Well there are two ways to do this an actual good game platform the jury is out on Arena.
But for the paper games they really need to improve the visibility somehow. Its impossible to see the cards most of the time or follow the action in the background.
Well there are two ways to do this an actual good game platform the jury is out on Arena.
But for the paper games they really need to improve the visibility somehow. Its impossible to see the cards most of the time or follow the action in the background.
Clearly...go full on yugioh and scan all board states into augmented reality visuals so that I can see LOTV get hit with a lightning bolt. Reroute that arena money into duel disks!
with 6 pro tours wizards would have to be bonkers to leave out modern.
interested to see how the scheduling works out if they arent going to be tied to set releases. also i guess they are just going to have the generic city + year title.
/shrug, i guess we will see how it works out. we can take solace in the fact that wizards isnt just sitting on their asses and is willing to try stuff out.
please just no more team unified. that format is nonsense.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
4 standard, 2 modern OR 4 standard, 1 modern, 1 arena standard. I will call my shot now: latter half of 2019 will contain an entirely digital pro tour.
The article says that there will be about the same number of players *total* in PT, with fewer in each. Given that pro will keep chaining appearances at PT, the only conclusion one reaches is that proportionally, there will be fewer non-pro at each PT. In total, in the year, the number of people getting in through PTQ will be the same, but spread out more.
Given that it does not make sense to have an unmatched number of PTQ vs PT, there will be 6 PTQ per year, but fewer entries given in each.
Ergo, it will be harder to qualify. (You'll have 6 opportunities to qualify, but each one will be 50% harder, since the output must be the same as 4 old PTQ.)
I for one am actually happy that the 6 Pro Tours a year schedule is back. Yes... back, I've been playing that long. I always hated the change from 6 to 4 years ago. 6 Pro Tours a year will mean Worlds is back in a regular schedule. Whether Modern gets more coverage or not matters only slightly, but the game itself will gain more coverage - which is the most important factor.
Shameless Plug for my new article - http://www.mtgcanada.com/modern/ban-ancient-stirrings/
After reading and replying to lots of posts on this forum I got the itch to write again, and here are my constructed philosophical thoughts about Ancient Stirrings.
Well there are two ways to do this an actual good game platform the jury is out on Arena.
But for the paper games they really need to improve the visibility somehow. Its impossible to see the cards most of the time or follow the action in the background.
There really is no paper card game that is easy to follow on camera. The only people who can follow the game in paper are people who know how to play, and even then it's sort of easy to lose track of what is going on. Part of the reason they want arena is that even if someone doesn't know what is going on, it still is entertaining to watch.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
Question for those who may have played it, is Baleful Strix too good for Modern? Its obviously a good card, but Modern has a million ways to remove a speed bump blocker, especially one which is also an artifact, has 1 toughness, and dies to a basic Push.
Maybe the question is 'is it too good for Standard' but it seems like it would be a fine.
Shameless Plug for my new article - http://www.mtgcanada.com/modern/ban-ancient-stirrings/
After reading and replying to lots of posts on this forum I got the itch to write again, and here are my constructed philosophical thoughts about Ancient Stirrings.
That was a lot of terrible analogies, strawmen, and moving of goalposts. "This isn't a problem because this thing over here IS a problem!" Despite ownership of a play-set of both, I'd be very happy to see both Spirit Guide AND Stirrings hit the Ban List, but one of those cards is in three Tier 1 decks, and one of them is in ZERO Tier 1 decks.
"Did you bring Stony? If not, concede to Mox Opal!" Jesus, what a terrible claim. Like a plethora of good answers to artifacts don't already exist (they do!), but there's nothing you can do about a KCI opponent digging 10 cards deep to find an EE to pop your Damping Sphere so that they still win on Turn 4 through multiple pieces of hate. Kek? Lul? Whatever the kids are saying these days to show extreme dismissal for an idea they find ridiculous; please apply it here!
FYI, I have my Excel overall MWP/matchup MWP matrix up and running. I'm adding data gradually to keep N growing. So far I have the four GP from Erzel's survey (Prague, Vegas, Barcelona, Sao Paulo) plus the SCG Open T8s/coverage matches from Louisville to present. So if anyone wants a matchup % or an overall MWP, just let me know and I'll provide it. All numbers will naturally be affected by the sample, which I have not adjusted to account for reporting/selection/other bias at this time. If you want to talk about how we can effectively do that, please let me know. If you just want to point out that the numbers are flawed do to small N or some other bias, I really don't care; we already know the sample isn't great. Let's talk about how we can adjust the sample instead of feeling smart on the Internet by pointing out issues that are previously known and acknowledged.
Just to keep people looped in, here are all decks with 100+ recorded matches in the dataset, ordered by overall MWP.
Expect some of those to change as I add both adjustments and more datapoints. I wouldn't expect some of the larger N samples to change much (those over 500).
That was a lot of terrible analogies, strawmen, and moving of goalposts. "This isn't a problem because this thing over here IS a problem!" Despite ownership of a play-set of both, I'd be very happy to see both Spirit Guide AND Stirrings hit the Ban List, but one of those cards is in three Tier 1 decks, and one of them is in ZERO Tier 1 decks.
I'd like to know what made the analogies terrible, I understand that they are difficult to accept at face-value. As a counter example, most posters on this forum (myself included) thought that Field of Ruin was going to be nothing but a bulk uncommon since we had access to both Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge. Those bad analogies we did as a community probably stifled the growth of UW Control for as long as it did. For some reason, most Magic players are bad with analogies. Which is why I constructed the article to have my philosophical stances as to how to manage banned lists.
Following, the Strawmen point was an interesting comment for the writing. For all the users of the forum, this is a term I find quite overused in this thread;
Quote from Google »
A straw man; is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man."
Although I directly have no opponent in my writing, I tried to make constructive ideas flow, perhaps I failed in that regard. If you could PM me specific examples of where you saw such things, I'd be appreciative. To quote the article I did address my specific thoughts about the rate at which non games occur (which I have shared on this forum a dozen of times).
Quote from Shmanka »
Modern in general has multiple decks that abuse mana. These include the suite of decks supported by Simian Spirit Guide such as Goryo’s Vengeance, Ad Nauseam, and Mono Red Prison. Any player invested in Modern has been killed by both Krark-Clan Ironworks, and Blood Moon before they have had a chance to react. I find it futile to attack the consistency of any deck before we address all of the non-games that exist within the format no matter how commonly or rarely they occur. Encouraging players to simply out chance an opponent does not create a healthy competitive environment. We saw this specifically in the past with large amounts of accusations towards cheating when it came to Amulet-Bloom. With such high variance decks that cannot be effectively interacted with, we can encourage the worst part of competitive play to show itself.
Quote from Crimson Lancer »
"Did you bring Stony? If not, concede to Mox Opal!" Jesus, what a terrible claim. Like a plethora of good answers to artifacts don't already exist (they do!), but there's nothing you can do about a KCI opponent digging 10 cards deep to find an EE to pop your Damping Sphere so that they still win on Turn 4 through multiple pieces of hate. Kek? Lul? Whatever the kids are saying these days to show extreme dismissal for an idea they find ridiculous; please apply it here!
I'm uncertain how to interpret this part of your post. The picture depicted of Mox Opal with the Stony Silence comment reflects a notion about how some decks need to play against KCI for the exact trolly reasons you posted afterwards.
Looking at the numbers only solidifies the "terrible claim" with direct notion that to beat KCI, you need a dramatic amount of Graveyard/Artifact hate and some threatening level of board presence to beat both Sai, Master Thopterist and the threat of dying to any awkward singleton they bring in their deck.
Quote from gkourou »
I also think that article was terrible on many fronts(my constructive criticism). Commune with Dinosaurs getting banned, if Wizards prints many good dinosaurs was my favourite worst argument. No, Commune with Stirrings is not comparable, because it will enable only a specific deck, and not too many, different decks.
