So this is interesting, you're not the first pauper video maker to make the standard bearer/grapeshot mistake... this week! Cdavis made the error in match 2 game 1 vs a storm deck in this daily event:
He had been talking up standard bearer as a grapeshot answer through the decktech and got pwned when it didn't work in that game (though he still won it).
I don't know all the correct rules terminology, but the way grapeshot works is like this. All of the copies of grapeshot go onto the stack separately and UNTARGETED (the visuals in MTGO with all of the copies stacked under the first target don't really help here). Then as each resolves you choose the target. So what happens with standard bearer is that copy 1 is on the stack, resolves with standard bearer as the target, and then standard bearer dies. Then copy 2 is at the top of the stack untargeted with standard bearer in the graveyard, so you can then be targeted. This also means that grapeshot can kill both halves of an undying/persist creature (kill young wolf, undying goes on top of the stack and triggers, send the next two copies of grapeshot at the +1/+1 young wolf).
Also I think you're missing a pretty big story with green stompy in your meta wrapup. Yes, it's only the #4 most popular deck but it's very, very close to being as popular as the other three big decks. It's the first time that it's come within a couple of % of any of those 3 decks. It's also firmly established itself as the most popular aggro deck in the format, with a massive lead over WW, and it's basically grown steadily week on week since M13 was released. Yes, the cost of rancor has helped out here (but that's balanced by nettle sentinel and quirion ranger prices shooting up), but I think it's mainly that it's a deck that's really well positioned in a delver/post meta and it also has a reasonable game against storm. Anyway, keep it up, love these columns!
Nice games. I probably would have made the same plays except the game you mulled to 5 I think I would have kept at 6 just because of the risk of a worse 5. Surprise ending is surprising. I didn't expect him to concede quite yet.
Going to listen to the podcast in the car in a bit, but I'm sure it's gold like always. ;)
Detain is definitely my favorite mechanic, but it's a little unfair because Azorius is my favorite guild. I love how it can really put you up in a race. Overload is terrific as well, provided all the cards work like we've seen so far. Scavenge is interesting, not quite as good as dredge, but any extra value from the graveyard is great. Populate is one we knew for a while, but I still like it. Unleash is the only one I think is kinda pedestrian. I mean, the ones we've seen so far just don't seem to justify a 2/2 regenerating bear that can't block for 2 (other than in limited). That horse card is a bit more interesting, but I'm hoping there's gonna be some cards that take a bit more advantage of being unleashed (As long as this creature has a +1/+1 counter on it, it gets blah blah blah). When I see the word unleash, I just don't think a +1/+1 counter fits it that well.
Playing: Commander, planning to jump into Standard Pauper and seeing if people will start picking up on M13 Core Constructed
It's not an official rule or anything, but I know that in many 8-4 drafts the finalists agree to split the packs 6-6. In those cases it's not 8-4-0 but rather 6-6-0, which is pretty sweet.
I 1st heard about it over at pauper to the people, immediately I logged on and sure enough there it was. This is great news. Thanks everyone and thanks WOTC. Will def shoot a thank you email out.
Good job everyone! I've yet to play Standard Pauper, but have been meaning to try the format out soon. But it's great to see all the effort joekewwl, gwyned, and the rest of the Standard Pauper community got WotC's attention, and maybe tournament support will occur in the future.
(On a side note, I'm a little worried about tournament support for Standard Pauper. Considering most competitive decks in the format would cost like 2 tix, tops, a prize pack would basically be worth the same as or more than the deck, which could cause a major upswing in Standard Pauper players. This is turn might possibly cause some commons to spike in price, especially staples in the format. This would cause some issues with regular Standard players who like building budget decks or for those people who are already paying a premium for their tournament deck and now have to pay $2+ for a playset of Delvers or something. I mean, I seriously doubt Classic Pauper prices would be where they're at if it weren't for the prize support offered by Wizards. When a Tier One all-commons deck costs over $75, there's a LOT of people pushing those prices up.)
If you know that you often are pulled away from drafts by family needing you, and have to quit after one match, 8-4s let you win zero packs in that situation, swiss lets you win 1, and 4-3-2-2s let you win two packs.
If you "feel good" any time you win some packs, and "feel bad" when you don't, 8-4s make you feel good 25% of the time, 4-3-2-2s 50%. Swiss are best if you feel "like you won something" from one pack, if you need 2+ they're still at 50% but without the chance to win 4.
You can finish more 4-3-2-2s than Swiss drafts, not just because of the longer post-round-2 wait, but because some portion of 4-3-2-2s you get eliminated and play 1 or 2 less rounds. If drafts-per-day is a factor, 4-3-2-2s outperform swiss on that criteria.
Great news! The Standard Pauper community really did an awesome job this past six months. Making WotC acknowledge this wonderful format is a significant achievement. Good job everyone! :)
I could be wrong (happens all the time) but I thought Pete was refering to 20-30% of your win% higher so if you win 61% of your 84s then youd need 61%x1.25 win% in 4322s to have a better ev. (Which works out to an incredible 76+%.)
"However, if your win percentage in 4-3-2-2s is 20-30% higher than in 8-4s, then the EV of 4-3-2-2s is actually higher than 8-4s."
I think people vastly overstate the difference in skill level between the two elimination draft queues. I know it was just a hypothetical, but 20-30% is not even close to realistic in my opinion. Just for reference, I keep a spreadsheet of my results and I'm at 63% for 4322 and 61% for 84, which results in a much better EV for 84's. Obviously not everyone will have the same results as myself, but after observing roughly similar skill level in the two queues I just have a hard time seeing anyone would have a huge gap in their win percentages.
And Standard Pauper is really and truly cheap (as mentioned in the article Classic Pauper can be expensive). However, there's still no support for it in the queues, and it seems unlikely they will let you win prizes with it. If you could play Standard Pauper in the 2-mans, even without dailies, I think it would quickly become quite popular with it's $1 decks. It's a format where everybody can afford to have all the top decks.
I had been out of the format for months after having been a part-time host and an article writer myself (btw, I'm glad you "stole" my article name, Standard & Pauper :-). But both real life getting in the way and a frustration with finding accurate Standard Pauper games caused me to all but give up. I never thought Wizards would listen to us; I never even sent an e-mail to Chris! But a lot of other people did, and thanks to you and joekewwl, I found out just a couple days ago that Standard Pauper was a real thing now and I decided right then and there to make time to play, update my collection, and get playing in events again. And guess what? In my first PRE in months, I made Top 4 with a techy new Grixis Flicker-Mancer deck!
The whole experience has been very satisfying, and everything you said is true: this is most low-cost and high-reward format there is on MTGO. I used to play in paper Magic tournaments, and whenever I won there was always this little voice inside me saying "You only won because you drew your big money rare." There's none of that in Standard Pauper. Everybody is on an even keel, and the community is what makes it happen. This brings playing MTGO in line with my admittedly far-left philosophy of equality for all and collective action trumping individual wealth.
So great job Gwyned, joekewwl, and everyone else who believed in Wizards enough to e-mail them. And big kudos to Wizards, too! You've proven that you do listen to the small yet dedicated communities who love this game enough, and you've given a great opportunity to play Magic to those of us who are financially disadvantaged but still love the game. This is truly a great day for Standard Pauper players and for the entire MTGO community.
As far as the future goes, once Wizards sees how successful this move is, perhaps they'll do the same for Modern Pauper which has even more legality issues what with Duel Deck only cards in the modern frame being illegal and Timeshifted cards also causing legality problems. After making Standard Pauper a real thing, I believe this will happen sometime in the future. Great job once again and let's go play some Standard Pauper!
Awesome write up sir.
I already posted on Wotc and pdcmagic boards, but let me also say it here.
Thanks to the community for getting behind this and pushing it and for all the emails you sent in.
It was never going to be a 100% sure thing, but we as the community did all we could and it shows.
Thanks Wotc ,Chris Kiritz who gets extra thanks for without him I know this wouldnt have happen.
- Joe
Kudos to Dabil and everyone who worked on Gatherling since its inception! That piece of software is made of pure awesomeness and it's getting better and better with each release. Keep up the great work! :)
So this is interesting, you're not the first pauper video maker to make the standard bearer/grapeshot mistake... this week! Cdavis made the error in match 2 game 1 vs a storm deck in this daily event:
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/channel-cdavis-pauper-daily-even...
He had been talking up standard bearer as a grapeshot answer through the decktech and got pwned when it didn't work in that game (though he still won it).
I don't know all the correct rules terminology, but the way grapeshot works is like this. All of the copies of grapeshot go onto the stack separately and UNTARGETED (the visuals in MTGO with all of the copies stacked under the first target don't really help here). Then as each resolves you choose the target. So what happens with standard bearer is that copy 1 is on the stack, resolves with standard bearer as the target, and then standard bearer dies. Then copy 2 is at the top of the stack untargeted with standard bearer in the graveyard, so you can then be targeted. This also means that grapeshot can kill both halves of an undying/persist creature (kill young wolf, undying goes on top of the stack and triggers, send the next two copies of grapeshot at the +1/+1 young wolf).
Also I think you're missing a pretty big story with green stompy in your meta wrapup. Yes, it's only the #4 most popular deck but it's very, very close to being as popular as the other three big decks. It's the first time that it's come within a couple of % of any of those 3 decks. It's also firmly established itself as the most popular aggro deck in the format, with a massive lead over WW, and it's basically grown steadily week on week since M13 was released. Yes, the cost of rancor has helped out here (but that's balanced by nettle sentinel and quirion ranger prices shooting up), but I think it's mainly that it's a deck that's really well positioned in a delver/post meta and it also has a reasonable game against storm. Anyway, keep it up, love these columns!
Nice games. I probably would have made the same plays except the game you mulled to 5 I think I would have kept at 6 just because of the risk of a worse 5. Surprise ending is surprising. I didn't expect him to concede quite yet.
Going to listen to the podcast in the car in a bit, but I'm sure it's gold like always. ;)
Detain is definitely my favorite mechanic, but it's a little unfair because Azorius is my favorite guild. I love how it can really put you up in a race. Overload is terrific as well, provided all the cards work like we've seen so far. Scavenge is interesting, not quite as good as dredge, but any extra value from the graveyard is great. Populate is one we knew for a while, but I still like it. Unleash is the only one I think is kinda pedestrian. I mean, the ones we've seen so far just don't seem to justify a 2/2 regenerating bear that can't block for 2 (other than in limited). That horse card is a bit more interesting, but I'm hoping there's gonna be some cards that take a bit more advantage of being unleashed (As long as this creature has a +1/+1 counter on it, it gets blah blah blah). When I see the word unleash, I just don't think a +1/+1 counter fits it that well.
Playing: Commander, planning to jump into Standard Pauper and seeing if people will start picking up on M13 Core Constructed
I agree with Keya on the shockland prices. I expect the drafting to lower the prices of even the hotter lands.
It's not an official rule or anything, but I know that in many 8-4 drafts the finalists agree to split the packs 6-6. In those cases it's not 8-4-0 but rather 6-6-0, which is pretty sweet.
I 1st heard about it over at pauper to the people, immediately I logged on and sure enough there it was. This is great news. Thanks everyone and thanks WOTC. Will def shoot a thank you email out.
Wow... I have done the same calculations and my win percentage in 4322 is usually 64-66%.... my win percentage in 84 is ~40%...
Good job everyone! I've yet to play Standard Pauper, but have been meaning to try the format out soon. But it's great to see all the effort joekewwl, gwyned, and the rest of the Standard Pauper community got WotC's attention, and maybe tournament support will occur in the future.
(On a side note, I'm a little worried about tournament support for Standard Pauper. Considering most competitive decks in the format would cost like 2 tix, tops, a prize pack would basically be worth the same as or more than the deck, which could cause a major upswing in Standard Pauper players. This is turn might possibly cause some commons to spike in price, especially staples in the format. This would cause some issues with regular Standard players who like building budget decks or for those people who are already paying a premium for their tournament deck and now have to pay $2+ for a playset of Delvers or something. I mean, I seriously doubt Classic Pauper prices would be where they're at if it weren't for the prize support offered by Wizards. When a Tier One all-commons deck costs over $75, there's a LOT of people pushing those prices up.)
When it was 0 tourneys for months, yes.
11 tourneys a week makes a card shoot up $40?
It shot up because people are actually playing competitive Legacy now.
I'd like to know why it's shot up, but I think the answer to your question is "no."
Force of Will at 140 dollars? Isn't it about time to re-think the Legacy format?
If you know that you often are pulled away from drafts by family needing you, and have to quit after one match, 8-4s let you win zero packs in that situation, swiss lets you win 1, and 4-3-2-2s let you win two packs.
If you "feel good" any time you win some packs, and "feel bad" when you don't, 8-4s make you feel good 25% of the time, 4-3-2-2s 50%. Swiss are best if you feel "like you won something" from one pack, if you need 2+ they're still at 50% but without the chance to win 4.
