MTG Salvation

Quote from cfusionpm »

Who says GDS is favored against burn? I have never thought this for the 6 months or so I played GDS. It was a constant stress test and very tricky to navigate.

Everyone knows that X is favored against Y. I saw someone play the match once so now it's proven.

Quote from gkourou »

Thanks, foodchains.

I do think that if the Burn player is skilled and experienced, he should be favoured against GDS.

Of course both player's skills matter a lot in that matchup.

I've heard from most of the better GDS players that GDS is favored in that matchup and it's not super close. The DSs are just too big too fast and once they get swinging the Burn player has only a few turns.

Quote from gkourou »

Thanks, foodchains.

I do think that if the Burn player is skilled and experienced, he should be favoured against GDS.

This is what I thought after the first time I did extensive testing.

But...after the 2nd time extensive testing a couple of months later, I felt like the Burn player could literally play spells in nearly any order and still win or come very close. GDS needed some super good draws after board and some land light or land heavy draws by the Burn player (3-4 lands is a death sentence). It's just my experience and I'll admit that I haven't played it in a tournament scene, so there's that.

*Remember, in his latest articles, Reid Duke has said that he feels Jund is favored vs. UWR Queller. I have seen many results that do not agree with this. I think Reid Duke's skill level just pushes over a matchup that probably should be 55/45 toward Jeskai Queller. (which I also realize goes against my own belief that play skill doesn't matter much in this format)

Foodchains, you play combo decks and get upset when they win their dice roll and just solitaire their way to victory? Help me understand, it's how I have been interpreting your examples lately.

I don't get it, you keep saying decision making doesn't matter at all.

I don't particularly feel sorry seeing something like a Titanshift player losing the race to Storm.

What decks do matter then?

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

What decks do matter then?

Caleb has shown even a solitaire deck can matter, he's not accidentally hitting top 8 or top 32s of all these Opens

Company decks, Abzan, jund, jeskai of all flavors, a little dredge in postboard games, Affinity, Humans

Honestly, a ton of decks. Even burn, which I don't respect at all.

There's some decks I can't stand, like Titanshift---I don't find anything skillful about that deck and it lacks decision trees.

But, yeah, a ton of decks have decisions that matter. Sometimes it does come down to a dice roll, but the game has variance.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

(which I also realize goes against my own belief that play skill doesn't matter much in this format)

This has already been resoundingly disproven in the realm of SCG Opens. Play skill very clearly matters there, as we see the same top performers get the same top performances from event to event with the same performance ceiling/distribution as we see in Legacy. I know that the Modern critics see this clear evidence and then shift the goal posts to say that SCG Opens aren't representative of the "real" Modern metagame in the first place, but I think we all know how flimsy that counterargument is. Especially when it's not backed up with any numbers to rebut the super clear/consistent SCG numbers over dozens of events.

I will say that the types of skills in Modern are probably different than those in Legacy and they show up in different areas. Some certainly overlap but others are distinct.

RE: GDS vs. Burn
I saw two datasets that showed this as a GDS blowout. The first was GP OKC where GDS was like 70/30 against Burn over about 25 games. The second was something on Reddit that I can't find where GDS was 60/40 vs. Burn. Our MTGS thread puts it closer to 55/45. All of this suggests that it's favorable, but I don't know the exact MWP.

Honestly other than the land matters decks, (Titanshift, all but U Tron) I feel every deck I've played with and against, even burn, has choices and paths that are interesting and varied.

So, you go to your local 20-30 person FNM with Jeskai Queller, pretty confident in recent results.

Round 1 you run into Dredge. He wins the die roll. He goldfishes the kill by his turn 4. You go to the SB. You try to find some early grave hate and even mulligan a weak hand to try to find it. You don't. You rely on Serum Visions, which doesn't find you RIP in time. You lose this round 0-2, with a feeling that there's not much you could have done. 0-2.

Round 2 you are matched against Mono G Tron. You lose the die roll. The first game, you counter and exile (SQ) some stuff, but in the end, he finds what he needs to basically exile everything you have except a single land. In the next game, you feel confident because you have your 2 Ceremonious Rejection and 2 Disdainful Stroke that you put in. But he plays a bunch of threats, landing the exile triggers from Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, which enables him to resolve his 3rd cast Karn Liberated of the game. You lose, feeling there's not much you could have done. 0-2.

Round 3 you are matched vs. Affinity. You WIN the die orll. You basically kill anything of importance that he has and get lucky with a Logic Knot on his Cranial Plating. This is essentially a breeze of a round because A - you didn't mulligan and B - everything was right in front of you. I mean, you're not going to just sit there and not cast your removal spells. Also you didn't see an Etched Champion in the games. Easy 2-0.

Round 4 you are matched vs. Bogles. I'm not going to say how this goes. Let's just say that this was the ugliest round by far. 0-2.

You end up 1-3 on the night, the worst record you've had in years. Did you have fun though? Not really.

*You may ask, "why are people playing so many noninteractive decks?" Because that's what is doing well right now and the format is WIIIIIDE open. There's no such thing as a "gentleman's agreement" where you all agree to not play certain decks. I personally feel that some players had that type of mentality during Eldrazi Winter and honestly, they were my easiest wins. Yes, winning appeals to players. It's not just 4 rounds of grindy Magic where I finished 2-2, but felt like I made 12123444 correct decisions. (whether I'm correct about making the right decisions is another story...)

How much play time do you have with Queller?

I've showed up my FNM with DnT and Shadow decks with limited experience and bombed, too...

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

How much play time do you have with Queller?

I've showed up my FNM with DnT and Shadow decks with limited experience and bombed, too...

No, that's a pretty standard result for a deck like that facing a lineup like that. Winning against them usually requires the opponent stumbles, regardless of what you do.

Ok---sometimes in every format we are just lined up with horrible matchups.

If this is your FNM, perhaps that was a bad meta decision

I'm glad people can cite these scenarios but not ones where they face

Affinity
Company
Burn
Humans

I haven't watched that YouTube yet, but I still think Dredge is manageable.

I mean that rundown of a 1-3 night is not at all new to URx players, but there are cards that can help those.

I know how to play most decks fairly well. It just doesn't matter. I've run decks I've played for years and bombed and I've run decks that I just barely tried and 4-0ed. (like Affinity) I tried Affinity 2-3 years ago and went 1-2, losing to Bloom Titan and Affinity. I tried it now a month ago and started 11-0 before Skred Red and Jund with a SB Shatterstorm took me down. For me, the correlation between playing a deck for a long time and doing well just hasn't mattered much.

Most of the fair deck Magic players have left our LGS or moved on to other decks. A guy who I've seen only run Junk for at least 2 years straight has been trying Dredge. There are a lot of "unfair" decks at our LGS. Why? Because people want to win and that's what has been putting up results. There are some Shadow players, but even they have a pretty rough time sometimes. This says nothing about the 17 different decks I faced in Santa Clara in 18 rounds (only Jeskai Queller twice).

Why do we still have people coming with anecdotal or theoretical evidence about skill? Didn't KTK disprove all myths regarding skill many pages okay? Like, okay Foodchains, you can think what you like, but it's been disproven. If a skilled pilot plays his deck skillfully, he will do well. Fact. Mathematically proven to be truth. I don't understand why you and others continue to assert that skill is irrelevant after being factually proven wrong.

Quote from idSurge »

I haven't watched that YouTube yet, but I still think Dredge is manageable.

I mean that rundown of a 1-3 night is not at all new to URx players, but there are cards that can help those.

And if you don't draw those cards, you probably lose. This is the nature of most really swingy matchups that rely on narrow hate cards. :/

Also, GreatNate's video is basically a podcast. Great to listen to on a commute or something.

I think I need to take a break from this thread, most of you guys are toxic as hell.

Quote from Earthbound21 »

Why do we still have people coming with anecdotal or theoretical evidence about skill? Didn't KTK disprove all myths regarding skill many pages okay? Like, okay Foodchains, you can think what you like, but it's been disproven. If a skilled pilot plays his deck skillfully, he will do well. Fact. Mathematically proven to be truth. I don't understand why you and others continue to assert that skill is irrelevant after being factually proven wrong.

I guess I'm just wrong then. Even Todd Stevens said that he's had some "horrible" nights online with his decks.

The reason I don't cite those matchups is because they are not that prevalent at my LGS or I just seem to avoid them. But those are not the ones seen on a national level. The ones seen are the 13-2s or starting 9-0, so "Todd's play skill is so much above any other player, that he always top 8s." This is what is seen by us.

I'll come back to this - at the Grand Prix Santa Clara in the $100 6 event Constructed Package, of which I chose Modern for all of them, 2 events per day, I ran into 17 decks in 18 rounds (Jeskai Queller twice). How do you metagame for that? Bocephus would tell me to metagame harder. What is the deck that does well in that metagame? The deck that I played the most in Modern, I went 1-2. The deck that I played almost never in tournament, I had a 3-0 before Skred and Jund with Shatterstorm SB took me down. I did the best at 5-1 with Grishoalbrand, a deck that I played the 2nd most in Modern.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I think I need to take a break from this thread, most of you guys are toxic as hell.

What? I dont know, I think you may need one, I dont see anything toxic here.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from idSurge »

I haven't watched that YouTube yet, but I still think Dredge is manageable.

I mean that rundown of a 1-3 night is not at all new to URx players, but there are cards that can help those.

And if you don't draw those cards, you probably lose. This is the nature of most really swingy matchups that rely on narrow hate cards. :/

Also, GreatNate's video is basically a podcast. Great to listen to on a commute or something.

Sure, but...when you do, sometimes its free win time, and as we all know, you need free wins to make it through a big event. Thats just part of Modern, and I'm ok with that. When you DO hit your hate and you STILL lose, (hi eldrazi tron!) thats when I start producing the salt.

Re: metagaming
At large events, you can't metagame a specific, exact deck. There's just too much matchup diversity. You can, however, metagame a general archetype, i.e. combo, midrange, big mana, control, etc. When you do this, you look at the MTGO metagame, you read what pro authors are saying, and you pick a strong representative of a well-positioned archetype. This means you don't pull a DeCandio and play Mono G Devotion. It means you identify big mana is good and play Tron. Alternately, you pull a Nikolich or Scherer and just play what you know.

At a small/local event, you should know your field enough to know what to play and what not to play. If you know your FNM bounces between linear piles, don't play Jeskai. If you know they don't do that, and you play Jeskai, and they suddenly do it once, it shouldn't matter because you should be making the right call in 90% of the other FNMs.

Remember that metagaming in Modern is not picking a specific deck. It's picking the appropriate archetype and then configuring your SB so you can prevent losses. Or just play the same deck always (preferably a good deck) and then configure the SB for events.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from Earthbound21 »

Why do we still have people coming with anecdotal or theoretical evidence about skill? Didn't KTK disprove all myths regarding skill many pages okay? Like, okay Foodchains, you can think what you like, but it's been disproven. If a skilled pilot plays his deck skillfully, he will do well. Fact. Mathematically proven to be truth. I don't understand why you and others continue to assert that skill is irrelevant after being factually proven wrong.

I guess I'm just wrong then. Even Todd Stevens said that he's had some "horrible" nights online with his decks.

The reason I don't cite those matchups is because they are not that prevalent at my LGS or I just seem to avoid them. But those are not the ones seen on a national level. The ones seen are the 13-2s or starting 9-0, so "Todd's play skill is so much above any other player, that he always top 8s." This is what is seen by us.

I'll come back to this - at the Grand Prix Santa Clara in the $100 6 event Constructed Package, of which I chose Modern for all of them, 2 events per day, I ran into 17 decks in 18 rounds (Jeskai Queller twice). How do you metagame for that? Bocephus would tell me to metagame harder. What is the deck that does well in that metagame? The deck that I played the most in Modern, I went 1-2. The deck that I played almost never in tournament, I had a 3-0 before Skred and Jund with Shatterstorm SB took me down. I did the best at 5-1 with Grishoalbrand, a deck that I played the 2nd most in Modern.

I think KTK's conclusions are being warped a bit and that's what you're running into above. Skill absolutely matters, but there's still a heavy dose of luck. The best players win less than 65% of their competitive matches. Let's assume Todd Stevens is the undisputed best player on the planet; every match he sits down for he is more skillful in match and at metagaming than his opponent. He still loses more than a third of his matches.

Todd may not be the actual best player in the world (although that is his GW Company result in the Challenge), but I think that should make sense no matter whose name you use. Skill is still very valuable, but it can only take you so far. KTK's results just suggest that it's a very similar situation with Legacy in that regard.

Note: that doesn't mean that even the best player in the world wins 65% of their games in every tournament. Sometimes they'll scrub out, sometimes they'll win. Only over a large enough sample size would you see the 65%; that makes it particularly hard to judge their success (and ours) without many, many results.

Quote from Darkest_before_dawn »

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from Earthbound21 »

Why do we still have people coming with anecdotal or theoretical evidence about skill? Didn't KTK disprove all myths regarding skill many pages okay? Like, okay Foodchains, you can think what you like, but it's been disproven. If a skilled pilot plays his deck skillfully, he will do well. Fact. Mathematically proven to be truth. I don't understand why you and others continue to assert that skill is irrelevant after being factually proven wrong.

I guess I'm just wrong then. Even Todd Stevens said that he's had some "horrible" nights online with his decks.

The reason I don't cite those matchups is because they are not that prevalent at my LGS or I just seem to avoid them. But those are not the ones seen on a national level. The ones seen are the 13-2s or starting 9-0, so "Todd's play skill is so much above any other player, that he always top 8s." This is what is seen by us.

I'll come back to this - at the Grand Prix Santa Clara in the $100 6 event Constructed Package, of which I chose Modern for all of them, 2 events per day, I ran into 17 decks in 18 rounds (Jeskai Queller twice). How do you metagame for that? Bocephus would tell me to metagame harder. What is the deck that does well in that metagame? The deck that I played the most in Modern, I went 1-2. The deck that I played almost never in tournament, I had a 3-0 before Skred and Jund with Shatterstorm SB took me down. I did the best at 5-1 with Grishoalbrand, a deck that I played the 2nd most in Modern.

I think KTK's conclusions are being warped a bit and that's what you're running into above. Skill absolutely matters, but there's still a heavy dose of luck. The best players win less than 65% of their competitive matches. Let's assume Todd Stevens is the undisputed best player on the planet; every match he sits down for he is more skillful in match and at metagaming than his opponent. He still loses more than a third of his matches.

Todd may not be the actual best player in the world (although that is his GW Company result in the Challenge), but I think that should make sense no matter whose name you use. Skill is still very valuable, but it can only take you so far. KTK's results just suggest that it's a very similar situation with Legacy in that regard.

Note: that doesn't mean that even the best player in the world wins 65% of their games in every tournament. Sometimes they'll scrub out, sometimes they'll win. Only over a large enough sample size would you see the 65%; that makes it particularly hard to judge their success (and ours) without many, many results.

This is true, but let's remember that this 65% top level Modern performance is also true of the 65% top Legacy performance. So if Modern requires some healthy dose of luck, Legcay requires the same healthy dose. And I NEVER hear people in this thread (or anywhere really) say that Legacy requires luck. People view Legacy as a no-luck high-skill utopia.

Yes, most definitely. I did not say that skill doesn't matter at all. It does. It just appears to matter less than I've ever seen in Modern since starting in 2011.

Quote from ktkenshinx »

Quote from Darkest_before_dawn »

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

Quote from Earthbound21 »

Why do we still have people coming with anecdotal or theoretical evidence about skill? Didn't KTK disprove all myths regarding skill many pages okay? Like, okay Foodchains, you can think what you like, but it's been disproven. If a skilled pilot plays his deck skillfully, he will do well. Fact. Mathematically proven to be truth. I don't understand why you and others continue to assert that skill is irrelevant after being factually proven wrong.

I guess I'm just wrong then. Even Todd Stevens said that he's had some "horrible" nights online with his decks.

The reason I don't cite those matchups is because they are not that prevalent at my LGS or I just seem to avoid them. But those are not the ones seen on a national level. The ones seen are the 13-2s or starting 9-0, so "Todd's play skill is so much above any other player, that he always top 8s." This is what is seen by us.

I'll come back to this - at the Grand Prix Santa Clara in the $100 6 event Constructed Package, of which I chose Modern for all of them, 2 events per day, I ran into 17 decks in 18 rounds (Jeskai Queller twice). How do you metagame for that? Bocephus would tell me to metagame harder. What is the deck that does well in that metagame? The deck that I played the most in Modern, I went 1-2. The deck that I played almost never in tournament, I had a 3-0 before Skred and Jund with Shatterstorm SB took me down. I did the best at 5-1 with Grishoalbrand, a deck that I played the 2nd most in Modern.

I think KTK's conclusions are being warped a bit and that's what you're running into above. Skill absolutely matters, but there's still a heavy dose of luck. The best players win less than 65% of their competitive matches. Let's assume Todd Stevens is the undisputed best player on the planet; every match he sits down for he is more skillful in match and at metagaming than his opponent. He still loses more than a third of his matches.

Todd may not be the actual best player in the world (although that is his GW Company result in the Challenge), but I think that should make sense no matter whose name you use. Skill is still very valuable, but it can only take you so far. KTK's results just suggest that it's a very similar situation with Legacy in that regard.

Note: that doesn't mean that even the best player in the world wins 65% of their games in every tournament. Sometimes they'll scrub out, sometimes they'll win. Only over a large enough sample size would you see the 65%; that makes it particularly hard to judge their success (and ours) without many, many results.

This is true, but let's remember that this 65% top level Modern performance is also true of the 65% top Legacy performance. So if Modern requires some healthy dose of luck, Legcay requires the same healthy dose. And I NEVER hear people in this thread (or anywhere really) say that Legacy requires luck. People view Legacy as a no-luck high-skill utopia.

No argument here; I don't play Legacy. I would suspect that given the more powerful tools it feels more skill-oriented, despite the numbers showing it's not particularly different.

Quote from ktkenshinx »

This is true, but let's remember that this 65% top level Modern performance is also true of the 65% top Legacy performance. So if Modern requires some healthy dose of luck, Legcay requires the same healthy dose. And I NEVER hear people in this thread (or anywhere really) say that Legacy requires luck. People view Legacy as a no-luck high-skill utopia.

I would definitely not consider Legacy such a format, I've extensively played that format for quite sometime and have sold my 40 set of duals twice now.

The rage can be real in that format. Sneak and Show can just slam it on your blind face turn 1. You kept a solid hand blind against an unknown without Force - your mistake. So in essence, there is a level of skill to that format, and generally always a possible best move, but some matchups are definitely 70/30. It becomes abundant when you need to either side out a ton of Counter-Magic to stay relevant or side in twice as much to stay just as relevant. Yet the proper line of play is generally discoverable.

Modern doesn't have that, the beauty I find in Modern is that based on the sequencing of lands can completely dictate a game. It's a different kind of skill that Modern has, being able to predict and play to your outs - personal example; I was playing JDS against Tron, I Thoughtseized his hand, took the better of the cards, but he still had double Karn, my opponent drew a map. This changed the dynamic, I went into hyper mode and played Death's Shadow as a 3/3 on turn 2 with a Fetchland and Traverse the Ulvenwald in my hand. I had delirium on my third turn, and searched for another Street Wraith in order to hope and draw a Temur Battle Rage, when I didn't I simply conceded. I had no more outs based on his hand, nor a fast enough clock with any other search option. I lost that game, but I played to the best of my outs. If that situation kept happening, my Tron matchup from not doing so might go from something like 65-35 to 60-40. That adds up after many many rounds, and big tournaments.

I believe the line of logic that better players are just going to be better at bigger tournaments, but I don't believe that's in direct contrast with horrible matchups. We have seen Reid Duke completely scrub out of Modern tournaments playing Jund. Yet if you threw 40 rounds in that guys face he wouldn't disappoint, but if you throw 10 of the wrong apples right at the start where a GP or a PT has a cutthroat finish for Day 1, it may not look that good. Especially when the skill level of all players are definitely equal.

I still strongly believe that there are some decks and matchups that are 65-35 or worse based on my own data samples, I've done really well for myself on MODO with a good win % and ELO across 5 different accounts. Although the last 7-8 months I'm not as active as I used to be.

There is a reason this thread has witnessed some seriously crazy suggestions, such as extended Sideboards to 25 cards, Banning 8th/9th Edition or banning Manamorphose. I don't know the main reason, but I guarantee it's generally not because Modern is a simple format to understand.