Beating everything

I think this is a tweet from Bryant Cook that could spark good discussion:

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One thing I've noticed from content creation is that the average Magic player builds their decks to try to beat everything and not to maximize their win percentage. I wish I would've learned this earlier in my card-slinging career.

You don't need "outs" to everything.

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Some people have said this is a youtube/twitch commenter thing. People don’t actually make this mistake building decks, but if you watch someone play a brew you might say “ how does it beat [pet deck]?”

I think people, especially fair non-blue players, do actually put terrible cards in their decks to beat unwinnablr matchups.
Dead/gone in burn to beat show&tell, archive trap in D&T to beat doomsday, 1of chains of Mephistopheles in pox to beat 8cast.

Thoughts?

While the sentiment has some truth to it, there are some caveats.

You need to be extremely confident in your ability to predict the meta/the meta has to be very inbred for this to work out well.
Otherwise you're just gambling with higher stakes.

There is a difference in trying to edge G1 by putting things in MD or having SB material available.

Bad matchups scale from unfavorable to effectively unwinnable.
There the gain in WR really matters.
This typically scales with the format as eternal formats tend to have more 0% matchups.
However at some point natural selection kicks in as the meta develops an the rounds progress.
Legacy has severely homogenized in terms of playable decks in the past decade.


Along the same, line in older formats you have easier access to your SB cards through card draw and tutors.
Hate also tends to be stronger and more binary in the sense of "draw and play = win otherwise loss".


In general, however, I noticed that people play a lot more 1 or 2 offs or have like 12-15 different cards in their SB in the past years.
While this may be ok for some cards which you don't need or want more than once or twice I don't like my chances of not getting them at all.
This is obviously personal preference.

When I craft my sideboards I prefer generalized answers because to some extent you DO need to beat everything. Your tournament ends with two losses, and you can't afford to get blindsided by a rogue deck.
And no one really knows what these percentages are, so it's all feels anyways if you're maximizing your deck or not.

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

Some people have said this is a youtube/twitch commenter thing.

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I've heard this from the ones I follow too, and I just think they're wrong.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

When I craft my sideboards I prefer generalized answers because to some extent you DO need to beat everything. ....

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Most of all if you're playing online.

Wish/Karn pretenses aside where having multiple single copies of cards is the best strategy, the concept of silver bullet answers, having a way to beat everything, and "how does it beat X" is too often based on a concept of looking for the specific while missing the obvious with the exceptions of truly knowing the metagame and the players who consistently play the same deck in smaller/medium-sized tournaments. It's also human bias.

Win ratio is a cumulative percentage, and that's what you need to look for to win a tournament. However there is substantial merit in knowing the better players at a tournament but that ties into the above exception where you have access to this knowledge and are willing to use it.
Some decks just cannot beat other decks without investing significant resources into doing so (for example, combo decks and Dredge) and you have to use an objective measure that gives you an idea when that's an acceptable tradeoff. It's never going to be perfect.


There is also a problem I was notorious for doing in my early Magic days which was game planning for specific cards and not decks. That has merit too, especially against Force of Will, Brainstorm, or Hymn to Tourach...but it is a variation of the same problem if you focus too much on it. You still have to see what you are doing and why you are doing it. It's, again, human bias that you cannot address unless you know that there is a problem and admit that. Card manipulation in Legacy does a wonderful job of allowing players to mask or hide other problems.

This is not a problem limited to Magic or competitive card games either, but whether this discussion should only focus on Magic and not external perspective or influence is not mine alone to make.

As just something to say as a talking head this sounds good, but I'm not sure what this substantially intends to say.
You'll only ever have 15 cards to sideboard, so you can't plan for every matchup, some cards just need to be left home.
I mean, outside of 4 Leylines so you can put them into play turn zero, what is the arguments for having any number of cards in the sideboard? Any card you include is a card that didn't make the cut.
Like what is an example 15 cards that tries to "beat everything" that could be made better?

The point is about the deck as a whole, not just the sideboard.

Always build to the matchups that matter.

People love cute little one off that have a chance to be amazing in specific situations/matchups but it is not worth displaying your win percentages to add minimal percent to a bad matchup. I feel the best play is to win your good matchups, board for the 50/50 and hope for the 30 in your 30/70 matchups.

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Originally Posted by PirateKing

Like what is an example 15 cards that tries to "beat everything" that could be made better?

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From the mtgo league dump this week:

8 mulch isn’t going to beat combo with only 2 flusterstorm. either run a LOT more combo hate, or run more anti hate (force of vigor) to beat fair decks’ hate.

Yorion taxes isn’t beating doomsday with just a Thran foundry. It is tutorable by saga but that assumes you aren’t dead by your t3. In something like curses, 8 cast, or painter that has a shot of beating doomsday naturally it is more reasonable.

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

From the mtgo league dump this week:

8 mulch isn’t going to beat combo with only 2 flusterstorm. either run a LOT more combo hate, or run more anti hate (force of vigor) to beat fair decks’ hate.

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+1 Lantern Main

+2 Enducance
+2 Surgicals
+1 Cage

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

Yorion taxes isn’t beating doomsday with just a Thran foundry. It is tutorable by saga but that assumes you aren’t dead by your t3. In something like curses, 8 cast, or painter that has a shot of beating doomsday naturally it is more reasonable.

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+4 Thalia Main
+4 Spirit of the Labyrinth main
+2 Fairy Macabre
+2 Surgicals
+1 Cage
+2 RIP

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Originally Posted by Zoid

+1 Lantern Main
+2 Enducance
+2 Surgicals
+1 Cage

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None of these cards do anything vs TES or Show & Tell, which is presumably where you want flusterstorm. You also need to draw one of your 12 blue sources. Why not commit to beating doomsday/gy decks with 4 endurance?

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Originally Posted by Zoid

+4 Thalia Main
+4 Spirit of the Labyrinth main

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These are 2 mana against a deck with dark ritual, daze, lotus petal, and fow. And they are mostly just a speed bump, especially against versions with temporal mastery.

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+2 Fairy Macabre
+2 Surgicals
+1 Cage
+2 RIP

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Doomsday doesn’t care in the vast majority of games.

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

None of these cards do anything vs TES or Show & Tell, which is presumably where you want flusterstorm. You also need to draw one of your 12 blue sources. Why not commit to beating doomsday/gy decks with 4 endurance?

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+1 Otawara Main
+1 Karakas Main

+1 Meekstone SB

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

These are 2 mana against a deck with dark ritual, daze, lotus petal, and fow. And they are mostly just a speed bump, especially against versions with temporal mastery.
Doomsday doesn’t care in the vast majority of games.

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Considering that there are a lot more hatebear.dec with 5-0 then combo in the league it seems like it's enough.
Obviously winning the coin flip helps.

I would also prefer something like Deafening Silence at 1 mana but there aren't too many options available.


In general, while I agree with your sentiment, people seem to prefer to play multiple 1-2 offs which are maybe not game winning but give you the edge in multiple different MUs.
Personally, I rather double down and have more dedicated and stronger hate but if you don't know what the meta is going to be like both are viable choices.
It comes down to personal preference.

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Originally Posted by Zoid

Considering that there are a lot more hatebear.dec with 5-0 then combo in the league it seems like it's enough.
Obviously winning the coin flip helps.

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If someone believes more fair creature decks are in leagues than combo, why not run something like palace jailer or tower of the magistrate to win the mirror?
Edit: rather than something that only comes in a few matchups and has to somehow win BOTH postboard matches.

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

If someone believes more fair creature decks are in leagues than combo, why not run something like palace jailer or tower of the magistrate to win the mirror?

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That is a false interpretation bias.
They made it to 5-0 precisely because they were running what they were running.
We don't know what the total meta was.

It' like during WW2 the Americans were looking at where to reinforce their planes.
They wanted to improve the areas where most planes showed bullet holes.
It needed a mathematician to point out that they should reinforce the other areas since planes hit there didn't make it back.

I usually just make my 50% matchups to beat it more decisively to 65% post board.

Those hard matchups with a 30% win rate ornlower, theres no point of putting cards into for sideboard because the other player will just put more post board to make the matchup even harder