There were issues both in the draft and in deck construction. I might be able to type out a longer reply later, but p1p2 (Igniter over Mortarpod) is a huge mistake. You already have a 6cc hard to cast bomb, you dont need another one in a different (and badly paired) color when you have a colorless bomb in the pack as well.
Once you got to deck construction, there was no need to squeeze the dragon in. You typically dont splash double colored cards, even if its 7cc.
Heres what I would do while still keeping it casual:
-3 ambassador oak
-12 of the 1-of creatures
-3 Wrath
-4 oblivion ring
-2 Path to exile
-1 Englistment
-1 Pride
-1 Anthem
+2 Tolsmir
+2 Rhys
+4 Glare of Subdual
+4 Mongrel Pack
+4 Squirrel Nest
+1 Sigil
+1 Pedelhanven elder
+3 Qasali Pridemage
+2 Selesnaya Guildmage
+4 Leyline of the Meek
and the work out the mana a bit more to include 2x pendelhaven and be a bit more consistent on the mana. All told thats like 5 tic in changes and I think it will really improve your game.
Just wanted to chime and say good job on this article, I think the idea of doing PER for magic cards is a GREAT idea, and you clearly put a lot of work into figuring out how exactly to do that.
As others have said, I think running a more consistent deck list (most decks run 4x of some cards and 0x of others rather than a ton of 1-ofs) would vastly improve the accuracy and value of your data (as when running 1-ofs when you draw a card vs when it is useful is too random) and make it even better next time.
This article was submitted over the past weekend, and was pushed back to today due to the tribute article. I did not think about sending it back to pete for him to add anything else
No thoughts about the Japanese spoiler leak for New Phyrexia? We know 23 cards already, almost all Mythic and Rares, including the new cost mechanics and the very controversial Karn planeswalker: http://mtgsalvation.com/new-phyrexia-spoiler.html
Elementary because as your first poster said, it is an aggroish deck. The reason Wrath is generally considered so good is because it helps to control the board. If your deck does not care about board control then you are probably just hurting your position more than your opponent's. IE: Wrath of God is NOT an auto-include just because you have the ability to cast it. Nothing should be.
Designing your deck's functionality as you choose the cards to go in it cards is important. Synergy being key. I know you aren't saying Wrath is bad, just bad in your deck. In fact, I tend to love wrath type of effects because I love controlling the board. So I build my decks with that in mind. Because I love wrath I also love one-sided recursion. (Zombie Bidding for example with Noxious Ghouls providing the one-sidedness to Patriarch's Bidding.)
I also think any deck that has a ton of 1 ofs is going to fall into a trap of being too random for consistency sake. Particularly if you are testing the goodness of a particular card. For example in the 14 games you didn't play Wrath of God, how many times were you in a position to win if you drew one? Hard to say since your top decks are so random.
Another thing I'm certain someone with more math accumen than myself will tell you is that 22 games is statistically insignificant. The only really valuable information you can gain from so few games (Not matches right? So no sideboard issues or dynamics.) is whether or not you enjoy playing it.
Also the variety of decks you play against is equally important. If your deck is trying to be midrange and you constantly find yourself fighting faster aggro decks then you probably want to change some of your card choices to either be more controlling or more aggro. If you are going aggro against controlling decks and losing to that control then you need to up your aggro game by changing the way your deck works. Mainly you need to consider your meta (through practice and analysis) before you can get solid conclusions about your deck. It could also just be a dog for instance to the decks you played and wrath of god or no you were doomed to lose to those decks. (Because it lacked the proper answers, etc.)
One last thing to note about the WOG family of cards (Damnation, DOJ, etc) they have a larger impact on the game than their casting cost and effect. If your opponent knows you may or do play with this type of card they will change their own play to suit. Thus the very threat of a WOG can slow a game down a lot. Or conversely cause an ALL-IN go for broke attack when it is disadvantageous in general to do so, just to avoid losing to card advantage when/if it shows up. I have seen both responses.
Your approach on a technical end is however intriguing. Scraping data from the game logs and pasting it into Excel is smart. (Of course doing that to 100 game logs would be tedious and I appreciate the work you must have done just to get 22 games worth of data.)
Right, the conclusion that Wrath isn't great in this deck is probably elementary to better players than myself. Without some data to raise that question in the first place, I probably would have happily gone on shooting myself in the foot.
@Poobah, I share your excitement about the possibilities. There is a surprising amount of data you can mine from the game log and a box score. By comparing the attacks of creature X and the opponent's change in life total, you can get a picture of how effective they are on offense, for instance. And the log does tally your poison counters, so there's that as well.
But you're right -- really high level analysis would require some more rigorous scorekeeping. Jotting down the changes in life total is easy enough, but at some point, tallying card advantage interferes with your play, and postmortem replays would be a little tedious. I've been trying to think of easy to track variables that could approximate things like card advantage. Maybe a turn-by-turn count of cards left in deck and permanents on board, or something. Let me know if you've got any ideas.
And yeah, I'm happy to share my stuff. They're mostly simple macros -- I'll attach the gametracker files with the next article.
Indeed...my wife just said, '...but you didn't even know the guy." to which I responded, "..of course I did. I listened to his thoughts more often that those of my family." I did feel a strange tinge of guilt, at feeling so depressed over someone who I haven't actually talked to 'in person' Let us hope is son takes up the game so that we can guide him in the ways of magic :)
The whole story about Wrath is really besides the point. It's all about the methodology, the approach, which I wholeheartedly endorse. I had never really thought about programatically processing the game logs, but that is such a fantastic idea. It would be really neat if you could track +/- life totals, poison counters, card advantage, and maybe a couple other metrics in addition to just simple win/loss. But I don't think the game logs have enough information for that; you'd have to build an engine to actually replay the games and count that stuff up. For ultimate analysis you'd want a complete log of all the information available to each player every step of the way so you could analyze the benefits of various choices like what card you chose with Jace's brainstorm ability etc.
It is the difficulty of this kind of analysis that leads us to rules of thumb based on experience, theory and conjecture. At any rate, are you willing to share any of the scripts you made? Be curious to see what you did.
It was really tough for me joe, I had to play super tight to avoid shrivel eating my team while at the same time trying to do 1-2 damage a turn, g3 was close but I sided out the only out I would have had in that game, by boarding out the burst lightnings to bring in more creatures.
I still think I played it as close to right as I could.
The point at which I think a deck becomes Overpowered is when it by it's very existence eliminates a large group of potential alternative strategies.
I've played landfall (variants) since season 8,
and I've made t8 with them quite a bit, and even been lucky enough to win 5 of them but at no point did I feel the deck was invalidating other strategies.
I really don't think that r/w landfall was the best aggro deck of season 11 it just happened to be the "flavor of the month build" with a high amount of representation at the beginning of the season, which pushed it out of the meta-game, leaving only decks that could deal with 4cc and esper as the gold standard for viability.
Leaving tokens in my opinion as the best aggro of last season but it was under represented for most of the season.
Tokens has been pretty good at clearing out alot of the control decks of last season making the meta open enough for the rise of mono colored decks and competing aggro and mid-range strategies.
I'm actually happy that landfall is under represented (again) since it gives me better margins on people since they aren't boarding alot of cards just to beat me.
P.S.I assume that one of the decks is landfall, the other I'm not sure of, but if it were me I would put it against either tokens or a sacred wolf deck, since both of those decks can go back and forth with good landfall draws.
I wouldn't expect WoG to be very good in an aggressive deck like this. The aim of the deck is to play creatures and attack with them; Wrath goes against that goal. In a creature light deck, Wrath is great because it generates card advantage. In a deck like this, where only 6 spells aside from WoG aren't creatures, don't create creatures, and don't help creatures, Wrath effects are considerably weaker. They hurt you as much or more than they hurt your opponent, and if you're in a situation where they don't, your deck has already failed.
I probably exaggerated my expression. Boros was the best aggro deck in Season 11, after all. As such, it probably was the main reason behind the coming of 4cc and Esper Control. So yes, it probably was "overpowered" at the beginning of Season 11, much like Bant Tokens has been in the first three events of the current season.
P.S. Tomorrow I'll be spreading Pauper Love at a local Comicon-like event; I've prepared, with the help of a friend, two Pauper Duel Decks that should ideally work as an introduction to the format. Guess which deck I choose. ;)
Keep them coming.
The mana base worked very good up until the finals.
Things went south on me then. PK did a good job, it didnt help me any when I drew half my lands in the 2nd game.
Life goes!
My top 4 match with Arcbound was a tough and close match.
- Joe
It's probably because of my corperate filter that I cant see "nin". I find sometimes when I view the same article from home, there are pictures in the article my company office computer filtered out. Same for some external websites. I cant go to any of the Wizards websites at work.
There were a high number of blue playables, but the green playables were MANY MORE and MARKEDLY BETTER.
Marauder is universally loved as one of the best commons in the set, and can invalidate entire strategies on its own. You were seeing them late, then ditched G immediately. Against most decks where Steel Sabotage will shine, Marauder will just be better (metalcraft). You might catch the random bomb with Sabotage, but G has ways to deal with artifact bombs anyway, and good players won't fall for it.
It's not just card evaluations, either - you're not drafting a cohesive deck. Moriok Reaver is an underrated man, but he and Wall of Tanglecord probably don't belong in the same UB deck. Thrummingbird works with exactly 2 cards, and blocks literally nothing other than infect guys (so obvious sideboard material). Hellkite Igniter off 3 mountains and a non-splashed Horizon Spellbomb? (Although at least there you identified the 'better' 3rd-color splash, the correct answer should have been 'neither')
Good thing you dodged the infect deck you passed - congrats on the win, and your deck wound up solid, but this was the shining silver beacon that infect was open (look at your p2 even with passing the Blightwidow - pretty nasty).
I'm pretty sure I read something in an article on wizards.com that made it sound like Lightning Bolt was out of M12. I wish I could remember where I saw that.
About your comment about Squadron Hawk not being reprinted because it's a dominant deck right now -- what is the time line for making the core sets? The expansions are made like 2 years in advance, are core sets that far ahead, too? If so, M12 would have been in the can before we ever knew what a Squadron Hawk was.
The reason why WotC would expand the format is because Extended only goes back as far as Lorwyn block. What happens when Extended goes through it's next rotation? Then it becomes Alara Block + 6 cards. Then, unless New Phyrexia and Innistrad are heavily multicolor, It's just those 6 cards + whatever random mythics they decide to make multicolor in those sets. Pretty sure that's a recipe for failure. Making it Legacy size gives players access to a much deeper card pool.
There were issues both in the draft and in deck construction. I might be able to type out a longer reply later, but p1p2 (Igniter over Mortarpod) is a huge mistake. You already have a 6cc hard to cast bomb, you dont need another one in a different (and badly paired) color when you have a colorless bomb in the pack as well.
Once you got to deck construction, there was no need to squeeze the dragon in. You typically dont splash double colored cards, even if its 7cc.
Heres what I would do while still keeping it casual:
-3 ambassador oak
-12 of the 1-of creatures
-3 Wrath
-4 oblivion ring
-2 Path to exile
-1 Englistment
-1 Pride
-1 Anthem
+2 Tolsmir
+2 Rhys
+4 Glare of Subdual
+4 Mongrel Pack
+4 Squirrel Nest
+1 Sigil
+1 Pedelhanven elder
+3 Qasali Pridemage
+2 Selesnaya Guildmage
+4 Leyline of the Meek
and the work out the mana a bit more to include 2x pendelhaven and be a bit more consistent on the mana. All told thats like 5 tic in changes and I think it will really improve your game.
Just wanted to chime and say good job on this article, I think the idea of doing PER for magic cards is a GREAT idea, and you clearly put a lot of work into figuring out how exactly to do that.
As others have said, I think running a more consistent deck list (most decks run 4x of some cards and 0x of others rather than a ton of 1-ofs) would vastly improve the accuracy and value of your data (as when running 1-ofs when you draw a card vs when it is useful is too random) and make it even better next time.
This article was submitted over the past weekend, and was pushed back to today due to the tribute article. I did not think about sending it back to pete for him to add anything else
Rap group that featured eminem and cast of others!
Isn't Vampire Hexmage still in standard to kill planeswalkers as well?
I could be mistaken of course...
No thoughts about the Japanese spoiler leak for New Phyrexia? We know 23 cards already, almost all Mythic and Rares, including the new cost mechanics and the very controversial Karn planeswalker: http://mtgsalvation.com/new-phyrexia-spoiler.html
Elementary because as your first poster said, it is an aggroish deck. The reason Wrath is generally considered so good is because it helps to control the board. If your deck does not care about board control then you are probably just hurting your position more than your opponent's. IE: Wrath of God is NOT an auto-include just because you have the ability to cast it. Nothing should be.
Designing your deck's functionality as you choose the cards to go in it cards is important. Synergy being key. I know you aren't saying Wrath is bad, just bad in your deck. In fact, I tend to love wrath type of effects because I love controlling the board. So I build my decks with that in mind. Because I love wrath I also love one-sided recursion. (Zombie Bidding for example with Noxious Ghouls providing the one-sidedness to Patriarch's Bidding.)
I also think any deck that has a ton of 1 ofs is going to fall into a trap of being too random for consistency sake. Particularly if you are testing the goodness of a particular card. For example in the 14 games you didn't play Wrath of God, how many times were you in a position to win if you drew one? Hard to say since your top decks are so random.
Another thing I'm certain someone with more math accumen than myself will tell you is that 22 games is statistically insignificant. The only really valuable information you can gain from so few games (Not matches right? So no sideboard issues or dynamics.) is whether or not you enjoy playing it.
Also the variety of decks you play against is equally important. If your deck is trying to be midrange and you constantly find yourself fighting faster aggro decks then you probably want to change some of your card choices to either be more controlling or more aggro. If you are going aggro against controlling decks and losing to that control then you need to up your aggro game by changing the way your deck works. Mainly you need to consider your meta (through practice and analysis) before you can get solid conclusions about your deck. It could also just be a dog for instance to the decks you played and wrath of god or no you were doomed to lose to those decks. (Because it lacked the proper answers, etc.)
One last thing to note about the WOG family of cards (Damnation, DOJ, etc) they have a larger impact on the game than their casting cost and effect. If your opponent knows you may or do play with this type of card they will change their own play to suit. Thus the very threat of a WOG can slow a game down a lot. Or conversely cause an ALL-IN go for broke attack when it is disadvantageous in general to do so, just to avoid losing to card advantage when/if it shows up. I have seen both responses.
Your approach on a technical end is however intriguing. Scraping data from the game logs and pasting it into Excel is smart. (Of course doing that to 100 game logs would be tedious and I appreciate the work you must have done just to get 22 games worth of data.)
Thanks for writing.
Right, the conclusion that Wrath isn't great in this deck is probably elementary to better players than myself. Without some data to raise that question in the first place, I probably would have happily gone on shooting myself in the foot.
@Poobah, I share your excitement about the possibilities. There is a surprising amount of data you can mine from the game log and a box score. By comparing the attacks of creature X and the opponent's change in life total, you can get a picture of how effective they are on offense, for instance. And the log does tally your poison counters, so there's that as well.
But you're right -- really high level analysis would require some more rigorous scorekeeping. Jotting down the changes in life total is easy enough, but at some point, tallying card advantage interferes with your play, and postmortem replays would be a little tedious. I've been trying to think of easy to track variables that could approximate things like card advantage. Maybe a turn-by-turn count of cards left in deck and permanents on board, or something. Let me know if you've got any ideas.
And yeah, I'm happy to share my stuff. They're mostly simple macros -- I'll attach the gametracker files with the next article.
Indeed...my wife just said, '...but you didn't even know the guy." to which I responded, "..of course I did. I listened to his thoughts more often that those of my family." I did feel a strange tinge of guilt, at feeling so depressed over someone who I haven't actually talked to 'in person' Let us hope is son takes up the game so that we can guide him in the ways of magic :)
So young.. best wishes to family and friends.
The whole story about Wrath is really besides the point. It's all about the methodology, the approach, which I wholeheartedly endorse. I had never really thought about programatically processing the game logs, but that is such a fantastic idea. It would be really neat if you could track +/- life totals, poison counters, card advantage, and maybe a couple other metrics in addition to just simple win/loss. But I don't think the game logs have enough information for that; you'd have to build an engine to actually replay the games and count that stuff up. For ultimate analysis you'd want a complete log of all the information available to each player every step of the way so you could analyze the benefits of various choices like what card you chose with Jace's brainstorm ability etc.
It is the difficulty of this kind of analysis that leads us to rules of thumb based on experience, theory and conjecture. At any rate, are you willing to share any of the scripts you made? Be curious to see what you did.
Here is her text:
Nin, the Pain Artist
RU
Legendary Creature - Vedalken Wizard Rare
XRU, T: Nin, the Pain Artist deals X damage to target creature. That creature's controller draws X cards.
1/1
It was really tough for me joe, I had to play super tight to avoid shrivel eating my team while at the same time trying to do 1-2 damage a turn, g3 was close but I sided out the only out I would have had in that game, by boarding out the burst lightnings to bring in more creatures.
I still think I played it as close to right as I could.
:)
The point at which I think a deck becomes Overpowered is when it by it's very existence eliminates a large group of potential alternative strategies.
I've played landfall (variants) since season 8,
and I've made t8 with them quite a bit, and even been lucky enough to win 5 of them but at no point did I feel the deck was invalidating other strategies.
I really don't think that r/w landfall was the best aggro deck of season 11 it just happened to be the "flavor of the month build" with a high amount of representation at the beginning of the season, which pushed it out of the meta-game, leaving only decks that could deal with 4cc and esper as the gold standard for viability.
Leaving tokens in my opinion as the best aggro of last season but it was under represented for most of the season.
Tokens has been pretty good at clearing out alot of the control decks of last season making the meta open enough for the rise of mono colored decks and competing aggro and mid-range strategies.
I'm actually happy that landfall is under represented (again) since it gives me better margins on people since they aren't boarding alot of cards just to beat me.
P.S.I assume that one of the decks is landfall, the other I'm not sure of, but if it were me I would put it against either tokens or a sacred wolf deck, since both of those decks can go back and forth with good landfall draws.
I wouldn't expect WoG to be very good in an aggressive deck like this. The aim of the deck is to play creatures and attack with them; Wrath goes against that goal. In a creature light deck, Wrath is great because it generates card advantage. In a deck like this, where only 6 spells aside from WoG aren't creatures, don't create creatures, and don't help creatures, Wrath effects are considerably weaker. They hurt you as much or more than they hurt your opponent, and if you're in a situation where they don't, your deck has already failed.
Duels of the Planeswalkers update
What is D12?
I probably exaggerated my expression. Boros was the best aggro deck in Season 11, after all. As such, it probably was the main reason behind the coming of 4cc and Esper Control. So yes, it probably was "overpowered" at the beginning of Season 11, much like Bant Tokens has been in the first three events of the current season.
P.S. Tomorrow I'll be spreading Pauper Love at a local Comicon-like event; I've prepared, with the help of a friend, two Pauper Duel Decks that should ideally work as an introduction to the format. Guess which deck I choose. ;)
Keep them coming.
The mana base worked very good up until the finals.
Things went south on me then. PK did a good job, it didnt help me any when I drew half my lands in the 2nd game.
Life goes!
My top 4 match with Arcbound was a tough and close match.
- Joe
It's probably because of my corperate filter that I cant see "nin". I find sometimes when I view the same article from home, there are pictures in the article my company office computer filtered out. Same for some external websites. I cant go to any of the Wizards websites at work.
There were a high number of blue playables, but the green playables were MANY MORE and MARKEDLY BETTER.
Marauder is universally loved as one of the best commons in the set, and can invalidate entire strategies on its own. You were seeing them late, then ditched G immediately. Against most decks where Steel Sabotage will shine, Marauder will just be better (metalcraft). You might catch the random bomb with Sabotage, but G has ways to deal with artifact bombs anyway, and good players won't fall for it.
It's not just card evaluations, either - you're not drafting a cohesive deck. Moriok Reaver is an underrated man, but he and Wall of Tanglecord probably don't belong in the same UB deck. Thrummingbird works with exactly 2 cards, and blocks literally nothing other than infect guys (so obvious sideboard material). Hellkite Igniter off 3 mountains and a non-splashed Horizon Spellbomb? (Although at least there you identified the 'better' 3rd-color splash, the correct answer should have been 'neither')
And so on.
Good thing you dodged the infect deck you passed - congrats on the win, and your deck wound up solid, but this was the shining silver beacon that infect was open (look at your p2 even with passing the Blightwidow - pretty nasty).
I'm pretty sure I read something in an article on wizards.com that made it sound like Lightning Bolt was out of M12. I wish I could remember where I saw that.
About your comment about Squadron Hawk not being reprinted because it's a dominant deck right now -- what is the time line for making the core sets? The expansions are made like 2 years in advance, are core sets that far ahead, too? If so, M12 would have been in the can before we ever knew what a Squadron Hawk was.
The reason why WotC would expand the format is because Extended only goes back as far as Lorwyn block. What happens when Extended goes through it's next rotation? Then it becomes Alara Block + 6 cards. Then, unless New Phyrexia and Innistrad are heavily multicolor, It's just those 6 cards + whatever random mythics they decide to make multicolor in those sets. Pretty sure that's a recipe for failure. Making it Legacy size gives players access to a much deeper card pool.