According to the data given to us in the announcement, Ramunap Red held an average of 60-70% against literally the entire field of decks except for Temur Energy. That's very different from 50/50 and probably shouldn't be used as an example of 50/50. I would love nothing more than to see similar data for 2015. If for no other reason than peace of mind. Because Ramunap Red's numbers do look particularly alarming as it was presented.
I'ts likely true no deck would be banned solely based on having even match-ups, but trivial. KTK's positing that a true 50/50 deck will inevitably garner too much of the meta. If you know A --> B --> C, disputing whether the cause is really A or B is best left to the pedants (like me!). Pragmatically speaking, everyone else would see the connection and react accordingly regardless of direct causation.
That's a huge key portion though, because you do not necessarily jump to A --> C or B --> C, it has to be A AND B --> C.
In the case of importance of meta, these were their exact words on Temur Energy today: "Temur Energy and its Temur-Black variants together make up a significantly larger portion of the Standard metagame than any other deck. Historically, the most-played deck at the beginning of a Standard season occupies about 10% of the metagame, with other decks vying for this top spot."
The catalyst is always either meta share, attendance, or turn 3. Everything else is just pulled out of a hat to help justify one of those three.
Whenever a 50/50+ deck exists in a competitive format and it is discovered, players will gravitate to that deck and its metagame share will be too high. Wizards yet again confirmed this in the current update, where they banned Ranumap Red cards because of its win percentages, not its small metagame share.
That is not always the case, because the most famous 50/50 deck in recent history never actually followed that path, despite being in the format 5 years. And Wizards banned stuff out of Ramunap for the reason they banned DTT and Reflector Mage, they banned the next-best-thing, just in case.
Being a 50/50 deck is like a tack-on charge filed against someone for something much worse. It would be like being pulled over for speeding 30mph over the limit and the officer adding "Missing Front License Plate" to the ticket. Nobody is going to pull you over for lack of front plate in CA (which is law here), but they'd certainly tack it on as some additional justification for raising your ticket cost after they nicked you for speeding.
They only actually care if it has oppressive meta shares, breaks turn 3 rules, or otherwise creates a negative image (or lowers attendance), so they have to make up new reasons to justify. That, or they just need to shake up events. Being a 50/50 deck on its own (without more egregious charges, or assumptions of "next best deck") is no justification for a ban.
I hope this Standard ban update puts to rest the absurd desires for a 50/50+ deck in Modern. The entire banlist update is a wholesale indictment of this style of deck, just in case you needed another one after all the other examples I and others have cited. The mythical 50/50+ deck will never exist in a competitive format without an eventual ban intervention. People who want this aren't just out of touch with Modern, they are also out of touch with Magic generally.
I think if Temur/Temur Black Energy and Ramunap Red were 10-12% of the meta, we'd be having very different conversations. There should be nothing, NOTHING inherently wrong with a 50/50-like deck. The problems arise when decks like that become disproportionately oppressive to the metas, like Energy being 50% of the format, or Saheeli decks being 60%. It's a totally different scenario when you have literally half of all players playing a deck, compared to 1 in 10.
Standard is supposed to have few bans, it should be more stable than Modern by definition. I think it's pretty funny that Modern is actually more stable than Standard in the last 2 years. It goes to show what having actual answer cards does for a format, even if Modern's answers need improved.
Well, it's also a result of complete removal of meaningful data, which leads to people "metagaming" for metas that may or may not exist as they think, which lead to huge variance of results from event to event, leading people to "metagame" again for a meta that may or may not actually exist. This is topped off by new sets having almost no meaningful impact on Modern, especially in the past two blocks.
Modern is essentially a chaos pool with nothing drastic being added to it. If two PTs were held back to back, they may have wildly different results from wildly different decks and players, as we've seen from GPs and Opens. The fact that the future of Modern in the short term rests on a single event in a format defined by matchups and variance is at least a little unnerving. Hopefully someone skillful is parsing the data that we don't have access too, but also making judgement calls on what should probably be unbanned to spice things up.
All in all though, Wizards is probably thrilled to see Modern how it currently is. They likely do not see the "problems" we see as problems, because there isn't a clear best deck. Therefore nothing needs to be done in terms of unbans. I hope I am wrong on this.
Salting the earth in Standard, yet again. I never thought we'd see the day when Modern actually felt safe to buy into by comparison. They've nuked half a dozen decks over the past two years alone.
I've showed up my FNM with DnT and Shadow decks with limited experience and bombed, too...
No, that's a pretty standard result for a deck like that facing a lineup like that. Winning against them usually requires the opponent stumbles, regardless of what you do.
Who says GDS is favored against burn? I have never thought this for the 6 months or so I played GDS. It was a constant stress test and very tricky to navigate.
I've subbed to his channel since I first started Modern (and Geist was the first deck I built, because of GreatNate, before eventually switching to Twin). His recent series of videos have been great, and this roundtable was awesome. Can't wait for part 2.
Though, interestingly enough, Rossum played Humans instead of Jeskai at the last Open.
If you're asking for a deck that can maintain it's position as the top deck of the meta for, well, ever, I don't think we can even have a conversation here.
LOL are you implying Jeskai is a top deck of the format?? If so, which build? I think it's pretty good most of the time, but I don't consider it at the top whatsoever. Not when Storm, Affinity, and GDS are all so much stronger and robust.
If all your matches are 50/50 (or thereabouts), you don't have any "free wins." So hypothetically, you give up having free wins in order avoid having terrible matchups. Decks with horrendously bad matchups should be balanced by having about as many free win matchups too. It should be a risk/reward system. Want to play Storm? Cool, you take your unwinnable matchups alongside your totally free wins. Decks like Jeskai have a bunch of relatively even matchups, several really, really bad matchups, and very few (if any) "free-win" matchups. It's a high risk/low reward deck. It's fun to play, challenging, and engaging. But it has virtually no "free wins" to balance out it's laughably bad matchups (of which there are several in the top tiers). So it's probably not a good choice to bring to a large tournament unless you just cross your fingers to dodge/get lucky in your bad matchups.
Maybe tapping out on turn 3 so they could just kill you on turn 4 wasn't the right way to play your deck...
Maybe, maybe not. The longer the game goes, the more I'm likely going to lose anyway (like G1) and I have to provide pressure as early as possible. But to somehow use this as an example for it being a reliably winnable matchup is pretty thin.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That's a huge key portion though, because you do not necessarily jump to A --> C or B --> C, it has to be A AND B --> C.
In the case of importance of meta, these were their exact words on Temur Energy today:
"Temur Energy and its Temur-Black variants together make up a significantly larger portion of the Standard metagame than any other deck. Historically, the most-played deck at the beginning of a Standard season occupies about 10% of the metagame, with other decks vying for this top spot."
The catalyst is always either meta share, attendance, or turn 3. Everything else is just pulled out of a hat to help justify one of those three.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
That is not always the case, because the most famous 50/50 deck in recent history never actually followed that path, despite being in the format 5 years. And Wizards banned stuff out of Ramunap for the reason they banned DTT and Reflector Mage, they banned the next-best-thing, just in case.
Being a 50/50 deck is like a tack-on charge filed against someone for something much worse. It would be like being pulled over for speeding 30mph over the limit and the officer adding "Missing Front License Plate" to the ticket. Nobody is going to pull you over for lack of front plate in CA (which is law here), but they'd certainly tack it on as some additional justification for raising your ticket cost after they nicked you for speeding.
They only actually care if it has oppressive meta shares, breaks turn 3 rules, or otherwise creates a negative image (or lowers attendance), so they have to make up new reasons to justify. That, or they just need to shake up events. Being a 50/50 deck on its own (without more egregious charges, or assumptions of "next best deck") is no justification for a ban.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I think if Temur/Temur Black Energy and Ramunap Red were 10-12% of the meta, we'd be having very different conversations. There should be nothing, NOTHING inherently wrong with a 50/50-like deck. The problems arise when decks like that become disproportionately oppressive to the metas, like Energy being 50% of the format, or Saheeli decks being 60%. It's a totally different scenario when you have literally half of all players playing a deck, compared to 1 in 10.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Well, it's also a result of complete removal of meaningful data, which leads to people "metagaming" for metas that may or may not exist as they think, which lead to huge variance of results from event to event, leading people to "metagame" again for a meta that may or may not actually exist. This is topped off by new sets having almost no meaningful impact on Modern, especially in the past two blocks.
Modern is essentially a chaos pool with nothing drastic being added to it. If two PTs were held back to back, they may have wildly different results from wildly different decks and players, as we've seen from GPs and Opens. The fact that the future of Modern in the short term rests on a single event in a format defined by matchups and variance is at least a little unnerving. Hopefully someone skillful is parsing the data that we don't have access too, but also making judgement calls on what should probably be unbanned to spice things up.
All in all though, Wizards is probably thrilled to see Modern how it currently is. They likely do not see the "problems" we see as problems, because there isn't a clear best deck. Therefore nothing needs to be done in terms of unbans. I hope I am wrong on this.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Salting the earth in Standard, yet again. I never thought we'd see the day when Modern actually felt safe to buy into by comparison. They've nuked half a dozen decks over the past two years alone.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
And if you don't draw those cards, you probably lose. This is the nature of most really swingy matchups that rely on narrow hate cards. :/
Also, GreatNate's video is basically a podcast. Great to listen to on a commute or something.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
No, that's a pretty standard result for a deck like that facing a lineup like that. Winning against them usually requires the opponent stumbles, regardless of what you do.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I've subbed to his channel since I first started Modern (and Geist was the first deck I built, because of GreatNate, before eventually switching to Twin). His recent series of videos have been great, and this roundtable was awesome. Can't wait for part 2.
Though, interestingly enough, Rossum played Humans instead of Jeskai at the last Open.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
LOL are you implying Jeskai is a top deck of the format?? If so, which build? I think it's pretty good most of the time, but I don't consider it at the top whatsoever. Not when Storm, Affinity, and GDS are all so much stronger and robust.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
And look where it is now.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
If all your matches are 50/50 (or thereabouts), you don't have any "free wins." So hypothetically, you give up having free wins in order avoid having terrible matchups. Decks with horrendously bad matchups should be balanced by having about as many free win matchups too. It should be a risk/reward system. Want to play Storm? Cool, you take your unwinnable matchups alongside your totally free wins. Decks like Jeskai have a bunch of relatively even matchups, several really, really bad matchups, and very few (if any) "free-win" matchups. It's a high risk/low reward deck. It's fun to play, challenging, and engaging. But it has virtually no "free wins" to balance out it's laughably bad matchups (of which there are several in the top tiers). So it's probably not a good choice to bring to a large tournament unless you just cross your fingers to dodge/get lucky in your bad matchups.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Maybe, maybe not. The longer the game goes, the more I'm likely going to lose anyway (like G1) and I have to provide pressure as early as possible. But to somehow use this as an example for it being a reliably winnable matchup is pretty thin.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
You mean the people who've played these decks for years and know the matchups fairly well?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate