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.
As far as I remember, I don't think any particular Modern ban update cited a deck's win percentage in exact terms. I suspect this is because old B&R changes were pretty opaque and Wizards got a lot of ***** for it so they changed their ways. Most Modern bans cite decks being too high of a metagame share and the T4 rule, with a few exceptions in there like "battle of sideboards" and logistics.
No one is saying that any particular ban announcement happened due to any given deck being 50/50+ in matchups. We are saying that it is not a reasonable or realistic request to ask for such a deck in Modern, because Wizards does not like these decks. Sure, it is possible that all those diversity violators were this very kind of deck! We don't know because Wizards was so opaque with its announcements and rationale.
I wouldn't go as far as calling it a positive consequence. Without the data embargo, cards could more easily rise and present themselves as viable answers, which in turn would lead to less need for bannings. It would also more accurately identify when and which cards rightfully need bans.
I agree it's not really positive, hence the "positive-ish" and the question mark. That policy sucks and the last year of Standard shows that hiding data did not save their beloved money-making format.
That said, I also believe Modern secretly has a few best decks and if you aren't playing one of those 2-3 decks you are playing something that is probably worse than a competing option. I'd even expand that to say that there may be 4-5 best decks in Modern if pressed. But even if we expand it to those 4-5 decks, there are still 25+ decks other people are playing that they think are as good as those 4-5 and probably aren't. I don't have decent data to back this up, so I'm just leaving it here as an intuition based on my experience watching and playing the format these past 6-8 months.
But a true 50/50+ deck does not just stay a 10% share secret for long. That is, unless it's not a truly 50/50+ deck.
I'm not so sure about that. Wizards implied there's a deck in standard right now that's under 2% of the metagame with better matchups than Ramunap Red, but they weren't going to take action against an unknown deck. If memory serves, Bloom Titan went under the radar for a long time as well and these days the playerbase has even less information to identify a deck like that, than we did back then.
You are definitely right that it is harder to identify 50/50+ today than it was years ago. I guess this is a positive-ish consequence of Wizards' data embargo? But these decks are frequently still discovered. Even Bloom was, although that wasn't so much banned for being 50/50+ as for violating the T4 rule. The thing is, Wizards needs to balance MWP distribution against sample size. If you have a deck that is <2% of the metagame, you don't really know if its 50/50+ matchup spectrum will withstand greater pressure once it is a larger metagame share. So it's possible it doesn't stay 50/50+ for long.
That said, none of this undercuts the fact that Wizards doesn't want these decks around, is very suspicious of these decks, and tends to take action against them. I suspect that most people in this thread might be persuaded to not want a "true" 50/50+ deck and would instead be happy with a deck whose top-tier matchups were no worse than 40/60. Something like GDS. That's a reasonable and realistic ask. But asking for a deck where a high-skill player can create exclusively 50/50+ matchups across the board? Not reasonable, not realistic, not happening.
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.
We already acknowledge that. What you are not acknowledging is that true 50/50+ decks do exactly what you just described. Wizards knows it. Most of us know it.
The first, most obvious thing to look for is whether or not any deck has a positive matchup against every other major deck in the field. When your worst matchup is the mirror, chances are you are going to get banned. Even if, in the real world, the deck hasn't won a lot of tournaments, this is a clear sign that it is poised to take over at some point, and we should probably act sooner rather than later.
Wizards does not want this deck around. Now, if you have a deck that "feels" 50/50+ but isn't actually 50/50+, that's probably fine. For instance, GDS is pretty much in this category. It has a lot of 50/50+ matchups but it also has a few that are in the 40/60 and 45/55 range. This means it's not a true 50/50+ deck because it has top-tier bad matchups. If that is the kind of deck you want then that's both reasonable and realistic. But if you genuinely want a deck that is 50/50+ across the board with no top-tier matchups that are truly unfavorable, then that is not happening and it is neither reasonable nor realistic.
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.
Obviously Wizards won't ban a deck until it becomes an issue beyond just MWP. 50/50+ MWPs alone doesn't get to a ban and no one is really saying it does. I can't think of any deck in recent bans outside of maybe Eldrazi that got banned for one single reason.
Here's what we are saying and what Wizards is saying. IF a deck is TRULY a 50/50+ deck, then over time players will identify it, gravitate towards it, and it will become a high-share metagame problem. If a deck doesn't do this over time, either players haven't figured it out OR it's not really a 50/50+ deck and has enough bad matchups to keep it down. But a true 50/50+ deck does not just stay a 10% share secret for long. That is, unless it's not a truly 50/50+ deck. It's possible you don't want this deck and actually would be happy with a deck that has no matchup worse than 40/60 with some 50/50s, 60/40s, and even better. That deck would probably not be a 50/50+ deck because it has some matchups that are worse. But that deck is also imaginary and purely theoretical. We can't just sculpt a deck's MWP spectrum in a vacuum.
You clearly want this kind of 50/50+ deck in Modern. It's basically the focal point of most of your posts in this thread and related macro-Modern threads. I think this earnest desire has blinded you to the reality that Wizards is not going to let it happen and you will throw up counter-arguments to any post made against the 50/50+ deck. That's fine because I don't know if people are trying to convince you personally that this deck isn't happening. We are just describing a state of affairs.
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.
I agree there is nothing inherently or philosophically wrong with this kind of deck. I see their appeal, as a competitive player. Unfortunately, the problem is that if these decks do exist, people slowly flock to them because they become the best choice for a skilled/competitive-minded player. The argument here has never been "50/50+ decks are inherently bad." The argument is "50/50+ decks eventually become the best choice and warp the format." That is what Wizards has said in the past, notably Stoddard, and that is why we don't get to have those decks. 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.
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.
Also, as others have pointed out already, I think we are now in the longest period of banlist "no changes" in Modern history. This suggests the format is currently healthy by Wizards standpoint (they also literally said this in October). In fact, it must be exceptionally healthy given the lack of changes for 12 months, a Modern first. People who don't think it's healthy are either wrong or out of touch with Wizards and/or the format-wide realities.
Also regarding Modern, this upcoming B&R update will be the first update that is almost explicitly connected with the results of one single event. Although I am sure Wizards will consider other sources, the PT is going to be the most important influencer.
Finally, huge props to Wizards for a data-driven and transparent approach to this update, and huge props again for honesty and transparency around the Modern update. This includes Forsythe's Tweets and previous articles that promised no shakeup bans. Wizards delivered. I hope this silences some of the ban mania and conspiracy theorizing across the community and keeps us more firmly grounded in data and official source material.
Why do we still have people coming with anecdotal or theoretical evidence about skill? Didn't KTK disprove all myths regarding skill many pages okay? Like, okay Foodchains, you can think what you like, but it's been disproven. If a skilled pilot plays his deck skillfully, he will do well. Fact. Mathematically proven to be truth. I don't understand why you and others continue to assert that skill is irrelevant after being factually proven wrong.
I guess I'm just wrong then. Even Todd Stevens said that he's had some "horrible" nights online with his decks.
The reason I don't cite those matchups is because they are not that prevalent at my LGS or I just seem to avoid them. But those are not the ones seen on a national level. The ones seen are the 13-2s or starting 9-0, so "Todd's play skill is so much above any other player, that he always top 8s." This is what is seen by us.
I'll come back to this - at the Grand Prix Santa Clara in the $100 6 event Constructed Package, of which I chose Modern for all of them, 2 events per day, I ran into 17 decks in 18 rounds (Jeskai Queller twice). How do you metagame for that? Bocephus would tell me to metagame harder. What is the deck that does well in that metagame? The deck that I played the most in Modern, I went 1-2. The deck that I played almost never in tournament, I had a 3-0 before Skred and Jund with Shatterstorm SB took me down. I did the best at 5-1 with Grishoalbrand, a deck that I played the 2nd most in Modern.
I think KTK's conclusions are being warped a bit and that's what you're running into above. Skill absolutely matters, but there's still a heavy dose of luck. The best players win less than 65% of their competitive matches. Let's assume Todd Stevens is the undisputed best player on the planet; every match he sits down for he is more skillful in match and at metagaming than his opponent. He still loses more than a third of his matches.
Todd may not be the actual best player in the world (although that is his GW Company result in the Challenge), but I think that should make sense no matter whose name you use. Skill is still very valuable, but it can only take you so far. KTK's results just suggest that it's a very similar situation with Legacy in that regard.
Note: that doesn't mean that even the best player in the world wins 65% of their games in every tournament. Sometimes they'll scrub out, sometimes they'll win. Only over a large enough sample size would you see the 65%; that makes it particularly hard to judge their success (and ours) without many, many results.
This is true, but let's remember that this 65% top level Modern performance is also true of the 65% top Legacy performance. So if Modern requires some healthy dose of luck, Legcay requires the same healthy dose. And I NEVER hear people in this thread (or anywhere really) say that Legacy requires luck. People view Legacy as a no-luck high-skill utopia.
Re: metagaming
At large events, you can't metagame a specific, exact deck. There's just too much matchup diversity. You can, however, metagame a general archetype, i.e. combo, midrange, big mana, control, etc. When you do this, you look at the MTGO metagame, you read what pro authors are saying, and you pick a strong representative of a well-positioned archetype. This means you don't pull a DeCandio and play Mono G Devotion. It means you identify big mana is good and play Tron. Alternately, you pull a Nikolich or Scherer and just play what you know.
At a small/local event, you should know your field enough to know what to play and what not to play. If you know your FNM bounces between linear piles, don't play Jeskai. If you know they don't do that, and you play Jeskai, and they suddenly do it once, it shouldn't matter because you should be making the right call in 90% of the other FNMs.
Remember that metagaming in Modern is not picking a specific deck. It's picking the appropriate archetype and then configuring your SB so you can prevent losses. Or just play the same deck always (preferably a good deck) and then configure the SB for events.
(which I also realize goes against my own belief that play skill doesn't matter much in this format)
This has already been resoundingly disproven in the realm of SCG Opens. Play skill very clearly matters there, as we see the same top performers get the same top performances from event to event with the same performance ceiling/distribution as we see in Legacy. I know that the Modern critics see this clear evidence and then shift the goal posts to say that SCG Opens aren't representative of the "real" Modern metagame in the first place, but I think we all know how flimsy that counterargument is. Especially when it's not backed up with any numbers to rebut the super clear/consistent SCG numbers over dozens of events.
I will say that the types of skills in Modern are probably different than those in Legacy and they show up in different areas. Some certainly overlap but others are distinct.
RE: GDS vs. Burn
I saw two datasets that showed this as a GDS blowout. The first was GP OKC where GDS was like 70/30 against Burn over about 25 games. The second was something on Reddit that I can't find where GDS was 60/40 vs. Burn. Our MTGS thread puts it closer to 55/45. All of this suggests that it's favorable, but I don't know the exact MWP.
I do think that if the Burn player is skilled and experienced, he should be favoured against GDS.
Of course both player's skills matter a lot in that matchup.
I've heard from most of the better GDS players that GDS is favored in that matchup and it's not super close. The DSs are just too big too fast and once they get swinging the Burn player has only a few turns.
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.
50/50+ decks are almost always the best choice for an event because a skilled player will leverage the lack of bad matchups into consistent wins. This is why Stoddard famously said something to the effect of "If a deck's worst matchup is the mirror, something is probably getting banned." These decks do not exist long in contemporary Magic formats. If they do, it's just because Wizards hasn't gotten around to dealing with them yet, or because they aren't as consistent as their critics/proponents claim.
Incidentally, I don't find these decks particularly skillful in practice. 50/50+ format monsters are generally just broken. This is because the matchup spectrum for a 50/50+ deck is rarely clustered around 50/50. It tends to be 50/50 against top-tier decks and like 70/30 or better against everything else. This means you pick up a ton of free wins against nonsense and are still favored against mainstream players. Broken. Now, I will admit that the mirrors are certainly high-skill, low-variance nail-biters. But this isn't particularly rewarding in a game like Magic. I'd rather play chess for that particular experience.
Though, interestingly enough, Rossum played Humans instead of Jeskai at the last Open.
And then we have Benjamin Nikolich who played Jeskai at literally every single recorded Open, Regionals, and Invitational from 06/2017 through present. Rosum did switch to Humans and did just as well at Columbus 2018 (7th) as he did on his last two recorded Jeskai forays in Richmond (5th: 08/2017) and Syracuse (4th: 08/2017).
Jund could beat Tron and Titanshift, it was just a bad matchup. Jeskai Draw & Go basically can't.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
We're talking about Jeskai Control, Jeskai Draw & Go, the one in the finals of SCG. Not all versions of Jeskai.
Logan Martin ran a very passive Gearhulk/Ajani/Search/no-Geist build at GP OKC. In games, He went 4-3 against Titanshift and 4-2 against Tron variants. In matches, he was 2-1 against Titanshift, 1-0 against Gx Tron, and 1-0 against ETron. He did just fine.
This is to show two things. First, that any personal anecdotes we can find in our own experience almost always have a counterexample that challenges them. Second, that this deck was viable at a high-level event even against its so-called impossible matchups.
Like GK, I'm not saying this deck is truly Tier 1 from a pure performance standpoint. I am saying this deck is significantly more viable than many of its detractors claim, and I wish those critics would look for examples of where it can succeed rather than continue to shoot down every one of its finishes. If we look through the post history of users who doubt Jeskai, we find an outrageous ratio of posts against Jeskai to posts for Jeskai; it's like they don't' even want it to succeed.
Jund could beat Tron and Titanshift, it was just a bad matchup. Jeskai Draw & Go basically can't.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
Having been on the other side of frustrating situations plenty of times, it's pretty easy to feel empathy for opponents. It's not fun to steamroll an opponent stuck on lands, flooding out, in a horrible matchup, or otherwise just not really getting to play the game and getting frustrated. I'll take the W all day, but neither of us had fun.
That's very empathetic if you have that kind of feeling for a player. Magic would be better if we had more of that. But I think we all know that almost all the people complaining about Modern are not basing their complaints off an opponent's bad game experience if the complainers are winning. They are based on losses. I'm pretty sure if we were to compare articles/comments complaining about personal performance vs. opponent performance, we would find an absurd imbalance. The most acute example of this is in matchup writeups where we see players describe their games in one of three ways:
1. One-sided win for the writer. The writer tends to hammer it out with little commentary: e.g. "T1 Thoughtseize into T2 Tasigur with Denial backup. T3 Shadow and it's pretty much game from there."
2. Hard-fought win for the writer. The writer explains the intricate steps he took to win the match based on skill and tight play.
3. One-sided loss for the writer. The writer laments bad luck, bad draws, bad matchups, variance, or various factors out of their control.
I rarely if ever see writers congratulate an opponent on their tight win, or graciously accept their loss to whatever factors are at play in their opponent's favor. This is because most players who take the time to a) compete, b) take notes on their matchups/remember them, c) write them up in an article/forum are very high on the competitive spectrum and probably really want to win. That's fine! But let's not pretend that performance, results, and winning are not a huge driving force behind this. Player empathy for the opponent rarely factors.
Its not just performance and results though, its about the perception of if someone is in the same game as you are, or is playing past you.
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
I will also say that the worst Modern complainers in SCG, CF, TCG, etc. articles are always the players with the worst records. For instance, DeCandio, Handy, and PVDR all had some pretty terrible Modern performances at the height of their Modern complaints. Hoogland is another one who is pretty darn salty on camera when he's losing and that often leads into anti-Modern articles. Meanwhile, Modern players with better records were almost always more measured. This isn't true across the board and in all cases, but it is true in many of those cases.
To be clear, I don't think it's bad that Modern complainers want to win more. That makes sense; if you're a vocal player on a Magic forum or in a Magic article, you probably have a vested interest in the game. That interest probably drives you to compete, which suggests you are a competitive person who enjoys winning. I think all of that is totally fine and understandable. It's less fine to deny that and make it about experience, especially when the winners rarely care what kind of experience the losers are having. I'm willing to acknowledge that experience PLUS performance might matter together. But anyone suggesting this is all about experience and not about their results is probably not telling the whole truth/isn't fully exploring their motives.
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As far as I remember, I don't think any particular Modern ban update cited a deck's win percentage in exact terms. I suspect this is because old B&R changes were pretty opaque and Wizards got a lot of ***** for it so they changed their ways. Most Modern bans cite decks being too high of a metagame share and the T4 rule, with a few exceptions in there like "battle of sideboards" and logistics.
No one is saying that any particular ban announcement happened due to any given deck being 50/50+ in matchups. We are saying that it is not a reasonable or realistic request to ask for such a deck in Modern, because Wizards does not like these decks. Sure, it is possible that all those diversity violators were this very kind of deck! We don't know because Wizards was so opaque with its announcements and rationale.
I agree it's not really positive, hence the "positive-ish" and the question mark. That policy sucks and the last year of Standard shows that hiding data did not save their beloved money-making format.
That said, I also believe Modern secretly has a few best decks and if you aren't playing one of those 2-3 decks you are playing something that is probably worse than a competing option. I'd even expand that to say that there may be 4-5 best decks in Modern if pressed. But even if we expand it to those 4-5 decks, there are still 25+ decks other people are playing that they think are as good as those 4-5 and probably aren't. I don't have decent data to back this up, so I'm just leaving it here as an intuition based on my experience watching and playing the format these past 6-8 months.
You are definitely right that it is harder to identify 50/50+ today than it was years ago. I guess this is a positive-ish consequence of Wizards' data embargo? But these decks are frequently still discovered. Even Bloom was, although that wasn't so much banned for being 50/50+ as for violating the T4 rule. The thing is, Wizards needs to balance MWP distribution against sample size. If you have a deck that is <2% of the metagame, you don't really know if its 50/50+ matchup spectrum will withstand greater pressure once it is a larger metagame share. So it's possible it doesn't stay 50/50+ for long.
That said, none of this undercuts the fact that Wizards doesn't want these decks around, is very suspicious of these decks, and tends to take action against them. I suspect that most people in this thread might be persuaded to not want a "true" 50/50+ deck and would instead be happy with a deck whose top-tier matchups were no worse than 40/60. Something like GDS. That's a reasonable and realistic ask. But asking for a deck where a high-skill player can create exclusively 50/50+ matchups across the board? Not reasonable, not realistic, not happening.
We already acknowledge that. What you are not acknowledging is that true 50/50+ decks do exactly what you just described. Wizards knows it. Most of us know it.
As Stoddard said:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/using-real-world-data-2016-02-11
Wizards does not want this deck around. Now, if you have a deck that "feels" 50/50+ but isn't actually 50/50+, that's probably fine. For instance, GDS is pretty much in this category. It has a lot of 50/50+ matchups but it also has a few that are in the 40/60 and 45/55 range. This means it's not a true 50/50+ deck because it has top-tier bad matchups. If that is the kind of deck you want then that's both reasonable and realistic. But if you genuinely want a deck that is 50/50+ across the board with no top-tier matchups that are truly unfavorable, then that is not happening and it is neither reasonable nor realistic.
Obviously Wizards won't ban a deck until it becomes an issue beyond just MWP. 50/50+ MWPs alone doesn't get to a ban and no one is really saying it does. I can't think of any deck in recent bans outside of maybe Eldrazi that got banned for one single reason.
Here's what we are saying and what Wizards is saying. IF a deck is TRULY a 50/50+ deck, then over time players will identify it, gravitate towards it, and it will become a high-share metagame problem. If a deck doesn't do this over time, either players haven't figured it out OR it's not really a 50/50+ deck and has enough bad matchups to keep it down. But a true 50/50+ deck does not just stay a 10% share secret for long. That is, unless it's not a truly 50/50+ deck. It's possible you don't want this deck and actually would be happy with a deck that has no matchup worse than 40/60 with some 50/50s, 60/40s, and even better. That deck would probably not be a 50/50+ deck because it has some matchups that are worse. But that deck is also imaginary and purely theoretical. We can't just sculpt a deck's MWP spectrum in a vacuum.
You clearly want this kind of 50/50+ deck in Modern. It's basically the focal point of most of your posts in this thread and related macro-Modern threads. I think this earnest desire has blinded you to the reality that Wizards is not going to let it happen and you will throw up counter-arguments to any post made against the 50/50+ deck. That's fine because I don't know if people are trying to convince you personally that this deck isn't happening. We are just describing a state of affairs.
I agree there is nothing inherently or philosophically wrong with this kind of deck. I see their appeal, as a competitive player. Unfortunately, the problem is that if these decks do exist, people slowly flock to them because they become the best choice for a skilled/competitive-minded player. The argument here has never been "50/50+ decks are inherently bad." The argument is "50/50+ decks eventually become the best choice and warp the format." That is what Wizards has said in the past, notably Stoddard, and that is why we don't get to have those decks. 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.
Also, as others have pointed out already, I think we are now in the longest period of banlist "no changes" in Modern history. This suggests the format is currently healthy by Wizards standpoint (they also literally said this in October). In fact, it must be exceptionally healthy given the lack of changes for 12 months, a Modern first. People who don't think it's healthy are either wrong or out of touch with Wizards and/or the format-wide realities.
Also regarding Modern, this upcoming B&R update will be the first update that is almost explicitly connected with the results of one single event. Although I am sure Wizards will consider other sources, the PT is going to be the most important influencer.
Finally, huge props to Wizards for a data-driven and transparent approach to this update, and huge props again for honesty and transparency around the Modern update. This includes Forsythe's Tweets and previous articles that promised no shakeup bans. Wizards delivered. I hope this silences some of the ban mania and conspiracy theorizing across the community and keeps us more firmly grounded in data and official source material.
This is true, but let's remember that this 65% top level Modern performance is also true of the 65% top Legacy performance. So if Modern requires some healthy dose of luck, Legcay requires the same healthy dose. And I NEVER hear people in this thread (or anywhere really) say that Legacy requires luck. People view Legacy as a no-luck high-skill utopia.
At large events, you can't metagame a specific, exact deck. There's just too much matchup diversity. You can, however, metagame a general archetype, i.e. combo, midrange, big mana, control, etc. When you do this, you look at the MTGO metagame, you read what pro authors are saying, and you pick a strong representative of a well-positioned archetype. This means you don't pull a DeCandio and play Mono G Devotion. It means you identify big mana is good and play Tron. Alternately, you pull a Nikolich or Scherer and just play what you know.
At a small/local event, you should know your field enough to know what to play and what not to play. If you know your FNM bounces between linear piles, don't play Jeskai. If you know they don't do that, and you play Jeskai, and they suddenly do it once, it shouldn't matter because you should be making the right call in 90% of the other FNMs.
Remember that metagaming in Modern is not picking a specific deck. It's picking the appropriate archetype and then configuring your SB so you can prevent losses. Or just play the same deck always (preferably a good deck) and then configure the SB for events.
This has already been resoundingly disproven in the realm of SCG Opens. Play skill very clearly matters there, as we see the same top performers get the same top performances from event to event with the same performance ceiling/distribution as we see in Legacy. I know that the Modern critics see this clear evidence and then shift the goal posts to say that SCG Opens aren't representative of the "real" Modern metagame in the first place, but I think we all know how flimsy that counterargument is. Especially when it's not backed up with any numbers to rebut the super clear/consistent SCG numbers over dozens of events.
I will say that the types of skills in Modern are probably different than those in Legacy and they show up in different areas. Some certainly overlap but others are distinct.
RE: GDS vs. Burn
I saw two datasets that showed this as a GDS blowout. The first was GP OKC where GDS was like 70/30 against Burn over about 25 games. The second was something on Reddit that I can't find where GDS was 60/40 vs. Burn. Our MTGS thread puts it closer to 55/45. All of this suggests that it's favorable, but I don't know the exact MWP.
I've heard from most of the better GDS players that GDS is favored in that matchup and it's not super close. The DSs are just too big too fast and once they get swinging the Burn player has only a few turns.
50/50+ decks are almost always the best choice for an event because a skilled player will leverage the lack of bad matchups into consistent wins. This is why Stoddard famously said something to the effect of "If a deck's worst matchup is the mirror, something is probably getting banned." These decks do not exist long in contemporary Magic formats. If they do, it's just because Wizards hasn't gotten around to dealing with them yet, or because they aren't as consistent as their critics/proponents claim.
Incidentally, I don't find these decks particularly skillful in practice. 50/50+ format monsters are generally just broken. This is because the matchup spectrum for a 50/50+ deck is rarely clustered around 50/50. It tends to be 50/50 against top-tier decks and like 70/30 or better against everything else. This means you pick up a ton of free wins against nonsense and are still favored against mainstream players. Broken. Now, I will admit that the mirrors are certainly high-skill, low-variance nail-biters. But this isn't particularly rewarding in a game like Magic. I'd rather play chess for that particular experience.
And then we have Benjamin Nikolich who played Jeskai at literally every single recorded Open, Regionals, and Invitational from 06/2017 through present. Rosum did switch to Humans and did just as well at Columbus 2018 (7th) as he did on his last two recorded Jeskai forays in Richmond (5th: 08/2017) and Syracuse (4th: 08/2017).
Logan Martin ran a very passive Gearhulk/Ajani/Search/no-Geist build at GP OKC. In games, He went 4-3 against Titanshift and 4-2 against Tron variants. In matches, he was 2-1 against Titanshift, 1-0 against Gx Tron, and 1-0 against ETron. He did just fine.
This is to show two things. First, that any personal anecdotes we can find in our own experience almost always have a counterexample that challenges them. Second, that this deck was viable at a high-level event even against its so-called impossible matchups.
Like GK, I'm not saying this deck is truly Tier 1 from a pure performance standpoint. I am saying this deck is significantly more viable than many of its detractors claim, and I wish those critics would look for examples of where it can succeed rather than continue to shoot down every one of its finishes. If we look through the post history of users who doubt Jeskai, we find an outrageous ratio of posts against Jeskai to posts for Jeskai; it's like they don't' even want it to succeed.
In tracked data that we have access to (obviously not the full sample), Jeskai was 9/21 vs. Tron and 4/6 vs. Titanshift at GP OKC. That's far from "basically can't" like you claim. That's obviously a small sample, but if you brought Jeskai to that event, you were statistically right around 40/60-50/50 in all those matches.
That's very empathetic if you have that kind of feeling for a player. Magic would be better if we had more of that. But I think we all know that almost all the people complaining about Modern are not basing their complaints off an opponent's bad game experience if the complainers are winning. They are based on losses. I'm pretty sure if we were to compare articles/comments complaining about personal performance vs. opponent performance, we would find an absurd imbalance. The most acute example of this is in matchup writeups where we see players describe their games in one of three ways:
1. One-sided win for the writer. The writer tends to hammer it out with little commentary: e.g. "T1 Thoughtseize into T2 Tasigur with Denial backup. T3 Shadow and it's pretty much game from there."
2. Hard-fought win for the writer. The writer explains the intricate steps he took to win the match based on skill and tight play.
3. One-sided loss for the writer. The writer laments bad luck, bad draws, bad matchups, variance, or various factors out of their control.
I rarely if ever see writers congratulate an opponent on their tight win, or graciously accept their loss to whatever factors are at play in their opponent's favor. This is because most players who take the time to a) compete, b) take notes on their matchups/remember them, c) write them up in an article/forum are very high on the competitive spectrum and probably really want to win. That's fine! But let's not pretend that performance, results, and winning are not a huge driving force behind this. Player empathy for the opponent rarely factors.
I don't think anyone can say this with a straight face. For one, I've never seen someone who played a strong deck complain that their opponent was totally not able to keep up with them. This is true of all the major banned Modern strategies that were banned for being too good. No Delver players said "huh, I want my TC banned because those BGx mages just aren't playing the same game as me and it's totally unfair." No Dredge opponents said "It sucks that now that I have Leyline out, my opponent can't even play Magic any more." The complaints always aim uphill at the decks that are causing a complainant to lose and have a bad performance.
I will also say that the worst Modern complainers in SCG, CF, TCG, etc. articles are always the players with the worst records. For instance, DeCandio, Handy, and PVDR all had some pretty terrible Modern performances at the height of their Modern complaints. Hoogland is another one who is pretty darn salty on camera when he's losing and that often leads into anti-Modern articles. Meanwhile, Modern players with better records were almost always more measured. This isn't true across the board and in all cases, but it is true in many of those cases.
To be clear, I don't think it's bad that Modern complainers want to win more. That makes sense; if you're a vocal player on a Magic forum or in a Magic article, you probably have a vested interest in the game. That interest probably drives you to compete, which suggests you are a competitive person who enjoys winning. I think all of that is totally fine and understandable. It's less fine to deny that and make it about experience, especially when the winners rarely care what kind of experience the losers are having. I'm willing to acknowledge that experience PLUS performance might matter together. But anyone suggesting this is all about experience and not about their results is probably not telling the whole truth/isn't fully exploring their motives.