Anyone testing out dragon Skred? I feel like it could have some wheels..
Edit: after thinking about it, it may not be too great. Sarkhan comes down turn three unless we play Simian spirit guide. And I’d much rather cheat in a Koth or Chandra on turn 3. The fact that it’s 3 mana is only really useful when we don’t have a mind stone out.
Kizzel: there's a dude at my LGS who's been having some luck with Double Dragon, though I don't think he runs Sarkhan.
#
I haven't been playing much Modern recently, but my LGS is doing a 1K in a couple weeks so it's time to dust off the Skreds. A couple questions:
- Are you guys pretty much onboard with Abrade? I've been on 3 Magma Jet for a while; I think I'm gonna make 2 into Abrades, and maybe add another 1-2 Abrades in the board.
- Am I correct in assuming Damping Sphere didn't really change the equation against Tron? I've always held that our slow clock is the real problem against them, and that Sphere doesn't bring anything new to the table.
What 2 mana spell to run is largely a build and metagame call. I find 3 Abrade more useful in general than many other options due to its flexibility. However, some prefer Mind Stones, Spellbombs, Jets, or Roast preferable.
I'd also agree that Sphere didn't change much against Tron. It does make it easier to thwart a turn 3 Tron, but unless you back that up with Rabblemaster it won't be good enough. The matchup is still very unfavorable.
For all of these reasons, I've found AotG to be the superior sweeper.
I liked Sun in theory but ultimately agree with this. If I have other cards in hand, I want to be casting those, not paying 3 mana to cycle and if I am top decking a dead Suns, things are not great anyways. I'll also add that Anger has much better synergy with Eternal Scourge as Suns can trap it in the yard.
Hi, I've beem looking at Skred for quite some time as a budget deck to build in order to play at FNM, while still being competitive in the long run. So far I've been torn apart between this and Martyr Proc, I'm the kind of the person who only has fun when the opponent is not having fun and in order to discover which deck is the best I've decided to give my decklist a go here since this was the first deck that came into mind when I started researching for this purpose. In order to learn more about the deck I'd like some constructive critics about it and what could I use to improve it, while still not dedtroying the budget since I don't have that much money to spend.
So far the deck seems to have a fair ground against anything that it faces, excluding the obvious Tron matchup, but with the 6 land hate effects (Moon and sphere) I managed to get a couple wins here and there. As far as consistency goes the decks is working fine.Now to the unusual picks: Ratchet Bomb, Dismember and Dragon's Claw.
Ratchet Bomb has saved me in many games as a way to kill death shadows, destroy very annoying enchantments, save me against mardu pyromancer as copies 4 and 5 of anger during game 1, destroying chalices and usually functions as a boardwipe against some decks (specially those with Aether Vial) who tends to have many creatures of the same cmc. All that made it own its slot on my main deck.
Dismember comes in usually as copies 9-10 of spot removal or against decks with tarmogoyf, reality smasher (big beaters in general) or Master of Waves. The instant speed helps and the life loss usually doesn't bothers me. The problem is that in matchups where, for example, anger and relic are not a good card I end up bringing in one copy of Dismember or Dragon's Claw just to fill in the slot.
Dragon's Claw is here mainly to help against aggro matchups that uses red or decks where I know that I can grind the opponent down they come usually as a two off to help me mitigate the life loss.
I hope it's not too much text to the point that it gets tedious but these are my thoughts about the deck and my choices, now I'd like to know how could I improve my decklist, mainly about the issue with the dismember/dragon's claw and if possible about taking cards off and putting cards in, adding or removing more copies of a card, etc.
Hey everyone. So, started looking at doing work with this deck. I prefer to use the data-based approach, and as such, here is my data so far. I still have quite a few videos from 10leej to enter, but it's coming along.
The main reason I'm posting, however, is to bring up a card that I hadn't seen anyone mention in this thread (I searched): Stuffy Doll. It seems good to me, in that it's not too high of a cmc, indestructible (so lives through our sweepers and can block for days), and allows us to turn our sweepers and Skreds into burn to the opponent's face. With this, I think I personally want to try Batterskull in the main as well. Since we're supposed to be a control deck, Batterskull is a card that can help us turn the corner. It's a mana sink that turns our otherwise small creatures (Pia and Kiraan Nalaar & tokens, Eternal Scourge) into healthy sized threats. When combined with a Stuffy Doll, it gets ridiculous.
