Most common cards at GP Chicago Day 2

I think the dominance of blue aggro-control is best shown by this: The most played cards don't represent different succesful deck types that fight against each other...they all make up one deck/archetype ! Witness:

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Top

4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Thoughtseize
3 Spell Snare

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant

4 Swords to Plowshares

19 lands

...a rather straightforward 4c build, succesfully incorporating 11 out of the 13 most popular cards in the format in one deck (probably not playing Wasteland though).

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Originally Posted by Skeggi

Any Chub Toads?

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Oh, you missed it:

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Yep. 83% sounds about right to me. Good work, Georgjorge. Tarmos are a virus. I would like to add that the blue aggro-control decks (except Merfolk which makes a point not to splash) are pretty much all Tarmo decks with the other popular creatures taking turns from one deck to another.

No Tarmo=no dominating blue aggro-control environment

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Originally Posted by GreenOne

Total decks excluding Tribal decks: 19
83,14% of the non-tribal decks playing creatures are packing goyf
* Excluding 5 Landstill (1 Eternal Dragon) and 1 UW control (2 eternal dragon)

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Wow, tweak the numbers much? Let's see, if you exclude all the decks that wouldn't be playing goyf, and then exclude all the decks that don't play goyf, then

100% of the decks at the GP played Tarmogoyf!

Yeah, the numbers I think would be a little skewed. A lot of tribal decks (prolly at least 25%) run Goyf. Those Goyfs might not have been subtracted along with the Tribal decks.

We have Goyflins and Golfolks now.


And 61% of decks with creatures run Goyf? I'm really surprised. What the hell are the other 39% of people doing?

I'm tempted to dust off my old Turbo Pascal skills and write a program to parse these results myself.

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Originally Posted by Forbiddian

And 61% of decks with creatures run Goyf? I'm really surprised. What the hell are the other 39% of people doing?

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They´re playing goblins. =]

/facepalm this whole thread.

I think the data is useful. It's not conclusive, but it is useful.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

Wow, tweak the numbers much? Let's see, if you exclude all the decks that wouldn't be playing goyf, and then exclude all the decks that don't play goyf, then

100% of the decks at the GP played Tarmogoyf!

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You're assuming that it would normally be reasonable for 80+% of the non-combo, non-tribal decks to play a single given creature. Your strawman is exceptionally fluffy.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

Wow, tweak the numbers much? Let's see, if you exclude all the decks that wouldn't be playing goyf, and then exclude all the decks that don't play goyf, then

100% of the decks at the GP played Tarmogoyf!

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I also said 61,06% of the decks playing creatures are packing goyf, just to avoid that.
But this number doesn't give an exact feeling of how much tarmogoyf is dominant in the metagame. I would not say that a deck with 1-2 Eternal Dragon as only creatures is a deck that plans on going beating. Same thing with a deck with 4 Painters or Salvagers+Gamekeepers. It's not a great manipulation when you offer both the percentage, and anyway, it's quite true that if you exclude decks that can't take advantage from goyf (like Ichorid, Gamekeeper, etc) and some tribal decks (not every, but some) then almost 100% of the decks that beat face are splashing green for Goyf.

I'm not assuming anything, Jack, and it would be great if you'd stop arguing with people (me) who have no agenda on the Tarmogoyf issue. I don't care about him at all. As long as he exists in the format, I will play him, as he is the best available creature. If he is somehow banned, I will find another card to play instead. Such is the benefit of being emotionally detached from deckbuilding.

I don't really give a shit, honestly, whether there were 100 or 1000 goyfs at GP Chicago. I just don't like people misrepresenting their statistics - which is what Green One was doing, for certain.

If you want to know what kind of presence the card had at the event, then consider it along with ALL the other cards, in ALL the other decks - not just the ones that make your case for you.

Providing context is misrepresentation?

Ur dum.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Providing context is misrepresentation?

Ur dum.

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Providing context is not the same as selectively excluding portions of the sample pool that don't point to the results you're looking for.

So if I said, "1% of America's population is in jails. 11% of young black men are in jail.", I would be selectively excluding portions of the sample pool that don't point to the results I'm looking for, which is the number of young black men in jail versus the overall figure, for instance.

And there would be no valid conclusions or data that could be drawn from this selective discrimination of data.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

So if I said, "1% of America's population is in jails. 11% of young black men are in jail.", I would be selectively excluding portions of the sample pool that don't point to the results I'm looking for, which is the number of young black men in jail versus the overall figure, for instance.

And there would be no valid conclusions or data that could be drawn from this selective discrimination of data.

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Well, certainly there is data that could be drawn. But you'd be lying if you were to say that those statistics aren't chosen to be leading.

What percentage of the jail population is black? What percentage of non-black males are in jail? What is the age defined as "Young?" These are as important in providing context as any of the information you've provided, but you've chosen to exclude it in order to invoke the idea that there is a disproportionately larger amount of black men in jail than the average populus. That may be true, but we certainly can't tell by your statistics alone - unless we take it at face value, which is exactly what you're hoping we do.

Besides, your example isn't what Green One did. It would be like saying "11% of young black males are in jail - if you don't count the ones in college, or the ones with full-time jobs."

I may not agree with what you say, sir, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Sometimes I write out posts that are funny in my head, laugh at them, and then delete them because it's better that way.

This was one of those times.

Well, I wrote
- the number of decks playing goyf,
- the number of decks playing goyf/the number of decks playing creatures
- the number of decks playing goyf/the number of decks playing creatures and not being tribal.

I do believe people can read statistic on their own. The 3rd point statistic is obviously biased (is that the correct term?) if presented on its own, that's why I wrote #1 and #2 too. Obviously with that statistic I wanted to communicate something, and I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

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Originally Posted by GreenOne

Well, I wrote
- the number of decks playing goyf,
- the number of decks playing goyf/the number of decks playing creatures
- the number of decks playing goyf/the number of decks playing creatures and not being tribal.

I do believe people can read statistic on their own. The 3rd point statistic is obviously biased (is that the correct term?) if presented on its own, that's why I wrote #1 and #2 too. Obviously with that statistic I wanted to communicate something, and I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

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I thought it was very clear. Also your source is easy to find, so anybody could look through and verify or think of contradictory data points to look up. I think Nightmare just didn't read your post and/or think.

Obviously every presented datum has an agenda. It either supports or refutes an idea. If you blame people for digging out data that support their ideas, you're really dumb. Try refuting the data instead of strawman.



It seems to me decks that have no business playing G at all crop up all over with Tarmogoyfs, and that's the general point.

I think a more telling data point might be, "What percentage of decks with fewer than 8 green cards are playing Tarmogoyf?" A similar line could be repeated for Force of Will, Brainstorm, and Daze, or even all the way down to Swords, Thoughtseize, etc which might be more "fair" since they're non-U. I think there would be an extremely trace number of decks splashing any extra colors for any cards other than Tarmogoyf (which I expect a lot of people would splash for).

This really narrows the Goyf numbers down to "The decks that have no business running G, but are better because of Tarmogoyf."

Those data could be coupled with, "What percentage of Tarmogoyf decks have less than 8 green cards?" and "What percentage of decks with any green but fewer than 8 green spells have Tarmogoyf?"