Here's my view. Pro performance at a GP doesn't matter, or at least it shouldn't. I am decent in Modern, but even if I were the best Modern player ever, I could never win a large event, because Draft. I personally think that Wizards making Draft part of Modern (or Standard) events is the worst thing they have ever done, and I count the Reserved List, Standard Affinity, Cawblade, and Eldrazi Winter. For cards in our format to be looked at for banning when the top whatever may have gotten there on being really good at Draft and only having a 'fine' Modern showing is obscene. I forget which event it was, but someone posted the Modern only results and only one of the Top 8 were among the top 16 looking at only the Modern portion. Until that changes, it infuriates me that tournament standings have any impact, and I don't feel that the event has any value in determining the best deck whatsoever. Idk about your LGS, but when I go play Modern, it is just about who performs best at Modern, there is no Draft portion so the guy who lost 2 rounds in Modern and the guy who went undefeated in that portion are viewed as having the same record. just my two cents.
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Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
I've beaten Dredge never drawing Rest in Peace and that match up 'feels' terrible. What we think are the numbers do not bear out to what ktk states.
I am responding to ktk, who just had an extreme opinion for me, trying to present all top decks as though they had 45-55/55-45 matchups vs each other.
This is certainly a hyperbole and I just gave some examples of 40-60/60-40 or worse.
If we were talking for such numbers(40-60/60-40), I probably would not have responded at all!
I agree that there are matchups better/worse than 45-55. I just meant the overall deck MWPs relative to one another are 45-55 range, not individual matchups.
Re: 4% difference
I added more Modern events to the sample and the difference is now 2%. I'm sure if I add more it will close even further. No matter how one spins it, those MWP are identical.
I definitely don't know for sure, but it definitely irks me to see the comparison made that Modern has the "same" variance as Standard, without delving into the attributing factors or WHY.
I feel like you're on to something. I have learned to let it go here. You can't convince people of what you feel and think is going on in your own Modern metagames. I have a feeling for Modern metagames in the Southern California area, where I've attended most shops that support Modern. I also have an idea for the Las Vegas GP metagames. But I know nothing about metagames in New York. I simply haven't played there. But for my area(s), I am always going to trust my own instinct over what 5-10 people here say. (Just like the middle stages of Bloom Titan when I said that it was a "Tier 1 deck," ktkenshinx and others said that Tier 1 specifically has to have a certain percentage of players playing the deck. I didn't care. Bloom was just as good as other Tier 1 decks and I'm assuming the eventual ban(s) proved this in the end.
I think in the end, you have to let it go. I can't convince everyone here that Umezawa's Jitte or Artifact lands should remain banned. That's fine. But I know that they should in fact remain banned. They're too strong and would be format warping.
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)
the only thing the pro-tour really provides is an idea of how pros perceive the strength of various decks, and we have evidence wizards takes that into consideration based on their previous statements.
if pro teams gain a major advantage in anything, as someone else brought up in the context of modern, it is limited. which is why, according to most of what ive read, the majority of practice and testing is devoted to it.
the unfortunate truth of things is that multi-format pros simply dont have enough time to discover and innovate new things in non-rotating formats. the byproduct of this is inflated numbers for known quantities because they are safe, low effort, choices. i believe twin and pod fell victim to this to some degree, more recently humans, and likewise decks such as grixis delver/czech pile in legacy.
i know many people tend to think of pros as a source of innovation and new ideas, but i tend to think that they are the engine that powers the bandwagons that players latch onto. the MOCS shortly after the unbannings where jund was a stupid portion of the field is evidence of this in practice.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I definitely don't know for sure, but it definitely irks me to see the comparison made that Modern has the "same" variance as Standard, without delving into the attributing factors or WHY.
I feel like you're on to something. I have learned to let it go here. You can't convince people of what you feel and think is going on in your own Modern metagames. I have a feeling for Modern metagames in the Southern California area, where I've attended most shops that support Modern. I also have an idea for the Las Vegas GP metagames. But I know nothing about metagames in New York. I simply haven't played there. But for my area(s), I am always going to trust my own instinct over what 5-10 people here say. (Just like the middle stages of Bloom Titan when I said that it was a "Tier 1 deck," ktkenshinx and others said that Tier 1 specifically has to have a certain percentage of players playing the deck. I didn't care. Bloom was just as good as other Tier 1 decks and I'm assuming the eventual ban(s) proved this in the end.
I think in the end, you have to let it go. I can't convince everyone here that Umezawa's Jitte or Artifact lands should remain banned. That's fine. But I know that they should in fact remain banned. They're too strong and would be format warping.
Bloom was Tier 1 by our stats for a few months, which was right around when I called for it to be banned. The data captured it's power level eventually, even if there was a delay.
It is very possible that some Modern matchups are more variable than Standard ones. But again, this variability, whatever it is, currently has zero measurable effect on Modern performance metrics at the GP or SCG level. Players with and without byes are able to have the same consistent top performance at Modern, Standard, and Legacy events. This means that variability isn't real and/or people are able to overcome it such that it has no effect on performance.
I never saw Bloom listed as Tier 1 here. The justification was that it did not have a high enough metagame percentage at around 7% at it's height. It's part of why the ban hurt so much. At the time, I personally felt that Summer Bloom and Splinter Twin could have been left alone. It sucks having nobody state that "your deck" is Tier 1, yet everyone is still calling for a ban. That feels pretty bad, even if I know how powerful the deck was. But I didn't feel that bans were necessary at that time.
Flash forward to nowadays, Modern is in a super good place. It's in a better place than it was during Bloom/Twin. The unbans were also very necessary, allowing players to play cards that they love that won't "hurt" the meta. Wizards made a good call. They have made a lot of good calls. But I hate these "rules" for bans in Modern - turn 4 rule, time consuming, dominating the meta. When it comes down to it, these are GUIDELINES at best. Wizards will do whatever they can to make the meta "healthy" because that's what drives sales. When someone says, "you should have known that your deck would be banned," that is ******* hurtful. I have guessed a lot of things, but have never been right about every single date of an unban or ban. For example, I thought BBE was going to be unbanned when it was and Maaaaybe Stoneforge Mystic. I felt that Jace was a year away, but here we are now.
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)
It is very possible that some Modern matchups are more variable than Standard ones. But again, this variability, whatever it is, currently has zero measurable effect on Modern performance metrics at the GP or SCG level. Players with and without byes are able to have the same consistent top performance at Modern, Standard, and Legacy events. This means that variability isn't real and/or people are able to overcome it such that it has no effect on performance.
ive yet to see any reasonable explanation on how one would overcome such a thing. at least to the point where it has minimal to no impact on results. all other things being equal, i just dont see how being upwards of 20% more or less likely to win a match isnt going to effect win percentages at the top level of play.
imo the simpler, and therefore more likely, explanation is either:
A)matchups in standard arent as even as people believe
B)matchups in modern arent as varied as people believe
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Keep in mind that ktk's comparison of pro players does not take into account decks that were played. Someone had mentioned apples and oranges - bringing up the variance in matchup WP is exactly that. The indistinguishable MWP between standard and modern are just to prove that, when played at the highest level, a professional is able to achieve the same (on average) win percentage between the two formats. This doesn't say that matchups between certain decks are at a certain percentage. There might be some correlation between the two, but the numbers do not state anything about this.
I never saw Bloom listed as Tier 1 here. The justification was that it did not have a high enough metagame percentage at around 7% at it's height. It's part of why the ban hurt so much. At the time, I personally felt that Summer Bloom and Splinter Twin could have been left alone. It sucks having nobody state that "your deck" is Tier 1, yet everyone is still calling for a ban. That feels pretty bad, even if I know how powerful the deck was. But I didn't feel that bans were necessary at that time.
Flash forward to nowadays, Modern is in a super good place. It's in a better place than it was during Bloom/Twin. The unbans were also very necessary, allowing players to play cards that they love that won't "hurt" the meta. Wizards made a good call. They have made a lot of good calls. But I hate these "rules" for bans in Modern - turn 4 rule, time consuming, dominating the meta. When it comes down to it, these are GUIDELINES at best. Wizards will do whatever they can to make the meta "healthy" because that's what drives sales. When someone says, "you should have known that your deck would be banned," that is ******* hurtful. I have guessed a lot of things, but have never been right about every single date of an unban or ban. For example, I thought BBE was going to be unbanned when it was and Maaaaybe Stoneforge Mystic. I felt that Jace was a year away, but here we are now.
You have a habit of injecting your own experiences into your posts. Many people wanted Bloom banned, or knew it had a target on its back.
Keep in mind that ktk's comparison of pro players does not take into account decks that were played. Someone had mentioned apples and oranges - bringing up the variance in matchup WP is exactly that. The indistinguishable MWP between standard and modern are just to prove that, when played at the highest level, a professional is able to achieve the same (on average) win percentage between the two formats. This doesn't say that matchups between certain decks are at a certain percentage. There might be some correlation between the two, but the numbers do not state anything about this.
true, but i think when an observation is made a natural response is to attempt to explain it. if you assume that modern truly has some lopsided matchups, and standard doesnt; then maybe we should be discussing how pros overcome this barrier and apply it to ourselves.
one such way is that one player is just way better than their opponent, meaning they would make up significant percentages attributed to a bad matchup. however we are talking about this in the abstract, meaning player skill isnt a factor. outside of overwhelmingly skewing your sideboard to address said bad matchup, i just dont see how you can expect to do well when paired with multiple bad matchups against players of similar skill level to your own.
hence i think its worth questioning the original assumption that there is a major difference between modern and standard.
More cards in the card pool to make a deck means more skill and less variance. Not sure why you guys are bickering, it really is that simple.
More cards in a pool means more search/sift cards to find copies 5-8. It also means there are many more strategies to make a deck with.
You can only do so much piloting a deck before the actual deck construction is weak.
yes modern decks have more tools to make executing their gameplan more consistent, but this is set apart from strategic differences. in fact it would only make it more noticeable, because its more likely that each deck does what its supposed to; which is the assumed state when discussing decks. when we talk about a deck like tron we arent thinking 'hey maybe they will brick for 5 turns and do nothing' we assume they are going to assemble tron early and play huge threats because that is what the deck is designed to do.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Re: 4% difference
I added more Modern events to the sample and the difference is now 2%. I'm sure if I add more it will close even further. No matter how one spins it, those MWP are identical.
A little passive aggressive for a valid critique of your original analysis, no? Regardless, if increasing the n for both samples means the delta shrinks that increases the likelihood that they're not substantially different. Your statistical work yet again is appreciated.
Re: 4% difference
I added more Modern events to the sample and the difference is now 2%. I'm sure if I add more it will close even further. No matter how one spins it, those MWP are identical.
A little passive aggressive for a valid critique of your original analysis, no? Regardless, if increasing the n for both samples means the delta shrinks that increases the likelihood that they're not substantially different. Your statistical work yet again is appreciated.
Sorry if that came off that way; it wasn't intended and I was just trying to respond quickly on mobile.
Re: Bloom
I don't remember the forum tiering for this deck, although i think there are old stickies which catalog it. I do remember my Nexus tracking had it at Tier 1 from November onward, which was right about when I started agreeing it needed banning. MTGS should have reflected those Nexus updates.
Re: matchup variance
It's totally possible that Modern has more variance than Standard in certain matchups. I haven't finished this analysis yet so I can't tell from the data, but it's definitely possible. But regardless, if it does exist (which again, doesn't seem to be the case) top players regularly overcome it to have consistent performance. More interestingly, players with fewer byes also have the same Modern standings as they do in Standard! So byes aren't even responsible for the ability of players to overcome the alleged Modern variance. If variance exists, everyone is able to overcome it in a way that matches their Standard performance. Like tronix said, we should focus on identifying those skills rather than try to keep proving Modern is high variance in a way that impedes performance. We know it doesn't at the GP and SCG level and we should stop trying to argue otherwise.
EDIT: update on the data
I probably won't finish tonight, but I'm beefing up the dataset and finishing the variance calculations. Here's a preview of what we'll probably find once N keeps increasing. We will see that Standard and Modern have slightly different average MWPs of roughly .58 vs. .61 respectively. We will see that Standard's variance is slightly higher than Modern's variance between player performances. But, and here's the fascinating thing, we are going to see Standard's interquartile range normalized between .5 and .75, whereas Modern's is going to be between roughly .43 and .78. Discuss and interpret and I'll keep sharpening the dataset.
But, and here's the fascinating thing, we are going to see Standard's interquartile range normalized between .5 and .75, whereas Modern's is going to be between roughly .43 and .78. Discuss and interpret and I'll keep sharpening the dataset.
It means the middle half of players have a broader MWP range in modern than standard. So the spread of MWP is significantly wider in modern than standard (for the middle 50%), the cause of that would be interesting to find out about. (and whether it narrows as more data is added)
So if I understand you, a possible interpretation of that statement would be 'the average Modern player see's less success than the average Standard Player'? Or just a wider spread of success, bad (.43) or good (.78)?
But, and here's the fascinating thing, we are going to see Standard's interquartile range normalized between .5 and .75, whereas Modern's is going to be between roughly .43 and .78. Discuss and interpret and I'll keep sharpening the dataset.
Sorry but what does that mean?
Interquartile range (IQR) measures the dispersion of the middle 50% of values in a distribution. It's a good measure of variability (with limitations, sure, but they don't matter much here). If Magic MWP had a classic normal distribution, a basic bell curve, we'd see an IQR of 40% to 60% or something like that. But we don't see that in Standard or Modern MWP for top players. Rather, we see a Standard IQR between .5 and .75, as compared to a Modern IQR of about ,43 to ,78. Don't get too focused on the Modern numbers (e.g .43 vs. .45) at this point because the data isn't finalized. But when it is, we'll still see Modern MWPs with about .03-.05 more variance at the bottom and .03-.05 more variance at the top.
So if I understand you, a possible interpretation of that statement would be 'the average Modern player see's less success than the average Standard Player'? Or just a wider spread of success, bad (.43) or good (.78)?
It's just a wider spread. The average top Modern player is actually more successful in Modern than in Standard by a small margin (.58 MWP Standard vs. .61 MWP Modern).
I need to keep adding to the Modern dataset, however. The Standard dataset has 172 observed tournaments in 2017-2018 for recorded top players. The Modern dataset has only 64 observed tournaments for those same players. This is just because there are fewer Modern events than Standard, but the relative differences in N mean that the Modern dataset has not yet settled and is including variance purely by virtue of N. I'm adding to it in order to sharpen it.
So if I understand you, a possible interpretation of that statement would be 'the average Modern player see's less success than the average Standard Player'? Or just a wider spread of success, bad (.43) or good (.78)?
I have a hypothesis that the success rate of modern players is probably related to the way swiss style tournaments typically work. The farther one climbs up in a tournament, the more the field matches the expected meta, but at the lower rungs players have to be able to handle an entire field of different strategies.
The mistake people make a lot in modern is trying to play anti meta. Modern is defined by strong threats and moderate to weak general answers. People often try strong narrow answers that are good against the top in the low rungs that can win a battle but lose them the war.
Jeskai control and some of the modern tier control decks are proving the moderate and weak answer argument false, though.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I play a lot, and I firmly believe that the 'answers are not sufficient' is not the issue, or I should say was never the issue.
The issue was getting those cards, when you need them, while being able to actively progress your own board state. Modern is not friendly to pure 'do nothing' Control. Thats just a fact of life. UWR succeeds on the back of being all of these things.
1. Removal.dec: It can exile or kill nearly anything, and that which it cannot, it can bounce.
2. Intellectual Burn: Its running around 9 Burn spells + 4 Snaps.
3. Reactive disruption: This is why I feel my Hollow One percentages are so good. If you can stop them from doing something stupid (Goblin Lore being a being one) or just you know, Bolt the Hound that is buffed by discard, or counter/bounce the Angler...that deck looks terrible.
4. Huge card advantage via Search, Teferi, Jace.
The issue we had before was not getting the cards we needed (Search fixes this) or simply running out of cards (Teferi/Jace fix this) or being unable to move forward, while keeping ourselves alive (Teferi fixes this). Throw in some 'free' mana disruption in Field of Ruin...and its impossible for me to say UWR is 'bad' even when a lot of people still dont believe in it.
The only issue I have left with UWR, is every game, quite literally, could be a massive grind. 30 min GAMES are not uncommon. Not matches, games. Its impossible to just 'oh lets get in a few matches' with UWR, it takes too long.