Anyways, I'm going to continue to enter data onto the spreadsheet and see where that takes me. I'll stop just lurking and update as numbers start showing interesting trends.
@sekiars: I see nothing unusual about your build besides the MB Ratchet Bomb. Everything else seems like commonly played Skred cards.
@thnkr: Stuffy Doll fills a similar niche to Boros Reckoner in detering attacks and making our Skreds and sweepers into direct damage spells. It was avoided since it's rather expensive mana-wise, doesn't have inherent beatdown value, and can be Pathed. That said, it might be potentially good in some environments, especially if you're playing a very reactive approach and use sweepers like Blasphemous Act.
I have seen very few builds incorporate a MB Ratchet Bomb. It's definitely not a common MB inclusion, though it is an extremely common SB card.
As to whether it's a wrong move, that would be a metagame question. If your meta is filled with low-cost aggro, things you can sweep with it, or things like GDS and Boggles, it certainly could be correct. The card is just dead in too many matchups for most people to play it in the MB though, but if you had an unusual meta (lacking in control, Storm, midrange decks, but with lots of the other decks mentioned earlier) it might be right for you.
If you run MB Ratchet and a bunch of Planeswalkers, I've always been a fan of a 1-of Tezzeret's Gambit. Not only is it Divination in a Mono-Red list, it also pushes crazy plays like Ulting Koth on Turn 4 (T2 Mind Stone, T3 Koth and +1, T4 Gambit and Ult). No one ever sees the Gambit coming, either!
Well I do have a lot of elves on my meta as well as some control, in which case I usually can use ratchet bomb to destroy a non-flipped search for azcanta, detention sphere and once I even managed to snag a gideon of the trials.
While I do admit it's not ideal in a couple matches I do find that it helps against things like mardu pyromancer and jund.
And since I have 4 free slots on my 75, off of which I use the 2 Ratchet bombs and the 2 dismember I wonder if it's possible to interchange things a little bit. Because there are merfolk players in my meta and ratchet can awkwardly kill master of waves but dismember is my choice post side. I find dismember to be essential to a lot of things, but I surely do think it's a terrible MB card because the interaction with aggro is terrible.
With that being said, what are the usual MB removal that takes the place of my ratchet bombs?
So I entered a bunch more data into the spreadsheet. Some pretty surprising results.
First, I want to talk about the methodology. Modern is often touted as a "turn four format". This doesn't mean that games are necessarily won or lost on turn four, but that they are determined largely by turn four if a player doesn't significantly disrupt the opponent. An argument could be made that it's more of a turn five format (as CavalryWolfPack mentioned during conversation on Discord), and I personally feel that it's more of a turn three format due to decks like Storm, KCI, and Gx Tron.
Anyways, if we agree that it's a turn four format, this means that if a player keeps a hand of seven cards and is on the draw, they will have 11 cards to work with by their end step of turn four. This means that the opening seven will be about 64% of the resources they have available to either win or not lose. Thus, the spreadsheet gathers opening hand data and focuses on that.
With that said, it's been my experience that every deck must meet four criteria in order to be competitive. These are already established game theory concepts, but usually using somewhat different terms.
[1] - Minimize the number and significance of options that the opponent has.
[2] - Maximize the number and significance of options that the player has.
[3] - Perform #1 and #2 consistently.
[4] - Perform #1, #2, and #3 faster than the opponent can.
These four principles are what are required to maintain the direction of the game, navigating the decision trees of each player involved. These will be important when working out why certain cards overperform and why others underperform. So, here we go:
Best performers (so far, accounting for diminishing returns):
[1] - Mind Stone. This allows us to get our four- and five-drops into play as quickly as possible. If our main gameplan is to win with Koth, Hazoret, Chandra, and/or Stormbreath, then we need to get them into play as quickly as possible. This card helps accomplish both objectives #3 and #4, by allowing us to dig deeper with the cantrip effect and by ramping our mana just a little.
[2] - Scrying Sheets. This is another card that helps us with objective #3, giving us a way to dig in red while acting as a mana source when needed in the early game.
[3] - Relic of Progenitus. Enables objective #1 against graveyard-reliant decks, and objective #3 using the dig mode. Also helps grind out the opponent thanks to Eternal Scourge, but we have to survive that long first. In some cases, the Scourge/Relic combo can allow us to do survive that long by giving us the ability to block for days.
[4] - Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If we want to ult our Koth, then we need to protect our Koth. P&K are great at doing just that. Thus, again, they help us to survive when we need to, while doubling as a decent threat later on when we've obtained control of the direction of the game.
[5] - Roast. This was a surprising one, although it does make sense in hindsight. We already have Lightning Bolt, Skred (hypothetically, but we'll get to that), and Anger of the Gods as our main removal pieces. What Roast does for us is remove most creatures that are too big for the previous three cards in the first four turns of the game. It basically covers a weak spot, supplementing the other removal pieces in completing objective #1.
[6] - Blood Moon. No suprise here that Blood Moon is good for us. Heavily disrupts plenty of opponents' decks, while having a near non-existent effect on us. Completes objective #1 in fine form.
[7] - Eternal Scourge. Works fine as a finisher, but in the opener can block larger creatures and eat removal, and come back for more.
[8] - Anger of the Gods. Again, helps to complete objective #1 by removing early threats in one fell swoop.
[9] - Koth of the Hammer. In my opinion, our preferred finisher and piece that helps us turn the corner. Once we can keep him ticking up and ult, it will be very difficult for an opponent to keep up with our clock and removal options.
Worst performers (so far, accounting for diminishing returns):
[1] - Skred. Yep, worst performer, by quite a margin. Which makes sense, if we think about it. If we go back to considering the importance of those first 11 cards available, Skred is basically a bad Shock on turns one and two, and a bad Bolt on turn three. It's only slightly better at removing creatures on turn four, and it isn't until turn five and after that it starts to become worthwhile, which may just be too late (and, according to the data, is too late).
[2] - Lightning Bolt. This is the only other card with a negative value for diminishing returns. I would argue that it's still a mainstay in the deck, for that much needed removal or reach. If I had to choose between this or Skred, the data shows that this is by far better than Skred, and I would go with the data.
Other positive performers (no data yet on diminishing returns):
[1] - Ratchet Bomb. Makes sense, acting as a decent sweeper that doesn't care about power/toughness, or how many permanents we need to take care of.
[2] - Hazoret, the Fervent. What appears to be a very worthwhile threat, and is great at keeping Koth alive to reach ult. Also great for the grindy long game, or to swing in for massive early hits. Seems to be all-around good for objectives #1 and #2.
[3] - Stormbreath Dragon. While it's more of a late-game card, and probably better at objective #2, can be used to keep Koth around when we need.
[4] - Goblin Rabblemaster. Typically seen as a sideboard card, so in games where this is sided in, it does seem good, acting as a clock to prevent the opponent from reaching the turns they need to regain control of the direction of the game.
[5] - Dragon's Claw. Just like Rabblemaster above, a sideboard card that performs well. This one, however, ensures that we make it to the turns of the game where we gain control of the direction of the game.
After Dragon's Claw, we have cards where there is a miniscule or no data. I would like to talk about one of them, one of CavalryWolfPack's favorite, from what I understand. Magma Jet is great on-curve, allowing us to complete objective #1 against early, small creatures, and meet objective #2, setting up our land drops and draws. Rather than seeing 11 cards in the first four turns, this allows us to possibly see 13. That's an 8% increase in possible resources we might see.
We then get down to the other, poor performers (no data yet on diminishing returns):
[1] - Chandra, Torch of Defiance. The second worst scoring card in the list, behind Skred. She is basically a four-mana, four-damage, sorcery-speed Lightning Bolt in the first four turns. An argument could be made that she's a great source of card advantage and maybe even a decent finisher, but we have other cards that work much better for those uses.
[2] - Hangarback Walker. This appears to basically be a bad version of P&K.
[3] - Glorybringer. For the same cost, Stormbreath Dragon has better protection and a faster clock.
[4] - Pyrite Spellbomb. Typically not used in current lists, having fallen out of favor, but we have other, more disruptive cantrips (that disrupt while cantripping).
[5] - Damping Sphere. Another sideboard card, but one that comes in for some of our already very poor matchups (Gx Tron, Storm, Ad Nauseum, KCI). To win, we need both this, to slow down the opponent, and a threat to kill them before they draw their answer to our Sphere.
There's a small amount of data on other less-used cards, but nothing I think is really worth mentioning here. Feel free to hop over and take a look for yourself.
Personally, I've made changes to my list, based on the data, and it seems to be performing very well. I'm sure that my particular list could use some further adjustments, but I've already noticed a great difference in the consistency and curve.
I've also taking to ranking the cards. My way is somewhat more arbitrary, but helps to contextualize cards within metagames rather than a specific build and environment.
The takeaway is that in an average meta, Blood Moon and PnKN are far-and-away our best cards. After a significant gap we hit Abrade and most of our other potential threats. Overall, most of our cards perform pretty poorly, but are very swingy. This shouldn't surprise us at all: in many matchups a large portion of our cards will be poor or useless, but some number are simply amazing and represent a potential to win despite whatever is dead weight there.
Is it possible to create a way for community members to submit data (like a google form with spaces for info and a link to video)? I imagine that there are people who would like to contribute and the more data points, the better. I know that I haven't been recording or streaming my matches because I don't have any internet entertainment star aspirations, but I might start if it has a good purpose such as this.
That data on skred is mighty timely with some of the recent conversation on dropping a copy or more in lieu of roasts, abrades, or other cards. This may finally push me over the edge to trying the deck with less or none of its namesake.
Wow nice analysis
Ill look into it closer but I want to mention its too early to draw conclusions from ratios only, confidence intervals are a must with low data statistics like this
I can supply you with my data from XMage if you want and if I find enough time to extract it from logs
@Nebman227 & @Timba, I can open it up to share it with people so that they can enter their own data. I'd just need you to PM me your email addresses so that I can give write permissions to you. And anyone else who is interested in submitting data, same thing, just need email addresses to set permissions.
@Timba, That may be true. Each of the cards' numbers are weighed for sample size to try to mitigate that problem, but the more data, the better.
@lord_darkview, I like the work. I think I would be particularly interested in evaluating each card against individual cards in the metagame. I mentioned it in chat on Discord, but that's what I did in my early work on Lantern. On this spreadsheet (screenshot below to save the click), I ranked cards with a simple 1 or 0, to take as much subjectivity and personal bias out of the equation as possible, and used the percentage of decks running the card, the average number of that card in the deck, and then had it calculate an ER using those three numbers. Each card then had a specific total score, which worked to show how well the card performed in the matchup. It was quite a bit of work, but it definitely paid off.
EDIT: Started testing Dismember in place of Roast. Working very well.
While it seems really strong versus aggro, I have no idea how it beats control or combo. Sarkhan is very interesting though, since a problem with the deck has long been cards that are great sometimes and awful the rest of the time.
Edit: after thinking about it, it may not be too great. Sarkhan comes down turn three unless we play Simian spirit guide. And I’d much rather cheat in a Koth or Chandra on turn 3. The fact that it’s 3 mana is only really useful when we don’t have a mind stone out.
#
I haven't been playing much Modern recently, but my LGS is doing a 1K in a couple weeks so it's time to dust off the Skreds. A couple questions:
- Are you guys pretty much onboard with Abrade? I've been on 3 Magma Jet for a while; I think I'm gonna make 2 into Abrades, and maybe add another 1-2 Abrades in the board.
- Am I correct in assuming Damping Sphere didn't really change the equation against Tron? I've always held that our slow clock is the real problem against them, and that Sphere doesn't bring anything new to the table.
I'd also agree that Sphere didn't change much against Tron. It does make it easier to thwart a turn 3 Tron, but unless you back that up with Rabblemaster it won't be good enough. The matchup is still very unfavorable.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
I liked Sun in theory but ultimately agree with this. If I have other cards in hand, I want to be casting those, not paying 3 mana to cycle and if I am top decking a dead Suns, things are not great anyways. I'll also add that Anger has much better synergy with Eternal Scourge as Suns can trap it in the yard.
2 Scrying Sheets
2 Eternal Scourge
3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Stormbreath Dragon
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Mind Stone
2 Ratchet Bomb
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Skred
3 Anger of the Gods
3 Damping Sphere
3 Dragon's Claw
2 Ricochet Trap
2 Shattering Spree
Hi, I've beem looking at Skred for quite some time as a budget deck to build in order to play at FNM, while still being competitive in the long run. So far I've been torn apart between this and Martyr Proc, I'm the kind of the person who only has fun when the opponent is not having fun and in order to discover which deck is the best I've decided to give my decklist a go here since this was the first deck that came into mind when I started researching for this purpose. In order to learn more about the deck I'd like some constructive critics about it and what could I use to improve it, while still not dedtroying the budget since I don't have that much money to spend.
So far the deck seems to have a fair ground against anything that it faces, excluding the obvious Tron matchup, but with the 6 land hate effects (Moon and sphere) I managed to get a couple wins here and there. As far as consistency goes the decks is working fine.Now to the unusual picks: Ratchet Bomb, Dismember and Dragon's Claw.
Ratchet Bomb has saved me in many games as a way to kill death shadows, destroy very annoying enchantments, save me against mardu pyromancer as copies 4 and 5 of anger during game 1, destroying chalices and usually functions as a boardwipe against some decks (specially those with Aether Vial) who tends to have many creatures of the same cmc. All that made it own its slot on my main deck.
Dismember comes in usually as copies 9-10 of spot removal or against decks with tarmogoyf, reality smasher (big beaters in general) or Master of Waves. The instant speed helps and the life loss usually doesn't bothers me. The problem is that in matchups where, for example, anger and relic are not a good card I end up bringing in one copy of Dismember or Dragon's Claw just to fill in the slot.
Dragon's Claw is here mainly to help against aggro matchups that uses red or decks where I know that I can grind the opponent down they come usually as a two off to help me mitigate the life loss.
I hope it's not too much text to the point that it gets tedious but these are my thoughts about the deck and my choices, now I'd like to know how could I improve my decklist, mainly about the issue with the dismember/dragon's claw and if possible about taking cards off and putting cards in, adding or removing more copies of a card, etc.
Thanks in advance.
The main reason I'm posting, however, is to bring up a card that I hadn't seen anyone mention in this thread (I searched): Stuffy Doll. It seems good to me, in that it's not too high of a cmc, indestructible (so lives through our sweepers and can block for days), and allows us to turn our sweepers and Skreds into burn to the opponent's face. With this, I think I personally want to try Batterskull in the main as well. Since we're supposed to be a control deck, Batterskull is a card that can help us turn the corner. It's a mana sink that turns our otherwise small creatures (Pia and Kiraan Nalaar & tokens, Eternal Scourge) into healthy sized threats. When combined with a Stuffy Doll, it gets ridiculous.
Anyways, I'm going to continue to enter data onto the spreadsheet and see where that takes me. I'll stop just lurking and update as numbers start showing interesting trends.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
@thnkr: Stuffy Doll fills a similar niche to Boros Reckoner in detering attacks and making our Skreds and sweepers into direct damage spells. It was avoided since it's rather expensive mana-wise, doesn't have inherent beatdown value, and can be Pathed. That said, it might be potentially good in some environments, especially if you're playing a very reactive approach and use sweepers like Blasphemous Act.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
As to whether it's a wrong move, that would be a metagame question. If your meta is filled with low-cost aggro, things you can sweep with it, or things like GDS and Boggles, it certainly could be correct. The card is just dead in too many matchups for most people to play it in the MB though, but if you had an unusual meta (lacking in control, Storm, midrange decks, but with lots of the other decks mentioned earlier) it might be right for you.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
While I do admit it's not ideal in a couple matches I do find that it helps against things like mardu pyromancer and jund.
And since I have 4 free slots on my 75, off of which I use the 2 Ratchet bombs and the 2 dismember I wonder if it's possible to interchange things a little bit. Because there are merfolk players in my meta and ratchet can awkwardly kill master of waves but dismember is my choice post side. I find dismember to be essential to a lot of things, but I surely do think it's a terrible MB card because the interaction with aggro is terrible.
With that being said, what are the usual MB removal that takes the place of my ratchet bombs?
First, I want to talk about the methodology. Modern is often touted as a "turn four format". This doesn't mean that games are necessarily won or lost on turn four, but that they are determined largely by turn four if a player doesn't significantly disrupt the opponent. An argument could be made that it's more of a turn five format (as CavalryWolfPack mentioned during conversation on Discord), and I personally feel that it's more of a turn three format due to decks like Storm, KCI, and Gx Tron.
Anyways, if we agree that it's a turn four format, this means that if a player keeps a hand of seven cards and is on the draw, they will have 11 cards to work with by their end step of turn four. This means that the opening seven will be about 64% of the resources they have available to either win or not lose. Thus, the spreadsheet gathers opening hand data and focuses on that.
With that said, it's been my experience that every deck must meet four criteria in order to be competitive. These are already established game theory concepts, but usually using somewhat different terms.
[1] - Minimize the number and significance of options that the opponent has.
[2] - Maximize the number and significance of options that the player has.
[3] - Perform #1 and #2 consistently.
[4] - Perform #1, #2, and #3 faster than the opponent can.
These four principles are what are required to maintain the direction of the game, navigating the decision trees of each player involved. These will be important when working out why certain cards overperform and why others underperform. So, here we go:
Best performers (so far, accounting for diminishing returns):
[1] - Mind Stone. This allows us to get our four- and five-drops into play as quickly as possible. If our main gameplan is to win with Koth, Hazoret, Chandra, and/or Stormbreath, then we need to get them into play as quickly as possible. This card helps accomplish both objectives #3 and #4, by allowing us to dig deeper with the cantrip effect and by ramping our mana just a little.
[2] - Scrying Sheets. This is another card that helps us with objective #3, giving us a way to dig in red while acting as a mana source when needed in the early game.
[3] - Relic of Progenitus. Enables objective #1 against graveyard-reliant decks, and objective #3 using the dig mode. Also helps grind out the opponent thanks to Eternal Scourge, but we have to survive that long first. In some cases, the Scourge/Relic combo can allow us to do survive that long by giving us the ability to block for days.
[4] - Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If we want to ult our Koth, then we need to protect our Koth. P&K are great at doing just that. Thus, again, they help us to survive when we need to, while doubling as a decent threat later on when we've obtained control of the direction of the game.
[5] - Roast. This was a surprising one, although it does make sense in hindsight. We already have Lightning Bolt, Skred (hypothetically, but we'll get to that), and Anger of the Gods as our main removal pieces. What Roast does for us is remove most creatures that are too big for the previous three cards in the first four turns of the game. It basically covers a weak spot, supplementing the other removal pieces in completing objective #1.
[6] - Blood Moon. No suprise here that Blood Moon is good for us. Heavily disrupts plenty of opponents' decks, while having a near non-existent effect on us. Completes objective #1 in fine form.
[7] - Eternal Scourge. Works fine as a finisher, but in the opener can block larger creatures and eat removal, and come back for more.
[8] - Anger of the Gods. Again, helps to complete objective #1 by removing early threats in one fell swoop.
[9] - Koth of the Hammer. In my opinion, our preferred finisher and piece that helps us turn the corner. Once we can keep him ticking up and ult, it will be very difficult for an opponent to keep up with our clock and removal options.
Worst performers (so far, accounting for diminishing returns):
[1] - Skred. Yep, worst performer, by quite a margin. Which makes sense, if we think about it. If we go back to considering the importance of those first 11 cards available, Skred is basically a bad Shock on turns one and two, and a bad Bolt on turn three. It's only slightly better at removing creatures on turn four, and it isn't until turn five and after that it starts to become worthwhile, which may just be too late (and, according to the data, is too late).
[2] - Lightning Bolt. This is the only other card with a negative value for diminishing returns. I would argue that it's still a mainstay in the deck, for that much needed removal or reach. If I had to choose between this or Skred, the data shows that this is by far better than Skred, and I would go with the data.
Other positive performers (no data yet on diminishing returns):
[1] - Ratchet Bomb. Makes sense, acting as a decent sweeper that doesn't care about power/toughness, or how many permanents we need to take care of.
[2] - Hazoret, the Fervent. What appears to be a very worthwhile threat, and is great at keeping Koth alive to reach ult. Also great for the grindy long game, or to swing in for massive early hits. Seems to be all-around good for objectives #1 and #2.
[3] - Stormbreath Dragon. While it's more of a late-game card, and probably better at objective #2, can be used to keep Koth around when we need.
[4] - Goblin Rabblemaster. Typically seen as a sideboard card, so in games where this is sided in, it does seem good, acting as a clock to prevent the opponent from reaching the turns they need to regain control of the direction of the game.
[5] - Dragon's Claw. Just like Rabblemaster above, a sideboard card that performs well. This one, however, ensures that we make it to the turns of the game where we gain control of the direction of the game.
After Dragon's Claw, we have cards where there is a miniscule or no data. I would like to talk about one of them, one of CavalryWolfPack's favorite, from what I understand. Magma Jet is great on-curve, allowing us to complete objective #1 against early, small creatures, and meet objective #2, setting up our land drops and draws. Rather than seeing 11 cards in the first four turns, this allows us to possibly see 13. That's an 8% increase in possible resources we might see.