I'd like to know what you thought was terrible, but I will take a moment to defend the Commune with Dinosaurs analogy. I believe that they are actually both fundamentally comparable. Each block will feature a new "Ancient Stirrings" which I directly mentioned in the article. So I find it a little backhanded that Wizards claims to hate consistency, but a 1 or 2 mana Green spell that helps the entire block synergism gets printed every 6 months. So yes, if Commune with Dinosaurs found a version of All is Dust of a different tribe, if it found a Dinosaur Temple if it found a Thought-Knot Dinosaur, we could honestly be having different discussions. I know it's all a different dimension type of talk, but with Wizards consistently printing more and more Green versions of Impulse, we can't ignore the possibilities of the precedents we set.
Although most of this list has not seen play, these are Modern legal cards costing 3 or less CMC that have a "top of library" Impulse-esque effect in Green.
It's not hard to see that Wizards prints many cards that increase the consistency of finding block related, or general resources in Green alone. The argument should stand, that Commune with Dinosaurs although obviously not on power level with Ancient Stirrings, has the same derived mechanics and Modern philosophy of design. Attacking Consistency with a banned list, but encouraging it with Set Design makes for a frustrating situation.
Bashing or not, constructive criticism or not, please PM me directly. I work Oilfield, nothing you type is going to hurt my feelings.
The article says that there will be about the same number of players *total* in PT, with fewer in each. Given that pro will keep chaining appearances at PT, the only conclusion one reaches is that proportionally, there will be fewer non-pro at each PT. In total, in the year, the number of people getting in through PTQ will be the same, but spread out more.
Given that it does not make sense to have an unmatched number of PTQ vs PT, there will be 6 PTQ per year, but fewer entries given in each.
Ergo, it will be harder to qualify. (You'll have 6 opportunities to qualify, but each one will be 50% harder, since the output must be the same as 4 old PTQ.)
And this is due to WOTC desperately wanting to make this an esport. Don't be surprised when the number of amateur entrants dwindles, and pros try to become an elite class with little to no competition. They want the same faces there all the time for reasons I've yet to comprehend.
@Shmanka,
I didn't think the article was bad, but there are definitely some issues:
Here is the fundamental issue with the attack on Ancient Stirrings for a consistency reason: where does it end? If we ban Ancient Stirrings, we open the floodgates to ban any one mana cantrip from Faithless Looting to Thought Scour to Opt.
This is a classic Slippery Slope fallacy. It's the same kind of logic people use when they say that legalizing gay marriage is going to lead to people wanting to legalize sex with animals. Banning Stirrings doesn't mean all the other cantrips have to be banned, it's a question of individual power level. Stirrings was a balanced card back when the colorless cards you could find with it were underpowered compared to their colored counterparts. That isn't the case anymore. Stirrings is clearly a power outlier in the format. Whether that means it should be banned or not is another question, but saying that banning it will necessitate a ban on other cantrips is fallacious.
Can you look yourself in the mirror and say if Wizards prints enough good Dinosaurs, we should ban that card too?
Yeah, maybe. Cards don't exist in a void, their power level is contextual to the format. We don't have enough playable dinosaurs to make Commune with Dinosaurs playable in Modern, but if they printed enough busted Dinos then it's certainly possible that the card would need to be banned. I don't think that's going to happen, but that's mostly because its restriction of only finding dinosaurs is much stricter than Stirrings' restriction of colorless cards, which include lands, artifacts, colorless creatures, and colorless spells. It's certainly not an impossibility, though.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
This is a classic Slippery Slope fallacy. ... Whether that means it should be banned or not is another question, but saying that banning it will necessitate a ban on other cantrips is fallacious.
And yet every stirring discussion always revolves around "but preordain", so surely the slope *is* slippery. People discuss cantrip bans due to previous cantrip bans. It's normal to discuss potential cantrip bans in light of other future cantrip bans.
My Blue Moon?! Thats a surprising number, I thought it would be a bit higher at least near the UWR numbers. I'm also really shocked at Mardu and Affinity still.