UR Breach on the other hand, is pure gas. If it had a way to deal very well with big butt creatures, I dont know that there is much else I want out of that deck, my win rate with it is very high.
I play a lot, and I firmly believe that the 'answers are not sufficient' is not the issue, or I should say was never the issue.
The issue was getting those cards, when you need them, while being able to actively progress your own board state. Modern is not friendly to pure 'do nothing' Control. Thats just a fact of life. UWR succeeds on the back of being all of these things.
1. Removal.dec: It can exile or kill nearly anything, and that which it cannot, it can bounce.
2. Intellectual Burn: Its running around 9 Burn spells + 4 Snaps.
3. Reactive disruption: This is why I feel my Hollow One percentages are so good. If you can stop them from doing something stupid (Goblin Lore being a being one) or just you know, Bolt the Hound that is buffed by discard, or counter/bounce the Angler...that deck looks terrible.
4. Huge card advantage via Search, Teferi, Jace.
The issue we had before was not getting the cards we needed (Search fixes this) or simply running out of cards (Teferi/Jace fix this) or being unable to move forward, while keeping ourselves alive (Teferi fixes this). Throw in some 'free' mana disruption in Field of Ruin...and its impossible for me to say UWR is 'bad' even when a lot of people still dont believe in it.
The only issue I have left with UWR, is every game, quite literally, could be a massive grind. 30 min GAMES are not uncommon. Not matches, games. Its impossible to just 'oh lets get in a few matches' with UWR, it takes too long.
UR Breach on the other hand, is pure gas. If it had a way to deal very well with big butt creatures, I dont know that there is much else I want out of that deck, my win rate with it is very high.
If your only issue is that each deck is a massive grind then that's great. That's sort of the point behind control decks.
I think he's alluding to time being an issue. Although time can always be an issue while grinding out wins with Control decks in the past, most Modern players simply are not used to going to time. Even a Control player probably would have a tough time dealing with going to time round after round and it would be nearly impossible to Top 8 a GP like this (even if you are a quick player). I think I've gone to time once in Modern since 2012, outside of players taking too long to play. So outside of slow play, unintentional or not, I've had 1 Unintentional Draw in 7 years in Modern.
Didn't even get a Unintentional Draw when playing Lantern at 1 tournament for 6 rounds, but I understand that playing it more often would make that road less able to avoid. I realize that most of the decks I choose have a tiny chance of going to time.
*Also I think that it becomes less an issue when you know how to play your deck quickly. I watched Ben Nikolich play my team mate at the Las Vegas PTQ in Round 5 and while he didn't play super quickly, you could tell that he was wary of the clock. He ended up getting 5 consecutive good draws to pull him out of an unwinnable game while my teammate drew his 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th lands to go with a Birds of Paradise. I don't know how Ben pulled that off (well I do, 10 cards combined on both libraries made it so). It's one thing to play quickly when everything is going your way, but when you need a string of cards on both sides to win and STILL play quickly, that's when you know you're doing a good job.
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)
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Spirits
I agree that there are matchups better/worse than 45-55. I just meant the overall deck MWPs relative to one another are 45-55 range, not individual matchups.
Re: 4% difference
I added more Modern events to the sample and the difference is now 2%. I'm sure if I add more it will close even further. No matter how one spins it, those MWP are identical.
I feel like you're on to something. I have learned to let it go here. You can't convince people of what you feel and think is going on in your own Modern metagames. I have a feeling for Modern metagames in the Southern California area, where I've attended most shops that support Modern. I also have an idea for the Las Vegas GP metagames. But I know nothing about metagames in New York. I simply haven't played there. But for my area(s), I am always going to trust my own instinct over what 5-10 people here say. (Just like the middle stages of Bloom Titan when I said that it was a "Tier 1 deck," ktkenshinx and others said that Tier 1 specifically has to have a certain percentage of players playing the deck. I didn't care. Bloom was just as good as other Tier 1 decks and I'm assuming the eventual ban(s) proved this in the end.
I think in the end, you have to let it go. I can't convince everyone here that Umezawa's Jitte or Artifact lands should remain banned. That's fine. But I know that they should in fact remain banned. They're too strong and would be format warping.
