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@ SynergyBuild

Worldfire with Jeska+Rog pairing in Birgi mono red storm shell? Yay, nay? Guess on more or less effective than standard mono red Birgi? Feels sideways move-ish to me.

Also, @ Abaques

“ What you're implying would turn Commander into a ramp race.”

That’s exactly what EDH is from a fundamental standpoint.

I get that, hence the “if allowed”.

wait a minute...

Golos got banned? A 5 mana artifact creature plus a land tutor that isn't even the highest win rate 5 color commander?

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Worldfire and Biorhythm seem like extremely odd things to unban as they are exclusively casual cards that are not playable competitively and do things all casual players dislike and that's usual the criteria to ban things in EDH rather than unban them. Biorhythm being the more surprising of the two if allowed in my opinion. It's very easy for mono green to come up with that much mana on turn 3 in even casual deck lists.

Golos getting the hammer before any of 1000 other cards is crazy though. That makes zero sense.

The math in the the title checks out. That’s totally how numbers work.

Would be a nifty tool, but it’s pretty basic probability calculations we’re talking about and it’s relatively easy to compute these things in your head on the fly for the most part. Particularly folks who’ve played a fair amount of poker would be likely to mention this kind of running probability math is second nature to calculate on a second by second basis. Definitely would be a cool add for those less math inclined, but it’s not like that math is tough to do in the first place.

Now a top 8 is impressive. Pretty much regardless of circumstance. Back in the day that would have earned a Pro Point and enough Pro Points meant automatic qualifications and sometimes WotC paying for various things or additional benefits. I hear the new systems WotC put in place are terrible in that regard and some folks are unhappy that the incentives and rewards have largely been nixed.

Meh, a top 32 is an ok result. Not bad but not great. I definitely had quite a bit of fun traveling as a teenager and seeing new places though. We were all super jealous of Andrew when he qualified for PT Berlin in 2004 or 2005 because it was the first event any of us had qualified for that wasn’t hosted on US soil. I would have given an arm and a leg for the opportunity to travel to Europe for a week of fun and sightseeing. 20 some years later and I can hardly recall the games we played, just the fun times we had together eating out, trashing hotel rooms, and singing karaoke at random bars. So much life lived in the name of playing MTG.

Calling myself a “pro” would be a stretch, tbh. The other 3 members of my playgroup at least managed a top 8 at some point and earned at least 1 lifetime pro point. My best finishes were a couple top 32s. None the less I played probably 30 GPs in my career and attended a handful of Pro Tours, but the really good players always thrashed me pretty easily. I’d call that “semi pro” if anything. I went, I played (mostly on the losers bracket side of things), I earned a profit from side events, trades, sales, and occasionally promoting Strike Zone for Dustin, but as far as success at the professional level I didn’t have much (spoiler alert, real mtg pros are really really good at mtg).

Most of the other guys I’m referencing here are other folks at about my level that I’d see at tourneys, not really the name brand dudes if ya know what I mean. But yeah, we’d talk and go out for food after games (drinks too once we were old enough) and talk about things. Calling a judge and the circumstances where it’d be palatable was definitely a topic that got discussed regularly. The general consensus being you don’t call a judge to mansplain to opponents that you were supposed to beat 10 times out of 10. There’d often be a whole side discussion of “karma” and the “MTG Gods” to go along with it. I’d liken the discussion to baseball and the “baseball gods” debate if you’re familiar with that (Trevor Bauer this season is a good example, dude spent last 2 years nagging folks about ticky tack stuff that every pitcher does to get a good grip and control the ball so batters don’t get hurt, this “upset the baseball gods”, and now he’s suffering the consequences).

There’s a difference between ensuring players learn the nuances of proper technical play and being a dick by calling a judge to enforce proper technical play.

Most (and by most I actually mean unanimous amongst other pro players I’ve spoken with this subject on, we literally all agree) of us feel you can educate and enlighten less experienced players about technical aspects without needing to call a judge just by explaining and then letting the opponent make the call on if they need to hear the same info from a judge who might then enforce the technicalities in a way that won’t be fun or enjoyable for the player you were going to beat anyways (potentially handing out even a game loss).

It’s very easy to tell the casual players from semi pro and pro players day 1 of a GP. Particularly for folks who’ve already played on the pro circuit for some time. We know each other and see each other regularly at events.

If a kid makes a mistake against me on day 1 and realizes the error before any subsequent actions are taken that reveal any additional information I’ll always let that opponent make a more sensible play on day 1 of a GP. Part of my duty as MTG’s old guard is to be an ambassador of the game for newer players and ensure that folks are having fun. I’m always going to win my fair share of games at such an event and earn a profit for attending, not everyone is as fortunate, and I remember quite fondly my one match against Finkel in 2002 where he let me take back a number of misplays in round 1 before easily trouncing me in back to back games. If that caliber of player (that I aspired to be at that time) can be that much of a gentlemen, I can learn to be the same kind of class act.

GPs and Pro Tours are very different day 1. 80% of the field at a GP on day 1 are going to be casual players who’ve often spent several hundred dollars in travel and hotel expenses, not to mention tourney fees. These players are there for fun, those of us who’ve had 2000 ratings in a particular format are going to beat them rather easily pretty much regardless of the situation, so let em have their fun I say. At a Pro Tour where it’s invite only and you’ll only be facing other high caliber players I’m all for the technicalities being observed. There’s a time and a place for Uber competitiveness and most of us who’ve played dozens and dozens of professional events consider it poor etiquette to call a judge on the 12 year old playing his first big tourney in round 1. If that player wants to call for a judge for a ruling, fine, but for players of a certain caliber it won’t be necessary to observe every technicality properly to win the match.

Calling for a judge on day 1 of a GP as a player who tends to make day 2s always seemed in bad taste to me. Happens all the time but I never liked it. If you’ve got a 2000ish rating it’s rather likely you’ll wind up at least 4-2 and make the cut off, don’t be that nit picky guy who calls a judge against random players you’re going to beat anyways whether they make mistakes or not. Just let them take back a play or make the move they intend and at least have some fun. Save the uber competitive side of things for feature table matches and bouts versus other professional and semi professional players.

Trade Secrets eh? Guess that one shouldn’t be too surprising.

As with any data set the way in which it’s manipulated can have a significant impact on the conclusions that are able to be drawn from it. Meta game, quality of competitors, even turn order are all factors that change what kind of conclusions can be drawn from the same set of data when accounted for as parameters. It’s the same for MTG as it is for fantasy baseball, sometimes that BaBIP metric is relevant in making a decision, sometimes it’s not.

The huge difference between them is definitely the thing that jumps out at me too. Without digging too deep I’m working from an assumption that it’s at least partly due to meta game bias (our group has previously recorded data about wheels for example and plays more wheels per pod on average because of that data, which should theoretically increase the effectiveness of Breacher in such a sample size). How much of that EWSC (expected win share contribution) can be attributed to this? Can’t say for certain without even more data, but it’s why I recommend some degree of skepticism. Hullbreacher is definitely a truly unique outlier as a piece of data, never seen anything like it personally.

Dockside Extortionist is a very strong performer with around +2% in a vacuum if I remember correctly. Haven’t checked it’s updated numbers lately but it’s been hovering in the +1.8% to +2.2% range ever since we hit the 500 games mark with it. Anything that posts about +1.5% or better in a sample size of 500 games is something we consider pretty significant in terms of strong consistent performance, so it’s certainly among the more powerful options out there.

Actually we do have data on Snow-Covered Island, lol.

3976 games played in a pod containing at least one deck list running at least 1 Snow-Covered Island. 11,966 total deck lists in those games. 2998 wins for lists including at least 1 Snow-Covered Island in those games. All factors accounted for, a 25.05% win rate, round up to be generous and call it 25.1% for an expected contribution towards win of +0.1%. Sample size here doesn't account for land count totals, but it's still useful information in it's own way.

No updates for Urza's Saga at the moment. It's liable to be a couple of months before I can acquire enough data for a large enough sample size.

I thought the Agent would get banned the second I saw it spoiled.

That opinion hasn't changed, I don't think. But I am concerned, given these results that are so far beyond any other single cards in our collection of data, that they have been "over evaluated" if such a thing is possible. At this point I'm mostly looking for flaws in our data collection processes that could help contribute to such inflated totals.

We've had plenty of cards post +5% or +6% expected win share contributions after 100 game sample sizes before, but these figures dropped after it became clear they represented underplayed but powerful cards and concepts. When we'd start to include more testing in pods that contained 2-4 deck lists running those cards the expected contribution to win share percentages would drop to more normalized figures. This happened with Agent and Breacher as well, just not to the degree I would have expected.

Dunno how one would rate the power of a data collection process, but our group's process has seemed pretty effective to date. Impossible I think for such a process to be flawless or perfect, but that's why you wanna pull data from as many sources as you can and start cross referencing.

Glad you appreciate the analytics approach, if it can be a nifty tool for sports teams or businesses then why shouldn't it also be a nifty tool when applied to MTG formats?

So at this point I've managed to get in 500 games of Hullbreacher and Opposition Agent play in various decks and that's a large enough sample size to be pretty confident in the results of the data.

Hullbreacher already got banned but I'll start with some statistics for it. 503 game played with Hullbreacher included in at least one of the lists. 318 wins for Hullbreacher decks in that span, and with everything accounted for the card wound up with an expected win share percentage of + 6.6%. In other words, just adding that card alone to a deck would bump it's win share % up from 25% in a vacuum to over 31% in that same vacuum. Our database has some 5,000 total cEDH games tracked and logged at this point, and 10s of thousands of individual cards performance's tracked as well. This probably won't come as a shock, but Hullbreacher, of every single individual card we've ever tracked and tested posted the highest single card expected win share increase of any card in MTG's history. By a lot. More than double the increase in win share percentage from the next closest card with a minimum 500 game sample size. In our data set it's confirmed at this point to be the most dominant performing card in cEDH history. Not to surprising it wound up banned.

Astonishingly (or perhaps not) the number 2 card on the list in terms of expected win share contribution in a minimum sample size of 500 games in the entire 5000+ game data set we've collected is Opposition Agent. 500 games on the nose, 206 wins, and a final expected win share contribution of +3.1%. Until these 2 cards were printed we'd never had a single card post even a +3.0% expected win share contribution and we'd seen some dominant numbers from cards like Extract, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune, Force of Will, Ashiok, Dream Render, Paradox Engine, Carpet of Flowers, Thassa's Oracle and Deathrite Shaman over +2.5%.

According to the data I've collected so far, Oppo Agent and Hullbreacher are the two most dominant cards ever printed for cEDH and by very significant margins. It wasn't even a contest, these two just performed heads and shoulders above every other card in the format.

Almost certainly this data set is not perfect or ideal, it's a mere 500ish game sample size compared to data we might have for a card in Legacy or Vintage that might have 10,000 or even 100,000 games of tracked data over several decades that can be easily found on the internet, so take these findings with a grain of salt would be my recommendation. I know since I've started posting more and more statistics based approaches to evaluating cards and decks in cEDH that more folks have been doing the same (hard to argue with the benefit of the results and those sweet extra wins here and there based off an analytics approach) and I'd be curious to see what kind of data others have collected about these 2 cards since their release. I think it's pretty unlikely our group wound up with an aberrant data set, but it's the kind of result that is so over the top and even a bit unexpected (seriously? THESE are the two best all time performing cards for cEDH?) that even I'm a bit skeptical looking at the results of the data collection.

We've had a fair amount of time to experiment with these 2 bad boys by now, so I'm curious about the results of any one else who tracks data like this and what their data set might say about the performance of these 2 cards in cEDH. If you've got some interesting results to share let us know how they've been performing in your games.

With the previous card text's the copied spells were much easier to stop and far more punishing to stop. Cast a spell, hold prio, cast the copy spell to copy the first spell, opponent casts a counterspell on the original, you lose 2 cards when both spells fizzle, all the mana investment, and probably lose on tempo alone the second this happens.

The new phrasing is a bit more forgiving as it forces opponents to make tougher choices with less information as soon as the copy spell is cast. Do you stop the copy spell? is it a bait? Is it worth the risk to try to wait for the real spell to try and shoot down both? The key difference in the phrasing is that the updated phrasing allows for more flexible game play patterns by the spell copier and more difficult choices to make for opponents. It's a minor difference, but can be a nice quality of life update to the functionality of spell copying.