http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/m...me_Report.html
Editor's Blurb:
Enjoy!Monday, November 16th - In today’s double header edition of So Many Insane Plays, Stephen Menendian examines the current Legacy metagame before turning his eye to the Vintage scene. With graphs, stats, and theories aplenty, Stephen brings us the Eternal lowdown as only he can!
In b4 complaints about Premium.
The Dredge data is really interesting. Thanks for the numbers; this seems to largely confirm my suspicions about the format, Dredge aside.
EDIT: I think the single biggest reason Countertop has caught up to Merfolk in that matchup is the advent of the Japanese Supreme Blue list. That and Progenitus are probably the two best versions right now.
EDIT 2: I think this data is a big argument in favor of splashing white in Merfolk for Absolute Law, Path/Swords, and maybe even Sygg. "Vial or lose" seems like a bad place to be in.
I'm thinking hard about going Premium now.
To hell with you! =P
"God, Premium blah blah..."Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies
I found the Zoo vs. Goblins matchup interesting. 6-0/6-1? That's pretty ugly. Did these lists splash for black or green (or both?). Instigator in there? Any non-traditional cards in the board(s) for those Goblin decks?
Delver enthusiast and avid practitioner of blind flipsmanship.
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Fantastic article. Thanks for putting in the work!
I look forward to more analysis like this. Its great to see actual match up statistics.
Is there a way to buy single articles? Or do I have to pay for all the standard and limited stuff I'll never read?
Articles like this one I'd definitely buy, but it's not worth a full subscription.
"Want all, lose all."
Really solid, really unprecedented in article-writing. I think you must have hand-compiled this; if you can get DCI Reporter files from the event, you might be able to make a program that can mine the data in it and do this automatically after you've assigned a deck value to each person. Or, more realistically, you could get someone else to do it : )
No, you have to buy a subscription.
I don't really care about Standard, but playing Limited is a great way to improve your game regardless of what constructed format you play, and discussion about it is definitely helpful. I've become a much better player since I started drafting regularly (even though I still suck at drafting).
So here's a question: assume that, as the article states and defends, Legacy is highly matchup-dependent. What does this imply for how we build decks?
Consider these proposals:
A. Sideboards should be very focused on using hate to remove your worst matchups. You can't afford to make your fifteen from 3 cards against each of 5 decks. Players should pack 6+ cards for their worst two matchups, and maybe some general utility in the remainder. 43land should play lots and lots of combo hate, and fight "fair" against CounterTop.
B. Players should ignore their bad matchups as unwinnable by any sideboarding means. Construct your sideboard to gain an edge in your winnable matchups: 43land should just assume it's never going to face Belcher, and pack its sideboard with tools to fight CounterTop decks.
1. Which of the above is true, if either?
2. Are these statements necessarily contradictory? (perhaps A is true for the best players, who can win their not-terrible-matchups through skill, and B is true for mediocre players)
3. Does the choice of strategy A vs. strategy B differ based on decktype? If so, how do you make that choice for each of the format's best decks?
Cue the long discussion on how 'hate' is bad term in MtG theory.
Please don't.
i really like the excel chart, wish there was more data to it, hopefully you can keep doing these analyses.
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Depends, when you're facing extremes, like Lands vs Belcher, then you're a huge dog game 1 and even with hate you're a coin flip game 2 and possibly unfavorable game 3. The match ups where you want to commit "hate" are the match ups that are closer to 35/65 or 40/60 like Merfolk/w for 4 Swords to Plowshares and 4 Path to Exiles vs Zoo etc. or when "hate" radically turns the match up around with Tormod's Crypt vs Ichorid etc.
It's also a question of whether or not you're utilizing your SB, decks like Tribal, Dredge and Storm can afford to dedicate their SB to one, two match ups because the synergy of the cards prevents extensive SBing.
It seems like the traditional answer to this has always been that it depends on the degree of how bad the bad matchups are. In some cases there's hope for winning a certain bad matchup post-board, in which case it's correct to build your board to do so in most cases. However, the corollary to this is that it also depends on how bad the deck's other weak matchups are and how much space you'd have to take away from those to address the truly horrendous matchups. At some point you run into diminishing returns on your focused matchup and the risk of losing the close matchups starts to outweigh that benefit. In scenarios like that (where one matchup is so awful it eats up almost all of your board space to fix it), it's probably best to just give up and focus on improving your game against a wider selection of decks.
The other trick is anticipating the hate you'll face from the other guy's board and figuring out what that would do to your percentages. If it doesn't depress your win rate significantly, that matchup effectively needs no sideboard space. If it could make things closer, you'd have to add in general counter-hate cards. Some decks are vulnerable to hate cards that are widely accessible (like Ichorid against Relic, Crypt, or the new Trap) and can use a small number of counter-hate slots to answer a lot of post-board matchups.
I think in the end that it's impossible to make blanket statements like that in a format as deck-driven as Legacy. Some decks will only have a few matchups that actually need dedicated sideboard slots, so they can go overboard there. Others will have one or two awful matchups but a lot more close ones, and at that point it's probably better to go with the board plan that boosts your return against the widest swath of the field you can.
Does anybody know if Wizards/DCI makes available tournament reporter files (including decklists and match win/loss)?
You know, I don't think I've said it yet, so I'll say it now: Your articles are the only reason I even have premium (got it for the Vintage back then, but definitely not complaining about Legacy content). This one is a perfect example of why. Just a good bunch of data I wouldn't normally have access to, compiled from tournament results. Thanks for that. Starcitygames should thank you for at least my money.
Last edited by Eldariel; 11-17-2009 at 12:33 AM.
I will, no worries. It's alot of work, but it's really rewarding, and I can see that alot of you appreciated the effort.
Anusien offered with a computer program, but, frankly, doing it by hand probably isn't much more complicated. I developed, through repetition, a pretty fast algorithm, and I can watch TV or something while I'm doing it.
It seems Countertop Goyf is still the best deck in the format upon looking at this analysis.
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