magic definitely has higher variance than chess, and it spans across formats. For reference, the all-time best MTG players tend to be in the 60% win-range at major events. The all-time best chess players appear to be at 70%-90% (https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/the-best-players-ever---a-statistical-evaluation), which is almost unheard of in even high-level MTG. I was worried at first you were making a claim about Modern being higher variance/luck than other formats, which we have some strong evidence against in large tournament contexts.
Have you done any calculations for how much luck plays into modern or mtg in general? Would it just be ~100%-(a great player's winrate)? Maybe add a couple percentage points for the occasional misplay?
It would be interesting to tease out the luck differences from say Hollow Chimp and Bogles (perceived low skill and luckbased decks) vs Lantern and Shadow (perceived high skill low luckbased decks). I'm not entirely sure how it would be done but there has to be a difference, right?
that would be waaaaaaay too simplistic of an approach. it assumes the wins were all due to skill, and the losses due to luck. i know some people love to believe that their wins are because of skill, but luck wins you as many games as it loses. this is true even at the pro level.
there are also cases where skilled players get outplayed by other skilled players, or lucky events happening at different moments even within a single game. not to mention the natural advantage gained from one decks strategy being innately good versus another, which includes card choices even before a single game is played.
good players win more, and becomes especially evident over a large series of games/matches.
as for how hard a deck is to pilot i think looking at weighted decision trees over a series of games is a decent approach.
that would involve an extensive analysis though, for the most part players can intuit the difficulty of a deck by playing it and seeing how hard it was to find a winning line of play.
there is also something to be said about players gravitating towards certain strategies because they intuitively understand certain aspects of it better. which makes 'difficulty' concept partially relative.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)not saying that it can never come up, but the likelihood is pretty close to zero.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)So basically no change.
Actually, technically you'll be able to split Electrolyze-type cards between your opponent and their Planeswalker, or between two Planeswalkers. Technically an improvement to those cards.
From what I've seen on the MTG Arena beta coverage, where this seems to have already been implemented, we'll be getting something similar to the Alpha wording of Lightning Bolt:
"Deal 3 damage to any target"
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
When does this go live?
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
I think MaRo said on his blog it should take effect around the release of Dominaria.
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
well @Shodai said maro indicated with Dominaria, i dont have a source though.
lightning bolt reprint confirmed for dominaria!
just kidding.
really though the interaction like never comes up, and if it does i dont see it likely being a determining factor in a game. its not like burn players are sitting there gnashing their teeth playing against an opponent with leyline and thinking - 'gah! if i could only kill their planeswalker!'
buddy i think you got bigger problems
though this no longer means that leyline + gideon3 is the hardlock against them. rejoice!
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I think luck is a zero sum game in the long run otherwise some players would naturally be luckier than others. Great players going against other great players certainly puts some strain on using MWP to determine luck in MTG.
I wonder if calculating complexity and interactivity of each card and then summing them up in a deck would bear any meaningful results. Like for example lava spike is a low complexity and low interactivity card while lightning bolt is much higher in both categories and Bogles most interactive card is a normal creature with lowish complexity and moderate interactivity. Hollow Derp actively tries to increase randomness so I dunno how that fits into calculations. Summing up the parts of decks could reveal inner complexity and interactivity which, I assume, help the more skilled player in winning.
To be clear I'm not putting burn in the same category as Bogles. I personally think Burn is middle of the pack in complexity and interactivity.
Intuition is important in the beginning but the best players put in tons of reps to be as good as they are. Or at least I hope lol.
This popped into my head because of the rise of Hollow One and Bogles. Do we really want to see these decks across from us every few matches or consistently at the top tables?
Don't forget RW prison is a deck. ATM leyline protects planeswalkers vs damage spells, which does come up against decks other than burn (jeskai, jund, lantern control, dredge, mardu pyromancer, etc. ).
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
there are just too many moving parts imo. its the reason that, as far as i know, no one has attempted to create/use a standardized method to assess the difficulty of decks, or judge how much variance plays a role in a certain decks success. for instance how would categorize events where a player actively attempts to put themselves in a position to get lucky - and then do. identifying potential outs is a pretty common occurrence when in a bad position.
if i understand correctly, it looks like you are assuming that skilled players always play more difficult or complex decks. which is most definitely not true. some pros like to play decks that include a number of decisions over a long game to hopefully leverage their play skill, but plenty of others play decks that are powerful or consistent because they deemed it the best avenue to winning.
for instance the recent MOCS tournament won by boggles. the MOCS is an invitational tournament so the baseline skill of the players is higher than it would be otherwise, yet multiple players chose to sleeve up boggles because it employs a strategy that is strong against jund - which ended up being the most played deck at the event. are these players less skilled because of their choice?
assigning values to cards sorta makes sense, but i have no clue how you would even attempt to create a comprehensive system. the card effects are so varied that you would have to create an enormous list of assumptions that people would have to agree on in order to take your results seriously.
so the magic community falls back on generalizations like 'linear', or 'reactive'. which goes back to my comment about intuition. people can grasp what you mean by these terms just by seeing a decks strategy play out or by eyeballing a decklist. the unfortunate side effect of this is that certain decks or their pilots dont get enough credit when they do play skillfully.
at the end of the day though you have to ask yourself: what does it matter? i say let people play the decks they enjoy. any deck that becomes too good, by whatever metric, should get the same treatment.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)fair enough. i made that statement based on personal experience, so maybe the interaction does come up more often.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Well, let me clarify. I don't think the situation will be common. It's still a very niche scenario especially since mardu planeswalker and/or Sun and Moon are generally rare decks. (maybe 2-3 people total at a major event piloting these decks).
Out of 100 matches... you might play 2-3 decks that would be impacted by this change. And that would be on the high end.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA