I propose a new subtype of constructed tournaments called Deckbuilder Tournaments, which would be unique in their method of prize distribution. These tournaments would be an incentive to get more players to plunge back into old-fashioned creative deck design. The scoring system for Deckbuilder Tournaments would be automated and therefore impartial and unbiased. Although I can’t realistically propose an automated system that can measure with pinpoint accuracy such nebulous things as creativity and ingenuity, I think this system would strongly encourage players to explore cards and strategies that have been neglected. And it would certainly increase the variety of decks you would play against.
Now I shall describe my initial proposal for how the Deckbuilder Prize system would operate.
DECKBUILDER PRIZE METHODOLOGY
1. Prize support in constructed events called Deckbuilder Tournaments is awarded based on Deckbuilder Points, not match points.
2. Players register their deck lists for Deckbuilder Tournaments electronically. A new computer program and phone app would be necessary for this.
3. Each deck has a Deckbuilder Percentile. The Deckbuilder Percentile is dependent upon the mean (average) popularity of the individual cards within the main deck (sideboard cards don’t affect Deckbuilder Percentile for now). It is desirable to have a high Deckbuilder Percentile because a high Deckbuilder Percentile indicates the inclusion of more unpopular cards in your deck. A Deckbuilder Percentile of 50% is the definition of average. The Deckbuilder Percentile of the oddest rogue decks will be close to 100%, and the Deckbuilder Percentile of the most popular netdecks will be close to 0%. That’s really all you need to know! But for those who are interested in math and statistics, search my full article linked at the start of this post for the area enclosed by a box.
4. At the end of the Swiss rounds, each player is ranked not by match points and tiebreakers, but by Deckbuilder Points. To determine the top Deckbuilders, use the following equation for each player:
Deckbuilder Points = Match Points + (Deckbuilder Percentile * Match Points)
The top Deckbuilders, as determined by this descending list of Deckbuilder Points, are awarded prizes at the end of the Swiss rounds. It is up to the tournament organizer to decide how much prize to allocate to the top 8 elimination rounds thereafter, if applicable.
I acknowledge that this protocol sounds complex. But with computer programming, the whole thing can easily be automated and implemented.
This Excel workbook takes 8 different Standard deck lists from the recent SCG Team Open Baltimore that occurred last weekend. I located these deck lists at https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=21065&f=ST. I also added two additional decks: my own current Standard deck, Duncan Hills Coffee, and a rogue deck called Mirror Match Wizards by SaffronOlive from https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-mirror-march-wizards-standard. On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 3:00pm Eastern time, I collected and calculated Standard card dominances from 92 Standard decks gathered at Mtgtop8.com over the past 2 weeks.
With these deck lists and a list of card dominances, I set up a hypothetical 10-player tournament in which each player achieved a final record of 3-3-1 (which is 10 match points). You can see below that decks with higher Deckbuilder Percentile ended up with more Deckbuilder Points in this hypothetical tournament.
This final list of standings, sorted by Deckbuilder Points, indicates that my method for calculating Deckbuilder Percentile might need modification. My Duncan Hills Coffee deck is a simple, linear deck that nevertheless has the highest Deckbuilder Percentile because it uses lots of cards that other people don’t use. Andrew Hung’s stereotypical Mono-Blue Aggro deck has a high Deckbuilder Percentile for the same reason, despite being basically a netdeck. Such high Deckbuilder Percentiles are largely undeserved. Ideally, SaffronOlive’s deliberately rogue Mirror March Wizards deck should have the highest Deckbuilder Percentile. But on the other hand, the two most prevalent netdecks, Sultai Aggro and Esper Control, have the lowest Deckbuilder Percentiles, so at least that is proper.
Although this system doesn’t appear to necessarily reward creativity all the time, I do predict it would be highly effective for promoting more deck diversity in the Standard metagame. And that might be even more important than awarding creativity, because it gets very dull to play against the same deck archetype for multiple rounds in a single tournament. It should be noted that these Deckbuilder Percentiles were derived from online data that encompassed only 92 decks, which might not be enough. It should also be noted that 9 out of the 10 decks (mine included) that I put on the spreadsheet are designed with the sole purpose of winning matches, with no impetus placed upon being weird or unique. In an actual Deckbuilder Tournament in which players are indeed trying to bring weird, unique decks, I have no idea what would happen with the numbers. Sometimes you just need to put things to the test to see if they work as intended, and I indeed think this system is ready for a few trial runs.
Now allow me to get grandiose and imagine that Deckbuilder tournaments become popular. A problem looms: Suppose a major Deckbuilder tournament is completed, and a bunch of new rogue deck lists are posted online. It will be necessary to have a method of disincentivizing players from simply copying these new rogue decks and playing them in future Deckbuilder tournaments. To address this, every Monday two separate official lists of Card Dominances for both plain Standard and Deckbuilder Standard would be posted. Until the following Monday, whenever a player registers a deck list for a Deckbuilder tournament, each card in their deck list uses whichever Card Dominance is higher (which could be either that card’s Dominance in the plain Standard list or in Deckbuilder Standard list). I think that these regularly updated lists would promote consistent creativity and deck diversity by always pushing players away from playing cards that are known to be popular.
CONCLUSION
I know that no proposal pleases everyone. Would my proposal please more people than it would displease? And would it increase attendance at tournaments and the audience for tournament coverage? Although I identify as a hybrid “Johnny/Spike”, I must endeavor to perceive this proposal from the perspectives of the other player stereotypes. These player stereotypes are described in the article TIMMY, JOHNNY, AND SPIKE at https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03
I suspect that players belonging to the “Spike” player stereotype (those who want to win by any means necessary) would not participate in Deckbuilder Tournaments. Indeed, the absolute worst sort of Spikes have contempt for rogue decks and the people who play them. By contrast, I suspect that “Johnny” players (those who like to win but are more interested in the crazy and creative opportunities deckbuilding provides) would love this proposal. “Timmys” (those who enjoy epic, profound creatures and effects) would probably like Deckbuilder Tournaments as well. As for the audience, I am very confident that Deckbuilder tournaments would increase the amount of people who view streaming tournament coverage.
In conclusion, Magic has several aspects behind its appeal. It has a competitive aspect, a creative aspect, a fantasy aspect, and a collectible aspect. I predict that if the creative aspect were emphasized with Deckbuilder Prizes, then there would be a flourishing of innovative new decks which would bring both higher attendance at constructed tournaments and a greater audience for event coverage.
So the decks with the most cookie-cutter netdeck structure will get {Match Points} as their score. The best you can do with a deck running nothing from the netdecks is {2 * Match Points} score. The problem I see is that in order to get a modifier like that, you'll have to build an extremely suboptimal deck (netdecks are netdecks for a reason), and your Match Points will be close to 0, which makes the modifier useless.
Somewhere south of 50% on your deck scoring system might be worth building, and you can get in some luck as well to still pull out ahead of the cookie-cutter deck's score. I don't think there is an intersection between expected total score for a 0% unique deck and expected total score for a >0% unique deck (as the expected match points will go down as a multiplier goes up), other than a netdeck that's expected to lose all matches. Of course getting lucky can put the >0% unique deck up higher, but if we're analyzing a format that's not explicitly meant to be gambling I don't think counting on luck should be included.
So the decks with the most cookie-cutter netdeck structure will get {Match Points} as their score. The best you can do with a deck running nothing from the netdecks is {2 * Match Points} score. The problem I see is that in order to get a modifier like that, you'll have to build an extremely suboptimal deck (netdecks are netdecks for a reason), and your Match Points will be close to 0, which makes the modifier useless.
Somewhere south of 50% on your deck scoring system might be worth building, and you can get in some luck as well to still pull out ahead of the cookie-cutter deck's score. I don't think there is an intersection between expected total score for a 0% unique deck and expected total score for a >0% unique deck (as the expected match points will go down as a multiplier goes up), other than a netdeck that's expected to lose all matches. Of course getting lucky can put the >0% unique deck up higher, but if we're analyzing a format that's not explicitly meant to be gambling I don't think counting on luck should be included.
Your understanding of how Deckbuilder Percentile affects the final standings is correct.
But take a look at the linked Excel workbook in the section "Deckbuilder Prizes in Practice", and click on the "Standings" tab. It shows that you can build a deck with Deckbuilder Percentile >85% without having to resort to using bad cards. However, in a tournament in which practically everyone deliberately avoids playing a popular netdecks, I predict the Deckbuilder Percentiles would become less spread out - perhaps between a range of 60%-95%.
Remember that Deckbuilder Percentile is based on online data, so it's easy to look online, see what the most popular decks and cards are, and deliberately void playing them. Also, presuming the Card Dominances are formally updated every Monday, you would be able to see exactly what your deck's Deckbuilder Percentile would be before the tournament.
At this date, it would also be certain that the Deckbuilder Percentile of the Mono-Blue Aggro would be lower, since last weekend this deck archetype saw lots of play, probably because it has a good matchup against the previous weekend's most popular deck, Sultai Aggro.
(This is a shorter version of an article I wrote. If you want to see the full version, it's at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CJqwASf-be5rDlHi2FTgmGH9uN3a9hPG/view).
I propose a new subtype of constructed tournaments called Deckbuilder Tournaments, which would be unique in their method of prize distribution. These tournaments would be an incentive to get more players to plunge back into old-fashioned creative deck design. The scoring system for Deckbuilder Tournaments would be automated and therefore impartial and unbiased. Although I can’t realistically propose an automated system that can measure with pinpoint accuracy such nebulous things as creativity and ingenuity, I think this system would strongly encourage players to explore cards and strategies that have been neglected. And it would certainly increase the variety of decks you would play against.
Now I shall describe my initial proposal for how the Deckbuilder Prize system would operate.
DECKBUILDER PRIZE METHODOLOGY
1. Prize support in constructed events called Deckbuilder Tournaments is awarded based on Deckbuilder Points, not match points.
2. Players register their deck lists for Deckbuilder Tournaments electronically. A new computer program and phone app would be necessary for this.
3. Each deck has a Deckbuilder Percentile. The Deckbuilder Percentile is dependent upon the mean (average) popularity of the individual cards within the main deck (sideboard cards don’t affect Deckbuilder Percentile for now). It is desirable to have a high Deckbuilder Percentile because a high Deckbuilder Percentile indicates the inclusion of more unpopular cards in your deck. A Deckbuilder Percentile of 50% is the definition of average. The Deckbuilder Percentile of the oddest rogue decks will be close to 100%, and the Deckbuilder Percentile of the most popular netdecks will be close to 0%. That’s really all you need to know! But for those who are interested in math and statistics, search my full article linked at the start of this post for the area enclosed by a box.
4. At the end of the Swiss rounds, each player is ranked not by match points and tiebreakers, but by Deckbuilder Points. To determine the top Deckbuilders, use the following equation for each player:
Deckbuilder Points = Match Points + (Deckbuilder Percentile * Match Points)
The top Deckbuilders, as determined by this descending list of Deckbuilder Points, are awarded prizes at the end of the Swiss rounds. It is up to the tournament organizer to decide how much prize to allocate to the top 8 elimination rounds thereafter, if applicable.
I acknowledge that this protocol sounds complex. But with computer programming, the whole thing can easily be automated and implemented.
DECKBUILDER PRIZES IN PRACTICE
I have assembled an Excel workbook illustrating the ease by which Deckbuilder Percentiles and Deckbuilder Points can be calculated. You can preview, download, and tinker with this workbook at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jt_VlymQk8wRZDkj_LXr0ImKb8zU2KWm
This Excel workbook takes 8 different Standard deck lists from the recent SCG Team Open Baltimore that occurred last weekend. I located these deck lists at https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=21065&f=ST. I also added two additional decks: my own current Standard deck, Duncan Hills Coffee, and a rogue deck called Mirror Match Wizards by SaffronOlive from https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-mirror-march-wizards-standard. On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 3:00pm Eastern time, I collected and calculated Standard card dominances from 92 Standard decks gathered at Mtgtop8.com over the past 2 weeks.
With these deck lists and a list of card dominances, I set up a hypothetical 10-player tournament in which each player achieved a final record of 3-3-1 (which is 10 match points). You can see below that decks with higher Deckbuilder Percentile ended up with more Deckbuilder Points in this hypothetical tournament.
This final list of standings, sorted by Deckbuilder Points, indicates that my method for calculating Deckbuilder Percentile might need modification. My Duncan Hills Coffee deck is a simple, linear deck that nevertheless has the highest Deckbuilder Percentile because it uses lots of cards that other people don’t use. Andrew Hung’s stereotypical Mono-Blue Aggro deck has a high Deckbuilder Percentile for the same reason, despite being basically a netdeck. Such high Deckbuilder Percentiles are largely undeserved. Ideally, SaffronOlive’s deliberately rogue Mirror March Wizards deck should have the highest Deckbuilder Percentile. But on the other hand, the two most prevalent netdecks, Sultai Aggro and Esper Control, have the lowest Deckbuilder Percentiles, so at least that is proper.
Although this system doesn’t appear to necessarily reward creativity all the time, I do predict it would be highly effective for promoting more deck diversity in the Standard metagame. And that might be even more important than awarding creativity, because it gets very dull to play against the same deck archetype for multiple rounds in a single tournament. It should be noted that these Deckbuilder Percentiles were derived from online data that encompassed only 92 decks, which might not be enough. It should also be noted that 9 out of the 10 decks (mine included) that I put on the spreadsheet are designed with the sole purpose of winning matches, with no impetus placed upon being weird or unique. In an actual Deckbuilder Tournament in which players are indeed trying to bring weird, unique decks, I have no idea what would happen with the numbers. Sometimes you just need to put things to the test to see if they work as intended, and I indeed think this system is ready for a few trial runs.
Now allow me to get grandiose and imagine that Deckbuilder tournaments become popular. A problem looms: Suppose a major Deckbuilder tournament is completed, and a bunch of new rogue deck lists are posted online. It will be necessary to have a method of disincentivizing players from simply copying these new rogue decks and playing them in future Deckbuilder tournaments. To address this, every Monday two separate official lists of Card Dominances for both plain Standard and Deckbuilder Standard would be posted. Until the following Monday, whenever a player registers a deck list for a Deckbuilder tournament, each card in their deck list uses whichever Card Dominance is higher (which could be either that card’s Dominance in the plain Standard list or in Deckbuilder Standard list). I think that these regularly updated lists would promote consistent creativity and deck diversity by always pushing players away from playing cards that are known to be popular.
CONCLUSION
I know that no proposal pleases everyone. Would my proposal please more people than it would displease? And would it increase attendance at tournaments and the audience for tournament coverage? Although I identify as a hybrid “Johnny/Spike”, I must endeavor to perceive this proposal from the perspectives of the other player stereotypes. These player stereotypes are described in the article TIMMY, JOHNNY, AND SPIKE at https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03
I suspect that players belonging to the “Spike” player stereotype (those who want to win by any means necessary) would not participate in Deckbuilder Tournaments. Indeed, the absolute worst sort of Spikes have contempt for rogue decks and the people who play them. By contrast, I suspect that “Johnny” players (those who like to win but are more interested in the crazy and creative opportunities deckbuilding provides) would love this proposal. “Timmys” (those who enjoy epic, profound creatures and effects) would probably like Deckbuilder Tournaments as well. As for the audience, I am very confident that Deckbuilder tournaments would increase the amount of people who view streaming tournament coverage.
In conclusion, Magic has several aspects behind its appeal. It has a competitive aspect, a creative aspect, a fantasy aspect, and a collectible aspect. I predict that if the creative aspect were emphasized with Deckbuilder Prizes, then there would be a flourishing of innovative new decks which would bring both higher attendance at constructed tournaments and a greater audience for event coverage.
Somewhere south of 50% on your deck scoring system might be worth building, and you can get in some luck as well to still pull out ahead of the cookie-cutter deck's score. I don't think there is an intersection between expected total score for a 0% unique deck and expected total score for a >0% unique deck (as the expected match points will go down as a multiplier goes up), other than a netdeck that's expected to lose all matches. Of course getting lucky can put the >0% unique deck up higher, but if we're analyzing a format that's not explicitly meant to be gambling I don't think counting on luck should be included.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Your understanding of how Deckbuilder Percentile affects the final standings is correct.
But take a look at the linked Excel workbook in the section "Deckbuilder Prizes in Practice", and click on the "Standings" tab. It shows that you can build a deck with Deckbuilder Percentile >85% without having to resort to using bad cards. However, in a tournament in which practically everyone deliberately avoids playing a popular netdecks, I predict the Deckbuilder Percentiles would become less spread out - perhaps between a range of 60%-95%.
Remember that Deckbuilder Percentile is based on online data, so it's easy to look online, see what the most popular decks and cards are, and deliberately void playing them. Also, presuming the Card Dominances are formally updated every Monday, you would be able to see exactly what your deck's Deckbuilder Percentile would be before the tournament.
At this date, it would also be certain that the Deckbuilder Percentile of the Mono-Blue Aggro would be lower, since last weekend this deck archetype saw lots of play, probably because it has a good matchup against the previous weekend's most popular deck, Sultai Aggro.