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)if pro teams gain a major advantage in anything, as someone else brought up in the context of modern, it is limited. which is why, according to most of what ive read, the majority of practice and testing is devoted to it.
the unfortunate truth of things is that multi-format pros simply dont have enough time to discover and innovate new things in non-rotating formats. the byproduct of this is inflated numbers for known quantities because they are safe, low effort, choices. i believe twin and pod fell victim to this to some degree, more recently humans, and likewise decks such as grixis delver/czech pile in legacy.
i know many people tend to think of pros as a source of innovation and new ideas, but i tend to think that they are the engine that powers the bandwagons that players latch onto. the MOCS shortly after the unbannings where jund was a stupid portion of the field is evidence of this in practice.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Bloom was Tier 1 by our stats for a few months, which was right around when I called for it to be banned. The data captured it's power level eventually, even if there was a delay.
It is very possible that some Modern matchups are more variable than Standard ones. But again, this variability, whatever it is, currently has zero measurable effect on Modern performance metrics at the GP or SCG level. Players with and without byes are able to have the same consistent top performance at Modern, Standard, and Legacy events. This means that variability isn't real and/or people are able to overcome it such that it has no effect on performance.
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)ive yet to see any reasonable explanation on how one would overcome such a thing. at least to the point where it has minimal to no impact on results. all other things being equal, i just dont see how being upwards of 20% more or less likely to win a match isnt going to effect win percentages at the top level of play.
imo the simpler, and therefore more likely, explanation is either:
A)matchups in standard arent as even as people believe
B)matchups in modern arent as varied as people believe
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)More cards in a pool means more search/sift cards to find copies 5-8. It also means there are many more strategies to make a deck with.
You can only do so much piloting a deck before the actual deck construction is weak.
You have a habit of injecting your own experiences into your posts. Many people wanted Bloom banned, or knew it had a target on its back.
Spirits
one such way is that one player is just way better than their opponent, meaning they would make up significant percentages attributed to a bad matchup. however we are talking about this in the abstract, meaning player skill isnt a factor. outside of overwhelmingly skewing your sideboard to address said bad matchup, i just dont see how you can expect to do well when paired with multiple bad matchups against players of similar skill level to your own.
hence i think its worth questioning the original assumption that there is a major difference between modern and standard.
yes modern decks have more tools to make executing their gameplan more consistent, but this is set apart from strategic differences. in fact it would only make it more noticeable, because its more likely that each deck does what its supposed to; which is the assumed state when discussing decks. when we talk about a deck like tron we arent thinking 'hey maybe they will brick for 5 turns and do nothing' we assume they are going to assemble tron early and play huge threats because that is what the deck is designed to do.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)A little passive aggressive for a valid critique of your original analysis, no? Regardless, if increasing the n for both samples means the delta shrinks that increases the likelihood that they're not substantially different. Your statistical work yet again is appreciated.
Sorry if that came off that way; it wasn't intended and I was just trying to respond quickly on mobile.
Re: Bloom
I don't remember the forum tiering for this deck, although i think there are old stickies which catalog it. I do remember my Nexus tracking had it at Tier 1 from November onward, which was right about when I started agreeing it needed banning. MTGS should have reflected those Nexus updates.
Re: matchup variance
It's totally possible that Modern has more variance than Standard in certain matchups. I haven't finished this analysis yet so I can't tell from the data, but it's definitely possible. But regardless, if it does exist (which again, doesn't seem to be the case) top players regularly overcome it to have consistent performance. More interestingly, players with fewer byes also have the same Modern standings as they do in Standard! So byes aren't even responsible for the ability of players to overcome the alleged Modern variance. If variance exists, everyone is able to overcome it in a way that matches their Standard performance. Like tronix said, we should focus on identifying those skills rather than try to keep proving Modern is high variance in a way that impedes performance. We know it doesn't at the GP and SCG level and we should stop trying to argue otherwise.
EDIT: update on the data
I probably won't finish tonight, but I'm beefing up the dataset and finishing the variance calculations. Here's a preview of what we'll probably find once N keeps increasing. We will see that Standard and Modern have slightly different average MWPs of roughly .58 vs. .61 respectively. We will see that Standard's variance is slightly higher than Modern's variance between player performances. But, and here's the fascinating thing, we are going to see Standard's interquartile range normalized between .5 and .75, whereas Modern's is going to be between roughly .43 and .78. Discuss and interpret and I'll keep sharpening the dataset.
