If you look at the overall decklists since the new standard begun, Jund has the most top 8's, followed by vampires, everything is else is way down with like 2-3, including white weenies, mono control decks, planeswalker decks etc etc.
Sure, bloodghast isn't 'Goyf, but he's a decent card, that can hold up your opponent's attacking because they know they will have 2 power at them every turn, they might have to keep a blocker back for it, who you can waste with removal. The curve of vampires means that card for card, it'll have the best plays, sure bloodghast isn't the best two drop in standard, but when he's sandwiched between a lacerator and a kicked gatekeeper, he becomes pretty amazing, followed up with nocturnus/bloodwitch, and you're gaining plenty of bonuses.
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Blood ghast is a 2/1 for 2 that keeps comming back... for a at most minumal cost... SO what if it dies to PoE... there are only a few cards that don't (pro:white and shroud...) I personally have no problem with dropping bloodghast turn 2 and having my opponet blow a PtE getting me an extra land which is actually a bit of a card advantage... the card is good just hard casting it not to mention you can use it for discard and then just play your land and get it back for free. It's not world shaking but it is a solid black creature.
Against, say, Jund, all their creatures - aside from BB-Elf, which generates CA anyway - kills Bloodghast. Thrinax, Leech (though the damage still gets through, you'll gain tempo as the Ghast player won't always have a land, and early (when Ghast is relevant) it'll have summoning sickness as well), Stag (whether MD'ed or sided, though Stag being good against Vamps is a moot point), Garruk tokens and, of course, Broodmate Dragons and Enlisted Wurms (of course, 6-drops do tend to kill 2-drops). All kill Ghast.
What am I arguing here? That Ghast dies to creatures? No. I'm arguing that Ghast will pretty much never grant you CA in the aggro matchup. It's just too easy to play around. It can't block and it has only got 2 power. It will never trade with anything. It will never be relevant to remove it (remove blockers before attacking? No need, he plays Bloodghast.) and as such, the CA you hope for will remain elusive.
It is a solid card in the control MU, though. Two damage each turn adds up, and when they Wrath, Ghast hits the board swinging. It doesn't need to be a good combat guy to own control - it just has to keep the beatings coming. This, however, isn't the case against most of the deck out there - not the way Wizards have been promoting creature-based decks lately.
Basically, Bloodghast is never actually a real threat. It doesn't block, which is huge. It doesn't kill anything (Hexmage at least blocks Bloodbraid Elf and lives). It doesn't generate CA. It hits for two, provided that there are no blockers (because everything is bigger than Ghast). And it survives Wrath.
I'm getting less and less impressed with the card. It has synergy wth Nocturnus and Bloodwitch. Other than that, it is a filler card in a subpar tribe, IMO. Vampires are insanely popular (not least because they are cheap to play, easy to build, reasonably powerful at a first glance and because the cards are easily available everywhere - I can almost build a Vamp deck out of my Zendikar Sealed pools from the pre-release tourneys I played). They are also not bad enough that a few of them can do well if there are enough of them at a given tournament, which just helps fuel the hype.
I don't like Vamps all that much in this metagame, to be honest.
Comment to the card Nurturer Initiate: [QUOTE=phaseshifter;15594671]She can suck as much as she wants, she's hot
Edit:.....wow, I just realised what I just said...[/QUOTE] --------- [QUOTE=reedbee]I can't count on both hands the number of times I've woken up next to a gorgeous girl after she came up to me and asked to get a better look at my Wumpus.[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Beanman1000;17774354]Naw man, you just walk around with a messenger bag with a trade binder and some decks, then use amazing magic pick up lines like "Hey baby, I'd tap that" and "Hey honey, wanna see me use giant growth?"[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Dr_Kraid;18066052]I want to be banned for laying my ween0r on my opponent's deck and posting pictures on the Internet [/QUOTE] ---- On Master Transmuter: [QUOTE=namdoolb;18132994]Nah, I'd rather send her packing on my flame javelin .[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Caldera42;14735749]And I'm not a jerk to myself.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Islands;14771286]You're missing out.[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Axl_Strife;17032267]I'm Matt Gottlieb b*tch! *banhammer*[/QUOTE]
Moral of the story... Serra is the kind of angel you marry... She's very loyal and always there for you both to attack or block. BSA... Well, she's the kind you call up every now and then to do all those things Serra won't do on some random Friday night.
[QUOTE=Momo;17971299]Actually you win, sir.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=sisomic;17973044]A "You win, sir." from Momo is worth 10 zillion dabloons. If only you could sell it...[/QUOTE]
There were others - this one was just the only one that mattered.
Skide Fuld - Problem of Evil by frontsession Check out the first one of my songs to be recorded by my Jazz/Fusion/whatever-band. Critique is welcome - just send me a PM or something.
Uh, no. Again, read what I said. "In terms of THAT tournament's placing."
The first tournament of the season doesn't have impact on what the "good" decks of that season will be.
Also, you're wrong about luck. When we're talking about many, many copies of a certain deck, some of them are going to beat better decks with a pair of god draws statistically. This has absolutely nothing to do with pros.
you can't even argue without devolving into petty insults, it's pretty revealing.
So the fact that Jund won doesn't have an impact on what the "good" decks of that season will be? The Phillies beat the Dodgers tonight, but since it's on the first game, it doesn't impact what the "good" team in the series will be?
I did not insult you, so I'm not sure what it reveals. I made a comment about a particular statement, not you as a person. Please don't claim things that aren't backed up by facts.
Yes, they will have "god" draws to win individual matchups. That's why the tournament has 8-9 rounds to determine a Top 16. The odds of the same person having enough of a "god draw" to win into Top 8 is simply improbable to the point of reasonable impossibility. Yes, the deck may have enough god draws throughout the day to steal games, but one individual person's deck does not get that lucky. Not to even mention the fact that building a deck with a "god draw" that they can hit reliably enough to Top 16 would have to be considered a consistent deck, because it's simply a statement of fact that it is realistically impossible for three different "bad" decks to god-draw for 8 rounds. As I said, this is an asinine statement; it ignores all logical deductions in favor of a statistical near-impossibility.
Once again, its a fair comparison between Magic and Poker. Both games have an element of luck, but as the numbers increase (like in any polling method) results become more standardized. This is why the same poker and magic players are consistently successful. The repeating of success is what defines it. This is why Magic tournaments run 8 rounds of swiss, to nearly-eliminate the aspect of "luck" to determine tournaments. Now MAYBE if only 1 Vampire deck had made it you could claim a corner case where one player lucks into Top Eight, but not three.
How many tournaments with solid vampire showings will it take for you to acknowledge the deck as Tier 1 (good)? I don't even like the deck, nor do I think it is anywhere near the best deck, but you are simply ignoring all mathematical bases with your arguments.
Though, if you believe I'm wrong, and would like to crunch numbers and demonstrate the probability of a deck that has a certain negative winning percentage against the field overcoming those statistics and getting into the Top 16, please do so. Then calculate the odds that three of these decks would accomplish this at any given point in time, I would welcome it.
But to do so you need to calculate the records of all Vampire decks against the field, then move from there. As your argument is the one that flies in the face of normal mathematical procedures, the onus is on you to demonstrate why the statistics were abnormal. Otherwise, the only logical conclusion is to judge the tournament by the measuring stick all tournaments are determined by: The Top 8/16. In doing so, one concludes that Vampires were the second-best deck. If you calculate the amount of decks being played and its percentage being Vampires, then you get somewhere. Since 3/16 = 18.75 percent, it would be worth determining what percentage of the field was Vampires. If you then assume the deck has a 50% winning percentage against the field (I suspect its higher, especially if you discount the mirror, as this cannot climb higher than 50%) you can then determine if the deck performed better or worse than the statistics would suggest.
If you don't do this research and offer proof to back up your claim that 3/16s being Vampires wasn't representative of the deck's strength, then your opinion is rendered logically meaningless.
Please get back to me when you have the numbers to back up your statements. Until then, the proof lies solely in the results of the tournament until you can prove them invalid.
Summation, since I went into mathematical facts that are beyond the attention span of the "average" reader here.
- Unless you can prove otherwise, the Top 16 lists determine what a "good" deck is. If Vampires = <19% percent of the field and have a 50% win ratio against the field, then the statistics don't back your point of view. Read more if you care to continue with an informed, intellectual discussion.
Also, there is reason they play 8 rounds before cutting in tournaments. It's to eliminate people from Top 16/8ing simply by being lucky for a few games. Again, there is reason you see the same people again and again in the top 16. They aren't the only ones playing a particular deck, and they aren't the luckiest people in the world. Magic is both a skill and luck game, but skill will always beat luck over the long run, by the very nature of statistical measure.
Also, I never insulted you. If I called you an idiot for making asinine statements (I didn't), that would be an insult. Calling a particular comment asinine is simply commentary that has nothing to do with you as a person.
Because we've had so much standard to abuse Bloodghast. Also Standard and Block are two very different topics. Coherence ftw.
Sooooo... A blurb in an article by a guy who's name I don't recognize and who has nothing in DeckCheck that I recognize, said that Vampires was underestimated and proceeded to masturbate his ego.
From today's MTG front article.
"On the Rookie of the Year front I will be keeping an eye on Brad "FFfreaK" Nelson, who comes into this event 10 points of the lead after a pair of heartbreaking bubble finishes in Honolulu—where he was 9th—and at U.S. Nationals—where he lost the 3rd/4th playoff for the remaining berth on the team to Todd Anderson. In the days leading up to Honolulu, Brad, who had been tearing up the Block Constructed PEs on Magic Online, was featured in this article using only his nom de MTGO. Anonymity quickly fell by the wayside for Brad, who found himself in the Feature Match Arena throughout the weekend playing against the likes of Luis Scott-Vargas and Shuhei Nakamura, and even taking part in a deck tech video. Since then he has become a weekly columnist on Channelfireball.com and a highly sought-after source ofMagic advice."
Heard of him yet? This is a person whose opinion about particular card is very much credible. It's the reason they bring doctors into court and lawyers are present, by the way, because they have experience and credentials in the field. Therefore citing a top player's opinion carries very much weight in this discussion, particulary since there hasn't been any reference to other top players trashing Vampires as some in this thread are.
Again, I don't even like the Vampire deck and wouldn't play it. I think its easily hated on, and just not as good as some other decks at the moment. But that does not mean it isn't a "good" deck; it's just not the best. But there is a world (and Top 16) of difference between a good deck and a bad one.
Summation, since I went into mathematical facts that are beyond the attention span of the "average" reader here.
- Unless you can prove otherwise, the Top 16 lists determine what a "good" deck is. If Vampires = <19% percent of the field and have a 50% win ratio against the field, then the statistics don't back your point of view. Read more if you care to continue with an informed, intellectual discussion.
Also, there is reason they play 8 rounds before cutting in tournaments. It's to eliminate people from Top 16/8ing simply by being lucky for a few games. Again, there is reason you see the same people again and again in the top 16. They aren't the only ones playing a particular deck, and they aren't the luckiest people in the world. Magic is both a skill and luck game, but skill will always beat luck over the long run, by the very nature of statistical measure.
Also, I never insulted you. If I called you an idiot for making asinine statements (I didn't), that would be an insult. Calling a particular comment asinine is simply commentary that has nothing to do with you as a person.
okay. Anyways, if I say your post was a waste of time and pathetically uninformed, that would be an insult to you.
But on point: The first tournament of a season where the metagame isn't established yet doesn't really have any impact on the rest of the season. This is just a precursor that's beginning to establish the metagame that will be present for the other 95% of this Standard season.
Also, if you'd read what I said, I said that some better decks will be taken out of the swiss by god draws by worse decks because of the sheer numbers of worse decks (henceforth "Vampires") being played at that tournament. This is why it's so impressive when a team really nails the metagame and T16s with 3/4 members or something to that effect.
This is all completely without considering the playskill of any player involved. Playskill matters, just not in an argument about decks. Vampires is a deck that can just win with a god draw, even if the player across the table has a better deck and is a better player. That's why it placed, because of the % of the room playing it, not because of how good it is.
A good deck like Boros was not played in numbers but still got second place in the tournament. Still, none of these results have any impact on how good these decks will be for the rest of the season. They just show how good they were for that tournament. The way we can tell how good a deck is in Standard is by examining it with a much larger sample size than a single tournament, which obv. we don't have access to yet.
If Vampires have the same results that they had at this tournament (honestly, a very mediocre ratio of T16s/total played), I'll concede that they're a tier one deck, and possibly an okay deck.
If you know about card advantage, then you might realize why this card is good. You trade with any x/2, and it sticks around. You draw out a removal, and it sticks around.