FYI, I have my Excel overall MWP/matchup MWP matrix up and running. I'm adding data gradually to keep N growing. So far I have the four GP from Erzel's survey (Prague, Vegas, Barcelona, Sao Paulo) plus the SCG Open T8s/coverage matches from Louisville to present. So if anyone wants a matchup % or an overall MWP, just let me know and I'll provide it. All numbers will naturally be affected by the sample, which I have not adjusted to account for reporting/selection/other bias at this time. If you want to talk about how we can effectively do that, please let me know. If you just want to point out that the numbers are flawed do to small N or some other bias, I really don't care; we already know the sample isn't great. Let's talk about how we can adjust the sample instead of feeling smart on the Internet by pointing out issues that are previously known and acknowledged.
Just to keep people looped in, here are all decks with 100+ recorded matches in the dataset, ordered by overall MWP.
Expect some of those to change as I add both adjustments and more datapoints. I wouldn't expect some of the larger N samples to change much (those over 500).
Really surprising numbers, did not expect Merfolk to be really good right now.
Question for those who may have played it, is Baleful Strix too good for Modern? Its obviously a good card, but Modern has a million ways to remove a speed bump blocker, especially one which is also an artifact, has 1 toughness, and dies to a basic Push.
Maybe the question is 'is it too good for Standard' but it seems like it would be a fine.
Baleful Strix is the inverse of Snapcaster Mage, but without flash, plus flying and deathtouch, and harder to cast. So no, it's not at all too powerful for Modern.
EDIT: What I mean by that is that giving a card in your g'yard Flashback for its mana cost and drawing a card that you have to cast for its mana cost are the same CA. I fully realize there are still differences - instant/sorcery only vs. drawing any card type, for instance, and helping to hit a land drop, etc. But in raw CA it's the same.
Really surprising numbers, did not expect Merfolk to be really good right now.
We might be seeing (or rather missing) the second order data: the variance of the MWP. That woudl explain that Merflok has a high score and yet rare finishes; it may be very good in it's good matchups and very bad in its bad ones, ensure it always finishes X-3 or worse.
It's better to play a more rounded deck, with a lower MWP but with a flatter distribution. That's why Merfolk only gets the spotlight when it successfully dodges bullets all day.
That Eldrazi Tron win% is an anomaly for sure - that deck is so bad now. I assume its data set is mostly from SCGs? I don't recall seeing a peep from it at any GPs recently.
And I'll just take this opportunity to once again say LOL Ponza.
My Blue Moon?! Thats a surprising number, I thought it would be a bit higher at least near the UWR numbers. I'm also really shocked at Mardu and Affinity still.
Blue Moon is also hard to classify. Fair versions (Thing, Pyro, Clique, P&K, etc) and unfair versions (Breach, Kiki) each play extremely differently and have different matchups they are good and poor in. And since none of them are all that great, or prominent enough to be discussed separately, they're lumped together.
That Eldrazi Tron win% is an anomaly for sure - that deck is so bad now. I assume its data set is mostly from SCGs? I don't recall seeing a peep from it at any GPs recently.
And I'll just take this opportunity to once again say LOL Ponza.
I believe this is just GP data, the last 3?
And yeah, fair point on Blue Moon, I have a text doc with a bunch of my thoughts on all the versions I've played, I should clean it up. I'm just surprised the numbers are that low, its not a bad deck.
That Eldrazi Tron win% is an anomaly for sure - that deck is so bad now. I assume its data set is mostly from SCGs? I don't recall seeing a peep from it at any GPs recently.
And I'll just take this opportunity to once again say LOL Ponza.
I believe this is just GP data, the last 3?
And yeah, fair point on Blue Moon, I have a text doc with a bunch of my thoughts on all the versions I've played, I should clean it up. I'm just surprised the numbers are that low, its not a bad deck.
It's a sample of the last 4 GP plus select SCG Open results. There is absolutely some reporting and selection bias at play, but I also think it's not as significant as many people might claim. Even if we adjusted for that, I would expect the numbers to change only by a small margin.
This does not apply to the decks that have N<300, which means a small sample might disproportionately drive the MWP. For instance, if I'm a proud, competent E-Tron player and I self-report my results at a GP, they are probably going to be better than the average E-Tron performance. These kinds of dynamics are definitely driving the smaller N MWPs. But they are probably not at play in the bigger ones. In particular, Humans with 1k+ matches recorded is almost definitely a 52% MWP deck as we are estimating.
That Eldrazi Tron win% is an anomaly for sure - that deck is so bad now. I assume its data set is mostly from SCGs? I don't recall seeing a peep from it at any GPs recently.
And I'll just take this opportunity to once again say LOL Ponza.
I believe this is just GP data, the last 3?
And yeah, fair point on Blue Moon, I have a text doc with a bunch of my thoughts on all the versions I've played, I should clean it up. I'm just surprised the numbers are that low, its not a bad deck.
It's a sample of the last 4 GP plus select SCG Open results. There is absolutely some reporting and selection bias at play, but I also think it's not as significant as many people might claim. Even if we adjusted for that, I would expect the numbers to change only by a small margin.
This does not apply to the decks that have N<300, which means a small sample might disproportionately drive the MWP. For instance, if I'm a proud, competent E-Tron player and I self-report my results at a GP, they are probably going to be better than the average E-Tron performance. These kinds of dynamics are definitely driving the smaller N MWPs. But they are probably not at play in the bigger ones. In particular, Humans with 1k+ matches recorded is almost definitely a 52% MWP deck as we are estimating.
Is there a way to account for the discrepancy in N and have them all report the same N? I'm not a numbers guy, but would your data be destroyed if you too the Median of each data set and extrapolated it all to 1k matches played? Or the middle 60% (20%-80%) so as to kill outliers? Maybe those are rubbish ideas, again not a numbers guy, but I wonder if all decks drive more toward that 50% MWP number the larger their N gets.
But for the paper games they really need to improve the visibility somehow. Its impossible to see the cards most of the time or follow the action in the background.
Clearly...go full on yugioh and scan all board states into augmented reality visuals so that I can see LOTV get hit with a lightning bolt. Reroute that arena money into duel disks!
interested to see how the scheduling works out if they arent going to be tied to set releases. also i guess they are just going to have the generic city + year title.
/shrug, i guess we will see how it works out. we can take solace in the fact that wizards isnt just sitting on their asses and is willing to try stuff out.
please just no more team unified. that format is nonsense.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I don't think a pure legacy one will happen, but 2 Modern? Sure.
Spirits
Given that it does not make sense to have an unmatched number of PTQ vs PT, there will be 6 PTQ per year, but fewer entries given in each.
Ergo, it will be harder to qualify. (You'll have 6 opportunities to qualify, but each one will be 50% harder, since the output must be the same as 4 old PTQ.)
On the Topic of Ancient Stirrings;
Shameless Plug for my new article - http://www.mtgcanada.com/modern/ban-ancient-stirrings/
After reading and replying to lots of posts on this forum I got the itch to write again, and here are my constructed philosophical thoughts about Ancient Stirrings.
There really is no paper card game that is easy to follow on camera. The only people who can follow the game in paper are people who know how to play, and even then it's sort of easy to lose track of what is going on. Part of the reason they want arena is that even if someone doesn't know what is going on, it still is entertaining to watch.
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!
Maybe the question is 'is it too good for Standard' but it seems like it would be a fine.
Spirits
That was a lot of terrible analogies, strawmen, and moving of goalposts. "This isn't a problem because this thing over here IS a problem!" Despite ownership of a play-set of both, I'd be very happy to see both Spirit Guide AND Stirrings hit the Ban List, but one of those cards is in three Tier 1 decks, and one of them is in ZERO Tier 1 decks.
"Did you bring Stony? If not, concede to Mox Opal!" Jesus, what a terrible claim. Like a plethora of good answers to artifacts don't already exist (they do!), but there's nothing you can do about a KCI opponent digging 10 cards deep to find an EE to pop your Damping Sphere so that they still win on Turn 4 through multiple pieces of hate. Kek? Lul? Whatever the kids are saying these days to show extreme dismissal for an idea they find ridiculous; please apply it here!
Just to keep people looped in, here are all decks with 100+ recorded matches in the dataset, ordered by overall MWP.
1. KCI: 57.44% (n=484)
2. Merfolk: 56.25% (n=112)
3. Eldrazi Tron: 55.77% (n=104)
4. Counters Company: 54.98% (n=331)
5. Hardened Scales: 54.49% (n=178)
6. UW Control: 54.33% (n=670)
7. Death and Taxes: 53.41% (n=176)
8. Humans: 52.01% (n=1092)
9. Gx Tron: 51.97% (n=814)
10. Infect: 51.56% (n=320)
11. Burn: 50.39% (n=772)
12. Bogles: 50.22% (n=229)
13. Storm: 50.16% (n=315)
14. Grixis Death's Shadow: 50% (n=368)
15. Hollow One: 49.89% (n=457)
16. Jeskai Control: 48.65% (n=703)
17. Bridgevine: 47.37% (n=152)
18. Mardu Pyromancer: 45.69% (n=580)
19. Titanshift: 45.13% (n=359)
20. Jund: 44.59% (n=379)
21. Elves: 44.55% (n=220)
22. Blue Moon: 44.03% (n=134)
23. Affinity: 43.37% (n=528)
24. Ponza: 35.82% (n=134)
Expect some of those to change as I add both adjustments and more datapoints. I wouldn't expect some of the larger N samples to change much (those over 500).
really though ktkenshinx, keep up the good work
i will say that its difficult to get a sense of where a deck passes into the realm of 'too good' using this information.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Following, the Strawmen point was an interesting comment for the writing. For all the users of the forum, this is a term I find quite overused in this thread;
Although I directly have no opponent in my writing, I tried to make constructive ideas flow, perhaps I failed in that regard. If you could PM me specific examples of where you saw such things, I'd be appreciative. To quote the article I did address my specific thoughts about the rate at which non games occur (which I have shared on this forum a dozen of times).
I'm uncertain how to interpret this part of your post. The picture depicted of Mox Opal with the Stony Silence comment reflects a notion about how some decks need to play against KCI for the exact trolly reasons you posted afterwards.
Looking at the numbers only solidifies the "terrible claim" with direct notion that to beat KCI, you need a dramatic amount of Graveyard/Artifact hate and some threatening level of board presence to beat both Sai, Master Thopterist and the threat of dying to any awkward singleton they bring in their deck.
I'd like to know what you thought was terrible, but I will take a moment to defend the Commune with Dinosaurs analogy. I believe that they are actually both fundamentally comparable. Each block will feature a new "Ancient Stirrings" which I directly mentioned in the article. So I find it a little backhanded that Wizards claims to hate consistency, but a 1 or 2 mana Green spell that helps the entire block synergism gets printed every 6 months. So yes, if Commune with Dinosaurs found a version of All is Dust of a different tribe, if it found a Dinosaur Temple if it found a Thought-Knot Dinosaur, we could honestly be having different discussions. I know it's all a different dimension type of talk, but with Wizards consistently printing more and more Green versions of Impulse, we can't ignore the possibilities of the precedents we set.
Although most of this list has not seen play, these are Modern legal cards costing 3 or less CMC that have a "top of library" Impulse-esque effect in Green.
Satyr Wayfinder, Scout the Borders, Seek the Wilds, Trackers' Instincts, Adventurous Impulse, Ancient Stirrings, Benefaction of Rhonas, Commune with Dinosaurs, Commune with Nature, Commune with the Gods, Duskwatch Recruiter, Elvish Rejuvinator, Enter the Unknown, Foul Emissary, Gather the Pack, Gift of the Gargantuan, Grim Flayer, Grisly Salvage, Growing Rites of Itlamoc, Kruphix's Insight, Lair Delve, Lead the Stampede, Mulch, Oath of Nissa
It's not hard to see that Wizards prints many cards that increase the consistency of finding block related, or general resources in Green alone. The argument should stand, that Commune with Dinosaurs although obviously not on power level with Ancient Stirrings, has the same derived mechanics and Modern philosophy of design. Attacking Consistency with a banned list, but encouraging it with Set Design makes for a frustrating situation.
Bashing or not, constructive criticism or not, please PM me directly. I work Oilfield, nothing you type is going to hurt my feelings.
And this is due to WOTC desperately wanting to make this an esport. Don't be surprised when the number of amateur entrants dwindles, and pros try to become an elite class with little to no competition. They want the same faces there all the time for reasons I've yet to comprehend.
I didn't think the article was bad, but there are definitely some issues:
This is a classic Slippery Slope fallacy. It's the same kind of logic people use when they say that legalizing gay marriage is going to lead to people wanting to legalize sex with animals. Banning Stirrings doesn't mean all the other cantrips have to be banned, it's a question of individual power level. Stirrings was a balanced card back when the colorless cards you could find with it were underpowered compared to their colored counterparts. That isn't the case anymore. Stirrings is clearly a power outlier in the format. Whether that means it should be banned or not is another question, but saying that banning it will necessitate a ban on other cantrips is fallacious.
Yeah, maybe. Cards don't exist in a void, their power level is contextual to the format. We don't have enough playable dinosaurs to make Commune with Dinosaurs playable in Modern, but if they printed enough busted Dinos then it's certainly possible that the card would need to be banned. I don't think that's going to happen, but that's mostly because its restriction of only finding dinosaurs is much stricter than Stirrings' restriction of colorless cards, which include lands, artifacts, colorless creatures, and colorless spells. It's certainly not an impossibility, though.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
And yet every stirring discussion always revolves around "but preordain", so surely the slope *is* slippery. People discuss cantrip bans due to previous cantrip bans. It's normal to discuss potential cantrip bans in light of other future cantrip bans.
My Blue Moon?! Thats a surprising number, I thought it would be a bit higher at least near the UWR numbers. I'm also really shocked at Mardu and Affinity still.
Spirits
Really surprising numbers, did not expect Merfolk to be really good right now.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
EDIT: What I mean by that is that giving a card in your g'yard Flashback for its mana cost and drawing a card that you have to cast for its mana cost are the same CA. I fully realize there are still differences - instant/sorcery only vs. drawing any card type, for instance, and helping to hit a land drop, etc. But in raw CA it's the same.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
We might be seeing (or rather missing) the second order data: the variance of the MWP. That woudl explain that Merflok has a high score and yet rare finishes; it may be very good in it's good matchups and very bad in its bad ones, ensure it always finishes X-3 or worse.
It's better to play a more rounded deck, with a lower MWP but with a flatter distribution. That's why Merfolk only gets the spotlight when it successfully dodges bullets all day.
(All this being pure speculation.)
And I'll just take this opportunity to once again say LOL Ponza.
Blue Moon is also hard to classify. Fair versions (Thing, Pyro, Clique, P&K, etc) and unfair versions (Breach, Kiki) each play extremely differently and have different matchups they are good and poor in. And since none of them are all that great, or prominent enough to be discussed separately, they're lumped together.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I believe this is just GP data, the last 3?
And yeah, fair point on Blue Moon, I have a text doc with a bunch of my thoughts on all the versions I've played, I should clean it up. I'm just surprised the numbers are that low, its not a bad deck.
Spirits
It's a sample of the last 4 GP plus select SCG Open results. There is absolutely some reporting and selection bias at play, but I also think it's not as significant as many people might claim. Even if we adjusted for that, I would expect the numbers to change only by a small margin.
This does not apply to the decks that have N<300, which means a small sample might disproportionately drive the MWP. For instance, if I'm a proud, competent E-Tron player and I self-report my results at a GP, they are probably going to be better than the average E-Tron performance. These kinds of dynamics are definitely driving the smaller N MWPs. But they are probably not at play in the bigger ones. In particular, Humans with 1k+ matches recorded is almost definitely a 52% MWP deck as we are estimating.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero