[Article] Information Cascades in Magic
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Ah, I remember Ghost Dad.
A good article and the process described fits the dynamic of the Academy. I would encourage anyone interested in brewing and improving their Vintage play to develop a network of players to bounce ideas off of.
I would also add that there is no reason why one cannot rely on public and private information. I collect more public information than anyone, yet I generally play jank trying to test varying ideas about the metagame or explore new space and interactions. Public information in this context is used to challenge my own opinions and better refine my knowledge.
For instance, I first started collecting data at a time where Oath was thought to beat Mentor. The theory of course was that Mentor was a creature and Oath was good against creatures. I played Mentor and my personal experience was strongly against that...I even thought Delver with Cruise beat Traditional Oath lists, but that metagame was too short-lived to really confirm it. The data robustly supported my experience and arguably holds to this day.
Curious why you decided to necro a 13 year-old article though. Do you feel something about the current metagame is feeding into an information cascade?
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@chubbyrain said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
Curious why you decided to necro a 13 year-old article though. Do you feel something about the current metagame is feeding into an information cascade?
My immediate thought when I saw this was the Fastbond deck. I don’t think any iteration of the Fastbond deck is good since for a turn one kill to occur you need 6 cards compared to the just 4 needed to turn 1 kill with DPS. It also depends too heavily upon a few cards that are easy to disrupt, yet it puts up decent results. I think mostly because people are just excited to play with unrestricted Fastbond.
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Also I think tournament results are hard to take too seriously when you have Belcher win a tournament out of nowhere and then disappear from the format for the next year.
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That assumes that you need a turn 1 kill for the deck to be good. You really don't...That's the advantage of the Prison-Shops component. You can win the game on the back of Spheres and Wasteland effects. Turn 1 Trinisphere with Wasteland effects remains very, very good. The deck does have to go through the process of adaptation as the metagame shifts to combat it and it becomes a known entity. I will have to do a write up about the Fastbond deck as this seems to be a misconception of the list. I will say that the data doesn't portray the deck as bad...It posted a reasonable metagame saturation of 12.5% with a plus-50% win rate. The records were polarized which suggests that several people who picked up the list did not understand some of the interactions. And from watching the games, I think people did miss things like Glacial Chasm enabling the combo kill.
As for Belcher, the only person that overreacted to that was you... Most people recognized that the sky wasn't falling, there was not reason to restrict Grim Monolith, and were happy that Belcher had it's day in the sun.
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Yeah but the turn 1 Trinisphere requires a lot, 4 lands and a Fastbond? When you could just tap a Workshop. It has two components, prison and combo, but it isn’t good at either.
And I’m not trying to shade anyone working with the deck. Just my immediate reaction to how this article applies to the current meta. I believe, without Gush, Fastbond has a low ceiling.
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Lands is a meta deck just like it is in legacy. It is a dog vs combo, but when there's a plethora of Xerox keeping combo away, lands can come prey on these strategies.
It's a rock paper scissors relationship.
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@desolutionist said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
Yeah but the turn 1 Trinisphere requires a lot, 4 lands and a Fastbond? When you could just tap a Workshop. It has two components, prison and combo, but it isn’t good at either.
Wait, What? I'm not sure I understand. It runs 4 Workshops. You can even Crop Rotate into a Workshop. When I introduced the concept for the deck on stream right after Fastbond was unrestricted, I talked about using Workshop was to compensate for the times you didn't have Fastbond. Are we talking about the same deck that has put up multiple trophies, a top 4 in the playoffs and another top 4 in the most recent challenge? Because as far as I know, that is the most successful and popular list. There was one other list that was a more traditional Legacy style lands list, but that style of deck has not be anywhere close to as successful.
@Tittliewinks22 That might be true in Legacy but it's not true in Vintage, at least not with the PrisonBond version. Xerox has been one of the tougher matchups because of Narset, Force of Negation, and Swords. Well, also the restricted Blue spells that let them find those answers in a relevant period of time. Your Combo matchup is much improved because you can reliably turn 1 Null Rod and Sphere your opponent, then Strip lock them.
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This article seems more about net decking than any particular deck. To which there is a truly obscene amount of net decking on MODO. It’s not even just the good decks anymore. So the format then gets littered with these suboptimal trash deck builds that get played because someone recognized the name of the deck builder. There is such an incredible amount of variance and luck in Vintage matches that it doesn’t really matter though. Win a die roll and you are favored with pretty much any pile.
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@chubbyrain said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
@desolutionist said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
Yeah but the turn 1 Trinisphere requires a lot, 4 lands and a Fastbond? When you could just tap a Workshop. It has two components, prison and combo, but it isn’t good at either.
Wait, What? I'm not sure I understand. It runs 4 Workshops. You can even Crop Rotate into a Workshop. When I introduced the concept for the deck on stream right after Fastbond was unrestricted, I talked about using Workshop was to compensate for the times you didn't have Fastbond. Are we talking about the same deck that has put up multiple trophies, a top 4 in the playoffs and another top 4 in the most recent challenge? Because as far as I know, that is the most successful and popular list. There was one other list that was a more traditional Legacy style lands list, but that style of deck has not be anywhere close to as successful
I hope you’re on the Fastbond deck next time we play.
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@mike-noble said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
@desolutionist said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
I hope you’re on the Fastbond deck next time we play.
Matt is trying to confirm that you're both talking about the only successful Fastbond + Trinisphere deck since your comment didn't show awareness that Mishra's Workshop was a 4-of in the maindeck. The deck he's talking about can be found here.
Hey Mike. I had originally constructed a more elaborated post with reasons I think Fastbond is not a great card in vacuum scenarios.
But it just doesn’t matter. If you have Workshop and Trinisphere then it just doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about the same things. We’re not talking about Fastbond. Fastbond.dec is a great one because it has turn one Shop, Trinisphere. Sure you got me!
Just prove it to me on the battlefield.
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@desolutionist damn, you are still salty about getting stomped by belcher? Shit happens, you got vintaged. Its a Hazard of playing the format.
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No I’m not salty. Just agreeing with you that people get “Vintaged” every tournament so the results just don’t even really fucking matter.
Every deck is actually just pure shit.
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@desolutionist said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
Every deck is actually just pure shit.
Finally, someone says what we're all thinking!
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If the game is so bad why play it?
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@tittliewinks22 said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
If the game is so bad why play it?
There have been a number of people through the years where I've wondered why they play Vintage instead of another format, or even Magic instead of another game. I think some people actually enjoy complaining.
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@grandpabelcher said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
@tittliewinks22 said in [Article] Information Cascades in Magic:
If the game is so bad why play it?
There have been a number of people through the years where I've wondered why they play Vintage instead of another format, or even Magic instead of another game. I think some people actually enjoy complaining.
This might be the funniest thing I've ever heard you say.
I think people are chasing some feeling or experience they had at some point. Vintage offers some pretty potent experiences. The problem is that everyone has a different conception of what that experience is or should be.
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Sure! And it’s not that I think they shouldn’t play Vintage. It’s just that we seem SO far apart on what we’re getting out of the format. Like, they’re unhappy with the very things I enjoy, and I don’t know what they enjoy because they never talk about it. Some of these players don’t seem to enjoy anything.
Lately I’ve been concerned that it’s me. Maybe Vintage is headed in a direction I don’t want. Middle School and Old School have fun communities, and Legacy has powerful cards. Would that be so bad? (Insert GIF of Principal Skinner saying “No, it’s the children who are wrong.” I’m on my phone and can’t find it.)
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I will literally complain about everything, even things I like, so I don't see why Magic or Vintage would be different.
In fact, I'll probably complain more about things that I like because on other things, I've completely given up.
