MTGS updates the forums on the first of every month to reflect changes in the Modern metagame. Decks are classified as Tier 1 (Decks to Beat), Tier 2 (Established Decks), or Developing Competitive (decks that do not currently have results but have competitive potential or history).
The google spreadsheets below document the Modern metagame in different ban cycles.
You can review the criteria and current decks for Tier 1, Tier 2, and Developing Competitive in the following threads:
Use this thread to discuss the metagame, its changes, possible areas for development, the classification system, and any related topics in this thread.
----------------------------------------------------- GRAPHS AND METAGAME RESOURCES
Here are different resources created from our spreadsheet that you can use to help understand and analyze the metagame, as well as tailor card and deck choices to the current format.
Is the current breakdown still in development since the percentages are all wrong with Naya Zoo being 51.10% and the MTGO meta game having nothing in them?
Is the current breakdown still in development since the percentages are all wrong with Naya Zoo being 51.10% and the MTGO meta game having nothing in them?
Yep, that one is still being built up. Here is what I have left to do there:
1. Add all MTGO events from 7/14 - 7/28
2. Add all large paper events from 7/6 - 7/28 (this includes PTQs, local events, and SCG weeklies)
GP Boston/Worcester was added to both the major paper T8/T16 tab, and to the day 2 metagame tab.
As many of you noticed, Wizards did a craptastic job of reporting decks for this event. We don't have a T16, and we have some bizarre groupings on the day 2 metagame breakdown that they gave. This includes putting all the Pod decks together, all the Tron decks together, not really breaking out BG Rock + Souls and true BGW Junk, and not giving discrete values for all the "other" decks. So to calculate those frequencies, I estimated based on the frequencies in the April-July metagame breakdown.
For example, we know there were 32 pod decks at GP Boston, but not how many were Melira/Junk/Kiki. But we know that from April-July, Melira Pod was about 7.5% of the metagame, Kiki Pod was about 2.5%, and Junk Pod was about 1.5%. So we can use those to break out that unclassified 32 into distinct segments. It's not perfect, but it's a better guess than anything else.
Is the current breakdown still in development since the percentages are all wrong with Naya Zoo being 51.10% and the MTGO meta game having nothing in them?
Yep, that one is still being built up. Here is what I have left to do there:
1. Add all MTGO events from 7/14 - 7/28
2. Add all large paper events from 7/6 - 7/28
GP Boston/Worcester was added to both the major paper T8/T16 tab, and to the day 2 metagame tab.
As many of you noticed, Wizards did a craptastic job of reporting decks for this event. We don't have a T16, and we have some bizarre groupings on the day 2 metagame breakdown that they gave. This includes putting all the Pod decks together, all the Tron decks together, not really breaking out BG Rock + Souls and true BGW Junk, and not giving discrete values for all the "other" decks. So to calculate those frequencies, I estimated based on the frequencies in the April-July metagame breakdown.
For example, we know there were 32 pod decks at GP Boston, but not how many were Melira/Junk/Kiki. But we know that from April-July, Melira Pod was about 7.5% of the metagame, Kiki Pod was about 2.5%, and Junk Pod was about 1.5%. So we can use those to break out that unclassified 32 into distinct segments. It's not perfect, but it's a better guess than anything else.
Yeah it's unfortunate how they did the breakdown this time.
Fortunately only Pod and the rogue decks are effected by that. Of course this is just a guess but I think that most Junk decks were BG Rock + Souls. I haven't seen "true" Junk decks for a very long time.
From the wording of it I think its clear that there were 11 GR Tron decks and 1 Mono-U Tron deck played by Samuele Estratti.
Is the current breakdown still in development since the percentages are all wrong with Naya Zoo being 51.10% and the MTGO meta game having nothing in them?
Yep, that one is still being built up. Here is what I have left to do there:
1. Add all MTGO events from 7/14 - 7/28
2. Add all large paper events from 7/6 - 7/28
GP Boston/Worcester was added to both the major paper T8/T16 tab, and to the day 2 metagame tab.
As many of you noticed, Wizards did a craptastic job of reporting decks for this event. We don't have a T16, and we have some bizarre groupings on the day 2 metagame breakdown that they gave. This includes putting all the Pod decks together, all the Tron decks together, not really breaking out BG Rock + Souls and true BGW Junk, and not giving discrete values for all the "other" decks. So to calculate those frequencies, I estimated based on the frequencies in the April-July metagame breakdown.
For example, we know there were 32 pod decks at GP Boston, but not how many were Melira/Junk/Kiki. But we know that from April-July, Melira Pod was about 7.5% of the metagame, Kiki Pod was about 2.5%, and Junk Pod was about 1.5%. So we can use those to break out that unclassified 32 into distinct segments. It's not perfect, but it's a better guess than anything else.
Yeah it's unfortunate how they did the breakdown this time.
Fortunately only Pod and the rogue decks are effected by that. Of course this is just a guess but I think that most Junk decks were BG Rock + Souls. I haven't seen "true" Junk decks for a very long time.
From the wording of it I think its clear that there were 11 GR Tron decks and 1 Mono-U Tron deck played by Samuele Estratti.
Camilluzzi, another italian player, was on UTron and since i followed the stream he was at like 8-0, he isn't in the Tron count?
- L
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
Is the current breakdown still in development since the percentages are all wrong with Naya Zoo being 51.10% and the MTGO meta game having nothing in them?
Yep, that one is still being built up. Here is what I have left to do there:
1. Add all MTGO events from 7/14 - 7/28
2. Add all large paper events from 7/6 - 7/28
GP Boston/Worcester was added to both the major paper T8/T16 tab, and to the day 2 metagame tab.
As many of you noticed, Wizards did a craptastic job of reporting decks for this event. We don't have a T16, and we have some bizarre groupings on the day 2 metagame breakdown that they gave. This includes putting all the Pod decks together, all the Tron decks together, not really breaking out BG Rock + Souls and true BGW Junk, and not giving discrete values for all the "other" decks. So to calculate those frequencies, I estimated based on the frequencies in the April-July metagame breakdown.
For example, we know there were 32 pod decks at GP Boston, but not how many were Melira/Junk/Kiki. But we know that from April-July, Melira Pod was about 7.5% of the metagame, Kiki Pod was about 2.5%, and Junk Pod was about 1.5%. So we can use those to break out that unclassified 32 into distinct segments. It's not perfect, but it's a better guess than anything else.
Yeah it's unfortunate how they did the breakdown this time.
Fortunately only Pod and the rogue decks are effected by that. Of course this is just a guess but I think that most Junk decks were BG Rock + Souls. I haven't seen "true" Junk decks for a very long time.
From the wording of it I think its clear that there were 11 GR Tron decks and 1 Mono-U Tron deck played by Samuele Estratti.
Camilluzzi, another italian player, was on UTron and since i followed the stream he was at like 8-0, he isn't in the Tron count?
- L
Well the wording is:
Tron - 12
"These are almost all the well-known Green-Red Tron decks that use Sylvan Scrying to assemble Urza's Power Plant, Urza's Mine and Urza's Tower and dominate the game with haymakers. Samuele Estratti bucks that trend by playing Mono-Blue."
That makes it sound like Samuele Estratti is the only one but if you know that there was another one playing U-Tron that made day 2 than he should be in there too. Could be that they just mentioned Estratti because he is a know pro player already.
As of now, the second spreadsheet is basically up to date. All the GP Boston results are in, it is updated with large paper events through 7/27, and all the MTGO events are current as of today. There might be a few straggler events here and there, but it's basically current. Remember that we only have a few weeks of data in the sheet, so some things might look weird now (e.g. Bogles tier 1 is still questionable). Also, remember that the cutoffs are dynamic and are based on the metagame. As more decks are added, the averages and standard deviations change. The formula remains the same but the discrete value will change with each update. So the current 5+ MTGO finish cutoff is definitely going to go up as we add more decks.
One thing I want to discuss is the Proven cutoff of 2+ criteria. All of the criterion themselves are based in good social science statistics, and I would happily defend and justify them to anyone. But the 2+ cutoff point is a lot less defensible. It was basically picked off of a gut feeling and is fairly arbitrary. Why not 3+? Or 4+ or 5+? At the time, we picked 2+ because it seemed reasonable, but it has been giving us weird results. Bogles won't go away, despite the fact that its successes come from one event (PT Valencia in February). Kiki Pod is a good deck, but does it really belong in the same subforum as BG Rock or Jund?
The solution that we have been thinking about is to increase the cutoff to 3+ criteria. To give you some idea of how that would look, here is how our current subforum would get organized if we switched that cutoff today:
Affinity (1,2,3,4,5)
UR Twin (1,2,3,4,5)
Melira Pod (1,2,3,4,5)
BG Rock (1,4,5)
Jund (1,2,4,5)
Scapeshift (1,2,5)
UWR Control (2,3,4,5)
Storm (1,2,3,4)
RUG Twin (2,3,5)
Kiki Pod, Merfolk, RG Tron, and Bogles would be gone and moved down to Established. Personally, I think this is a much more accurate depiction of the Proven decks, and one that I can really get behind. There might be other ways to do it (e.g. make some criteria mandatory for inclusion in Proven, like you have to meet criteria 4 or 5), but I think this is the best way. Would be curious to know all your thoughts on this idea.
As of now, the second spreadsheet is basically up to date. All the GP Boston results are in, it is updated with large paper events through 7/27, and all the MTGO events are current as of today. There might be a few straggler events here and there, but it's basically current. Remember that we only have a few weeks of data in the sheet, so some things might look weird now (e.g. Bogles tier 1 is still questionable). Also, remember that the cutoffs are dynamic and are based on the metagame. As more decks are added, the averages and standard deviations change. The formula remains the same but the discrete value will change with each update. So the current 5+ MTGO finish cutoff is definitely going to go up as we add more decks.
One thing I want to discuss is the Proven cutoff of 2+ criteria. All of the criterion themselves are based in good social science statistics, and I would happily defend and justify them to anyone. But the 2+ cutoff point is a lot less defensible. It was basically picked off of a gut feeling and is fairly arbitrary. Why not 3+? Or 4+ or 5+? At the time, we picked 2+ because it seemed reasonable, but it has been giving us weird results. Bogles won't go away, despite the fact that its successes come from one event (PT Valencia in February). Kiki Pod is a good deck, but does it really belong in the same subforum as BG Rock or Jund?
The solution that we have been thinking about is to increase the cutoff to 3+ criteria. To give you some idea of how that would look, here is how our current subforum would get organized if we switched that cutoff today:
Affinity (1,2,3,4,5)
UR Twin (1,2,3,4,5)
Melira Pod (1,2,3,4,5)
BG Rock (1,4,5)
Jund (1,2,4,5)
Scapeshift (1,2,5)
UWR Control (2,3,4,5)
Storm (1,2,3,4)
RUG Twin (2,3,5)
Kiki Pod, Merfolk, RG Tron, and Bogles would be gone and moved down to Established. Personally, I think this is a much more accurate depiction of the Proven decks, and one that I can really get behind. There might be other ways to do it (e.g. make some criteria mandatory for inclusion in Proven, like you have to meet criteria 4 or 5), but I think this is the best way. Would be curious to know all your thoughts on this idea.
I agree with this, I definitely think that those 9 decks make up the best decks in the format and represents the reality of things very well.
As you may have noticed I already had a few discussions about what constitutes Tier 1 decks and what not. If this change can finally put an end to such discussions by reflecting the metagame more accurately then Im all for that change.
And I definitely agree that Bogles especially shouldn't be there. The deck is so rare to play against that it being there just doesn't make sense.
As of now, the second spreadsheet is basically up to date. All the GP Boston results are in, it is updated with large paper events through 7/27, and all the MTGO events are current as of today. There might be a few straggler events here and there, but it's basically current. Remember that we only have a few weeks of data in the sheet, so some things might look weird now (e.g. Bogles tier 1 is still questionable). Also, remember that the cutoffs are dynamic and are based on the metagame. As more decks are added, the averages and standard deviations change. The formula remains the same but the discrete value will change with each update. So the current 5+ MTGO finish cutoff is definitely going to go up as we add more decks.
One thing I want to discuss is the Proven cutoff of 2+ criteria. All of the criterion themselves are based in good social science statistics, and I would happily defend and justify them to anyone. But the 2+ cutoff point is a lot less defensible. It was basically picked off of a gut feeling and is fairly arbitrary. Why not 3+? Or 4+ or 5+? At the time, we picked 2+ because it seemed reasonable, but it has been giving us weird results. Bogles won't go away, despite the fact that its successes come from one event (PT Valencia in February). Kiki Pod is a good deck, but does it really belong in the same subforum as BG Rock or Jund?
The solution that we have been thinking about is to increase the cutoff to 3+ criteria. To give you some idea of how that would look, here is how our current subforum would get organized if we switched that cutoff today:
Affinity (1,2,3,4,5)
UR Twin (1,2,3,4,5)
Melira Pod (1,2,3,4,5)
BG Rock (1,4,5)
Jund (1,2,4,5)
Scapeshift (1,2,5)
UWR Control (2,3,4,5)
Storm (1,2,3,4)
RUG Twin (2,3,5)
Kiki Pod, Merfolk, RG Tron, and Bogles would be gone and moved down to Established. Personally, I think this is a much more accurate depiction of the Proven decks, and one that I can really get behind. There might be other ways to do it (e.g. make some criteria mandatory for inclusion in Proven, like you have to meet criteria 4 or 5), but I think this is the best way. Would be curious to know all your thoughts on this idea.
The solution that we have been thinking about is to increase the cutoff to 3+ criteria. To give you some idea of how that would look, here is how our current subforum would get organized if we switched that cutoff today:
Affinity (1,2,3,4,5)
UR Twin (1,2,3,4,5)
Melira Pod (1,2,3,4,5)
BG Rock (1,4,5)
Jund (1,2,4,5)
Scapeshift (1,2,5)
UWR Control (2,3,4,5)
Storm (1,2,3,4)
RUG Twin (2,3,5)
This seems to perfectly fit the meta moment.
- L
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
I'm a Merfolk player, and though I would hate to to see us drop, I can get behind the meeting of 3+ criteria, specifically these at a minimum:
1. Makes up 3%+ of the MTGO metagame (reported 4-0/3-1 and T16 decks at Dalies/Premiers) over the last 3 months (i.e. has prevalence greater than one standard deviation over average MTGO deck prevalence)
3. Has 3+ Grand Prix/Pro Tour Top 16 appearances in the last 6 months
4. Makes up 3.5%+ of the Day 2 metagame at all GPs in the last 6 months/since the most recent significant ban update (i.e. has prevalence greater than one standard deviation over average day 2 prevalence at GPs)
Reasoning:
1) MTGO seems to be really popular despite the bugs, and gives people a way to play without travelling
3) Just seems a great way to determine how well the deck does at a high level event (and don't they also do Grand Prix's for MTGO also?)
4) Determines how popular a deck is. A deck may not be too powerful or too weak, but having a lot of people flood the GP with it will bump up numbers. and 3.5% sounds like a good percentage. And isn't popularity one definition of tier?
If there is a determination that there a deck must meet mandatory criteria, I would say that 3 and 4 are a must, since those two criteria combined show both the power level of a deck, and the popularity of the deck. It normally takes an X-2 record to Top 16 a Grand Prix, so that would weed out the weaker decks, even if they happen to the most popular.
Just my two cents
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Be a lemming hunter. Don't be a lemming. Really, all you had to do was explain to him the popularity metric, not give him the lemming hunter manifesto...
Doing some updates to the spreadsheet (it's already at 3+ for Proven instead of 2+, so that's already implemented) and wanted input on an idea.
Currently, we have a large paper event cutoff at 40+ players. But I'm no longer sure where this number came from and it feels arbitrary. I want to update that cutoff to either include more or fewer paper events. Here are the ways we can proceed.
1. No more cutoff for paper events. We don't have a cutoff for MTGO ones so why should we have one for paper? If we did this, all paper events would get added to the dataset regardless of attendance.
2. Cutoff based on swiss rounds. For instance, we could say that 6+ rounds is a "large tournament", so the attendance cutoff would be 33 players. Or 7+ rounds and the cutoff becomes 65.
I'm actually leaning towards the first option. The key there is that we don't have attendance cutoffs for MTGO events so why should we have them for paper ones? Given that we are trying to do an overall metagame breakdown for paper, it seems unfair to exclude the smaller events.
Doing some updates to the spreadsheet (it's already at 3+ for Proven instead of 2+, so that's already implemented) and wanted input on an idea.
Currently, we have a large paper event cutoff at 40+ players. But I'm no longer sure where this number came from and it feels arbitrary. I want to update that cutoff to either include more or fewer paper events. Here are the ways we can proceed.
1. No more cutoff for paper events. We don't have a cutoff for MTGO ones so why should we have one for paper? If we did this, all paper events would get added to the dataset regardless of attendance.
2. Cutoff based on swiss rounds. For instance, we could say that 6+ rounds is a "large tournament", so the attendance cutoff would be 33 players. Or 7+ rounds and the cutoff becomes 65.
I'm actually leaning towards the first option. The key there is that we don't have attendance cutoffs for MTGO events so why should we have them for paper ones? Given that we are trying to do an overall metagame breakdown for paper, it seems unfair to exclude the smaller events.
Thoughts on this?
Do both? Just add a column for 'Small/Unsized Paper Events', and keep the current 6 round/33 people cutoff as Large Paper. That way people who are looking for decks that do well in larger tournaments can look at those columns, while people looking for new trends that are still bubbling upward and neat one-off FNM stuff can look at the new column.
Do both? Just add a column for 'Small/Unsized Paper Events', and keep the current 6 round/33 people cutoff as Large Paper. That way people who are looking for decks that do well in larger tournaments can look at those columns, while people looking for new trends that are still bubbling upward and neat one-off FNM stuff can look at the new column.
Adding a column is easy, even if I'm not sure it's particularly useful. Overall, I just want to think about what the actual criteria would be. Let's say that I added all the paper events to the dataset, regardless of size. Would the Proven/Established cutoff be based on the unmodified paper dataset? Or the modified one with some attendance cutoff?
My inclination is that Small Paper events should not contribute to any of the Proven criteria; the data is both likely to be suspect and smaller events don't give enough data about performance versus variance to really be helpful.
However, it definitely should qualify a deck for Established, as the intent there is to make people aware of decks that they might run into at any given FNM. My first suggestion would be something along the lines of a high percentage of T8 in general paper events. Maybe 5% of top 8s per ban cycle. I'd go this route rather than any hard number (like the existing hard 7+ for Large events Top 8s), simply because there are a potentially unbounded number of smaller events that could be reported, so choosing an arbitrary cut off is difficult.
My feeling is that if a deck is doing especially well in FNM and smaller events, it's probably interesting enough to talk about and have a thread that's easy to find. Perhaps all it needs is a few more eyes, a few more people playing, and some reps in order to start making the jump from Creation to Established and maybe eventually Proven. It can indicate a deck that has a lot of potential but is something that hasn't had a "face" to champion it at higher quality events and spread word that "hey, this is a thing".
Alternately, if a deck that's not seeing play at GP/PT levels, but is *still* consuming a huge chunk of the paper T8 metagame in smaller events, then it might be something worth watching for potential problems. Because being oppressive at lower level events can still be as bad for the format as a deck that's oppressive at all levels or only high levels.
Doing some updates to the spreadsheet (it's already at 3+ for Proven instead of 2+, so that's already implemented) and wanted input on an idea.
Currently, we have a large paper event cutoff at 40+ players. But I'm no longer sure where this number came from and it feels arbitrary. I want to update that cutoff to either include more or fewer paper events. Here are the ways we can proceed.
1. No more cutoff for paper events. We don't have a cutoff for MTGO ones so why should we have one for paper? If we did this, all paper events would get added to the dataset regardless of attendance.
2. Cutoff based on swiss rounds. For instance, we could say that 6+ rounds is a "large tournament", so the attendance cutoff would be 33 players. Or 7+ rounds and the cutoff becomes 65.
I'm actually leaning towards the first option. The key there is that we don't have attendance cutoffs for MTGO events so why should we have them for paper ones? Given that we are trying to do an overall metagame breakdown for paper, it seems unfair to exclude the smaller events.
I think no cutoff makes the most sense. The sticking point for me is that we don't have an attendance cutoff for MTGO events. I'll leave this an open question for a few more days before I start modifying the dataset though.
I got something else out of it. By scaling back on removal they don't have to keep pushing creatures. The way it sounded to me was that they want things to be creature centric without having to make every creature some insane monster instead average creatures that aren't competing with decent removal can accomplish the goal. The way I interpret this is the sets are going to be low power level for awhile so don't expect a whole lot for Modern.
Doing some updates to the spreadsheet (it's already at 3+ for Proven instead of 2+, so that's already implemented) and wanted input on an idea.
Currently, we have a large paper event cutoff at 40+ players. But I'm no longer sure where this number came from and it feels arbitrary. I want to update that cutoff to either include more or fewer paper events. Here are the ways we can proceed.
1. No more cutoff for paper events. We don't have a cutoff for MTGO ones so why should we have one for paper? If we did this, all paper events would get added to the dataset regardless of attendance.
2. Cutoff based on swiss rounds. For instance, we could say that 6+ rounds is a "large tournament", so the attendance cutoff would be 33 players. Or 7+ rounds and the cutoff becomes 65.
I'm actually leaning towards the first option. The key there is that we don't have attendance cutoffs for MTGO events so why should we have them for paper ones? Given that we are trying to do an overall metagame breakdown for paper, it seems unfair to exclude the smaller events.
