Yeah, I know Europe and east Asia get it good in this regard. Sadly, things aren't that great here in South America either. I currently pay around $50 for 15 mega in a large city, and in most of my state's countryside the max download speed available barely reaches 1 mega. I hear it's a bit better for small cities in southern Brazilian states (I live in the Brazilian Northeast), but still not that great.
I have also been forcing Dimir trying the cypher mill style and i'ts really hard to win with that in mind. I am wondering though if you have made this article a week before it was published because right now I always go against a Dimir guild in my drafts. But I am playing 4-3-2-2 and maybe 8-4 drafters has a different take in gtc drafts.
Getting it out with one other drop that evolves it in the same turn is probably enough. Because a 1/2 is a bit harder to kill than a 0/1 and at the same time it doesn't look that offensive until you get a couple counters on it.
It was more of a joke but yeah, don't run it out as your very first threat and you'll get more mileage. On the other hand, Simic Manipulator is different in that you HAVE to play it before most of your other creatures for its mechanic to function.. and it can't activate for an entire turn, so it does limit how you use the thing.
For these reasons I'll probably start taking straight removal over it most picks.
It's really all about the board state. Sure if you plop it down with nothing else out and your op is playing a typical deck they are going to have something to kill it with. But if you treat it like the combo card it is you will have better success.
I don't understand how this math is misleading. If we have to divide all of the cards in the set in five parts, this is the number that is left.
Of course, there is some bleed between guilds. Boros can take white cards from the "Orzhov" pool and red cards from the "Gruul" pool. But the point still stands. If there are five guilds, and each guild has the same number of cards in its card pool, then we can divide the number of cards by the number of guilds to get it's overall pool.
As to the point that some cards won't get played, you are simply demonstrating the point I just made. Yes, there are some number of cards that aren't good enough to get played. But if that number equals one third of your card pool, then your guild is not that good.
I'll reiterate my point. People always assume that overdrafting and underdrafting has a bigger impact on a draft format than it does in actuality.
For Dimir, you have 1.12 people at a table playing Dimir. That means you need 25.76 cards out of 67.5. There is easily that number of playables. If Dimir spikes up to 20%, then they will need 36.8 playables. There are definitely 11 more playable cards in Dimir's card pool.
Be careful of overanalyzing the affect of overdrafting and underdrafting. I'm going to put together an article demonstrating my point about this, but after having done several of these set analyses, I can demonstrate that these phenomenons have a smaller affect on win rate than you would think.
@ricklongo The internet in the US is not very good. It's improving, but price wise compared with speeds, we are like 15th or something crazy low in the world. It's pretty depressing, but mainly since our government did nothing for the infrastructure and the companies that provide the service have a monopoly in alot of areas, and even in some bigger cities, you have maybe 3 choices. My internet is about 15 down and 2.5 up but I pay around $70 a month for it..terrible compared to friends of mine in Germany and France who get literally twice or more speed for about $40 US.
Hey man, thanks for the insight on that finals match! I could tell you had a burn-heavy game plan, but hadn't even considered the idea that you'd have hands where you would just be using Scent of Cinder to dome them for 7 on the draw. I was envisioning a more typical RDW play style, dropping creatures and using burn to clear the way -- which is pretty bad against mihahitlor's decks. You obviously played it much more as a pure burn deck than I envisioned. This is why I wish I had a match replay, of course.
Also, the fact that mihahitlor had a lot of answers to creatures and very few to burn spells (only Nighthawk, which you could easily kill) is one of the reasons I usually advocate running a good amount of burn spells in any aggro deck. His decks are constructed to be absolutely brutal on opposing creatures, and the burn plan was obviously essential against him. It also sounds like you are an experienced mono-red player, which likely helped quite a bit. People think aggro decks are easy to play, but from my time piloting legacy Zoo, I know the decisions you make to maximize the damage out of your hand and mana every turn aren't always easy -- when you first pick those decks up, there are all those times your opponent wins with 1 or 2 life and you realize later how you could have won the game. Good work!
I should point out that Elaine was NY Statechamp the year Academy was the deck. (My friend Hogan took 5th place with our techy homebrew of the same archetype) and her husband (Kieran? cant remember the spelling) took 2nd.
Also isn't your wife something of a thing in pro MTG?
first, it will be great when I never have to write about this again. However, as a judge, I can tell you that I have often had to intervene because of inappropriate / rude / insulting behavior by males against females. I wish we were past it, but there are still cavemen out there. I can't wait for it to end.
On the plus side, I am old enough that I can remember when the last laws making mixed race marriages a criminal offense were repealed. Now, mixed race couples, and kids, are no longer remarkable. Progress happens.
As for who you root for - root for whomever you want. I root for the people I know, and especially for those from Madison, or at least close to it. (Owen and GerryT) Or root for your favorite deck. It's all good.
Well, that math could be a bit misleading. Does each card fit cleanly only into 1 guild?
There are also a number of cards that are just not going to get played.
As for Dimir, the question I would pose would be, does it still do as well with 2 drafters? At 15%, you have roughly 1 person a table, so the strictly Dimir cards as easier to get. I do agree Dimir is better than thought, but I do not think it would be better than Orzhoz given the same amount of competition for cards.
The final game of the final match came down to having enough burn in hand to draw my 8th card and go to face for 7 with scent of cinder. I followed it up with Mogg War-Marshall goblin grenade and still had enough burn in hand to close the game. The vamps deck is good, but far slower than the goblins. It also has no real way of stopping the burn plan outside of resolving nighthawk and a lord or getting crazy with one of it's death leeches. The goblins deck has plenty of removal on a low curve to clear a path.
If you'll notice all of my 3 drop creatures either have haste or a relevant ability that I could use if they were to be killed. Lords are only good if you have a board established when they drop otherwise their ability is worthless. I just played the deck as a burn deck using my creatures as slightly better burn spells, and not really caring if they died in combat. The deck plays like a best of from different mono red lists I've played over the years with a few cute tricks based on tribal synergy like sacing my board to pump Spikeshot Elder and fire at the face multiple times instead of going through combat. If I was to make changes it would have been fireblast in for reckless abandon and drop Goblin patrol for Goblin Guide, I even have those cards but just threw together cards that were lower in value because I only spent 5 minutes making the deck.
Missed deadline - rushed. Ran out of time to get everyone.
For everyone else - also great people at Wizards: Whitney, Renee, Tolena - wait, not going to try to list them, because I can think of a half dozen more, which would mean I am missing at least that many.
If you don't mind me asking, how fast is your internet? I know I have had to turn down job opportunities with slight raises in the country because the sucky internet would deprive me of my favorite hobby (MTGO). I always thought Americans had it better in that regard.
Anyway, great article as always. I always look forward to these.
"Simic Manipulator always dies before he does anything. Always."
As a guy who has gotten wrecked by Manipulator + Illusionist's Bracers in limited, let me say "not always". Although when it's ME who controls the Manipulator, then sure, always. :)
I am bored as well of the women talk in magic. I could truly care less of what your gender is or anything in between. If you play magic and sit across the table from me I want to beat you. I will shake your hand regardless of the outcome and move along.
In essence we need to move along as this is a tiresome dance that keeps on popping up now and again.
Congrats to Melissa!
Andy
On one hand I understand it. There is some sexism in Magic, if you go to random tournament, there will be someone who does not want to lose to a girl. On the other hand, it is rough to feel like the bad guy for supporting a person that I feel treats others with kindness over someone I do not know. (I also saw that Melissa has played alot of MTGO drafts over the weeks leading up to it, so I may have had similar interactions with her, but her screenname is not as obvious as TomM.)
So I built the "better" version of this deck and played a few rounds with it. It felt either very, very strong; or a big miss. Hexproof creatures decimated me, as did discard. But, on the games I won, it was a lot of fun. I kind of felt bad for my opponent as this deck creates a feeling of dread where you see you're just not going to win. I really like it though. Again, great article and I hope you have another 20 articles to post. I truly have never seen a deck quite like this, and enjoyed the cool "combo-ish" aspect.
I will be building every deck you list. Are you taking requests for color combinations or deck types?
I'm seeing a trend with the Pauper prices. Like I pointed out last time, pauper prices rise when Standard is in flux (new expansion is coming out, people aren't sure what the meta will be like) and then drop again when the new expansion is out and there's some tournament results showcasing the new meta so it's "safe" to invest in Standard again.
I think people flock to Pauper when the Standard meta is uncertain. I fully expect to see a huge Pauper price surge when Innistrad is rotating out, like there was when SoM rotated.
I've never really bought into the idea that sexist attitudes by male players is what keeps women away from tournaments. Most of the guys at a local FNM are the type that can barely talk to women in the first place, otherwise they would likely be on a date occasionally and not summoning dragons every Friday night. The whole FNM thing just seems to be repellent to women in every regard. I've seen many more ladies at Grand Prix events, where the venues are nicer and it's easier to get away from weirdos when you want to. The increased GP schedule might allow more women to get into competitive magic while bypassing their local player communities with whom they aren't comfortable. But still, this is a game about summoning dragons and casting lightning bolts, let's be honest, interest in that fantasy stuff skews HEAVILY male and always will.
On the pricing trends, JTMS crashing so hard has me surprised. I wonder if there's some speculation about a reprint in FTV:20 affecting this? That said, 40 tix has been the baseline he's returned to several times, so maybe that's not so surprising.
Yeah, I know Europe and east Asia get it good in this regard. Sadly, things aren't that great here in South America either. I currently pay around $50 for 15 mega in a large city, and in most of my state's countryside the max download speed available barely reaches 1 mega. I hear it's a bit better for small cities in southern Brazilian states (I live in the Brazilian Northeast), but still not that great.
I played Jor Kadeen once, many moons ago. Mirrorworks got really silly, really fast.
I have also been forcing Dimir trying the cypher mill style and i'ts really hard to win with that in mind. I am wondering though if you have made this article a week before it was published because right now I always go against a Dimir guild in my drafts. But I am playing 4-3-2-2 and maybe 8-4 drafters has a different take in gtc drafts.
Getting it out with one other drop that evolves it in the same turn is probably enough. Because a 1/2 is a bit harder to kill than a 0/1 and at the same time it doesn't look that offensive until you get a couple counters on it.
It was more of a joke but yeah, don't run it out as your very first threat and you'll get more mileage. On the other hand, Simic Manipulator is different in that you HAVE to play it before most of your other creatures for its mechanic to function.. and it can't activate for an entire turn, so it does limit how you use the thing.
For these reasons I'll probably start taking straight removal over it most picks.
It's really all about the board state. Sure if you plop it down with nothing else out and your op is playing a typical deck they are going to have something to kill it with. But if you treat it like the combo card it is you will have better success.
I don't understand how this math is misleading. If we have to divide all of the cards in the set in five parts, this is the number that is left.
Of course, there is some bleed between guilds. Boros can take white cards from the "Orzhov" pool and red cards from the "Gruul" pool. But the point still stands. If there are five guilds, and each guild has the same number of cards in its card pool, then we can divide the number of cards by the number of guilds to get it's overall pool.
As to the point that some cards won't get played, you are simply demonstrating the point I just made. Yes, there are some number of cards that aren't good enough to get played. But if that number equals one third of your card pool, then your guild is not that good.
I'll reiterate my point. People always assume that overdrafting and underdrafting has a bigger impact on a draft format than it does in actuality.
For Dimir, you have 1.12 people at a table playing Dimir. That means you need 25.76 cards out of 67.5. There is easily that number of playables. If Dimir spikes up to 20%, then they will need 36.8 playables. There are definitely 11 more playable cards in Dimir's card pool.
Be careful of overanalyzing the affect of overdrafting and underdrafting. I'm going to put together an article demonstrating my point about this, but after having done several of these set analyses, I can demonstrate that these phenomenons have a smaller affect on win rate than you would think.
@ricklongo The internet in the US is not very good. It's improving, but price wise compared with speeds, we are like 15th or something crazy low in the world. It's pretty depressing, but mainly since our government did nothing for the infrastructure and the companies that provide the service have a monopoly in alot of areas, and even in some bigger cities, you have maybe 3 choices. My internet is about 15 down and 2.5 up but I pay around $70 a month for it..terrible compared to friends of mine in Germany and France who get literally twice or more speed for about $40 US.
Hey man, thanks for the insight on that finals match! I could tell you had a burn-heavy game plan, but hadn't even considered the idea that you'd have hands where you would just be using Scent of Cinder to dome them for 7 on the draw. I was envisioning a more typical RDW play style, dropping creatures and using burn to clear the way -- which is pretty bad against mihahitlor's decks. You obviously played it much more as a pure burn deck than I envisioned. This is why I wish I had a match replay, of course.
Also, the fact that mihahitlor had a lot of answers to creatures and very few to burn spells (only Nighthawk, which you could easily kill) is one of the reasons I usually advocate running a good amount of burn spells in any aggro deck. His decks are constructed to be absolutely brutal on opposing creatures, and the burn plan was obviously essential against him. It also sounds like you are an experienced mono-red player, which likely helped quite a bit. People think aggro decks are easy to play, but from my time piloting legacy Zoo, I know the decisions you make to maximize the damage out of your hand and mana every turn aren't always easy -- when you first pick those decks up, there are all those times your opponent wins with 1 or 2 life and you realize later how you could have won the game. Good work!
I should point out that Elaine was NY Statechamp the year Academy was the deck. (My friend Hogan took 5th place with our techy homebrew of the same archetype) and her husband (Kieran? cant remember the spelling) took 2nd.
Also isn't your wife something of a thing in pro MTG?
first, it will be great when I never have to write about this again. However, as a judge, I can tell you that I have often had to intervene because of inappropriate / rude / insulting behavior by males against females. I wish we were past it, but there are still cavemen out there. I can't wait for it to end.
On the plus side, I am old enough that I can remember when the last laws making mixed race marriages a criminal offense were repealed. Now, mixed race couples, and kids, are no longer remarkable. Progress happens.
As for who you root for - root for whomever you want. I root for the people I know, and especially for those from Madison, or at least close to it. (Owen and GerryT) Or root for your favorite deck. It's all good.
Well, that math could be a bit misleading. Does each card fit cleanly only into 1 guild?
There are also a number of cards that are just not going to get played.
As for Dimir, the question I would pose would be, does it still do as well with 2 drafters? At 15%, you have roughly 1 person a table, so the strictly Dimir cards as easier to get. I do agree Dimir is better than thought, but I do not think it would be better than Orzhoz given the same amount of competition for cards.
The final game of the final match came down to having enough burn in hand to draw my 8th card and go to face for 7 with scent of cinder. I followed it up with Mogg War-Marshall goblin grenade and still had enough burn in hand to close the game. The vamps deck is good, but far slower than the goblins. It also has no real way of stopping the burn plan outside of resolving nighthawk and a lord or getting crazy with one of it's death leeches. The goblins deck has plenty of removal on a low curve to clear a path.
If you'll notice all of my 3 drop creatures either have haste or a relevant ability that I could use if they were to be killed. Lords are only good if you have a board established when they drop otherwise their ability is worthless. I just played the deck as a burn deck using my creatures as slightly better burn spells, and not really caring if they died in combat. The deck plays like a best of from different mono red lists I've played over the years with a few cute tricks based on tribal synergy like sacing my board to pump Spikeshot Elder and fire at the face multiple times instead of going through combat. If I was to make changes it would have been fireblast in for reckless abandon and drop Goblin patrol for Goblin Guide, I even have those cards but just threw together cards that were lower in value because I only spent 5 minutes making the deck.
Missed deadline - rushed. Ran out of time to get everyone.
For everyone else - also great people at Wizards: Whitney, Renee, Tolena - wait, not going to try to list them, because I can think of a half dozen more, which would mean I am missing at least that many.
also great women at Wizards - lots.
On a good day, we max out at 1.5M up and maybe 375kbps down. On a bad day, half or a third of that, with a lot of latency and packet errors.
on Tolena's wall. She will not let you live this down. Marcella too.
If you don't mind me asking, how fast is your internet? I know I have had to turn down job opportunities with slight raises in the country because the sucky internet would deprive me of my favorite hobby (MTGO). I always thought Americans had it better in that regard.
Anyway, great article as always. I always look forward to these.
"Simic Manipulator always dies before he does anything. Always."
As a guy who has gotten wrecked by Manipulator + Illusionist's Bracers in limited, let me say "not always". Although when it's ME who controls the Manipulator, then sure, always. :)
I am bored as well of the women talk in magic. I could truly care less of what your gender is or anything in between. If you play magic and sit across the table from me I want to beat you. I will shake your hand regardless of the outcome and move along.
In essence we need to move along as this is a tiresome dance that keeps on popping up now and again.
Congrats to Melissa!
Andy
I believe (e.g. questionable) should be: (i.e. questionable)
On one hand I understand it. There is some sexism in Magic, if you go to random tournament, there will be someone who does not want to lose to a girl. On the other hand, it is rough to feel like the bad guy for supporting a person that I feel treats others with kindness over someone I do not know. (I also saw that Melissa has played alot of MTGO drafts over the weeks leading up to it, so I may have had similar interactions with her, but her screenname is not as obvious as TomM.)
So I built the "better" version of this deck and played a few rounds with it. It felt either very, very strong; or a big miss. Hexproof creatures decimated me, as did discard. But, on the games I won, it was a lot of fun. I kind of felt bad for my opponent as this deck creates a feeling of dread where you see you're just not going to win. I really like it though. Again, great article and I hope you have another 20 articles to post. I truly have never seen a deck quite like this, and enjoyed the cool "combo-ish" aspect.
I will be building every deck you list. Are you taking requests for color combinations or deck types?
I'm with you man. I'm not sure why it's even mentioned. That'd be like saying, "OMG, a black guy was in the top 8". I'd hoped we were way past that.
I'm seeing a trend with the Pauper prices. Like I pointed out last time, pauper prices rise when Standard is in flux (new expansion is coming out, people aren't sure what the meta will be like) and then drop again when the new expansion is out and there's some tournament results showcasing the new meta so it's "safe" to invest in Standard again.
I think people flock to Pauper when the Standard meta is uncertain. I fully expect to see a huge Pauper price surge when Innistrad is rotating out, like there was when SoM rotated.
I've never really bought into the idea that sexist attitudes by male players is what keeps women away from tournaments. Most of the guys at a local FNM are the type that can barely talk to women in the first place, otherwise they would likely be on a date occasionally and not summoning dragons every Friday night. The whole FNM thing just seems to be repellent to women in every regard. I've seen many more ladies at Grand Prix events, where the venues are nicer and it's easier to get away from weirdos when you want to. The increased GP schedule might allow more women to get into competitive magic while bypassing their local player communities with whom they aren't comfortable. But still, this is a game about summoning dragons and casting lightning bolts, let's be honest, interest in that fantasy stuff skews HEAVILY male and always will.
On the pricing trends, JTMS crashing so hard has me surprised. I wonder if there's some speculation about a reprint in FTV:20 affecting this? That said, 40 tix has been the baseline he's returned to several times, so maybe that's not so surprising.