No, that's a statistical aberration and you shouldn't deckbuild or play expecting it to happen everytime like the original poster did.
He should not have changed his sideboard, but he did, that's why he lost two tournaments instead of one, because he believed in superstition and tried to do something against it ultimatedly only affecting his chances in reality in a way that wouldn't have happened if he analized how likely it would be to repeat his first tournament's match-ups.
We are saying the same thing, you just don't want to use the word luck.
Noun, 1. bad luck - an unfortunate state resulting from unfavorable outcomes
How do you know it was the wrong call to change his deck? Local metas vary wildly, and playing against three RG Tron opponents is an indication that there's a strong Tron presence; they may not have even been the only ones there. You're making the assumption that there were other decks he should have been prepared for but that may not have been the case at all. The point he and the rest of us are making is that you cannot prepare for every matchup, and you cannot avoid the fact that you will occasionally get matched against some of those decks. When you're prepared for 95% of the meta and your first three rounds are against decks in the other 5% you're going to lose. Call it whatever you like, but as I said you still lost and no one's going to give you your money back because you were a "statistical aberration", which in reality is not true to begin with given that there's no deck can even come close to beating 95% of any meta. The simple truth is the best you can do is pick a deck you expect to be well positioned and hope to dodge all the bad matchups, which there will still be many of. Welcome to matchup lottery.
Luck doesn't exist.
You know what cards you have in your deck. You know what cards go in most decks, you know your good matchups and bad matchups. You know the probability of getting your sideboard tech vs the probability of your opponent getting theirs and you should take a look at the competition to make an educated guess about your probabilities to find certain matches and use a deck that better fights that particular meta.
I've won tournaments with "Tier 3 crap" like 8Rack and Dega Midrange because I took responsibility for my future "luck" instead of just letting things happen.
You are contradicting yourself. You can play whatever garbage you want because it seems strong against a particular meta, but there's always going to be outlier decks (like yours) and even tier one/two decks you do not have a good matchup against. Any given deck may statistically be a good choice on any given day, but there will always be some amount of decks in the room that you aren't going to beat. If you get paired against those decks, however few they may be, rather than the majority that you were prepared for then you will lose. Knowing probabilities doesn't mean knowing they'll be in your favor, nor does it mean you won't just end up being a statistical outlier. If you're playing in a 2,000 person tournament with three RG Tron players, yourself, and 1996 people playing easy matchups for you and happen to play against Tron in the first three rounds then you're playing dead regardless of how good your deck looks against the field. It doesn't matter that the chances of that happening were abysmally low; you lost and probabilities aren't going to change that or get your money back. That is called bad luck.
As the others have pointed out this format is essentially a lottery; not just in terms of matchups but also in drawing the right game-breaking hate cards in those matchups. All of the uninteractive linear decks create games that hinge around drawing the right hate, and are won or lost by whether you drew a single card. Polarizing decks like Tron compound the problem further by creating a bunch of 90/10 and 10/90 matchups that are decided before you even sit down. Get the right matchups and draws and you win. Run cold and you lose. It's as simple as that. A lot of people like the format for this reason. It gives everyone a fair shot to win in that the winner is essentially decided by drawing names from a hat. If you're looking for skill-testing games that are won on the back of tight play and sound strategy go buy a race car or a chess set. Modern is not the format for you.
With the modern PPTQ season wrapping up are we expecting prices to flatten out or decline in the near future? Here's to hoping for some price spikes in the next few months so I can sell my modern cards to put a down payment on the new Africa Twin.
"It's the third worst ban because it breaks the rule." This argument is simply not consistent with how Wizards bans cards now that we have 2 top decks that violate this rule. My question for you guys is: why do cards like the red ritual get banned but other decks like Amulet and Griselbrand get to live when they violate this rule constantly.
Both of these fail to understand that raw speed is not the only metric, there is also consistency. Consistency is why Ponder and Preordain are banned and why they make decks like Twin toxic to the meta. Well established consistency (added redundancy) + speed (consistent acceleration) is the reason why Rite of Flame is banned.
Now, you may contend that Amulet and such win too fast too consistently, but I am certain that if the ways in which WoTC judges such things reaches the same level as Storm, then they will get nipped. It is a matter of having enough good data.
Really?
There really aren't that many cards on the banlist that are proven to make the format faster.
speed isn't the reason most of the banned cards are there
If raw speed is the metric
What you failed to understand is my post was explicitly about speed.