Thoughts on this?
I have no problem with no cut off, but we all must understand that the smaller the event the more skewed the numbers could and probably will be.
Quote from Aazadan »
I got something else out of it. By scaling back on removal they don't have to keep pushing creatures. The way it sounded to me was that they want things to be creature centric without having to make every creature some insane monster instead average creatures that aren't competing with decent removal can accomplish the goal. The way I interpret this is the sets are going to be low power level for awhile so don't expect a whole lot for Modern.
I read it as opening up some design space and shifting things a bit. Going more the conditional, situational, drawback type spells they have been doing for removal and counters in general. This does not equate to lower power, but different game play.
Doing some updates to the spreadsheet (it's already at 3+ for Proven instead of 2+, so that's already implemented) and wanted input on an idea.
Currently, we have a large paper event cutoff at 40+ players. But I'm no longer sure where this number came from and it feels arbitrary. I want to update that cutoff to either include more or fewer paper events. Here are the ways we can proceed.
1. No more cutoff for paper events. We don't have a cutoff for MTGO ones so why should we have one for paper? If we did this, all paper events would get added to the dataset regardless of attendance.
2. Cutoff based on swiss rounds. For instance, we could say that 6+ rounds is a "large tournament", so the attendance cutoff would be 33 players. Or 7+ rounds and the cutoff becomes 65.
I'm actually leaning towards the first option. The key there is that we don't have attendance cutoffs for MTGO events so why should we have them for paper ones? Given that we are trying to do an overall metagame breakdown for paper, it seems unfair to exclude the smaller events.
Thoughts on this?
I have no problem with no cut off, but we all must understand that the smaller the event the more skewed the numbers could and probably will be.
Quote from Aazadan »
I got something else out of it. By scaling back on removal they don't have to keep pushing creatures. The way it sounded to me was that they want things to be creature centric without having to make every creature some insane monster instead average creatures that aren't competing with decent removal can accomplish the goal. The way I interpret this is the sets are going to be low power level for awhile so don't expect a whole lot for Modern.
I read it as opening up some design space and shifting things a bit. Going more the conditional, situational, drawback type spells they have been doing for removal and counters in general. This does not equate to lower power, but different game play.
Perhaps, but something tells me WoTC isn't going to print anything that is conditional, but efficiently costed ala:
New Path to Exile W
Instant
Exile target creature with CMC 3 or less.
Or they're not going to print Ponder at 2 CMC, but with Instant, etc. When was the last time Control got a non-creature Modern playable that was efficiently costed? They've been dialing this down since Rise of Eldrazi, and ratcheting creature power levels.
I would be hesitant to say that future standard sets will not impact Modern. Even if the removal / creature power level drops or stagnates, we may very well get some new spells that enable or disable certain decks on the field now. If say, Price of Progress or some similar non basic hosing card were to be printed the effects could make a huge impact in the modern meta (just an example).
Also I will never be surprised to see a couple Modern playable critters regardless of what they say. Good critters sell packs.
Anymore and I would say its good lands that sell packs, at least to the players in my area. While creatures are great (oh how I chased you Thundermaw Hellkite the people that play modern or legacy all seem to be much more interested in what lands could they pull. Again this is in my local play group, so we might be the odd ones out.
FORUM LAST UPDATED: 6/12/2016
FORUM NEXT UPDATED: 7/8/2016
Metagame spreadsheet: January - December 2016
(See comments below for details of previous forum updates)
-6/12/16 forum update
-5/6/16 forum update
-2/13/16 forum update
-1/15/16 forum update
-12/10/15 forum update
-11/12/15 forum update
-10/11/15 forum update
-9/8/15 forum update
-8/6/15 forum update
-7/8/15 forum update
-6/8/15 forum update
-5/7/15 forum update
-----------------------------------------------------
OVERVIEW
MTGS updates the forums on the first of every month to reflect changes in the Modern metagame. Decks are classified as Tier 1 (Decks to Beat), Tier 2 (Established Decks), or Developing Competitive (decks that do not currently have results but have competitive potential or history).
The google spreadsheets below document the Modern metagame in different ban cycles.
You can review the criteria and current decks for Tier 1, Tier 2, and Developing Competitive in the following threads:
-----------------------------------------------------
GRAPHS AND METAGAME RESOURCES
Here are different resources created from our spreadsheet that you can use to help understand and analyze the metagame, as well as tailor card and deck choices to the current format.
SPREADHSEETS
Yep, that one is still being built up. Here is what I have left to do there:
1. Add all MTGO events from 7/14 - 7/28
2. Add all large paper events from 7/6 - 7/28 (this includes PTQs, local events, and SCG weeklies)
GP Boston/Worcester was added to both the major paper T8/T16 tab, and to the day 2 metagame tab.
As many of you noticed, Wizards did a craptastic job of reporting decks for this event. We don't have a T16, and we have some bizarre groupings on the day 2 metagame breakdown that they gave. This includes putting all the Pod decks together, all the Tron decks together, not really breaking out BG Rock + Souls and true BGW Junk, and not giving discrete values for all the "other" decks. So to calculate those frequencies, I estimated based on the frequencies in the April-July metagame breakdown.
For example, we know there were 32 pod decks at GP Boston, but not how many were Melira/Junk/Kiki. But we know that from April-July, Melira Pod was about 7.5% of the metagame, Kiki Pod was about 2.5%, and Junk Pod was about 1.5%. So we can use those to break out that unclassified 32 into distinct segments. It's not perfect, but it's a better guess than anything else.
Yeah it's unfortunate how they did the breakdown this time.
Fortunately only Pod and the rogue decks are effected by that. Of course this is just a guess but I think that most Junk decks were BG Rock + Souls. I haven't seen "true" Junk decks for a very long time.
From the wording of it I think its clear that there were 11 GR Tron decks and 1 Mono-U Tron deck played by Samuele Estratti.
Camilluzzi, another italian player, was on UTron and since i followed the stream he was at like 8-0, he isn't in the Tron count?
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
Well the wording is:
Tron - 12
"These are almost all the well-known Green-Red Tron decks that use Sylvan Scrying to assemble Urza's Power Plant, Urza's Mine and Urza's Tower and dominate the game with haymakers. Samuele Estratti bucks that trend by playing Mono-Blue."
That makes it sound like Samuele Estratti is the only one but if you know that there was another one playing U-Tron that made day 2 than he should be in there too. Could be that they just mentioned Estratti because he is a know pro player already.
One thing I want to discuss is the Proven cutoff of 2+ criteria. All of the criterion themselves are based in good social science statistics, and I would happily defend and justify them to anyone. But the 2+ cutoff point is a lot less defensible. It was basically picked off of a gut feeling and is fairly arbitrary. Why not 3+? Or 4+ or 5+? At the time, we picked 2+ because it seemed reasonable, but it has been giving us weird results. Bogles won't go away, despite the fact that its successes come from one event (PT Valencia in February). Kiki Pod is a good deck, but does it really belong in the same subforum as BG Rock or Jund?
The solution that we have been thinking about is to increase the cutoff to 3+ criteria. To give you some idea of how that would look, here is how our current subforum would get organized if we switched that cutoff today:
Affinity (1,2,3,4,5)
UR Twin (1,2,3,4,5)
Melira Pod (1,2,3,4,5)
BG Rock (1,4,5)
Jund (1,2,4,5)
Scapeshift (1,2,5)
UWR Control (2,3,4,5)
Storm (1,2,3,4)
RUG Twin (2,3,5)
Kiki Pod, Merfolk, RG Tron, and Bogles would be gone and moved down to Established. Personally, I think this is a much more accurate depiction of the Proven decks, and one that I can really get behind. There might be other ways to do it (e.g. make some criteria mandatory for inclusion in Proven, like you have to meet criteria 4 or 5), but I think this is the best way. Would be curious to know all your thoughts on this idea.
I agree with this, I definitely think that those 9 decks make up the best decks in the format and represents the reality of things very well.
And I definitely agree that Bogles especially shouldn't be there. The deck is so rare to play against that it being there just doesn't make sense.
I would support the 3+ cutoff.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
This seems to perfectly fit the meta moment.
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
1. Makes up 3%+ of the MTGO metagame (reported 4-0/3-1 and T16 decks at Dalies/Premiers) over the last 3 months (i.e. has prevalence greater than one standard deviation over average MTGO deck prevalence)
3. Has 3+ Grand Prix/Pro Tour Top 16 appearances in the last 6 months
4. Makes up 3.5%+ of the Day 2 metagame at all GPs in the last 6 months/since the most recent significant ban update (i.e. has prevalence greater than one standard deviation over average day 2 prevalence at GPs)
Reasoning:
1) MTGO seems to be really popular despite the bugs, and gives people a way to play without travelling
3) Just seems a great way to determine how well the deck does at a high level event (and don't they also do Grand Prix's for MTGO also?)
4) Determines how popular a deck is. A deck may not be too powerful or too weak, but having a lot of people flood the GP with it will bump up numbers. and 3.5% sounds like a good percentage. And isn't popularity one definition of tier?
If there is a determination that there a deck must meet mandatory criteria, I would say that 3 and 4 are a must, since those two criteria combined show both the power level of a deck, and the popularity of the deck. It normally takes an X-2 record to Top 16 a Grand Prix, so that would weed out the weaker decks, even if they happen to the most popular.
Just my two cents
Be a lemming hunter. Don't be a lemming.
Really, all you had to do was explain to him the popularity metric, not give him the lemming hunter manifesto...
Originally posted by MemoryLapse and DotMatrix
Currently, we have a large paper event cutoff at 40+ players. But I'm no longer sure where this number came from and it feels arbitrary. I want to update that cutoff to either include more or fewer paper events. Here are the ways we can proceed.
1. No more cutoff for paper events. We don't have a cutoff for MTGO ones so why should we have one for paper? If we did this, all paper events would get added to the dataset regardless of attendance.
2. Cutoff based on swiss rounds. For instance, we could say that 6+ rounds is a "large tournament", so the attendance cutoff would be 33 players. Or 7+ rounds and the cutoff becomes 65.
I'm actually leaning towards the first option. The key there is that we don't have attendance cutoffs for MTGO events so why should we have them for paper ones? Given that we are trying to do an overall metagame breakdown for paper, it seems unfair to exclude the smaller events.
Thoughts on this?
Do both? Just add a column for 'Small/Unsized Paper Events', and keep the current 6 round/33 people cutoff as Large Paper. That way people who are looking for decks that do well in larger tournaments can look at those columns, while people looking for new trends that are still bubbling upward and neat one-off FNM stuff can look at the new column.
Adding a column is easy, even if I'm not sure it's particularly useful. Overall, I just want to think about what the actual criteria would be. Let's say that I added all the paper events to the dataset, regardless of size. Would the Proven/Established cutoff be based on the unmodified paper dataset? Or the modified one with some attendance cutoff?
However, it definitely should qualify a deck for Established, as the intent there is to make people aware of decks that they might run into at any given FNM. My first suggestion would be something along the lines of a high percentage of T8 in general paper events. Maybe 5% of top 8s per ban cycle. I'd go this route rather than any hard number (like the existing hard 7+ for Large events Top 8s), simply because there are a potentially unbounded number of smaller events that could be reported, so choosing an arbitrary cut off is difficult.
My feeling is that if a deck is doing especially well in FNM and smaller events, it's probably interesting enough to talk about and have a thread that's easy to find. Perhaps all it needs is a few more eyes, a few more people playing, and some reps in order to start making the jump from Creation to Established and maybe eventually Proven. It can indicate a deck that has a lot of potential but is something that hasn't had a "face" to champion it at higher quality events and spread word that "hey, this is a thing".
Alternately, if a deck that's not seeing play at GP/PT levels, but is *still* consuming a huge chunk of the paper T8 metagame in smaller events, then it might be something worth watching for potential problems. Because being oppressive at lower level events can still be as bad for the format as a deck that's oppressive at all levels or only high levels.
I support no cutoff.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29141_184-Modern-Decklists.html
I wanted to talk about this article, as it eventually has to do with modern. Basicly, for those of you who detest reading says this:
as this is them talking about at least 2 years, this doenst just shape standard, it shapes what pushed cards eventually fall into our hands.
I have no problem with no cut off, but we all must understand that the smaller the event the more skewed the numbers could and probably will be.
I read it as opening up some design space and shifting things a bit. Going more the conditional, situational, drawback type spells they have been doing for removal and counters in general. This does not equate to lower power, but different game play.
Perhaps, but something tells me WoTC isn't going to print anything that is conditional, but efficiently costed ala:
New Path to Exile W
Instant
Exile target creature with CMC 3 or less.
Or they're not going to print Ponder at 2 CMC, but with Instant, etc. When was the last time Control got a non-creature Modern playable that was efficiently costed? They've been dialing this down since Rise of Eldrazi, and ratcheting creature power levels.
Also I will never be surprised to see a couple Modern playable critters regardless of what they say. Good critters sell packs.
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