Random Thoughts on BTT Limited

Biggest Disagreements with CFB articles on limited (Limited to 2 cards per color):

Blue
Siren of the Coast Fang (MindControl Tribute): Seems to be rated as one of the better uncommons. I think it is mediocre. Essentially equivalent in power to a Prescient Chimera. And since we get two packs of Chimeras/Horizon Scholars I am not interested.

Its often going to be a 4/4 flier which is obviously good but not a ton better then prescient chimera. However on an empty board or versus a 2/1 (or 1/1, 2/1, 2/3 etc) it becomes a 1/1 + shitty creature. Imagine a board of three 2/1s. Mind control can be worse than a 3/4.

Archetype of Imagination: This is much better than mind control tribute. It can single handedly win a game. It represents a fast clock with any other board presence. Of course you can get blown out by removal but that isn’t much different than many other game changing pants in history of magic. At least in this format instant speed removal is much harder to come by. Perfect curve topper in any aggressive blue deck, though if it could only stop the unbeatable Nessian Asp it would be perfect.

White
Hero of Iroas: Frank Karsten has it as the third best rare. Which mostly doesn’t make sense in the context of how he rates Akroan Skyguard. I have had the Hero twice, it makes about 2 mana per game (when you draw it). Usually only one of that mana is meaningful (in terms of improving your curve). That upside does not make it significantly better then skyguard/wingsteed/favored hoplite etc… White is the best color, but Hero is much closer to Skyguard than Endless Legions.

Akroan Phalanx: White/Red is the best deck (or at least tied for it). Phalanx is insane in that deck while serviceable if you can’t activate it. However its fairly easy to get a shimmering grotto or nylea’s prescence. I am definitely first picking it over Vanguard of Brimaz.

RED
Everflame Eidolon > Fall of Hammer  >> Bolt of Keranos and Searing Blood.

I think cheap removal is overrated since I only really want it vs ordeals (and edict hero). You also end up low on space in your heroic decks since combat tricks are also required. Everflame eidolon is cheap, trades with everything and a huge threat on an empty board.

Fearsome Temper: Second best common in the set. Can’t fathom a world I take searing blood over this. Post PT I started taking it over Bolt (which I didn’t have the balls for even though it felt right initially). Do not regret.

Green
Nessian’s Wild Ravager: Personal bias definitely plays a part here, but I think the card is very overrated again. Worse than nessian asp. If you are losing to huge flying creature (or aqueous form etc..) the ability isn’t saving you. It comes down slow (acceleration is now less common as well). Basically too interchangeable with other shitty green boom booms to be a first pick.

Mortal’s Resolve: Fantastic card. This is green’s wannabe God’s Willing . Should be in discussion for best green common in the set (at least your first copy).  On that note stop passing Boon of Erebos.

Black
For commons/uncommons:
1. Bile Blight
2. Asphyxiate
3. Servant of Tymaret

Don’t like Shrike Harpy in aggressive decks and its more replacable than the servant (though maybe slightly more powerful).

Welcome to the Jungle.

I played Zoo at the PT. It didn’t go well. Limited didn’t go well either.

I still think this is the best Zoo deck. But given  that 3 people played the deck and the other two hated it, maybe its time to let go. 

The List:
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
4 Loam Lion
4 Experiment One
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Flint Hoof Boar
3 Mutagenic Growth
4 Ghor-Clan Rampager
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
4 Tribal Flames

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Arid Mesa
1 Forest
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Blood Crypt
1 Temple Garden

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Stomping Ground

sb:
3 Pyroclasm
3 Scavenging Ooze
1 Destructive Revelry

1 Ancient Grudge

1 Ray of Revelation

1 Combust

1 Torpor Orb

1 Thrun, the Last Troll

1 Sword of WaP

1 Harm's Way

1 Stony silence.

On this Zoo deck:
16 one drop zoo makes you a 50/50 deck where 15% of the time you draw 3 one drops and they are just dead. You also get a bunch of free wins against people who just didn’t really respect zoo. The main question is why this is better than a bigger version of zoo.

Going large is a lot less effective in the mirror these days. It used to be that a 4/4 (or 4/5) blocking a 2/3 or 3/3 was always a 2 for 1. Mutagenic Growth and Rampager changed that. All of the sudden your opponent often has to block on turn 3 or 4 with his 5/5 knight and you are going to blow him out.

People were also focused on fighting Zoo with permanents so I wanted to have the best reach possible. Once the board gums up you often need to be able to deal 5-8 damage off of two cards. Enter Rampager/Tribal Flames. We tested the mirror a bunch and felt that the added instability/damage from lands was basically the never deciding factor in the mirror. Against most big decks you are the aggressor (and life is not relevant) and against the other smaller decks flood/screw and helixes were the most important things. Taking an additional 2 from your lands wasn’t a big deal.

3 drops in general suck because you end up having to build a manabase which wants to get to 3. This means you can’t operate on 1 or 2 effectively and when you flood you draw 5 or 6 lands instead of 4 or 5. I think 3’s also generally are a trade off between resilience and speed. For an open format I generally want speed.

Maindeck I wanted to be immune to 2 power creatures (electrolyze/grim lavamancer/magma spray) being relevant by themselves. E.g. I didn’t want the front half of voice, back half of Finks or other random 2-power dudes to do anything against me by themselves. Thus there are no Goblin Guides or Burning Tree Emissarys. In most matchups you are fast enough without them.

The biggest sideboard innovation came from Todd. His suggestion of Pyroclasm was excellent in a variety of very close matchups: Affinity, Pod, BW Tokens, UR Pyromancer. It was also randomly decent against things like Boggles. In those matchups they are often relying on chumping while stabilizing or racing. Being able to clear multiple blockers (for two mana) is often enough to swing the game.

You can’t really bring out more than 5 cards in any matchup with this deck, so the rest of the sideboard is to provide you with some disruptive cards that cover almost any and every matchup. You can have insane 4 drops for the UWR matchup because they path you.

I had concerns with 3 matchups:
1) Burn.
2) UWR.

3) Twin decks built like our team’s. Tempo twin decks (such as ones that top 8ed) are much easier to beat because Spellskite is the real problem card. Didn’t think most people would play the more combo-ish version.

The Manabase is a work of art. Avoiding the chronic Steam Vents + Scalding Tarn combo that seems perennial in almost every tribal flames deck.

On Deck Selection:
The reason the top pros didn’t do well (in my opinion) is because even if you found the best archetypes with 3-5 days to go it didn’t matter. You weren’t going to be able to play/build them proficiently. Not having experts in the "hard" decks also made some of the fringe strategies seem better than they probably were. For example I know that going into the week of testing I thought that Scapeshift crushed Pod. I still think its favorable but much closer than I previously thought.

2-3 days before the PT I thought Pod was the best deck. But, after watching Josh McClain, talking to Sam Pardee and trying a few games for myself, I realized I couldn’t play it. I just don’t have the intuition to be able to pilot the deck with anything close to optimality.

In addition to Pod, I was confident we also had the best Affinity list (courteousy Alex Majlaton), the best Burn deck (courteousy Glenn McIelwain and team refinements), the Best Zoo deck (me and Todd) as well as the best Twin list (Glenn again).

Burn: This was our best anti Zoo deck. But it was a bit of a glass cannon and I (pretty much alone on the team) thought there was a good chance that Zoo would be a small part of the metagame (~10%) or not at the top tables.

Affinity: Early in testing we were all looking at cutting affinity hate or playing more generic cards (e.g. Destructive Revelry over Stony Silence). We didn’t think affinity would be a big player. When everyone starts believing that, it becomes the perfect time to robot some people. I am not good at affinity so it wasn’t really an option for me. It also turned out that other people kept their affinity hate for the most part.

Twin: For the metagame Face to Face was testing I thought Glenn had broken it. It was a better version of Burn as far as I was concerned. The all in Twin version had much better game vs Zoo and sacrificed against U-Control decks and Thoughtseize decks. Neither of which I thought would be big players (but I was open to being wrong here). However after testing a few games I was miserable. I think in 10 games I won 1. It was a weird headspace where I couldn’t beat the deck and I couldn’t win with it. I was drawing 3 Splinter Twins in every game or missing 4^th land drops. My mind said the deck was great, my practice said it sucked. On the other hand I was confident in every card choice for Zoo.

Zoo: From our testing even the decks built to beat Zoo only won 40% of the time. And doing so contorted your deck to be worse against everyone who wasn’t trying so hard. Thus I thought the top tables would just be the versions of decks where they didn’t try so hard to beat Zoo (and that is essentially what Sam/Jacob/Josh did). Unfortunately most people decided to just jam 3 Anger of the Gods main and it didn’t hurt them because everyone was doing it.

Going forward I would be okay playing this deck again. The only matchup I wouldn’t want to play against for sure in the top 8 was Sean’s deck. Storm might also be bad, but I assume it will be unplayable in the near future as people go back to having some hate for it. I have no idea how Blue Moon plays out, but I know they have a lot of cards I normally don’t mind seeing across from me. Maybe their LD is good enough.

Facts of MODO

There are a lot of conversations about why MODO (Magic Online) is broken. This post is designed to collect information to inform that conversation. People correctly criticize me for opinions without facts. So I am going to try and go the other way.

I do not have any access to truly insider information from Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro.

What I do have access to:
Hasbro Financials (this includes transcripts from Investor Day, Accounting and Financial Statements, Annual Investor Report).

Facebook Comments (assorted from friends and acquaintences)

LinkedIn Profiles for various WotC employees

Hipstersofthecoast.com historical review of the MODO program (highly suggested reading).

Various salary and employment websites (glassdoor, salarylist, careerbliss)

Reddit, Wikipedia, Google etc..

The TL;DR estimates

Magic Revenues: $360M

Magic Players Worldwide: 3.3M - 12M

MODO Revenues: $140M

MODO Employees: 50-150

MODO Players: 500,000 - 700,000

MODO Developer Salaries: $60,000 (Industy Median is $75,000)

MODO Costs: $60-120M

The biggest problem with accuracy is that my statements will aggregate data from 2011-2013. And the timeline isn’t exactly clear even to me. So you might feel that the following answers are an unfair characterization of the situation.

What is the Problem with MODO?

            Hipstersofthecoast explains the problem with version 2 (note current client is v3 and Beta is v4) as said by Randy Buehler:

            “You might think that we could add more servers to deal with this problem, but that’s just not how Magic Online works. We can add more game servers to handle as many games as people want to play, but there is only one master server that handles everything else that goes on (chat, trading, ratings, etc.). Every time any user does anything outside of a “duel,” Magic Online has to spend some time thinking about that user. As we add more cool new features to the game, the amount of memory that needs to be allocated to each user keeps going up. At some point, when enough users are logged in doing enough things, the whole master server comes crashing down.”

I would highly suggest reading the full article here:

http://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2013/11/what-we-learned-16/

From what I can tell they attempted to go from one server organizing all non-game activity to multiple, but that clearly has not worked. It is unclear if we currently operate on one server still or multiple servers which do not scale well. Further discussion on Reddit suggests that MODO is built on antiquated language/framework (.NET /non-scalable etc…). I am in no way qualified to tell if this is true (EDIT 11/20: Reddit has also since commented that I am wrong).

           

How is Magic Doing?

Very good. Based on my readings of financial statements, the has been between 150%-300% growth in revenues during the 4 years since 2008. Additionally there is an expected growth of 35% in 2013.

Based on those numbers we would have revenues of 250-500M (Million) dollars this year.

Alternatively Hasbro reports 12M active magic players (including digital). Assuming each only spends 30$ per year on average. Then revenues are $360M. Hasbro’s revenues from “Games” is $1.2 Billion. It has stated that Magic is the biggest brand in the portfolio. Thus the the estimates seem reasonable.

*EDIT 11/20: The Hasbro 2012 report states there are 3.3M players currently. Despite their being an NBC article which quotes 12M as of 2013. The only official Hasbro source which uses the 12M number is a few years old, so I will be editing the range of players.

How is Hasbro doing? Any reason to think they are pinching pennies?

            As a company Hasbro had a rough 2012 (in terms of stock price). It has since rebounded during 2013 (though that was simply consistent with US Large Cap market in general). During 2012 things were bad enough that Hasbro was engaging in layoffs and restructuring as a cost saving measure.

            However there is little evidence that Hasbro makes many decisions re: the Magic the Gathering brand. I have read (in a statement by Aaron Forsythe I believe) that Hasbro has little input on the decisions to manage Wizards of the Coast properties. Sean McGowan (an analyst at Needham & Co.) says “The Best thing [Hasbro] did was leave [Magic] alone for several years.” when discussing the explosion in Magic’s popularity.

            In all financial statements Hasbro touts Magic as its model product. They  reference digital (though in most cases Duels of the Planeswalkers) and paper growth. Many people associated with MODO since 2008 (when Buehler et al. were fired), have been promoted. This includes Worth, Arron and Elaine Chase. 

Unclear whether MODO growth has mimiced paper.

How many people play MODO?

Note I will use multiple methodologies to arrive at different estimate and see how much they align.

According to the Linked In of Vice President of Digital Technology – ( See description below).  He alludes to “Direct Brand revenue impact of 150M+”.

I remember seeing somewhere that MODO is equivalent to North American revenues for Magic, was also equal to about 30-50% of overall revenues. Assuming this is true (it was according to Worth in 2007), and using the base number of 360M revenues overall, we estimate MODO has a revenue of 144M.

Assuming the average player spends $100 a year (which seems reasonable), then there are 1.4M people who touch MODO in a given year.

Based on personal observation there are only ~5000 people on MODO at peak times. Assuming each person plays 24 hours a year on average there would be 730,000 players.

According to Reddit other sources place MODO playerbase at 500,000.

So the True Number is likely somewhere between 500,000-1,400,000.

Note if we use the low end, then the average player is spending ~$300 year. Making MODO the highest revenue game per player that I could find.

To keep scale in perspective - a year old estimate puts League of Legends players at 32M active per month. Their revenues are in the $200M estimate range (Wikipedia).

How much resources are thrown at MODO?
            According to the Linked In of Vice President of Digital Technology he is “Responsible for managing the technology development and operations for the Magic Online, free-to-play digital objects business, Duels of the Planeswalkers game title (XBLA, Steam, iTunes, Android Market) and the subscription D&Di digital experience.”

He states he has a Budget of 40M+. Note the budget presumably wouldn't cover the fixed costs of developing MODO that he has no control over (office space, legal etc). I would assume MODO costs at least 150-300% of that budget.$60-120M.

He also mentions having 200 employees (150 of whom work onsite). Wizards of the Coast has 1000-5000 employees total according to glassdoor. There are 550 on LinkedIn. Given that Hasbro has 6000 employees total (based on company documents), 600-1000 overall seems about right for WotC.

Assuming MODO comprises 2/3s of the Digital Team at WotC there are 100 people working on it.

To put this in perspective Riot Games which makes league of legends has 2013 estimates of 200M in revenues and 1000 employees. MODO should require less employees (because actual game design is not part of the product). Blizzard (with Revenues in the area of $2B) had 7061 employees in 2012.

Are WotC software developers underpaid?

            According to Facebook WotC software interns earn $4000 less for a summer then other major software firms in Seattle. Getting an accurate measure of compensation for senior developers is much more complicated since few people actually report salaries.

Salary List Reports the following for Developers:

                        

                       “Wizards of the Coast Software Developer average salary is $59,000, median salary is $59,000 with a salary range from $59,000 to $59,000. Wizards of the Coast Software Developer salaries are collected from government agencies and companies. Each salary is associated with a real job position. Wizards of the Coast Software Developer salary statistics is not exclusive and is for reference only. They are presented "as is" and updated regularly.”

The median for Software Developers overall is $75,000 (average is slightly higher).

            If you look at the last 10 employee reviews on glassdoor.com for WotC, 7 out of the 10 rated Wizards 2/5 or worse on compensation. The 3 people who rated them higher worked in Graphics, Art and Game Design. A couple of people who interviewed for software positions complained that interviews were conducted by recruiters and not people working directly with the product. Those complaints cited that recruiters had a lack of knowledge (both technical and regarding magic). Take this with a grain of salt since I assume most complainees did not receive job offers. I am unsure how common the use of recruiters is in the software industry. Blizzard had similar people surrounding it.

Also note that Hasbro is routinely voted one of the best places to work in the United States (via Fortune Magazine). However most of the benefits are perks and not direct compensation.

Are 3^rd Party Developers a realistic option?
            Hasbro already pays EA studios to develop games for 8 of its various brands. It has also acquired a majority stake in Backflip Studios (a mobile game developer). Duels of the Planeswalkers is developed by a third party and the original version of MODO was developed by a professional studio. Current versions are made inhouse.

Does wizards have a track record re: inhouse development. Are they planning to move it out of house?

            I would refer you the Hipsters’ article linked above. Wizards has repeatedly made comments similar to the 11/2013 blog post. They have also removed premiere events before. The last time they were down for about 4-6 months. The 3.0 version was delayed by about 18 months (on top of the 18 month schedule).

Wizards is currently hiring Senior Magic Developers/Testers/Technology Project managers to work on MODO (as of Nov 5/2013).

Final Thoughts on the HoF and the Skill Paradox

A final thought on the HoF.

PT Top 8s in the modern era are worth less than PT Top 8s from earlier in magic’s history. This is in spite of the average modern player being much more skilled.

**What I am writing about is an adaptation of well known theory in investing, Sabremetrics and Poker. For those interested in a more detailed analysis I suggest Mauboussin and googling the ‘Skill Paradox.’.

The Paradox of Skill

We start with the fairly simple assumption that

Performance = Skill + Luck

We also assume each person’s luck is drawn each tournament from some distribution that is equal to all players. E.g. LSV might have been be luckier in PT Kyoto than Nassif because he opened Nicol Bolas at that specific tournament, however they had equal chances to open it.

Because a person’s skill and luck are uncorrelated, we arrive at the Paradox of Skill:

Variance of Population Performance =

Variance of Skill in population + Variance of Luck in Population

As the Variance in skill gets smaller, the variance associated with luck starts to dominate in determining the overall outcome of tournaments.

Consider the following example:

A)    A PT in 1999, where Jon Finkel is far and away the best player. The 100^th best player barely knows how to draft and the rest of population is somewhere in between.

B)     A PT in 2013 where, the top 100 players are all equal to skill Jon Finkel @1999 skill level.

It should be clear that someone’s final position in PT A is strongly correlated with skill. In other words we can be confident that the person in 8^th was better than the person in 16^th.

In PT B, the opposite would be true. The only difference between someone who gets 8^th and 15^th was the amount of luck they had in that specific tournament.

Assumptions I am using:

1)      The skill dispersion (especially at the top of the game) is much lower today than it was historically. In other words, the top 50 players in the game are much closer today (even if they are all much better) than they were historically.

And that’s it. Everything I have read from Kai, Finkel and Kibler on the topic would seem to support the view, but I haven’t bothered to try and prove the above assumption.

Just to reinforce that this situation isn’t completely impossible. In a world where the top 50 players attend 3 PTs a year and each have 10% chance to top8 a PT: we would still expect one person to top 8 two PTs a year. In other words the fact that some players do consistently well isn't enough to disprove assumption 1. If you have ever heard or read about the birthday paradox, the same principles apply.

Practical Implications

We are seriously overweighting T8s and wins in the modern era competitors. Instead we should focus on a looser metric (e.g. 32s/64s etc…). Rate metrics and consistency become much more important. For older players, top 8s are more likely to imply that they were one of the best 8 players in the tournament. And a top 32 is more likely to imply that they were NOT one of the top 8.

Recently in his SCG article Reid Duke made the point we shouldn’t punish anyone for having a few bad initial years on the PT. And I really wanted this to be true (Because me obv). But if we now know that luck is the major determinant in people’s short term success rates, things like 3 Yr medians should mean less for modern competitors. Forgiving a few “bad years” makes it more likely you select someone who's results are variance driven (as opposed to skill).

