Re: All B/R update speculation.
I'm skeptical of any argument, whether for or against Brainstorm or any other card, that uses GPNJ as evidence. The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything.
A basic statistics example is this:
You are going to enter a Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament, in which you must play the same choice every time. You know that 50% of people will play Rock, 35% of people will play Scissors, and 15% of people will play Paper. If you tie, a coin is flipped to determine the winner. Who wins? Paper. Paper has the best chance to win the tournament, even though Rock is the more popular choice. The reason is that Rock defeats most of the Scissors in early rounds, and then anyone left who is playing Paper is very unlikely to play against Scissors.
In this case, we can extremely simplify GPNJ and hypothesize that at GPNJ, 50% played URx Delver, 35% played something that loses to Delver, and 15% played something that beats delver. So Delver was the most popular, and beat all the decks that lose to it, and then the couple decks that are good against delver just had to wade through delver after delver after delver.
This is why looking at just top 8, top 16, or even top 32 for a tournament this size tells us nothing about the health of the format if the base deck choices are so heavily split. We can't determine whether miracles really is that good, or if all the decks that beat it are just getting killed by the hordes of delver players.
We can't determine whether or not Brainstorm is bannable based on any of the results that we're seeing because "Delver" is a much more homogeneous category than "Brainstorm", and Delver decks tend to be good at beating decks that would beat non-Delver Brainstorm decks.
Anyone agree/disagree?
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iGrok
I'm skeptical of any argument, whether for or against Brainstorm or any other card, that uses GPNJ as evidence. The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything.
And you are basing this on what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iGrok
A basic statistics example is this:
You are going to enter a Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament, in which you must play the same choice every time. You know that 50% of people will play Rock, 35% of people will play Scissors, and 15% of people will play Paper. If you tie, a coin is flipped to determine the winner. Who wins? Paper. Paper has the best chance to win the tournament, even though Rock is the more popular choice. The reason is that Rock defeats most of the Scissors in early rounds, and then anyone left who is playing Paper is very unlikely to play against Scissors.
In this case, we can extremely simplify GPNJ and hypothesize that at GPNJ, 50% played URx Delver, 35% played something that loses to Delver, and 15% played something that beats delver. So Delver was the most popular, and beat all the decks that lose to it, and then the couple decks that are good against delver just had to wade through delver after delver after delver.
This is why looking at just top 8, top 16, or even top 32 for a tournament this size tells us nothing about the health of the format if the base deck choices are so heavily split. We can't determine whether miracles really is that good, or if all the decks that beat it are just getting killed by the hordes of delver players.
We can't determine whether or not Brainstorm is bannable based on any of the results that we're seeing because "Delver" is a much more homogeneous category than "Brainstorm", and Delver decks tend to be good at beating decks that would beat non-Delver Brainstorm decks.
Except that paper always beats rock. The same is not true for MTG as play error and variance play a role in every match. The only way rock beats paper is if the guy on paper has a brain aneurysm between "sham" and "bo."
I understand color pie and blue gets library manipulation and card draw and instant speed at a high level. That's fine! Ancestral Recall is a perfectly flavorful card. As is Treasure Cruise. Delver may be a little questionable, but before TC was printed it was good, but not great in modern, because it was much harder to flip and protect without Brainstorm & FoW/Daze. (And the only reason TC works for Delver in modern is that it helps the deck keep up on removal/counters while they wait for delver to naturally flip much more often than it being setup by Serum Visions).
I mean even in the simplified example if 50% of people were on the same 75 — literally 2,000 players in a room — they could be justified in banning a card before Day 2.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
maharis
And you are basing this on what?
Except that paper always beats rock. The same is not true for MTG as play error and variance play a role in every match. The only way rock beats paper is if the guy on paper has a brain aneurysm between "sham" and "bo."
The lengths that people contort themselves to assure all of us that Brainstorm is not more powerful than the rest of the format is insane. "Oh we can't look at this evidence where this one card was in like 70+% of the 400+ best decks because everyone wanted to play that card for reasons having nothing to do with its power level." Come on. This is what FoaT and nedleeds are talking about. If this card was not blue, there would be no chance it lasts this long with such a high permutation and with so many defenders.
I understand color pie and blue gets library manipulation and card draw and instant speed at a high level. That's fine! Ancestral Recall is a perfectly flavorful card. As is Treasure Cruise. Delver may be a little questionable, but before TC was printed it was good, but not great in modern, because it was much harder to flip and protect without Brainstorm & FoW/Daze. (And the only reason TC works for Delver in modern is that it helps the deck keep up on removal/counters while they wait for delver to naturally flip much more often than it being setup by Serum Visions).
I mean even in the simplified example if 50% of people were on the same 75 — literally 2,000 players in a room — they could be justified in banning a card before Day 2.
Are you saying the game is entirely skill-based? That it isn't important to know which matchups are favorable and which ones are not?
I see your point about matchups not being the be all end all of the game like RPS is, but to dismiss his claim that using only the top decks from GPNJ isn't valid is, as you say, insane.
I'm not arguing against the power of brainstorm (though I will say its impact on the Legacy metagame would be a lot healthier without some other parts of the blue shell), and I'm not arguing that GPNJ Results can't be used to some extent (perhaps analyzing how the decks that made it to Day 2 came out to be on top?). Just saying that variance influenced by matchups still has an impact, perhaps moreso than variance influenced by skill level and blind luck.
Just food for thought: the likelihood of coming into the top 8 out of 4096 people in a coin-flipping contest (one flip = one match; 50% chance to win or lose) is roughly 0.2% (50% ^ LOG.BASE.2(4096/8)); winning the whole thing is 0.025%.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EpicLevelCommoner
Just food for thought: the likelihood of coming into the top 8 out of 4096 people in a coin-flipping contest (one flip = one match; 50% chance to win or lose) is roughly 0.2% (50% ^ LOG.BASE.2(4096/8)); winning the whole thing is 0.025%.
Can you do that fancy math for someone who decided to play a deck that wasn't running brainstorm? Because that number is going to be a hell of a lot smaller (than someone running brainstorm). Or better yet, top 16 with 2 slots open for non-brainstorm decks.
I would argue that this GP is the best place to draw conclusions about the health of the format. There are more rounds which leads to variance mattering less than in a smaller tournament.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Confession bear: I secretly don't want BS banned because I play elves and I don't want to have a target on my back if BS/blue gets banned <_<
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AznSeal
Confession bear: I secretly don't want BS banned because I play elves and I don't want to have a target on my back if BS/blue gets banned <_<
No shame in that. Julian is right there with you. And Lemnear doesn't want storm to lose BS.
Edit: But don't say that the format is fine when it clearly is not.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
maharis
And you are basing this on what?
I'm basing it off of 3 things: All of the reports that huge numbers of people were playing delver decks, the fact that in Day 2 Delver was 30.7% of the metagame and UR Delver specifically was 20.0%, and decks playing maindeck Hydroblasts to kill off opposing maindeck Red Blasts?
Before you comment on Delver %s, skip to the bottom of this post for a less simplified example.
Quote:
Except that paper always beats rock. The same is not true for MTG as play error and variance play a role in every match. The only way rock beats paper is if the guy on paper has a brain aneurysm between "sham" and "bo."
I agree. As I said, its an extremely simplified example. But surely you aren't suggesting that deck choice has no impact on who wins?
Quote:
I understand color pie and blue gets library manipulation and card draw and instant speed at a high level. That's fine! Ancestral Recall is a perfectly flavorful card. As is Treasure Cruise. Delver may be a little questionable, but before TC was printed it was good, but not great in modern, because it was much harder to flip and protect without Brainstorm & FoW/Daze. (And the only reason TC works for Delver in modern is that it helps the deck keep up on removal/counters while they wait for delver to naturally flip much more often than it being setup by Serum Visions).
I think you're on the wrong forum, this is the Legacy B&R thread, not the modern one! As an aside, I completely agree that Cruise is banworthy in modern.
Quote:
I mean even in the simplified example if 50% of people were on the same 75 — literally 2,000 players in a room — they could be justified in banning a card before Day 2.
Sure! But if they are all using the same 75, what card do you ban?
A less simplified example would be the following:
You go to a rock paper scissors tournament, in which you must choose rock, paper, or scissors beforehand. If you would tie, a coin is flipped. However, you can also choose (before the tournament) to play Anti-Rock, Anti-Paper, or Anti-Scissors, which only win against their respective Anti-choices, and lose all other games (a coin is flipped in an Anti-choice matchup).
31% is on Rock, 21% is on Paper, and 12% is on Scissors. 15% is on Anti-Rock, 10% is on Anti-Paper, and 12% is on Anti-Scissors. This is a much better (although still simplified) example of the GPNJ Metagame.
The correct choice is still Paper, or whatever beats delver without losing to everything else.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Why do people use terrible, examples when we have real data?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheArchitect
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Barook
Why do people use terrible, examples when we have real data?
Thats the data I used in my second post, with the less simplified example.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EpicLevelCommoner
I see your point about matchups not being the be all end all of the game like RPS is, but to dismiss his claim that using only the top decks from GPNJ isn't valid is, as you say, insane.
Just to note, I realized after posting that I shouldn't have flown off the handle and I removed that paragraph for a reason, I don't mind that you quoted it or anything but I would like to apologize for being a nut. Not to mention I meant permeation and not permutation. Anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EpicLevelCommoner
Are you saying the game is entirely skill-based? That it isn't important to know which matchups are favorable and which ones are not?
I'm not arguing against the power of brainstorm (though I will say its impact on the Legacy metagame would be a lot healthier without some other parts of the blue shell), and I'm not arguing that GPNJ Results can't be used to some extent (perhaps analyzing how the decks that made it to Day 2 came out to be on top?). Just saying that variance influenced by matchups still has an impact, perhaps moreso than variance influenced by skill level and blind luck.
Just food for thought: the likelihood of coming into the top 8 out of 4096 people in a coin-flipping contest (one flip = one match; 50% chance to win or lose) is roughly 0.2% (50% ^ LOG.BASE.2(4096/8)); winning the whole thing is 0.025%.
Of course the game isn't entirely skill-based and matchups matter (I always think of MTG as a lot like American football in that regard). The thing is, clearly the BS decks and Delver in particular are viewed by the community to have the best overall matchups (didn't CF and SCG both have articles about the best deck being UR delver?) And despite the fact that people should've come to the tournament with that in mind, a number of little guy + bolt + cantrip decks did well despite everyone gunning for them (or playing them, which is the point about saturation.
I don't understand why every data point is contested. We can only have so much. Every amount of mass analysis we can get — MODO card counts, live tournament top 8s/16s/32s/64s/however far they go, day 2 metagame reports from the Grand Prix — indicate that this card is endemic to the format and that decks with it perform at a high level.
As to whether or not this card is at fault or its the fault of all these additions around it... well, I can see why if you just really love playing with this card why you are willing to give up everything to keep it. It's almost like people say, take delver, take TC, take TNN, take anything but my brainstorm. The issue is that even if WoTC was on the ball enough to monitor legacy at all, then you just end up with every set release holding your breath to see if there's another card that will make Brainstorm insane again and hoping they agree and ban it.
Delver is the closest thing to a mistake that is oppressive but at the end of the day it is a 3/2 creature in a format where Bolt and STP have been staples since day 1 and has added to that Abrupt Decay and so many other removal spells more efficient than Terror. And you look at the top decks or the interesting decks and you see cards like Young Pyromancer, Stoneforge Mystic, and even out of the Delver deck Monastery Swiftspear (which I think might have been even more important to the U/R deck than Treasure Cruise) which aren't blue and aren't really mistakes. They are in color, flavorable, fun, and powerful, but it takes Brainstorm to really break them.
At the same time Treasure Cruise isn't exactly a mistake in a vacuum (I'm not sure it's even played all that much in Standard) but obviously draw 3 cards for 1 in Legacy is crazy. Still, it's not an auto 4-of and having more than one of them when you don't have BS is actually a bummer.
There's no deck that wants 1-3 Brainstorm. If you can cast it, you want 4. I guess the literal only exception is Merfolk, but somewhere you know there's someone playing Merfolk with the High Tide mana base.
I hope it's banned. I think hoping to shake up the format by doing anything else is simply wishful thinking. And the thing is, I don't play a BS deck and I still have fun playing legacy. it's not even about my own personal fun within a game because even if I'm playing against a BS deck I usually have fun. It's more that it's a bummer on the day after a tournament when you look at the decklists hoping to see something cool and it's like.... oh. Same stuff. Or you look in a coverage thread and it's just people complaining about people seeing the same decks. That sucks.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
iGrok, don't want to make another wall of text, but anyway please accept my apologies for flying off the handle initially in my response to your first post.
Anyway.
You said: "The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything." But that in itself is wrong. If the strategy was so powerful as to necessitate maindeck hydroblast then there is a problem. At the same time, it wasn't Delver of Secrets or Treasure Cruise that was the most played card in the top decks.
You also said in your second post: "I agree. As I said, its an extremely simplified example. But surely you aren't suggesting that deck choice has no impact on who wins?" Of course it does. And most people picked UR delver because it was widely considered to be the best deck. 20% of the field is freakin' huge for a Legacy tournament. And Brainstorm is the best card in the deck. That is shown by the fact that all the "next best" decks were also BS decks. Qweerios, for example, said in the Nic Fit thread that he felt he had no choice but to play BS & FoW in his deck at the GP.
You also said in your second post: "I think you're on the wrong forum, this is the Legacy B&R thread, not the modern one! As an aside, I completely agree that Cruise is banworthy in modern." I actually don't think TC is bannable in any format, but that's a digression. My point was about Delver of Secrets. In standard, Ponder and Preordain were legal with it. In Legacy, Brainstorm added to those two. In Modern, for a long time and still today, Serum Visions was the only one-mana cantrip that could conceivably flip a Delver and the card was nowhere near oppressive. Being able to flip a Delver with multiple one-mana cantrips is what makes the card dangerous. And as for the impact of TC on the modern delver deck, because the deck has to last a little longer than the Legacy version (because t1 delver isn't practically guaranteed to flip) the card advantage is important. Plus it's a common in a deck of uncommons and commons that is very inexpensive compared to previous T1 modern decks. Anyway, digression over.
I don't really understand the stat model you set up at the end. However I respectfully disagree that GPNJ data is somehow unusable or skewed.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iGrok
I think you're on the wrong forum, this is the Legacy B&R thread, not the modern one! As an aside, I completely agree that Cruise is banworthy in modern.
It really isn't. It's a good card, and it elevated a Tier 1.5/2 deck to Tier 1, but quite honestly Lightning Bolt is more banworthy than Treasure Cruise. Heck, based on the results of the Grand Prix, Birthing Pod is more banworthy than Treasure Cruise.
If Wizards of the Coast does think it might be a little powerful for the format, they should try unbanning some of the things that have no business being banned, not banning a card and reverting the meta back to the same stagnation we've had for the last 2 years (broken up only when a good new card gets printed, which of course is always undone by a ban). If they let the format grow a bit in power, maybe it would be better equipped to handle good cards and stop this endless cycle of the metagame getting shaken up only to be completely reverted by a ban.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
maharis
My point was about Delver of Secrets. In standard, Ponder and Preordain were legal with it.
Delver of Secrets was never simultaneously legal with Preordain in Standard. Only Ponder.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
maharis
Just to note, I realized after posting that I shouldn't have flown off the handle and I removed that paragraph for a reason, I don't mind that you quoted it or anything but I would like to apologize for being a nut. Not to mention I meant permeation and not permutation. Anyway.
Of course the game isn't entirely skill-based and matchups matter (I always think of MTG as a lot like American football in that regard). The thing is, clearly the BS decks and Delver in particular are viewed by the community to have the best overall matchups (didn't CF and SCG both have articles about the best deck being UR delver?) And despite the fact that people should've come to the tournament with that in mind, a number of little guy + bolt + cantrip decks did well despite everyone gunning for them (or playing them, which is the point about saturation.
I don't understand why every data point is contested. We can only have so much. Every amount of mass analysis we can get — MODO card counts, live tournament top 8s/16s/32s/64s/however far they go, day 2 metagame reports from the Grand Prix — indicate that this card is endemic to the format and that decks with it perform at a high level.
As to whether or not this card is at fault or its the fault of all these additions around it... well, I can see why if you just really love playing with this card why you are willing to give up everything to keep it. It's almost like people say, take delver, take TC, take TNN, take anything but my brainstorm. The issue is that even if WoTC was on the ball enough to monitor legacy at all, then you just end up with every set release holding your breath to see if there's another card that will make Brainstorm insane again and hoping they agree and ban it.
Delver is the closest thing to a mistake that is oppressive but at the end of the day it is a 3/2 creature in a format where Bolt and STP have been staples since day 1 and has added to that Abrupt Decay and so many other removal spells more efficient than Terror. And you look at the top decks or the interesting decks and you see cards like Young Pyromancer, Stoneforge Mystic, and even out of the Delver deck Monastery Swiftspear (which I think might have been even more important to the U/R deck than Treasure Cruise) which aren't blue and aren't really mistakes. They are in color, flavorable, fun, and powerful, but it takes Brainstorm to really break them.
At the same time Treasure Cruise isn't exactly a mistake in a vacuum (I'm not sure it's even played all that much in Standard) but obviously draw 3 cards for 1 in Legacy is crazy. Still, it's not an auto 4-of and having more than one of them when you don't have BS is actually a bummer.
There's no deck that wants 1-3 Brainstorm. If you can cast it, you want 4. I guess the literal only exception is Merfolk, but somewhere you know there's someone playing Merfolk with the High Tide mana base.
I hope it's banned. I think hoping to shake up the format by doing anything else is simply wishful thinking. And the thing is, I don't play a BS deck and I still have fun playing legacy. it's not even about my own personal fun within a game because even if I'm playing against a BS deck I usually have fun. It's more that it's a bummer on the day after a tournament when you look at the decklists hoping to see something cool and it's like.... oh. Same stuff. Or you look in a coverage thread and it's just people complaining about people seeing the same decks. That sucks.
Fair enough: I just know Brainstorm has been around since Ice Age and it really hasn't been this ubiquitous until recently. I know how you feel about seeing the same decks over and over again: I am too, and I'm sure back when this thread was created in the heyday of CounterTop strategies that those who voted for SDT were as well.
Perhaps I am wrong in redirecting the blame from Brainstorm onto Delver? While Delver is a good choice to ban for the short term (answers exist to it, true, but the main problem is the evasion), it does nothing in the long term should another Brainstorm-fueled strategy become oppressive. Yet, I can't imagine the format without it, as it does reduce the amount of variance in blue-based decks and thus make blue-based mirrors (or shotos to be more precise) more skill-based.
All in all, if they ban Delver (or at least print something maindeckable that can buy time to dig removal) and make black, red, and white counterparts to Brainstorm (green has pseudo-Brainstorm on a stick in Sylvan Library), I believe the format would be a lot healthier.
Also, I'm primarily a Junk player: actually need to update my signature with my latest projects. While I have tried Brainstorm before, it just didn't work as well I had hoped in BUG Fit.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
The question is are decks with BS really THAT much more powerful than those without? For instance, pretend it's only a little bit better than the nonblue decks, however pros/competitive players want every single advantage they can get, so that little bit better matters. This way, it can skew metagame data. Pretend blue decks are 10% better than nonblue (random number), but then since that little % matters, it becomes 75% of the tournament. That makes the data seem skewed.
Also, we realize that the blue shell will get weakened but what gets strengthened? Pretend the blue shell becomes less consistent after brainstorm gets banned, and now the best deck by 10% (random number again) is Jund. Now everyone will want that marginal advantage and Jund will be 75% of the field at the next big tournament. Do we cry for Tarmogoyf's ban?
All completely hypothetical btw.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
maharis
iGrok, don't want to make another wall of text, but anyway please accept my apologies for flying off the handle initially in my response to your first post.
Anyway.
You said: "The metagame was so heavily skewed and inbred that the data doesn't mean anything." But that in itself is wrong. If the strategy was so powerful as to necessitate maindeck hydroblast then there is a problem. At the same time, it wasn't Delver of Secrets or Treasure Cruise that was the most played card in the top decks.
You also said in your second post: "I agree. As I said, its an extremely simplified example. But surely you aren't suggesting that deck choice has no impact on who wins?" Of course it does. And most people picked UR delver because it was widely considered to be the best deck. 20% of the field is freakin' huge for a Legacy tournament. And Brainstorm is the best card in the deck. That is shown by the fact that all the "next best" decks were also BS decks. Qweerios, for example, said in the Nic Fit thread that he felt he had no choice but to play BS & FoW in his deck at the GP.
I don't really understand the stat model you set up at the end. However I respectfully disagree that GPNJ data is somehow unusable or skewed.
Ok, here's the "more accurate" Rock-paper-scissors model.
You are going to sign up for a Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament, in which you must choose your pick at the beginning of the day and stick with it. All ties will be broken by coinflip. This part is the traditional decks - Delver, Non-delver brainstorm/elves, and Midrange (Jund, Deadguy, Nic Fit, etc). Delver beats Midrange, Midrange beats non-delver brainstorm/elves, and non-delver brainstorm/elves beats Delver. Again, very simplified.
However, because magic isn't 100% matchup dependent, we have to add another factor into our RPS tournament. Anti-decks, designed to beat a particular deck to the exclusion of all others. These are going to make up probably a third of the field.
A new method of making a fist is developed, so everyone thinks that Rock (delver) is the best choice. This also means that everyone thinks that Paper (midrange) is the weakest choice. Even with nothing new actually happening, here's how people's perceptions can change a metagame.
So excluding Anti-decks, 50% of the people play Delver, 35% play Non-Delver Brainstorm/elves, and 15% play Midrange. But roughly a third of the people are going to play Anti-decks, which leads us to 31% Delver, 24% is on Non-delver Brainstorm/elves, and 12% is on midrange, while 33% are on Anti-decks.
Anti-decks are only actually better than a main choice if the meta is warped to the point that 50% of all participants are playing what you're hating, otherwise you still end up with a losing record. So they won't win.
So if you want to win, you should play Non-delver brainstorm/elves, because conventional wisdom says that you should play delver even if all decks were actually equally powerful. If conventional wisdom said to play non-delver brainstorm/elves, you should play midrange. If conventional wisdom said to play midrange, you should play delver.
Again, these are all assuming 100/0 matchup winrates, BUT while the math does get much harder when you take winrates like 60/40 or 56/43/1 (lol miracles draws), the answer stays the same.
Hopefully this helps you follow the math a bit more.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AznSeal
The question is are decks with BS really THAT much more powerful than those without? For instance, pretend it's only a little bit better than the nonblue decks, however pros/competitive players want every single advantage they can get, so that little bit better matters. This way, it can skew metagame data. Pretend blue decks are 10% better than nonblue (random number), but then since that little % matters, it becomes 75% of the tournament. That makes the data seem skewed.
Also, we realize that the blue shell will get weakened but what gets strengthened? Pretend the blue shell becomes less consistent after brainstorm gets banned, and now the best deck by 10% (random number again) is Jund. Now everyone will want that marginal advantage and Jund will be 75% of the field at the next big tournament. Do we cry for Tarmogoyf's ban?
All completely hypothetical btw.
If you want to win a tournament, you look for every little advantage you can get. If something is better to the point where it becomes significant, it shows up in force. If X is more powerful than anything else, you need a damn good reason not to play X.
Even without Brainstorm, Blue would still be good since the rest of the shell is still intact. Miracles would probably lose some strenght since they can't use Brainstorm to setup/get rid of naturally drawn Miracles, but they still have Top.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
testing32
Can you do that fancy math for someone who decided to play a deck that wasn't running brainstorm? Because that number is going to be a hell of a lot smaller (than someone running brainstorm). Or better yet, top 16 with 2 slots open for non-brainstorm decks.
I would argue that this GP is the best place to draw conclusions about the health of the format. There are more rounds which leads to variance mattering less than in a smaller tournament.
Might as well answer this while I'm at it:
I'm not saying the GP isn't a good place to start analyzing the result, but to be honest, it seems a lot of arguments on both sides are just looking at it all wrong.
More food for thought: let's say there are just two distinct lists at a 4096 person tournament. List A is the better one, albeit also more expensive. List B is cheaper, but ultimately worse for play.
List A wins 75% and loses 25% of the time against List B. Both Lists win 50% and lose 50% of the time in the mirror match.
List A comprises 25% (1024) of the field. List B comprises the remaining 75% (3072) of the field.
Round 1 Pairings: 37.5% A v B (768); 6.25% A v A (128); 56.25% B v B (1152); 100% (2048) matches total.
Round 1 Results: 704 A advancing; 1344 B advancing. A now comprises 34.375% of the field; B now comprises the remaining 65.625% of the field.
Round 2 Pairings: 462 A v B; 121 A v A; 441 B v B; 1024 Matches total (sorry: having trouble with Excel showing the right amount of decimal places).
Round 2 Results: 467.5 A advancing; 556.5 B advancing (bear with me here: I understand that you can't have half a deck advancing).
Round 3 Pairings: ~254 A v B; ~107 A v A; ~151 B v B; 512 Matches total (well, I think I made my point, which is good since keeping track of this recursive crap is only gonna get trickier)
Round 3 Results: 297.5 A advancing; 214.5 B advancing
After just 3 rounds, the clearly dominant List A went from comprising 25% of the field to comprising >50% of the field.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
testing32
No shame in that. Julian is right there with you. And Lemnear doesn't want storm to lose BS.
Edit: But don't say that the format is fine when it clearly is not.
I play Elves, Miracles and storm, so don't see me as one-dimensional here. Even if I feel pretty competent to build a working storm-shell without Brainstorm within days, I would have a headache to fix decks like Miracles or S&T or even fringe decks like Foodchain. I do care about all these decks and the colateral damage dealt just because people want Delver to become a bit worse, otherwise I would sit here and say "ban Brainstorm, so I can rock the field with Elves!". It seems that either some people can't comprehend that the loss of BS has different impact on various decks running it (from a need to streamline to stay viable to complete extinction) or just give a fuck. The arguing with Delver, which is the archetype which predictable would have minimal problems adapting (See Modern), is dumb and shallow. If you want to push the blue shell back into midrange or control to battle with Loam and Miracles for it's spot in the metagame instead of dominating the first 4 turns, you need to remove Delver from the metagame and give Tempo players the painful choice between Goose & Goyf or Treasure Cruise
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
FoolofaTook
So, are you suggesting banning a handful of creatures and never printing another creature that can cost-efficiently be shoe-horned into blue as a beater?
Because I don't see any other way to handle the vise-lock that the blue shell has on the format right now. Even then Miracles would just become the best list by a mile if you did that since it's the blue shell lists with good creatures that do the most to suppress it right now in commonly played matchups.
You have to weaken the shell, maybe significantly with more than one core card ban, to put us in a meta where choice becomes real again.
Think about it: you can't make a rule for cost efficient creatures that they have to have double non-blue color in the casting cost in order to be printed. Even if you did that Abrupt Decay is a major part of BUG and it has double non-blue casting cost.
It's the shell. It's like a gigantic vampire squid eating the face off of Magic on a daily basis.
So what do you suggest instead?
Ban Brainstorm and EVERY other cantrip close to power of brainstorm? We could leave U shell only with cc>3 or more draw cards?
As said before by other users the previous build of RUG (the close deck to UR before delver was printed) weren't so oppressive like is UR now.
Anyway an effective move by WOTC could be UNban some cards to give nonU shell some raw power that lacks at the moment: survival? Workshop?
Bye
Re: All B/R update speculation.
I remember the day when Survival was banned and ppl lost their deck AND several hundred dollars. There's at least one guy in our lgs... who's not in our lgs anymore. Never seen him since the ban.
So, what's the trouble with BS? People really cannot lose their €0.02 card? Morevoer if it's so "easily replaceable by any other cantrip" and all that jazz.
