Maybe it's making excuses, but Grishoalbrand has similar problems. I've had numerous games where I draw some odd 1/3 to 2/3 of the deck and don't find a win-con. That is more harmful mentally than a deck where I didn't siphon through most of the deck to not find anything capable of winning. Maybe that's the problem? It's easier for me to accept that my deck (Bogles) won't draw well because technically I could draw every single Aura and have 13 creatures on the bottom of my deck. But with Grishoalbrand, there is some sort of BELIEF or faith that drawing a certain amount of cards will get you there. As someone who has played the deck for longer than 1 year (3-5 months continuously), that's just not the truth.
I'm not saying you will always win with a deck that has more decision trees and velocity. In fact, there is no deck that always wins in Magic (let alone Modern), and there is no player in the history of the game with a publicly noted win rate greater than about 65% across the biggest, most competitive events. If you want a game where play skill determines 100% of your games, then don't play Magic. But you do want to play decks that maximize your win percentage, and those are the decks where you can leverage play skill to pick up edges. This doesn't have to be through answering threats; that's a common misconception. But it does have to be through creating lines where others don't see them. Decks like Bogles don't do this and are, at best, metagame "got 'em" calls. They will never maximize any play skill you have.
I am also going to strongly challenge you on this notion:
It's easier for me to accept that my deck (Bogles) won't draw well because technically I could draw every single Aura and have 13 creatures on the bottom of my deck. But with Grishoalbrand, there is some sort of BELIEF or faith that drawing a certain amount of cards will get you there.
I respect you enough as a player and poster to tell you this mentality is lazy and/or arrogant (hear me out) and it will hold you back. I see players fall for this when they get ego involved. They don't like losing, so they want losing to be out of their hands as much as possible. Then they can just blame variance and not themselves. That, or they don't want to acknowledge that losses are due to errors in deck building, selection, and/or gameplay so they just jam the same deck/style over and over again to "prove" they are losing for reasons out of their control. This mentality is rampant in tournament reports on forums and articles. When players win, it's because they outplay an opponent, find a clever line, or just brute force to victory. When players lose, it's because they were super unlucky to not topdeck the right card, their opponent drew a god hand or got the topdeck first, the matchup was bad, etc. There's rarely responsibility for personal errors during deck-building, deck selection, and gameplay. Every competitive discipline has this problem and has many competitors of varying levels who suffer from such thinking errors. The best competitors in those disciplines, however, do not have these errors. To be clear, I don't necessarily think you are doing those things because I don't know you well enough to know for sure. But in my experience, I know with certainty that many competitors who say comments like those I quoted above are falling victim to one or both of these traps. This mindset cripples competitors and holds them back.
*Also right now in Modern and this is my true beliefs, trying to match answers with the correct problems is often much tougher than just presenting problem after problem, especially when the answers are not quite as strong. If I draw 3 Logic Knot vs. 3 straight Mantis Rider, I lose. If I draw 3 Bolt, but he has Vial on Thalia's Lieutenant in response, I just lose. That is how I feel about Control right now. I am not looking for a "moral" victory. I am looking for the deck that has the best chance to win or outplay my opponent and also WIN.
If you don't want to play an answer deck, that's totally fine. Play one of the high-decision decks that present threats and mingle them with answers where you can (H1, Humans, Grishoalbrand, Bloom, etc.). Or play the answer-based decks and practice turning the corner and not just playing draw-go 1994 Magic.
There is a sizable contingent of players who have consistent success in this format. Those players hover around a 65% win rate and they have a gameplay, deck-building, and deck selection philosophy that allows them to have this consistent success. I guarantee you that these players don't deliberately shy away from high decision decks because they are frustrated when they lose despite seeing more cards and trying more lines.
Well, to play Magic the Gathering requires that players accept the fact the game is designed around the concept that you can lose a game. The choice of having lands in the deck was not arbitrary and neither was the choice to limit cards to a max of 4 copies per deck. Some people like this facet of the game and others absolutely hate it, but it is part of the game.
The only part no one likes about this is that since competitive players want consistency, they will do whatever they can to make success more consistent. If someone can sneak another Glorybringer into a limited deck during an event, or do something similar during draft, that poses a huge difference. In modern, the cheating usually is a bit different. Typically it's marked cards (hence why you have to watch for the dragon sleeves, don't let someone use pink sleeves and tell you it's okay when they can see the backs of the cards faintly through the back), and sleight of hand tricks.
But in any case, I agree with ktkenshinx that playing a deck with a high number of decisions and eating a few losses on the way is best for growing ones skills and becoming better at the game as a whole. It's why I picked up affinity now after having merfolk and spirits for a while. Affinity has a lot of decisions even though it's a fast deck that aren't readily apparent. Case in point, what is the chances that my opponent has a Settle the Wreckage, should I try to push hard now before that fourth land drop next turn to get extra damage, and then, what do I do about the fact he has a bigger creature that will trade favorably with an attacker? Can I afford that loss? Red vs affinity feels harder since they can have Anger of the Gods, and that actually can hit soon enough to really punish over extending too quickly.
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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!
There is a sizable contingent of players who have consistent success in this format. Those players hover around a 65% win rate and they have a gameplay, deck-building, and deck selection philosophy that allows them to have this consistent success. I guarantee you that these players don't deliberately shy away from high decision decks because they are frustrated when they lose despite seeing more cards and trying more lines.
I definitely don't shy away from admitting a mistake or multiple mistakes, if I can see them. That is one of my greatest strengths. But I also know that when I'm on top of my game, the mistakes are close to nonexistent for at least 1 tournament and I can often see success from this. But not always. Sometimes you play to the best of your ability and finish 3-2 or lose 2 win-and-ins. I personally find it hard to believe that someone can go less than 3-2 if they are making all of the right plays, but 3-2 gets you...well, nothing.
Before kavu.ru crashed, I looked up my stats. For Modern, my win percentage was 65.5%. For Standard, I was close to 69% and for Booster Draft, I was close to 72%. There's no reason for a format like Modern to be way less than those for several reasons. Firstly, I can play what I want to play. Secondly, I have played Modern only since I became more competitive minded. Also, there were times that I had to LEARN Standard and Booster Draft, whereas I knew how to play Magic by the time I played Modern full on.
Why is my win percentage much less in Modern? I have to identify that. Is it my deck choices? I do think so. For what it's worth, my Sealed win percentage was 61% and my Legacy win percentage was 57% (GASP!), so Modern isn't the worst for me, but I also know that I could improve those others easily if I tried. With Modern, I AM trying. But then again, by not playing the best deck, in a way, maybe I am sabotaging myself in this quest?
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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)
Having read so many of your posts over the past year FCG, along with being a poster I really respect my comments boils down to this
A: You seem torn as a player when it comes to your identity. You want to win but you want to do it with sneaky Tier 2 decks that can maximize you're experience and skill. Unfortunately, these seem to be at cross purposes. Tier 2 decks are that for a reason and sometimes, even with superior play you're going to lose to the "better" deck. You need to decide if you're ok with that.
Playing decks that prey on others is all well and good, but if ones prey isn't a high enough percentage of the meta, that won't help you much. You can hunt Delver in Legacy and whatever is the Deck of the day in Standard. In Modern, I don't think it's that easy since nothing will have the same sort of play percentages as those referenced above.
B: Sometimes mate, you just seem burnt out. I wonder if a format change for a couple of weeks or taking your mind off Modern for a bit by diving into something else expansive like Witcher 3 would recharge your batteries.
C: Stuff what other people think about your deck. If you want to play Bogles and enjoy playing Bogles, Giver.
D: Combo decks sometimes beat themselves. If that's not on your happy list, I'd keep Grishoalbrand/Knightfall as decks that you play for fun rather then when you want to win gas money.
You know me a little too well! Are you someone I talk to in person, by chance?
Yes, I know that I probably should be playing something at a higher Tier to appease my Spike side. But I also have a Johnny (Combo player) side. I should play what I need to play to compete at the highest level and what I WANT to play for when it doesn't matter much. I have done that before, but when I am drawing poorly with a bad deck, I quickly revert to a consistently good deck in order to "know that I can still win at Magic." You know, I have gotten the "take a break" from Magic for a while before and I have never listened to it before. This is the first time it actually hit me hard, so thanks for that. I just came back from a 1K today where the toughest opponent for me was the guy I drove with, who is a lesser play skill level than myself, and LOST (again) in the top 4 after knocking him out of the top 8. I literally was 1 Bogle of a draw in 2 loooong games from winning. I was stuck with 7 Auras in hand both games, going to the discard several times. I drew 0 Slippery Bogle and 0 Gladecover Scout in the 2 games, but was 1 draw of either of those from winning either game. And yes, he mulliganed to 4 in game 1. But, he got the win.
The deck was really good for the meta. I got to play against Affinity, Soul Sisters, and Jeskai Control. I also dodged playing against at least 3 Humans and 3 Burn decks. I also sadly dodged playing against a Dredge deck that top 4ed also. So, often my poor choices of deck choice get rewarded and that enforces my belief to go under the meta with a worse deck that has a positive matchup vs. some of the top decks. I know what I'm doing, but I don't know how to stop it, lol.
Not unless you come up to Vancouver regularly. I haven't been to Cali outside of San Fran for conferences in years. Mostly, I just pay attention to posts from people I respect. Also, I saw a bit of myself in your original post as my inner Johnny and Spike are constantly battling, much like yourself.
The best (in terms of maximizing my win rate) I've been able to come up with is to have one Tier 1 "winner" style deck and then another to monkey around with. For example I play Storm as my Tier 1 deck (bonus as it's a combo deck) and then monkey around with Angry Garden as my just for fun/palate cleanser deck.
If you wanted to try a similair path, I'd be jamming Humans as my "win now" deck and something CoCo based as your palate cleanser since you really enjoy that card/those decks.
Modern has been the only format I considered playing for years. But very recently I discovered that I also like drafting Dominaria. In comparison, it feels so much more skill-intensive than Modern, especially the drafting/deck construction part. Most of the top decks of Modern may be hard to master, but they are surely not that hard to pilot decently.
Modern isn't the most-played format where I live, but we have a somewhat big community of active players, so there are dozens of people who play Modern semi-casually in weekly tournaments. Since those players don't have the time and interest in the format to practice it intensively, they tend to build the least interactive and most linear decks they can find, which is actually pretty smart if you think about it. But at the same time, this creates a toxic local tournament environment for players like me who want to play a more traditional game of MtG.
Back in the late 1990s when I played the game extensively, my win ratio was perhaps around 75% and I won about every third local tournament that I participated in (10-20 people tournaments mostly, but I also qualified for the Pro Tour in my first and only attempt to do so and with a deck variant that I came up with by myself - now, that felt rewarding). In current day Modern, my win ratio is close to 60% in MTGO and at a depressing 50% at local tournaments since I stubbornly insist on playing decks that I actually enjoy playing.
But now that I started drafting Dominaria, my win ratio is currently at 85% after a few intermediate draft leagues. I probably got really lucky and I don't think it will last in the long run because literally all I know about drafting I got from watching others doing it on youtube. But it sure feels like a flashback to the days in pre-netdeck constructed MtG when my opponents had to beat me in several disciplines, including deck building. I'm aware that those days are never going to come back, but I still think that the issue I have with Modern (and probably most other constructed formats) is the lack of opportunity to outplay my opponent when they are on a deck that - more often than not - pretty much plays itself.
I don't really know what to do about it, because the cards that make these decks exist and banning them will likely only bring similarly problematic cards to the spotlight. So I guess all I can do for now is play less Modern and draft more Dominaria while it lasts.
yeah limited is often overlooked, but is quite skill intensive; especially when the format is deep and supports a lot of different archetypes.
tbh from your descriptions it sounds like you might enjoy pauper. i hear a lot of high praise for the format because threats are weaker so you dont have people clobbering you with the raw power of rares and mythics; which leads to games that are more drawn out. blue is also pretty busted in that format cause of the cantrips so there is that to consider.
i think a lot of it comes down making sure your experiences with the game are varied. which is why i endorse the recommendation to have a couple of decks in the stable and rotate them on occasion. however i also understand that not everyone can do that because the format is expensive.
also you gotta be realistic. most everyone thinks they are better than they are. if you just assume the majority of people you play against are less skilled than you wins stop becoming triumphs and every loss becomes a blow to your ego; which can drive you from seeking how to better your play.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
also you gotta be realistic. most everyone thinks they are better than they are. if you just assume the majority of people you play against are less skilled than you wins stop becoming triumphs and every loss becomes a blow to your ego; which can drive you from seeking how to better your play.
That's a really good point. I don't think that I am a great player per se, I have strengths and weaknesses just like every other person. Perhaps my greatest strength is that I'm pretty good (though often not great, as I lack patience) at many different things. I think my D&D class would be bard, i. e. jack of all trades, master of none. Thus I tend to be good at games and activities in general which involve quick tactical thinking, frequent adjustment to new situations, improvisation and multitasking.
MtG can be this kind of game, but it seems as if players whose set of strengths and weaknesses is considerably different from mine have found deck archetypes in Modern and other formats that take most of what I personally consider 'skill' out of the equation. Yet, their definition of 'skill' could just be different from mine. Maybe they are always looking for new ways to lock the opponent completely out of the game or enjoy perfecting their sequencing in a highly linear combo deck.
When I feel lost at a Modern tournament because all of my opponents bring decks that want to avoid interacting with my deck in any meaningful way (which has actually happened several times by now), I can't really blame them. They are actually maximizing their chances of winning against someone like me. Yet it appears as if they have a much harder time escaping me in limited.
Thanks for the recommendation of Pauper. The popular blue red deck is pretty close to the kind of deck that I'm trying to play in just about any constructed format and I love mirror matches.
I was in a similar boat as you a few months ago. Humans, affinity, and hollow one had started to dominate, and being an avid eldrazi tron player I was really disheartened being stomped by these new meta decks all of a sudden. I played "fair decks" for a few years in jeskai and abzan/ jund in my play group for fun, even though those choices were suboptimal in the meta- I would never bring these to any competitive events at all because they just weren't the best choices. One thing I noticed about all of the decks you play is that they are all linear, unfair, combo or creature combo based (bogles, affinity, scapeshift, grishoalbrand, etc.). Eldrazi tron is a bit similar to these styles, there aren't too many decision trees in the gameplay, and mostly you're just doing your thing and not worrying about your opponent as much.
Recently, however, the meta has shifted- people have recognized that humans and hollow one are arguably the best linear decks in the format, and neither are particularly great against jeskai control. Hollow one can definitely beat jeskai, but the matchup isn't particularly lopsided except when they get their very busted starts. All that time playing jeskai in my playgroup, even though it sucked, prepared me for this moment basically. I have more or less "mastered" jeskai and picked up the nuances- what matchups do you fetch lands aggressively for and which do you not, when to use cantrips, when to hold up answers rather than slam an azcanta or planeswalker, learning how to play to your outs, which openers do you keep against deck x and which do you keep against deck y, sideboarding in particular metas, etc.
In this regard I would say that it's important to master multiple archetypes in a format like modern and have decks at the ready for when you anticipate things to shift. All the decks you described are going to be suboptimal choices when a few of the best decks in the format are running turn 1 IoK/thoughtseize (i.e. mardu/jund). I would recommend that rather than focus on only one archetype, that instead you focus on mastering multiple. Choose a "fair deck" to really dig into and understand deeply. These decks often require much more time to become better with because there are many more decision trees and important sequencing decisions(fetchlands, more interactive cards like scavenging ooze, more resource management, usually more mana sinks like man lands, etc.) compared to a deck like scapeshift. Right now, I think that mardu pyromancer, jund, and jeskai control are all great decks that would be perfect choices to have a solid grasp of in addition to something like bogles. There will always be periods of time when it's better to choose a fair deck or an unfair deck and have it ready to go because of an influx of new cards from a new set (for instance, I think jeskai got some major upgrades from dominaria in teferi and damping sphere, and jund got the major upgrade of BBE not long ago). Right now fair decks are doing pretty well, and the two or three best linear aggro or combo decks are humans, hollow one, and KCI (this deck is criminally underplayed for how good it is).
Re: win rates
Magic players, both here and generally, here have extremely unreasonable expectations about win rates. This is because many players think they are better than they really are, because they don't know the win rates of actual pros, or they are big fish in a little pond and have worse opponents who inflate their win percentages. For example, in SCG Opens, here are the top 10 players by MWP with >4 Opens in the last year:
There are literally thousands of players in these Opens and the 10th highest player with >4 events ONLY has a 60% MWP in Modern. For Legacy, the highest MWP is Sam Roukas at 67% with 5 Opens and the 10th highest is Zachary Koch with 57% at 4 Opens. No one is over 70% at all, let alone 75%+.
This is also true outside of the SCG circuit. Let's look at the #2 and #1 players in the world right now. Reid Duke's 2017/2018 overall MWP is 65% for all GP/PT/Worlds events. If we break that down between Modern/Limited/Standard/Legacy we get 70%, 68%, 54%, and 81% (Legacy's N is very small though). Seth Manfield has a 63% overall MWP for the same dataset broken down for Modern/Limited/Standard/Legacy at 63%, 63%, 64%, and 58%. We could keep expanding this analysis to all the best players and we would find the same thing; win rates clustering in the 60%-70% range for the best players in the world.
If a player is shooting for 70%+ win rates, you either need to lower your expectations or find better opponents. It is statistically improbable that players who want better win rates are actually as good as they think an intended 80%+ win rate will suggest. When good players play against other good players, you are not seeing win rates much higher than that. See Duke, Manfield, and basically every other player on the Pro leaderboard. The overwhelming majority are in that 60%-70% range, and those are the ~100 best players in the entire world. If someone is batting a higher win rate than those players, it's generally because the competition isn't at their level. For instance, when I was playing Cheeri0s in MTGO leagues, I was in the 75% MWP range for 300+ games. But I don't believe for a second that's my "True" MWP and I'm 10% points better than Reid Duke. If you put me in GP/PT/Worlds settings, or if I played 1000+ Competitive League games, it would fall. As another example, if one is at a 90% win rate in FNM and LGS drafts, you probably aren't actually 30% points better than Reid Duke at Limited. Your opponents are probably just not as good as Duke's.
I noticed the uptick in Jeskai Control decks, but unfortunately I have never warmed up to any of their incarnations. I'm actually surprised that Humans is considered a favorable matchup for Jeskai Control, because I imagine that Jeskai Control would have trouble to take over the game quickly enough against such a fast disruptive deck.
My secondary deck is actually Hollow One, because I wanted to learn the ins and outs of a linear deck. But when I play the deck it doesn't feel as if there is a lot to learn. It took me about a day to feel comfortable with the deck, whereas it took me several months to feel comfortable with Grixis Shadow. I don't think I have played a relevant number of games against Jeskai Control, so I'm curious if is indeed favored against Hollow One. I practiced intensively against the blue-white Jace decks that were all the rage for a while after the unban and those decks where certainly too clunky to beat Hollow One reliably.
Those win rates are pretty sweet to see. That's just the thing. I expect my win rate to be much higher at FNMs and other non GP tournaments. My opponents are not close to the play skill level as Reid Duke's. A friend of mine looked up my GP win rate recently and it was 48-44, not counting Byes, so that really surprised me. I assumed that it wouldn't be too good because I played mostly formats that I don't like much, but I did NOT expect it to be merely barely over 50%. That was kind of a moment of reflection.
But when I play at other tournaments, I expect to do much better. My assumption is that if Reid Duke played in the tournaments that I did, he would win nearly 90% of the time. But these tournaments are just bad EV for him, so he would never do so. I still play the game for fun as well!
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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)
A lot of advice I've seen is "play decks that have more decision trees so so you can leverage your skill advantage." I agree with this, but there's problems with this idea, especially in this format and in the current meta.
Going from my personal experience as a combo deck lover, some times some combo decks have too much variance, like Bogles. All of the criticism of the deck on this forum is true, the deck just is a brute force deck. The problem at hand is that in the current Modern meta, most combo decks don't have that much decision trees to leverage your skill.
Me and you both seem to "main" Titanshift, and is always the deck I fall back on after playing a week or two of jank decks at my fnm and losing. The deck is so streamlined and hard to hate out. However, because its so streamlined and straight forward, it gets pretty boring playing that style deck every week. Storm is the premier combo deck, imo, in Modern right now, but because of the popularity of Humans and Burn, and how easy it is to pack Storm hate in a small local meta, it becomes annoying, at least for me, to play a deck that has these problems that is also sometimes 100 times more difficult than the guy's deck who's sitting across the table with me. Storm was my first deck when I returned to Modern, and it was very frustrating losing to people who dont know how to play the game who picked up a deck with a bunch of lightning bolts in it and I would lose to that mu like 90% of the time.
So if you take Storm and Titanshift off the table, what combo decks are left? Pretty much all the rest are tier 2 on a good day, and that is when the frustration seeps in. (KCi is a good option, but it's results are relatively new.)
My advice is to just take a break a little bit or pick up a new deck and just have fun. Thats what I am doing currently
In some ways I feel lost in Modern, but in other ways I think I have a good grasp of the format.
95% of the time I bring my own brew, I just use netdecks to find piles of cards that work well together. I've had some very good builds in the past few months. However, I'm not a top tier player, in fact I'm getting worse at Magic over time so I try to find my edges in deck building (being generous I'm probably a 55% MWP player... at some competitive FNM's I'm under 50). Lots of times I try to find powerful synergies that slide into decks but aren't build arounds.
Unless you're a very, very good player I think this is the best approach. The idea that you can play a 50/50 deck and leverage skill is a strategy that becomes increasingly prone to failing the deeper into a tournament you make it as the skill level of your competition rises. Basically, it's a good strategy to get into the money, but a bad strategy to win. Instead, the strategies I favor are having lots of small synergies, having broad cards that can deal with a wide variety of threats, and a handful of powerful rogue cards. I prefer playing a lot of 1-3 of's with very, very few 4 of's in order to broaden my cards.
Essentially, I go wide on my answers and threats. I used to believe it was best to go wide on answers and deep on threats, but with few exceptions (like Mardu Pyromancer) I've changed my opinion because most of the format is currently going deep on answers and I don't want to run into a match where my deep threats line up poorly against my opponents deep answers.
So if you take Storm and Titanshift off the table, what combo decks are left? Pretty much all the rest are tier 2 on a good day, and that is when the frustration seeps in. (KCi is a good option, but it's results are relatively new.)
First piece of advice: don't take Storm off the table! Caleb Scherer regularly beats hate with that deck, including Humans. He has the second highest MWP across a whopping 11 Opens of all players who play Opens (70%+!) and almost exclusively plays Storm. Paul Muller is similar. Scherer went T8 in the last Open and Muller went T20. Storm beats hate and beats Humans. It has a lot of decision making, lines, and velocity, and is a spectacular combo choice for combo players. This is just as true on MTGO as in paper.
KCI is insane. I would be playing KCI right now if I wanted to shell out for the MTGO Opals. This is another viable combo option and its recent results, even though they are new, should be convincing. Amulet Titan is in a similar position, if you want to consider it combo (but if you're considering Titan Shift as combo, then Amulet is definitely combo too). Amulet is another high decision deck that rewards repetitions and is very hard to beat in the hands of a master.
Ad Nauseam is also strong if you don't mind a losing Humans matchup. But there is no Modern deck with winning matchups across the board, so if you are okay have an unfavorable Humans matchup, this is another strong choice. I'll also add that Ad Nauseam has fewer decisions and lower complexity/lines than Storm, KCI, and Amulet, so your Ad Nauseam ceiling is probably lower than those of the other decks.
I probably shouldn't say too much about Storm because I haven't played it much recently, but I know a friend of mine who played it regularly and talks to Caleb and Paul said that there was just too much hate locally. He sold the deck, but is trying to get it back. He's gonna give it another try.
KCI is pretty insane, no doubt, but it loses to extreme hate and everybody has those because of Affinity or Grave based decks. There are too many hate options for me to consider trying this again. Before when I tried it a bit, the hate was rough when you can't find your removal for it or Ghirapur Aether Grid that I played at the time. Now I know it's a bit different with Buried Ruins instead of Sanctum of Ugin, but it fails to the same hate.
Amulet is a deck that I'm super interested in and have been play testing for a month now. I had previously done some time with Bloom Titan, but there were just too many decks for me at the time and I didn't realize that it's days were numbered. Right now I'm super unsure about its place in the meta, but once I get better at playing it, I will have a better picture.
Ad Nauseam can be a pretty strong deck that is tough to hate out. The person who leads our State in PW points runs this as his main deck. He does pretty well, but even he does probably a lot worse than he would expect. So, although I haven't played it since 2012 (outside of testing), I trust that it is not for all metas.
But any of the decks could obviously do well in a certain meta, so there's that too.
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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)
Those win rates are pretty sweet to see. That's just the thing. I expect my win rate to be much higher at FNMs and other non GP tournaments.
I'll second that. The attainable win rate obviously depends on the environment. If you are one of the few competitive players in a FNM full of casual players, 75% certainly is within reach in some formats. A few years back I played Standard extensively on MTGO. Each time the format shifted, I noticed how I gained a significant advantage over the vast majority of local FNM players who were net-decking but didn't have hundreds of matches in the new metagame under their belt. I saw my advantage diminish over time until the next block entered the format and I started getting absurd win rates again.
I doubt that many participants in this discussion expect to hit 70%+ regularly in a pro-level environment or compare themselves to the best players in the world who will usually have much better sparring partners to practice with if they are in a team.
I probably shouldn't say too much about Storm because I haven't played it much recently, but I know a friend of mine who played it regularly and talks to Caleb and Paul said that there was just too much hate locally. He sold the deck, but is trying to get it back. He's gonna give it another try.
KCI is pretty insane, no doubt, but it loses to extreme hate and everybody has those because of Affinity or Grave based decks. There are too many hate options for me to consider trying this again. Before when I tried it a bit, the hate was rough when you can't find your removal for it or Ghirapur Aether Grid that I played at the time. Now I know it's a bit different with Buried Ruins instead of Sanctum of Ugin, but it fails to the same hate.
Amulet is a deck that I'm super interested in and have been play testing for a month now. I had previously done some time with Bloom Titan, but there were just too many decks for me at the time and I didn't realize that it's days were numbered. Right now I'm super unsure about its place in the meta, but once I get better at playing it, I will have a better picture.
Ad Nauseam can be a pretty strong deck that is tough to hate out. The person who leads our State in PW points runs this as his main deck. He does pretty well, but even he does probably a lot worse than he would expect. So, although I haven't played it since 2012 (outside of testing), I trust that it is not for all metas.
But any of the decks could obviously do well in a certain meta, so there's that too.
As a player who also loves combo, I just resign myself to my combo decks sometimes getting hated out. That's why I advise players to have 2 decks they have mastered with opposing weaknesses. For instance, KCI is excellent when there isn't focused GY hate and Stony Silence, and Bloom is excellent when you have lots of aggressive Moon decks. Add in Ad Nauseam and now you have a deck that beats both land disruption and GY/artifact hate! I'll also say that even in hostile MTGO metagames, you can often eke out a 3-2 League finish even against hateful sideboards.
If you just can't stand the thought of getting hated out, then you shouldn't be playing combo. I'd lean towards decks like Mardu, Ux Control, Humans, etc.
there is also that player (DaSneakyPete) who is consistently near the top of the mtgo comp league 5-0 trophy leaderboard that plays ad naus exclusively. quite the feat considering how fickle the mtgo meta can be. i believe he is tied for first atm.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
As a Combo player, I can tell you that I can definitely stand the thought of being hated out. But when it's infinitely easier than it is to hate out than a deck with 1 drop, double 1 drop, triple 1 drop Aggro, then I have to occasionally pass on it.
Michael Mapson actually believes the Humans matchup to be favored. He said that there are too many angles in Amulet for them to contain and they are obviously slower. But my play testing seems to differ with this. Once I find out how to make Humans a favorable matchup, I may start playing Amulet at tournaments again.
*As an aside, he also said that Ponza is the worst matchup and unwinnable, but I actually found it not bad in 1 session of play testing. Blood Moon into quick pressure or land destruction can be super strong, but if you have land heavy hands, you actually have a good chance to race them since they're not that fast.
**Also, any deck gets hated out to a point. I've landed Rest in Peace vs. Mardu. That's pretty darn good. Cavern and Aether Vial are pretty hate worthy for UW Control and Torpor Orb, lol, is hate for Humans, along with differed targeted removal and differed mass removal. When I have tried other decks, I have run into hate at nearly the same rate, or it feels so.
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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)
there is also that player (DaSneakyPete) who is consistently near the top of the mtgo comp league 5-0 trophy leaderboard that plays ad naus exclusively. quite the feat considering how fickle the mtgo meta can be. i believe he is tied for first atm.
Shoktroopa is also one of the most competitive MTGO players with consistent finishes and he only plays Mono U Tron. Of course, these aren't necessarily the model for Modern success. But I do generally recommend that people stick with as few decks as possible. You also need to keep playing those decks through plateaus. I can't think of many disciplines where a practitioners gets a proven technique or expert advice, tries to implement that technique/advice for just a few weeks, and then ditches it completely because it doesn't work. Many of those lessons take months or longer to start working and paying dividends. Sure, sometimes it's just not a good fit for the practitioner and they need to find something else. But if that's happening for every piece of advice/technique that comes along, the problem isn't with the information. It's the practitioner.
For instance, assume someone is an aspiring writer looking to get their first short story published but they just can't get it together. To get back on track, they try some free form writing exercises and after a few weeks they realize it's just not their style. So they move on. Then they try a critique group and that sucks for them too, so they leave after a few months. They try to read more diverse books/material and they dislike the authors so it doesn't drive their improvement either. They get a coach and go through one coach every few months. Etc. Etc. A year and twenty "tricks" later, they still haven't finished or sharpened that story.
At the end of their Month #1, I am 100% willing to say that maybe those free-form writing exercises aren't for them and it's okay to move on. But if after a year of trying and failing dozens of recommended methods isn't working for them too, the problem is likely not with the methods. That writer probably need to revisit some of those methods, stick with them, and stop hoping for immediate results. Given that this is true in basically every practiced discipline I have ever pursued (and true for those around me), I'm guessing it's probably true for Magic and Modern.
That has more to do with the variance in Magic. Even if you play a league a day with a deck, your MWP across the field can vary by 10% in either direction. Throw in humans natural lack of skill in evaluating percentages with any sort of observable outcome and it's easy to see why this happens.
I encountered the same problems and was lost for half a year now. I've switched from Affinity to Bant Company to Dredge to Bant Company and even Rg Eldrazi. Nothing was really outstanding. I sat down and really felt disappointed about the format.
Finally i've settled on a deck many players discarded: BW Eldrazi and Taxes. It's still struggling against it's both worst offenders (Jund and Affinity), but everything else beside those Matchups felt good. Sometimes it easily locks out opponents of the game, on other occasions decisions will offer intrueging plays that lead to rewarding games.
It's clunky sometimes and card-draw isn't one of it's strength, but it has all the tools for fun, competitive and exciting games.
Local Storm hate is real. People hate losing to the deck, plus random people playing burn since its cheap, money wise.
KCI doea lose to a lot of hate, but ot does run 4 nature's claim and has a good amount of draw. Stony isnt that common unless theres other affinity or lantern players and i find that RiP isn't common at all, and Relic is easy to beat.
I wanna try out Cheerios since i have the Opals but dont have the rest of the deck. I watched some videos on it and it looks inconsistent. However the new build with Artificer's Assistant looks actually sick
Maybe you just aren't playing the right decks, as others have said. I was on blue tron, grixis delver, and storm over the past couple years as I started to play modern. I like playing blue decks, but nothing was really clicking. I put together burn six weeks ago and just wrapped up my first ever 4-0 night. It is just one big algebra problem, and I am shocked at how much fun I am having.
Proxy up a couple different decks and test with friends. You may be shocked to find that despite you thinking you know a preferred style that you might want to start running Affinity out of nowhere and everything just clicks.
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I'm not saying you will always win with a deck that has more decision trees and velocity. In fact, there is no deck that always wins in Magic (let alone Modern), and there is no player in the history of the game with a publicly noted win rate greater than about 65% across the biggest, most competitive events. If you want a game where play skill determines 100% of your games, then don't play Magic. But you do want to play decks that maximize your win percentage, and those are the decks where you can leverage play skill to pick up edges. This doesn't have to be through answering threats; that's a common misconception. But it does have to be through creating lines where others don't see them. Decks like Bogles don't do this and are, at best, metagame "got 'em" calls. They will never maximize any play skill you have.
I am also going to strongly challenge you on this notion:
I respect you enough as a player and poster to tell you this mentality is lazy and/or arrogant (hear me out) and it will hold you back. I see players fall for this when they get ego involved. They don't like losing, so they want losing to be out of their hands as much as possible. Then they can just blame variance and not themselves. That, or they don't want to acknowledge that losses are due to errors in deck building, selection, and/or gameplay so they just jam the same deck/style over and over again to "prove" they are losing for reasons out of their control. This mentality is rampant in tournament reports on forums and articles. When players win, it's because they outplay an opponent, find a clever line, or just brute force to victory. When players lose, it's because they were super unlucky to not topdeck the right card, their opponent drew a god hand or got the topdeck first, the matchup was bad, etc. There's rarely responsibility for personal errors during deck-building, deck selection, and gameplay. Every competitive discipline has this problem and has many competitors of varying levels who suffer from such thinking errors. The best competitors in those disciplines, however, do not have these errors. To be clear, I don't necessarily think you are doing those things because I don't know you well enough to know for sure. But in my experience, I know with certainty that many competitors who say comments like those I quoted above are falling victim to one or both of these traps. This mindset cripples competitors and holds them back.
If you don't want to play an answer deck, that's totally fine. Play one of the high-decision decks that present threats and mingle them with answers where you can (H1, Humans, Grishoalbrand, Bloom, etc.). Or play the answer-based decks and practice turning the corner and not just playing draw-go 1994 Magic.
There is a sizable contingent of players who have consistent success in this format. Those players hover around a 65% win rate and they have a gameplay, deck-building, and deck selection philosophy that allows them to have this consistent success. I guarantee you that these players don't deliberately shy away from high decision decks because they are frustrated when they lose despite seeing more cards and trying more lines.
The only part no one likes about this is that since competitive players want consistency, they will do whatever they can to make success more consistent. If someone can sneak another Glorybringer into a limited deck during an event, or do something similar during draft, that poses a huge difference. In modern, the cheating usually is a bit different. Typically it's marked cards (hence why you have to watch for the dragon sleeves, don't let someone use pink sleeves and tell you it's okay when they can see the backs of the cards faintly through the back), and sleight of hand tricks.
But in any case, I agree with ktkenshinx that playing a deck with a high number of decisions and eating a few losses on the way is best for growing ones skills and becoming better at the game as a whole. It's why I picked up affinity now after having merfolk and spirits for a while. Affinity has a lot of decisions even though it's a fast deck that aren't readily apparent. Case in point, what is the chances that my opponent has a Settle the Wreckage, should I try to push hard now before that fourth land drop next turn to get extra damage, and then, what do I do about the fact he has a bigger creature that will trade favorably with an attacker? Can I afford that loss? Red vs affinity feels harder since they can have Anger of the Gods, and that actually can hit soon enough to really punish over extending too quickly.
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 definitely don't shy away from admitting a mistake or multiple mistakes, if I can see them. That is one of my greatest strengths. But I also know that when I'm on top of my game, the mistakes are close to nonexistent for at least 1 tournament and I can often see success from this. But not always. Sometimes you play to the best of your ability and finish 3-2 or lose 2 win-and-ins. I personally find it hard to believe that someone can go less than 3-2 if they are making all of the right plays, but 3-2 gets you...well, nothing.
Before kavu.ru crashed, I looked up my stats. For Modern, my win percentage was 65.5%. For Standard, I was close to 69% and for Booster Draft, I was close to 72%. There's no reason for a format like Modern to be way less than those for several reasons. Firstly, I can play what I want to play. Secondly, I have played Modern only since I became more competitive minded. Also, there were times that I had to LEARN Standard and Booster Draft, whereas I knew how to play Magic by the time I played Modern full on.
Why is my win percentage much less in Modern? I have to identify that. Is it my deck choices? I do think so. For what it's worth, my Sealed win percentage was 61% and my Legacy win percentage was 57% (GASP!), so Modern isn't the worst for me, but I also know that I could improve those others easily if I tried. With Modern, I AM trying. But then again, by not playing the best deck, in a way, maybe I am sabotaging myself in this quest?
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)Not unless you come up to Vancouver regularly. I haven't been to Cali outside of San Fran for conferences in years. Mostly, I just pay attention to posts from people I respect. Also, I saw a bit of myself in your original post as my inner Johnny and Spike are constantly battling, much like yourself.
The best (in terms of maximizing my win rate) I've been able to come up with is to have one Tier 1 "winner" style deck and then another to monkey around with. For example I play Storm as my Tier 1 deck (bonus as it's a combo deck) and then monkey around with Angry Garden as my just for fun/palate cleanser deck.
If you wanted to try a similair path, I'd be jamming Humans as my "win now" deck and something CoCo based as your palate cleanser since you really enjoy that card/those decks.
Just my 2 cents.
Modern: Storm
Legacy: ANT
Modern isn't the most-played format where I live, but we have a somewhat big community of active players, so there are dozens of people who play Modern semi-casually in weekly tournaments. Since those players don't have the time and interest in the format to practice it intensively, they tend to build the least interactive and most linear decks they can find, which is actually pretty smart if you think about it. But at the same time, this creates a toxic local tournament environment for players like me who want to play a more traditional game of MtG.
Back in the late 1990s when I played the game extensively, my win ratio was perhaps around 75% and I won about every third local tournament that I participated in (10-20 people tournaments mostly, but I also qualified for the Pro Tour in my first and only attempt to do so and with a deck variant that I came up with by myself - now, that felt rewarding). In current day Modern, my win ratio is close to 60% in MTGO and at a depressing 50% at local tournaments since I stubbornly insist on playing decks that I actually enjoy playing.
But now that I started drafting Dominaria, my win ratio is currently at 85% after a few intermediate draft leagues. I probably got really lucky and I don't think it will last in the long run because literally all I know about drafting I got from watching others doing it on youtube. But it sure feels like a flashback to the days in pre-netdeck constructed MtG when my opponents had to beat me in several disciplines, including deck building. I'm aware that those days are never going to come back, but I still think that the issue I have with Modern (and probably most other constructed formats) is the lack of opportunity to outplay my opponent when they are on a deck that - more often than not - pretty much plays itself.
I don't really know what to do about it, because the cards that make these decks exist and banning them will likely only bring similarly problematic cards to the spotlight. So I guess all I can do for now is play less Modern and draft more Dominaria while it lasts.
tbh from your descriptions it sounds like you might enjoy pauper. i hear a lot of high praise for the format because threats are weaker so you dont have people clobbering you with the raw power of rares and mythics; which leads to games that are more drawn out. blue is also pretty busted in that format cause of the cantrips so there is that to consider.
i think a lot of it comes down making sure your experiences with the game are varied. which is why i endorse the recommendation to have a couple of decks in the stable and rotate them on occasion. however i also understand that not everyone can do that because the format is expensive.
also you gotta be realistic. most everyone thinks they are better than they are. if you just assume the majority of people you play against are less skilled than you wins stop becoming triumphs and every loss becomes a blow to your ego; which can drive you from seeking how to better your play.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)MtG can be this kind of game, but it seems as if players whose set of strengths and weaknesses is considerably different from mine have found deck archetypes in Modern and other formats that take most of what I personally consider 'skill' out of the equation. Yet, their definition of 'skill' could just be different from mine. Maybe they are always looking for new ways to lock the opponent completely out of the game or enjoy perfecting their sequencing in a highly linear combo deck.
When I feel lost at a Modern tournament because all of my opponents bring decks that want to avoid interacting with my deck in any meaningful way (which has actually happened several times by now), I can't really blame them. They are actually maximizing their chances of winning against someone like me. Yet it appears as if they have a much harder time escaping me in limited.
Thanks for the recommendation of Pauper. The popular blue red deck is pretty close to the kind of deck that I'm trying to play in just about any constructed format and I love mirror matches.
Recently, however, the meta has shifted- people have recognized that humans and hollow one are arguably the best linear decks in the format, and neither are particularly great against jeskai control. Hollow one can definitely beat jeskai, but the matchup isn't particularly lopsided except when they get their very busted starts. All that time playing jeskai in my playgroup, even though it sucked, prepared me for this moment basically. I have more or less "mastered" jeskai and picked up the nuances- what matchups do you fetch lands aggressively for and which do you not, when to use cantrips, when to hold up answers rather than slam an azcanta or planeswalker, learning how to play to your outs, which openers do you keep against deck x and which do you keep against deck y, sideboarding in particular metas, etc.
In this regard I would say that it's important to master multiple archetypes in a format like modern and have decks at the ready for when you anticipate things to shift. All the decks you described are going to be suboptimal choices when a few of the best decks in the format are running turn 1 IoK/thoughtseize (i.e. mardu/jund). I would recommend that rather than focus on only one archetype, that instead you focus on mastering multiple. Choose a "fair deck" to really dig into and understand deeply. These decks often require much more time to become better with because there are many more decision trees and important sequencing decisions(fetchlands, more interactive cards like scavenging ooze, more resource management, usually more mana sinks like man lands, etc.) compared to a deck like scapeshift. Right now, I think that mardu pyromancer, jund, and jeskai control are all great decks that would be perfect choices to have a solid grasp of in addition to something like bogles. There will always be periods of time when it's better to choose a fair deck or an unfair deck and have it ready to go because of an influx of new cards from a new set (for instance, I think jeskai got some major upgrades from dominaria in teferi and damping sphere, and jund got the major upgrade of BBE not long ago). Right now fair decks are doing pretty well, and the two or three best linear aggro or combo decks are humans, hollow one, and KCI (this deck is criminally underplayed for how good it is).
Magic players, both here and generally, here have extremely unreasonable expectations about win rates. This is because many players think they are better than they really are, because they don't know the win rates of actual pros, or they are big fish in a little pond and have worse opponents who inflate their win percentages. For example, in SCG Opens, here are the top 10 players by MWP with >4 Opens in the last year:
1. Merriam, Ross [US]: 73.33% (6 opens)
2. Scherer, Caleb [US]: 71.72% (11 opens)
3. McDuffie, Korey [US]: 64.44% (4 opens)
4. Firer, Harlan [US]: 63.7% (6 opens)
5. Nikolich, Benjamin [US]: 63.7% (9 opens)
6. Donegan, Dylan [US]: 63.33% (6 opens)
7. Carpenter, Brad [US]: 61.33% (5 opens)
8. Syed, Zan [US]: 61.27% (7 opens)
9. Rosum, Jonathan [US]: 60.56% (8 opens)
10. Jones, Kevin [US]: 60.44% (5 opens)
There are literally thousands of players in these Opens and the 10th highest player with >4 events ONLY has a 60% MWP in Modern. For Legacy, the highest MWP is Sam Roukas at 67% with 5 Opens and the 10th highest is Zachary Koch with 57% at 4 Opens. No one is over 70% at all, let alone 75%+.
This is also true outside of the SCG circuit. Let's look at the #2 and #1 players in the world right now. Reid Duke's 2017/2018 overall MWP is 65% for all GP/PT/Worlds events. If we break that down between Modern/Limited/Standard/Legacy we get 70%, 68%, 54%, and 81% (Legacy's N is very small though). Seth Manfield has a 63% overall MWP for the same dataset broken down for Modern/Limited/Standard/Legacy at 63%, 63%, 64%, and 58%. We could keep expanding this analysis to all the best players and we would find the same thing; win rates clustering in the 60%-70% range for the best players in the world.
If a player is shooting for 70%+ win rates, you either need to lower your expectations or find better opponents. It is statistically improbable that players who want better win rates are actually as good as they think an intended 80%+ win rate will suggest. When good players play against other good players, you are not seeing win rates much higher than that. See Duke, Manfield, and basically every other player on the Pro leaderboard. The overwhelming majority are in that 60%-70% range, and those are the ~100 best players in the entire world. If someone is batting a higher win rate than those players, it's generally because the competition isn't at their level. For instance, when I was playing Cheeri0s in MTGO leagues, I was in the 75% MWP range for 300+ games. But I don't believe for a second that's my "True" MWP and I'm 10% points better than Reid Duke. If you put me in GP/PT/Worlds settings, or if I played 1000+ Competitive League games, it would fall. As another example, if one is at a 90% win rate in FNM and LGS drafts, you probably aren't actually 30% points better than Reid Duke at Limited. Your opponents are probably just not as good as Duke's.
My secondary deck is actually Hollow One, because I wanted to learn the ins and outs of a linear deck. But when I play the deck it doesn't feel as if there is a lot to learn. It took me about a day to feel comfortable with the deck, whereas it took me several months to feel comfortable with Grixis Shadow. I don't think I have played a relevant number of games against Jeskai Control, so I'm curious if is indeed favored against Hollow One. I practiced intensively against the blue-white Jace decks that were all the rage for a while after the unban and those decks where certainly too clunky to beat Hollow One reliably.
But when I play at other tournaments, I expect to do much better. My assumption is that if Reid Duke played in the tournaments that I did, he would win nearly 90% of the time. But these tournaments are just bad EV for him, so he would never do so. I still play the game for fun as well!
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)A lot of advice I've seen is "play decks that have more decision trees so so you can leverage your skill advantage." I agree with this, but there's problems with this idea, especially in this format and in the current meta.
Going from my personal experience as a combo deck lover, some times some combo decks have too much variance, like Bogles. All of the criticism of the deck on this forum is true, the deck just is a brute force deck. The problem at hand is that in the current Modern meta, most combo decks don't have that much decision trees to leverage your skill.
Me and you both seem to "main" Titanshift, and is always the deck I fall back on after playing a week or two of jank decks at my fnm and losing. The deck is so streamlined and hard to hate out. However, because its so streamlined and straight forward, it gets pretty boring playing that style deck every week. Storm is the premier combo deck, imo, in Modern right now, but because of the popularity of Humans and Burn, and how easy it is to pack Storm hate in a small local meta, it becomes annoying, at least for me, to play a deck that has these problems that is also sometimes 100 times more difficult than the guy's deck who's sitting across the table with me. Storm was my first deck when I returned to Modern, and it was very frustrating losing to people who dont know how to play the game who picked up a deck with a bunch of lightning bolts in it and I would lose to that mu like 90% of the time.
So if you take Storm and Titanshift off the table, what combo decks are left? Pretty much all the rest are tier 2 on a good day, and that is when the frustration seeps in. (KCi is a good option, but it's results are relatively new.)
My advice is to just take a break a little bit or pick up a new deck and just have fun. Thats what I am doing currently
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
95% of the time I bring my own brew, I just use netdecks to find piles of cards that work well together. I've had some very good builds in the past few months. However, I'm not a top tier player, in fact I'm getting worse at Magic over time so I try to find my edges in deck building (being generous I'm probably a 55% MWP player... at some competitive FNM's I'm under 50). Lots of times I try to find powerful synergies that slide into decks but aren't build arounds.
Unless you're a very, very good player I think this is the best approach. The idea that you can play a 50/50 deck and leverage skill is a strategy that becomes increasingly prone to failing the deeper into a tournament you make it as the skill level of your competition rises. Basically, it's a good strategy to get into the money, but a bad strategy to win. Instead, the strategies I favor are having lots of small synergies, having broad cards that can deal with a wide variety of threats, and a handful of powerful rogue cards. I prefer playing a lot of 1-3 of's with very, very few 4 of's in order to broaden my cards.
Essentially, I go wide on my answers and threats. I used to believe it was best to go wide on answers and deep on threats, but with few exceptions (like Mardu Pyromancer) I've changed my opinion because most of the format is currently going deep on answers and I don't want to run into a match where my deep threats line up poorly against my opponents deep answers.
First piece of advice: don't take Storm off the table! Caleb Scherer regularly beats hate with that deck, including Humans. He has the second highest MWP across a whopping 11 Opens of all players who play Opens (70%+!) and almost exclusively plays Storm. Paul Muller is similar. Scherer went T8 in the last Open and Muller went T20. Storm beats hate and beats Humans. It has a lot of decision making, lines, and velocity, and is a spectacular combo choice for combo players. This is just as true on MTGO as in paper.
KCI is insane. I would be playing KCI right now if I wanted to shell out for the MTGO Opals. This is another viable combo option and its recent results, even though they are new, should be convincing. Amulet Titan is in a similar position, if you want to consider it combo (but if you're considering Titan Shift as combo, then Amulet is definitely combo too). Amulet is another high decision deck that rewards repetitions and is very hard to beat in the hands of a master.
Ad Nauseam is also strong if you don't mind a losing Humans matchup. But there is no Modern deck with winning matchups across the board, so if you are okay have an unfavorable Humans matchup, this is another strong choice. I'll also add that Ad Nauseam has fewer decisions and lower complexity/lines than Storm, KCI, and Amulet, so your Ad Nauseam ceiling is probably lower than those of the other decks.
KCI is pretty insane, no doubt, but it loses to extreme hate and everybody has those because of Affinity or Grave based decks. There are too many hate options for me to consider trying this again. Before when I tried it a bit, the hate was rough when you can't find your removal for it or Ghirapur Aether Grid that I played at the time. Now I know it's a bit different with Buried Ruins instead of Sanctum of Ugin, but it fails to the same hate.
Amulet is a deck that I'm super interested in and have been play testing for a month now. I had previously done some time with Bloom Titan, but there were just too many decks for me at the time and I didn't realize that it's days were numbered. Right now I'm super unsure about its place in the meta, but once I get better at playing it, I will have a better picture.
Ad Nauseam can be a pretty strong deck that is tough to hate out. The person who leads our State in PW points runs this as his main deck. He does pretty well, but even he does probably a lot worse than he would expect. So, although I haven't played it since 2012 (outside of testing), I trust that it is not for all metas.
But any of the decks could obviously do well in a certain meta, so there's that too.
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)URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
I doubt that many participants in this discussion expect to hit 70%+ regularly in a pro-level environment or compare themselves to the best players in the world who will usually have much better sparring partners to practice with if they are in a team.
As a player who also loves combo, I just resign myself to my combo decks sometimes getting hated out. That's why I advise players to have 2 decks they have mastered with opposing weaknesses. For instance, KCI is excellent when there isn't focused GY hate and Stony Silence, and Bloom is excellent when you have lots of aggressive Moon decks. Add in Ad Nauseam and now you have a deck that beats both land disruption and GY/artifact hate! I'll also say that even in hostile MTGO metagames, you can often eke out a 3-2 League finish even against hateful sideboards.
If you just can't stand the thought of getting hated out, then you shouldn't be playing combo. I'd lean towards decks like Mardu, Ux Control, Humans, etc.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Michael Mapson actually believes the Humans matchup to be favored. He said that there are too many angles in Amulet for them to contain and they are obviously slower. But my play testing seems to differ with this. Once I find out how to make Humans a favorable matchup, I may start playing Amulet at tournaments again.
*As an aside, he also said that Ponza is the worst matchup and unwinnable, but I actually found it not bad in 1 session of play testing. Blood Moon into quick pressure or land destruction can be super strong, but if you have land heavy hands, you actually have a good chance to race them since they're not that fast.
**Also, any deck gets hated out to a point. I've landed Rest in Peace vs. Mardu. That's pretty darn good. Cavern and Aether Vial are pretty hate worthy for UW Control and Torpor Orb, lol, is hate for Humans, along with differed targeted removal and differed mass removal. When I have tried other decks, I have run into hate at nearly the same rate, or it feels so.
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)Shoktroopa is also one of the most competitive MTGO players with consistent finishes and he only plays Mono U Tron. Of course, these aren't necessarily the model for Modern success. But I do generally recommend that people stick with as few decks as possible. You also need to keep playing those decks through plateaus. I can't think of many disciplines where a practitioners gets a proven technique or expert advice, tries to implement that technique/advice for just a few weeks, and then ditches it completely because it doesn't work. Many of those lessons take months or longer to start working and paying dividends. Sure, sometimes it's just not a good fit for the practitioner and they need to find something else. But if that's happening for every piece of advice/technique that comes along, the problem isn't with the information. It's the practitioner.
For instance, assume someone is an aspiring writer looking to get their first short story published but they just can't get it together. To get back on track, they try some free form writing exercises and after a few weeks they realize it's just not their style. So they move on. Then they try a critique group and that sucks for them too, so they leave after a few months. They try to read more diverse books/material and they dislike the authors so it doesn't drive their improvement either. They get a coach and go through one coach every few months. Etc. Etc. A year and twenty "tricks" later, they still haven't finished or sharpened that story.
At the end of their Month #1, I am 100% willing to say that maybe those free-form writing exercises aren't for them and it's okay to move on. But if after a year of trying and failing dozens of recommended methods isn't working for them too, the problem is likely not with the methods. That writer probably need to revisit some of those methods, stick with them, and stop hoping for immediate results. Given that this is true in basically every practiced discipline I have ever pursued (and true for those around me), I'm guessing it's probably true for Magic and Modern.
I encountered the same problems and was lost for half a year now. I've switched from Affinity to Bant Company to Dredge to Bant Company and even Rg Eldrazi. Nothing was really outstanding. I sat down and really felt disappointed about the format.
Finally i've settled on a deck many players discarded: BW Eldrazi and Taxes. It's still struggling against it's both worst offenders (Jund and Affinity), but everything else beside those Matchups felt good. Sometimes it easily locks out opponents of the game, on other occasions decisions will offer intrueging plays that lead to rewarding games.
It's clunky sometimes and card-draw isn't one of it's strength, but it has all the tools for fun, competitive and exciting games.
Green @ it's best
KCI doea lose to a lot of hate, but ot does run 4 nature's claim and has a good amount of draw. Stony isnt that common unless theres other affinity or lantern players and i find that RiP isn't common at all, and Relic is easy to beat.
I wanna try out Cheerios since i have the Opals but dont have the rest of the deck. I watched some videos on it and it looks inconsistent. However the new build with Artificer's Assistant looks actually sick
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Proxy up a couple different decks and test with friends. You may be shocked to find that despite you thinking you know a preferred style that you might want to start running Affinity out of nowhere and everything just clicks.