[Article] Eternal Europe – Get Back Into The Helvault Already

[Malchar]

And I recall when Ad Nauseam came out, people were calling for it to be banned as they made direct comparisons to Bargain. The whole "well, Card A is banned, so Card B must be banned too!" is a played out argument that doesn't hold a lot of water, mostly due to Wizards' inconsistent policies and enforcement of said policies.

The weird thing is that sometimes having one copy of a card is fine, but having another one with a similar function makes the whole thing broken. I mean, if bargain was legal, sneak and show decks would have a total of 8x griselbrand effects. This would make the deck way more consistent, and a single pithing needle wouldn't necessarily lock them out since you can only stop one engine per needle. This isn't the greatest example, but I'm just using it to illustrate a point.

[Lemnear]

Mind Twist is obviously more powerful than Rakdos's Return, but Mind Twist is still an awful card, so the dropoff wouldn't be as pronounced as you're making it. Again, my point was that the banned list doesn't necessarily align with Wizards' perspective on fun/unfun/good/bad/etc.

And I recall when Ad Nauseam came out, people were calling for it to be banned as they made direct comparisons to Bargain. The whole "well, Card A is banned, so Card B must be banned too!" is a played out argument that doesn't hold a lot of water, mostly due to Wizards' inconsistent policies and enforcement of said policies.

They just banned the enabler (mystical Tutor/S&T) Not the engine (Ad Nauseam/Griselbrand). *shrug*

As if we would ever get a detailed Analysis for bannings or unbalanced new printings from the DCI or WotC

[Koby]

I've done some number crunching on Griselbrand since his release back in May. The data points to Griselbrand being a powerful, but tempered strategy in Legacy in hindsight. Many may find this interesting/useful for analysis. If you have any questions, please ask. There are some conclusions that can be drawn from the data, but some that cannot.

You asked, so here is the Griselbrand data I've gathered/calculated:

Data is based upon TCdecks tournaments recorded. This will not include all the tournaments, but is consistent month to month.

Raw = # of decks with Griselbrand (Reanimator, Hypergenesis, Sneak Show / OmniTell, Tin Fins)

Month		Raw	% of Decks with Griselbrand
May  '12	48	10.90%
June '12	53	10.30%
July '12	43	11.50%
Aug  '12	24	 8.30%
Sept '12	48	10.20%
Oct  '12	38	 9.50%
Nov  '12	39	 9.50%
Dec  '12	34	 9.30%
Jan  '13	30	10.00%
Feb  '13	30	11.20%
Mar  '13	40	14.90%

Based on raw amount, it seems to be steady between 30-50 Griselbrand decks per month. However, as a percentage of all the decks played, this is now more visible as there are fewer reported events. It is definitely more apparent the less data that is reported. I don't think all of March's events have been reported as of yet.

The data does not represent nor not-represent that conclusion at all. This is a bird's 20,000 ft view down on Legacy as a whole. March's data saw a large jump for Sneak Attack from previous months in terms of ranking, which means several things specifically:

1) increased play of the deck, or being more popular in general
2) better performance in a given tournament (higher finish in Swiss = more points)

You have to specifically/mathematically define what "dominate" means in order to validate your conclusion.

As a side note, the approach I used can gauge diversity of archetypes. That might be a good metric to see if the format is evolving in a positive or degenerate way. Suppose the threshold is 80% of the most popular decks; count the unique archetypes represented and use that as the measure. The more decks that show up in this threshold, the more diverse the format is. Diversity is representing that no one or few decks is comprising a majority of the Top 8 placements.

[xfxf]

Koby, if you still have the spreadsheet can you do a quick subtotals for the Deathrite Shamans decks as well? I think it could be nice to have a frame of reference or comparison to understand how much is 10%.

[Koby]

Koby, if you still have the spreadsheet can you do a quick subtotals for the Deathrite Shamans decks as well? I think it could be nice to have a frame of reference or comparison to understand how much is 10%.

Ya I still have the spreadsheet. I think something like DRS is a little more looser criteria for selection, as many decks can play it and often do. For instance, some BUG lists play him, but not all. Whereas decks like Jund all exclusively play him. That becomes part of the challenge.

Pointing to Sneak Show and saying with absolute certainty "this deck plays with Griselbrand" is easy.
Pointing to BUG Delver and saying with absolute certainty "this deck plays with DRS" is not, however.

[xfxf]

Yep, fair enough.