I wasn't even advocating for those unbans, I was just pointing out how flawed this Legacy lite logic is.
Except that it isn't flawed. There are some cards that are played both in Modern and Legacy. That's fine.
What isn't fine is removing a large majority of the cards that are proven to warp the metagame and move it towards a much faster, much more "degenerate" format, hence the moniker "Legacy lite."
There really aren't that many cards on the banlist that are proven to make the format faster. There's a few like Dread Return, Blazing Shoal, and Hypergenesis that would likely have that effect, but speed isn't the reason most of the banned cards are there. Jace isn't going to make Twin kill on turn three, nor are any of the cantrips going to let the combo decks do anything faster than they do already. If raw speed is the metric for deciding whether or not Modern is legacy lite then that ship has sailed and it's setting a course for vintage lite.
Well, I lost today in the finals of a PPTQ to GR Tron, 1-2. Do I think Tron should be banned? No. Do I think it's too powerful? No, he killed me on turn 13 in the first game and turn 15 in game 3 while my deck took a steaming dump on me. Despite both of us mulling to 5 in the final game, I had plenty of chances to win after landing an early Blood Moon with Through the Breach in hand. I wish more people shared this mentality. (I realize that this is 1 match, but the match was incredibly important to me.)
I actually give credit to Tron players. They maneuvered their way through a small metagame to do well. There are so many decks that people can play that just really punish Tron and to dodge those matchups is a gutsy call on their part. I'm actually glad that with recent sets, Tron has been helped a little (Rending Volley, Ugin) because if people play Tron's worst matchups, it's incredibly tough playing nearly at Sorcery speed the whole match. Tron is fine.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but to give them credit for "maneuvering their way through a small metagame" is a bit of a stretch. Essentially what you're saying is Tron players show up to play matchup lottery and this time your opponent hit the jackpot. It's a gutsy call, sure, in the same sense that bringing a knife to gun fight is. That is the nature of playing a deck that's either 10/90 or 90/10 across the board, and that is what a lot of people hate about both those type of decks and by extension the format itself for being defined by the matchup lotto they create. I don't think Tron is anywhere near needing a ban, but at the same time I think Tron players stand to gain a lot more from leveraging their luck at a casino than a Magic tournament.
Please explain to me how Thopter/Sword would be any worse for aggro that isn't Zoo, Soul Sisters, or Affinity (because people would be running more Stony Silences if Thopter/Sword was legal) than Twin.
Because Twin can't tutor and is soft to Path to Exile and Qasali Pridemage in GWx builds.
Please explain to me how much more powerful Thopter Sword gaining life and making thopters to win around turn 6-7 is better than Twin instantly winning against decks like Bogles, Burn, Merfolk, and Infect.
Bogles can run Path, Merfolk can run Vapor Snag, Infect has Vines and Burn has burn, all of which can deal with the Twin combo at instant speed. The Thopter/Sword combo is harder to disrupt mainboard and it's easier to get to the lategame in a controlling list.
Thopter/Sword would be strong in Tezzerator decks against Midrange and other Control. That's basically it.
So you're saying that Thopter/Sword is bad against aggro? Because that's hilariously false.
TL;DR this is all speculation. Without hundreds of hours of testing, you have no idea how good the combo is, nor do we. Acting like you do is narcissistic and blatantly dishonest.
It really doesn't take hundreds of hours. For some of the other borderline cards I agree, it would take a long time and a countless number of games in various decks to deem them safe. Sword of the Meek is not one of those cards. Throw it into a few different shells on Cockatrice, play a couple games and it's pretty obvious the Thopter/Sword combo itself just isn't very strong in this format. It doesn't take any more testing to confidently say that than it does to confidently say Skullclamp is too strong for Modern. We are talking about a combo that nets you one life and a 1/1 flyer on turn three, or five life and five 1/1s on turn four if your opponent has no way to interact with the combo. That is your ultimate hand, in a format defined by decks trying to break the turn four rule. Yes, it gives inevitability to control decks that make it to the late game against aggro. So does Drogskol Reaver, and I don't see anyone clamoring for that card to be banned.
And White is such an oppressed color in the metagame right now, amirite? No one runs that...
I know you're trying to be sarcastic but what you said is true. White is the least played and least powerful color in Modern, and Path to Exile likely sees less play now than any other time in the format's existence. Of the ten most popular decks in the format only #10 runs any copies of the card, and typically only one or two. Looking at the top 19 decks there's three more that sometimes run it, including Abzan CC and Merfolk which are both a bit of a stretch.
Where are you getting your numbers? Junk is pretty popular, and typically runs Path as a 4 of mainboard.
Burn runs 2-3 in the side.
Zoo runs 3-4 main.
I don't follow any other decks, but I don't think what you're saying is correct.
Abzan now sees less play than Bloom Titan and Grixis control at around 3%ish of the meta. Zoo sees even less.
And White is such an oppressed color in the metagame right now, amirite? No one runs that...
I know you're trying to be sarcastic but what you said is true. White is the least played and least powerful color in Modern, and Path to Exile likely sees less play now than any other time in the format's existence. Of the ten most popular decks in the format only #10 runs any copies of the card, and typically only one or two. Looking at the top 19 decks there's three more that sometimes run it, including Abzan CC and Merfolk which are both a bit of a stretch.
I don't think this is as complicated as some of you are making it out to be. Simply determining what the goal of each deck is will answer most questions with regard to deck building, or archetype classification if that's what you're looking for. Most decks are played differently in different matchups but that generally doesn't change the overarching goal of the deck. Some can also adjust their goals via sideboarding, though this again does not change their goal for game one; it simply means they require some sort of annotation. Examples:
Splinter Twin
- Plays a disruptive game until either its efficient threats deal lethal damage or it combos off. This makes it pretty firmly a tempo deck with two options for victory, so you could call it Tempo-combo if you really want to split hairs.
- After sideboarding it sometimes becomes significantly more control oriented. That doesn't make it a control deck, it makes it a tempo deck capable of sideboarding into a more controlling deck, and it should be labelled as such.
Jund
- Plays a combination of disruption, removal, and efficient creatures. Focuses on one for one trades then overpowering the opponent with card quality. It has controlling elements combined with creatures that close the game out quickly before the opponent can recover. Pretty much the definition of a midrange deck.
Burn
- A single minded deck focused on burning the opponent out. It is sometimes forced to use burn spells on creatures, but does so only in extreme situations in which said creatures will end the game before the Burn deck does. It is very similar to other aggro decks like Zoo in that it has huge redundancy and aims to close out games quickly before the opponent can stabilize. It has no alternate path to victory and often falls short against decks capable of staving off its early aggression. Quite definitely an aggro deck.
Infect
- Another single minded deck, though this time the focus is pumping up an Infect creature and swinging for lethal in one or two attacks. This is another deck focused on closing out games quickly and featuring huge redundancy to make that happen as often as possible. Again, there is no alternate path to victory and although it has some ability to grind out games it tends to suffer against decks that can drag the game out past four turns like any other aggro deck. That makes it pretty firmly an aggro deck as well in my mind.
It's worth mentioning that although many people claim Infect and Burn are combo decks or have combo elements, the aren't and don't. Combo decks have combos. Their consistency comes in the form of cantrips and some amount of redundancy to ensure they find the combo cards. Burn and Infect do not have combos. They have a pile of cards that all do pretty much the same thing and thus all contribute more or less equally to the cause. Infect is slightly more complicated in that it needs a creature in addition to its pump spells but that doesn't make it a combo deck; it just makes it a more fragile aggro deck. Perhaps that's why it hasn't been able to match Burn's success. Zoo has the same problem; it is an aggro deck that's easier to interact with than Burn, especially in a format where everyone is prepared to deal with creatures, and thus its success has fallen far short of Burn's.
Anyway, as illustrated the current format definitions are fine. The issue we have on these boards is not the existing archetypes or their definitions. It's people warping those definitions to suit their needs. The reason I don't bother to wade into the archetype arguments anymore is exactly that. It is utterly impossible to have any sort of productive argument when everyone's definition of a given archetype is one he or she created solely to serve his or her own argument. What those people fail to realize is that broad classifications of decks (ie archetypes) do not matter. What matters is whether or not there's a deck for any given player in Modern. Whether there is a viable, competitive option for everyone. Right now there isn't, and Wizards is at least in part to blame or thank for that. There is probably never going to be a viable land destruction deck in Modern for example, because Wizards has expressed their dislike for mana denial strategies and intentionally weakened the cards they print for such strategies. They cannot make everyone happy, they can only make decisions that are best for the playerbase as a whole. Weakening mana denial strategies was one of those decisions. There are likely a variety of other strategies that have fallen victim to such decisions, and if your strategy of choice isn't and hasn't been viable in Modern then it's likely one of them due to Wizards' strong shaping of the format in their vision. Sorry for your loss.
Tron is rough beats. Karn, Wurmcoil, Ugin, and Eldrazi are all miserable threats to answer, especially with Relic to back them up. 4 GQ is hard on the manabase, but it may be correct.
Still, Relic can be too soft a form of grave hate at times with how fast Loam decks can fill up the yard. The real killer is Rest in Peace. I haven't managed to beat that card yet.
Fortunately for Loam white is pretty much a lost cause in the current metagame. Of the 19 tier one/two decks in the spreadsheet there's maybe one or two at most that could run Rest in Peace. Junk doesn't need it, Collected Company can't run it, and all that leaves is Ad Nauseum and Naya Zoo running white..
We are saying the same thing, you just don't want to use the word luck.
How do you know it was the wrong call to change his deck? Local metas vary wildly, and playing against three RG Tron opponents is an indication that there's a strong Tron presence; they may not have even been the only ones there. You're making the assumption that there were other decks he should have been prepared for but that may not have been the case at all. The point he and the rest of us are making is that you cannot prepare for every matchup, and you cannot avoid the fact that you will occasionally get matched against some of those decks. When you're prepared for 95% of the meta and your first three rounds are against decks in the other 5% you're going to lose. Call it whatever you like, but as I said you still lost and no one's going to give you your money back because you were a "statistical aberration", which in reality is not true to begin with given that there's no deck can even come close to beating 95% of any meta. The simple truth is the best you can do is pick a deck you expect to be well positioned and hope to dodge all the bad matchups, which there will still be many of. Welcome to matchup lottery.
You are contradicting yourself. You can play whatever garbage you want because it seems strong against a particular meta, but there's always going to be outlier decks (like yours) and even tier one/two decks you do not have a good matchup against. Any given deck may statistically be a good choice on any given day, but there will always be some amount of decks in the room that you aren't going to beat. If you get paired against those decks, however few they may be, rather than the majority that you were prepared for then you will lose. Knowing probabilities doesn't mean knowing they'll be in your favor, nor does it mean you won't just end up being a statistical outlier. If you're playing in a 2,000 person tournament with three RG Tron players, yourself, and 1996 people playing easy matchups for you and happen to play against Tron in the first three rounds then you're playing dead regardless of how good your deck looks against the field. It doesn't matter that the chances of that happening were abysmally low; you lost and probabilities aren't going to change that or get your money back. That is called bad luck.
Really?
What you failed to understand is my post was explicitly about speed.
There really aren't that many cards on the banlist that are proven to make the format faster. There's a few like Dread Return, Blazing Shoal, and Hypergenesis that would likely have that effect, but speed isn't the reason most of the banned cards are there. Jace isn't going to make Twin kill on turn three, nor are any of the cantrips going to let the combo decks do anything faster than they do already. If raw speed is the metric for deciding whether or not Modern is legacy lite then that ship has sailed and it's setting a course for vintage lite.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but to give them credit for "maneuvering their way through a small metagame" is a bit of a stretch. Essentially what you're saying is Tron players show up to play matchup lottery and this time your opponent hit the jackpot. It's a gutsy call, sure, in the same sense that bringing a knife to gun fight is. That is the nature of playing a deck that's either 10/90 or 90/10 across the board, and that is what a lot of people hate about both those type of decks and by extension the format itself for being defined by the matchup lotto they create. I don't think Tron is anywhere near needing a ban, but at the same time I think Tron players stand to gain a lot more from leveraging their luck at a casino than a Magic tournament.
It really doesn't take hundreds of hours. For some of the other borderline cards I agree, it would take a long time and a countless number of games in various decks to deem them safe. Sword of the Meek is not one of those cards. Throw it into a few different shells on Cockatrice, play a couple games and it's pretty obvious the Thopter/Sword combo itself just isn't very strong in this format. It doesn't take any more testing to confidently say that than it does to confidently say Skullclamp is too strong for Modern. We are talking about a combo that nets you one life and a 1/1 flyer on turn three, or five life and five 1/1s on turn four if your opponent has no way to interact with the combo. That is your ultimate hand, in a format defined by decks trying to break the turn four rule. Yes, it gives inevitability to control decks that make it to the late game against aggro. So does Drogskol Reaver, and I don't see anyone clamoring for that card to be banned.
Lists? There was exactly one Abzan deck in the top 32. That's not a very convincing sample size.
This, plus Abzan very rarely runs four. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pfIg2W7v1nprkM1GcmrQxEgumo3bqvuEwqG9zuIvY7A/pubhtml#
Where are you getting your information?
I know you're trying to be sarcastic but what you said is true. White is the least played and least powerful color in Modern, and Path to Exile likely sees less play now than any other time in the format's existence. Of the ten most popular decks in the format only #10 runs any copies of the card, and typically only one or two. Looking at the top 19 decks there's three more that sometimes run it, including Abzan CC and Merfolk which are both a bit of a stretch.
Splinter Twin
- Plays a disruptive game until either its efficient threats deal lethal damage or it combos off. This makes it pretty firmly a tempo deck with two options for victory, so you could call it Tempo-combo if you really want to split hairs.
- After sideboarding it sometimes becomes significantly more control oriented. That doesn't make it a control deck, it makes it a tempo deck capable of sideboarding into a more controlling deck, and it should be labelled as such.
Jund
- Plays a combination of disruption, removal, and efficient creatures. Focuses on one for one trades then overpowering the opponent with card quality. It has controlling elements combined with creatures that close the game out quickly before the opponent can recover. Pretty much the definition of a midrange deck.
Burn
- A single minded deck focused on burning the opponent out. It is sometimes forced to use burn spells on creatures, but does so only in extreme situations in which said creatures will end the game before the Burn deck does. It is very similar to other aggro decks like Zoo in that it has huge redundancy and aims to close out games quickly before the opponent can stabilize. It has no alternate path to victory and often falls short against decks capable of staving off its early aggression. Quite definitely an aggro deck.
Infect
- Another single minded deck, though this time the focus is pumping up an Infect creature and swinging for lethal in one or two attacks. This is another deck focused on closing out games quickly and featuring huge redundancy to make that happen as often as possible. Again, there is no alternate path to victory and although it has some ability to grind out games it tends to suffer against decks that can drag the game out past four turns like any other aggro deck. That makes it pretty firmly an aggro deck as well in my mind.
It's worth mentioning that although many people claim Infect and Burn are combo decks or have combo elements, the aren't and don't. Combo decks have combos. Their consistency comes in the form of cantrips and some amount of redundancy to ensure they find the combo cards. Burn and Infect do not have combos. They have a pile of cards that all do pretty much the same thing and thus all contribute more or less equally to the cause. Infect is slightly more complicated in that it needs a creature in addition to its pump spells but that doesn't make it a combo deck; it just makes it a more fragile aggro deck. Perhaps that's why it hasn't been able to match Burn's success. Zoo has the same problem; it is an aggro deck that's easier to interact with than Burn, especially in a format where everyone is prepared to deal with creatures, and thus its success has fallen far short of Burn's.
Anyway, as illustrated the current format definitions are fine. The issue we have on these boards is not the existing archetypes or their definitions. It's people warping those definitions to suit their needs. The reason I don't bother to wade into the archetype arguments anymore is exactly that. It is utterly impossible to have any sort of productive argument when everyone's definition of a given archetype is one he or she created solely to serve his or her own argument. What those people fail to realize is that broad classifications of decks (ie archetypes) do not matter. What matters is whether or not there's a deck for any given player in Modern. Whether there is a viable, competitive option for everyone. Right now there isn't, and Wizards is at least in part to blame or thank for that. There is probably never going to be a viable land destruction deck in Modern for example, because Wizards has expressed their dislike for mana denial strategies and intentionally weakened the cards they print for such strategies. They cannot make everyone happy, they can only make decisions that are best for the playerbase as a whole. Weakening mana denial strategies was one of those decisions. There are likely a variety of other strategies that have fallen victim to such decisions, and if your strategy of choice isn't and hasn't been viable in Modern then it's likely one of them due to Wizards' strong shaping of the format in their vision. Sorry for your loss.
Fortunately for Loam white is pretty much a lost cause in the current metagame. Of the 19 tier one/two decks in the spreadsheet there's maybe one or two at most that could run Rest in Peace. Junk doesn't need it, Collected Company can't run it, and all that leaves is Ad Nauseum and Naya Zoo running white..