Junk is midrange. It ramps, it plays creatures (sometimes recursively), and forces you to come up with answers to it rather than the other way around. It has elements of combo but it ultimately functions without rites.
Jund as it is currently runs 11 removal spells main deck. It runs a sweeper in bonfire and a suit of 3 different planeswalkers between main and side. The lines are blurry, certainly it runs 13 creatures as well, but all those creatures are spells with bodies attached. It controls the board until it resolves a finisher, it just so happens that some of the better stabilization plays right now are creatures with life gain and multiple bodies stapled to them like thragtusk and huntmaster, which basically just makes them a different kind of timely reinforcements. That seems very controlling to me.
Jund relies on the strength of its threats to overcome its opponent. It doesn't make any attempt to outright stop its opponent from enacting their strategy, and instead opts to remove opposing threats as a form of disruption. It's kind of like the distinction between aggro-control, and control. Aggro control is primarily an aggro strategy that uses control elements to protect its threats. Jund is similar in that it isn't trying to outright control the opponent, only disrupt them long enough for its threats to do their job.
In contrast, a control deck usually has a more linear game-plan (but often a greater opportunity cost in their decisions). Traditional control will answer its opponent until it can stabilize, and then at that point, will enable its win condition. Jund has numerous win conditions, many of which are quite resilient, and generate virtual card advantage on their own. Control generally has few win conditions, but it packs good threat removal, and a draw engine to minimise variance. Control is also more reactive (though you can have tapout control), whereas midrange tends to be proactive.
The crux of it is that most strong decks combine multiple strategies in order to win. Jund does have controlling elements, but these aren't the primary focus of the deck.
Funny, there are 49 states top 8s listed at tcgplayer:
I wonder how control decks did in the states you didn't count?
(49 - 35) * 8 = 112 top eights. 34 total decks with 'control' in their name, so 34 - 21 = 13 decks.
Let's see, that means control decks made up 7.5% of the top eights you counted and 11.6% of those you didn't.
Two quick points: he doesn't need to count every single state, as long as the initial sample size is sufficiently large (and it was). The average of the sample will approach the average of the population as the sample size increases. This is basic stats, which you would know if you knew what a sample size is.
Secondly, even with your figures, control makes up less than 10% of the meta with Windexlol's figures taken into account. Congratulations, you just proved his point: control is on life support.
Was anyone really debating whether or not Jund was midrange 2 months ago when an actual control deck (by today's standards) like Esper was around?
Your deck's role will change in every match-up you play. For most of Jund's recent Standard existence, it was mid-range (and I would argue that if you were to place it in most Standard environments, it would be as well). It played the aggressor against control as it had more threats/less pure card advantage while control was reactive - trying to survive and mill you out. Jund was controlling against aggro. Now, since control is greatly weakened most of Jund's match-ups are against aggro so it more often plays the role of a control deck. So yeah, in that sense Jund is now more often a control deck. All in all, by arguing that Jund is now a control deck you're implicitly stating that the current environment is so hostile towards control that the scales have shifted to the point where what was once largely considered a mid-range deck is now the shining pillar of control decks. So no, control isn't dead but the old way of viewing it/playing it certainly is close which is a shame.
That is well put Tomisa. I think that kind of answers the debate in my mind.
In my opinion
Atm control has the power.. but not the tools... there are a ton of great cards that win the game. But it can't get to the late game without a ton of luck atm and Luck is exactly what a control deck trys to fight against.
There is no library manipulation. no way to fight against randomness.
Augur and Jace are really the only card selection cards (oh and alchemy) So even if we did have the tools control can't find them reliably enough
azorius charm is good.... think twice is best we have to work with.. thought scour is unfortunately necessary in a lot of decks. I don't think anything else is worth mentioning.
ultimate price is very bad atm... turn//burn and far//away are good but inefficient... slip and warped phsyque are really conditional.
All counterspells are weak as long as cavern exists (grr I hate it).. syncopate and dissapate are the best we have.. Syncopate good early and useless late.. or very mana ineffient opening you up to them letting it get countered and casting something better. Dissipate slightly too slow, when they can burning tree chain turn two. counterflux and psychic strike have the problem of not being dissipate. essence scatter runs the risk of being completely dead.
Sweepers... supreme vedicit... can only have 4 in deck.... terminus sometimes its in your opening hand or you draw it without white up and then its too slow. bonfire useless when in hand.... forces you to tap out when you might not want to. Mizzium mortars... triple red and too slow. Magmaquake.. I like it but it doesn't hit fliers and becomes inefficient beyond X = 2 kills your planewalkers which are generally really important to you. Mutilate.... actually really good... forces you mostly mono black in a multi colour format opponents can out race your land drops.
I think that people is taking esper control in the wrong direction.
Supreme veredict is REALLY bad atm, i mean, against any form of reanimator or aristocrats is like doing nothing.
But, on the other hand, terminus is awesome, it costs 6 mana, but it is aweosme, what if the control player starts to try to actively get a miracle by drawing cards on every single opponent turn? they will get it, and they will get it more often than you think, because there is a draw in each of his turns and he can also draw a supreme veredict, that althoug is still bad, it can save your soul for a turn or 2.
so if the control player really needs to draw terminus, the best instant speed cantrip is thought scour, so we need four, main deck right?...
If we target ourselves, we have a 66% more chances of milling our terminus than drawing it, so what if we target you with terminus instead of ourselves... well we will mill some creatures, we have aggro decks with more than 30 creatures main deck... now... ok we still need some time to do all of this and we are not getting terminus yet, but we are killing creatures with pin point removal and milling them... and we need a turn... or 5... so we can play crypt incursion and remove all of your milled/destroyed creatures and gain a bunch of life... or a bazillion life.
crypt incursion is also splash damage against reanimator... and most of the time a pretty big wall to climnb for most decks.
well at this very moment this is my personal approach to control... the match up against reanimator variants is still quite tough, but aggro is a piece of cake.
Secondly, even with your figures, control makes up less than 10% of the meta with Windexlol's figures taken into account. Congratulations, you just proved his point: control is on life support.
I stopped counting because i got tired of meticulously double checking every time to make sure i wasn't going to be even one number off... It took me like 30 minutes just to get that many lol.
Sample size does nothing to prevent selection bias.
Oh god.. seriously... You're crazy. I went from the most recent down for 35. I'll go do the rest and add to it but you will just say i'm making it up, because you refuse to face the numbers and instead want to argue that it placing in a couple of modo dailies means its being equally represented in the meta.
I think that people is taking esper control in the wrong direction.
Supreme veredict is REALLY bad atm, i mean, against any form of reanimator or aristocrats is like doing nothing.
But, on the other hand, terminus is awesome, it costs 6 mana, but it is aweosme, what if the control player starts to try to actively get a miracle by drawing cards on every single opponent turn? they will get it, and they will get it more often than you think, because there is a draw in each of his turns and he can also draw a supreme veredict, that althoug is still bad, it can save your soul for a turn or 2.
so if the control player really needs to draw terminus, the best instant speed cantrip is thought scour, so we need four, main deck right?...
If we target ourselves, we have a 66% more chances of milling our terminus than drawing it, so what if we target you with terminus instead of ourselves... well we will mill some creatures, we have aggro decks with more than 30 creatures main deck... now... ok we still need some time to do all of this and we are not getting terminus yet, but we are killing creatures with pin point removal and milling them... and we need a turn... or 5... so we can play crypt incursion and remove all of your milled/destroyed creatures and gain a bunch of life... or a bazillion life.
crypt incursion is also splash damage against reanimator... and most of the time a pretty big wall to climnb for most decks.
well at this very moment this is my personal approach to control... the match up against reanimator variants is still quite tough, but aggro is a piece of cake.
Honestly the problem is that Supreme Verdict is necessary because of Blitz. If Blitz was not around then ok, you can spend a turn or two to draw, but with Blitz runnign around you cannot waste a single turn early on to just draw. You are constantly having to tap out to bounce away (or kill) their early game threats and turn 4 Verdict them just to survive. Additonally, Terminus is just WAY to unreliable. You cannot expect draw terminus Miracled fairly often against Blitz.
Oh, and I would like to point out to people that, despite the fact that Aggro only makes up a moderate sized portion of top 8s, Blitz makes up a large portion of the meta in general. It is kind of like the whole Delver thing, alot of people played delver, but the top 8s didn't show that as much because alot of new players/less experianced players also played delver so they would not make it to the top 8. they would often lose to games that are not in their favor. This is much like Blitz. Blitz is popular among newer/less esperienced players because:
1) It is cheap compared to decks like Jund, Junk, or Esper Control
2) It is relatively easy to pilot. Just put guys down as fast as possible and turn sideways (ok I know to be a good aggro player is much harder than that but for a newer guy it is easier to learn that than to try and learn about timing, the stack, priority, ect. that a control guy needs to learn).
Many of those players don't make it to tops because they are ill experianced and tend to lose to the Midrange match ups (i.e. Jund) which tends to be not in their favor. But against control, even a decent Blitz player can steam roll a control deck piloted by anything less than a very good control pilot. So alot of control decks will get knocked out early in an event and the Blitz peopel knocked out later by the Midrange decks.
On another note, after Innistrad rolls out things look to very interesting though. Control may just become top dog again, depending on what Theros brings. The top decks right now are HIGHLY dependent on Innistrad block/M13 for their goodies. Additionally, alot of the worst offenders when it comes to creatures go away as well. Thragtusk, Olivia, Huntmaster, Giest of St. Traft, Falkenrath Aristocrat, The zombie buddies, Strangleroot Giest, Champion of the Parish, ect. Control is poised to lose snapcaster and some draw spells and Nephalia but still have plenty of options to chose from regardless (UWR DEFINTELY loses very little). So all in all, I say to control players, be patient. Things just might get interesting...
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This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
Sample size does nothing to prevent selection bias.
okay then, let's assume the worst, and say he cherry picked the data to get the worst possible representation. Even using your data, if we take his data into account to get the actual population mean, the average is still below 10% of the meta. That doesn't speak to me of a high representation at all. It indicates that at higher levels of the game, where the relative skill difference is much lower, control decks just aren't cutting it.
Furthermore, people are making assumptions that control players aren't trying to get their decks to function. Of course they are, because that's what they enjoy playing. But what's happened is that over time, the number of control decks in the meta has decreased (contrary to people's expectations), because most players are finding the strategy untenable. If the strategy you enjoy playing isn't really feasible, you have a couple of options: you either play something else, or you leave the format.
Honestly the problem is that Supreme Verdict is necessary because of Blitz. If Blitz was not around then ok, you can spend a turn or two to draw, but with Blitz runnign around you cannot waste a single turn early on to just draw. You are constantly having to tap out to bounce away (or kill) their early game threats and turn 4 Verdict them just to survive. Additonally, Terminus is just WAY to unreliable. You cannot expect draw terminus Miracled fairly often against Blitz.
Oh, and I would like to point out to people that, despite the fact that Aggro only makes up a moderate sized portion of top 8s, Blitz makes up a large portion of the meta in general. It is kind of like the whole Delver thing, alot of people played delver, but the top 8s didn't show that as much because alot of new players/less experianced players also played delver so they would not make it to the top 8. they would often lose to games that are not in their favor. This is much like Blitz. Blitz is popular among newer/less esperienced players because:
1) It is cheap compared to decks like Jund, Junk, or Esper Control
2) It is relatively easy to pilot. Just put guys down as fast as possible and turn sideways (ok I know to be a good aggro player is much harder than that but for a newer guy it is easier to learn that than to try and learn about timing, the stack, priority, ect. that a control guy needs to learn).
Many of those players don't make it to tops because they are ill experianced and tend to lose to the Midrange match ups (i.e. Jund) which tends to be not in their favor. But against control, even a decent Blitz player can steam roll a control deck piloted by anything less than a very good control pilot. So alot of control decks will get knocked out early in an event and the Blitz peopel knocked out later by the Midrange decks.
On another note, after Innistrad rolls out things look to very interesting though. Control may just become top dog again, depending on what Theros brings. The top decks right now are HIGHLY dependent on Innistrad block/M13 for their goodies. Additionally, alot of the worst offenders when it comes to creatures go away as well. Thragtusk, Olivia, Huntmaster, Giest of St. Traft, Falkenrath Aristocrat, The zombie buddies, Strangleroot Giest, Champion of the Parish, ect. Control is poised to lose snapcaster and some draw spells and Nephalia but still have plenty of options to chose from regardless (UWR DEFINTELY loses very little). So all in all, I say to control players, be patient. Things just might get interesting...
We'll see. I think that the three cards that dealt the killing blow to control as we knew it are all from Dragon's Maze: VoR, Sire of Insanity (in combination with CoS), and Sin Collector. You can argue that VoR is an aggressive card but Sin Collector and Sire definitely are not. Control has always had a tougher time with aggro (granted, it's worse now that at any point in recent memory) but it's always been able to feast on mid-range. The only two mid-range decks that make up a significant portion of the metagame are Jund and arguably Rites (feel free to classify Rites as something else). Both gained cards in Dragon's Maze that probably tilt those matchups against control slightly in their favor. In addition, aggro decks have become so efficient that they simply overwhelm their natural foil, mid-range, unless that midrange deck is Jund. You're unlikely to see that change much because no other color combination has the efficient 1 for 1 removal and life gain/value creatures that Jund has other than maybe UWR. Ultimately, I think that mid-range players being pigeon-holed into playing Jund has negatively affected control almost as much as the plethora of aggro decks out there. For control to come back, mid-range needs to also be healthy. While Jund as we know it will cease to exist, will the format slow down enough for other mid-range options to become viable?
Losing Hellrider, Noble, Champion of the Parish, Aristocrat, Thundermaw, Flinthoof Boar, Strangleroot Geist, Zombies, Cavern of Souls etc is a start. I just hope that they don't print many overpowered haste creatures to make up for those losses.
Wow, real. I also recently read an article on starcity where the meta was laid out as a context for the deckbuilding being done and he didn't even mention control of any kind.
if you want control back stop buying cards and going to tournaments
wizards prints anti-control cards and no good control cards and tournament attendance goes up, what do you think is going to happen? they're just going to stop because some people create threads on a forum they don't read?
You want to get into a statistics debate? Ok, but your smug attitude about statistics is especially funny seen as you clearly are an amateur in the area of statistics. You have a lot to learn.
Judging the total population from a sample is only fine if that sample is selected at random and is representative of the population.
Niether is true. The person selecting the sample didnt do so at random. His selections of where to look were therefore open to bias. Secondly, you are just trying to take a sample from a low level of magic (states) and expand that to reflect the state of the wider community. This is again wrong to do. As the people going to states are a self selecting sample. Therefore, again, statistically there are serious flaws.
This is basic stats, and you would know about it if you knew what sample size is.
Go back and read what was written, Windex chose the first samples by the order they were listed in. That's hardly cherry picking. Secondly, all competitions involve some self-selection bias, but that doesn't mean we should discard the data. In fact, at this level the data is more useful to us, because the variance in skill level is lower, giving us a more accurate look at the cards and their relative power. There's less noise in this data than a hypothetical random sample of all players, especially if we're only looking at top 8 placings.
I mean you can try poking holes in the data all you want, but the fact remains: control is not winning competitions. It's not even well represented at higher levels of the game. Do you have a Starcity premium account? If so, read Patrick Chapin's article on the standard meta-game since DGM hit. He's pretty liberal with his definition of control, and winds up with a total representation of around 15% of the meta. Jund alone is more highly represented than that, and if you count up all of the aggro variants, aggro as an archetype makes up more than 40% of the meta.
My smug attitude aside, I genuinely want this game to have variety in its strategies and experiences, and right now it doesn't have that. This is a problem, and it's annoying to be told that control players are the ones at fault for not adapting, when you and I know that an outcome like that is hugely improbable, and almost certainly cannot be the case. But hey, what the **** would I know?
Actually Blitz is very strong vs all match ups except UWR control/flash decks with aethering, snapcaster mage, a ton of removal, bolas etc. By far the hardest matchup for me as a blitz player. My record is very good vs other decks, even mid range decks. But this control deck is a hard counter to blitz. Izzet staticaster is your friend. If you have trouble with blitz as this sort of control deck then either your sideboarding is horrible or you just make alot of errors, or you havent played the match up enough to realise what happens
You wrote a long post to try to sound smart, but all you actually said is that my selection was "open to bias". If states is too low a level, then go look at the last 20 or so SCG opens / tcgplayer 5k's / gps etc and tell me if control is not between 7-11% of the top 8s.
A deck's role ingame has no impact on what style of a deck it is. An aggro deck could play the controllish role 90% of the time in a field and it would STILL be aggro.
It doesn't? I could build a random deck full of Smiters, VoRs, Geists etc and call it aggro but if 90% of the matches I play in against the field I am the control deck - because I am slower than Blitz and trying to get value out of blocking with my creatures - it is probably a midrange deck for that particular metagame. My plan isn't what I thought it would be so I am forced to adjust. What a deck tries to do is very dependent upon its matchups - it is very metagame dependent.
In this metagame, the near absence of true control makes midrange seem like control because midrange doesn't have a matchup where it plays as the aggro deck. If control as we know it never existed throughout the history of magic, midrange would be considered control. It really doesn't exist much in this metagame, so people have shifted their views of what midrange/Jund really is.
I agree with you if you place a given deck in a vacuum and discount its matchups. But if you discount a deck's matchups how would you even know how the deck actually plays out? At that point, you're really just arbitrarily labeling the deck with no comparisons/actual playtesting to base it on.
In terms a statistical analysis it is impossible to get a truly representative sample of the wider population in this situation. The best you can do is look at a wide range of observable, tangible data and run basic analysis on that, which is what Windex did and presented.
The data would be accepted as valid, it would simply be considered with scrutiny before generalising beyond the sample.
If you're going to tell people off about stats, then you should probably keep in mind that his analysis is perfectly acceptable (to accuse Windex of cherrypicking is rubbish) as an analysis of the sample, but we would be careful about generalising. Keep in mind here that it does have some generalisability, and this is expanded upon by looking at further results from all forms of top 8 events which give a better idea of the overall picture.
We can perform a very adequate statisical analysis for this question through observable data based on results from competitive top 8 events, and that's whats been done in part here. Windex's results give a pretty good indication for where we can expect the results to head.
Current standard is not conducive for control decks. That isn't a huge issue, though it does hurt the versatility of the meta, but it doesn't make it any less true. Control simply isn't very competitive at the moment and that happens now and then. I'll continue to play control and tweak and see if I can develop a more favourable build, but overall there are alot of cards which are stacked against control builds and you simply can't argue that that isn't the case.
So are you saying that his statistical analysis would be valid from a scientific point of view? Yes or no. If Yes then you don't know anything above 4th grade statistics and we can just stop the discussion there. If no then you agree with me and his statistics prove nothing to a degree of certainty or reliability which are worth consideration. As such they should be ignored. His statistical analysis would be laughed out of any scientific community because its terrible. Using flawed statistics to back up arguments is foolish.
Opinions are awesome. Trying to display your opinions as facts by using flawed statistics is NOT awesome. It is bad etiquette and insincere.
Context is important; if you think we need to run a hypothesis test and get the p-value for a discussion on the internet, you're missing the larger point that is being made. Actually, it's worse than that; all you're doing is baiting, because the truth is you don't actually have an argument, and so you're attacking a technicality that has no real bearing to the discussion at hand.
This isn't a scientific debate, and the data shouldn't be held up to scientific scrutiny, because the contexts are not the same. There is nothing wrong with looking at the top decklists and saying "control is under-represented as an archetype", because we haven't tried to prove anything, we've only made an observation. We aren't trying to extrapolate anything further from the data, because we don't need to, we've already established the point being made. If you have a problem with that, be my guest.
Permission control as true permission hasn't existed for a very long time. If you hate it now, you would have hated magic back at the beginning to the point of tearing arms off.
Permission control, or at least as it is known now is just another way of playing magic. Interaction is interesting, spell wars add interesting aspect to the game.
I don't disagree with the introduction of tools to hose control, but I think what control players in general are saying here is that, its a bit too much as it currently is.
The shutting down of control as a viable archetype cuts out a large portion of players too.
Control shouldn't have had the representation it had in previous years, but it shouldn't be as dead as it is now. There is a balance. The way control works now is quite enjoyable in my opinion, but there are too many tools which are particularly unfavourable towards control. The meta is saturated with them now.
The funny thing is that to say "control is struggling" doesn't even need to be backed by statistical evidence right now. All you would have to do is be remotely in tune with the metagame to know this. I'd have to question whether or not anyone who argues the contrary even plays standard.
Opinions are awesome. Trying to display your opinions as facts is NOT awesome. It is bad etiquette and insincere.
Wise words.
You do not find permission fun. However, permission based control decks have been viable with relative consistency from as recently as mirrodon-innistrad standard back to kamigawa-ravnica (when i began playing). Sales and attendance had been quite high starting with ravnica (as far as i know) and going forward all through that time. I don't think magics success is absolutely mutually exclusive with permission based control as an archetype being viable (not dominant). Playing around permission successfully is fun
(AKA, i have experienced fun doing this and, knowing that i can only truly speak for myself about incredibly subjective experiences such as "fun", am assuming that it can be fun for other people, too.)
Counter wars are fun. ETC, ETC. I think its pretty likely that control will be truly "viable" again with the theros rotation.
I feel like most of you "control" players just want to ruins someones day playing permission.
Good game design = fun for person doing it and the person having it done on them.
What? First of all, go look up what a "spike" is. I'm not trying to inflict any emotional state on my opponent when i play a permission based control deck, i play magic because it is a very intelligent competitive medium, and i want to compete with others. Secondly, WHAT? This statement is one of the most baffling things in this thread (and that is saying something!). Is losing fun for the majority of mtg players? No. But winning is, and you can't have one without the other. Is me killing your creature with spot removal right when you go to attack me fun for you? Probably not, you might argue that its less "unfun" then it just being countered straight out, but you still dont want me to Doom Blade your guy.. I can go on and on, there are tons of examples of things that are absolute pillars of the game (and games in general, winning/losing is a pretty good example) that are not fun for both players. That's just stupid.
Nobody who doesnt play permission enjoys playing against permission. Being in a total lockdown for 20 minutes whilst they sift through their deck to find their 1 win condition isnt fun at all. Fun should be two sided. Fun for the person playing the deck AND fun for the person playing AGAINST the deck. Permission is fun for the person playing it maybe. But not for the other poor individual. That is why permission being reduced is a good thing. It could and should go further though. Cavern should be reprinted for a start.
Winning against permission isnt fun either. Except that it means you beat somebody whose pleasure in life is to make others miserable in some power crazed way.
Interaction on the stack is just as important as interaction among creatures.
Nobody who doesnt play permission enjoys playing against permission. Being in a total lockdown for 20 minutes whilst they sift through their deck to find their 1 win condition isnt fun at all. Fun should be two sided. Fun for the person playing the deck AND fun for the person playing AGAINST the deck. Permission is fun for the person playing it maybe. But not for the other poor individual. That is why permission being reduced is a good thing. It could and should go further though. Cavern should be reprinted for a start.
Winning against permission isnt fun either. Except that it means you beat somebody whose pleasure in life is to make others miserable in some power crazed way.
So "fun", as you define it, is nothing more than a slugfest between two aggro decks, because control elements aren't fun because they don't let you play the way you want. That sounds extremely boring to me, because every turn would be "Tap lands, play threat, turn other guys sideways, hit for X".
Let's be clear here, control is annoying, yes, but it's also incredibly fragile and limited. Most control is not permanent in effect - it's instants and sorceries that go in the graveyard after being used up. Control players have to constantly refresh their hands with draw effects, and it's impossible for any control player to completely counter or lock down every card in an opponent's library, particularly in Standard.
I stopped counting because i got tired of meticulously double checking every time to make sure i wasn't going to be even one number off... It took me like 30 minutes just to get that many lol.
I just searched for the word 'control' in my browser and subtracted the hits in the sidebar from the total. Took me about two minutes, tops.
because you refuse to face the numbers and instead want to argue that it placing in a couple of modo dailies means its being equally represented in the meta.
Project much? You could at least put a sentence break between accusing me of ignoring data and doing it yourself.
So "fun", as you define it, is nothing more than a slugfest between two aggro decks, because control elements aren't fun because they don't let you play the way you want. That sounds extremely boring to me, because every turn would be "Tap lands, play threat, turn other guys sideways, hit for X".
Let's be clear here, control is annoying, yes, but it's also incredibly fragile and limited. Most control is not permanent in effect - it's instants and sorceries that go in the graveyard after being used up. Control players have to constantly refresh their hands with draw effects, and it's impossible for any control player to completely counter or lock down every card in an opponent's library, particularly in Standard.
That's not what he was saying at all. He was specifically targeting permission, which is counter-magic. There are other ways to interact other than counters. You have point removal, wraths, bounce, edicts, threaten and steal, pump, and even prevention (stalls like Fog). It's all interactive, and it's all tricky. That's why combat tricks were so named.
Control decks don't need to focus so hard on permission. There are other types of cards that are still Control-friendly. He's just trying to point that out, too. Don't read too much into what he's actually saying by putting your slippery slope into his mouth.
I've been playing a lot of permission based control decks over the yrs (all the way back to buehler draw-go and Forbiddian), and I know, the reality of it is, permission is not fun. Ive played against the very decks I have piloted and its not fun (im serious). Its not interesting or fun to have your adversary constantly counterspell your attempts and then draw more cards at Eot fact or fiction style. I always thought blue based control should lean towards creature possession effects, library sifting, and ways to slow the game down or warp advantage. But, to be fair, constantly countering someone's spells makes the game often one sided and quite stale. Essentially magic is about what you can do, not simply deny. I also understand that magic is combat based (not intrinsically creature based combat, but two mages dueling). And, there has to be a certain amount of excitement for both parties. If counterspelling was the end all and be all of magic, it would die. Imagine watching a Jackie Chan movie in which his opponent always guarded/avoided/reversed/ every single attack or attack series made by Jackie Chan regardless of his speed or ability to outmaneuver or outsmart his opponent. It would be stale, unrealistic and lame. No one, regardless of what they play in magic wants their attempts to be involved in the game constantly thwarted because it would make the game stupid. Sorry, no master of aikido blue anymore, and its better for the game this way.
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Jund relies on the strength of its threats to overcome its opponent. It doesn't make any attempt to outright stop its opponent from enacting their strategy, and instead opts to remove opposing threats as a form of disruption. It's kind of like the distinction between aggro-control, and control. Aggro control is primarily an aggro strategy that uses control elements to protect its threats. Jund is similar in that it isn't trying to outright control the opponent, only disrupt them long enough for its threats to do their job.
In contrast, a control deck usually has a more linear game-plan (but often a greater opportunity cost in their decisions). Traditional control will answer its opponent until it can stabilize, and then at that point, will enable its win condition. Jund has numerous win conditions, many of which are quite resilient, and generate virtual card advantage on their own. Control generally has few win conditions, but it packs good threat removal, and a draw engine to minimise variance. Control is also more reactive (though you can have tapout control), whereas midrange tends to be proactive.
The crux of it is that most strong decks combine multiple strategies in order to win. Jund does have controlling elements, but these aren't the primary focus of the deck.
Two quick points: he doesn't need to count every single state, as long as the initial sample size is sufficiently large (and it was). The average of the sample will approach the average of the population as the sample size increases. This is basic stats, which you would know if you knew what a sample size is.
Secondly, even with your figures, control makes up less than 10% of the meta with Windexlol's figures taken into account. Congratulations, you just proved his point: control is on life support.
Your deck's role will change in every match-up you play. For most of Jund's recent Standard existence, it was mid-range (and I would argue that if you were to place it in most Standard environments, it would be as well). It played the aggressor against control as it had more threats/less pure card advantage while control was reactive - trying to survive and mill you out. Jund was controlling against aggro. Now, since control is greatly weakened most of Jund's match-ups are against aggro so it more often plays the role of a control deck. So yeah, in that sense Jund is now more often a control deck. All in all, by arguing that Jund is now a control deck you're implicitly stating that the current environment is so hostile towards control that the scales have shifted to the point where what was once largely considered a mid-range deck is now the shining pillar of control decks. So no, control isn't dead but the old way of viewing it/playing it certainly is close which is a shame.
In my opinion
Atm control has the power.. but not the tools... there are a ton of great cards that win the game. But it can't get to the late game without a ton of luck atm and Luck is exactly what a control deck trys to fight against.
There is no library manipulation. no way to fight against randomness.
Augur and Jace are really the only card selection cards (oh and alchemy)
So even if we did have the tools control can't find them reliably enough
azorius charm is good.... think twice is best we have to work with.. thought scour is unfortunately necessary in a lot of decks. I don't think anything else is worth mentioning.
ultimate price is very bad atm... turn//burn and far//away are good but inefficient... slip and warped phsyque are really conditional.
All counterspells are weak as long as cavern exists (grr I hate it).. syncopate and dissapate are the best we have.. Syncopate good early and useless late.. or very mana ineffient opening you up to them letting it get countered and casting something better. Dissipate slightly too slow, when they can burning tree chain turn two. counterflux and psychic strike have the problem of not being dissipate. essence scatter runs the risk of being completely dead.
Sweepers... supreme vedicit... can only have 4 in deck.... terminus sometimes its in your opening hand or you draw it without white up and then its too slow. bonfire useless when in hand.... forces you to tap out when you might not want to. Mizzium mortars... triple red and too slow. Magmaquake.. I like it but it doesn't hit fliers and becomes inefficient beyond X = 2 kills your planewalkers which are generally really important to you.
Mutilate.... actually really good... forces you mostly mono black in a multi colour format opponents can out race your land drops.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Sample size does nothing to prevent selection bias.
Supreme veredict is REALLY bad atm, i mean, against any form of reanimator or aristocrats is like doing nothing.
But, on the other hand, terminus is awesome, it costs 6 mana, but it is aweosme, what if the control player starts to try to actively get a miracle by drawing cards on every single opponent turn? they will get it, and they will get it more often than you think, because there is a draw in each of his turns and he can also draw a supreme veredict, that althoug is still bad, it can save your soul for a turn or 2.
so if the control player really needs to draw terminus, the best instant speed cantrip is thought scour, so we need four, main deck right?...
If we target ourselves, we have a 66% more chances of milling our terminus than drawing it, so what if we target you with terminus instead of ourselves... well we will mill some creatures, we have aggro decks with more than 30 creatures main deck... now... ok we still need some time to do all of this and we are not getting terminus yet, but we are killing creatures with pin point removal and milling them... and we need a turn... or 5... so we can play crypt incursion and remove all of your milled/destroyed creatures and gain a bunch of life... or a bazillion life.
crypt incursion is also splash damage against reanimator... and most of the time a pretty big wall to climnb for most decks.
well at this very moment this is my personal approach to control... the match up against reanimator variants is still quite tough, but aggro is a piece of cake.
Chile!
I stopped counting because i got tired of meticulously double checking every time to make sure i wasn't going to be even one number off... It took me like 30 minutes just to get that many lol.
Oh god.. seriously... You're crazy. I went from the most recent down for 35. I'll go do the rest and add to it but you will just say i'm making it up, because you refuse to face the numbers and instead want to argue that it placing in a couple of modo dailies means its being equally represented in the meta.
Honestly the problem is that Supreme Verdict is necessary because of Blitz. If Blitz was not around then ok, you can spend a turn or two to draw, but with Blitz runnign around you cannot waste a single turn early on to just draw. You are constantly having to tap out to bounce away (or kill) their early game threats and turn 4 Verdict them just to survive. Additonally, Terminus is just WAY to unreliable. You cannot expect draw terminus Miracled fairly often against Blitz.
Oh, and I would like to point out to people that, despite the fact that Aggro only makes up a moderate sized portion of top 8s, Blitz makes up a large portion of the meta in general. It is kind of like the whole Delver thing, alot of people played delver, but the top 8s didn't show that as much because alot of new players/less experianced players also played delver so they would not make it to the top 8. they would often lose to games that are not in their favor. This is much like Blitz. Blitz is popular among newer/less esperienced players because:
1) It is cheap compared to decks like Jund, Junk, or Esper Control
2) It is relatively easy to pilot. Just put guys down as fast as possible and turn sideways (ok I know to be a good aggro player is much harder than that but for a newer guy it is easier to learn that than to try and learn about timing, the stack, priority, ect. that a control guy needs to learn).
Many of those players don't make it to tops because they are ill experianced and tend to lose to the Midrange match ups (i.e. Jund) which tends to be not in their favor. But against control, even a decent Blitz player can steam roll a control deck piloted by anything less than a very good control pilot. So alot of control decks will get knocked out early in an event and the Blitz peopel knocked out later by the Midrange decks.
On another note, after Innistrad rolls out things look to very interesting though. Control may just become top dog again, depending on what Theros brings. The top decks right now are HIGHLY dependent on Innistrad block/M13 for their goodies. Additionally, alot of the worst offenders when it comes to creatures go away as well. Thragtusk, Olivia, Huntmaster, Giest of St. Traft, Falkenrath Aristocrat, The zombie buddies, Strangleroot Giest, Champion of the Parish, ect. Control is poised to lose snapcaster and some draw spells and Nephalia but still have plenty of options to chose from regardless (UWR DEFINTELY loses very little). So all in all, I say to control players, be patient. Things just might get interesting...
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
okay then, let's assume the worst, and say he cherry picked the data to get the worst possible representation. Even using your data, if we take his data into account to get the actual population mean, the average is still below 10% of the meta. That doesn't speak to me of a high representation at all. It indicates that at higher levels of the game, where the relative skill difference is much lower, control decks just aren't cutting it.
Furthermore, people are making assumptions that control players aren't trying to get their decks to function. Of course they are, because that's what they enjoy playing. But what's happened is that over time, the number of control decks in the meta has decreased (contrary to people's expectations), because most players are finding the strategy untenable. If the strategy you enjoy playing isn't really feasible, you have a couple of options: you either play something else, or you leave the format.
We'll see. I think that the three cards that dealt the killing blow to control as we knew it are all from Dragon's Maze: VoR, Sire of Insanity (in combination with CoS), and Sin Collector. You can argue that VoR is an aggressive card but Sin Collector and Sire definitely are not. Control has always had a tougher time with aggro (granted, it's worse now that at any point in recent memory) but it's always been able to feast on mid-range. The only two mid-range decks that make up a significant portion of the metagame are Jund and arguably Rites (feel free to classify Rites as something else). Both gained cards in Dragon's Maze that probably tilt those matchups against control slightly in their favor. In addition, aggro decks have become so efficient that they simply overwhelm their natural foil, mid-range, unless that midrange deck is Jund. You're unlikely to see that change much because no other color combination has the efficient 1 for 1 removal and life gain/value creatures that Jund has other than maybe UWR. Ultimately, I think that mid-range players being pigeon-holed into playing Jund has negatively affected control almost as much as the plethora of aggro decks out there. For control to come back, mid-range needs to also be healthy. While Jund as we know it will cease to exist, will the format slow down enough for other mid-range options to become viable?
Losing Hellrider, Noble, Champion of the Parish, Aristocrat, Thundermaw, Flinthoof Boar, Strangleroot Geist, Zombies, Cavern of Souls etc is a start. I just hope that they don't print many overpowered haste creatures to make up for those losses.
People can interpret this however they want
Wow, real. I also recently read an article on starcity where the meta was laid out as a context for the deckbuilding being done and he didn't even mention control of any kind.
wizards prints anti-control cards and no good control cards and tournament attendance goes up, what do you think is going to happen? they're just going to stop because some people create threads on a forum they don't read?
Go back and read what was written, Windex chose the first samples by the order they were listed in. That's hardly cherry picking. Secondly, all competitions involve some self-selection bias, but that doesn't mean we should discard the data. In fact, at this level the data is more useful to us, because the variance in skill level is lower, giving us a more accurate look at the cards and their relative power. There's less noise in this data than a hypothetical random sample of all players, especially if we're only looking at top 8 placings.
I mean you can try poking holes in the data all you want, but the fact remains: control is not winning competitions. It's not even well represented at higher levels of the game. Do you have a Starcity premium account? If so, read Patrick Chapin's article on the standard meta-game since DGM hit. He's pretty liberal with his definition of control, and winds up with a total representation of around 15% of the meta. Jund alone is more highly represented than that, and if you count up all of the aggro variants, aggro as an archetype makes up more than 40% of the meta.
My smug attitude aside, I genuinely want this game to have variety in its strategies and experiences, and right now it doesn't have that. This is a problem, and it's annoying to be told that control players are the ones at fault for not adapting, when you and I know that an outcome like that is hugely improbable, and almost certainly cannot be the case. But hey, what the **** would I know?
You wrote a long post to try to sound smart, but all you actually said is that my selection was "open to bias". If states is too low a level, then go look at the last 20 or so SCG opens / tcgplayer 5k's / gps etc and tell me if control is not between 7-11% of the top 8s.
It doesn't? I could build a random deck full of Smiters, VoRs, Geists etc and call it aggro but if 90% of the matches I play in against the field I am the control deck - because I am slower than Blitz and trying to get value out of blocking with my creatures - it is probably a midrange deck for that particular metagame. My plan isn't what I thought it would be so I am forced to adjust. What a deck tries to do is very dependent upon its matchups - it is very metagame dependent.
In this metagame, the near absence of true control makes midrange seem like control because midrange doesn't have a matchup where it plays as the aggro deck. If control as we know it never existed throughout the history of magic, midrange would be considered control. It really doesn't exist much in this metagame, so people have shifted their views of what midrange/Jund really is.
I agree with you if you place a given deck in a vacuum and discount its matchups. But if you discount a deck's matchups how would you even know how the deck actually plays out? At that point, you're really just arbitrarily labeling the deck with no comparisons/actual playtesting to base it on.
In terms a statistical analysis it is impossible to get a truly representative sample of the wider population in this situation. The best you can do is look at a wide range of observable, tangible data and run basic analysis on that, which is what Windex did and presented.
The data would be accepted as valid, it would simply be considered with scrutiny before generalising beyond the sample.
If you're going to tell people off about stats, then you should probably keep in mind that his analysis is perfectly acceptable (to accuse Windex of cherrypicking is rubbish) as an analysis of the sample, but we would be careful about generalising. Keep in mind here that it does have some generalisability, and this is expanded upon by looking at further results from all forms of top 8 events which give a better idea of the overall picture.
We can perform a very adequate statisical analysis for this question through observable data based on results from competitive top 8 events, and that's whats been done in part here. Windex's results give a pretty good indication for where we can expect the results to head.
Current standard is not conducive for control decks. That isn't a huge issue, though it does hurt the versatility of the meta, but it doesn't make it any less true. Control simply isn't very competitive at the moment and that happens now and then. I'll continue to play control and tweak and see if I can develop a more favourable build, but overall there are alot of cards which are stacked against control builds and you simply can't argue that that isn't the case.
Context is important; if you think we need to run a hypothesis test and get the p-value for a discussion on the internet, you're missing the larger point that is being made. Actually, it's worse than that; all you're doing is baiting, because the truth is you don't actually have an argument, and so you're attacking a technicality that has no real bearing to the discussion at hand.
This isn't a scientific debate, and the data shouldn't be held up to scientific scrutiny, because the contexts are not the same. There is nothing wrong with looking at the top decklists and saying "control is under-represented as an archetype", because we haven't tried to prove anything, we've only made an observation. We aren't trying to extrapolate anything further from the data, because we don't need to, we've already established the point being made. If you have a problem with that, be my guest.
Permission control, or at least as it is known now is just another way of playing magic. Interaction is interesting, spell wars add interesting aspect to the game.
I don't disagree with the introduction of tools to hose control, but I think what control players in general are saying here is that, its a bit too much as it currently is.
The shutting down of control as a viable archetype cuts out a large portion of players too.
Control shouldn't have had the representation it had in previous years, but it shouldn't be as dead as it is now. There is a balance. The way control works now is quite enjoyable in my opinion, but there are too many tools which are particularly unfavourable towards control. The meta is saturated with them now.
Really? well,
Wise words.
You do not find permission fun. However, permission based control decks have been viable with relative consistency from as recently as mirrodon-innistrad standard back to kamigawa-ravnica (when i began playing). Sales and attendance had been quite high starting with ravnica (as far as i know) and going forward all through that time. I don't think magics success is absolutely mutually exclusive with permission based control as an archetype being viable (not dominant). Playing around permission successfully is fun
EDIT : also,
What? First of all, go look up what a "spike" is. I'm not trying to inflict any emotional state on my opponent when i play a permission based control deck, i play magic because it is a very intelligent competitive medium, and i want to compete with others. Secondly, WHAT? This statement is one of the most baffling things in this thread (and that is saying something!). Is losing fun for the majority of mtg players? No. But winning is, and you can't have one without the other. Is me killing your creature with spot removal right when you go to attack me fun for you? Probably not, you might argue that its less "unfun" then it just being countered straight out, but you still dont want me to Doom Blade your guy.. I can go on and on, there are tons of examples of things that are absolute pillars of the game (and games in general, winning/losing is a pretty good example) that are not fun for both players. That's just stupid.
Interaction on the stack is just as important as interaction among creatures.
So "fun", as you define it, is nothing more than a slugfest between two aggro decks, because control elements aren't fun because they don't let you play the way you want. That sounds extremely boring to me, because every turn would be "Tap lands, play threat, turn other guys sideways, hit for X".
Let's be clear here, control is annoying, yes, but it's also incredibly fragile and limited. Most control is not permanent in effect - it's instants and sorceries that go in the graveyard after being used up. Control players have to constantly refresh their hands with draw effects, and it's impossible for any control player to completely counter or lock down every card in an opponent's library, particularly in Standard.
I just searched for the word 'control' in my browser and subtracted the hits in the sidebar from the total. Took me about two minutes, tops.
And for anyone who investigates academic fraud, that little bit was a red flag.
That's entirely up to you. Make stuff up, and I'll call you on it. Don't, and I won't.
Project much? You could at least put a sentence break between accusing me of ignoring data and doing it yourself.
That's not what he was saying at all. He was specifically targeting permission, which is counter-magic. There are other ways to interact other than counters. You have point removal, wraths, bounce, edicts, threaten and steal, pump, and even prevention (stalls like Fog). It's all interactive, and it's all tricky. That's why combat tricks were so named.
Control decks don't need to focus so hard on permission. There are other types of cards that are still Control-friendly. He's just trying to point that out, too. Don't read too much into what he's actually saying by putting your slippery slope into his mouth.
Currently Working On: Jund Ramp (RTR Block)
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