You can finish more 4-3-2-2s than Swiss drafts, not just because of the longer post-round-2 wait, but because some portion of 4-3-2-2s you get eliminated and play 1 or 2 less rounds. If drafts-per-day is a factor, 4-3-2-2s outperform swiss on that criteria.
Great news! The Standard Pauper community really did an awesome job this past six months. Making WotC acknowledge this wonderful format is a significant achievement. Good job everyone! :)
I could be wrong (happens all the time) but I thought Pete was refering to 20-30% of your win% higher so if you win 61% of your 84s then youd need 61%x1.25 win% in 4322s to have a better ev. (Which works out to an incredible 76+%.)
Thanks for the shout out guys. =D I think your League is already above and beyond my efforts, so thanks for keeping the dream alive!
Thanks Xaos. Glad you enjoyed the article and to see you back in the community.
Congratulations to Yasooka for an impressive run and Watanabe for becoming the first Magic Players Champion.
Good enough for me. Thanks for the headsup!
"However, if your win percentage in 4-3-2-2s is 20-30% higher than in 8-4s, then the EV of 4-3-2-2s is actually higher than 8-4s."
I think people vastly overstate the difference in skill level between the two elimination draft queues. I know it was just a hypothetical, but 20-30% is not even close to realistic in my opinion. Just for reference, I keep a spreadsheet of my results and I'm at 63% for 4322 and 61% for 84, which results in a much better EV for 84's. Obviously not everyone will have the same results as myself, but after observing roughly similar skill level in the two queues I just have a hard time seeing anyone would have a huge gap in their win percentages.
And Standard Pauper is really and truly cheap (as mentioned in the article Classic Pauper can be expensive). However, there's still no support for it in the queues, and it seems unlikely they will let you win prizes with it. If you could play Standard Pauper in the 2-mans, even without dailies, I think it would quickly become quite popular with it's $1 decks. It's a format where everybody can afford to have all the top decks.
I had been out of the format for months after having been a part-time host and an article writer myself (btw, I'm glad you "stole" my article name, Standard & Pauper :-). But both real life getting in the way and a frustration with finding accurate Standard Pauper games caused me to all but give up. I never thought Wizards would listen to us; I never even sent an e-mail to Chris! But a lot of other people did, and thanks to you and joekewwl, I found out just a couple days ago that Standard Pauper was a real thing now and I decided right then and there to make time to play, update my collection, and get playing in events again. And guess what? In my first PRE in months, I made Top 4 with a techy new Grixis Flicker-Mancer deck!
The whole experience has been very satisfying, and everything you said is true: this is most low-cost and high-reward format there is on MTGO. I used to play in paper Magic tournaments, and whenever I won there was always this little voice inside me saying "You only won because you drew your big money rare." There's none of that in Standard Pauper. Everybody is on an even keel, and the community is what makes it happen. This brings playing MTGO in line with my admittedly far-left philosophy of equality for all and collective action trumping individual wealth.
So great job Gwyned, joekewwl, and everyone else who believed in Wizards enough to e-mail them. And big kudos to Wizards, too! You've proven that you do listen to the small yet dedicated communities who love this game enough, and you've given a great opportunity to play Magic to those of us who are financially disadvantaged but still love the game. This is truly a great day for Standard Pauper players and for the entire MTGO community.
As far as the future goes, once Wizards sees how successful this move is, perhaps they'll do the same for Modern Pauper which has even more legality issues what with Duel Deck only cards in the modern frame being illegal and Timeshifted cards also causing legality problems. After making Standard Pauper a real thing, I believe this will happen sometime in the future. Great job once again and let's go play some Standard Pauper!
Awesome write up sir.
I already posted on Wotc and pdcmagic boards, but let me also say it here.
Thanks to the community for getting behind this and pushing it and for all the emails you sent in.
It was never going to be a 100% sure thing, but we as the community did all we could and it shows.
Thanks Wotc ,Chris Kiritz who gets extra thanks for without him I know this wouldnt have happen.
- Joe
You missed one other very important piece of news: Wizards also gave official support to the Standard Pauper format!
Kudos to Dabil and everyone who worked on Gatherling since its inception! That piece of software is made of pure awesomeness and it's getting better and better with each release. Keep up the great work! :)