[B&R] Vengevival vs GP NJ

[Gheizen64]

JESUS NO I lost first 2 matches log because i misclicked refresh... I'm writing on paper next time. Well i won with survival against UR delver first match 2-1 with and lost the second 2-0. I am playing the third match , first game right now, and Survival is about to win.

It'd be much faster than writing if i could get someone to test with* me on cockatrice and register it with some video program? I'm not good with those pc things.

EDIT: okay i'm reading about video recording programs, is EZVID good for this?

EDIT2: It has some horrible freeware annoyance, i just want something that's clean and just record zzz

[apple713]

So what? BS is a repeatable card tutor that filter and only get better as more cards get printed. With the difference that apparently it's so it's fine while SotF is green so it ain't? Or wait, what about SnT that is a mana cheat for creatures that only get better with power creep etc... but apparently that's fine too because it's blue ok.
The point of what i did is showing that old "busted" interactions aren't actually as busted as we remember because of how much stronger the rest of the pool as gotten in the meanwhile. It's just a memory refreshing exercise, sorry if you had to waste your time bitching about my post.

TLDR: Although i agree that sotf is probably ok to unban, because it's disrupted by almost everything, pithing needle, abrupt decay, DRS, RIP.... your article was unconvincing


You argument is not something i would expect to see on the source, its more consistent with mtg salvation...the issue you are having in this comparison is that brainstorm is nothing like sotf. the equivalent of a blue sotf would be

Survival of the smartest: 1U
Enchantment
Card Text: Blue, Discard an instant or sorcery card: Search your library for an instant or sorcery card, reveal that card, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

Other than the fact that brainstorm is absolutely nothing like the above card. Brainstorm is a one time use like S&T.

it would be more convincing to argue that sotf should a higher cmc like sneak attack or birthing pod.

Arguing that sotf is too slow or not powerful enough because the deck you constructed is poor is also not a good argument. The power level of the card is absurd. It only continues to grow with every creature that is printed. In time S&T will probably get banned if permanents become so significant that it is 100% assured victory upon resolution. Griselbrand comes dangerously close to achieving this result.

sotf is 1 card engine for 2 mana. it requires only itself to be successful. cards similar to this are oath of druids, hermit druid, and have been banned with good reason.

[btm10]

sotf is 1 card engine for 2 mana. it requires only itself to be successful. cards similar to this are oath of druids, hermit druid, and have been banned with good reason.

The comparison to Oath is deeply misleading. While Oath places more stringent restrictions on deckbuilding, it's still a one-card combo in a way that SotF and Show and Tell aren't. Hermit Druid is a bit closer, but is significantly more broken because he lets you flip your deck immediately for G, rather than going one card at a time, and Druid requires no condition (like a creature in hand) to start a tutor chain the way Survival does.

I think that the major hindrance to testing decks like this is that the decks against which you're playing the Survival deck are the "week 1" decks - Survival gets unbanned and people either make few-to-no adjustments to their existing decks or radically overcompensate for it, and the metagame a month or two after unbanning could look very different than the metagame a week after unbanning, and the degree and kind of change we see due to unbanned Survival is what determines if it's a safe unban, not whether it can dominate (or be dominated by) a deck that's done well in the current meta where playing against Survival isn't something that people are building toward.

[Gheizen64]

Ok can we skip the part about why SotF is broken and other cards aren't and :

if i could get someone to test with* me on cockatrice and register it with some video program?

EDIT: okay i'm reading about video recording programs, is EZVID good for this?

EDIT2: It has some horrible freeware annoyance, i'd rather have something that's clean and just record

This could be much more productive than just spamming post in the Banned and REstricted discussion topic.

[Gheizen64]

The comparison to Oath is deeply misleading. While Oath places more stringent restrictions on deckbuilding, it's still a one-card combo in a way that SotF and Show and Tell aren't. Hermit Druid is a bit closer, but is significantly more broken because he lets you flip your deck immediately for G, rather than going one card at a time, and Druid requires no condition (like a creature in hand) to start a tutor chain the way Survival does.

I think that the major hindrance to testing decks like this is that the decks against which you're playing the Survival deck are the "week 1" decks - Survival gets unbanned and people either make few-to-no adjustments to their existing decks or radically overcompensate for it, and the metagame a month or two after unbanning could look very different than the metagame a week after unbanning, and the degree and kind of change we see due to unbanned Survival is what determines if it's a safe unban, not whether it can dominate (or be dominated by) a deck that's done well in the current meta where playing against Survival isn't something that people are building toward.

It's a trade you have to do. Actually the only one since you won't get a dedicated playtest team spending weeks on developing a non-existing meta.
You can test non-optimal survival lists vs current legacy decks, and it can be an indicator. If you start to *fix* decks for an hypotetical survival meta, you should then also play an optimized survival list but that'd take a lot of time if it's not downright impossible.
Bad data is still better than speculation. If an untuned survival list don't win against decks that don't consider it into the metagame, it probably mean that even a better designed survival deck wouldn't be that much better against a tuned list that consider Survival in the metgame. Also consider that survival isn't really splashable because this is the Surv shell:

4 Survival , 3 VV, 2 Walla, 1 Retainer, 1 Iona, 1 Elesh Norn (or OOze + phyrexian dev. but i think retainer's better)

About 11-12 cards, and you probably have to put shaman in there if you want to be consistent, at which point you get to 14-15 cards, which clearly isn't splashable, even if it can work as a base for many different decks.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Ok can we skip the part about why SotF is broken and other cards aren't and :

if i could get someone to test with* me on cockatrice and register it with some video program?

EDIT: okay i'm reading about video recording programs, is EZVID good for this?

EDIT2: It has some horrible freeware annoyance, i'd rather have something that's clean and just record

This could be much more productive than just spamming post in the Banned and REstricted discussion topic.

Obs I believe is what you're looking for

[nedleeds]

Oath? Really? Somebody tried to compare the power level of Survival to Oath? I mean they are both green enchantments? But Jesus, that's absurd. Oath reads "If your opponent is playing creatures you probably win the game". It's a 6-7 card investment and a one card combo. Can we compare Dark Ritual to Black Lotus next? Thanks.

[Gheizen64]

Obs I believe is what you're looking for

Finally this is perfect thx you, i'm ready to record everything boys

[bruizar]

It's a trade you have to do. Actually the only one since you won't get a dedicated playtest team spending weeks on developing a non-existing meta.
You can test non-optimal survival lists vs current legacy decks, and it can be an indicator. If you start to *fix* decks for an hypotetical survival meta, you should then also play an optimized survival list but that'd take a lot of time if it's not downright impossible.

I think it's perfectly fine to test the Survival lists as they were when they got banned. They got banned because THOSE particular decks were dominating. If those decks don't perform against new decks, just open Survival of the Fittest up again. Let the hive mind see if they can break Survival of the Fittest again, perhaps in a different shell. If SotF is broken yet again, WOTC can always put the genie back in the bottle for a couple of years. There is nothing permanent about unbannings and I believe it is good to test the waters from time to time IF those dominating decks of notoriety are empirically proven to not be dominant anymore.

Bad data is still better than speculation.

Well, if your input is crap, your output will be crap, so you're going a little too far here ^_^. Basing your decisions on misinformation is one of the biggest hurdles in analytics. I would rather go for the gut feeling of specialist than go for the decision that was based on the right interpretation of wrong data (or the wrong interpretation of good data).



My personal opinion is that Survival of the Fittest is still too strong, but I would deem it an improvement if they just tested it by unbanning it. Pithing Needle doesn't stop Survival at all since you just Survival a Reclamation Sage in response to the needle. If Needle comes down before Survival, just Green Sun's Zenith Reclamation Sage/Harmonic Sliver as a backup plan or use Fauna Shaman, drop loyal retainers into Emrakul and annihalator 6 for the win. Abrupt Decay doesn't have split second, so you can get an Eternal Witness in response for example (a bit slow, but it illustrates the point). Krosan Grip was around when survival dominated and that didn't seem to have helped.

[apple713]

I think it's perfectly fine to test the Survival lists as they were when they got banned. They got banned because THOSE particular decks were dominating. If those decks don't perform against new decks, just open Survival of the Fittest up again. Let the hive mind see if they can break Survival of the Fittest again, perhaps in a different shell. If SotF is broken yet again, WOTC can always put the genie back in the bottle for a couple of years. There is nothing permanent about unbannings and I believe it is good to test the waters from time to time IF those dominating decks of notoriety are empirically proven to not be dominant anymore.


My personal opinion is that Survival of the Fittest is still too strong, but I would deem it an improvement if they just tested it by unbanning it. Pithing Needle doesn't stop Survival at all since you just Survival a Reclamation Sage in response to the needle. If Needle comes down before Survival, just Green Sun's Zenith Reclamation Sage/Harmonic Sliver as a backup plan or use Fauna Shaman, drop loyal retainers into Emrakul and annihalator 6 for the win. Abrupt Decay doesn't have split second, so you can get an Eternal Witness in response for example (a bit slow, but it illustrates the point). Krosan Grip was around when survival dominated and that didn't seem to have helped.

survival didn't get banned because survival decks were dominating. By that logic brainstorm should be banned. Survival got banned because when viewing the card independantly it is simply too powerful, at least in their opinion.

[Gheizen64]

Recorded a match vs Grixis control but my opponent had to leave after the 2nd game so we ended 1-1. Also holy shit recorded matches are so slow, i should totally record at 2x because without commentating is way too long. 45 mins for 2 games what is this.

The 2nd game was nice, with him getting a Dack Fayden emblem, and stealing my jitte, which however didn't do much thanks to my Maze and won without ever playing Survival (he played T1 needle and i never drew a decay or Pridemage). And i won from a mull to 5 wow.

[ReAnimator]

I think it's perfectly fine to test the Survival lists as they were when they got banned. They got banned because THOSE particular decks were dominating. If those decks don't perform against new decks, just open Survival of the Fittest up again. Let the hive mind see if they can break Survival of the Fittest again, perhaps in a different shell. If SotF is broken yet again, WOTC can always put the genie back in the bottle for a couple of years. There is nothing permanent about unbannings and I believe it is good to test the waters from time to time IF those dominating decks of notoriety are empirically proven to not be dominant anymore.

This doesn't make any sense to me. If we were testing if Flash was OK we would be using Serum Visions and Lim Dul's Vault over Ponder and Preordain? Why?

Why wouldn't every Survival list start on 4 DRS?

I don't see a reason to needlessly handy cap an experiment like this if you were trying to determine if the card is ok in this environment you should use the best cards in the environment to determine that.

[ReAnimator]

Because the reason was the existence of THAT particular deck. It wasn't banned because of Deathrite Shaman, it was banned because _THAT_ particular composition of cards PROVED to be too much. If you are going to start with hypothetical decks, the discussion goes no where. First the burden of proof is showing that the deck for which it was banned is safe today. After that, you can run other experiments or decide to unban it. What happens if you follow your thought stream? Anyone can counter the argument by debating that your brew is unproven and sucks and therefore it loses. EVEN if DRS is a strict upgrade (Which it is not, otherwise Infect would play it over Noble Hierarch), you must avoid the temptation initially. First prove that Vengevine in its ban-worthy state no longer poses a threat, then brew to your heart's desire.

I see what you are saying but honestly this makes literally no sense to me and seems deeply flawed.

[Tammit67]

I see what you are saying but honestly this makes literally no sense to me and seems deeply flawed.

Yeah, why would I care if a deck that got banned out 2 years ago is still ban worthy now? Wouldn't it make sense to see if the card that got banned would still be ridiculous with today's card pool and meta?

If you really care to see "Is Vengevival still too good for today's meta?", then yeah sure... but that conversation is really just a segway into "Is Survival still banworthy?"

[Tammit67]

It depends on the goal of your analysis. If your goal is to make a case / petition to wotc, you need at the minimum, to be able to show that the banned version isn't still better. If that empircal data is missing, it's all nice and cool that you found that survival of the fittest isn't dominating anymore, but it still means nothing because you didn't actually test vengevival.

H₀: Vengevival > format
H₁: Vengevival <= format

Testing DRS-Vengevival thus fails to give you information which allows you to reject the null.

The second hypothesis would be:

H₀: Updated Vengevival > format
H₂: Updated Vengevival <= format

H₂ is contingent upon H₁ if you are to provide WOTC with a case.

Why is it contingent? If in the process of updating Vengevival you find nothing needs to be changed, that's fine too right?

Wizards isn't going to go, "you right, old version of deck A with broken card X isn't broken in today's meta. It's safe!". Oh, so turns out the Oath of Druids deck that gets verdant force or akroma isn't soo good anymore, oath must be safe right? That's what it feels like you are saying.

In your case, you would test:
H0: Updated Vengevival > format
H1: Updated Vengevival <= format

If you can reject the null, you still haven't proven that Vengevival (upon which the initial ban-decision was made), is <= format.

Yeah, because old "Vengevival (upon which the initial ban-decision was made), is <= format" is irrelevant for banning purposes.

[ReAnimator]

If you want waste your time go ahead but to me it seems completely nonsensical to test a flash deck that was running Serum Visions and not Ponder, just to provide some back work in a spread sheet to WOTC. Likewise a GBW Survival list without DRS or Griselbrand or reclamation sage or if there was a new creature that turned Necrotic ooze (or Proteon Hulk) into a 2 card combo instead of 3. Or if there was a rootwalla that was a 2/1 or something, to not include and test with strict straight upgrades just doesn't make sense to me at all.

Obviously you disagree and that's fine, lets just leave it at that.

[Gheizen64]

Okay i was trying to upload my video but it totally crash my internet so i'll have to do it during the night so i can do other things in the meanwhile, if someone wants to test or brew that survival list hit me a PM.

[Lemnear]

Wizards isn't going to go, "you right, old version of deck A with broken card X isn't broken in today's meta. It's safe!". Oh, so turns out the Oath of Druids deck that gets verdant force or akroma isn't soo good anymore, oath must be safe right? That's what it feels like you are saying.

Matt, that nonsense is exactly why ReAnimator and I are ranting throughout the thread. You can't compare current decks and ones which are outdated for years to gather evidence of how good a certain banned card is in todays Environment. You need 1-2 good deck Designers and 2-3 experienced pilots with the old and/or new archetypes and banned cards to gather evidence through testing in a nutshell.

If you want to invest the time for tests, take the Banned-Series as a starting point, but get better deck Designers and pilots ;P

[Tammit67]

Matt, that nonsense is exactly why ReAnimator and I are ranting throughout the thread. You can't compare current decks and ones which are outdated for years to gather evidence of how good a certain banned card is in todays Environment. You need 1-2 good deck Designers and 2-3 experienced pilots with the old and/or new archetypes and banned cards to gather evidence through testing in a nutshell.

If you want to invest the time for tests, take the Banned-Series as a starting point, but get better deck Designers and pilots ;P

But apparently it isn't his goal to see how good Survival-the-card is in today's meta. His goal is to see how good Survival-the-deck-when-it-got-banned is in today's meta.

Which then leads to how good Survival-the-card is in today's meta? I wasn't able to follow

[Lemnear]

My goal would be to make a petition / build a case to unban the card, not to confirm that the card is still too strong for legacy (waste of time and energy in that case). It's obvious to me that you guys do not have a background in analysis or research design and that's okay. Just stop trolling the thread if you don't understand how to properly design a study.

It's obvious that his results should lead to an unbanning, but he can't even remember the GW list he used, nor gave any ideas about his testing parameters. That leaves too many question marks from the start to qualify as a "proper designed Study". I also don't see that testing a 2010 Layout should qualify as proof that the card is fine in 2014. Its like testing if Wagon Vaults still do their job and call them an excellent because you choose to ignore the last Century of development, with the intent to create a misleading outcome of your testing