Thought about including Disciple of the Vault, but had talked about it a lot in my affinity article a few theme weeks back.
Per the comment below, I also considered Withered Wretch, but decided Canonist would be my hatebear representative on the list since she still sees play while Wretch is mostly outclassed in 'yard hate options now. Orzhov Pontiff has been coming on strong lately in Modern, and I could have seen slotting it into the list.
Yeah, that's the most recognizable illustration I could find that wasn't just the paperback cover, but I figured that reference to be a "five-percenter" anyhow. I'm reading that series now, so it's on the brain.
I seem to be forced into GW a lot lately - I think your deck was reasonable. After reading the Ars Arcanum article http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-journey-nyx-draft-overview - I probably would have gone UG with what I saw here, but I don't think you made any really bad choices. (I like Thunderhoof over Oakheart Dryads in most cases). Better luck next time and thanks for the well written article.
I enjoyed the article concept a lot, and you nailed some great clerics. I'd have mentioned one of the Odyssey block dudes though (or maybe the land), since they were part of an influential combo deck for a while. They are also more commander-friendly than Wayfarer, in my mind (although he's a beast there too). Hierarch's reign was so short, and Canonist has been mostly underwhelming. I'd cut them both. Wayfarer would have been in slot 10 for me. Exarch wouldn't have made the top 10, in my mind, although it did "make" the standard spliter twin. I guess it's fine.
I wish you'd done 3 top 10s maybe, like Casual/EDH/multiplayer clerics, Standard/block clerics, and Eternal clerics. Modern/extended could fit in either of the last 2 categories, or could have gotten it's own list. Top 10 limited clerics might be fun to debate too.
The biggest misses, in my mind - disciple of the vault, withered wretch, Orzhov Pontiff, Preacher, and Tireless Tribe. None are too glaring, buttttttttt.
Really enjoyed this article. I found the opening to be particularly funny and I completely agree with your observations on Thor.
As far as the list goes it seems pretty solid. I feel like Disciple of the Vault deserves to be on the list though, particularly as it was actually banned in Standard, Block and Extended, surely the most banned Cleric and very prominent in tournament Magic until its ban.
I've been having trouble with signals so far myself, and it's really come back to haunt me. I think reading signals is way more important than sending them (after all, 2>1). Of course it's best if you can do both, but sometimes it doesn't work out.
I actually thought the Temple of Plenty pick was quite good, since you were in those colors.
That was a pretty tough pool. Since none of the colors seemed particularly strong, I think I would have went U/R because then you at least have access to your powerful 6-drops. The only time I played Pharika was in a nutty Constellation deck where I also had Doomwake Giant. Of course, making a bunch of Sedge Scorpions is pretty good.
I was able to play in a PTQ last weekend in Denver. I thought my pool was pretty good, but I went 1-2 drop anyway. I won the first round, played and lost to a great deck in Round 2, and then flooded pretty badly Round 3. I played GWu, splashing for Kiora and Ephara's Enlightenment. I also had the Charioteers, Broodmaster, and Fleecemane Lion.
With the Limited Championships coming up, I think my Sealed play is winding down for this Block.
The reason for this is both understandable and yet mindboggling at the same time. Understandable because when you are starting a project like this over you leave out a lot of "common sense" functionality just so that you can test proof of concepts. Mind boggling because no one thought these functions important enough to put back despite not wanting to "bloat" the design.
Imho this is one of the biggest fails of this ongoing fiasco. The people in charge of deciding what stays and what goes seem entirely out of touch with what is actually wanted and needed by the players on average.
Or perhaps I should be more cynical and assume that they deliberately decided to alienate the players they felt least likely to be contributors to their bottom line. After all, it is the drafters that drive the engine so to speak. If the drafters are happy (ish) nothing else matters right?
The short-sightedness of such thinking is astounding to me. But it makes sense in a way. After all, the Corp can't really account for what goes on in the secondary market or the forces that entity brings to bear on the drafters who provide their bread and butter.
Or perhaps they have considered that and decided that the influx of new players will make up for the thousands of casual players who drop off the game as the client ends up not serving their needs. Maybe they assume new players will know no better and will take whatever pitiful client they are given since it is a way to play Magic from the comfort of one's home/office/etc.
All of that means you probably will continue to be frustrated as will I and many other casual players.
There's a pretty easy workaround for the autosave "feature". Just save a copy of the deck and tinker with that. Annoying, yes, but hardly make-or-break in my mind.
The worst part for me, or anyone else that builds decks the way that I do is the inability to manually sort piles. When building from the ground up, or even tinkering, I like to sort cards by function. For example, I put Wasteland and Stifle in the same pile (mana disruption), likewise with Propaganda and Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale (creature control). It is actually impossible to arrange cards like that in V4, which was the most frustrating aspect of building a deck on it for me.
Because Vanguard cards, Archenemy schemes, Planechase planes and phenomena do not share the card size and card back with regular Magic cards. Conspiracies do, and are drafted as cards. Bear in mind that references to commanders and the command zone are legal: It's where all the emblems from Planeswalkers end up, and you can run Command Tower and Opal Palace despite them not doing anything.
I didn't read the rules for Conspiracy, but I don't entirely understand why they felt the need to add those cards to the Vintage and Legacy ban lists. I mean, then why not the Vanguard avatars, the Archenemy schemes and the Planechase planes and phenomenons, too? I don't see under which ruling you can be expected to play in Vintage/Legacy with something that just says, "Start the game with this conspiracy in your command zone". Like, where would you even bring out these cards from? You certainly don't have a secondary deck of cards in Vintage/Legacy.
I wasn't around, but I guess that date, which is what I found listed on Wikipedia as a "birthdate" for V3 (there's a lot of references to Wollpert et al. in that article, so I didn't question it), may mark the moment when the new version was considered fully operative, with the "beta" label removed and such? An occurrence that might have followed the "time of death" of V2.5 by a few months. I expect the current beta to still be called beta for a little while even after July, then eventually becoming officially V4 and losing that "beta" logo that appears when you launch it.
One correction. V2 was officially taken offline in November of 2007. I know this because I was unable to use V3 on my old XP machine because of the quadrupled RAM requirements. Having just lost my mom that year sort of landmarked a number of events that stick out in my mind and losing MTGO for 2.5 years is one of them.
Another function that should be given the option to be disabled, of course. And the whole issue would be easily solved if you had access to a separate local save: at that point, the server deck could even autosave for convenience, and you would still have the original .txt to come back to if needed.
Most of these functionalities mimic popular programs: for instance, any program of the Office suite has an autosave function. Problem is, none of them FORCES you to have the autosave enabled.
It would appear that the autosave "feature" is still there during deckbuilding (whenever you make a change to your deck, the deck is saved with that change). Any comments on that?
This series is fantastic as always. I personally don't draft JBT because I hate the format (strangely I find JJJ to be more fun), but it's still very interesting to get a statistical window of this quality.
The Archetype Speed section is one of the best additions to this series yet. I think you found the perfect angle to look at it from, giving us not only information about how fast/slow decks are but when they tend to win/lose. That last bit of data is very rich. If you were able to get a large enough sample size it would be very interesting to see the speed data for various specific matchups! That would be a lot of work though, I am sure.
Hey - I always look forward to your articles, and the new analyses are very interesting. I really like the Archetype Speed section also - it really helps in plotting out strategies for each color combination, as it shows you where the "sweet spot" is in terms of wins for each archetype.
There's 3 things that came to mind after reading this. I'm probably one of the most prolific drafters on MTGO right now (I think I have the most QPs on the leader board at the moment) but these are still just my anecdotal observations compared to your statistical analysis:
1) RW is still the deck to beat. I agree with your data that it's not the most winning deck by far, and it is clearly overdrafted. However, it is still the fastest deck by far (GW I don't really count because it's really bad), and its very popularity means that you'll almost certainly be against by Boros at some point if you play 3 matches. And against very slow decks or bad keeps, a good Boros hand will just win with an explosive start. I don't need to go into the exact cards that make this archetype so good, but in general the combination of quality white weenies and red burn is excellent (see my point 2 though).
2) Favorable matchups. In my self-concocted theory, the ideal deck to have is SLIGHTLY SLOWER than your opponent's deck. If you are slightly slower, you will generally have creatures, card draw, and effects that are stronger than your opponent, while you're not susceptible to getting rushed. While you don't have the matchup % win rates (and you shouldn't, because that would be way too much work), I suspect such data would agree with me. What does this mean? Well, the slowest decks - BG and UB, I find - will tend to beat midrange decks like RG or UG, while the midrange will tend to beat fast decks, like RB or RW. This may partially explain why RB and UG rack up such high % - they are slightly slower against the very popular RW, and fewer people are drafting the slowest decks which can dominate them. Note, on the other hand, that a terrible position to be in is MUCH SLOWER than your opponent - you will really need to be careful in keeping relatively fast hands if you want to survive.
3) Skill level and archetypes. Despite RW being a lower-percentage win deck, I still believe it is a good choice for those without a lot of draft experience. It is one of the easier decks to assemble, and requires fewer difficult decision points than, say, GB or UB. Further, it has the best chance to win against a deck that has a lot more bombs and power level than yours, because of the possibility of unstoppable explosive starts. GB, on the other hand, particularly the self-milling archetype, is one of the hardest play properly, as there are tough draft decisions (Nessian Asp or Grey Merchant? Can I expect to wheel this Rescue from the Underworld? Do I tend towards ramp or graveyard shenanigans and card advantage? etc.) and game decisions. For example, last night I drafted an excellent GB deck, based on graveyard strategies with two Pharika's Menders, a Rescue, two Grey Merchants, and self-millers. I convincingly made it to the finals, only to be blown out by what I thought was a mediocre Boros deck with no rares. It's the risk one takes if one goes for a slow archetype, which is why I prefer mid-range slightly more if it's open.
4) Self-targeting enablers and cutting lands. This is just a short reminder - if you want to play heroic with W, G, or R, please get at least 5-7 enablers, and preferably more. It's much harder to do now in JBT than in TTT, but it's just sad to watch opponents fight with their 1/1 Satyr Hoplite or 1/1 Akroan Skyguard for the entire game and lose. Also, I'm an advocate of cutting to 16 or 15 lands for RW, RB, and sometimes UW, especially if you're playing in an 8-4 where the skill level is higher and you need to take the higher risk of mana screw to gain a small edge.
OK, a lot of words here, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there and maybe get some feedback. Thanks for all your work in making another great article.
Hyperion series by?? (I am thinking Frederick Pohl but I don't think I read anything called that.)
Hey thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
Thought about including Disciple of the Vault, but had talked about it a lot in my affinity article a few theme weeks back.
Per the comment below, I also considered Withered Wretch, but decided Canonist would be my hatebear representative on the list since she still sees play while Wretch is mostly outclassed in 'yard hate options now. Orzhov Pontiff has been coming on strong lately in Modern, and I could have seen slotting it into the list.
Yeah, that's the most recognizable illustration I could find that wasn't just the paperback cover, but I figured that reference to be a "five-percenter" anyhow. I'm reading that series now, so it's on the brain.
I'm pretty sure you're right...
I seem to be forced into GW a lot lately - I think your deck was reasonable. After reading the Ars Arcanum article http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-journey-nyx-draft-overview - I probably would have gone UG with what I saw here, but I don't think you made any really bad choices. (I like Thunderhoof over Oakheart Dryads in most cases). Better luck next time and thanks for the well written article.
Please tell me sandwiched between Sauron and Cthulhu is the Shrike from the hyperion series...
I enjoyed the article concept a lot, and you nailed some great clerics. I'd have mentioned one of the Odyssey block dudes though (or maybe the land), since they were part of an influential combo deck for a while. They are also more commander-friendly than Wayfarer, in my mind (although he's a beast there too). Hierarch's reign was so short, and Canonist has been mostly underwhelming. I'd cut them both. Wayfarer would have been in slot 10 for me. Exarch wouldn't have made the top 10, in my mind, although it did "make" the standard spliter twin. I guess it's fine.
I wish you'd done 3 top 10s maybe, like Casual/EDH/multiplayer clerics, Standard/block clerics, and Eternal clerics. Modern/extended could fit in either of the last 2 categories, or could have gotten it's own list. Top 10 limited clerics might be fun to debate too.
The biggest misses, in my mind - disciple of the vault, withered wretch, Orzhov Pontiff, Preacher, and Tireless Tribe. None are too glaring, buttttttttt.
Really enjoyed this article. I found the opening to be particularly funny and I completely agree with your observations on Thor.
As far as the list goes it seems pretty solid. I feel like Disciple of the Vault deserves to be on the list though, particularly as it was actually banned in Standard, Block and Extended, surely the most banned Cleric and very prominent in tournament Magic until its ban.
Clerics are a surprisingly deep tribe. Good work!
I've been having trouble with signals so far myself, and it's really come back to haunt me. I think reading signals is way more important than sending them (after all, 2>1). Of course it's best if you can do both, but sometimes it doesn't work out.
I actually thought the Temple of Plenty pick was quite good, since you were in those colors.
Thanks for the draft!
That was a pretty tough pool. Since none of the colors seemed particularly strong, I think I would have went U/R because then you at least have access to your powerful 6-drops. The only time I played Pharika was in a nutty Constellation deck where I also had Doomwake Giant. Of course, making a bunch of Sedge Scorpions is pretty good.
I was able to play in a PTQ last weekend in Denver. I thought my pool was pretty good, but I went 1-2 drop anyway. I won the first round, played and lost to a great deck in Round 2, and then flooded pretty badly Round 3. I played GWu, splashing for Kiora and Ephara's Enlightenment. I also had the Charioteers, Broodmaster, and Fleecemane Lion.
With the Limited Championships coming up, I think my Sealed play is winding down for this Block.
Thanks for the article!!
The reason for this is both understandable and yet mindboggling at the same time. Understandable because when you are starting a project like this over you leave out a lot of "common sense" functionality just so that you can test proof of concepts. Mind boggling because no one thought these functions important enough to put back despite not wanting to "bloat" the design.
Imho this is one of the biggest fails of this ongoing fiasco. The people in charge of deciding what stays and what goes seem entirely out of touch with what is actually wanted and needed by the players on average.
Or perhaps I should be more cynical and assume that they deliberately decided to alienate the players they felt least likely to be contributors to their bottom line. After all, it is the drafters that drive the engine so to speak. If the drafters are happy (ish) nothing else matters right?
The short-sightedness of such thinking is astounding to me. But it makes sense in a way. After all, the Corp can't really account for what goes on in the secondary market or the forces that entity brings to bear on the drafters who provide their bread and butter.
Or perhaps they have considered that and decided that the influx of new players will make up for the thousands of casual players who drop off the game as the client ends up not serving their needs. Maybe they assume new players will know no better and will take whatever pitiful client they are given since it is a way to play Magic from the comfort of one's home/office/etc.
All of that means you probably will continue to be frustrated as will I and many other casual players.
There's a pretty easy workaround for the autosave "feature". Just save a copy of the deck and tinker with that. Annoying, yes, but hardly make-or-break in my mind.
The worst part for me, or anyone else that builds decks the way that I do is the inability to manually sort piles. When building from the ground up, or even tinkering, I like to sort cards by function. For example, I put Wasteland and Stifle in the same pile (mana disruption), likewise with Propaganda and Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale (creature control). It is actually impossible to arrange cards like that in V4, which was the most frustrating aspect of building a deck on it for me.
Because Vanguard cards, Archenemy schemes, Planechase planes and phenomena do not share the card size and card back with regular Magic cards. Conspiracies do, and are drafted as cards. Bear in mind that references to commanders and the command zone are legal: It's where all the emblems from Planeswalkers end up, and you can run Command Tower and Opal Palace despite them not doing anything.
I didn't read the rules for Conspiracy, but I don't entirely understand why they felt the need to add those cards to the Vintage and Legacy ban lists. I mean, then why not the Vanguard avatars, the Archenemy schemes and the Planechase planes and phenomenons, too? I don't see under which ruling you can be expected to play in Vintage/Legacy with something that just says, "Start the game with this conspiracy in your command zone". Like, where would you even bring out these cards from? You certainly don't have a secondary deck of cards in Vintage/Legacy.
I wasn't around, but I guess that date, which is what I found listed on Wikipedia as a "birthdate" for V3 (there's a lot of references to Wollpert et al. in that article, so I didn't question it), may mark the moment when the new version was considered fully operative, with the "beta" label removed and such? An occurrence that might have followed the "time of death" of V2.5 by a few months. I expect the current beta to still be called beta for a little while even after July, then eventually becoming officially V4 and losing that "beta" logo that appears when you launch it.
One correction. V2 was officially taken offline in November of 2007. I know this because I was unable to use V3 on my old XP machine because of the quadrupled RAM requirements. Having just lost my mom that year sort of landmarked a number of events that stick out in my mind and losing MTGO for 2.5 years is one of them.
It could be a good thing to try, never thought of it before honestly.
What about Scent of Ivy in this deck?
Another function that should be given the option to be disabled, of course. And the whole issue would be easily solved if you had access to a separate local save: at that point, the server deck could even autosave for convenience, and you would still have the original .txt to come back to if needed.
Most of these functionalities mimic popular programs: for instance, any program of the Office suite has an autosave function. Problem is, none of them FORCES you to have the autosave enabled.
It would appear that the autosave "feature" is still there during deckbuilding (whenever you make a change to your deck, the deck is saved with that change). Any comments on that?
I'm just glad that this isn't further polluting the weekends as a regular rotation format.
This series is fantastic as always. I personally don't draft JBT because I hate the format (strangely I find JJJ to be more fun), but it's still very interesting to get a statistical window of this quality.
The Archetype Speed section is one of the best additions to this series yet. I think you found the perfect angle to look at it from, giving us not only information about how fast/slow decks are but when they tend to win/lose. That last bit of data is very rich. If you were able to get a large enough sample size it would be very interesting to see the speed data for various specific matchups! That would be a lot of work though, I am sure.
I thought I cleared that up when I linked the spoiler list.
My apologies for missing it and creating confusion.
Hey - I always look forward to your articles, and the new analyses are very interesting. I really like the Archetype Speed section also - it really helps in plotting out strategies for each color combination, as it shows you where the "sweet spot" is in terms of wins for each archetype.
There's 3 things that came to mind after reading this. I'm probably one of the most prolific drafters on MTGO right now (I think I have the most QPs on the leader board at the moment) but these are still just my anecdotal observations compared to your statistical analysis:
1) RW is still the deck to beat. I agree with your data that it's not the most winning deck by far, and it is clearly overdrafted. However, it is still the fastest deck by far (GW I don't really count because it's really bad), and its very popularity means that you'll almost certainly be against by Boros at some point if you play 3 matches. And against very slow decks or bad keeps, a good Boros hand will just win with an explosive start. I don't need to go into the exact cards that make this archetype so good, but in general the combination of quality white weenies and red burn is excellent (see my point 2 though).
2) Favorable matchups. In my self-concocted theory, the ideal deck to have is SLIGHTLY SLOWER than your opponent's deck. If you are slightly slower, you will generally have creatures, card draw, and effects that are stronger than your opponent, while you're not susceptible to getting rushed. While you don't have the matchup % win rates (and you shouldn't, because that would be way too much work), I suspect such data would agree with me. What does this mean? Well, the slowest decks - BG and UB, I find - will tend to beat midrange decks like RG or UG, while the midrange will tend to beat fast decks, like RB or RW. This may partially explain why RB and UG rack up such high % - they are slightly slower against the very popular RW, and fewer people are drafting the slowest decks which can dominate them. Note, on the other hand, that a terrible position to be in is MUCH SLOWER than your opponent - you will really need to be careful in keeping relatively fast hands if you want to survive.
3) Skill level and archetypes. Despite RW being a lower-percentage win deck, I still believe it is a good choice for those without a lot of draft experience. It is one of the easier decks to assemble, and requires fewer difficult decision points than, say, GB or UB. Further, it has the best chance to win against a deck that has a lot more bombs and power level than yours, because of the possibility of unstoppable explosive starts. GB, on the other hand, particularly the self-milling archetype, is one of the hardest play properly, as there are tough draft decisions (Nessian Asp or Grey Merchant? Can I expect to wheel this Rescue from the Underworld? Do I tend towards ramp or graveyard shenanigans and card advantage? etc.) and game decisions. For example, last night I drafted an excellent GB deck, based on graveyard strategies with two Pharika's Menders, a Rescue, two Grey Merchants, and self-millers. I convincingly made it to the finals, only to be blown out by what I thought was a mediocre Boros deck with no rares. It's the risk one takes if one goes for a slow archetype, which is why I prefer mid-range slightly more if it's open.
4) Self-targeting enablers and cutting lands. This is just a short reminder - if you want to play heroic with W, G, or R, please get at least 5-7 enablers, and preferably more. It's much harder to do now in JBT than in TTT, but it's just sad to watch opponents fight with their 1/1 Satyr Hoplite or 1/1 Akroan Skyguard for the entire game and lose. Also, I'm an advocate of cutting to 16 or 15 lands for RW, RB, and sometimes UW, especially if you're playing in an 8-4 where the skill level is higher and you need to take the higher risk of mana screw to gain a small edge.
OK, a lot of words here, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there and maybe get some feedback. Thanks for all your work in making another great article.
I wrote this last Wed. The whole set is up now.