All B/R update speculation.

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Originally Posted by TheFlyinGutchman

Banning top seems like a big middle finger because it's one of the few, if not the only, good providers of card selection that can be used by any color.

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If Top is so great, then why is it barely run by any nonblue decks?

That statement is incredible generic and can be used for anything, e.g.

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Banning Mental Misstep seems like a big middle finger because it's one of the few, if not the only, good provider of free countermagic that can be used by any color.

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If Top had to go, it would be because of the blue shells that abuse it the most, not because of the nonblue decks which run it. It's the degeneracy (or other problems like logistics) that counts, not the fair things you could do with a problematic card.

I think if you wanted to take Top out of Miracles, you could do so by taking Counterbalance out of the format and leave Top in for Painter, Junk/Jund, 12 Post or Nic Fit. Now while I understand these decks don't play it all the time or win often enough for people to remember they play it at all, it's worth noting they do and they exist. Hell even Pox plays it at times.

Top is played by non Blue, just because those decks are not always at the top tables doesn't mean it's not happening.

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Originally Posted by HSCK

If you think looking at the last 5 events is all that's needed to see what a format is then there is nothing more to discuss, suffice it to say it's one of the poorest ideas I've seen yet on how to manage a format.

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I never said that - in fact I provided six months of SCG data in a link. And note that my looking at the five most recent events was in direct response to you having cited one event. One. :rolleyes:

What I'm saying is that if Miracles sees only six spots in five consecutive major top8s, obviously the format is more than capable of "handling" it.
Five's not a magic number - just what was on the first page. We can go back further if you want (on my way to work now).

Edit - I think those five events might be a better representation than you think, at least for miracles. Taking six (top eight) spots in five events is exactly 15%. MTG top8 has Miracles at 16%, while Goldfish lists it at 15.79%. This is roughly where it's been every time I've looked since the DTT ban (before which it hovered around 20%).

I don't think we actually disagree on the numeric facts (I sure hope not). We disagree as to what constitutes a dominant deck. Its okay if we disagree on this. But to me ~15% =/= tearing up the meta. Miracles has its poor MUs within the top tier, and it hasn't reduced the meta to a small pool of viable decks. It also makes a difference to me that Miracles' "dominance" in top brackets seems to be roughly in tow with its "dominance" at the sign-up desk.

Unban Mm. Should fix the format return the clamp as well

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by tescrin

This actually disproves your own point just fine. Just because their skin color is the same doesn't mean that their gene pool is non-diverse.
Quit being actually-racist.
(Hint: White is a race and countries that white people come from are actually countries and subsets of genes that happen to have similar skin color while being genetically diverse is a thing.)

Ever notice how you can tell Norse bloodlines by their jawline, hair color, or eye color.. from say.. Spanish?

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Successful troll is successful? The example was purposefully terrible (for reasons that you accurately illustrated in your response). The nonsense Crimhead was spouting didn't deserve an analogy that was actually good.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

Maverick won't come back as its been outdated by Jund and Shardless, both are simply better midrange decks with more powerful cards, Zoo is still laughable as why play a deck predicated on playing the best aggressive creatures in the format when you can't play the actual best Aggro creature (Delver of Secrets) and Goblins steamrolls miracles, banning its best MU would make it worse.

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You might be correct about Maverick and Jund / Shardless.
Delver of Secrets is a great card, and I don't see it going anwhere, but the reason Delver of Secrets is better then Wild Nacatal is because it slots into a tempo build better. The "conditional trigger" (which Tempo decks can design around) is a bigger draw back then Wild Nacatals drawback... but it's extremely easy to slot Delver into a tempo deck that negates most 95% of the drawback.

Goblins does have a positive matchup against Miracles, but your looking only at that matchup, and ignoring that Miracles is doing a great job of reducing the number of "fair" decks in the meta, and pushing for the rest of the non-miracles meta to be decks that Goblins has problems with. So yeah this might seem counterintuative, but I think miracles going away would increase the number of "fair" decks that Goblins would end up playing each tourniment and be good for Goblins.... If you only look at the head to head, then I think your are ignoring the true impact of a banning which is a shift in the overall meta.

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Originally Posted by Crimhead

I never said that. What I'm saying is that if Miracles sees only six spots in five consecutive major top8s, obviously the format is more than capable of "handling" it.
Five's not a magic number - just what was on the first page. We can go back further if you want (on my way to work now).

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I think it's incorrect to focus only on the top 8 results.

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Originally Posted by GundamGuy

You might be correct about Maverick and Jund / Shardless.
Delver of Secrets is a great card, and I don't see it going anwhere, but the reason Delver of Secrets is better then Wild Nacatal is because it slots into a tempo build better. The "conditional trigger" (which Tempo decks can design around) is a bigger draw back then Wild Nacatals drawback... but it's extremely easy to slot Delver into a tempo deck that negates most 95% of the drawback.

Goblins does have a positive matchup against Miracles, but your looking only at that matchup, and ignoring that Miracles is doing a great job of reducing the number of "fair" decks in the meta, and pushing for the rest of the non-miracles meta to be decks that Goblins has problems with. So yeah this might seem counterintuative, but I think miracles going away would increase the number of "fair" decks that Goblins would end up playing each tourniment and be good for Goblins.... If you only look at the head to head, then I think your are ignoring the true impact of a banning which is a shift in the overall meta.

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That's the point, you can't really play cat and delver in the same deck, delver as an aggressive strategy is just straight up better then zoo or affinity, your namesake card is more aggressive then wild nacatl, and rewards you for building a deck with a bunch of disruption. To put it simply, would you rather play a 3/3 with no evasion backed up with more dudes and burn, or a 3/2 flier backed up with countermagic and removal, in the face of storm and show and tell, most definitely the second one.

It might help goblins but taking away its best matchup results in more BUG delvers to randomly hymn you out of the game, more lands to beat you to death with 20/20s and punishing fire, a meta game that may actually be more hostile to goblins given what it's doing has largely been outdated by better creatures and stronger disruption suites.

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Originally Posted by Crimhead

I never said that. What I'm saying is that if Miracles sees only six spots in five consecutive major top8s, obviously the format is more than capable of "handling" it.
Five's not a magic number - just what was on the first page. We can go back further if you want (on my way to work now).

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

That's the point, you can't really play cat and delver in the same deck, delver as an aggressive strategy is just straight up better then zoo or affinity, your namesake card is more aggressive then wild nacatl, and rewards you for building a deck with a bunch of disruption. To put it simply, would you rather play a 3/3 with no evasion backed up with more dudes and burn, or a 3/2 flier backed up with countermagic and removal, in the face of storm and show and tell, most definitely the second one.

It might help goblins but taking away its best matchup results in more BUG delvers to randomly hymn you out of the game, more lands to beat you to death with 20/20s and punishing fire, a meta game that may actually be more hostile to goblins given what it's doing has largely been outdated by better creatures and stronger disruption suites.

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You can't play Cat and Delver in the same deck, Zoo and Tempo are totally different strats anyway... To answer your question, it depends on the meta... current meta 100% delver for sure.
In a meta without Miracles, likely still 100% delver, but I don't think it's right 100% of the time.

It might result in more BUG Delver, but is randomly getthing hymned out of the game a huge problem for a deck that runs Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader? Seems like you can out "Card Advantage" them even if they randomly hit a goblin or two. I also don't know that "more" lands will be the result.

Also Goblins has never been about having the "best" creatures, or "strong disruption suites." It's alwasy been about being resilient, and overwhelming in the long run.

All this aside, how do you see the meta changing in a post-miracles world? More BUG Delver / Shardless BUG?

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Originally Posted by GundamGuy

All this aside, how do you see the meta changing in a post-miracles world? More BUG Delver / Shardless BUG?

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I would play an insane amount of High Tide if Counterbalance wasn't a thing in the meta.

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Originally Posted by Admiral_Arzar

I would play an insane amount of High Tide if Counterbalance wasn't a thing in the meta.

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Surprising actually no one.

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Originally Posted by GundamGuy

You can't play Cat and Delver in the same deck, Zoo and Tempo are totally different strats anyway... To answer your question, it depends on the meta... current meta 100% delver for sure.
In a meta without Miracles, likely still 100% delver, but I don't think it's right 100% of the time.

It might result in more BUG Delver, but is randomly getthing hymned out of the game a huge problem for a deck that runs Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader? Seems like you can out "Card Advantage" them even if they randomly hit a goblin or two. I also don't know that "more" lands will be the result.

Also Goblins has never been about having the "best" creatures, or "strong disruption suites." It's alwasy been about being resilient, and overwhelming in the long run.

All this aside, how do you see the meta changing in a post-miracles world? More BUG Delver / Shardless BUG?

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You made my point for me, they are different strategies but as aggressive strategies, Delver is straight up better then Zoo

Goblins being resilient isn't enough, the more powerful the format gets the more underwhelming goblins becomes, 1/1s for 3 that tutor 2/2 haste creatures for 4 that draw 3 cards isn't good enough, it's too slow, the cards you get aren't much better, yes you can hit that critical mass and swarm your opponent but it's considerably much more difficult then in years past.

Miracles is one RG lands worst MUs, take it away and all of a sudden, Lands only has to really worry about pure combo.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

Miracles is one RG lands worst MUs, take it away and all of a sudden, Lands only has to really worry about pure combo.

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Lands player here. I am okay with this.

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Originally Posted by GundamGuy

I think it's incorrect to focus only on the top 8 results.

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As do I! Over all Miracles has a win rate just over 50% - hardly a monster! I put a link to some data in the post you quoted(or maybe the post before that).

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Originally Posted by Crimhead

As do I! Over all Miracles has a win rate just over 50% - hardly a monster! I put a link to some data in the post you quoted(or maybe the post before that).

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Wining over 50% of the time against the field is actually really good. Most decks have a much more sinusoidal win rate curve*... (I just made this up on the spot so... uh... hold on for a second as I explain what I mean....)

*If you were to plot the win rate out of 100% on the Y axis and all the decks in the meta on the X axis, most decks would have some highs and some lows. For example Imperial Painter has a really bad Burn Matchup. Like Win 5%, Lose 95%, but a really good Lands matchup Win 85%, Lose 15%. Of course those are the extremes and some match-ups are closer to 55,45, and 50,50 etc.

I suspect if you created a chart like this (access to data is a problem...) and compared Miracles to other legacy decks you'd find Miracles doesn't have the highest win % against any deck in the meta, but has fewer extreme highs and and extreme lows... meaning that on average it performs above the curve and is more consistently good against the meta then average. (This is what makes it a top tier deck and I'd expect this to be true of all the top tier to some extent with perhaps a few more spikes)...

To put this another way... if you know the meta had an extreme amount of miracles (6 out of 9 matches), what deck would you play because it gives you a slam dunk win against Miracles...? (Expected win rate of 80% of the time against Miracles..?)

Is there a deck that wins more then 75% of the time against Miracles?

TL;DR

IMO: If one deck doesn't have any really bad matchups it's likely not healthy for the meta because the meta game is solved.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

Miracles is one RG lands worst MUs, take it away and all of a sudden, Lands only has to really worry about pure combo.

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Does Lands not have to worry about Bloodmoon?

Sure but how many decks can run blood moon without punching themselves in the dick?

Not many

Enough to cause headaches. Trust me on that.

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Originally Posted by GundamGuy

Is there a deck that wins more then 75% of the time against Miracles?

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12 Post?

Although that deck has different weaknesses that hold it back.

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Originally Posted by Barook

12 Post?

Although that deck has different weaknesses that hold it back.

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One of 12 Posts weaknesses is that Miracles can and often does have Blood Moon in the SB... (To be clear, I think you are right that 12 Posts has a pretty good Miracles Matchup)

I would think that MUD has an OK matchup as well. MUD is weaker to Swords and Terminus though. Maybe New MUD with Ugin is the savior we've been looking for...:eyebrow:

What about ending the talk of banning top, brainstorm or any miracles card. Be honest they dont ban any of those cards. Maybe in hundred years but that is still a long distance and not worth talking about. :-P

It is more interesting to talk about cards that can be unbanned and why.
For example some thought that Black Vise would have an impact for Delver decks, WGD for Reanimator...but nothing happened.
Maybe it is time to unban a card that has a little more impact on legacy than the last few unbanned cards.

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Originally Posted by Deckerator

What about ending the talk of banning top, brainstorm or any miracles card. Be honest they dont ban any of those cards. Maybe in hundred years but that is still a long distance and not worth talking about. :-P

It is more interesting to talk about cards that can be unbanned and why.
For example some thought that Black Vise would have an impact for Delver decks, WGD for Reanimator...but nothing happened.
Maybe it is time to unban a card that has a little more impact on legacy than the last few unbanned cards.

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But they don't unban without banning something. Might as well trade out Top.

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Originally Posted by jrsthethird

But they don't unban without banning something. Might as well trade out Top.

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That's not really true.