[Article] Metagaming Legacy Before GP NJ and Eternal Weekend

[boxian]

Hi guys,

This is the first theory article I have ever posted and I wanted to get y'all opinion on it and put it out there for the community. Hopefully some theory crafting that I and my good friend have done will help someone get out there and crush. Please leave any comments here or on the wordpress site. Sorry about it being a work in progress, but I wanted to get it out there before the week started to give people time to think about the idea.

Thanks for the time!

Here is the link: http://boxian0.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/metagaming-legacy-before-gpnj-and-eternal-weekend/

[Lemnear]

Punishing Jund isn’t built so that you have to filter your draws – your deck is a hammer and every opponent is a nail. Every topdeck from you is a threat. Their topdecks are significantly worse

This is laughable. Topdecking random lands/creatures against combo or discard against decks like 12-Post or Loam is just pointless compared to your opponent topdecking cantrips to filter for what he/she is looking for. You can't write down such bold and biased stuff in an article which claims to contain "analysis" of the metagame.


Bob Huang, who just jammed 4x Cruises into his list and said go

Thie is respectless AND wrong. He added Swiftspear, cut down common played cards like SCM, counters and the complete Stifle/Wasteland package for an approach more focused on aggro than on Tempo. This build made him burn through his deck/cards rather than holding back cards like the Tempo/control Version does and ergo he is quicker to fill his graveyard for Treasure Cruise to reload his hand. From here the article goes down the drain as shallow and wrong analysis just pairs up with your love for Jund.


More than half the field is playing blue for cantrips, and if you don’t believe me, ask Jeff Hoogland (http://themeadery.org/articles/leaving-legacy-for-a-modern-mistress) how many Brainstorms there are.

You seriously want to make a point by using this crap? Jeff was looking for an excuse, for him not being able to play his pile successfully over 4 years without changing and despite of the increasing number of S&T decks during that time. He kept playing Loam against S&T which IS a bad matchup no matter what and blamed Brainstorm for his losses rather than his unwillingness to adjust. His rant boiled down to "if Loam is a bad strategy against combo (because Loam is actually good against Delver.dec), I'll leave Legacy! WotC please ban combo!". You're not doing yourself a favor by taking this article as your foundation


Elves! relies heavily on Elvish Visionary and Glimpse of Nature to combo off (Sometimes though, they’ll just have it naturally, two games in a row.

Wrong again. What will kill you in this matchup is Natural Order and Wren Runs Packmaster powered by Gaea's Cradle. Unless you can cast Punishing Fire at least 3 times in a single turn (even more with Symbiote on their field) you cannot beat the Wolf-Lord. Focusing on the draw of Visionary and ignoring all the tutors they run just to have a point on Chains of Mephistopheles is exactly the bias which makes the article packed with bold and wrong statements. You need to look at decks as a whole as the issue comes up several times:


Decks which have a significant draw engine, such as Elves! or Storm into the second category

Excuse me? I should know if storm would run a "significant draw engine" ;)

It's not that Chain of M. comes down before your opponent was able to fire his cantrips for 1-2 turns to fix his/her hand anyways, which was also the backbreaker for Spirit of the Labyrinth and how do you expect Chains to fare as a mere 2-off which doesn't even bring a body unlike SotL? Do you think you are the only one running Abrupt Decay? After that 1-2 turns of cantripping, storm will just kill you with Infernal Tutor, PIF or AN with neither card having the word "draw" written on it.


“Non-draw” decks as the last category where decks are primarily trying to play a fair game and not draw a lot of cards to fix their situation. This would be the Junds, Death and Taxes, and Mavericks of the format. I also included Miracles here because they use Sensai’s Diving Top over Brainstorm for the most part.

I could swear Miracles plays the same 4 Ponder, 4 Brainstorms like every other blue deck (sans Meerfolk) in Legacy and that SDT also says "draw". Your "analysis" goes from wrong to inconsistent in terms of classifying decks.


The maindeck Scavenging Ooze is a concession to delve cards running around. If you only have 1x Chains of Mephistopheles, then I would play another Hymn to Tourach despite feelings on it currently fueling delve.

So what? A hellbent opponent is a hellbent opponent. You need to create cardadvantage in Order to keep up with other decks and arguing with your opponent topdecking TC is off. You can still hit their lands and cantrips they would otherwisely use to chain into another to fill their graveyard even faster. Not running Hymn in general just because SOME decks in the metagame can "undo" the cardadvantage gained by Hymn via TC is stupid. You know that Elves, storm, Miracles and others won't run TC at all and are commonly played?


The maindeck Scavenging Ooze is a concession to delve cards running around.

You already have 4 DRS against Delve but no way to Tutor for Ooze :/


decklist and Verdict

If you would have done a decent analysis instead of finding arguments supporting CoM you would have noticed that Pyroblast is a much better anti-metagame-card than Chains as it Deals with Counterbalance, Delver, S&T as well as Treasure Cruise. You miss that Hymn + Pyroblast (the TC) just stifles any comeback-attempt of Delver decks and that Lightning Bolt is on a low on value in the current metagame. The article doesn't even bother to adress Miracles as THE DtB atm and how to deal with it even if the article is nothing but a Jund-Ad. You know how good Pyroblast + Decay is against Miracles?

In essence, you ignored the metagame in your "metagame analysis" and how to react to it AS A WHOLE. You cherrypicked an aspect (lots of draw effects in the format), drew the wrong conclusion (Chains due to not noticing all the draw effects are blue and that Pyroblast can handle these too and even more common played cards like S&T, Delver, Counterbalance, etc.) and tied it to an advertisement for Jund.

[nevilshute]

This might just be me, but I am having problems understanding your graph. How did your friend obtain a matchwin %? I'm sorry if this is blatantly obvious, but the graph speaks of "% of games won against decks where Chains is effective/ineffective". Is this based on actual hard data where your friend has playtested and the plotted down his matchwin% against an array of decks? Or is it conjecture based upon experiences with the deck?

[Lemnear]

This might just be me, but I am having problems understanding your graph. How did your friend obtain a matchwin %? I'm sorry if this is blatantly obvious, but the graph speaks of "% of games won against decks where Chains is effective/ineffective". Is this based on actual hard data where your friend has playtested and the plotted down his matchwin% against an array of decks? Or is it conjecture based upon experiences with the deck?

As the distribution is linear, there is no Chance that it comes from playtesting or metagame data. In addition to the fact that it doesn't care for metagame-deck distribution which we even have at hand by Nihil Credo's monthly DtB-updates for example, nor credits the differing impact of CoM (which is only a 2-off!) on particular decks (which was done horribly wrong throughout the article anyways), the whole graph is pointless. It's an Auto-distribution and declaring a 2-off "100% effective" is impossible to ever explain in a game which also has to deal with a manacurve, 60 cards and yourself only being allowed to play 4 copies of a card

Edit: if you don't exclude the 50-50 case in your auto-distribution but round it up like in this case, you'll always get that 60/40 distribution

Tbh, you need to make a whole different level of data collection if you want to evaluate CoM/SotL on the metagame, beginning with getting metagame % of each deck over the complete months 50+ people events, analyze the decks reliance on draw-effects past turn 2 (aka the moment SotL/CoM can be cast) and then hand out a % of the metagame which have a tough time executing their gameplan with CoM/SotL on the table reduced by the factor of decks running MB Decays. Afterwards, set it in Relation to the actual number of CoM/SotL you actually play.

[Vicar in a tutu]

Lemnear, although I agree with your points, I don't think you have to be so confrontational. This is his first legacy-article. Take it easy.

[Echelon]

Lemnear, although I agree with your points, I don't think you have to be so confrontational. This is his first legacy-article. Take it easy.

I beg to differ. The best way to get people to watch their toes is to drop a big hammer on them.

The article just seems silly, assuming the reader follows the same train of thought as the writer does without specifically explaining what that train is, where it's going or why it's going where it's going in the first place (hello, chains-is-effective/ineffective-so-I-win-%). The article pretty much boils down to "Here's a deck. Go play it because numbers".

[boxian]

First of, thanks to everyone for reading and commenting on my article. I will try to address some concerns and clarify some points.


This is laughable. Topdecking random lands/creatures against combo or discard against decks like 12-Post or Loam is just pointless compared to your opponent topdecking cantrips to filter for what he/she is looking for. You can't write down such bold and biased stuff in an article which claims to contain "analysis" of the metagame.

12-Post and Loam aren't a significant part of the metagame and don't see a high Top 16 representation which is as deep as the data goes as far as I know. The point of that statement was that card for card, without filter, Jund wins topdeck wars as a core part of its strategy. If you use a card, such as Spirit of the Labyrinth or Chains of Mephistopheles, in order to cut off the cantripping of your opponents then they can no longer filter and the topdeck war can be won again.


Thie is respectless AND wrong. He added Swiftspear, cut down common played cards like SCM, counters and the complete Stifle/Wasteland package for an approach more focused on aggro than on Tempo. This build made him burn through his deck/cards rather than holding back cards like the Tempo/control Version does and ergo he is quicker to fill his graveyard for Treasure Cruise to reload his hand. From here the article goes down the drain as shallow and wrong analysis just pairs up with your love for Jund.

I really didn't mean any disrespect to Bob Huang at all. I think that what he did was great and I recognize that he changed a fundamental feature of the deck to make it more synergistic with Monastery Swiftspear by removing more reactive cards. That said, if you watched his interview, he said "I stuck 4 in the deck because Carsten Kotter said it would be good and then I tuned the deck from there and it turned out to be fantastic." So, he started with the assumption that playing four would be good and then moved the deck from there, which is "jamming 4 in" though I will admit there is certainly more finesse there than it may have sounded I gave him. The article isn't about playing Treasure Cruise though, he wrote a great one about that here: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cruising-to-victory-in-new-jersey/ and this article is about beating cantrips with available cards.


You seriously want to make a point by using this crap? Jeff was looking for an excuse, for him not being able to play his pile successfully over 4 years without changing and despite of the increasing number of S&T decks during that time. He kept playing Loam against S&T which IS a bad matchup no matter what and blamed Brainstorm for his losses rather than his unwillingness to adjust. His rant boiled down to "if Loam is a bad strategy against combo (because Loam is actually good against Delver.dec), I'll leave Legacy! WotC please ban combo!". You're not doing yourself a favor by taking this article as your foundation

First, Jeff's article was not a foundational article for mine. They're independent conclusions about a format which has a very high blue bias. I've yet to come out for the ban Brainstorm debate. I mainly included it as a fun joke, since I know that most people know of his hate of Brainstorm and the few articles and tweets he has made about the numbers it gets played. He is the main person who keeps tallying that number.



Wrong again. What will kill you in this matchup is Natural Order and Wren Runs Packmaster powered by Gaea's Cradle. Unless you can cast Punishing Fire at least 3 times in a single turn (even more with Symbiote on their field) you cannot beat the Wolf-Lord. Focusing on the draw of Visionary and ignoring all the tutors they run just to have a point on Chains of Mephistopheles is exactly the bias which makes the article packed with bold and wrong statements. You need to look at decks as a whole as the issue comes up several times:

Across those 4 SCG Opens, not a single Elves! player registered a Wren's Run Packmaster. There was an Ezuri, Renegade Leader from Jonathan Jolin and Ruric Thar from Sam Thompson. In the article, I talk about them having a nut draw with Natural Order. You just lose. That happens sometimes. However, requesting Punishing Jund to play a lot of removal spells against Elves! is also asking it to play it's plan A, so I didn't think that I needed to enumerate that. The only tutor they have is GSZ as Natural Order is less of a tutor and more of a button to press that says "I win". The deck remains ahead of Natural Order by killing everything it sees. GSZ generally gets a piece that can be killed as well.


Excuse me? I should know if storm would run a "significant draw engine" ;)

It's not that Chain of M. comes down before your opponent was able to fire his cantrips for 1-2 turns to fix his/her hand anyways, which was also the backbreaker for Spirit of the Labyrinth and how do you expect Chains to fare as a mere 2-off which doesn't even bring a body unlike SotL? Do you think you are the only one running Abrupt Decay? After that 1-2 turns of cantripping, storm will just kill you with Infernal Tutor, PIF or AN with neither card having the word "draw" written on it.

Obviously, cards will die to removal spells. Abrupt Decay will certainly kills Chains. I think that it not having a body is actually a point in its favor because it doesn't die to Forked Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Fire//Ice and so on. I'm not saying that YOU don't know about the "significant draw engine" of Storm. What I will say is that maybe you have misunderstood me. Elves! has a draw engine in bouncing and replaying Elvish Visionary or Glimpsing. Storm has a "significant draw engine" because I was categorizing things and didn't want to put a combo deck into the Xerox category, but generally still starts with a 4 Brainstorm/4 Ponder/X Gitaxian Probe shell, with that being another 4 of per the TES thread here. The turn 1 and turn 2 cantrips are very powerful, and maybe they fixed the hand entirely and they're ready to combo, but sometimes they aren't. The combo decks still prefer to have options and cantrips available. Cutting down on cantrips reduces lines of play and forces your opponent into lines that ought to be more favorable to the pilot who is prepared to take advantage of the Chains symmetry in the same way that a prison deck operates under its soft locks.



I could swear Miracles plays the same 4 Ponder, 4 Brainstorms like every other blue deck (sans Meerfolk) in Legacy and that SDT also says "draw". Your "analysis" goes from wrong to inconsistent in terms of classifying decks.

SDT says Draw, but for them to mess up due to a Chains in play they have to be 1. hellbent and 2. not remembered what the judge just told them about trying to draw with an empty hand and Chains out. Miracles, if you look at those 4 SCG Opens, has its number of Ponders in flux. There is 1 deck of 9 top 16 miracles decks which plays the full 4 ponder and I think about 3 which played 1 ponder. The other cut them for other spells, which reduces them to SDT sort of, 4 copies of Brainstorm, and generally 3 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

Chains is good against Jace, but they can just fateseal you out - it's not an appropriate answer here without other followup. Hating out 4 cards in those Brainstorms is probably not completely worth it, but it's not dead in the maindeck. And SDT allows them to organize and filter their draws, so Chains doesn't and has never had an effect on topdecking into a win in true variance style. It also is ineffective when your opponent is playing 3 deep. That said, it at least stops hellbent miracles on your turn. Yet to do much against a 1 card in hand miracled card though.



So what? A hellbent opponent is a hellbent opponent. You need to create cardadvantage in Order to keep up with other decks and arguing with your opponent topdecking TC is off. You can still hit their lands and cantrips they would otherwisely use to chain into another to fill their graveyard even faster. Not running Hymn in general just because SOME decks in the metagame can "undo" the cardadvantage gained by Hymn via TC is stupid. You know that Elves, storm, Miracles and others won't run TC at all and are commonly played?

There is currently some debate about Hymn, and how if it doesn't hit the Treasure Cruise, it merely fuels it as long as they have access to U. I agree that many decks won't be playing it, but I would expect that more people are excited by the card and trying it out in some fashion than not. I cut Hymns over Lightning Bolt because I wanted to maintain a removal density.


You already have 4 DRS against Delve but no way to Tutor for Ooze :/

A better deck builder would have found room for a GSZ. I leave that to the intelligent audience, as I clearly wasn't up to the task.



If you would have done a decent analysis instead of finding arguments supporting CoM you would have noticed that Pyroblast is a much better anti-metagame-card than Chains as it Deals with Counterbalance, Delver, S&T as well as Treasure Cruise. You miss that Hymn + Pyroblast (the TC) just stifles any comeback-attempt of Delver decks and that Lightning Bolt is on a low on value in the current metagame. The article doesn't even bother to adress Miracles as THE DtB atm and how to deal with it even if the article is nothing but a Jund-Ad. You know how good Pyroblast + Decay is against Miracles?

In essence, you ignored the metagame in your "metagame analysis" and how to react to it AS A WHOLE. You cherrypicked an aspect (lots of draw effects in the format), drew the wrong conclusion (Chains due to not noticing all the draw effects are blue and that Pyroblast can handle these too and even more common played cards like S&T, Delver, Counterbalance, etc.) and tied it to an advertisement for Jund.

I included a main deck REB in the list and have more copies out of the sideboard, even with different names to play around Meddling Mages. Lightning Bolt is still good against Jace, Clique, D&T, Elves!, etc. I didn't want to make it Painter style and just jam 4-8 REBs in and call it a day. The other problem with that approach is that Jund often wants to get rid of it's entire hand and holding REBs has a pretty big dis-synergy with Liliana and with emptying your hand. Chains is a permanent-based solution to a bevy of cantrip heavy decks.

I am currently X-2 lifetime against Miracles, with one of those losses being to the winner of the latest SCG Atlanta. Jund has a strong match up against Miracles, though I am currently unsure about how to approach the Keranos build.

Jund, as you have noted, is my deck of choice and I believe I started out the article talking from that point of view. I apologize that I wasn't clear that I was writing this from a non-blue perspective, but I was. The reason I had a broad title is that any deck, whether a RWB or a Junk or a Jund or Deadguy Ale or whatever fair deck with black you would like to play would most likely gain from playing a maindeck Chains. Thanks for reading and the critical analysis though!



This might just be me, but I am having problems understanding your graph. How did your friend obtain a matchwin %? I'm sorry if this is blatantly obvious, but the graph speaks of "% of games won against decks where Chains is effective/ineffective". Is this based on actual hard data where your friend has playtested and the plotted down his matchwin% against an array of decks? Or is it conjecture based upon experiences with the deck?

So, the numbers are a hypothetical where they are just saying that if you were to win whatever % of your matches against decks where chains is effective and whatever % where it is ineffective, assuming that you draw Chains in both games and it is good in one match and a stone brick in the other, what will your win % be in raw numbers. We didn't have time to do a proper simulation through MathCAD going over 1,000,000 iterations with different variables so instead we simplified the problem down just like we do in physics courses. However, it is also conjecture from anecdotal evidence I have where I have never lost a game where I resolved Chains.


As the distribution is linear, there is no Chance that it comes from playtesting or metagame data. In addition to the fact that it doesn't care for metagame-deck distribution which we even have at hand by Nihil Credo's monthly DtB-updates for example, nor credits the differing impact of CoM (which is only a 2-off!) on particular decks (which was done horribly wrong throughout the article anyways), the whole graph is pointless. It's an Auto-distribution and declaring a 2-off "100% effective" is impossible to ever explain in a game which also has to deal with a manacurve, 60 cards and yourself only being allowed to play 4 copies of a card

Agreed, the chart isn't from playtesting. However, the expected metagame number will change the win % numbers when it changes in the excel sheet to give us an idea of different things. The expected metagame % in that chart, the large bolded number, is where we are predicting that "60% of the metagame will be affected by having Chains in play".

I also agree that there is variance in MTG and that you may not draw your 2-of and even if you do, it may die. It's still better that you have it mainboard than sideboard as the majority of the matches, it will be effective as indicated by the Top 16 metagame distribution where we see that there is, in general about 50% of the field being a Xerox/Delver deck and another 15-20% of the field has a significant draw portion. Adding those together gives us more than 60% but I wanted to be conservative so the numbers would be looked at and taken seriously. The 100% effective part is clearly not something that happens in real life but is there for an interesting number that pops and illustrates the point. Without resorting to using a university's stats lab, I had to simplify the problem to get a general view. This is what I saw and I wanted to talk with people about running Chains or Spirit maindeck - I focused on Chains because of my deck and my preferences about it not being a creature, as I said above.


Lemnear, although I agree with your points, I don't think you have to be so confrontational. This is his first legacy-article. Take it easy.

Thanks, hopefully some of my comments here will also help clarify some of my points a bit more too. Thanks for reading!

[iGrok]

This might just be me, but I am having problems understanding your graph. How did your friend obtain a matchwin %? I'm sorry if this is blatantly obvious, but the graph speaks of "% of games won against decks where Chains is effective/ineffective". Is this based on actual hard data where your friend has playtested and the plotted down his matchwin% against an array of decks? Or is it conjecture based upon experiences with the deck?
Hey, I'm the guy who actually did the math!

The graph is a purely mathematical one. Changing the cell next to "What Percentage of the Meta do you think gets hated out?" from 60% changes all of the win percentages in the graph, but we didn't have a way to put that on wordpress. The way to look at the chart is to type in whatever the percentage of the meta is hated out decks, then find the cell that matches your own Win percentages against hated and non-hated decks. That will tell you what percent of your games you are winning. If you want to find out your exact number, use the formula [HWin%]*[HMeta]+[OWin%]-[OWin%]*[HMeta] mentioned above the graph with whatever numbers go there for you personally, and it will spit out your total win %. The math doesn't care what hatecard you're talking about - just put in whatever numbers are accurate for you personally and it will spit out the right answer

What the graph is good for is estimating beforehand if running hatecards main is useful. 60% of the meta being hated out by Chains is a low number, but we're intentionally understating the effect because the math is quite non-intuitive. I play blue. I've never won a game against a resolved Chains. You guys know how great that card is against blue players. It makes you win 99% of the games where it resolves. So, lets take a conservative guess at what your winrate is with Chains. If you have been keeping track of your games, you can use only the sideboard games where you brought in Chains, but I feel like a good, conservative guess is that you win 70% of games that you sideboarded in Chains. Obviously, this goes up if you are playing multiple copies, but lets stick to 70%. The last number we need is your win% where you have a dead card in your hand. You can estimate this by counting your winrate of games that you mulliganed at least once, but you can also just check out the 70% row and see what the minimum needs to be. In this case, winning 20% of your "mulliganed" games is the break-even point. If you're doing better than that, its better to play Chains main.

The point of the chart it's data-irrelevant. It's just a visual representation of the formula and a quick-reference chart. If you have hard data, you can be more precise than the chart can, but as an estimation tool, its pretty useful.

Hope this clarifies a bit, and I'm happy to answer any further questions!

[Lemnear]

Lemnear, although I agree with your points, I don't think you have to be so confrontational. This is his first legacy-article. Take it easy.

It's an ad cloaked as a metagame analysis and this is intended mislead.

It's not that he wrote an article about Jund and it's position in the metagame, which I would welcome, especially in regards to Treasure Cruise vs. Cardadvantage (via Hymn, P.Fire) + Denial (via DRS, Ooze, CoM). Instead, he wrote that switching 2 Sylvan Library for two 300$+ cards just turns Junds position in the metagame upside down and creates plenty of flawed to wrong arguments, with the sole intent to support his thesis. There is not a single word on why Jund had a tough time before TC nor about the logic hole to battle 1cc spells with 2cc answers.

You can't claim to write about the metagame, if you don't give a fuck about it throughout the article, which is the core of my critique. All the other things I mentioned before are just the icing on the cake.

[iamajellydonut]

It's an ad cloaked as a metagame analysis

Agreed. And if you want to attack that, do so. Instead you nit-picked insignificant details and acted like a turd. Especially so since many of the critiques and points you made were incorrect or just white noise.

@OP: There's a Jund thread. Just post there. This has nothing to do with the metagame as a whole and generally nobody cares about reading a Jund article unless they're actually playing Jund.

@Lemnear: Stop it.

[nevilshute]

Hey, I'm the guy who actually did the math!

The graph is a purely mathematical one. Changing the cell next to "What Percentage of the Meta do you think gets hated out?" from 60% changes all of the win percentages in the graph, but we didn't have a way to put that on wordpress. The way to look at the chart is to type in whatever the percentage of mated is hated out decks, then find the cell that matches your own Win percentages against hated and non-hated decks. That will tell you what percent of your games you are winning. If you want to find out your exact number, use the formula [HWin%]*[HMeta]+[OWin%]-[OWin%]*[HMeta] mentioned above the graph with whatever numbers go there for you personally, and it will spit out your total win %. The math doesn't care what hatecard you're talking about - just put in whatever numbers are accurate for you personally and it will spit out the right answer

What the graph is good for is estimating beforehand if running hatecards main is useful. 60% of the meta being hated out by Chains is a low number, but we're intentionally understating the effect because the math is quite non-intuitive. I play blue. I've never won a game against a resolved Chains. You guys know how great that card is against blue players. It makes you win 99% of the games where it resolves. So, lets take a conservative guess at what your winrate is with Chains. If you have been keeping track of your games, you can use only the sideboard games where you brought in Chains, but I feel like a good, conservative guess is that you win 70% of games that you sideboarded in Chains. Obviously, this goes up if you are playing multiple copies, but lets stick to 70%. The last number we need is your win% where you have a dead card in your hand. You can estimate this by counting your winrate of games that you mulliganed at least once, but you can also just check out the 70% row and see what the minimum needs to be. In this case, winning 20% of your "mulliganed" games is the break-even point. If you're doing better than that, its better to play Chains main.

The point of the chart it's data-irrelevant. It's just a visual representation of the formula and a quick-reference chart. If you have hard data, you can be more precise than the chart can, but as an estimation tool, its pretty useful.

Hope this clarifies a bit, and I'm happy to answer any further questions!

Thank you for coming on here and trying to explain it. I think it's still rather convoluted and while I'm sure the math behind the model is spot on, the method seems really flawed as it appears as though you are setting up a model that doesn't take into account several relevant factors.

First:


60% of the meta being hated out by Chains is a low number, but we're intentionally understating the effect because the math is quite non-intuitive.

This seems like a wild and unfounded statement. "Hated out" feels like a quite one-dimensional way to look at it. It would be beneficial to replace it with something like "has a hard time beating a resolved Chains".

Secondly:


I play blue. I've never won a game against a resolved Chains. You guys know how great that card is against blue players. It makes you win 99% of the games where it resolves. So, lets take a conservative guess at what your winrate is with Chains. If you have been keeping track of your games, you can use only the sideboard games where you brought in Chains, but I feel like a good, conservative guess is that you win 70% of games that you sideboarded in Chains

While I can see where you are coming from... hmm, maybe it's just me, but I find it rather rash to create this model based upon something resembling gut feeling. I mean it's fine but then maybe don't deliver it in the form of a mathematical model that reads like you can plot in the expected amount of brainstorm decks and then get an expected win%.

Lastly, you do not appear to be taking into account all manners of factors such as, what does it mean to be running 2x main deck hate card in a deck that has no meaningful way to reduce variance on par with what the blue decks have in the form of cantrips. Simply sticking 2x Chains of Mephistopholes into your Jund deck based on how much your matchwin % should be with one of them in play doesn't tell the whole story.

I don't know, the longer I think about it, and revisit the article and graph, the more confused I get about what the actual aim of the graph and model is? To offer a speculative notion of what a Jund deck's win % is against a brainstorm deck if the Jund deck gets to resolve Chains? Or what the win % is from the beginning of a game before Chains is in play? What about against various types of answers for the chains (or any hatecard)? Decay, countermagic, discard etc, etc.

[iGrok]

Thank you for coming on here and trying to explain it. I think it's still rather convoluted and while I'm sure the math behind the model is spot on, the method seems really flawed as it appears as though you are setting up a model that doesn't take into account several relevant factors.

First:



This seems like a wild and unfounded statement. "Hated out" feels like a quite one-dimensional way to look at it. It would be beneficial to replace it with something like "has a hard time beating a resolved Chains".

Secondly:



While I can see where you are coming from... hmm, maybe it's just me, but I find it rather rash to create this model based upon something resembling gut feeling. I mean it's fine but then maybe don't deliver it in the form of a mathematical model that reads like you can plot in the expected amount of brainstorm decks and then get an expected win%.

Lastly, you do not appear to be taking into account all manners of factors such as, what does it mean to be running 2x main deck hate card in a deck that has no meaningful way to reduce variance on par with what the blue decks have in the form of cantrips. Simply sticking 2x Chains of Mephistopholes into your Jund deck based on how much your matchwin % should be with one of them in play doesn't tell the whole story.

I don't know, the longer I think about it, and revisit the article and graph, the more confused I get about what the actual aim of the graph and model is? To offer a speculative notion of what a Jund deck's win % is against a brainstorm deck if the Jund deck gets to resolve Chains? Or what the win % is from the beginning of a game before Chains is in play? What about against various types of answers for the chains (or any hatecard)? Decay, countermagic, discard etc, etc.

So, the point of the model/chart is to demonstrate when running your hatecards main is effective. I agree on your word change from hated out, it's definitely possible to beat a resolved hatecard. The chart is independent of what hatecard you are using, so it could be applied to REB or Spirit, or even Hydroblast - just change the "effected by your hatecard" meta% accordingly. If you would like the sheet, or to just see it with different meta%s, let me know, I'm happy to provide it.

The chart is good at showing you, "if I'm winning X% of my regular games with a dead card, and Y% of my games where it isnt dead, is it better to play this card main or sideboarded?". Green means play it main, red is keep playing it sideboard. So this is one step above saying, "is it better to play 2 or 1", the math says, "tell me your win%s for whatever your decklist is, and the meta%, and I'll tell you if playing it main is the right idea." In a personal case, I'd suggest the formula instead - the graph is just a way to demonstrate many values of that formula at once, and a good 'at-a-glance' estimation tool.

Does this help clarify a bit more? It's not showing win% based on sticking a chains, it's a chart saying, "hey, if you're winning X% of your games wthat you sideboarded a card (regardless of if you see it), how much do you have to be able to win with a dead card such that playing the sideboard card main is the right idea?". And the numbers change with the meta% that the sideboard card is relevant against. The math doesn't care if you somehow win every game without it ever sticking or even seeing it the math just cares about how much you win.

[Lemnear]

12-Post and Loam aren't a significant part of the metagame and don't see a high Top 16 representation which is as deep as the data goes as far as I know. The point of that statement was that card for card, without filter, Jund wins topdeck wars as a core part of its strategy. If you use a card, such as Spirit of the Labyrinth or Chains of Mephistopheles, in order to cut off the cantripping of your opponents then they can no longer filter and the topdeck war can be won again.


I don't think that we can exclude about a fifth of the metagame which does not rely on cantrips or draw engines. Even in the mirror, topdecking a CoM is horrible. Two fundamental problems with the CoM idea are that your opponent can and will play his cantrips before CoM can even come down and that most decks are already in their midgame by turn 3-4. Running a card just to disrupt your opponent in a lategame topdeck war instead of improving your own topdecks is kinda wierd for my taste especially as it doesn't adress the decks existing problems with. Grinding out your opponent with P.Fire was ever a viable strategy against fair and slow decks. Getting there is the issue, especially against combo.

Across those 4 SCG Opens, not a single Elves! player registered a Wren's Run Packmaster. There was an Ezuri, Renegade Leader from Jonathan Jolin and Ruric Thar from Sam Thompson. In the article, I talk about them having a nut draw with Natural Order. You just lose. That happens sometimes. However, requesting Punishing Jund to play a lot of removal spells against Elves! is also asking it to play it's plan A, so I didn't think that I needed to enumerate that. The only tutor they have is GSZ as Natural Order is less of a tutor and more of a button to press that says "I win". The deck remains ahead of Natural Order by killing everything it sees. GSZ generally gets a piece that can be killed as well.


The SCG circus was never known to adapt techs which weren't on screen or in an US top 8. Regardless of US top 8 appearances of the card, it is a common weapon in MTGO and Europe. CoM is pointless if you keep the board under control with Punishing Fire and stuff as Glimpse does nothing if your opponent is out of manadorks and creatures in general to feed Cradle.

Obviously, cards will die to removal spells. Abrupt Decay will certainly kills Chains. I think that it not having a body is actually a point in its favor because it doesn't die to Forked Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Fire//Ice and so on. I'm not saying that YOU don't know about the "significant draw engine" of Storm. What I will say is that maybe you have misunderstood me. Elves! has a draw engine in bouncing and replaying Elvish Visionary or Glimpsing. Storm has a "significant draw engine" because I was categorizing things and didn't want to put a combo deck into the Xerox category, but generally still starts with a 4 Brainstorm/4 Ponder/X Gitaxian Probe shell, with that being another 4 of per the TES thread here. The turn 1 and turn 2 cantrips are very powerful, and maybe they fixed the hand entirely and they're ready to combo, but sometimes they aren't. The combo decks still prefer to have options and cantrips available. Cutting down on cantrips reduces lines of play and forces your opponent into lines that ought to be more favorable to the pilot who is prepared to take advantage of the Chains symmetry in the same way that a prison deck operates under its soft locks.


If you are going into the topdeck mode drawing the CoM or cascading into it is a bad one compared to a Tarmogoyf or the like. If it has a body it could sure eat a bolt, but also attack if the ability of disrupting draw spells is only marginal relevant. CoM is too slow to catch early cantrips and punishing bad keeps and adds nothing to the board if both players go into topdeck.

You can't rely on your storm opponent keeping bad and slow hands. You must notice that stripping their mana and business with discard like Hymn gets around the problem, that you need to hope, that their hand plain sucks.

Prison decks don't work under the priciple of symmetry but being able to break the symmetry which appears on certain cards. If you play mostly creatures, Thalia isn't symmetric. If you play mostly Artifacts, Lodestone Golemn isn't symmetric. If you have Crucible of Worlds, Smokestack ism't symmetric. If you run Mishras Workshop, Trinisphere isn't symmetric. You get the idea.

SDT says Draw, but for them to mess up due to a Chains in play they have to be 1. hellbent and 2. not remembered what the judge just told them about trying to draw with an empty hand and Chains out. Miracles, if you look at those 4 SCG Opens, has its number of Ponders in flux. There is 1 deck of 9 top 16 miracles decks which plays the full 4 ponder and I think about 3 which played 1 ponder. The other cut them for other spells, which reduces them to SDT sort of, 4 copies of Brainstorm, and generally 3 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor.


see: the Elves example before in regards to just picking SCG data for references. 4 Ponder is common in Europe. Don't confuse "SCG Top 8" with "The Legacy metagame"

Chains is good against Jace, but they can just fateseal you out - it's not an appropriate answer here without other followup. Hating out 4 cards in those Brainstorms is probably not completely worth it, but it's not dead in the maindeck. And SDT allows them to organize and filter their draws, so Chains doesn't and has never had an effect on topdecking into a win in true variance style. It also is ineffective when your opponent is playing 3 deep. That said, it at least stops hellbent miracles on your turn. Yet to do much against a 1 card in hand miracled card though.


just a small add: they can fateseal themselves and dig through their deck like this while presenring a clock with the increasing loyalty counters.

There is currently some debate about Hymn, and how if it doesn't hit the Treasure Cruise, it merely fuels it as long as they have access to U. I agree that many decks won't be playing it, but I would expect that more people are excited by the card and trying it out in some fashion than not. I cut Hymns over Lightning Bolt because I wanted to maintain a removal density.


depending on your metagame, Pyroblast is also removal. Hymn does not fuel TC. I know where this strange idea has it's roots and it's just wrong if you just keep an eye on available handcards. Hymn and TC just balance each other out. Both equal a two-card-swing for the other player and if your opponent isn't topdecking a TC to undo your Hymn, you can easily run away with the win.

A better deck builder would have found room for a GSZ. I leave that to the intelligent audience, as I clearly wasn't up to the task.


the removal slots in the deck are pretty overpopulated for my taste. Would start there cutting, but I'm not interrested to discuss deckbuilding of Jund in this thread rather than in the Jund thread itself

I included a main deck REB in the list and have more copies out of the sideboard, even with different names to play around Meddling Mages. Lightning Bolt is still good against Jace, Clique, D&T, Elves!, etc. I didn't want to make it Painter style and just jam 4-8 REBs in and call it a day. The other problem with that approach is that Jund often wants to get rid of it's entire hand and holding REBs has a pretty big dis-synergy with Liliana and with emptying your hand. Chains is a permanent-based solution to a bevy of cantrip heavy decks.


Chain is a narrow and slow "solution" not to forget. You have a point about Liliana, but as mentioned before, your main focus should be to survive 'till you can drop her. If you go slapping with tarmogoyf and Liliana on the field against an opponent out of handcards, it doesn't matter if you had to discard a Lightning Bolt to Liliana or a REB.

Jund, as you have noted, is my deck of choice and I believe I started out the article talking from that point of view. I apologize that I wasn't clear that I was writing this from a non-blue perspective, but I was. The reason I had a broad title is that any deck, whether a RWB or a Junk or a Jund or Deadguy Ale or whatever fair deck with black you would like to play would most likely gain from playing a maindeck Chains. Thanks for reading and the critical analysis though!


half of the decks you named are white and would prefer to play SotL due to the damage it provides while stalling the opponent. CoM is a midfame cars and the deck is already bursting of 2-mana plays which have a bigger impact than Chains. I wished there were more cards discussed with the intensity you gave Chains for the current and upcoming metagame. You added an Ooze and a Pyroblast too, but their evaluation done in the article wasn't even close to Chains, especially under the aspect that both cards also help out against combo, which is a natural Problem for a deck like Jund.

So, the numbers are a hypothetical where they are just saying that if you were to win whatever % of your matches against decks where chains is effective and whatever % where it is ineffective, assuming that you draw Chains in both games and it is good in one match and a stone brick in the other, what will your win % be in raw numbers. We didn't have time to do a proper simulation through MathCAD going over 1,000,000 iterations with different variables so instead we simplified the problem down just like we do in physics courses. However, it is also conjecture from anecdotal evidence I have where I have never lost a game where I resolved Chains.

-snip-

Agreed, the chart isn't from playtesting. However, the expected metagame number will change the win % numbers when it changes in the excel sheet to give us an idea of different things. The expected metagame % in that chart, the large bolded number, is where we are predicting that "60% of the metagame will be affected by having Chains in play".

I also agree that there is variance in MTG and that you may not draw your 2-of and even if you do, it may die. It's still better that you have it mainboard than sideboard as the majority of the matches, it will be effective as indicated by the Top 16 metagame distribution where we see that there is, in general about 50% of the field being a Xerox/Delver deck and another 15-20% of the field has a significant draw portion. Adding those together gives us more than 60% but I wanted to be conservative so the numbers would be looked at and taken seriously. The 100% effective part is clearly not something that happens in real life but is there for an interesting number that pops and illustrates the point. Without resorting to using a university's stats lab, I had to simplify the problem to get a general view. This is what I saw and I wanted to talk with people about running Chains or Spirit maindeck - I focused on Chains because of my deck and my preferences about it not being a creature, as I said above.


edit: erased for being unclear. See below

Thanks, hopefully some of my comments here will also help clarify some of my points a bit more too. Thanks for reading!

[Richard Cheese]

Rather than just beating a dead horse (as fun as that can be), can we turn this thread into a meaningful metagame/deck choice discussion for Eternal Weekend and the GP?

More specifically, can anyone tell me why I shouldn't just pound 3 Bloodies at breakfast and play Burn?

[Lemnear]

So on my way to get food, I thought about Eidolon taking the spot of Chains as it also punishes the whole cantripping-stuff, while also presenting a clock if topdecked and a threat to combo. If you rather run Thoughtseize than Hymn, I cannot see serious restrains for the manabase.

[iamajellydonut]

More specifically, can anyone tell me why I shouldn't just pound 3 Bloodies at breakfast and play Burn?

1) Because mimosas are classier and don't make your breath smell like ass.

2) Because Burn continues to be a "surprise!" deck.

Burn is incredibly easy to hate out. Every color has like a bajillion cards that just smack it down and make it cry uncle. The problem with doing that is those cards suck against literally anything else. There's no overlap of cards that are good against both Miracles and Burn or BUG and Burn. You either gear for the decks that matter or you gear for Burn. So, with that in mind, yes, Burn can see Jund and ill prepared BUG sixteen times and careen its way to victory, but the reality is that there are too many decks that naturally steamroll Burn without remorse and eventually someone will either have the proper hate or just win a fair match.

[Ellomdian]

You seriously want to make a point by using this crap? Jeff was looking for an excuse...

Why do people continue to link to Jeff's articles? It's like people clinging to Mike Flores articles for Standard relevance after, like, '05.


Agreed. And if you want to attack that, do so. Instead you nit-picked insignificant details and acted like a turd.

Because, as of late, when you tell someone their article is poorly worded crap without specific justification, the bleeding-hearts brigade comes out in force saying 'be nice, it's their first time' as though inexperience dictates acceptance of sub-par quality.


More specifically, can anyone tell me why I shouldn't just pound 3 Bloodies at breakfast and play Burn?

Because it's nice to see guys from back home still in contention on day 2, instead of hung over playing in irrelevant side events :P

[iamajellydonut]

Because, as of late, when you tell someone their article is poorly worded crap without specific justification, the bleeding-hearts brigade comes out in force saying 'be nice, it's their first time' as though inexperience dictates acceptance of sub-par quality.

Oh, I think the article is terrible and deserves to be generally shamed. Don't misinterpret my post as saying otherwise. I'm even of the opinion that the majority of Carsten's articles don't need to be reblogged over here. What I was saying is that Lemnear's posts in this thread so far are of extremely little consequence and he's being a turd in his own right.

[iGrok]

Hey Lemnear, could you explain more what you're talking about in the last paragraph?from what I can tell, you are misunderstanding the chart, but it's difficult to tell exactly what you are talking about.

[Benrobnu]

Don't know if being in the Northeast matters but what I saw from the SCG this weekend I want to do two things:

Play Chalice on 1
Be ready to beat miracles


This goes against what I usually play but these decks were very prevelant at the open. The only problem with chalice decks is in a big tournament the variance gods are going to smite you. But I have been eyeballing the Kronberger list from BOM.

[Lemnear]

Hey Lemnear, could you explain more what you're talking about in the last paragraph?from what I can tell, you are misunderstanding the chart, but it's difficult to tell exactly what you are talking about.

Sure. My issue is NOT that you've considered CoM to actually hit 60% of decks as statistically ~65% of decks run at least Brainstorm in their 60 atm. These ~65% include combo decks as well, which can kill you before CoM comes down and therefore should not be part of the statistic of decks CoM is effective against. If they are not included in these estimated 60% you picked, the number of decks, which go into the midgame with their cantrips (aka past turn 3) and are the target for CoM, is too high, but whatever :). I asume we agree that we count mostly Delver and Blade variants in that category and those don't make up 60% of the metagame.

The problem with that table is this part:


In this table, we are assuming that 60% of the field is playing one of these Xerox style decks or a draw focused deck. You can go through the table yourself, but something huge to look at is that if you are only able to win 20% of your matches where the mainboard Chains of Mephistopheles is ineffective, but have a 70% win rate with the Chains which shuts off the cantrip of the decks, you break even on your expected win percentage at 50%

You can't tie your estimated, average win-% (here 50%) to a card and make a statement with the graph which boils down to (correct me if I'm wrong) "I won 70% of those matches just because I have CoM in the deck and managed to win 20% of matches against decks which CoM is a blank against" as neither the table nor the formula takes the waxing/waning impact of CoM into account if drawn at certain stages of the game. I hope we agree that the value of CoM varies depending on your opponents plays and the turn when you find & resolve CoM rather than your opponents deck constellation and therefore I think the table is very misleading.

[Richard Cheese]

Don't know if being in the Northeast matters but what I saw from the SCG this weekend I want to do two things:

Play Chalice on 1
Be ready to beat miracles


This goes against what I usually play but these decks were very prevelant at the open. The only problem with chalice decks is in a big tournament the variance gods are going to smite you. But I have been eyeballing the Kronberger list from BOM.

Yeah, I'm thinking the field will probably be mostly Delver (UR, BUG, RUG, in that order) and Miracles, but with a good amount of D&T, Elves, and Sneak/Show present.

I would love to play Aggro Loam, but it's slow and inconsistent in the early game.

Fast combo like Belcher or TinFins is also high on the list, but you might as well just assume that ever round you're sitting down across from at least 4 Force, 4 Daze, 4 Brainstorm.

Could get in on the Delver circlejerk and play BUG, but picking a DTB for a major event seems like something you should only do if you're good at this game. I need that left-field factor to buy me free wins and make the games interesting enough to not just drop after one loss.

For what it's worth, I don't go to these big things expecting to make day 2, I just want to have more wins than losses at the end of day 1. Plus I'm there for a week with the wife to visit friends and family, so there's not going to be any late-night practice sessions or last-minute changes. I guess what I'm saying is, if you're bored and want to grab a drink after round ~4, you know who to PM.

[iGrok]

Sure. My issue is NOT that you've considered CoM to actually hit 60% of decks as statistically ~65% of decks run at least Brainstorm in their 60 atm. These ~65% include combo decks as well, which can kill you before CoM comes down and therefore should not be part of the statistic of decks CoM is effective against. If they are not included in these estimated 60% you picked, the number of decks, which go into the midgame with their cantrips (aka past turn 3) and are the target for CoM, is too high, but whatever :). I asume we agree that we count mostly Delver and Blade variants in that category and those don't make up 60% of the metagame.

The problem with that table is this part:



You can't tie your estimated, average win-% (here 50%) to a card and make a statement with the graph which boils down to (correct me if I'm wrong) "I won 70% of those matches just because I have CoM in the deck and managed to win 20% of matches against decks which CoM is a blank against" as neither the table nor the formula takes the waxing/waning impact of CoM into account if drawn at certain stages of the game. I hope we agree that the value of CoM varies depending on your opponents plays and the turn when you find & resolve CoM rather than your opponents deck constellation and therefore I think the table is very misleading.

Ok, I think I've found our communication issue! The graph does not say "I won 70% of those matches becausechains was in the deck.". What it says is, "I won 70% of those matches when chains was in the deck." How or if you played the card isn't at question here. Maybe you played it, maybe you discarded it to Lilianna to pump goyf, or maybe you never saw the card, and won anyways becausethat can happen. I'm not looking at what specific impact it has on any game in particular.

The chart gives a lot of example cells at various winrates so that whatever you think the winrates might be, you can get a rough feeling for if its correct. A more exact method would be to use the formula and exact numbers after testing, but we can make rough guesses.

As for the numbers we picked:
"60% of the meta is affected by chains" sounds reasonable to me, although I suppose it depends if you count Elves or storm (i count elves but not storm). I also don't know the European meta very well. I also don't know the Japanese meta, but I assume that at an American GP, the American metagame will be the most represented.
"70% against affected decks" sounds in the right neighborhood. Again, this includes all the games you don't see chains and win anyways. But at the end of this post I'll throw you some lower comparison numbers.
"20% against non-affected decks" was picked mostly for the shock value. If you're playing Jund, you are going to win more than 20% of matches against decks that can't out-card advantage you, even if you are playing a dead card or two. You won't see them every game, and under some situations you can discard it to grow goyf, and eek some marginal value from it. This number also doesn't care how you win, just that you do.

So to give an example that might seem a little more tame, if 60% of the meta is affected by a hatecard, and you win 61% of the affected games and 35% of the rest, you're still better off playing that hatecard main, regardless of what that card is.

He's not saying that 70% and 20% the actual numbers, just that 70% is in the right ballpark, and 20% is around the flip point if 70% is accurate. Actual testing is of course needed to confirm, but it's a strong theory. From my end, I'm just fascinated by the math behind it, because it challenges something that I, and probably most people, thought. If all you care about is winning, playing simetimes-dead cards might actually be the right choice.

[JamieW89]

"70% against affected decks" sounds in the right neighborhood. Again, this includes all the games you don't see chains and win anyways. But at the end of this post I'll throw you some lower comparison numbers.


Winning 70% of the matches against decks affacted by draw-hate with this list? Seems way too high imo. The graph doesn't include 40-50% numbers, which, to me, seem more likely to be true than 70%.



So to give an example that might seem a little more tame, if 60% of the meta is affected by a hatecard, and you win 61% of the affected games and 35% of the rest, you're still better off playing that hatecard main, regardless of what that card is.

No. What you should look at is the changes in MW% with/without said hatecard in those matchups. (Preferably the effect on each individual matchup compared to that decks metagame share, but making 2 or 3 subgroups is fine to get an overview of the effects)
Using your method you could decide that an already well positioned deck requires a narrow hate card while in reality that card has a negative effect on your overall win%.


From my end, I'm just fascinated by the math behind it, because it challenges something that I, and probably most people, thought. If all you care about is winning, playing simetimes-dead cards might actually be the right choice.

Obviously playing a dead card is worth it if that card alone would get you to a 70% matchup vs 60% of the field. I doubt anyone would find that shocking.

[thecrav]

Obviously playing a dead card is worth it if that card alone would get you to a 70% matchup vs 60% of the field. I doubt anyone would find that shocking.

I believe the people who've been maindecking Red Blasts can attest to that!

[iGrok]

Winning 70% of the matches against decks affacted by draw-hate with this list? Seems way too high imo. The graph doesn't include 40-50% numbers, which, to me, seem more likely to be true than 70%.
If your win% with hatecards against affected decks is 40-50%, you've got a bad hatecard (or a bad deck), unless you're winning more than 65% of your other games even with two dead cards in your deck. I'm not a Jund player, but my understanding is that Chains is a good card to bring in against decks that like to draw cards. If your winrate with the card is <50%, your non-affected winrate needs to be between 50-70%. Jund is having trouble because it's not having that kind of winrate against these decks (again, thats my understanding anyway).

If I knew how well Jund performed against the field with chains in the deck, the chart wouldn't be needed :). As is, it helps to figure out where the line is, using estimations based on current sideboarded game winrates against the metadecks and non-meta unsided mulligan games winrate. These are rough approximations, but they can give a general sense of net positive or negative.


No. What you should look at is the changes in MW% with/without said hatecard in those matchups. (Preferably the effect on each individual matchup compared to that decks metagame share, but making 2 or 3 subgroups is fine to get an overview of the effects)
Using your method you could decide that an already well positioned deck requires a narrow hate card while in reality that card has a negative effect on your overall win%.
I agree that looking at changes in MW% would be great to see, especially if it was split deck-by-deck. But, that's significantly more in-depth than the scope of one article.

I don't agree that this method could make net-negative cards seem positive. How do you figure that?


Obviously playing a dead card is worth it if that card alone would get you to a 70% matchup vs 60% of the field. I doubt anyone would find that shocking.

Apparently, a lot of people do. :)

[Ellomdian]

Don't know if being in the Northeast matters but what I saw from the SCG this weekend I want to do two things:

Play Chalice on 1
Be ready to beat miracles



So, maybe Tezz could be your friend for a few weeks? :p

[tescrin]

So on my way to get food, I thought about Eidolon taking the spot of Chains as it also punishes the whole cantripping-stuff, while also presenting a clock if topdecked and a threat to combo. If you rather run Thoughtseize than Hymn, I cannot see serious restrains for the manabase.

Eidolon
(Taken with the bag of salt that I am obviously not a significant name in Legacy, ahem) I've been saying for a few months that any non-blue deck running red is basically obligated to run Eidolon. He's the only thing that makes up for the lack of White in such a deck (by giving the obligatory hatebear + discard synergy.) Jam 4 and don't look back. The only reason that bandwagon isn't a thing is because red is bad and double-red is worse.

Chains
To the article: Library > Chains. As someone who uses library and ran Chains for a good 6-months in the sideboard; Chains is basically really-cool, really-expensive, hot-garbage. I love the card, I would love for it's value to skyrocket so I could really stick it to some poor sucker on ebay; but that card is balls IME. It's not worth the card slot a lot of times against Delver (it just gets countered, it's win more, or it's straight tempo loss) and against S&T variants you still lose because they combo through it. It also has good potential to simply fuel PiF. It is hit or miss against elves, and they carry 8-10 outs post-board (3-4 decay + 3-4 gsz + 1-2 sage) meaning if you DID get the right combo with it, they can probably just pop it.

Library
Library is always live. I say that even if SotL is flashed in. What..? I just don't draw and nothing bad happens? Dang. And if you're even slightly ahead? Screw it, punch the turbo-fuck button and jizz all over your poor opponent.

[Lemnear]

Eidolon
(Taken with the bag of salt that I am obviously not a significant name in Legacy, ahem) I've been saying for a few months that any non-blue deck running red is basically obligated to run Eidolon. He's the only thing that makes up for the lack of White in such a deck (by giving the obligatory hatebear + discard synergy.) Jam 4 and don't look back. The only reason that bandwagon isn't a thing is because red is bad and double-red is worse.


I don't care for names, but for good ideas :)

I'm with you here and would have to ponder over double red for Eidolon vs. double black for Hymn and if they can even played in the same deck or if Hymn need to be replaced with Thoughtseize. Guess people with more experience should think about those options.

Chains
To the article: Library > Chains. As someone who uses library and ran Chains for a good 6-months in the sideboard; Chains is basically really-cool, really-expensive, hot-garbage. I love the card, I would love for it's value to skyrocket so I could really stick it to some poor sucker on ebay; but that card is balls IME. It's not worth the card slot a lot of times against Delver (it just gets countered, it's win more, or it's straight tempo loss) and against S&T variants you still lose because they combo through it. It also has good potential to simply fuel PiF. It is hit or miss against elves, and they carry 8-10 outs post-board (3-4 decay + 3-4 gsz + 1-2 sage) meaning if you DID get the right combo with it, they can probably just pop it.


That section is spot on. Grinselbrands draw is indeed pointless to hate out as you'll lose to the 7/7 lifelinking, flying body. Elves have indeed plenty of options to get rid of CoM, but I guess Elves was a sidenote only anyways. I haven't thought of cantrips used to fuel PIF with a CoM on the field. Nice idea.

Library
Library is always live. I say that even if SotL is flashed in. What..? I just don't draw and nothing bad happens? Dang. And if you're even slightly ahead? Screw it, punch the turbo-fuck button and jizz all over your poor opponent.


Library at least always advances your gameplan unlike CoM. We could ponder over Miiri's Guile or SDT instead, but that's not the place. Thanks for your input

[Gunz24]

Interesting that I posted something very similar to this in the Jund thread prior to your blog and your membership on The Source.


Jund bros (and gals?),

Everyone in this thread is losing their damn mind. Treasure Cruise has everyone in fits and understandably but some of these suggesstions are just a touch overboard. Cutting Hymn for example? We run Hymn because our combo match-up is terrible. More often than not I'm siding this card out against any delver deck which is where Treasure Cruise is the most threatening so the idea of "feeding their graveyard" is overblown. Not to mention if your concern is Treasure Cruise how does Inquisition help? The simple answer is it doesn't. Keep the Hymns and sideboard smarter.

Lose Punishing Fire? This isn't the first time or the last we'll talk about this possibility but removing our Fire package seriously undermines our longevitiy. Not to mention it may be our strongest card against delver variants where, again, Treasure Cruise is the most damaging to us.

I've given this Treasure Cruise problem a lot of thought and I have good news and bad news. Good news is we can beat it, the bad news is I'm nearly certain the way we can most efficiently do so is a $400 card on the reserve list. Whomp whomp. Chains of Mephistopheles is the answer to our Jund woes.

Think about how we are able to interact with Treasure Cruise. One way is to attack the graveyard and prevent them from delving. This may seem relavtively easy because traditionally our sideboards are full of graveyard hate but when you get to the true reason for that its because our Reanimator match-up is less than ideal. We bring in graveyard hate that wins us the game not that helps us durdle. If we take this route and main deck our hate we're affecting our deck's bottom line: Tarmogoyf. And for what in exchange? So they can't cast one spell? That doesn't win us the game in the same way eating Griselbrands with Scavenging Ooze or cracking a Spellbomb on a Dredge deck does. All this strategy does is waterdown our power in match-ups where we need to rely on forcing poor trades. The same match-ups where a 4/5 or a 5/6 Tarmogoyf is a serious issue for our opponent.

Another way is to just outright counter the Cruise. Incliment weather, sorry dude. Except we can't do this. Sure we could bring in Red Blast and Pyroblast from the board but that isn't what our deck wants to be doing. How often have you taken this approach in a match and found yourself sitting with a Red Blast in hand wishing it were something relevant? "But it can kill a Delver!" Yea, it can. So does Punishing Fire. The closest we come to this is Thoughtseizing, Hymning or Duressing away a Cruise before they can cast it and we are capable of doing that aready without drastic deck composition changes.

So this brings me to the solution. Anyone who's resolved a Chains of Mephistopheles against a blue player knows how devistating it is. I have never lost a match where a copy of Chains stayed in play. Never. With Chains, Treasure Cruise becomes "Exile your graveyard and discard 3 cards" for U. Great! Traditionally this was a sideboard card because in the match-ups it was good in it was really good and the match-ups its bad against its hot garbage. The current metagame has changed that. The amount of Treasure Cruises running around in my opinion justify main decking Chains of Mephistopheles. Best case scenario you crush your opponents card advantage and then grind them out the way only Jund can. Worst case scenario you pitch it to a Liliana activation and grow your goyf with the ever elusive enchantment card type.

My propsed list for the current metagame would be as follows:

3 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf

4 Liliana of the Veil

2 Lightning Bolt
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Punishing Fire

4 Thoughtseize
3 Hymn to Tourach
1 Maelstrom Pulse

1 Sylvan Library
1 Chains of Mephistopheles

1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wasteland
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Bayou
2 Badlands

Sideboard:

1 Sylvan Library
1 Chains of Mephistopheles
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Golgari Charm
1 Massacre
2 Duress
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Engineered Plague

I really love the 2 Library configurations and in some match-ups we want to be in that mode but against other decks we need to turn on 2Chainz. A note about the interaction of Sylvan Library and Chains of Mephistopheles if you choose to take this route. Library is a YOU MAY ability meaning if Chains is out you will need to defer from "looking" at the other 2 cards in your draw step. Frequently Library use is played in the manner Scry 3 would be except you're technically drawing these cards. If you do this with Chains in play you will need to discard cards and then put some back or pay life. Tragic. Don't get caught screwing this up, it will end you.

Finally, if the meta shifts or your opponent decided to move to Dig Through Time over Treasure Cruise your Chains of Mephistopheles will do nothing. Dig puts the cards in hand not draw so in this way Dig gets around Chains just like Bob does for us. If you encounter this I'd advise switching to double Library mode and heavier discard, Duress would be a must.

I'll be putting some testing into this leading up to Legacy Champs in Philly and will follow up with you.

Stay strong Jund Bros. Don't panic.

[Vicar in a tutu]

Interesting that I posted something very similar to this in the Jund thread prior to your blog and your membership on The Source.
I play Jund as my main deck in legacy. I have the cards to build anything, but I prefer Jund (my brain can't handle storms, if you get what I'm saying). The problem with your solution to Treasure Cruise is that a miser Chains, in a deck with 0 cantrips, 1 Library (which is a nonbo with Chains) and 4 Dark Confidants, is very difficult to find. Is this supposed to fight a U/R Delver deck with a million ways of finding Treasure Cruise? Over any given tournament, you might get to cast Chains once while a typical Treasure deck would cruise away at warp-speed.

[Lemnear]

I play Jund as my main deck in legacy. I have the cards to build anything, but I prefer Jund (my brain can't handle storms, if you get what I'm saying). The problem with your solution to Treasure Cruise is that a miser Chains, in a deck with 0 cantrips, 1 Library (which is a nonbo with Chains) and 4 Dark Confidants, is very difficult to find. Is this supposed to fight a U/R Delver deck with a million ways of finding Treasure Cruise? Over any given tournament, you might get to cast Chains once while a typical Treasure deck would cruise away at warp-speed.

This. It's a 300$+ too-Late-to-be-effective random draw/topdeck which does nothing to adress Junds problems (combo, no card selection, Terminus) nor brings damage to the table.

[FoolofaTook]

Rather than just beating a dead horse (as fun as that can be), can we turn this thread into a meaningful metagame/deck choice discussion for Eternal Weekend and the GP?

More specifically, can anyone tell me why I shouldn't just pound 3 Bloodies at breakfast and play Burn?

That sounds like a great choice. You can win or lose fast and then watch people gawking at TC fueled mayhem for the rest of the round. Watching a guy pull just what he needs off of his TC is fun but watching him pull 2 lands and a cantrip is priceless.

[Richard Cheese]

That sounds like a great choice. You can win or lose fast and then watch people gawking at TC fueled mayhem for the rest of the round. Watching a guy pull just what he needs off of his TC is fun but watching him pull 2 lands and a cantrip is priceless.

Maybe I'll just maindeck Misinformation and keep putting fetches on top of their library before they get to 7 cards! Where is your blue god now?!?!

[Ellomdian]

Maybe I'll just maindeck Misinformation and keep putting fetches on top of their library before they get to 7 cards! Where is your blue god now?!?!

You fool! Don't make ANOTHER Alliances Uncommon an $80 card overnight!

[FoolofaTook]

Maybe I'll just maindeck Misinformation and keep putting fetches on top of their library before they get to 7 cards! Where is your blue god now?!?!

Works against Elves, Miracles, Viking Funeral, Reanimator, Dredge, Treasure Cruise, etc.

Think we could talk WotC into a strictly better upgrade with Draw 1 Card added in?

Heck, I might even test out a Scry 1.

[Julian23]

Somehow I feel putting Fetchlands on top of their library kind of defeats the purpose ;-)

[Ellomdian]

Somehow I feel putting Fetchlands on top of their library kind of defeats the purpose ;-)

The purpose being to Dilute their draws with low-impact cards (since they don't run many 'real' lands) while making their Cruises more expensive and forcing them to pop the first fetch unless they want to draw blanks?

I'm all for that :cool: