All B/R update speculation.

[Gheizen64]

Just for complete data: For all events in 2016 you get 16,1% Counterbalance and 17,3% Delver of Secrets. The relevant data at this point is Top8/Share

Maybe there is a card that is even more played than both and enable them both?


J/k. But i still believe that if anything would need a ban, is neither top or delver, but the enabler for them both (and one of the best anti-discard and cantrip ever printed while at it). I'm not for the banning of anything.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Clearly fetch lands need to go based on that not at all subtle post.

[Dice_Box]

I think he is genuinely excited about Magic, which is great. But his views on what constitutes interesting Magic are warped and unfortunately his voice still echoes in the halls of Wizards. These are the guys who refused to play less than 4 Misstep, 1-2 Fluster and lose the maindeck Pyroblasts and would cry about losing to shops. Complaining while wielding decks with 13-14 lands, sometimes with no basics. Decks with like 2 plows. Never acknowledging that the chance of having mox, land, bolt/plow was better than shop, mox, golem (assuming you actually played removal). The cryback was an unwillingness to concede anything in game 1 in the blue cantrip circle jerk mirror. Then he finally decides to play real removal maindeck in the form of Snuff Out and he punts completely, not knowing how LSG or Snuff Out even work. Then proceeds to not talk at all about his savage punt but cry about how shops is still too powerful. Never mentioning his incompetence.

The worst part of this all, Wizards has come out and said to all the people like Jaco that they had made up their minds before their articles where published. Then said they should have written them sooner, like it had actually made some kind of internal difference that was just ignored thanks to a choice already being handed down.

What sucks the most is that the decks built to act like Shops doesn't exist keep on trucking with no change the format did not get better, it just got more counter heavy. That said, I wish they would give Chalice back. In hindsight I am more willing to accept Lodestone if you give decks like Blue Moon, the new powerless Eldrazi and other lock decks that card back.

Edit. I just raised ned might never see this. I am likely on his ignore list.

[Lysandros]

I like Randy and appreciate his contributions (some of them) to the game. His enthusiasm for Vintage has been instrumental in the format staying afloat. That said, as a still embittered Shops pilot, his post about Miracles struck a really raw nerve. So locking people out with CounterTop is fine and fun, but Shops hurts his feelings? Got it, thanks Captain Hypocrite.

[Megadeus]

The worst part of this all, Wizards has come out and said to all the people like Jaco that they had made up their minds before their articles where published. Then said they should have written them sooner, like it had actually made some kind of internal difference that was just ignored thanks to a choice already being handed down.

What sucks the most is that the decks built to act like Shops doesn't exist keep on trucking with no change the format did not get better, it just got more counter heavy. That said, I wish they would give Chalice back. In hindsight I am more willing to accept Lodestone if you give decks like Blue Moon, the new powerless Eldrazi and other lock decks that card back.

Edit. I just raised ned might never see this. I am likely on his ignore list.

There.


It's pretty awful to see the clear bias when it comes to people that have sway on what will or won't be in the BnR. I'd love to see some unbannings as per usual though. Still a few cards that would see little to no play at worst and become tier 1.5 but not oppressive pieces of the meta.

I'm also interested to see how the Death and Taxes deck gets. It's kind of the "shops" of the format with taxing plus mana denial and a clock. Wonder how much Randy hates that deck

[Dark Ritual]

Second nedleeds on the 4 misstep and stuff against workshops in vintage. In such a meta where everyone is maindecking 4 misstep, multiple flusterstorms and pyroblasts the best metagame call is shops by light years as it makes a bunch of cards dead and smashes you to pieces. Adapt? Nah we gotta win that blue mirror, even though swords to plowshares is a great card there because it comes down to creatures in the form of mentor/pyromancer/whatever in the end and plow answers those. Same with bolt. Randy Buehler is an awful magic player though and would likely blame himself last for any defeat despite the fact that he really doesn't know how to sequence or know what cards do as pointed out with the 'pay' for his lotus line against lodestone when every single vintage player should know that it doesn't tax artifacts. It is not sphere of resistance.

Number of people that find countermagic and land destruction fun are few and far between. People will freak out if they have their 2 drop counterspelled, but if it's a doom blade oh that's way fine. Both are the same thing unless there's a profitable enter the battlefield trigger involved, but new magic players are too stupid to see that generally speaking as that's the crowd that WotC tries to cater to and is the reason for the great creature push the last 8 years while simultaneously making creature kill and countermagic worse and worse. WotC itself is too stupid to realize that you can have great countermagic, creature kill, and creatures in the same environment. Maybe even land destruction, but that's a stretch as WotC thinks all of it should be 4 mana or more.

[Stevestamopz]

People will freak out if they have their 2 drop counterspelled, but if it's a doom blade oh that's way fine. Both are the same thing unless there's a profitable enter the battlefield trigger involved, but new magic players are too stupid to see that generally speaking as that's the crowd that WotC tries to cater to and is the reason for the great creature push the last 8 years while simultaneously making creature kill and countermagic worse and worse. WotC itself is too stupid to realize that you can have great countermagic, creature kill, and creatures in the same environment. Maybe even land destruction, but that's a stretch as WotC thinks all of it should be 4 mana or more.

I asked a very similar question on plebbit and was not rewarded with a greater understanding of why counterspells = bad but discard = fine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co..._when_discard/

[Jain_Mor]

I like Randy and appreciate his contributions (some of them) to the game. His enthusiasm for Vintage has been instrumental in the format staying afloat. That said, as a still embittered Shops pilot, his post about Miracles struck a really raw nerve. So locking people out with CounterTop is fine and fun, but Shops hurts his feelings? Got it, thanks Captain Hypocrite.

I think he was heavily implying it's NOT fine in his opinion. I think like his article on land destruction, he acknowledged it is fun to be the winner, but it isn't necessarily fun / good for the game to lock people out. So until B&R makes a move, as a competitive player he will play what seems like the clear, abundantly clear in his opinion, most powerful deck in the format. But he doesn't necessarily think it's fine in the format, he'll just abuse it while it's legal seems to be his stance.

I see no hypocrisy here.

[Barook]

I asked a very similar question on plebbit and was not rewarded with a greater understanding of why counterspells = bad but discard = fine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co..._when_discard/

That question is actually easy to answer - it feels worse to spend mana and then have your spell denied instead of just having it taken.

[dte]

Imost players do not like the feeling to continue to "play" a game that they have lost a long time ago.

That's one of the worst parts. You still have to continue playing in order not to give up on that tiny chance of still turning it around, heavily demoralizing you in the process.

[Stevestamopz]

That question is actually easy to answer - it feels worse to spend mana and then have your spell denied instead of just having it taken.

But it's not so black and white, at least not for me.

If they have a counterspell, I can try and play around it. I might have Vial or Cavern, or I might be able to bait them out with something lesser.

Discard gives your opponent perfect information and takes your best card out of the hand and I hate that feeling, certainly much more than someone countering something.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Ultimately I find it less egregious for someone to hit me in the balls with a sledgehammer then vivisecting my scrotum but both fucking suck.

That said I prefer counterspells to discard, least they don't get perfect info.

[Barook]

But it's not so black and white, at least not for me.

If they have a counterspell, I can try and play around it. I might have Vial or Cavern, or I might be able to bait them out with something lesser.

Discard gives your opponent perfect information and takes your best card out of the hand and I hate that feeling, certainly much more than someone countering something.

Instants/flash get around discard in response. Due to discard being sorcery speed in general, you feel safe when drawing a new card that you can play on the same turn. That doesn't work too well against counters, as you can never feel safe - counters are always the looming threat of fucking your plays over. That's why anti-counter cards feel good, because you finally play the game without having to worry about counters.

Chances are you can still play stuff in most cases after getting hit by discard. Especially in the early game, counter spells are essentially Time Walks.

As for perfect information, Gitaxian Probe does the same, for free. It was named quite often by Sources as a card they loath in a thread some time ago about cards they love/hate.

[Megadeus]

If probe just said draw a card it would be light years less miserable. Then getting information for free and drawing like therapy or so easily getting to figure out what to play around. I just really hate when my opponent gets free info with doing no work

[Lemnear]

But it's not so black and white, at least not for me.

If they have a counterspell, I can try and play around it. I might have Vial or Cavern, or I might be able to bait them out with something lesser.

Discard gives your opponent perfect information and takes your best card out of the hand and I hate that feeling, certainly much more than someone countering something.

Apples and Oranges. Counterspells often cost less mana than the card countered so they generate a tempoadvantage, while discard ALWAYS is a tempoadvantage for your opponent, because the only one paying mana is you. You can't point to the additional information discard wields without mentioning that the player casting it is paying for that info unlike the one countering a Spell with Daze/Pierce/Fluster/etc

[marax]

Eventhough the discussion about statistics between Lemnar and others here was somewhat heated and emotional I strongly believe it is a very important topic especially because many MTG players misuse statistics so often.
I would like to point out that most data gathering for legacy is a community driven effort and that only gathering and posting Top 8 data greatly diminishes avaiable data sets. Though it is less work of course!

In a perfect world of data gathering I would like to know the decktype of every person playing in the torunament represented as a sum for every decktype (e.g. of 100 players attending, 20 played miracles, 10 played grixis delver, ....)
Next I would like to have a list of the "winners" metagame. How you would define winners metagame precisely is something that we as a community could discuss and might depend a bit on the amount of rounds in the tournament. as a starting point let's say it would include roughly the best 33% (e.g. Top 32 or a certain points after swiss cutoff to resemble ~32 of 100 Man tournament). Decklists are nice to have for inspiration but the least important thing.

Which stat is more impressive?
Top 8 of Modern GP bologna having 5/8 decks including 8 Eldrazi lands
OR
Top 100 of Modern GP Blogna having 67/100 decks including 8 Eldrazi lands

Both are facts about that tournament from the first quarter of 2016. Luckily the % are also pretty similiar in this case ( 62,5% vs. 67%) and both sets as well playing a couple of games strongly point to OPness. As a magic community and human beings we need to move away from valuing only "first" places and also apreciate tournament finishes such as 5-2 or 11-3-1 as great sucesses eventhough they are often not rewarded much.


For discussion I would also strongly advise to first post your statistical findings (I had a look at the last x tournaments of the follwoung sort and the following size. I calculated the following stats a, b, c. The raw data can be found at: www. this mightbe mtgtop8 .com) .

From this data I derive .....


Instead of : The last 3 tournaments I attended were won by that one guy playing his petdeck Miracles. Clearly its OP!

[Dice_Box]

I don't know what I am meant to be looking at in your link.

Also, to answer your post, I work with what I have when I do my numbers. I am not intentionally overlooking or excluding anything. If you have numbers I don't, feel free to share, but until someone does that I will stick with the sample I have. Is it perfect? Nothing is. Is it worthwhile? Yes.

[Lemnear]

I don't know what I am meant to be looking at in your link.

Also, to answer your post, I work with what I have when I do my numbers. I am not intentionally overlooking or excluding anything. If you have numbers I don't, feel free to share, but until someone does that I will stick with the sample I have. Is it perfect? Nothing is. Is it worthwhile? Yes.

I second this. I can't figure out what you post is about marax

[marax]

1)
Working with what you have is fine is the only avaiable option of course.

2)
However as a community we can push to get the data we would rather like to have or even better post it from tournaments in which you are involved.
It is "us" posting tournament results and somehow ending up in the "top 8 only" metric.
In my opinion the metric should be "winner's" metagame, not almost exclusively Top 8 Data and Top 8 derived stats.

3)
Doing analysis only with To8 placings strongly reduces the "strength in numbers" metric that is so very important for a robust statistic. People seem to forget that.

4)
It's not really important whether 3/8 or 2/8 or 478 in a particluar Top 8 were Miracles. The resulting statistic using apropriate methodes to determine the robustness will come to the result that the interpretation is inconclusive because of the lack of data. What actually matters is how the % of miracles (or any other strongly played deck) played in a (big) tournament changes when you compare "winner's" metagame vs. metagame before the first round. Which is what coverage does for GP's with reports on Day1 vs. day 2 metagame for example.

We should ask and fight and help to get that data for MKM/SCG style 80+ player torunaments

5)
We should be more factual about what we post:

dte did a good job:
"I redid my analysis with all the 50+ players events that took place in 2016 for which top8 is recorded in mtgtop8.
It gave 58 placings:
6 first positions;
6 nd
17 3-4
29 5-8.

99 matchs, 47 wins. 47.5 % winrate.

Miracle win about half of its matches. Statistics is not big enough to be trusted more precisely, but shows a pretty even result.
But this should not be interpreted as "miracle is not dominant", it is the most represented deck. And so the one which take the most top8 shares. And seeing that on internet, the most picked deck for going to an event."

He states where the raw data can be found (so people can rebuke him if he made mistakes). He gives important metrics for the size of the data and how he calculated "the stat" he wants to use -miracles win% in top 8 matches.
At the end he adds his own interpretation which is formulated nice and neutral.

6)
I just want to nicely point out to the "loud" people in this thread that they should do likewise.

[Lemnear]

6)
I just want to nicely point out to the "loud" people in this thread that they should do likewise.

Eh? Who you are referring to?