Putting this together for HoF implications I think should go as follows. Suppose someone has 2 PT Top 8s and 6 PT top 16s. In the Modern Age: I think “Hes unlucky”. If he is old school: I think “he probably wasn’t that good”.

Focusing on results through this lens I think we could argue:
Underrated (in no particular order):

1)      Shouta Yasooka

2)      Hoaen (do we consider him “modern”?)

3)      Osyp

Overrated
      1)   Edel.

2)      Saito (if “Modern”)

3)      Ikeda

4)      Gary

Final Unrelated HoF Thoughts:

Stats I used in my previous formula driven HoF Ballot:
Longevity = # of PTs, # of Pts

Consistency = PT Median, 3 Yr Median, Difference in Medians, T16s, GP Top 8s

Best in World = 3 Yr Median, POYs

Place in History = These are indicator variables (e.g. are you in the top 20%). In other words having 4 PT Top 8s is the same as zero because 80% of ballotees had 4 or less.

Top 8s, Money List, GP Top 8s, Pro Points.

Skill = T16s per PT, Median Finish, POYs per years played.

My Ballot (which I don’t have):

1. LSV

2. Edel + Ikeda

These are the only two who are not top 5 stat wise. I think pioneers in a field deserve credit. I am willing to go beyond the stats if there is proof they did something truly unique. I feel the case for Ikeda is weaker than Edel (he has more similar analogues in Fujita, Oishi etc..). I could be convinced to vote for Osyp (easily the most underrated candidate on the ballot) instead.

3. Shota Yasooka.

Stats + Skill Paradox already implied he was one of the best players skill wise on the ballot. Juza’s interview on cfb was a nice (if unnecessary) confirmation.

4. Saito.

1.      He was (or at least top 3) the best deckbuilder in the world for a long period of time. Still seems like he might be.

2.      He is one of the best players I have seen play. I can sometimes remember individual matches where I was blow away by the play I saw. Saito in TSP block is amongst those. Ditto San Juan. Most players I have talked to feel that he was easily amongst the best when he played.

3.      He was an angle shooter, but a lot of people on the PT are. Stalling in particular seems like one of the most hypocritical things for many players to call someone out on (based on my PT experience). So while he might be the scummiest of successful players (which I doubt), other players are close to that level. This might be too much apologizing for someone who is arguably a cheater (I differentiate between rules lawyers/cheaters/angle shooters), but I don’t believe (based on 1 and 2) that his results were significantly impacted by his angel shooting.

The honourable mentions: BenS, Efro, Gary.

One Game

It can be hard to figure out exactly how good you are.

You can play a whole game and make zero interesting decisions.

Or you could spend eight turns finding out you have a long way to go.

Three friends went to GP Providence. We had practiced a lot. We had a history of some success (2^nd at the last Team GP) etc. But this isn’t a feel good tournament report. And it isn’t an appeal for pity.

I have finally found some time (and my notes) to do some honest reflection on facing two (maybe 3) future hall of famers; and then being weighed, being measured and  being  found wanting. Not a tournament report. Not a match report.

So don't call this a report so much as a story about one game against the best in the world.

Before the 2^nd draft on Day 2, we were 9-3. That’s not the end of the world, but it is not a great place to face Cheon, Froelich and LSV.

I was summarily dispatched by LSV in the middle seat. Jamie beat Paul. Which means it would be Maksym vs Efro for all the marbles. In game 2, we played well and managed to find all the right attacks. It was one of those games, where you didn’t necessarily outplay your opponent. But rather we had managed not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I think most grinders would know the feeling.

So its time for game 3. The good news is that Maksym’s deck had Aetherling, Pack Rat and Soul Ransom. The bad news is that last year their team had more pro points then our lifetime totals combined. We were fighting the civil war of Ratinum. Efro’s deck was an aggressive boros deck splashing blue for Ral Zarek and Beck//Call. We knew about at least one Weapon Surge and were on the draw for game 3.

Jamie and I do a mental high five when they take their mulligan and we see a rat. At least I think we do. Jamie’s probably too a nice guy to revel in our opponent’s misfortune, but I hate imagining myself on the solo end of a high five.

Grade = A++. Opponent on 6. We have turn 2 rat with 3 lands in hand. Played this part perfectly.

Grade = A. Nothing to screw up. Yet.

There are some small set of scenarios where not playing pack rat is correct (and Maksym broached the topic). However, against an aggressive deck I don’t think you can possibly afford to be that cautious.

Grade: = A. Didn’t punt by not playing rat. No victories are too small for this story.

TURN 3

At 14 life we face our first real decision.

3) Should we spend a turn making rats or play a barrier?

3a) If we make a rat can we afford not to block?

If we don’t block next turn we will be at 10 (if he plays another creature), or 6 if he just double pumps.  After that we will have three 3/3s, but his Truefire Paladin is an abyss and his other guys are trading for rats.

3b) So we have to block if we make a rat. What are optimal blocks?
Presumably we would just block firstblade. A trick gets really costly here since we would be at ~10 with one rat facing 2 creatures. And again Truefire is close to abyss mode (assuming a 4^th land).

3c) Whats the goal here?

We have soul ransom (he mulliganed) and tons of gas. So we just want this game to go as long as possible. Which means preserving life even if that means throwing away cards.

Hover Barrier makes the most sense in this context. Its going to be especially good if his 4^th land doesn’t allow for double pumps (e.g. isn’t a mountain). A reasonable guess given his mulligan and being on the play.

Grade: A. Found the important strategy for the game.

TURN 4

Cluestone gives him double pump mana. Truefire gives a way to grow an army that could potentially fight rats. The whole game is going to shit. But he only has one card in hand and we have Soul Ransom. We could also Fatal Fumes here. Millenial gargoyle, call of the Nightwing and making PR#2 all don’t do enough defensively.

4) Should we Fumes or Soul Ransom?

4a) Assume Fumes whats the optimal target?

We can’t afford to let him have guildmage in the long game and Soul Ransom isn’t a permanent answer. So we would have to fumes guildmage. He then attacks with both.

4a – II) If he attacks with both what do we block?

Chumping with rat seems unadvisable (but maybe we should of considered it), so where to put the Barrier is question. Paladin would kill it setting us up with a Pack Rat vs his board of two creatures and being at 10. We would ransom paladin, he would discard two and we would still be at 10 and have to chump with Pack Rat or go to 2. Not a winnable board state.

If we block the Viashino, he pumps twice we go to 6 and Soul Ransom his Truefire. He discards and we put Hover Barrier in front. Leaving us with a rat at 4 life versus his two creatures. Not a winnable board state.

4b) What about Soul Ransom? Optimal Target?

I think its safe to assume he is going to crack the Soul Ransom to get back whatever we take. If he gets it back immediately, taking the Truefire is better since he can’t attack right away and the paladin isn’t useful summoning sick. If he is holding a good card (or draws one) he might wait a turn or two to crack it. In which case taking the guildmage is better. I didn’t want to give him option value (e.g. the ability to draw cards just make dudes), so I suggested we take the Sunhome Guildmage.

Grade: B. Not playing the fatal fumes is good and not an obvious line. In retrospect taking the guildmage might have been bad, since we can always fatal it the next turn if he decides to wait.

TURN 5

After Efro plays Goblin Rally, its obvious hes setting up to get his guildmage next turn.

5) Should we make a play, mainphase fatal fumes or hold up fatal fumes?

5a) Can we afford for him to get guildmage back?
No.

5b) So mainphase or wait for him to discard?

The first question is the interaction between Soul Ransom and Removal. Short answer is we get to draw 2. But, we had to ask a judge to confirm. Luckily LSV seemed to get the wrong read here (based on us asking the judge question). Maybe he assumed we knew basic rules interactions. Joke’s on him.

5b2) What happens if we wait, they figure it out and do nothing?

Well we have pack rat so our mana won’t really be wasted. And they won’t be able to attack. Seems like waiting is fine.

Grade A-: I think we made the right play, but it should have been obvious that we had removal because we had to talk to a judge. A massive leak which better players would avoid.

TURN 6

On his turn 6, efro discards two cards and we respond with fatal fumes. I have listed the 3 cards drawn on our turn 6 (two from Soul Ransom). He still gets to attack his board into our Rat + Barrier. We could also chump with a rat.

6a) Who are we blocking with Hover Barrier?

If we don't block Truefire, we go to two life. We would also be facing 6 creatures, with 4 potential blockers. So we need to block Truefire Paladin.

6b) Should we chump with rat?
We need to start making creatures at this point and Rat can make 2 a turn. Can’t afford to chump block (on Efro’s T6). 

For our turn 6 making two rats is the only way to make two blockers and not die. He has 6 attackers and we have 3 blockers during his turn 7.

Grade: A. Made all the right plays, though it is not like there were real decisions.

TURN 7

After he attacks with everything (4 tokens, firstblade, truefire). We make 2 rats going up to 3 total and chump + kill 2 tokens. On our turn we face a bunch of possibilities given that we have 2 rats in play.

7) What are the options?
Plan to make two more rats on his turn (while holding up Cancel). Suppose we make the third rat and block everything but one token. He can either pump (+ first strike) his Paladin or not. If he does we make the 4^th rat going to one but ending up with 3 rats. If he keeps his mana up we can trade boards and have cancel for his threat, followed by a threat. We can beat a burn spell (assuming it costs more than 2 mana) with this line.

Alternatively we can play a land and cast CotN.

7a) Why cast Call of the Nightwing (CotN)? Why Not?

He can’t block the ciphered rat (because we can make a third rat in combat). We end up with 2 bats, 2 rats (1 untapped) and the ability to make 1 more rat, but no Cancel. Our ciphered rat is unlikely to get in again. This is fine if he draws nothing.

However we lose to burn and maybe top decked tricks. We are also lower on cards in hand (because we need to make another land drop_ so in a stalemate we could conceivably lose given his abyss Paladin.

Jamie and I thought we could afford to play around top decks (and hold up cancel).

Maksym wanted to CotN and try and end the game. Maksym was losing a game with turn 2 Pack Rat, so we overruled him. Just kidding. Kind of. Fuck Karma.

Grade: B. Upon further reflection I think it is definitely a close call. Also an important note was that his land didn’t make red.

TURN 8

With zero cards in hand. Untap. Upkeep. Efro draws his card.

Looks at LSV.

Cheon  ~ “We have to attack or eventually his rat will get us”.

Lucas -  “100% they drew weapon surge”.

Obviously we go into the tank.

8a) Could this be a bluff?

Very unlikely. If we didn’t have cancel we are essentially forced to make two rats and quad block. This goes very poorly for them if they don’t have anything (the board becomes our 3 rats versus their paladin + one token). Its worse then just sending Paladin probably. And since we are dead, we can’t really afford to play around anything.

This just reinforces the Weapon Surge read. I would like to think they give us enough credit to realize that bluff here doesn’t work. On the other hand the way they Hollywooded before attacking is a signal they aren’t giving us too much credit.

8b) Then what Sherlock?

Well we have to make a dude because we are dead without 3 blockers.

Lucas – “First things first, make a third rat”.

Sometimes you need to be precise. To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about what to discard. It was obvious to me that we needed the first rat, and I wanted to take an action to buy more thinking time. 

Except we needed to think first, because what we discard is important.

Unfortunately we discarded Deathcult Rogue.

8c) Can we make 4 guys and block?
Not if we actually believe he has weapon surge since he can plague wind us.

8d) What happens if we block only 3 guys?

He can weapon surge or use 2 abilities from Paladin, but not both.

If he decides to surge, then we cast Cancel, he makes paladin a 4/2. That ends with us at 1 life facing a token. Him with zero cards, but we would have CotN and Deathcult Rogue. Pretty good spot.

Except we discarded Deathcult Rogue. So we would have Island and CotN When he attacks with Token we have to chump with token. And it’s a topdeck war with us at 1 life. He has a cluestone he can crack to find an extra card as well. That isn’t great for us.

If he doesn’t cast weapon surge and instead makes a 4/2 first strike we can make another rat. He loses a goblin token and a Viashino Firstblade. We are at 1 life, but have 3 rats. Even better then above.

8e) Ok so, assuming he players correct (and weapon surges), what do we do now that have discarded Deathcult Rogue?

Then the doubt creeps in.

What made me so sure he had drawn weapon surge? Obviously a snap read is based on intuition but if you put a gun to my head how sure would I have been really? 70%? 90%? How likely are we to win the games where he is actually bluffing, and we just call?

Some people would tell you the pressure was overwhelming or they felt the world on their shoulders. But it was nothing so dramatic. My lucky history in Magic has given me wealth of experience on being embarrassed during feature matches.

Instead I gave my team “the speech”.

Lucas: “We fucked up. We are probably 10-20% to win if play around my initial read. We are close to 100% to win if we don’t play around and my read was wrong.

What do you guys want to do?”

Them: YOLO.

Oddly enough this seems to primarily be the refrain of those in the process of committing suicide.

We would be no exception.

Final Thoughts:

They had the weapon surge. We lost.

We played a game for 8 turns (7 on our side) and made at least 3 mistakes, 2 of which may have cost us the match.

We played a turn 2 pack rat and lost.

Because we made the perfect read against one of the best teams in the world, we had a chance to win even when they were drawing pretty well.

Its unfortunate that Magic chose that moment in time to be a skill game.

FIN.

HoF Voting. Quant Style.

I don’t want to get into an argument about the use of intangibles or subjective achievements (penalties as well) for use in HoF voting. This is just going to be a simple explanation and presentation of a mathematical approach to judging deservedness. Its not necessarily how I would vote exactly, but I think its a more a honest method then most.

1. The first cut.

Due to time constraints (aka lazy constraints) I only considered players with 5 top 16s or more. The cut is somewhat arbitrary, but it left me with 25 considerations and it seems like below that number you would have to rely on subjective arguments anyways (e.g. Pikula and Herberholz’s of the world).

Once I did this, I did all analysis WITHOUT names attached, to remove as much bias (during the methodology creation) as possible.

2. The meat of the method.

I created 5 super categories. Each one has multiple components. Then I gave a weight to each of these categories. This creates an overall score for each player and the top 5 scores were reported. I like this methodology since it can tell you where a player has a deficit or strength. If you disagree with my weights it simple enough to see how the rankings change based on your own personal preferences. For example, Lauren Lee doesn’t think consistency should matter whereas my friend Sam seemed to think it much more important.

Below I list the 5 categories, the weight assigned to each, an example of a subcomponent and some discussion of players who excel or fail in the category. Finally I might add some color commentary.

Note some weights changed since I posted on facebook based on discussions with people I respect.

Longevity (10%):  

How long was the player at a high level of magic. The simplest subcomponent is # of PTs played.

Top 3 (always in order)
Ikeda, Yasooka, Stark

Bottom 3 (no order unless mentioned)

Krempels, Justice, Soh/Kaji.

This is one the places where Justice gets really punished. If you put little weight on Longevity, I think its hard to argue that he shouldn’t get in.

Consistency (15%):

Was the person consistent at the highest level of play. PT Median Finish is here. Note this is somewhat independent of how long the player played.

Top 3)
LSV, Efro, Osyp/Mori

Bottom 3)

Jurkovic, Tiago Chan, Geoffrey Siron

I am not sure that consistency should be that important. If someone was bad early on in their PT career, but became dominant I could fully imagine they belong in the HoF.

Best in World (25%):

Could we consider the player amongst the best in the world during some extended period of time. I think its hard to argue that someone is among the best of all time if you can’t even provide evidence that they were the best during their time. 3 YR Median is one of the subcomponents.

Top 3)
LSV (Get used to this), Saito, Wafo-Tapa

Bottom 3)
Reitzl (Booooo), Ikeda (first good argument for why he shouldn’t be in), Jurkovic

Place in History (25%): How unusual is their resume? Do they have something that really stands out, makes you say “Wow that would be hard to do”. How many standard deviations above the mean are their stats.

Top 3)
LSV, Saito, Yasooka (15 Gp Top 8s, 16^th on Money List, insanely high pro points)

Bottom 3)

Krempels (no idea who he is for good reason?),  Tiago Chan, Justice (0 GP Top 8s, almost no pro points).

Again this tries to quantify place in history, I know lots of people would argue Justice should be higher but I need a data point and I don’t have one.

Skill (25%): This is probably the most controversial category, I think even if you had low skill and had results from the above categories you might deserve to be in. %Top 16s is an example of skill.

Top 3)
Justice, LSV (now I wanna see a Justice/LSV grudge match), Efro

Bottom 3)

Tiago Chan, Ikeda, Fabiano

4^th was a tie between Johns/Kaji.

The Final Top 10 (with scores and lower is better):

1. LSV (1.65)
2. Saito (6.4)
3. Yasooka (7.55)
4. Efro (7.85)
5. Osyp (8.1)
6. Gary (8.1)
7. Stark (8.45)
8. Wafo-Tapa (8.85)
9. Mori (8.9)
10.  Johns (9.05)

What do the top 10 have to do make a move into top 5:

Gary – literally anything to break the tie with Osyp.

Stark – Scores worst in Skill (low Median) and BiW (low 3 Year Median), which I am sure many would disagree with. Honestly just weighting those two areas slightly lower and hes in.

Wafo-Tapa – Consistency and Longevity were is two weakest areas and the ban definitely didn’t help that.

Mori – Skill and BiW need improvement.

Johns – Longevity is far and away his worst score. Hard Time to start PTQing IMO.

Justice – If you put 0 weight on Longevity/Place in History, Justice becomes a slam dunk candidate (2^nd to LSV, with Saito falling to 8^th in this case).

Welcome to Vegas

Welcome to Las Vegas

Vegas is going to be the largest magic tournament ever. And its going to be the largest by a big margin. Which makes it an interesting exercise to try and figure out the implications for how that effects records and the cut to top 8.

For those who read my facebook notes, you will have seen my previous attempt to make a guess at what records would top 4 the Player’s Championship. Something I nailed with reasonable accuracy. The methodology is fairly simple. I assume everyone is 50/50 in every matchup and then simulate it a crapload of times. Draws are not allowed.

There were 3 problems adapting this framework to Vegas:

• How to incorporate byes.

I figured Vegas would have about 4000 people and a large number of those would have some number of byes. The original program isn’t designed to handle that, so I figured I would compensate by just setting the number of participants at 5000.

• Time to Run

The initial version was pretty slow, which wasn’t a big deal when I had to simulate a 12 round tournament with 16 people. I had to make some pretty big adjustments to speed it up for a 15 round 5000 person tournament. I don’t think I made any errors when making these adjustments, but who knows.

• Trials.

I am down to about 100 trials because of how long this thing takes. The information regarding 12–3 players is based on 10 trials.

Results

1. The record needed to top 8 will be 13–2. In all 100 trials 8th place was 13–2.

2. Between 17–20 people end the tournament with that record or better. The average was 18.72. So on average 10 people missed the cut at 13–2.

3. An average of 87.8 people were 12–3 or better. Which means 20+ people were missing the money with a 12–3 record. The first GP I ever travelled to (GerryT winning in Denver) that record was a lock for t8. This actually makes me suspicious that I did something wrong (because the result is so ridiculous), but I haven’t found what it could be yet.

Practical Implications

1. You can drop at X–4.

2. Draws are much better then they would otherwise be, especially late on day 1.

   For example, assume you are 7-1 going into the last round of Day 1. A draw is going to be significantly better than a loss here assuming you care about t8 only. With either a draw or a loss you have to win out to have a shot at Top8ing. But with a draw you are 100% to top 8 assuming you win out. With a loss you are almost 100% eliminated from top 8.
   

3. If you are 7–2 on day 1, your odds of top 8ing even if you win out are essentially zero.

Breakers are going to a matter a lot for the top 8 cut, so losing early is costly (See above). Though you can still obviously qualify for dublin.