I've been toying around with Amulet Titan for several years, but I've never brought it to a "major" tournement. Howevere, last weekend I deceided to play Amulet for once. Part of my reason was to I wanted to test Jace, as Amulet can play Jace as early as turn 2; and the very least on turn 3. I'm more of a control player then a combo player, so my list is more geared towards a control-combo then normal.
Match 1 - Jund: 2-0
G1: I had turn 1 Amulet into second Amulet and Jace bouncing my opponents Confidant. Followed up with double Titan.
G2: Slow game. He had some disruption but was not able to stop my Titan.
Match 2 - Death and Taxes: 2-0
Don't really recall these. Jace did some work controling the board.
Match 3 - Death and Taxes: 2-0
Don't really recall these either. My opponent did play Amulet Bloom when it was legal, so he was aware of the interaction and did his best to respond to triggers with GQs, Aether Vial activations and Paths.
Match 4 - Jund: 1-2
G1: I had both Jace and Titan. Ended the game with a hasted double striking Titan.
G2: My opponent had early pressure with double Goyfs and was able to close the game fast
G3: I lost 3 bounce lands to 2 Fulminator Mages and a Kolaghan's Command getting back a Fulminator...
Match 5 - RG TRON: 1-1-0
G1: He had natual TRON and a turn 3 Worldbreaker. This game took some time as I was trying to race him with hasted Titans. I don't recall the details, but the game ended when he had landed 2 Ulamogs, 2 Worldbreakers and all my Titans were exiled. I was able to hit him down to 2 life, so the game was close even though he had "the nuts".
G2: This was a "fair" game. I had a Crumble for his TRON-lands, but he was also targeting my lands with GQ and Worldbreaker. I won the game, but we didn't have time to the start the last game.
Match 6 - Burn: 2-0
G1: Got him with a hasted double striking Titan
G2: Courser made things difficult for him. When I landed Azusa a few turn later and used a bounceland for 3 life a turn his life became miserable.ar
If you math it right you don't even need that, just more lands.
I see that this 11th mountain business is a big deal. After redoing the math, you are correct that I only needed the 10 mountains to win. However, if I had drawn 4 mountains with only 10 mountains in my deck (a plausible scenario) then I would have only been able to deal 18 damage to my opponent, which wasn't lethal.
If the 11th mountain is needed depends on how much life your opponent is on.
Let's have a look at your example:
You have 9 lands in play, 4 of them which are mountains. Your opponent has 2 Ghost Quarters as only interaction.
IF your basic mountain is allready in play you can't get double Valakut because the 2 Ghost Quarters can put you down to 5 mountains (2 Valakut + 7 mountains -> then 2 mountains get destroyed by GQ). So the maximum damage you can do in this case is 18 by sacrificing 7 lands, keeping 2 mountains in play, and getting 1 Valakut and 6 mountains. You'll get 6 Valakut triggers and 8 mountains in play, so you can't be interupted by the 2 GQs.
BUT IF you have your basic moutain left in library you can get double Valakaut. You can do 30 damage by playing Scapeshift, sacrifing 7 lands, keeping 2 mountains play, and getting 2 Valakut and 5 non-basic mountains. You'll get 10 Valakut triggers on the stack and 7 mountains in play. If they do try to interact with the GQs you'll get the basic mountain left in your deck (which is your last mountain) with one of them and any basic with the other. That will leave you with 2 Valakut, 6 mountains and 1 basic in play, and the clause for Valakut is still satisfied. Also note that the basic mountain put into play with GQ will trigger the 2 Valakuts, leaving you with 12 triggers totalt. That's 30 damage if they don't use GQ, and 36 damage if they do.
NOTE: If you allready have Valakut in play you keep it and sacrifice one less land with scapeshift (only searching for the second Valakut).
While most of the time 10 mountains is sufficient, there are definitely scenarios where we will be unable to deal lethal damage.
Most of the time drawing to many mountains forces you to go for double Valakut, ie meaning an 8-land kill instead of 7. Your opponent's life total has to be above mountains left in your deck times 3 for it to matter. As mentioned, you can allways go for double Valakut, so the most common scenario is when combo on 7 lands. You have to have drawn at least 5 mountains before affection you on 7 land combo turn.
The 11th mountain won me a game against eldrazitron where I had drawn 1 valakut and 3 mountains. I had to go off with 9 lands getting 1 valakut and 8 mountains. (He had 2 ghost quarter so I needed every mountain to make sure my triggers resolved.
You have to realize how big the advantage of having 3 byes actually is. When a Pro enter the tournement all the people who have lost or drawn a match is basicly out of the top8. That is 7/8=87,5% of the field is allready out, and on top of that the Pro get better tie breakers because of the byes.
...
I'm not sure you quite understand how the math works. 4.7% is not remotely close to Yuya Watanabe's 25% Top 8 percentage. Yuya is more than 6 times more likely to top 8 a GP than your average Joe with 3 byes.
And, yes, Magic has more variance in it than chess, since chess pieces and the board has not changed for centuries and chess does not allow you to sideboard different pieces. It's not at all relevant to this conversation since no one is arguing that Magic is free from variance or that pros win every game.
What many in this thread have decided to do is claim that luck is a huge important factor and then take a magnifying glass to where it shows up (single draw or game). If you flipped a coin 1000 times, at some point it would land on heads 5 times in a row. An unreasonable person would say 'it is more likely that the next flip will be heads since heads is on a hot streak.'
What is meant by this? Variance is not luck. You will always, over a large enough sample size, encounter all possible variants in card draws, deck matchups, and whatever else you want to consider 'luck.' However, some players overcome when variance goes against them better, and therefore win more games.
Put simply, if you play to your 5% out 1000 out of 1000 times, you will win 50 of them, while the player who plays to that out 100 times will only win 5. Over the long haul, skill shows that it is the determining factor.
I did the same math that you did for calculating probabilty of finishing in the top8; 8 divided by number of competitors for top8. In round 4 of a tournement with 1361 players at there are (approximently) 170 players 3-0 (games that end in draw will make that number smaller, but the depending on the players with byes that number can be higher; so let's assume that the accumulated effect of those factors is so small that it can be ignored). The probability for ending in the top 8 then becomes 8 / 170 = 4.70588% (if we assume that all players at 3-0 have equal chances). Of course the last assumption is not true, some players are better then others so those have a higher chance ending in the top.
Yuuya Watanabes results are impressive, but again he's only one of many Pros. What's the average top8 ratio for all Pros? That ratio should be significantly higher then 4.7%, but as your list is cut around the 5% mark I can't tell. I do notice that there are several players that are considered good but only have a ratio slightly over 5%. Shenhar, Ochoa, J. Wilson, Levy and Kibler are all below 7% ratio; the final two are even in the Hall of Fame.
The example with chess was to illustrate how much influence the players have over the game when playing at their best (which is close to 100% skill). In Magic there are some games you have practically no influence over the outcome; so some games will be all luck/unluck.
I would like to go back to the opening question: How much luck is involved in Magic?
That is allmost impossible to measure. But if I where to do so I would start trying to measure luck/skill by looking at a single game between to identical decks to elimate deckchoice from the equation. The luck/skill measured will be dependent on the deck. Let me illustrate by some examples:
Legacy Belcher Mirror: This is basicly a race. The player starting has a significant adavantage. Some number of the games the player on the draw won't play a single spell because he/she is killed before his/her first turn. Most games will be over in the first couple of turns, and after the initial hands are kept the players has little influence over the outcome.
Legacy Miracles Mirror: These games are notoriously known for being long. The players will be seeing most of their decks
and take many decisions before most of the games has come to a conclusion.
When considering matchups between different decks it gets complicated further. Some matchups decks have a little to no interaction between each other, in other they have lots of interaction. In general I belive more interaction means more deceisions, and hence more influence over the outcome.
Look at Yuya Watanabe... dude top 8s more han a quarter of the GPs in which he plays! And many other top tier pros have a 15%+ conversion ratio, which is crazy higher than the EV of a tournament with 1600 entrants (which is at .5%). So before you look at the 15% as a negative and proof of luck, realize that someone is performing, over a large sample size, 20-30 times better than than expected value. Statistically, that cannot be luck!
You have to realize how big the advantage of having 3 byes actually is. When a Pro enter the tournement all the people who have lost or drawn a match is basicly out of the top8. That is 7/8=87,5% of the field is allready out, and on top of that the Pro get better tie breakers because of the byes. (A person that has played from round 1 and is 3-0 will have a worse Opponent Match Win % then anyone with 3 byes).
The average attendance on GPs from 2009 to present is 1361 (calculated from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_Grand_Prix_events). A regular Joe with 3 byes have a 4.7% to finish in the top8 in an averaged sized GP, so Pros making top8 twice that often isn't actually that impressive; afterall they've put considerable more time into magic then the average player.
If you compare with chess, which is (allmost) a pure game of skill, you'll see that the top players like Carlsen, Kramnik, Soo, Caruana etc finish on top every tournement the enter.
I could play thousands of games against Carlsen (or any other GM) and lose every single one. On the other hand if I would play some games of Magic against a Magic Pro I'll beat him (or her) eventually, maybe in less then 10 games.
...and I've put a lot more time and effort in chess then Magic.
I saw a perfect example of poor decisions being written off as variance on Twitch this weekend. The streamer kept a two-lander on the play that was very strong if they ever hit three lands. They proceeded to brick on lands for 5 turns and lose the game. Naturally, the saltometer was sky high as they ripped on variance and the MTGO shuffler. All I could ask was, why the hell didn't this player mull that hand?? They knew they had zero cantrips to increase velocity, and they knew most of their bombs required three mana or more. With just 20ish lands left in their deck, they had around a 40% or so chance of drawing that land each turn, and only around a 60% cumulative chance of hurting it by T4 or so. The bad deckbuilding decision of running that curve with no consistency tools and that land count, and THEN not mulling, was not variance at work.
Given the information in your post is correct:
On the play he/she had a 56.8% chance of hitting the land within turn 3, and a 72.1% chance of hitting the land within turn 4. On the draw the chance is 72.% and 82.1% chance of hitting land on turn 3 and 4 respectivly.
On the draw he/she is better of keeping the hand. On the play it's up to debate whether to keep on the play. If the pay-off spell at 3 mana has a high enough impact even on turn 4 (or later) he/she should probably keep the hand on the play as well.
One should also consider the likelyhood of getting a better 6 card hand then your current 7 card hand. A 6 card will most likely be a 2 land hand anyway (given a land count of 20), so mulliganing for 3 land hand seems foolish.
In summary: My conclusion is the opposite of yours, this was a reasonable keep. And not hitting land within the first 5 draws is only a 11.3% chance, so this WAS variance at work.
Regarding the other scenario it is all about how one evaluate the risk vs the reward. The risk is higher playing the Angler without Denial backup, but the reward is also higher. Either way, you drawing the Path from the top is certainly not skill.
Back to the orginal topic. As an indicator of how skill intensive a game is one can look at the learning curve for the game. In Magic you'll find sucessfull players with short previous history. You won't find any such cases in games like Chess or Go. That is a strong indicator that the luck factor is much larger in Magic.
What are the best card options against Death's Shadow variants for RUG Scapeshift (no Bring to Light)? I'm considering Hornet Nest. I would guess they will take out their Fatal Push, so the Hornet Nest is more likely to be able to block. It also seems good against EldraziTRON and BGx-decks.
What do you think? Are there other options I should consider (Threads of Disloyalty, Sower of Tempation, Repeal, EE, etc)?
Would you like to share your thoughts on the new additions to the deck? In particular I would like to hear your about your experience with Shefet Monitor, Explore and Repeal. Do you miss hard removal, or is the Repeals enough?
So, some people have already noticed that prices have crept up over the past few days. My Cardmarket-insight data, of which I've been keeping track, actually shows that there is quite some decrease in stock on the most-wanted cards from MM2017, although generally not on their older counterparts from previous sets.
I assume more packs are cracked during weekends as drafts and sealed tournements are held on friday - sunday? Demand is the same all days of the week, but the supply is at it highest monday (after a weekend), hence we'll see a small increase in price during monday - friday?
Playing such a high-cost interactive spell as the crux of your deck is very dangerous right now.
Maybe not unplayably bad, but its certainly not popular.
Just because it's not popular doesn't mean it's not good.
That's because the deck is dead. If you want to play a Valakut deck, choose between TitanShift and Breach. No reason to play this deck anymore. I say that as a person who played RUGShift since the day it was unbanned in modern. It hurts (a lot), but it's the truth.
That's what we get for trying to play blue and be interactive.
Classic RUG Scapeshift is definitely still a good deck. Scapeshift is the best Cryptic Command fueled deck by a large margin, and as long as Cryptic Command is good Scapeshift will be viable.
Because I want to see more combo and control decks :
Perfect Transmutation UG
Instant
Search your library for a spell with converted mana cost 1 and cast it without paying it's mana cost.
This is absurdly broken. With Ancestral Visions in your deck it's practically Ancestral Recall at UG; and that's just one of many options. If that card was legal every deck in Modern, Legacy and Vintage would start with 4 Perfect Transmutation + x Ancestrak Visoins...
Ancestral Visions has CMC 0.
This. All the suspend spells have CMC 0 and this is cast any spell with CMC 1. This would be more of a tool to find Amulet of Vigor or similar 1 drop engine cards.
Somehow I read "converted mana cost 1 or less and cast it without paying it's mana cost". It's still borderline broken as there are lot of key cards at CMC 1. In vintage it's an instant speed tutor for Ancestral Recall, which will be the most frequent target. In addition it can counter the most relevant spells by including Mental Misstep and Spell Snare in your deck, it kills allmost any creature with StP or Bolt, it gets your Voltaic Key for your Timevault, and it gets any card by playing Vampiric Tutor.
It's less powerful in Modern because of the smaller cardpool, but still it can do some powerful stuff. In modern its power is in its flexability; you can get cards cards with CMC 1 that it's relevant against any deck in the format.
Agree. Grouping decks by archtype is a lot more user friendly then grouping them by a tier that changes over time.
2 Botanical Sanctum
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Mana Confluence
1 Crumbling Vestige
1 Boros Garrison
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Izzet Boilworks
2 Gruul Turf
4 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Khalni Garden
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Slayers' Stronghold
1 Vesuva
2 Tolaria West
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Tireless Tracker
2 Courser of Kruphix
4 Primeval Titan
4 Amulet of Vigor
1 Root Maze
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Serum Visions
4 Explore
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor
3 Summoner's Pact
1 Pact of Negation
1 Hornet Queen
1 Obstinate Baloth
2 Spell Pierce
2 Dismember
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Kozilek's Return
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Nature's Claim
I ended in 3rd place of 41 players total.
Short summary of my matches.
Match 1 - Jund: 2-0
G1: I had turn 1 Amulet into second Amulet and Jace bouncing my opponents Confidant. Followed up with double Titan.
G2: Slow game. He had some disruption but was not able to stop my Titan.
Match 2 - Death and Taxes: 2-0
Don't really recall these. Jace did some work controling the board.
Match 3 - Death and Taxes: 2-0
Don't really recall these either. My opponent did play Amulet Bloom when it was legal, so he was aware of the interaction and did his best to respond to triggers with GQs, Aether Vial activations and Paths.
Match 4 - Jund: 1-2
G1: I had both Jace and Titan. Ended the game with a hasted double striking Titan.
G2: My opponent had early pressure with double Goyfs and was able to close the game fast
G3: I lost 3 bounce lands to 2 Fulminator Mages and a Kolaghan's Command getting back a Fulminator...
Match 5 - RG TRON: 1-1-0
G1: He had natual TRON and a turn 3 Worldbreaker. This game took some time as I was trying to race him with hasted Titans. I don't recall the details, but the game ended when he had landed 2 Ulamogs, 2 Worldbreakers and all my Titans were exiled. I was able to hit him down to 2 life, so the game was close even though he had "the nuts".
G2: This was a "fair" game. I had a Crumble for his TRON-lands, but he was also targeting my lands with GQ and Worldbreaker. I won the game, but we didn't have time to the start the last game.
Match 6 - Burn: 2-0
G1: Got him with a hasted double striking Titan
G2: Courser made things difficult for him. When I landed Azusa a few turn later and used a bounceland for 3 life a turn his life became miserable.ar
Quarter Final - Zoo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qT4EX-U7YY
Semi Final - WB Eldrazi: 0-2
He had a lot of disruption both games and I was not able to land a relevant threat.
If the 11th mountain is needed depends on how much life your opponent is on.
Let's have a look at your example:
You have 9 lands in play, 4 of them which are mountains. Your opponent has 2 Ghost Quarters as only interaction.
IF your basic mountain is allready in play you can't get double Valakut because the 2 Ghost Quarters can put you down to 5 mountains (2 Valakut + 7 mountains -> then 2 mountains get destroyed by GQ). So the maximum damage you can do in this case is 18 by sacrificing 7 lands, keeping 2 mountains in play, and getting 1 Valakut and 6 mountains. You'll get 6 Valakut triggers and 8 mountains in play, so you can't be interupted by the 2 GQs.
BUT IF you have your basic moutain left in library you can get double Valakaut. You can do 30 damage by playing Scapeshift, sacrifing 7 lands, keeping 2 mountains play, and getting 2 Valakut and 5 non-basic mountains. You'll get 10 Valakut triggers on the stack and 7 mountains in play. If they do try to interact with the GQs you'll get the basic mountain left in your deck (which is your last mountain) with one of them and any basic with the other. That will leave you with 2 Valakut, 6 mountains and 1 basic in play, and the clause for Valakut is still satisfied. Also note that the basic mountain put into play with GQ will trigger the 2 Valakuts, leaving you with 12 triggers totalt. That's 30 damage if they don't use GQ, and 36 damage if they do.
NOTE: If you allready have Valakut in play you keep it and sacrifice one less land with scapeshift (only searching for the second Valakut).
Most of the time drawing to many mountains forces you to go for double Valakut, ie meaning an 8-land kill instead of 7. Your opponent's life total has to be above mountains left in your deck times 3 for it to matter. As mentioned, you can allways go for double Valakut, so the most common scenario is when combo on 7 lands. You have to have drawn at least 5 mountains before affection you on 7 land combo turn.
The Ghost Quarters doesn't matter as long as you have a basic Mountain left in your deck for each Ghost Quarter. A more detailed explaination can be found here:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/666117-scapeshift-and-ghost-quarter-question
I did the same math that you did for calculating probabilty of finishing in the top8; 8 divided by number of competitors for top8. In round 4 of a tournement with 1361 players at there are (approximently) 170 players 3-0 (games that end in draw will make that number smaller, but the depending on the players with byes that number can be higher; so let's assume that the accumulated effect of those factors is so small that it can be ignored). The probability for ending in the top 8 then becomes 8 / 170 = 4.70588% (if we assume that all players at 3-0 have equal chances). Of course the last assumption is not true, some players are better then others so those have a higher chance ending in the top.
Yuuya Watanabes results are impressive, but again he's only one of many Pros. What's the average top8 ratio for all Pros? That ratio should be significantly higher then 4.7%, but as your list is cut around the 5% mark I can't tell. I do notice that there are several players that are considered good but only have a ratio slightly over 5%. Shenhar, Ochoa, J. Wilson, Levy and Kibler are all below 7% ratio; the final two are even in the Hall of Fame.
The example with chess was to illustrate how much influence the players have over the game when playing at their best (which is close to 100% skill). In Magic there are some games you have practically no influence over the outcome; so some games will be all luck/unluck.
I would like to go back to the opening question: How much luck is involved in Magic?
That is allmost impossible to measure. But if I where to do so I would start trying to measure luck/skill by looking at a single game between to identical decks to elimate deckchoice from the equation. The luck/skill measured will be dependent on the deck. Let me illustrate by some examples:
Legacy Belcher Mirror: This is basicly a race. The player starting has a significant adavantage. Some number of the games the player on the draw won't play a single spell because he/she is killed before his/her first turn. Most games will be over in the first couple of turns, and after the initial hands are kept the players has little influence over the outcome.
Legacy Miracles Mirror: These games are notoriously known for being long. The players will be seeing most of their decks
and take many decisions before most of the games has come to a conclusion.
When considering matchups between different decks it gets complicated further. Some matchups decks have a little to no interaction between each other, in other they have lots of interaction. In general I belive more interaction means more deceisions, and hence more influence over the outcome.
You have to realize how big the advantage of having 3 byes actually is. When a Pro enter the tournement all the people who have lost or drawn a match is basicly out of the top8. That is 7/8=87,5% of the field is allready out, and on top of that the Pro get better tie breakers because of the byes. (A person that has played from round 1 and is 3-0 will have a worse Opponent Match Win % then anyone with 3 byes).
The average attendance on GPs from 2009 to present is 1361 (calculated from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_Grand_Prix_events). A regular Joe with 3 byes have a 4.7% to finish in the top8 in an averaged sized GP, so Pros making top8 twice that often isn't actually that impressive; afterall they've put considerable more time into magic then the average player.
If you compare with chess, which is (allmost) a pure game of skill, you'll see that the top players like Carlsen, Kramnik, Soo, Caruana etc finish on top every tournement the enter.
I could play thousands of games against Carlsen (or any other GM) and lose every single one. On the other hand if I would play some games of Magic against a Magic Pro I'll beat him (or her) eventually, maybe in less then 10 games.
...and I've put a lot more time and effort in chess then Magic.
Given the information in your post is correct:
On the play he/she had a 56.8% chance of hitting the land within turn 3, and a 72.1% chance of hitting the land within turn 4. On the draw the chance is 72.% and 82.1% chance of hitting land on turn 3 and 4 respectivly.
On the draw he/she is better of keeping the hand. On the play it's up to debate whether to keep on the play. If the pay-off spell at 3 mana has a high enough impact even on turn 4 (or later) he/she should probably keep the hand on the play as well.
One should also consider the likelyhood of getting a better 6 card hand then your current 7 card hand. A 6 card will most likely be a 2 land hand anyway (given a land count of 20), so mulliganing for 3 land hand seems foolish.
In summary: My conclusion is the opposite of yours, this was a reasonable keep. And not hitting land within the first 5 draws is only a 11.3% chance, so this WAS variance at work.
Regarding the other scenario it is all about how one evaluate the risk vs the reward. The risk is higher playing the Angler without Denial backup, but the reward is also higher. Either way, you drawing the Path from the top is certainly not skill.
Back to the orginal topic. As an indicator of how skill intensive a game is one can look at the learning curve for the game. In Magic you'll find sucessfull players with short previous history. You won't find any such cases in games like Chess or Go. That is a strong indicator that the luck factor is much larger in Magic.
The closest thing to Stirrings would be Commune with the Gods.
What do you think? Are there other options I should consider (Threads of Disloyalty, Sower of Tempation, Repeal, EE, etc)?
Interesting.
Would you like to share your thoughts on the new additions to the deck? In particular I would like to hear your about your experience with Shefet Monitor, Explore and Repeal. Do you miss hard removal, or is the Repeals enough?
I assume more packs are cracked during weekends as drafts and sealed tournements are held on friday - sunday? Demand is the same all days of the week, but the supply is at it highest monday (after a weekend), hence we'll see a small increase in price during monday - friday?
+1
Glad to see you've started playing Snaps and Bolts.
Classic RUG Scapeshift is definitely still a good deck. Scapeshift is the best Cryptic Command fueled deck by a large margin, and as long as Cryptic Command is good Scapeshift will be viable.
When using [ card ] - tags it automatic links to cards-page here on mtgsalvation. The prices on those pages is not up to date.
You were off by 500 000% with your price estimate. No reason to be upset when someone corrects you.
Somehow I read "converted mana cost 1 or less and cast it without paying it's mana cost". It's still borderline broken as there are lot of key cards at CMC 1. In vintage it's an instant speed tutor for Ancestral Recall, which will be the most frequent target. In addition it can counter the most relevant spells by including Mental Misstep and Spell Snare in your deck, it kills allmost any creature with StP or Bolt, it gets your Voltaic Key for your Timevault, and it gets any card by playing Vampiric Tutor.
It's less powerful in Modern because of the smaller cardpool, but still it can do some powerful stuff. In modern its power is in its flexability; you can get cards cards with CMC 1 that it's relevant against any deck in the format.