Sorry but what does that mean?
Spirits
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
Spirits
Interquartile range (IQR) measures the dispersion of the middle 50% of values in a distribution. It's a good measure of variability (with limitations, sure, but they don't matter much here). If Magic MWP had a classic normal distribution, a basic bell curve, we'd see an IQR of 40% to 60% or something like that. But we don't see that in Standard or Modern MWP for top players. Rather, we see a Standard IQR between .5 and .75, as compared to a Modern IQR of about ,43 to ,78. Don't get too focused on the Modern numbers (e.g .43 vs. .45) at this point because the data isn't finalized. But when it is, we'll still see Modern MWPs with about .03-.05 more variance at the bottom and .03-.05 more variance at the top.
Spirits
It's just a wider spread. The average top Modern player is actually more successful in Modern than in Standard by a small margin (.58 MWP Standard vs. .61 MWP Modern).
I need to keep adding to the Modern dataset, however. The Standard dataset has 172 observed tournaments in 2017-2018 for recorded top players. The Modern dataset has only 64 observed tournaments for those same players. This is just because there are fewer Modern events than Standard, but the relative differences in N mean that the Modern dataset has not yet settled and is including variance purely by virtue of N. I'm adding to it in order to sharpen it.
I have a hypothesis that the success rate of modern players is probably related to the way swiss style tournaments typically work. The farther one climbs up in a tournament, the more the field matches the expected meta, but at the lower rungs players have to be able to handle an entire field of different strategies.
The mistake people make a lot in modern is trying to play anti meta. Modern is defined by strong threats and moderate to weak general answers. People often try strong narrow answers that are good against the top in the low rungs that can win a battle but lose them the war.
Jeskai control and some of the modern tier control decks are proving the moderate and weak answer argument false, though.
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!
The issue was getting those cards, when you need them, while being able to actively progress your own board state. Modern is not friendly to pure 'do nothing' Control. Thats just a fact of life. UWR succeeds on the back of being all of these things.
1. Removal.dec: It can exile or kill nearly anything, and that which it cannot, it can bounce.
2. Intellectual Burn: Its running around 9 Burn spells + 4 Snaps.
3. Reactive disruption: This is why I feel my Hollow One percentages are so good. If you can stop them from doing something stupid (Goblin Lore being a being one) or just you know, Bolt the Hound that is buffed by discard, or counter/bounce the Angler...that deck looks terrible.
4. Huge card advantage via Search, Teferi, Jace.
The issue we had before was not getting the cards we needed (Search fixes this) or simply running out of cards (Teferi/Jace fix this) or being unable to move forward, while keeping ourselves alive (Teferi fixes this). Throw in some 'free' mana disruption in Field of Ruin...and its impossible for me to say UWR is 'bad' even when a lot of people still dont believe in it.
The only issue I have left with UWR, is every game, quite literally, could be a massive grind. 30 min GAMES are not uncommon. Not matches, games. Its impossible to just 'oh lets get in a few matches' with UWR, it takes too long.
UR Breach on the other hand, is pure gas. If it had a way to deal very well with big butt creatures, I dont know that there is much else I want out of that deck, my win rate with it is very high.
Spirits
If your only issue is that each deck is a massive grind then that's great. That's sort of the point behind control decks.
Spirits
Didn't even get a Unintentional Draw when playing Lantern at 1 tournament for 6 rounds, but I understand that playing it more often would make that road less able to avoid. I realize that most of the decks I choose have a tiny chance of going to time.
*Also I think that it becomes less an issue when you know how to play your deck quickly. I watched Ben Nikolich play my team mate at the Las Vegas PTQ in Round 5 and while he didn't play super quickly, you could tell that he was wary of the clock. He ended up getting 5 consecutive good draws to pull him out of an unwinnable game while my teammate drew his 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th lands to go with a Birds of Paradise. I don't know how Ben pulled that off (well I do, 10 cards combined on both libraries made it so). It's one thing to play quickly when everything is going your way, but when you need a string of cards on both sides to win and STILL play quickly, that's when you know you're doing a good job.
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)