Plus, in addition to not understanding the intricacies of card advantage, op shows that you don't understand curves well either. You seem to assume bloodghast is meant to be in a deck with 4 blood ghasts, 4 runeclaws, and 32 other 2 mana 2/2s. Yea, bloodghast is going to be pretty crappy there. Realize though that on turn 2, a 2/1 that can trade with 3/2's and will stay around is amazing. Later turns, you'd be hitting them with larger threats because they're busy using their larger creatures to block your recurring bloodghast. Or if they're trading their bigger threats for yours, your 2/1 is chipping away at their life. And if they wrath, it can come back to keep hitting. Either way, recurring 2/1's allow you to continually punch damage through.
Vampires are tier 1. Tiers aren't determined by how good the deck is, but by how popular it is.
Vampires look very good on the surface. Once you look deeper, you see that most of their good cards just really isn't good enough incentives to play the deck. Many decent players has fallen for this (an effect otherwise descriped as hype). When many decent (and even some good) players (who have better access to the cards in Vamps.dec than they do most other decks this early in the season) decide to play Vamps, chances are that at least a few Vamp decks will rise to the top 16.
If you want the math, imagine a deck that has a 45-48% matchup against every single good deck in the format (this is just an imaginary number for the purposes of this thought experiment). This deck would usually be described as a very bad metagame choice indeed, but not incapable of winning a couple of rounds in a row against good decks. In a tournament such as the SSG one, the first four rounds or so, you are usually playing against suboptimal lists - longer if you lose or draw one of those rounds (note that you should be able to top 16 with a 7-1 record). A Vamp build with a competent pilot (who has weathered the first four or five rounds only has to win four or five matches in a row. This is where it gets complicated (though I won't go through the numbers).
A deck with a constant of, say, 45% matchup against all other decks in the format won't have that much lower chance at winning three or four matches in a row than a deck with a 50% matchup. It will in no way be impossible to get good enough hands and topdecks to win through three or four rounds. With that in mind, your idea that 'a bad deck will never achieve multiple t16 spots' go out the window. You can only evaluate the amount of vampire decks in the tournament versus the amount of vampire decks in the t16 - and even then, if Vamps were good, Vamps should have a much higher t16 ratio than tournament ratio due to the many crap decks. This is not the case. Vamps only had three t16 spots despite an overwhelming amount of Vamp decks in the tourney.
Note that you cannot discern from this alone whether Vamps are good or not. The sample size isn't big enough, and allround catch-all decks (such as Jund and, to some degree, Vamps) are generally better against an untested metagame. I am personally on the side of the nay-sayers for now.
Comment to the card Nurturer Initiate: [QUOTE=phaseshifter;15594671]She can suck as much as she wants, she's hot
Edit:.....wow, I just realised what I just said...[/QUOTE] --------- [QUOTE=reedbee]I can't count on both hands the number of times I've woken up next to a gorgeous girl after she came up to me and asked to get a better look at my Wumpus.[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Beanman1000;17774354]Naw man, you just walk around with a messenger bag with a trade binder and some decks, then use amazing magic pick up lines like "Hey baby, I'd tap that" and "Hey honey, wanna see me use giant growth?"[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Dr_Kraid;18066052]I want to be banned for laying my ween0r on my opponent's deck and posting pictures on the Internet [/QUOTE] ---- On Master Transmuter: [QUOTE=namdoolb;18132994]Nah, I'd rather send her packing on my flame javelin .[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Caldera42;14735749]And I'm not a jerk to myself.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Islands;14771286]You're missing out.[/QUOTE] ---- [QUOTE=Axl_Strife;17032267]I'm Matt Gottlieb b*tch! *banhammer*[/QUOTE]
Moral of the story... Serra is the kind of angel you marry... She's very loyal and always there for you both to attack or block. BSA... Well, she's the kind you call up every now and then to do all those things Serra won't do on some random Friday night.
[QUOTE=Momo;17971299]Actually you win, sir.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=sisomic;17973044]A "You win, sir." from Momo is worth 10 zillion dabloons. If only you could sell it...[/QUOTE]
There were others - this one was just the only one that mattered.
Skide Fuld - Problem of Evil by frontsession Check out the first one of my songs to be recorded by my Jazz/Fusion/whatever-band. Critique is welcome - just send me a PM or something.
[/QUOTE]
