[Article] Hard Decks by PVDR

[Koby]

Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa talks about difficult decks, and when you may want to play a simple or difficult deck. He also rates a few sample Legacy decks as examples.

Click here (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pvs-playhouse-hard-decks/) to read the article.

Do you agree with PVDR on his rankings for the decks he chose?
How would you rank deck difficulty?

[bkemke]

I disagree on Death and Taxes, take for example the complexity plays that become open when you have Aether Vial with Flickerwisp as opposed to without vial. When to activate port or cast a spell isn't obvious either.

I do agree about Elves and Storm but I think what's hardest on these decks is sideboarding. You don't want to give up nut draws or dilute to potency of these decks with too much sideboarding.

Great article.

[Vicar in a tutu]

Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa talks about difficult decks, and when you may want to play a simple or difficult deck. He also rates a few sample Legacy decks as examples.

Click here (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pvs-playhouse-hard-decks/) to read the article.

Do you agree with PVDR on his rankings for the decks he chose?
How would you rank deck difficulty?
I have never played Death & Taxes, but it does not strike me as an easy deck to play. I would rate it above Sneak & Show. Watching Tomas Enevoldsen play the deck gave me a lot of respect for it, not just in terms of power, but also complexity.

[TheArchitect]

Death and taxes easier than show and tell. What?

Other than that it was a good article, most of which I find myself agreeing with.

[JPoJohnson]

Good article for sure. I would agree with switching D&T and Sneak/Show's ratings though. I would not agree with saying that Sneak/Show is as difficult to play in Legacy as UWR is in modern (scores fairly similar).

[Technics]

Good article for sure. I would agree with switching D&T and Sneak/Show's ratings though. I would not agree with saying that Sneak/Show is as difficult to play in Legacy as UWR is in modern (scores fairly similar).

I think you can't compare cross format. Part of the score is how well do you need to know the format to play. Thus because Legacy is a much harder format to learn a deck that needs a "5" in format knowledge in Legacy is much harder than a deck that needs a "5" in Standard/Modern. Thus I don't think you can really cross compare.

[ukyo_rulz]

For Legacy decks in particular, I felt that the article focused too much on the first two aspects (decisions, complexity) and not enough on the third (unforgiving). Most Legacy decks are extremely forgiving, just because the cards are so powerful. Sure, it may not be easy to play a tempo deck to perfection, but anyone can play an early threat then use mana denial and countermagic to ensure the opponent never does anything relevant for the rest of the game. Anyone can cast Show & Tell, Natural Order for the win. Anyone can play Putrid Imp turn one and end turn two with his board full of creatures the opponent's hand stripped of anything relevant. Because of this, I think decks like DnT were rated too low and decks like Elves were rated too high.

Basically I wouldn't rate any deck with four or more "I win" cards costing three or less as more than a 2.5 in difficulty rating.

[JPoJohnson]

I think you can't compare cross format. Part of the score is how well do you need to know the format to play. Thus because Legacy is a much harder format to learn a deck that needs a "5" in format knowledge in Legacy is much harder than a deck that needs a "5" in Standard/Modern. Thus I don't think you can really cross compare.

I figured it was a standardized system across formats. Otherwise you couldn't say that standard is a more simple format because the ratings were lower (which is what he did in his article). Since he did that, I figured it was fair to compare.

[joemauer]

I think the ratings are all out of wack.

Elves is not as difficult as Storm. I don't think elves is difficult at all. I would rank elves around Death n Taxes. Like a 3. Death and Taxes has to play tight games to win. Somewhat straightforward but requiring a lot of tight plays.

Sneak n Show should be given a 1. This is the easiest deck in Legacy next to Burn. Oh so many decisions: Should I Show and Tell in Grizzlebrand or Emmy? Hmmm. I have a Force of Will in hand should I use it on my opponent's Fow targeting my Show and Tell? Hmmm. So difficult.

I find Miracles to be an easier deck due to its power level. It is somewhat forgiving when you can topdeck the win. I would rank it around 3 as well.

And Bug is very difficult. I find this to be the toughest tempo deck to play in Legacy. With discard+counters and brainstorm+shuffle effects to choose between the two it can be easy to mess up with. Also, the deck doesn't run a lot of creatures limiting your win conditions. I would give it a 4 at least.

[Lord Seth]

Sneak n Show should be given a 1. This is the easiest deck in Legacy next to Burn. Oh so many decisions: Should I Show and Tell in Grizzlebrand or Emmy? Hmmm. I have a Force of Will in hand should I use it on my opponent's Fow targeting my Show and Tell? Hmmm. So difficult.
Interesting you mention that, considering a friend of mine recently tried out Show and Tell after playing mostly Jund, and they said they thought that Show and Tell required a lot more thinking than Jund.

[lordofthepit]

Death and Taxes is much more difficult to play than Sneak Attack. There might be a lot of decisions to make when you cast cantrips, but as far as Legacy decks go, Sneak Attack is relatively straight forward with fewer decision trees than other decks.

I do agree that Elves and Miracles are very complicated decks, and I actually think Elves makes the most decisions in the course of a game than any other commonly played deck in the format (i.e. not counting the likes of Doomsday, Lands, and Turbo Eldrazi). In addition to what PV described with the "combo" vs. "aggro" plan, the sequencing of creatures/spells matters much more in that deck than in almost any other. You frequently need to do counterintuitive things like wait on your land drop for as long as possible (juggling that with the risk of playing into taxing counters) and hold creatures in your hand. In addition to all that, the board states can get pretty complicated. I don't think I need to elaborate on Miracles.

That being said, unlike something like Storm, if you mess up with Elves or Miracles, your deck is resilient enough to recover. If you screw up with ANT or TES, you might have just gone from a guaranteed win to hellbent with no board. I'd argue that Elves and Miracles are extremely difficult to play optimally, but significantly easier to play "well enough to win".

[sdematt]

After reading the title of the article in a New Zealand accent, I was totally surprised at the content PV included.

Moving along.


In general, I think the article is fine, but the numbers seem a tad weird - I can get behind whole and half integers, but .1? Like what the hell is the difference between a 4.3 and a 4.2? Is it just that teeny percent harder? Does that tiny bit matter?

-Matt

[aahz]

After reading the title of the article in a New Zealand accent, I was totally surprised at the content PV included.

Moving along.


In general, I think the article is fine, but the numbers seem a tad weird - I can get behind whole and half integers, but .1? Like what the hell is the difference between a 4.3 and a 4.2? Is it just that teeny percent harder? Does that tiny bit matter?

-Matt

The graders were Shahar, Matt Nass, Josh Utter-Leyton, LSV, EFro, Reid, Owen, and myself. Then I averaged the grade and this is the order we came up with:

Also, needs more Enchantress.

Interestingly, the actual text of his descriptions of D&T and S&S are very much in line with the the criticism posted here (and in contrast to the number grades).

[Lemnear]

Rating a handful of decks with a 0.1 scale is ridiculous. If he rated 60 Legacy decks this might have made any sense but not for that selection.

If confused about some sentence early in the article that decks like Elves and Storm don't need format knowledge. You don't need format Knowledge piloting decks with full playsets of Cabal Therapy?! You don't need format Knowledge if you have to decide between going all-in against a possible FoW or being hit by discard if you wait in every game on the draw?

[JPoJohnson]

Rating a handful of decks with a 0.1 scale is ridiculous. If he rated 60 Legacy decks this might have made any sense but not for that selection.

If confused about some sentence early in the article that decks like Elves and Storm don't need format knowledge. You don't need format Knowledge piloting decks with full playsets of Cabal Therapy?! You don't need format Knowledge if you have to decide between going all-in against a possible FoW or being hit by discard if you wait in every game on the draw?

Good job guys, you poked the guy that happens to play both elves and storm.

[Lemnear]

Good job guys, you poked the guy that happens to play both elves and storm.

I know and therefore I'm confused about the statement and the shallow analysis overall in this article and still making such a differentiate ranking

P.S. I doubt anything is harder than piloting elves though a field of Miracles and BUG control

[Echelon]

I wonder what the writer wants to accomplish with his article.

His general consensus seems to be "Sometimes playing Magic is hard and sometimes it isn't" and is by definition subjective.

The article is kinda pointless.

[Dark Ritual]

Sneak and show hard to play? Yeah, so difficult. Here's the deck's ENTIRE GAMEPLAN in one sentence:

Get emrakul or griselbrand into play via show and tell or sneak attack.

The end.

As for therapy making elves so hard to play, that is not true. Therapy is a very difficult card to master. But when you have training wheels/access to flashback it's a lot easier. In storm you don't get to flashback it short of PiF or having a creature in play...sure probe is training wheels but you don't always draw them together otherwise every deck would be running gitaxian probe and therapy as 4 ofs as gitaxian therapy is insanely good.

If you think there's nothing harder than X doomsday fetchland tendrils is always ready to prove you wrong. Nothing is harder, end of story. I kind of wanted to jokingly write in the comments that doomsday would probably weigh in at 50 on the scale or something absurd like that as doomsday in comparison to everything else is like comparing calculus to basic math.

[HammafistRoob]

Doomsday isn't that bad, I don't understand where this consensus even comes from.

[Barook]

Rating a handful of decks with a 0.1 scale is ridiculous.
This

Easy, easy-average, average, average-hard, hard would work way better than random numbers he pulled out of his ass.

A trained monkey can execute S&T's game plan. Considering the scale goes from 1.0 to 5.0, with 3.0 being the midpoint, stating that D&T takes below average skill/format knowledge and S&T above average skill/format knowledge is downright ridiculous.

All I see is a pointless article with some ludicrous statements.

[Royce Walter]

"The graders were Shahar, Matt Nass, Josh Utter-Leyton, LSV, EFro, Reid, Owen, and myself. Then I averaged the grade and this is the order we came up with"


That's where the grading scale comes from. Good job with reading comprehension, team.

[Lemnear]

"The graders were Shahar, Matt Nass, Josh Utter-Leyton, LSV, EFro, Reid, Owen, and myself. Then I averaged the grade and this is the order we came up with"


That's where the grading scale comes from. Good job with reading comprehension, team.

I've read where they come from, but that is not the point. Presenting the average crowd from beginners to veterans a 0.1 scaling based on personal opinions of people who partly have no or near-no experience with some decks listed wields questionable value.

I have the impression that some of the ratings reflect just that on both ends of the scale. Hear-Say all over.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Interesting you mention that, considering a friend of mine recently tried out Show and Tell after playing mostly Jund, and they said they thought that Show and Tell required a lot more thinking than Jund.

My God, the first time I played Sneak and Show (coming from a combo-focused background) I made what should have been game-ending punts in basically every match and still won. If the deck is "on" for that day it's very difficult to lose no matter what you do. The second time I played it I lost to my own inconsistent draws a lot. Skill in that deck translates to knowing when to mulligan, how to cantrip, and knowing when to go off vs. when to wait for more protection. Basic combo skills...the difference is the combo itself is so easy it's brain-dead, whereas Elves, Storm, Dredge etc. actually have combos with decision trees and many things to do.

Of course, I won't claim Jund is "hard" to play. The Legacy version is definitely harder than the old standard lists were because you have more options, and the manabase blows so fetching is a little complex. Deciding whether to Hymn, Goyf, Bob, or kill their one drop on turn 2 can be thought-provoking, for example, but overall it's not a difficult deck.

[Koby]

My biggest take away from the rankings given by PVDR hinge on it being subjective. Granted, this is going to be subjective because it's very difficult to rank "hardness" without a strict objective criteria, of which I doubt we can even come up with. However, seeing the list of pros PVDR queried to make the rankings, I'm not surprised that Elves was ranked with a 4.7.

LSV, Matt Nass, and Josh Utter-Leyton all have piloted Elves in numerous formats and at some of the highest level of competitive play. Reid Duke also won an event with the Legacy version about a year ago. That's a lot of bias towards the deck that skews its ranking. I agree that Elves is not a simple deck to pick up and play cold, but it's certainly easier than Storm, and likely on par with UW Miracles.

Overall, I think PVDR's thesis regarding 1. deck knowledge, 2. format knowledge, and 3. "an unforgiving deck" are all reasonable and could easily serve as a basis of evaluation of archetypes at large.

I recall in many events I've selected a deck that was less decision heavy as a method of hedging against a long day of play. For example, at a GP I would prefer a simpler deck to play that is still objectively powerful and competitive; kind of like Sneak & Show.

[sdematt]

"The graders were Shahar, Matt Nass, Josh Utter-Leyton, LSV, EFro, Reid, Owen, and myself. Then I averaged the grade and this is the order we came up with"


That's where the grading scale comes from. Good job with reading comprehension, team.

I skipped through all the garbage prior to the actual ratings since it was like 3am. Shame on me? Big fucking whoop.

Sneak and Show is widely played at Invitationals because - oh look - it's super simple to play. The decision trees REALLY only get hard when your opponent has Humility or Ensnaring Bridge off of your own Show and Tell. But, the decision extends to "I fucking lose since no one packs bounce in this deck anymore, bai". The deck is, in my opinion, a 2/5 in terms of difficulty to play.

Here's my scale:

Easy to play: Deck is VERY linear, and although you have to make decisions, you're usually still bounding towards a main goal every time. Ex. Burn

Medium Difficulty: Deck is still quite linear, but you have more options in your deck to play around more stuff. There could be more intricate interactions, but again, there's one or two main gameplans and you're going with those. Ex. Affinity, Dredge, Sneak and Show, Reanimator

Medium Plus Difficulty: Like medium, but player skill and format knowledge and lots of tuning impacts your results a lot heavier. This is mostly the midrange decks - you don't lose if you make mistakes, but the "right" decision can be tough. Ex. Jund, BUG, Junk, RUG, Patriot, etc. etc.

Hard Difficulty: Deck can be very flexible and has many different options. Deck can be hard to play, either mechanically or by format knowledge. Mistakes cost you much more, and tight play is required to achieve good results. Ex. Miracles, Elves, ANT/TES

Why are you playing this?: Deck is too hard to play and doesn't put up results because no one knows how to play it as well as you do. You have to play this deck for years before you start putting up finishes. Ex. Doomsday.

Similar to the 1-5, and maybe similar to the article, but it's mine.

Also, mostly just wanted to shit on Doomsday.

-Matt

[nedleeds]

Any deck that uses a crutch like Brainstorm to fix draws and bad hands, and eschews combat ("Attack with Emrakul" doesn't count) should max out at about a 2.5.

[nevilshute]

Any deck that uses a crutch like Brainstorm to fix draws and bad hands, and eschews combat ("Attack with Emrakul" doesn't count) should max out at about a 2.5.

I guess that means storm :wink:

[Julian23]

I feel most of you are already well aware of this distinction, but I'm gonna repeat it for anyone who's not:

There are two kinds of "hard to play". One is where it's only hard to play for you and you get little value out of its inherent difficulty - as in confusing your opponent about what he should do. Doomsday comes to mind as a perfect example of where difficulty does not scale very well with value. The other kind of "hard" is a deck that's very difficult to master, but will not only put you but also your opponent to tough decision; thus it's level of difficulty scales much better with value. For the later, Elves comes to mind.

[Malakai]

Miracles should be a 5.0. You walk a knife's edge with that deck, except you have to run so that you don't run out of time. Hell, I've top8'd with it a few times and I even moved to something else because the fatigue over the course of a long tournament was too great.

[Tammit67]

Miracles should be a 5.0. You walk a knife's edge with that deck, except you have to run so that you don't run out of time. Hell, I've top8'd with it a few times and I even moved to something else because the fatigue over the course of a long tournament was too great.

I'd like to think the deck has a very low skill floor (as sometimes you can fuck literally everything and as long as you hit terminus, you got it) but pretty high skill ceiling. There are a lot of small advantages you can take having the experience in the format, but sometimes you just don't get punished for mistakes because you just miracle for the win.

Here's how'd I'd rate things:

Low skill floor: You don't have to be particularly good to see success, the cards are inherently powerful and sometimes a moron with the deck happens to crush an event on the power level alone. Kinda single minded in purpose such that you really only have to keep track of what cards actually interfere with you (and in g1 there isn't much)
Decks- Burn, Belcher, Jund, Reanimator, Sneak and Show, Omni-tell, dredge, oops all spells, MUD, merfolk, zoo, dragon stompy

Medium skill floor: Playing this deck blind is probably a bad idea, but you aren't always super punished for mistakes. Your role in the matchup rarely changes so that helps.
Decks- Miracles, elves, death and taxes, affinity, lands, AnT, deathblade, UWR delver, BUG delver, goblins, maverick

High skill floor: Mistakes are punished super hard and if you fail to play your deck properly, you might never see how the pile is able to win games. You tread a fine line constantly
Decks- RUG delver, TES, Team America, High tide


Low skill ceiling: You've made a decision and that's that. Deck pseudo plays itself and your opponent often can interact with you or not. It's not like your deck doesn't have a decision tree, just that they aren't as complex. Decks are often thought as glass cannon or inconsistent. I actually hate these decks for larger events
Decks- Belcher, Oops all spells, MUD, dragon stompy

Medium Skill ceiling: Your decisions matter, but you either don't have a lot of them or you leave yourself room to get outplayed or out synergied by decks with more meaningful decisions. Deck might be unable to change its role in a matchup depending on opposing response. Sometimes you got a ton of decions but an opponents renders it moot.
Decks- Jund, Merfolk, Elves, death and taxes, deathblade, UWR delver, maverick, reanimator, affinity*, lands, deathblade, Omnitell, show and tell, dredge*, goblins*, 12 post

High skill ceiling: Master these and you are pretty much God. You'll be that guy known for that deck forever. So many decisions that when you lose, often you feel it was your fault. It probably was.
RUG delver, Storm variants, miracles, most jace/brainstorm decks, Team america

* I'd rate these at a higher ceiling if the advantages they were looking to seek were better in the meta. You can outplay all you want as dredge until rest in piece comes down your you stop revealing dredgers. Deck tends to variance on you sometimes despite really good play. Similarly, affinity and goblins have a lot of decisions but aren't suited to the meta atm

[Lemnear]

Call me a nicpicker, but ranking "storm" here as one deck is a failure itself as ANT has 2 lines of winning with PIF and Tutor-chain, TES a bunch of additional sideboard engines to choose from and Doomsday is a deck for masochists with barely any advantage over the previous 2 (personal opinion).

Ranking ANT higher than Elves is nonsense

[Technics]

@Tammit

I take huge issue with your high ranking of RUG Delver. Skill needs to be broken down into 2 categories. Your own deck skill needed (which could be further broken down) and format knowledge. Dredge is actually much harder of a skill floor (I would put it medium) and RUG's floor is also in the medium camp. However where the distinction comes is format knowledge. As a Dredge player you can raise yourself from a 2 (floor) to a 3 (cap) with proper format knowledge by naming blind of Therapy. Here format knowledge (as well as play skill) can help to move you up, but once you understand how backwards dredge works, you pretty much have it and have little room to move. However RUG although extremely easy to start with (2 floor for me), there is SO much format knowledge and learning of the deck that will bring it up to a higher level (5).

Here would be my ranking of the same decks you listed. FKG = Format Knowledge Growth, or how much room is available to improve your game due to format knowledge.

http://djrow3.com/images/r/legacyskill.png

[Zombie]

Medium skill floor: Playing this deck blind is probably a bad idea, but you aren't always super punished for mistakes. Your role in the matchup rarely changes so that helps.
Decks- Miracles, elves, death and taxes, affinity, lands, AnT, deathblade, UWR delver, BUG delver, goblins, maverick

High skill floor: Mistakes are punished super hard and if you fail to play your deck properly, you might never see how the pile is able to win games. You tread a fine line constantly
Decks- RUG delver, TES, Team America, High tide


Low skill ceiling: You've made a decision and that's that. Deck pseudo plays itself and your opponent often can interact with you or not. It's not like your deck doesn't have a decision tree, just that they aren't as complex. Decks are often thought as glass cannon or inconsistent. I actually hate these decks for larger events
Decks- Belcher, Oops all spells, MUD, dragon stompy

Medium Skill ceiling: Your decisions matter, but you either don't have a lot of them or you leave yourself room to get outplayed or out synergied by decks with more meaningful decisions. Deck might be unable to change its role in a matchup depending on opposing response. Sometimes you got a ton of decions but an opponents renders it moot.
Decks- Jund, Merfolk, Elves, death and taxes, deathblade, UWR delver, maverick, reanimator, affinity*, lands, deathblade, Omnitell, show and tell, dredge*, goblins*, 12 post

High skill ceiling: Master these and you are pretty much God. You'll be that guy known for that deck forever. So many decisions that when you lose, often you feel it was your fault. It probably was.
RUG delver, Storm variants, miracles, most jace/brainstorm decks, Team america

* I'd rate these at a higher ceiling if the advantages they were looking to seek were better in the meta. You can outplay all you want as dredge until rest in piece comes down your you stop revealing dredgers. Deck tends to variance on you sometimes despite really good play. Similarly, affinity and goblins have a lot of decisions but aren't suited to the meta atm

The underlined. I don't even.


Here would be my ranking of the same decks you listed. FKG = Format Knowledge Growth, or how much room is available to improve your game due to format knowledge.

http://djrow3.com/images/r/legacyskill.png

a 0 FKG rating to a Therapy deck where you have to switch between fair and unfair plans on the fly, and play most of those fair matches with very subpar cards, plus where your maindeck is 99% proactive cards and you can't just take out "dead" things when sideboarding? Please.

[Royce Walter]

I skipped through all the garbage prior to the actual ratings since it was like 3am. Shame on me? Big fucking whoop

My apologies, in the future I won't make the mistake of assuming you read the article in discussion.

[sdematt]

My apologies, in the future I won't make the mistake of assuming you read the article in discussion.

Perfect.

-Matt

[Technics]

The underlined. I don't even.

Dredge CAN change it's game plan a ton depending on what the other player is doing. Either you have never played Dredge, or you are incompetent. Dredge has the same "game plan flexibility" as storm, but you don't see those decks capped at medium because "they can't decide to not play spells in a turn". EVERY deck have a main gameplan. Some of them can get hosed by a single card (Thalia, RiP, Ensnaring Bridge, Choke) but you don't see them all ranked at medium because of it.


a 0 FKG rating to a Therapy deck where you have to switch between fair and unfair plans on the fly, and play most of those fair matches with very subpar cards, plus where your maindeck is 99% proactive cards and you can't just take out "dead" things when sideboarding? Please.

What deck are you talking about? Every Therapy deck has a FKG of at least 1. Elves is not a "Therapy Deck", and runs zero in the main. I did not got an evaluate side boarding difficulty as yes, than can extremely warp a decks difficulty, but also is different depending on specific builds, and is too "open" to evaluate as an initial ranking of decks.


Also as a side note, thanks for using 5 words to respond to an entire post and ranking system. I can see you are only focused on being constructive and helping the community, and not just being a dick.

[twndomn]

Why do we lump everything about competitive Magic into one word: skill?

Skill comes in different form. Let's look at the controversial Legacy elf rating, what's there?
1. Land sequencing because cradle and arbor matter.
2. Catching triggers.
3. Utilize Elf/Insect abilities in play fully and remember which has done what.
4. To GSZ or not, if yes, what's my GSZ target.
5. To Glimpse or not.

That's really it. Feel free to add if I miss some. Those are the criterion in determining the skill level of an Elf player.

Let's look at Miracle, which got rated lower:
1. Land sequencing because some spells require WW or UU. Fetching Basic matters also well.
2. Catching CB triggers and stack manipulation. Lossett's Legend build manipulates stack a lot, trick people into multiple spells countered from the same CB... etc.
3. The typical control dilemma, do I let it go or do I counter it now. Is this the moment to do the counter war?
4. Observe opponent. When you play a control deck, the effort is spent on observing opponent, respond to which trigger. It's a draw-go deck for good reasons. Some opponents try to shortcut you out of responding to triggers.
5. Time, be efficient at everything, including Top utilization, to avoid draws. Miracle is known to get into draws.

The rating would be equal, to say the least. If I am allowed to take one step further, I would rate Miracle higher. The bullet points or the decision points from Elves are straight forward yes/no most of time, while Miracles are often it-depends.

[danyul]

A year or so ago spent several weeks trading/buying my way into Miracles. I went all over the city to all of the major shops wheeling and dealing with locals. Finally I built the damn thing and played it cold in one of our larger monthly events. 6+ rounds! This will be sweet! What a grand adventure!

I kept forgetting the top 3 cards and punted my way into oblivion. I lost my final game to a Gaddock Teeg with a Sword of ProWhite on it. I went 0-2 drop and spent the rest of the event trading the deck away.

Yes. That is all I have to add.

[Lemnear]

A year or so ago spent several weeks trading/buying my way into Miracles. I went all over the city to all of the major shops wheeling and dealing with locals. Finally I built the damn thing and played it cold in one of our larger monthly events. 6+ rounds! This will be sweet! What a grand adventure!

I kept forgetting the top 3 cards and punted my way into oblivion. I lost my final game to a Gaddock Teeg with a Sword of ProWhite on it. I went 0-2 drop and spent the rest of the event trading the deck away.

Yes. That is all I have to add.

Karakas is still a thing ;)

[lordofthepit]

A year or so ago spent several weeks trading/buying my way into Miracles. I went all over the city to all of the major shops wheeling and dealing with locals. Finally I built the damn thing and played it cold in one of our larger monthly events. 6+ rounds! This will be sweet! What a grand adventure!

I kept forgetting the top 3 cards and punted my way into oblivion. I lost my final game to a Gaddock Teeg with a Sword of ProWhite on it. I went 0-2 drop and spent the rest of the event trading the deck away.

Yes. That is all I have to add.

When was this?

[phazonmutant]

I'd like to think the deck has a very low skill floor (as sometimes you can fuck literally everything and as long as you hit terminus, you got it) but pretty high skill ceiling. There are a lot of small advantages you can take having the experience in the format, but sometimes you just don't get punished for mistakes because you just miracle for the win.

Here's how'd I'd rate things:

Low skill floor: You don't have to be particularly good to see success, the cards are inherently powerful and sometimes a moron with the deck happens to crush an event on the power level alone. Kinda single minded in purpose such that you really only have to keep track of what cards actually interfere with you (and in g1 there isn't much)
Decks- Burn, Belcher, Jund, Reanimator, Sneak and Show, Omni-tell, dredge, oops all spells, MUD, merfolk, zoo, dragon stompy

Medium skill floor: Playing this deck blind is probably a bad idea, but you aren't always super punished for mistakes. Your role in the matchup rarely changes so that helps.
Decks- Miracles, elves, death and taxes, affinity, lands, AnT, deathblade, UWR delver, BUG delver, goblins, maverick

High skill floor: Mistakes are punished super hard and if you fail to play your deck properly, you might never see how the pile is able to win games. You tread a fine line constantly
Decks- RUG delver, TES, Team America, High tide


Low skill ceiling: You've made a decision and that's that. Deck pseudo plays itself and your opponent often can interact with you or not. It's not like your deck doesn't have a decision tree, just that they aren't as complex. Decks are often thought as glass cannon or inconsistent. I actually hate these decks for larger events
Decks- Belcher, Oops all spells, MUD, dragon stompy

Medium Skill ceiling: Your decisions matter, but you either don't have a lot of them or you leave yourself room to get outplayed or out synergied by decks with more meaningful decisions. Deck might be unable to change its role in a matchup depending on opposing response. Sometimes you got a ton of decions but an opponents renders it moot.
Decks- Jund, Merfolk, Elves, death and taxes, deathblade, UWR delver, maverick, reanimator, affinity*, lands, deathblade, Omnitell, show and tell, dredge*, goblins*, 12 post

High skill ceiling: Master these and you are pretty much God. You'll be that guy known for that deck forever. So many decisions that when you lose, often you feel it was your fault. It probably was.
RUG delver, Storm variants, miracles, most jace/brainstorm decks, Team america

* I'd rate these at a higher ceiling if the advantages they were looking to seek were better in the meta. You can outplay all you want as dredge until rest in piece comes down your you stop revealing dredgers. Deck tends to variance on you sometimes despite really good play. Similarly, affinity and goblins have a lot of decisions but aren't suited to the meta atm

I like this system and for the most part I agree. Just a note that you have BUG Delver / Team America on your "floor" list twice. Like some other posters mentioned, I don't believe Canadian Threshold has more than a medium skill floor since your normal game plan is so linear - mana screw your opponent. I agree with the skill floor for Team America being high - the deck is a miserable pile if you're not playing the matchup right, so it requires a lot of format knowledge.

[Tammit67]

I like this system and for the most part I agree. Just a note that you have BUG Delver / Team America on your "floor" list twice. Like some other posters mentioned, I don't believe Canadian Threshold has more than a medium skill floor since your normal game plan is so linear - mana screw your opponent. I agree with the skill floor for Team America being high - the deck is a miserable pile if you're not playing the matchup right, so it requires a lot of format knowledge.

Team america was more the "we aren't running the powerful cards, just tempo" and BUG delver was more true name, bob, delver, goyf my cards are really good on their own stuff. Certainly with the addition of delver, the tempo archetype just has such a braindead decision tree with certain hands and perhaps for this reason I should have dropped it down. Back when the only creatures were goose and goyf though...

For those bitching about elves: It takes all of like 6 games to realize that while you have a ton of GSZ targets, in reality you only ever want a much smaller subset. There are sequencing decisions that even if you mess up, your board position isn't completely compromised most of the time. "I failed to kill you this turn, pass turn with 20+ power in play"

For those bitching about dredge: Herp derp, I dredged 6 every turn since the start and my deck handed me a win, despite removing the wrong cards to ichorid, sacrificing the wrong creatures to therapy, playing the wrong land. The deck fights on such a different axis game one that those games come pretty fucking easily.

AnT vs TES vs DDFT: AnT is easy mode and is easier to win with less effort, hence the lower skill floor. Storm in general though just has a very high cap on what is possible, and while I could have differentiated more, wasn't really worth my time to please the 12 people reading that might care enough about the distinction.

I'm glad my simplified list gave something to talk about.