How's anyone supposed to answer that? Every card that got banned in Modern had a different life-span in the format.
Pod had something like 2 or 3 years before it got hit, DRS had a year and a half or so, TC had I think 4-ish months. Most of the cards on the list are put there for different reasons anyway so how do you expect anyone to put a time frame to it.
If WOTC thinks it needs to go, it goes. Simple as that.
Play this game long enough and you'll experience both losing out and coming out ahead due to a ban list update. Heck this even happens organically with the introduction of new cards.
Game/format balance should not be held hostage by card prices. If a situation arises where a deck is heads and shoulders above everything else then it should go. 'investments' be damned.
And you're right, dredge can brute force through 1 or 2 relics without too much trouble with decent dredges. Creeping chills still do their thing. Creatures can still be cast. He talks like its so easy to just hold up relic. Dredge doesn't need to blow their load in one big turn. They can play the slow game just fine and it's not like they don't run nature's claim to force the relic.
Are you gonna crack the relic when it's a bloodghast coming back to trigger an amalgam? If you do, pretty easy to start refilling again next turn, if not here's 5 power on the board, deal with it.
We didn't have any visibility into Day 1 stats before. And there have been some assertions (more reddit than here)because of that unknown that UR Phoenix being an immensely popular deck may have under-performed in conversions from Day 1 to Day 2.
Now that we know almost for sure (at least for Tampa) that it over-performed at every stage, that can be put to rest.
12% is big news, by the way. Izzet Phoenix’s metagame share of 12.2% in Tampa is the highest a deck reached at any Grand Prix in recent memory. I won’t judge whether or not this qualifies as oppressive, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that once upon a time Splinter Twin was banned for threatening the format’s diversity.
Equally astonishing is the win rate Izzet maintained even in the face of growing numbers. Usually, a rise in popularity goes hand in wing with a drop-off in performance. Early adopters typically outperform the average player. I thought we’d seen this effect in action with Grand Prix Los Angeles, but no, that was just temporary turbulence. The win rate went back to 57% and a bit for Tampa Bay. Indeed it is higher now than it ever was before, if only by 0.02%.
As you will see, other archetypes managed to do better than Izzet Phoenix at one or two events, but nothing outperformed the deck with comparable consistency. Also, nothing could match Izzet Phoenix’s massive sample size.
Should be noted that when he says 12.2% metagame share, it is based on a sample of 57.5% of that tournament’s full field.
So IF this 12.2% is accurate, or as accurate as it can be based on the sample, then we now know that UR Phoenix:
Day 1: 12.2% (possibly more)
Day 2: 19.5%
Top 32: 31.25%
Over-performed.
Hopefully people can now stop claiming that the deck is overrated and not that good.
Agreed, if happenings outside playing the game affecting attendance is your fundamental point, then yes, there are a lot of factors that are frankly impossible to account for.
But using the GGT banning to 'reinforce' your fundamental point is disingenuous at best.
Adding to that, I think 2017/2018 with Modern Masters 3 and fetchland reprints has made Modern far more accessible, which is a great thing, and a huge factor in bringing players in to the format.
If people bring in arguments of how there are many players who have "completely been driven out of the format", then these people might as well come with some data to back this up, because just claiming it is not enough.
Again, for the people in THIS forum, the result is rather clear. Attendance in events has not dropped as well, so I am not sure where this narrative is coming from, but I guess personal experience is a strong feeling.
This is a metric we can objectively measure and is well documented. I just took the numbers from season 2014-2015 onwards, excluded team events and the results seem to indicate that the average attendance for Modern GPs is going down in the last seasons.
If we are going to use this data as an indicative of how much people enjoy the format, attendance numbers would reinforce the idea that people are being driven out of the format.
Doesn't this have a bit of a correlation doesn't equal causation problem? Changes in incentives, prize payouts, number of modern GPs, CFB getting a monopoly on event hosting, etc could all attribute to a decline in attendance.
To kind of reinforce my point, Golgari Grave Troll was banned January 9th 2017 and the "result" was an 18% drop in GP attendance from the previous year
If you're assuming that GGT was banned at the start of 2017, therefore resulting in attendance drop of 18% for the year Jan 2017 - Jan 2018, then you would be wrong.
Depian mentioned that he counted by seasons and not the actual year. Seasons don't start in Jan and end in Dec. 2016-2017 season started on 13th August 2016 and ended on 30th July 2017. The banning happened right smack in the middle of that particular season. The attendance drop in the next season (2017-2018)can't be attributed to the banning.
I'm quite surprised UR Phoenix actually hit 55% win rate vs the rest of the field. I thought it might have been less considering the law of large numbers.
Update to 1 of my previous posts (to account for places 16-32 @ Bilbao):
Tampa: 19.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so 31.25% of top 32 (4 in top 8) - Top 32 at 33 points. 33 points players continue until 49th place.
Bilbao: 22.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so also 31.25% of top 32 (2 in top 8) - Top 32 is a very clean cut off at 36 points for this event.
So based on these 2, I'd say UR Phoenix over-performed in conversion to top places relative to share of day 2.
While UR Phoenix had very strong Day 2 to Top 32 conversion, it does make sense that it was a few places away from being the best performing deck vs the field considering the law of large numbers and how it had something like triple the play rate of the next most popular deck.
If we were to refer to Karsten's article for matches played for UR Phoenix and the 4 decks that had better win-rate in non-mirrors:
UR Phoenix played a total of 274 matches while the deck with best win-rate, whir prison only played 66.
UR Phoenix played over 4x the amount of matches than Whir prison.
The 4 decks that had a better win-rate than UR Phoenix combine for a total of 284 matches played.
Because of this huge disparity in numbers, I'm not sure if it's fair to say UR Phoenix is 5th best deck because of its overall non-mirror win-rate. After all, it did over-perform in Day 2 to top 32 conversions
Do any of you think Whir prison could sustain a win rate anywhere near 66% or even 60% if it was played 4 times as much? I highly doubt it.
Edit:
Tobi Henke puts it into words better than me so I'll just quote him
But when evaluating these numbers, we also have to take into account that a larger population gravitates to more average performances almost by default. The main stream usually finds itself somewhere in the middle.
@gkourou Serious question. What is the logic behind why you think Phoenix is overrated?
If it's just being carried by a wave of popularity, logically, there would be higher representation but lower conversion, but this is not the case.
Tampa: 19.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so 31.25% of top 32 (4 in top 8)
Bilbao: 22.5% Day 2 share, 5 UR Phoenix in top 16 so also 31.25% of top 16 (2 in top 8)
Based on these 2, UR Phoenix over-performed in conversion to top places relative to share of day 2.
What is the reasoning behind claiming that a deck which over-performed, is actually overrated?
Has Gokurou ever asserted that modern is the best it's ever been in relation to the current phoenix meta? I keep seeing Renegade Rallier mention it over and over in response to posts that don't contain the statement.
They didn't say that UWx are second and third as of now. They spoke of a specific timeframe and they were right in that one.
Also, yes, I believe Modern is one of the best Modern formats we have ever seen at the moment, so yeah, I am happy with that statement of theirs(that everything is fine for now, no changes are needed and that Modern will hopefully self regulate itself), because I 100% agree.
My opinion is still that it's hugely over represented as a deck, and even if it's too consistent, it's not that good, so I guess I am in line with all of those people.
Tampa: 19.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so 31.25% of top 32 (4 in top 8)
Bilbao: 22.5% Day 2 share, 5 UR Phoenix in top 16 so also 31.25% of top 16 (2 in top 8)
So based on these 2, I'd say UR Phoenix over-performed in conversion to top places relative to share of day 2.
Pod had something like 2 or 3 years before it got hit, DRS had a year and a half or so, TC had I think 4-ish months. Most of the cards on the list are put there for different reasons anyway so how do you expect anyone to put a time frame to it.
If WOTC thinks it needs to go, it goes. Simple as that.
I simply don't care about the notion that things shouldn't be banned because it hurts some people's wallets.
And you're right, dredge can brute force through 1 or 2 relics without too much trouble with decent dredges. Creeping chills still do their thing. Creatures can still be cast. He talks like its so easy to just hold up relic. Dredge doesn't need to blow their load in one big turn. They can play the slow game just fine and it's not like they don't run nature's claim to force the relic.
Are you gonna crack the relic when it's a bloodghast coming back to trigger an amalgam? If you do, pretty easy to start refilling again next turn, if not here's 5 power on the board, deal with it.
Now that we know almost for sure (at least for Tampa) that it over-performed at every stage, that can be put to rest.
Should be noted that when he says 12.2% metagame share, it is based on a sample of 57.5% of that tournament’s full field.
So IF this 12.2% is accurate, or as accurate as it can be based on the sample, then we now know that UR Phoenix:
Day 1: 12.2% (possibly more)
Day 2: 19.5%
Top 32: 31.25%
Over-performed.
Hopefully people can now stop claiming that the deck is overrated and not that good.
But using the GGT banning to 'reinforce' your fundamental point is disingenuous at best.
Adding to that, I think 2017/2018 with Modern Masters 3 and fetchland reprints has made Modern far more accessible, which is a great thing, and a huge factor in bringing players in to the format.
If you're assuming that GGT was banned at the start of 2017, therefore resulting in attendance drop of 18% for the year Jan 2017 - Jan 2018, then you would be wrong.
Depian mentioned that he counted by seasons and not the actual year. Seasons don't start in Jan and end in Dec. 2016-2017 season started on 13th August 2016 and ended on 30th July 2017. The banning happened right smack in the middle of that particular season. The attendance drop in the next season (2017-2018)can't be attributed to the banning.
Update to 1 of my previous posts (to account for places 16-32 @ Bilbao):
Tampa: 19.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so 31.25% of top 32 (4 in top 8) - Top 32 at 33 points. 33 points players continue until 49th place.
Bilbao: 22.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so also 31.25% of top 32 (2 in top 8) - Top 32 is a very clean cut off at 36 points for this event.
So based on these 2, I'd say UR Phoenix over-performed in conversion to top places relative to share of day 2.
Counted from: https://www.channelfireball.com/the-9th-16th-place-decklists-of-grand-prix-bilbao/
and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRNjbzrDeyG6-NV3rvYNuyhQTCF1y9h52ufa-n9gZWP-COji9A_d0C_VMvv8WwDOLILuG79ZcV1adan/pubhtml?gid=1324917569&single=true
and https://www.channelfireball.com/grand-prix-tampa-9-32-decklists/
While UR Phoenix had very strong Day 2 to Top 32 conversion, it does make sense that it was a few places away from being the best performing deck vs the field considering the law of large numbers and how it had something like triple the play rate of the next most popular deck.
If we were to refer to Karsten's article for matches played for UR Phoenix and the 4 decks that had better win-rate in non-mirrors:
UR Phoenix 274 - 55.5%
Whir prison 66 - 66.7%
Dredge 85 - 60%
UW Control 61 - 59%
Affinity 72 - 55.6%
UR Phoenix played a total of 274 matches while the deck with best win-rate, whir prison only played 66.
UR Phoenix played over 4x the amount of matches than Whir prison.
The 4 decks that had a better win-rate than UR Phoenix combine for a total of 284 matches played.
Because of this huge disparity in numbers, I'm not sure if it's fair to say UR Phoenix is 5th best deck because of its overall non-mirror win-rate. After all, it did over-perform in Day 2 to top 32 conversions
Do any of you think Whir prison could sustain a win rate anywhere near 66% or even 60% if it was played 4 times as much? I highly doubt it.
Edit:
Tobi Henke puts it into words better than me so I'll just quote him
If it's just being carried by a wave of popularity, logically, there would be higher representation but lower conversion, but this is not the case.
Tampa: 19.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so 31.25% of top 32 (4 in top 8)
Bilbao: 22.5% Day 2 share, 5 UR Phoenix in top 16 so also 31.25% of top 16 (2 in top 8)
Based on these 2, UR Phoenix over-performed in conversion to top places relative to share of day 2.
What is the reasoning behind claiming that a deck which over-performed, is actually overrated?
Edit:
Gonna call BS on this
Tampa: 19.5% Day 2 share, 10 UR Phoenix in top 32 so 31.25% of top 32 (4 in top 8)
Bilbao: 22.5% Day 2 share, 5 UR Phoenix in top 16 so also 31.25% of top 16 (2 in top 8)
So based on these 2, I'd say UR Phoenix over-performed in conversion to top places relative to share of day 2.
Counted from: https://www.channelfireball.com/the-9th-16th-place-decklists-of-grand-prix-bilbao/
and https://www.channelfireball.com/grand-prix-tampa-9-32-decklists/
A deck that's highly popular but "not that good" as you claim won't convert like this into top 32/16.