We then get down to the other, poor performers (no data yet on diminishing returns):
[1] - Chandra, Torch of Defiance. The second worst scoring card in the list, behind Skred. She is basically a four-mana, four-damage, sorcery-speed Lightning Bolt in the first four turns. An argument could be made that she's a great source of card advantage and maybe even a decent finisher, but we have other cards that work much better for those uses.
[2] - Hangarback Walker. This appears to basically be a bad version of P&K.
[3] - Glorybringer. For the same cost, Stormbreath Dragon has better protection and a faster clock.
[4] - Pyrite Spellbomb. Typically not used in current lists, having fallen out of favor, but we have other, more disruptive cantrips (that disrupt while cantripping).
[5] - Damping Sphere. Another sideboard card, but one that comes in for some of our already very poor matchups (Gx Tron, Storm, Ad Nauseum, KCI). To win, we need both this, to slow down the opponent, and a threat to kill them before they draw their answer to our Sphere.
There's a small amount of data on other less-used cards, but nothing I think is really worth mentioning here. Feel free to hop over and take a look for yourself.
Personally, I've made changes to my list, based on the data, and it seems to be performing very well. I'm sure that my particular list could use some further adjustments, but I've already noticed a great difference in the consistency and curve.
// 8 Artifact
4 Mind Stone
4 Relic of Progenitus
// 9 Creature
2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Eternal Scourge
2 Stormbreath Dragon
2 Hazoret the Fervent
// 3 Enchantment
3 Blood Moon
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Magma Jet
// 23 Land
21 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Scrying Sheets
// 3 Planeswalker
3 Koth of the Hammer
// 6 Sorcery
3 Roast
3 Anger of the Gods
3 Damping Sphere
1 Pithing Needle
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Dragon's Claw
3 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Abrade
1 Shattering Spree
1 Anger of the Gods
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Here is a link to the spreadsheet.
The takeaway is that in an average meta, Blood Moon and PnKN are far-and-away our best cards. After a significant gap we hit Abrade and most of our other potential threats. Overall, most of our cards perform pretty poorly, but are very swingy. This shouldn't surprise us at all: in many matchups a large portion of our cards will be poor or useless, but some number are simply amazing and represent a potential to win despite whatever is dead weight there.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Is it possible to create a way for community members to submit data (like a google form with spaces for info and a link to video)? I imagine that there are people who would like to contribute and the more data points, the better. I know that I haven't been recording or streaming my matches because I don't have any internet entertainment star aspirations, but I might start if it has a good purpose such as this.
That data on skred is mighty timely with some of the recent conversation on dropping a copy or more in lieu of roasts, abrades, or other cards. This may finally push me over the edge to trying the deck with less or none of its namesake.
Ill look into it closer but I want to mention its too early to draw conclusions from ratios only, confidence intervals are a must with low data statistics like this
I can supply you with my data from XMage if you want and if I find enough time to extract it from logs
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
@Timba, That may be true. Each of the cards' numbers are weighed for sample size to try to mitigate that problem, but the more data, the better.
@lord_darkview, I like the work. I think I would be particularly interested in evaluating each card against individual cards in the metagame. I mentioned it in chat on Discord, but that's what I did in my early work on Lantern. On this spreadsheet (screenshot below to save the click), I ranked cards with a simple 1 or 0, to take as much subjectivity and personal bias out of the equation as possible, and used the percentage of decks running the card, the average number of that card in the deck, and then had it calculate an ER using those three numbers. Each card then had a specific total score, which worked to show how well the card performed in the matchup. It was quite a bit of work, but it definitely paid off.
EDIT: Started testing Dismember in place of Roast. Working very well.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Skred Dragons
Ozzy Kelly
1st Place at StarCityGames.com Classic on 7/22/2018
Modern
Creatures (10)
4 Glorybringer
2 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Thunderbreak Regent
Planeswalkers (6)
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Sarkhan, Fireblood
Lands (24)
21 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Scrying Sheets
Spells (20)
2 Ratchet Bomb
4 Blood Moon
4 Draconic Roar
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Skred
2 Anger of the Gods
Sideboard
1 Batterskull
4 Dragon's Claw
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Alpine Moon
2 Anger of the Gods
3 Molten Rain
3 Shattering Spree
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB