Evaluating Legacy Decks on Twin-scales of Power Level [Archive]

nevilshute

03-03-2014, 05:08 AM

So I’ve been playing with the notion of twin-scale of power on which to estimate the best decks in legacy. It’s obviously flawed, incomplete and shouldn’t be taken as anything other than ONE (somewhat simplistic) way among many to approach deck selection.

But it might be a useful help to newer players in legacy, not only on what decks are strongest in the hands of a skilled pilot, but also which decks requires the most training.

The two scales are:

Scale of potential power (1-10): how much potential does this deck contain? How much power is inherent in the synergies of the deck and are just waiting for the pilot to unlock them?

Scale of immediate power (1-10): how powerful is the deck in the hands of a relative novice? A person with some, but not extensive, knowledge of the format picking up the deck for the first time.

As you can see the list is quite incomplete. I've started out with some of the decks I know the best. I would like to build on this list and include other decks in this analysis, but would first like to see if this has any backing out there? People are also more than welcome to copy this format of analysis and write their own as a reply to the thread and I will be more than happy to post them in the OP.

Also, be sure to let me know if you think I have it wrong in my description/analysis of any of the decks.

Disclaimer: There is no fixed power state. Any given deck’s power level is subject to the introduction of new cards into the Legacy card pool, bannings/unbannings and other factors. So this should be viewed as power level guide that should be constantly modified.

Combo

Reanimator

Scale of potential power: 8 – The deck has a very high power level. The synergy, low casting cost and power level of its combo pieces together with a quite strong protection suite mean it’s very strong. It doesn’t really suffer any terrible matchups but is lacking a little bit in its resiliency to hate for it to hit 9 or 10.
Scale of immediate power: 6 – A deck that, through the aforementioned synergies and power level, can simply mow down opposition even with an inexperienced pilot at the helm. A skilled pilot will be able to better maneuvre the deck around the hate which this deck is bound to face.

Sneak and Show

Scale of potential power: 9 – Very much like Reanimator this deck’s immediate and linear power levels are very high. Not using the graveyard means this deck’s potential is perhaps a little higher as it has more resilience this way.
Scale of immediate power: 6 – Again, this deck has enough raw power and very straight forward roads to victory to allow an inexperienced player to do quite well with it.

Storm Combo (ANT)

Scale of potential power: 9 – This strategy is fast, resilient and powerful. It trades a little bit of power compared to the other abovementioned two decks, but in return, gets great strategic resiliency. In the hands of a skilled pilot you can witness this deck get out of the trickiest of situations. At the same time it does hold powerful enough synergies to simply win on turn one or two with the correct draw.
Scale of immediate power: 3 – Here is a marked difference from the abovementioned combo decks. This deck is hard to play well. Very hard. A new player will need to slug through some weeks or months (or even longer) of training where there will be defeats aplenty and rough lessons to learn before getting to a point where they are close to the full potential of the deck.

Elves

Scale of potential power: 9 – A combo deck with a lot of redundancy and inevitability. It will consistently win on turn 3 or 4 and can throw together a makeshift beat down plan if need be. It is incredible to see Elves rebuild after being wiped for instance. They never seem to be more than one or two turns away from winning, even after a board wipe.
Scale of immediate power: 5 – somewhat like Storm, this deck requires a training regiment for its pilot to truly get the best out of it. It packs a LOT of synergies and interactions that need to be learned before you truly master it.

Aggro/midrange/tempo

RUG delver

Scale of potential power: 9 – The tempo decks have the power to keep their opponent playing the same turn over and over again, namely turn 1. With wastelands, stifles and dazes coupled with 8 aggressive 1-drops in Delver of Secrets and Nimble Mongoose and 8 free counter spells the deck holds an immense power potential. On the play, turn 1 delver of secrets with daze back up and stifle/wasteland and/or brainstorm to follow it up can be nearly impossible to beat for many decks in the format.
Scale of immediate power: 5 – This is a deck that rewards tight, pensive play. And unlike something like, say Storm Combo, it is often not apparent how much of this deck’s potential hinges on making the right decisions in what could mistakenly be thought of to be a line of arbitrary calls. Play delver turn 1 or keep mana open for stifle? Use a daze to counter a Stoneforge Mystic and set yourself back a land drop or untap and bolt said Stoneforge. Main phase Brainstorm and wait a turn before playing Tarmogoyf, playing around daze in the process? Or simply jam in the goyf to apply more pressure? All of these decisions require much insight, not only in the deck you are playing, but in deck your opponent is playing and therefore broad format knowledge.

UWR delverblade
Jund
Esper Deathblade
Shardless BUG

Control

Death and Taxes

Scale of potential power: 9 – This deck is many players’ worst nightmare to face if the pilot is strong (no one likes neither death nor taxes, right?). It has probably got the strongest mana denial plan among legacy tier 1 decks with 4 each of Rishadan Port, Wasteland and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Combined with a plethora of utility creatures as well as a Stoneforge Mystic package and you have a got a deck that is incredibly unforgiving to play against and incredibly flexible in its way of answering various threats across the board.
Scale of immediate power: 4 – Much like with RUG – but perhaps even more so – this is a deck that rewards format knowledge and tight play. You will often see experienced pilots of this deck mulling over carefully every step of the game as this deck’s power lies in squeezing every last drop out of every resource you have while denying that of the opponent. Every turn is likely to contain several key decisions to be made, triggered abilities to remember and combat math to be done correctly. Therefore much of this deck’s power is lost on new players.

UWr Miracles

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-03-2014, 11:03 AM

Lot of 9s.

So do you just mean, "How difficult is it to play?"

I still enjoy Jesse Hatfield (MadZur's) observation on this topic. We were talking about, I don't know, I think it was Doomsday, maybe Aluren. One of those decks that get perennial cult support from advocates who insist that a deck is so good it's just difficult to play.

Jesse's observation was, isn't that another way of saying it's bad? I mean when a deck is really good people say the exact opposite things, right: "You just do X and win," "Cast X and they just sit there," "It just plays itself," "Play this deck it will carry you to victory," "Free wins," etc., etc..

The language we use in describing very good decks has the opposite meaning. And it's not because skill was irrelevant- I remember that after a month of testing with Hulk-Flash, I knew how to best combo through all kinds of hate, graveyard, creature removal, a cycled Gempalm; I knew hot to stack it on end steps or upkeeps in ways I've forgotten at this point but there were a lot of ways to fully or partially go off; there was a way to just get double Protean Hulk into play around a Crypt that I've forgotten now. I remember Dazing my own spell in response to a Force so I could replay the land and play a second Flash in my hand. I mean, there were a lot of tricks.

The guy who won the GP completely punted the combo the first time his opponent asked him to play it out.

But you know, that was fine. You didn't have to be an ace to play Hulk-Flash actually, it was absurdly good. So good that it was very forgiving of mistakes.

Which is good because everyone makes mistakes, so a deck that's really good if you don't make them is a deck that is not in fact really good.

JPoJohnson

03-03-2014, 11:37 AM

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-03-2014, 11:48 AM

Yeah, I mean I'm not suggesting that skill's not a factor. And you have to at least know how your combo works. Like it's less relevant now, but even when Goblins was the dominant/most popular deck in the metagame, I think a lot of people threw away wins by not understanding how to block and play defensively with the deck.

But blaming the pilot rather than the deck persistently in the face of results sounds like delusion most of the time.

JPoJohnson

03-03-2014, 12:54 PM

PirateKing

03-03-2014, 01:08 PM

There was a post that now I want to find it cannot be found, however, it was all about how to aggregate deck power and player skill into a single number that reflected that deck piloted with that player. It should be obvious that knowing a deck will let you play better. And some decks are easier to play than others. But given enough instances, pretty much any deck on the forums could get good pairing and be played well to win a tournament.

Bed Decks Palyer

03-03-2014, 01:46 PM

But given enough instances, pretty much any deck on the forums could get good pairing and be played well to win a tournament.
Yeah! (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22679-5-0-with-turbofog)

gregtron

03-03-2014, 01:48 PM

Agreed. There's a reason that Doomsday decks don't place very often, and it's not primarily because the deck requires the absolute most skill in the history of the universe.

Can we be real for a minute, though? Doomsday is definitely hard to pilot correctly, but the idea that it would be a tier-1 deck in the hands of a True Master is ridiculous myth. If it were true, you'd think one of the shitload of good Magic players out there would've picked up Doomsday and, you know, won something with it. I ran the thing for a year, constantly coming up with and memorizing piles for every situation, and jamming game after game to develop my skill in coming up with piles on the fly, and the only useful thing I ever really learned is that ANT is a better deck by miles.

The argument that Doomsday (or whatever deck) is great but too hard to pilot is incredibly silly. It's like saying bicycles are faster than motorcycles if you just pedal hard enough.

GoboLord

03-03-2014, 01:50 PM

JPoJohnson

03-03-2014, 02:01 PM

Can we be real for a minute, though? Doomsday is definitely hard to pilot correctly, but the idea that it would be a tier-1 deck in the hands of a True Master is ridiculous myth. If it were true, you'd think one of the shitload of good Magic players out there would've picked up Doomsday and, you know, won something with it. I ran the thing for a year, constantly coming up with and memorizing piles for every situation, and jamming game after game to develop my skill in coming up with piles on the fly, and the only useful thing I ever really learned is that ANT is a better deck by miles.

The argument that Doomsday (or whatever deck) is great but too hard to pilot is incredibly silly. It's like saying bicycles are faster than motorcycles if you just pedal hard enough.

Exactly what I was saying but oh so more poetic. That last line is fantastic.

Bed Decks Palyer

03-03-2014, 02:06 PM

That last line is fantastic.
It's like saying bicycles are faster than motorcycles if you just pedal hard enough.
Have you ever tried to google "steam motorcycles"? Germany wouldn't find you influential. :smile:

nevilshute

03-03-2014, 02:30 PM

...and we didnt even talk about how subjective such a "dual scale of power" is. There are so many potential disagreements just about how to SCORE the decks, that I can't imagine that the scale is even usable. Even if we could agree on how to rate relevant decks on those two dimensions, we still would not know how large the difference in, say, 'immediate power' is between a deck scored with an 8 opposed to a deck scored with a 9. The scale, as it was propsed in the OP, is viewing decks in a vacuum, i.e. does not involve the question of power in a certain metagame (which, as we all know, is always in motion). As an example: I'm pretty sure Zoo would have been scored somewhere between 7 and 9 on "immediate", if we asked people back in 2009 - today it would definitely gain lower scores. What I'm trying to point out is that this scale is a static approach to a non-static concept. It's like assessing the position of a car on circuit by taking just a single photograph: at the time you are looking at the photograph, the red car might be leading the field, whereas a moment later some green car takes over.

I'm sorry if this statement sounded all negative. Actually I think the discussion about (relative) deckpower and how to rate it is more interesting than the scale itself. So in that sense: thank you for bringing up that idea.

I understand where you're coming from. It was always going to be impossible to set up hard-and-fast rules for any "scale", but there are things which can be learned even from honourable failures.

So perhaps it is was a folly to try and create these scales, but at the same time, intuitively, I'm sure most people can relate to, and understand, what I'm trying to describe. Some decks are easier to pick up and win with than others. In some cases this is more obvious than in others. I especially think that to be true with Tempo decks. There's a guy at my LGS who has access to practically every card. He has to my knowledge never settled on any one deck. Occasionally he'll assemble RUG delver if someone has gone well with it at an SCG open. He'll bring it, and won't do very well so he'll leave it at home for next week and bring something like Sneak and Show and top-8 with it. To my knowledge he has played both decks equally little, but one of them just demands less to perform because that deck's "immediate power level" is just higher.

It was merely this concept I was trying to convey, at a very basic level :)

Dzra

03-03-2014, 03:09 PM

If I were inclined to make two scales, they would be "Raw Power" and "Learned Power," each would be rated 1-5. Raw Power is similar to your design; how powerful the deck is in the hands of a complete novice. For example, I'm picking up Sneak and Show for the first time, how likely am I to take down a four rounder? I'm picking up RUG Delver for the first time or Miracles or Dredge or Belcher, etc. Learned Power would be how much additional power you'd expect to gain by having extensive knowledge of the deck and its matchups. In other words, how many more wins would you get by having played the deck for six months? Once done, these numbers could be combined to form an aggregate rating out of 10.

For example:

Miracles
Raw Power: 2
Learned Power: 5
Combined Power: 7

Dredge
Raw Power: 3
Learned Power: 3
Combined Power: 6

RUG Delver
Raw Power: 3
Learned Power: 4
Combined Power: 7

Belcher
Raw Power: 4
Learned Power: 1
Combined Power: 5

Sneak and Show
Raw Power: 5
Learned Power: 2
Combined Power: 7

These are just examples, as the problem is still that these numbers are highly subjective. Perhaps someone else can come along with a more definitive method of determining power levels. Looking at data will certainly be able to yield the combined power of decks, but it is hard to determine how much of that power is raw as opposed to learned. Maybe once you've definitively rated decks based on their combined power (by going through top 16s and assigning points etc), it would be easier to eyeball the rest.

JPoJohnson

03-03-2014, 03:16 PM

What dictates that Sneak N' Show gets a 5 for raw power but Belcher only gets a 4?

The problem with any scale is that there is no criteria. It's all subjective.

gregtron

03-03-2014, 04:44 PM

What dictates that Sneak N' Show gets a 5 for raw power but Belcher only gets a 4?

The problem with any scale is that there is no criteria. It's all subjective.

Absolutely true. OP is just calling two different sets of gut-feeling the basis for his scale, and assigning them numbers arbitrarily. It's easy enough to show the relative strength of a deck by comparing top 8/16/32 places in tournaments compared to the total number of copies of the deck in the tournament, but even that number is rendered meaningless because there's no control for variation in builds, sub-archetypes, sideboard builds, strategies for specific matchups employed by the decks' pilots, and (most importantly) there is absolutely no metric for player skill (Planeswalker Points? Please!), let alone player skill with a certain archetype or strategy. The closest a person can come to even having that type of data is only available at pro-tours, not the countless number of people who run minor variations of decks in GPs, PTQs, etc - and there aren't any Legacy Pro Tours.

Also, steam bike? German engineers are the world's mad scientists.

Dzra

03-03-2014, 05:50 PM

What dictates that Sneak N' Show gets a 5 for raw power but Belcher only gets a 4? The problem with any scale is that there is no criteria. It's all subjective.

My reasoning here was that Belcher is perfectly equipped to win any game that doesn't involve countermagic. Sneak and Show is more adept at protecting itself. But unfortunately you are correct and this is still somewhat subjective. I like the idea of rating a deck's overall performance and then perhaps creating a skill-based rating off of planeswalker points and using the two to determine a deck's raw power verses learned power. While it wouldn't be as subjective, it would still be easy to misinterpret the data.

FTW

03-03-2014, 06:43 PM

My reasoning here was that Belcher is perfectly equipped to win any game that doesn't involve countermagic. Sneak and Show is more adept at protecting itself. But unfortunately you are correct and this is still somewhat subjective. I like the idea of rating a deck's overall performance and then perhaps creating a skill-based rating off of planeswalker points and using the two to determine a deck's raw power verses learned power. While it wouldn't be as subjective, it would still be easy to misinterpret the data.

I like this proposal.

The biggest problem with just looking at statistics of raw finishes in major events is that statistics require comparing apples and apples.

Just looking at number of top8s/number of top16s misses some information. Decks may fail to place because people are simply not playing them even though they are viable in the format. This could occur because of a) cost/card availability barriers, b) deck takes too long to play and too risky for draws, c) people jumping on bandwagon and playing something else, etc.

Looking at %top8s might help, factoring in the number of people trying the deck at the event as well as the number of people that did well with it. But not all pilots are created equal. For example, when people go around saying "Doomsday decks don't place well so Doomsday isn't good", they should first interview the players who placed poorly about what piles they build to play around Thalia+Gaddock Teeg or Thalia+Leyline of Sanctity or Revoker@LED or how they would play around Force+Spell Pierce+Daze with a TNN on the board. If they don't even know what piles to build, how can they play the deck? They're basically losing to themselves by going "BBB: Exile my library and lose a bunch of life and do nothing". Some TES players do that too by screwing up resource management. Those results shouldn't be compared with results from people who know what they're doing. Factoring in some kind of skill rating seems like a good way to do this.

The problem is planeswalker points are based on participation, not just skill (the old ELO rating were better skill markers). A new player can get lots of PW points by just playing in a ton of events. A much better player might have far fewer points if they don't play in as many. There's also the fact that people getting Top8 placings with decks are also going to have more points from those finishes, so that's a bit redundant. A deck with a lot of good finishes will be biased towards having a lot of people with many PW points...

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-03-2014, 07:29 PM

I think you bear a substantial burden of proof if you claim that a deck doesn't perform because everyone that tries it is bad.

Dzra

03-03-2014, 07:53 PM

A new player can get lots of PW points by just playing in a ton of events. A much better player might have far fewer points if they don't play in as many.

This actually seems helpful to me since one of the main things we are trying to evaluate is how deck knowledge (ie having more play time with a deck) affects your ability to perform with it. We aren't interested in the "better" player because that really gets highly subjective. We are mainly interested in the player with more experience (hopefully playing that deck). For example, let's say we have the following entries:

Sally
100 Planeswalker Points
Places 10th with Sneak and Show

Billy
1000 Planeswalker Points
Places 5th with Sneak and Show

Richard
800 Planeswalker Points
Places 12th with ANT

No results found for someone top 16ing with ANT and less than 500 Planeswalker Points.

Using this (made-up) data, we can assume that Sneak and Show has more raw power and that ANT has a much steeper learning curve. Using enough data, we could create some sort of numbering system to correlate these findings.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-03-2014, 07:59 PM

What dictates that Sneak N' Show gets a 5 for raw power but Belcher only gets a 4?

Take some number 7-9, with 7 being a tier 3 deck, 8 a tier 2, 9 a tier 1.

Assign a value 1-5 of how much you like the deck. This is the "learned power" or how "skill-intensive" it is. The remainder of the previously assigned number is the "raw power."

Keep in mind that the two numbers must tally to the deck's metagame number.

Zupponn

03-03-2014, 08:34 PM

Take some number 7-9, with 7 being a tier 3 deck, 8 a tier 2, 9 a tier 1.

Assign a value 1-5 of how much you like the deck. This is the "learned power" or how "skill-intensive" it is. The remainder of the previously assigned number is the "raw power."

Keep in mind that the two numbers must tally to the deck's metagame number.
Don't forget to add or subtract 1-3 points based on the deck's position in the format.

JPoJohnson

03-03-2014, 08:49 PM

This feels like too much effort to simply play a game with my friends that I find fun.

Also I'm not sure if comparing numbers that have nothing to do with each other would really impact anything. Placing sixth or fifteenth at an event has nothing to do with PW points as someone else pointed out. Unfortunately they are given out for mass amounts of events as well as high placing so you can never know what one's rating means.

FTW

03-03-2014, 09:14 PM

I think you bear a substantial burden of proof if you claim that a deck doesn't perform because everyone that tries it is bad.

I'm saying that competence is not a function of frequency, but of ability and practice. If 2% of people fail a math test, you might say they're bad at math. If 60% of people fail a math test, it doesn't suddenly make math wrong. It just means they didn't learn it properly (fault on them for not studying and/or teacher for not teaching it well).

When people play Doomsday and lose because they didn't stack the right pile, they're losing because they misplayed not because the deck was bad. The only burden of proof required is someone showing the correct pile for that situation and how to execute it through that board state. If someone can show the correct pile, then the deck is perfectly capable of winning - the pilot just didn't bother to learn how to. Practice and learning piles could fix that.

If you bring a bigass super gun to a fight and end up shooting yourself in the face instead of the other guy, that's not the gun's fault. Similarly, if you resolve Doomsday and then end up just exiling your library and doing nothing when it was possible to win, that's not the deck's fault.

What remains to be shown is whether most people lose with Doomsday because they make the wrong piles/went off at the wrong times or whether it would have lost those games no matter what. I think most experienced pilots like emidln and Menendian speak anecdotally when they see other people misuse the deck, losing when the deck clearly had an angle that would irrefutably win. We'd need a survey of Doomsday pilots from various events to really find out the reasons they lost those matches. But I don't think either side can make informed conjecture without that information.

emidln

03-03-2014, 09:44 PM

What remains to be shown is whether most people lose with Doomsday because they make the wrong piles/went off at the wrong times or whether it would have lost those games no matter what. I think most experienced pilots like emidln and Menendian speak anecdotally when they see other people misuse the deck, losing when the deck clearly had an angle that would irrefutably win. We'd need a survey of Doomsday pilots from various events to really find out the reasons they lost those matches. But I don't think either side can make informed conjecture without that information.

I'm probably not the right person to ask given how I get to events once every year or two, but at the last SCG I attended (in 2012!) I lost the win then draw in round to never seeing business in a game 3 and a match to Delver where my fetchland/dual manabase got stifled/wasted out of the game. I beat a bunch of people who played really poorly and a couple who had never faced a storm deck with SDT.

Doomsday often feels like an X-2 deck to me. It's consistent enough to get you close with good play, but I don't have the ability to play it nearly often enough to determine if it's an X-1-1/X-2 deck (i.e. a reasonable choice) or if it's an X-2/X-3 deck (a pet deck). That said, good play with Doomsday is rarely different than good play with ANT. There are matchups here and there where Doomsday is a better deck, but most of those are really about SDT being better than Preordain in the matchup than Cantrip->BW->Tendrils/Doomsday vs IT-IT->Tendrils/IT->AdN. Ritual mana is often a wash (if you know how to execute correctly with your cantrips) and the goldfish speed of ANT and Doomsday isn't appreciably different in the matchups where it might matter (particularly if you know how to build ad-hoc piles with double cantrips).

Something that is exceedingly obvious to me is that the amount of effort it takes to play an SDT Ritual deck vs a Preordain Ritual deck matters greatly in an event. That SDT saps much more thought power from you over the course of an event probably doesn't make up for the games where it dominates an opponent. The leads ANT to appear to be easier to play, and provides for much stronger later tournament stages as you have less mental fatigue. Where this becomes a pretty big issue is that if Preordain ANT and SDT Doomsday are trading increased resiliency for increased mental fatigue, what point do you stop? Choosing ANT is already known to break down very strong players over the course of an event. Unless the matchups are so overwhelmingly in favor of SDT, why play Doomsday at all? Indeed, if all you need is SDT (i.e. the tutorable bounce isn't that big of a deal), why bother thinking about how cantrips morph into rituals when you can just draw+cast rituals?

I suspect that with Past in Flames, much of the reason to play Doomsday has been lost (strong late game without worry about hand size or life; you can just play SDT in ANT to get the benefits of SDT). It's a reasonable deck at the top end. That said, the strength of the pilots playing it would lend equally well to ANT or TES, particularly a build of ANT that had SDT if the matchups called for it. The observation of certain pros and grinders who actually understand Doomsday to a reasonable degree (the Ari Laxes and Jon Johnsons) is strongly in favor of (a) SDT not being a strong enough pull recently and (b) the extra effort to play your SDTs, manage a 4-5c manabase, and then execute a five card tutor doesn't yield enough advantages vs "just ANT".

I'm still going to play Doomsday. It's the most fun I have when playing Magic. In certain metagames, SDT is a very strong pull. In the right metagame, the allure of an alternate kill condition or tutorable bounce might draw others to the deck as well. I'm uncertain if continuing to play Doomsday vs PiF/ANT makes me a Johnny instead of a Spike, but I suspect the answer is "yes". I will continue not recommending the deck to people (I haven't in a long time).

uncletiggy

03-03-2014, 09:56 PM

Perhaps a better way to go about compiling a list would be too not include skill level. On the premis if you take time to accuire the cards and keep up with new adittions to the card pool your skill will increase over time. Players should stick to what they are comfortable piloting over a deck they've never shuffled despite the new pile having a slight edge in a certain meta.

With this in mind I propose forming a list of each decks average matchup up analysis vs the rest of the decks on the list. For example if a deck has a 90/10 projected success rate in three games vs a specific deck it would score a 9 if the matchup comes down to who wins the coin flip it would be 50/50 and score a 5 and if it is almost unwinable you are looking at a 1. Obviously these numbers sway depending on the exact composition of your 75 but some generalization can be done to represent standardized lists.

This would allow players to quickly look at a list of decks they have access to grab the scores of the decks they expect to be major players in thier metas add them together for a total meta score and determine which of the decks is best suited to the expected field. obviously the idea needs refined and would require crowd sourcing to determine the proper realistic expectaions of any given matchup. also it may be more accurate to average the scores together i have no clue. Additionally the entire list of matchups of each deck could be added to give a score for a deck in a completely blind meta.

It could become a very useful recource if stickied and continuously updated to reflect new decks or evolutions based on new cards.

Finn

03-03-2014, 10:57 PM

Have you ever tried to google "steam motorcycles"? Germany wouldn't find you influential. :smile:

You are so my hero. Poor Cavius.

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=36727.0;wap2

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-03-2014, 11:10 PM

If you bring a bigass super gun to a fight and end up shooting yourself in the face instead of the other guy, that's not the gun's fault.

It is absolutely a design flaw if people using a gun keep shooting themselves in the face. A good gun should be designed to reduce the likelihood of any kind of misfire.

Same with a deck. Being forgiving of mistakes is part of being a good deck.

Lord Seth

03-04-2014, 12:24 AM

I think the point people are trying to make against Doomsday is that the deck being hard to play isn't because it's so skill-intensive; it's because it's (allegedly) a weaker deck than something like ANT, so to make up for it being weaker you have to be even better with it. In other words, say you play Doomsday absolutely perfectly, 100% correct... you'll still do worse than someone who played ANT absolutely perfectly because ANT is the more powerful deck. You could take the two most talented archers in the world, but if you put one twice as far away from the target as the other, the guy with the advantage of being closer is likely going to do better.

It's kind of like if you start a game of Chess with only one Knight. It's possible to win that game, but it'll take you more skill than if you had started with all of your pieces. That doesn't mean that playing with only one Knight is actually stronger than playing with two.

I haven't personally played Doomsday or ANT so I can't really make say if this is true based on experience, but this does seem a reasonable argument.

Zombie

03-04-2014, 03:54 AM

Storm players love overrating their deck: News at 11.

Bed Decks Palyer

03-04-2014, 04:50 AM

You are so my hero. Poor Cavius.
I'm glad you recognized the quote! :laugh:

It is absolutely a design flaw if people using a gun keep shooting themselves in the face. A good gun should be designed to reduce the likelihood of any kind of misfire.

Same with a deck. Being forgiving of mistakes is part of being a good deck.
As much as i hate to write it, but pretty much this...

PirateKing

03-04-2014, 07:52 AM

It is absolutely a design flaw if people using a gun keep shooting themselves in the face. A good gun should be designed to reduce the likelihood of any kind of misfire.

Same with a deck. Being forgiving of mistakes is part of being a good deck.

Pointing a gun at your face and pulling the trigger isn't a misfire.

HammerAndSickled

03-04-2014, 12:19 PM

There is nothing inherent about deck design that makes "being idiot proof" a desirable characteristic. The one and only goal of deck design is to make a deck that can win a tournament. Each deck builder might have different goals for themselves, from "this is the deck I want my whole team to t8 the PT with" to "I want to win this SCG open" but overall the goal is just to compete as best you can, and being forgiving of mistakes has nothing at all to do with that goal if you don't foresee or intend mistakes to happen.

You're conflating "design" as it's used commonly in terms of engineering or craftsmanship and "design" as we're using it in Magic. Designers in the real world have a vested interest in making their designs as idiot-proof as possible, because when you design an oven or a coffee maker or the control assembly for the space station you have to assume that a large number of people will be using it and not everyone will be intelligent or even intuitively understand the design, and so you have to account for mistakes and user error in the design process. Magic isn't like that at all: often people are designing or tweaking decks for their own use to actualize a goal of winning a tournament, and so the differential between designer intent and user intuition is nonexistent: you built the deck and should know how to play it. If we look at Finkel's team from the Pro Tour, they dominated with all of them playing the same list (Modern Storm, another deck with a high skill cap) So why didn't they design a deck that was easier to play, if they knew mistakes happen and therefore according to your logic mistake-proofing a deck is a valued characteristic? Because the trade off in power wasn't offset by making it easier to play, and more importatly because the best magic players of all time were playing on that team and therefore "skill required" is a non-issue. If you're building decks for the average SCG grinder to play, or to make a deck for a known metagame like most Standard formats, then by all means make it idiot-proof. But that doesn't say anything positive about the quality of the design.

Bed Decks Palyer

03-04-2014, 02:27 PM

Generally speaking, yes, speaking of Doomsday, no. Deck's crap.

gregtron

03-04-2014, 02:40 PM

Storm players love overrating their deck: News at 11.

True, but we are at least honest about other peoples' Storm decks. ANT is like a shining light from heaven, sent to show us the error of playing creatures. DD, TES, High Tide, Spanish Inquisition, and all the rest are heretical traps.

JPoJohnson

03-04-2014, 02:56 PM

True, but we are at least honest about other peoples' Storm decks. ANT is like a shining light from heaven, sent to show us the error of playing creatures. DD, TES, High Tide, Spanish Inquisition, and all the rest are heretical traps.

Err what? I'm not sure how DD and Spanish Inquisition can possible be listed in the same sentence as TES and High Tide.

Worldslayer

03-04-2014, 10:36 PM

I hear this argument a lot. "It's clearly the best deck in [X] genre, it's just so hard no one plays it (or plays it correctly)".

Seriously? At what point did most of Legacy become idiots?

You know why it's "much harder to pilot" than [Y]? Because it runs worse cards than [Y]. In the time it takes you to sift out and resolve Doomsday and have a cantrip and pick the perfect stack assuming your read on their cards in hand is correct (and god help you if it isn't) and shipped the turn and not died and untapped and then killed them, I've reached five mana, cast Ad Nauseum, drew seventeen cards, played a couple of Lotus Petals and Chrome Moxes and killed them. You know when Jund strips your hand to nothing and all you're doing is laying mana and praying you draw before they kill you? I'm drawing AdNauseum, and possibly Past in Flames. You're drawing Doomsday. I'll take mine.

This argument isn't really an argument, and it's insulting to anyone that regularly plays Legacy/Eternal/Magic. This is the argument Local Spanish Inquistion Guy uses as to why it's an incredible deck but no one plays it over ANT. You're in the same boat as Local Spanish Inquisition Guy. You're telling me that when I play a regular ANT version over Doomsday, it's because I'm just not good enough at Doomsday? How about if I tell you it's because I'm fine at Doomsday, and it's just a worse option than ANT. Where are we at in the conversation now?

The anecdote of Doomsday "masters" watching Doomsday players fudge it up and giving them the correct pile does absolutely nothing to account for those same players' ability to correctly navigate the current game state with literally any other deck. They know how to win with Doomsday. Hooray! Somehow this precludes other decks from doing the same? Somehow this precludes other decks from being BETTER at doing the same?

tl;dr - "Skill cap" is closer to a Binary function than anyone wants to readily admit, especially in combo decks that have much less "wiggle room" than generic bland midrangey durdles. You're either proficient in the genre/archetype, in which case thought and remembering your 60 puts you in pretty good position as can readily be expected, or you're not. There isn't some secret mystical Level Up-o-meter, and the truth is across most games most proficient storm players are mostly the same. You got standouts like Cook, but even then, he's not much scarier than the average storm pilot who is essentially "capable".

This is just that horseshit Kung Fu Master argument you used to hear about UFC when it started, where some mystical mountain ninjas were going to come down and show everyone how it was done - except that never happened, because flatmatting someone and punching them in the face a lot is usually a superior proposition to anything named after a magic animal.

Bed Decks Palyer

03-05-2014, 06:35 AM

emidln

03-05-2014, 09:29 AM

Worldslayer, you're right.
While playing Doomsday was definitely funny, and every time I won a match, it was pretty satisfying and I felt like I just achieved something special, it was also really difficult, tedious, unreliable and mentally taxing. Not a good deck.

It seems like a lot of people in this thread are actually just bad storm players complaining about how bad they are.

As I mentioned above, playing Doomsday at a high level is rarely different than playing ANT. The difference in skill isn't from the card Doomsday. The effort isn't from casting Doomsday. Doomsday is literally the easiest card in the deck. Doomsday always works and always has at least one obvious line. Think I'm being hyperbolic? I'll make another claim. If Doomsday is the problem, a "Doomsday Master" literally is having better Ponders, Brainstorms, and Preordains when they play ANT than when you play ANT. This results in wins that you probably don't realize are possible and are the wins that keep you out of top8. The last claim I'll make is that SDT is the reason why Doomsday takes more effort and more skill.

Let's examine. What does it mean to cast Doomsday? You pay BBB and pick five cards from two zones and exile the rest. You stack those cards how you want, then lose some life. Realistically, you don't just pick random cards. In fact, Doomsday isn't even a strong card unless it sets up an end state where you can trade your future draw steps and decisions for a quick win. In practice, this means you have to know how you're winning the game with before you use it. This isn't a problem, because you know your deck, you understand how cantrips interact with Rituals or Tutors, and know immediately whether you can win with this state, what you can win through, and what you can't. In fact, Doomsday is just a final sub problem of the deck full of "you have to know how you're winning the game before you use it" cards.

A dirty secret of Doomsday decks is that if you suck, you never actually get to win with Doomsday. I really do mean never. It's not because you're punting Doomsday either. You never are in the position to resolve Doomsday because you misplayed your cantrips. You cast Ponder post-fetch and had to keep a couple bad cards. In another situation you cast Ponder pre-fetch and couldn't keep two. Your Brainstorms never seem quite as insane as those you hear about here or on Storm Boards. Sensei's Divining Top is your own personal Sphere of Resistance . You don't actually understand why you lose these games, you just feel that Doomsday is a gimmicky deck that only a savant can play and move back to ANT. At least there you get some hands that don't require cantripping well (all those rits into IT is pretty easy) and you continue down your X-4 to X-3 path at SCGs and GPs.

The reason for this is that cantrips are just another set of "you have to know how you're winning the game before you use it" subproblem in a storm deck. When you cast one, you need to already know what your outs are. What cards should this Brainstorm draw you, best case scenario? How can this Ponder help me? Is this fetch's interaction with my cantrip relevant? Is the card I find off SDT and my chances of finding it worth my mana? If you don't know the answer to these questions each time you cast your cantrip, you are giving away games with ANT and TES. In Doomsday, where there are fewer rituals and more draw spells, you are giving away the same games but they don't feel as "close" because you don't understand how BBB + cantrip + cantrip actually wins the game. In Doomsday, carelessly playing your cantrips results not only in needing 6-7 mana instead of 3-5, but not having the cantrips to win the game right now. The people who are "good" with Doomsday are very likely just strictly better than you are with your favorite storm.

SDT is the problem card in Doomsday. SDT in the best case shaves a mana off the cost of winning right now. It lets you run your Doomsday or IT +LED into a Force of Will and keep on storming them out. It sets up lose-lose VClique scenarios, sculpts past Standstill, and pairs with fetches to send those sweet sweet business spells to the top vs discard. In the worst case, it's your own personal Sphere of Resistance. I love playing cards that cost 1 and read "All cantrips you play cost 1 more for mythical max value." (This is sarcasm if you can't tell.) SDT is a Ponder that forces you to reconsider your decision tree multiple times a game if you attempt to play optimally. This is where the fatigue comes from for Preordain ANT vs SDT Doomsday. Knowing when you use your SDT and then how to shuffle the cards around (literally always knowing what helps you and what you’re looking for) is what takes skill and what takes effort.

As to why you would play Doomsday over ANT? SDT + the long game used to be the reason. These days, ANT has a reasonable enough long game that unless you see a lot of need for a tutorable removal spell, a good ANT player can simply select SDT when the metagame would otherwise demand it. That said, putting SDT in your ANT deck has the exact same problems that SDT in your Doomsday deck has. You get more power, more sub-games, and, with the extra power plus sub-games, more opportunity to torpedo your tournament with sloppy play.

Worldslayer

03-05-2014, 10:25 AM

And this is where the storm discussion finally factors into this, probably bogus, "power scale" -

If Doomsday takes more effort and mental exhaustion to perform at a similar level to ANT, which suffers from the same problem but mitigated, at what point is it an intrinsically more powerful deck? If it takes me more work to get to the same place, isn't that the definition of less powerful?

If even your definable difference is A) a metagame weapon and B) cooptable by the alternative, that's still not making a case for Dday being a more powerful deck in the hands of a competent pilot. Like you said, the people winning with doomsday are likely just winning at storm in comparison to your average storm pilot, which brings us back to "so far, nothing actually says that doomsday is the better deck. The people winning with Dday would likely be winning with any properly built storm deck".

Not knocking Dday, really, as much as this argument. I hate, hate, hate this argument. When there's no discernable difference in average top end, but the effort required to get there favors one list, that list is the better lost. Ceteris paribus, the "easier" deck is the better deck. I don't understand why that's an issue. This notion of being rewarded for hard work is noble, but limited when it comes to the game. You work years on Tiger Claw, you're going to Tiger the shit out if things and rightfully so - but some guy that spent half that time learning to punch things in the head really good is still probably a favorite for side by side fights.

Completely unrelated note, they ever give us Gush back then DDay is a functionally different entity, and expect me to jump ship for it and never look back.

Related edit: The Reanimator skill rating, for reference, is completely bogus. My finishes with the deck were all in the first three months I played it, and the two best were in the first month or two. If you're taking about a "skill rating" of the deck, the most necessary one is just knowing when to play it. The actual deck is pretty absurdly easy for anyone that's played Underground Sea decks in eternal before, and if anyone tells you different they're either lying or mistaken.

emidln

03-05-2014, 12:47 PM

And this is where the storm discussion finally factors into this, probably bogus, "power scale"

I suspect that with Past in Flames, much of the reason to play Doomsday has been lost (strong late game without worry about hand size or life; you can just play SDT in ANT to get the benefits of SDT). It's a reasonable deck at the top end. That said, the strength of the pilots playing it would lend equally well to ANT or TES, particularly a build of ANT that had SDT if the matchups called for it. The observation of certain pros and grinders who actually understand Doomsday to a reasonable degree (the Ari Laxes and Jon Johnsons) is strongly in favor of (a) SDT not being a strong enough pull recently and (b) the extra effort to play your SDTs, manage a 4-5c manabase, and then execute a five card tutor doesn't yield enough advantages vs "just ANT".

I'm still going to play Doomsday. It's the most fun I have when playing Magic. In certain metagames, SDT is a very strong pull. In the right metagame, the allure of an alternate kill condition or tutorable bounce might draw others to the deck as well. I'm uncertain if continuing to play Doomsday vs PiF/ANT makes me a Johnny instead of a Spike, but I suspect the answer is "yes". I will continue not recommending the deck to people (I haven't in a long time).

I mentioned this earlier, but the only reason you would put yourself through Doomsday is that you are already maximizing SDT and want to change how some ANT matchups play out. In particular, these:

Gaddock Teeg decks (in particular, GSZ->Gaddock Teeg decks) are significantly better matchups for Doomsday than ANT
Deathrite Shaman + Aggro / Discard decks are significantly better matchups for Doomsday than ANT (this would be something like Jund or Junk vs something like Esper Stoneblade that applies zero pressure and thus makes AdN reasonable)
Leyline of Sanctity-packing Combo (mostly SnT variants: OmniShow, Hive Mind, and Sneak Attack)
Reanimator is a much better matchup for Doomsday than ANT given how much lower the bar to combo with Doomsday is vs Ad Naus or Past in Flames. You can throw BBB Doomsdays that kill next turn with Duress out until one of them resolves for very little cost. AdN

How much better Doomsday is vs ANT+SDT when facing these decks is variable. It's a lot better vs Gaddock Teeg decks. It's somewhat better than ANT+SDT vs Jund or Junk. It's a lot better than typical Preordain/Burning Wish ANT vs Jund or Junk. It's appreciably better vs ANT+SDT or Preordain ANT vs Leyline of Sanctity combo.

The right question to ask is how often are matchups encountered where either Doomsday (as a business card e.g. Gaddock Teeg, Jund/Junk, Leyline of Sanctity, ) or SDT (Jund/Junk/Stoneblade) are better actually encountered in your metagame. If the answer is "frequently", then as an ANT player, you almost certainly would want to at least reach for SDT. If the answer is rarely, then adding additional effort to play SDT just isn't going to be worth it. For the last year or two, I feel like the answer has mostly been ANT with at most 1-2 SDT.

For reference, my decision tree of what to play in an event goes something like this:

If Storm: "is aggression crucial?" If yes, play TES
If not, "do I want to play SDT?" If no, play ANT
If yes, "what win conditions are best (pick 2-3)? Tutor Chain vs Ad Naus vs Past in Flames vs ETW vs Doomsday vs Emrakul vs Lab Man"
If I want lab man, I must play Doomsday
If I want Emrakul, I must play Doomsday
If I want ad naus, I must play ANT

If I want to tutor chain, I can typically pick between the late game I want. "Is there a reason to need silver bullet tutoring vs drawing/cantripping into a business spell?"
If I need silver bullet tutoring, I must play Doomsday.
If I don't think I do, I can be happy to play a mix of Chain of Vapor, Dread of Night, and Abrupt Decay (so I have the right 3-5 for each matchup). There is no reason to play Doomsday,
so I should play ANT.

Some more decisions are "what is the right number of Lotus Petals to play in ANT or Doomsday?" This affects Ad Naus and ETW. "What are the protection spells I want to play?"

Worldslayer

03-05-2014, 01:57 PM

emdlin:

accepted, and if I thought I'd be walking into discard and hate bears all day I'd probably pilot an Ant list close to doomsday, the hybrid lists, or doomsday itself.

That's a meta call though, not done intrinsic power level difference only unlocked after years of training in the mountains as several Dday proponents suggest. That hearkens back to my reanimator comment where once you achieve functional proficiency the only skill test left is knowing when to play it. In a wide open, unknown field, the easier is probably the better unless you are just that good at navigating incredible complex systems and manage to wrangle RNG in your favor.

As a result of this conversation, I don't think this thread really works on valuable, measurable metrics. You can compare benchmarks within a genre (ANT is a turn 1-2 deck in Vintage versus TPS's 3-4, or Drain Tendrils 5-7, for example) and contrast components against an expected metagame (TPS style is probably superior to ANT on Vintage currently given its greater protection suite against blue decks running MD misstep and fluster storm), but trying to make an argument that a deck is better but fails because it's harder just doesn't make sense. If it's that much harder, it's probably because you choose the wrong combo variant for the field and failed one of the two combo binaries, not because its deadly mysteries are unfathomable your uninitiated mind.

Generally, the "easier" a comparable deck is to pilot, the more likely it is that's the better (current) deck, because "ease" is more a function of correctly selecting (more like guessing given the complex system of a tournament and an average human being's inability to correctly navigate that, even more so when coupled with what is essentially RNG) a deck more suitable to the current metagame than the other, "harder" option, because most of whatever makes a combo deck (or any deck, really) "hard" on a given tournament is more the hurdles your opponents present than any secret art of storm assuming technical proficiency (I.e. counting to ten, Legacy fundamentals).

Arbitrarily assigning a subjective as hell number or two to a deck in terms of power is at best temporary, and at worst completely useless, OP.

uncletiggy

03-05-2014, 02:37 PM

Admiral_Arzar

03-05-2014, 02:53 PM

This entire theead has digressed to is doomsday good or not, it no longer has anything to do with developing a scale with which to rate decks. So sad because I feel like my idea could have been expanded on to be a useful tool.

Laws of the Source #137: Any discussion on deck power level relating to skill required must eventually devolve into a debate about Doomsday and/or Storm Combo in general.

Worldslayer

03-05-2014, 03:32 PM

This entire theead has digressed to is doomsday good or not, it no longer has anything to do with developing a scale with which to rate decks. So sad because I feel like my idea could have been expanded on to be a useful tool.

It was a converging argument, or at least a suitable vehicle of an argument, to dismiss your basic metrics. "Skill level" is an argument I find to be largely binary (proficient/not), and "objective power", while a term easy to imagine and certainly one which exists in some way, is much harder to define in the context of metagame. If anything, your metrics would almost always favor combo decks (show and tell, storm) in the"raw power" department, while nearly any noncombo deck would be, under your assumptions, a nonregister on objective pet but probably score highly on the "skill test" section, since winning with inherently inferior cards would require more "skill" by definition.

In reality, a way to define a Deck's state in legacy would be closer to a graph in which there are compartmentalized and overlapping "zones", and the decks would exist as points on that grid. Griselbrand is objectively powerful, but only on comparison to a field not heavily making Emrakuls or Entering the Infinite, if that helps clarify, and one may even argue that griselbrand isn't even all that powerful in a correctly aligned Antigriselbrand field, as even if what he does is beyond the scope of most cards it very rarely yields a victory in this case.

Essentially, my argument is that your system doesn't need revision, but you require a totally different system to get anywhere near the benefits you want from the system in the first place.

uncletiggy

03-05-2014, 03:40 PM

Your reply leads me to believe you have me confused with the op. I purposed rateing each deck vs each other deck based on projected match out come, and forming it into a chart on the second page. Nothing involving skill level or subjective how powerful is card/deck A in a vacuum. More of a comprehensive numerical matchup analysis chart of each deck rather then viewing each individual primers matchup sections.

FTW

03-06-2014, 02:10 AM

Taking this back closer to the original thread topic

It is absolutely a design flaw if people using a gun keep shooting themselves in the face. A good gun should be designed to reduce the likelihood of any kind of misfire.

Same with a deck. Being forgiving of mistakes is part of being a good deck.

I don't agree with you on that being part of a good deck at all.
That strikes me as the kind of pandering-to-mediocrity mentality that's seen the gradual dumbing down of standard (remember when Standard was control mirrors with stack interaction instead of turning Thragtusks sideways or playing 10 guildgates and fogs?) If a deck can play itself, what's the point of playing it? That's where Magic starts turning into a dumb game of turning monsters sideways. A deck "playing itself" or being very forgiving of mistakes means there are fewer critical decisions to make. With fewer decisions to make, you're basically just doing simple things like casting bomby spells, repeating simple linear combos and turning fatties sideways. Minimal thinking involved, minimal strategy, minimal decisions. You just start playing, don't have to do much and auto-win. How is that fun or healthy for any game? What's the point of individuals even playing then? The outcome is practically pre-determined by the net deck you brought, not by your ability to pilot it or the strategy you use. You might as well just plug parameters into a computer, hit a random number generator and watch the game play itself out on TV while you eat 2 bags of chips on the couch. One of the reasons Legacy is so fun (IMO) is that it's full of highly interactive tempo and aggro-control decks that involve tons of decision trees and opportunities to try to win by outwitting and outplaying the opponent, not just by winning the die roll and flipping a turn 1 Delver "like a champ" (PS - no, that's not champ-like, that's just lucksacking).

"Good" is a fairly subjective term, of course.

I'm assuming we're talking from a Spike perspective, too. i.e. deck value is based on its ability to win. If your valuation of a deck is based on its ability to pull off cool random combos or to play big fat creatures, then clearly this doesn't apply.

Consider 2 decks.

Deck A
power level 4 in hands of newer player
power level 6 in hands of experienced pilot

Deck B
power level 2 in hands of newer player
power level 8 in hands of experienced pilot

Which is the better deck? Your argument is deck A (more forgiving of mistakes), but I would say deck B. Objectively, the deck itself has more capacity for wins. If a player can't use it to obtain those wins, the deck still had the capacity to get them.

When musicians talk about a really nice guitar, there are usually subtleties to the design that a novice wouldn't notice. Most new guitar players probably won't get much of a difference out of a $300 guitar vs a $3000 guitar, whereas a really experienced player would be able to make it sound pretty freaking amazing. Just because the novice can't make it sound better, does that mean the $3000 guitar isn't any better?

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-06-2014, 02:57 AM

I don't have time for a longer post at the moment, but two obvious flaws in the above are simply:

- A pretty silly, rose-tinted view of past environments, especially in Standard. Standard has almost always sucked. Blue-Green Madness and Goblin-Bidding and Raffinity were not great times to be playing the game.

- A false premise in what decks' wins tend to look like. The reality is that in almost any case you're getting 75, 85% of the wins the same regardless of whether you've played the deck for months with intensive testing, or for hours with little attention paid. The amount that skill affects outcomes is incredibly overrated. There is no viable Legacy deck where you're four times as likely to win as a very good pilot than an even barely competent one.

Worldslayer

03-06-2014, 11:26 AM

- A false premise in what decks' wins tend to look like. The reality is that in almost any case you're getting 75, 85% of the wins the same regardless of whether you've played the deck for months with intensive testing, or for hours with little attention paid. The amount that skill affects outcomes is incredibly overrated. There is no viable Legacy deck where you're four times as likely to win as a very good pilot than an even barely competent one.

Once you achieve general competency in Legacy, this. So much this.

In your example, FTW, Deck A would be a 4/6 and Deck B would more realistically be a 2/6.25. Once you're in the tier ones in Legacy, pretty much everything is absurd.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

03-06-2014, 03:14 PM

If we were grading on a ten point scale, I would be extremely skeptical that any Legacy deck has a reasonable skill reward bonus greater than 1, and most well below that. Assuming we're talking about the low-skill being someone who has at least an idea of what the deck does and the cards in it do, and not like, a fucking inebriated walrus who gets DQ'd for flopping onto and breaking the table.

HammerAndSickled

03-06-2014, 03:27 PM

For fair decks, maybe. Basic proficiency with the game teaches you how to play guys and kill things and counter spells pretty easily. There's a big difference between a master playing Delver and a novice, but I'll agree that the skill differential is not hugely important. But unless I'm an absolute idiot (entirely possible) it takes a lot more than a few hours to learn how to play a storm deck or a cantrip-dense slower combo deck like High Tide even semi-competently. Every time I play those decks in a local event, all of my losses feel like "a better or more experienced player could have won that game, there was a line that could have won and I either didn't see it until after the match or I got ruined by a specific piece of disruption I could have played around." I also play Lands, and the lines of play for that deck are pretty mystifying to anyone who doesn't have experience with the deck. Knowing when to push the mana denial hard and when to attack their permanents, knowing what to tutor for in each matchup, knowing when to just go for the "combo" kill, those are decision points that really don't exist in "regular" Magic. That's a pretty clear indicator that there's a skill gap that can be improved with familiarity with the deck.

(nameless one)

03-06-2014, 04:38 PM

a fucking inebriated walrus who gets DQ'd for flopping onto and breaking the table.

This sounds awfully familiar. Didn't this actually happened to someone prominent here at the Source?

Megadeus

03-06-2014, 05:06 PM

This is just that horseshit Kung Fu Master argument you used to hear about UFC when it started, where some mystical mountain ninjas were going to come down and show everyone how it was done - except that never happened, because flatmatting someone and punching them in the face a lot is usually a superior proposition to anything named after a magic animal.

This. This so hard

Megadeus

03-06-2014, 05:12 PM

] I also play Lands, and the lines of play for that deck are pretty mystifying to anyone who doesn't have experience with the deck. Knowing when to push the mana denial hard and when to attack their permanents, knowing what to tutor for in each matchup, knowing when to just go for the "combo" kill, those are decision points that really don't exist in "regular" Magic. That's a pretty clear indicator that there's a skill gap that can be improved with familiarity with the deck.
Also this as well. I played the deck for the first time last night and there were many times where I was completely unsure of what I should do and I am sure that a good pilot of the deck would have romped much harder than I did

Lord Seth

03-06-2014, 05:17 PM

That strikes me as the kind of pandering-to-mediocrity mentality that's seen the gradual dumbing down of standard (remember when Standard was control mirrors with stack interaction instead of turning Thragtusks sideways or playing 10 guildgates and fogs?)
I sure do! If memory serves right, it was last week.

Richard Cheese

03-06-2014, 06:32 PM

I vote for tracking builder/pilot success separately, like WRC/F1.

FTW

03-06-2014, 08:50 PM

Once you achieve general competency in Legacy, this. So much this.

In your example, FTW, Deck A would be a 4/6 and Deck B would more realistically be a 2/6.25. Once you're in the tier ones in Legacy, pretty much everything is absurd.

The decks wouldn't realistically be any number, a priori, before we even establish power scales to rate them. That was the point of the thread, right?

The point of the examples was not to necessarily represent real decks in the current metagame. Something he said surprised me, and I was posing a theoretical question to discuss principles behind people's evaluation of whether "good"="forgiving to player", since interpretations of "good" are subjective and may differ. If we cannot agree on those underlying principles, using them to rate and evaluate decks is a pretty freaking pointless exercise.

Sticking with the numbers I put up (these are fake decks after all), I think IBA is arguing from a point where he favors A over B, i.e., he thinks something (not just a Legacy deck, but a gun or whatever) is "good" if it's performance is consistent regardless of the user. That's a commonly held point of view in society. But I (and others probably) disagree and would think a deck (or gun, tool or whatever) is better if its raw potential is higher. Like the fancier guitar, it just requires a veteran user to appreciate and exploit the difference.

Which do you think is better? A at 4/6 or B at 2/8?

Now moving from the abstract to Legacy:
Some tier decks are definitely harder to pilot for newer players than others (more decision trees about what to disrupt or how to play around heavy disruption), making their "beginner" number lower. It's a lot easier to punt with a grindy deck like RUG by cantripping and disrupting wrong than it is to punt with Sneak/Show or TNN+Blade (although you can still punt). But as for the top number, yeah, clearly no tier 1 decks are much stronger than any other. They're all about the same power, marginal differences dependent on metagames and pilots.

So if we're talking about two tier 1 decks with about equal top-end potential but one is much more forgiving on the pilot (e.g. C is 4/6 and D is 2/6.25), there are two ways to interpret it. If you chose A over B in my above example, you'd probably go with C here no question. If you chose B over A in my example, you'd probably argue they're about equal power (assuming a sufficient pilot) and subtle differences depend on the metagame. The person who chose A would probably always bring C to a tourney. The person who chose B would probably bring the D if he saw some metagame reasons why he suspected it might marginally perform better and C otherwise.

Basically, I think how people choose between A and B (abstract example) impacts how they would choose between real examples. The big difference is that A and B have the same average, making them on paper a more equal point of comparison to touch on how something is or should be valued. Bankers do this sort of thing all the time to assess investors' individual risk profiles and utility valuations.

People value things differently. It's usually just easier to get to the heart of that with an abstract example. If it looks too realistic, people start arguing in circles about Doomsday and Brainstorm forever. Well, this is the Source. Why did I even bother.