Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

You can't call 1CC strictly better than 1CD at all though. In a situation where you only have one C available the second one is better, and that's not be any stretch of the imagination an unreasonable scenario.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Irony Be My Shield posted:

You can't call 1CC strictly better than 1CD at all though. In a situation where you only have one C available the second one is better, and that's not be any stretch of the imagination an unreasonable scenario.

Yeah, that was narrow-minded of me. I was thinking along the lines of how going beyond one color is a deckbuilding cost, even though it's negligible in current times.

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!

LordSaturn posted:

This leads us to perceive the downside of 1CD as less onerous, because we can just move into D

But note that even this statement makes assumptions (which currently come naturally to us, certainly, but aren't inherently true) about the ease of moving into D. When there are literally 12+ lands in the format that will access D while also accessing C, so that you're never at a risk of getting screwed out of C, then yeah the splash is a no-brainer. And incidentally, a deck that's just splashing by making use of the aforementioned surfeit of dual lands won't mind 1CC either. It's when you're actually trying to spread yourself between 2 or 3 colors, the way a lot of decks now do, that the tension against 1CC comes up even when mana is off the hook.

LordSaturn
Aug 12, 2007

sadly unfunny

JerryLee posted:

But note that even this statement makes assumptions (which currently come naturally to us, certainly, but aren't inherently true) about the ease of moving into D. When there are literally 12+ lands in the format that will access D while also accessing C, so that you're never at a risk of getting screwed out of C, then yeah the splash is a no-brainer. And incidentally, a deck that's just splashing by making use of the aforementioned surfeit of dual lands won't mind 1CC either. It's when you're actually trying to spread yourself between 2 or 3 colors, the way a lot of decks now do, that the tension against 1CC comes up even when mana is off the hook.

I edited my post about six times because I kept thinking about it, here's the last thing I said:

LordSaturn posted:

The resources to splash D always exist, but the resources to splash D and efficiently maximize C are harder to come by.

Which, yeah, points out that the resources to splash D on top of C always exist. My real question is this: When, in what format, did those resources not exist? Is that scenario worth considering?

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!

LordSaturn posted:

Which, yeah, points out that the resources to splash D on top of C always exist. My real question is this: When, in what format, did those resources not exist? Is that scenario worth considering?

Honestly? In most Standards prior to Invasion, and to a lesser extent since then until around Alara. Those where when you had the transition into more than 4 and more than 8 playable dual lands, respectively, for a given color pair. And that's if you wanted allied colors; if you were playing enemy colors you had zero "good" lands before Apocalypse and didn't get more than 4 until RAV/9th standard. Obviously I'm not including City of Brass in any of these assessments

Note how Magic back in those days was an unfun hellhole where all the decks sucked, creatures weren't playable and nobody was enjoying themselves (please note that this sentence is a sarcastic exaggeration).

Also most Block formats, of course.

DAD LOST MY IPOD
Feb 3, 2012

Fats Dominar is on the case


I think the restrictiveness of CC and CCC costs comes up more in situations where your mana is pressured either in availability (by wasteland or a low land count) or accessibility (shock lands vs an aggressive deck). When you have a CD deck, you have some C cards, some D cards and some CD cards, as well as CC and DD. Since a lot of your mana comes from fetching, when choosing to fetch you are making a decision. By fetching C and D sources you can cast your CD cards, but also all of your C cards and D cards. If you get CC then not only can you not cast CD but you can't cast D at all. Obviously having sources that can generate either CC or DD or CD is ideal, which is why filterlands see lots of play despite not being fetchable or able to generate colored mana on their own.

black potus
Jul 13, 2006
e: wow wrong thread

black potus fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Mar 26, 2015

black potus
Jul 13, 2006
1CC isn't strictly better than 1CD i think, but i'd say it's generally better. with the flexibility of mana in constructed these days i think they're much more even in constructed, but the value of staying on color in limited exists. 1CC means you need to hit two lands of your main color in three turns to cast it on t3, whereas 1CD means you need your splash online. so if you're wanting to reliably cast this theoretical card on t3, 1CD puts a lot more demands on your manabase, i.e. has a higher opportunity cost.

this is all of course assuming that C is your main color/one of your main colors. also that you're trying to drop poo poo t3, i think if it's a removal spell that you can afford to cast like t6 or whatever then that opportunity cost is cut because you can afford to not hit your splash until t6.

that said this is smoothed out a ton in constructed where you can put together whatever the best manabase is for your deck and reliably cast siege rhino t4 no problemo.

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110
It's worth noting that 1CD being better assumes that you're actually playing that exact color combo. While some cards are certainly good enough to warrant a splash, plenty are merely "pretty good" which can be enough to put the card (or even the deck) out of contention

Sigma-X
Jun 17, 2005
Is there any loving purpose to trying to argue some sort of vacuum-specific (and therefore always irrelevant) Master Card Evaluation Ruleset or whatever the gently caress the purpose of this thread is?

It seems like comparing cards in a deck is strictly loving better than arguing about hypothetical cards

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110
Yeah its not useful and it's why I think trying to save the term is dumb. The obvious judges familiar / cursecatcher comparison kills it: the text on cursecatcher is worse by itself, except that's not how magic works so it gets played as a beater instead of a counterspell that dies to removal.

black potus
Jul 13, 2006

Sigma-X posted:

Is there any loving purpose to trying to argue some sort of vacuum-specific (and therefore always irrelevant) Master Card Evaluation Ruleset or whatever the gently caress the purpose of this thread is?

It seems like comparing cards in a deck is strictly loving better than arguing about hypothetical cards

it's cool to talk about a cool game on a mechanical level.

Sigma-X
Jun 17, 2005

black potus posted:

it's cool to talk about a cool game on a mechanical level.

Yeah but the arguments seem to be focused around some sort of non-contextual vacuum in which important relationships are disregarded when that is disconnected from the actual mechanical design of the game so that we can champion a particular card as Objectively The Best despite context that would render that untrue.

Like Judge's Familiar is objectively better than Cursecatcher in a vacuum except in most/all actual contexts Cursecatcher is better as the benefits that Familiar provides are typically overridden by the tribal benefits of being a merfolk.

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

You can say "Judge's Familiar is strictly better than Curse Catcher, barring tribal synergies" and that would be helpful for someone considering including a Curse Catcher in a non-tribal deck. If they are building a merfolk deck then they know to ignore it.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Irony Be My Shield posted:

You can say "Judge's Familiar is strictly better than Curse Catcher, barring tribal synergies" and that would be helpful for someone considering including a Curse Catcher in a non-tribal deck. If they are building a merfolk deck then they know to ignore it.

:agreed:
Yeah, "strictly better" is pretty narrow, and Cursecatcher/Familiar is a good example of why it isn't always true. But it still provides a good basis for a comparison of cards that do a similar thing. I feel that evaluation is more geared towards deckbuilding rather than the actual play, since play is reactive (with the exception of VERY few decks that just do their combo thing, you care about the board in some manner), whereas deckbuilding is proactive. Yeah, there are times where the opponent is at one life, but has ground blockers and no Islands, so your Merfolk army is useless, whereas a Familiar would be able to just fly over and steal victory, but that doesn't mean that Familiar is generally evaluated equally to Cursecatcher in that deck.

And besides, in play you either have no choice over what you draw, making the "which one would you rather draw" argument go back to deckbuilding, or you DO have choice, and therefore can choose the best according to the circumstances. Barring stuff like Bribery, your control over what you draw goes back to what you included in your deck, and how many.

Basically, what I'm saying is that, to me, card eval is much more about deckbuilding than playing (although playtesting/playing will, of course, influence stuff). It's theory, of sorts, whereas playing is practice.

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

I mean to go back to the original post that ignited this you could say "They won't print lands that are strictly better than basics (barring the fact that they are vulnerable to non-basic hate)". That would be fair, I don't think they're prepared to reprint the super strong nonbasic hate that would be required to make them worse than basics in realistic situations.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Irony Be My Shield posted:

I mean to go back to the original post that ignited this you could say "They won't print lands that are strictly better than basics (barring the fact that they are vulnerable to non-basic hate)". That would be fair, I don't think they're prepared to reprint the super strong nonbasic hate that would be required to make them worse than basics in realistic situations.

It's pretty late here, but most (if not all) of the recent non-basics I can think of come with drawbacks. Painlands/Mana Confluence come with pain, Temples and Trilands ETB tapped, same as the lifegain duals from KTK and the Gates, Fetches ping you when you use them, Innistrad Checklands don't always come down untapped...

Even besides the hate, it's still an actual choice whether to include them or not. That's not the case with, say, the OG Duals, since they were strictly better (besides the 4-of limit, obviously). Why just make U when I can make U/R? Hate does change the question, making it a metagame call as well, especially since most prominent land destruction (Tec Edge, Wasteland) is tuned to kill nonbasics, as well as the prominence of cards that reward you for playing basics (Ghost Quarter, Path to Exile). They're still generally better, sure, but there are good meta-related (as opposed to "I'm playing Hatebears/High Tide/Burn") reasons why you'd prefer basics over them.

Sigma-X
Jun 17, 2005
Being non-basic is a contextual drawback and not an intrinsic one, like Yavimaya Coast's pain.

In our strictly better vacuum, or Hooverville as I'll refer to it, the original duals have no drawback. Outside of Hooverville, they are susceptible to all of the typed destruction in the original ABU (but this is moot because the only other lands that play those alternate colors also expose you to typed destruction). So the contextual drawback doesn't really exist until you evolve the format to the point where wasteland exists. At that point though, it's about a break-even (as evidenced by how they're played) or still net-positive typically, but anything with an additional (and intrinsic) drawback is no longer playable without having bigger upsides than just fixing mana.

black potus
Jul 13, 2006

Sigma-X posted:

Yeah but the arguments seem to be focused around some sort of non-contextual vacuum in which important relationships are disregarded when that is disconnected from the actual mechanical design of the game so that we can champion a particular card as Objectively The Best despite context that would render that untrue.

Like Judge's Familiar is objectively better than Cursecatcher in a vacuum except in most/all actual contexts Cursecatcher is better as the benefits that Familiar provides are typically overridden by the tribal benefits of being a merfolk.

i have no desire for this thread to poop out the list of cards in Objective Order of Quality or w/e. i think that card eval is both somethin that's good to practice and also lets us talk about the game on a mechanical level in an interesting way. i think the cursecatcher vs judge familiar example is a good discussion point, how synergies can provide incentive to play the "strictly worse" card.

w/ cursecatcher you're losing natural evasion to take advantage of tribal synergies. but tribal synergies incur a deckbuilding cost. however, merfolk has a robust enough suite of cards with useful effects (islandwalk hoho) that that cost is matched by a more significant payoff. these are all things that have some depth to them and i think are interesting even if we don't come out of the discussion learning the relative power of the two cards. i think talking about it with cards we know the value of is still useful because it helps us consider those points when new cards show up and evaluate them.

like there's no thesis on this thread about how one card is The Tits No Argument Allowed, i just think it's useful to talk out the steps of card evaluation. i started this with the strictly better discussion because even talking about how cards might be on the surface "strictly better" but have contextual downsides is an interesting topic to me. contrasting those scenarios with bolt vs shock.

this is probably rambly as hell i haven't had coffee yet and have a splitting headache.

Heatwizard
Nov 6, 2009

Sigma-X posted:

Like Judge's Familiar is objectively better than Cursecatcher in a vacuum except in most/all actual contexts Cursecatcher is better as the benefits that Familiar provides are typically overridden by the tribal benefits of being a merfolk.

Except for every deck that isn't interested in being a merfolk deck? Just because you acknowledge that one card is an upgrade over another doesn't mean you're obligated to burn all your copies of the other version and forever deny that it'll ever have a place anywhere. For any deck that doesn't get saved under the file name 'merfolk.dek' they'd sooner run Familiar over Cursecatcher, it's just that merfolk.dek is the only deck that ultimately decides it'll bother running that effect. Extrapolating from that that you can never ever compare two cards without having the entirety of Magic the Gathering open in front of you just seems like pointless hand-wringing.

Sigma-X
Jun 17, 2005

Heatwizard posted:

Except for every deck that isn't interested in being a merfolk deck? Just because you acknowledge that one card is an upgrade over another doesn't mean you're obligated to burn all your copies of the other version and forever deny that it'll ever have a place anywhere. For any deck that doesn't get saved under the file name 'merfolk.dek' they'd sooner run Familiar over Cursecatcher, it's just that merfolk.dek is the only deck that ultimately decides it'll bother running that effect. Extrapolating from that that you can never ever compare two cards without having the entirety of Magic the Gathering open in front of you just seems like pointless hand-wringing.

That's a pretty extreme response!

You just said that only merfolk wants the effect because it isn't a powerful card on it's own. So you just argued that again, contextually familiar is not a more powerful card.

You absolutely should be comparing cards to each other in the format. In fact when building a deck you should be comparing cards that are dissimilar too, to determine if card A or B is more powerful in your meta. Maybe you'll run a sweeper because. It's a heavy creature meta or maybe you'll run a counterspell.

There is literally no value in declaring Judges Familiar as Strictly Better than Cursecatcher (except for all practical contexts which we will ignore).

But I'm done I clearly don't get this thread at all.

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

Sigma-X posted:

But I'm done I clearly don't get this thread at all.

Opening a thread with "let's talk about card evaluation; here's what I think strictly better means" isn't very strong in this meta

Heatwizard
Nov 6, 2009

Sigma-X posted:

That's a pretty extreme response!

You just said that only merfolk wants the effect because it isn't a powerful card on it's own. So you just argued that again, contextually familiar is not a more powerful card.

You absolutely should be comparing cards to each other in the format. In fact when building a deck you should be comparing cards that are dissimilar too, to determine if card A or B is more powerful in your meta. Maybe you'll run a sweeper because. It's a heavy creature meta or maybe you'll run a counterspell.

There is literally no value in declaring Judges Familiar as Strictly Better than Cursecatcher (except for all practical contexts which we will ignore).

But I'm done I clearly don't get this thread at all.

The value is that you then ask the correct questions while building your deck. When you look at these two cards you should ask yourself "why would I run cursecatcher over familiar". "Why should I run shock over bolt". Perhaps there's a good answer to that question in a given case ("well I have four lords of atlantis already") but that doesn't mean the question is a waste of time.

Like, in what situation would you run Savannah Lions over Soldier of the Pantheon? You could sit there and wring your hands over 'but but but what if they print a bunch of cat tribal or whatever" but what is that getting you in a universe where that doesn't exist?

Orange Fluffy Sheep
Jul 26, 2008

Bad EXP received

Heatwizard posted:

'but but but what if they print a bunch of cat tribal or whatever"



:shepface:

yes I know it's garbage shut up

Toshimo
Aug 23, 2012

He's outta line...

But he's right!

Heatwizard posted:


Like, in what situation would you run Savannah Lions over Soldier of the Pantheon? You could sit there and wring your hands over 'but but but what if they print a bunch of cat tribal or whatever" but what is that getting you in a universe where that doesn't exist?

You'd be better off making that argument with the new 2/1 pro-dragons guy. There have existed formats where multicolor auras (see also: Armadillo Cloak) have seen constructed play and also things like multicolor charms that give pumps. Protection from multicolor us very much a double edged sword in this case. And it's certainly not cat tribal/Murganda Petroglyphs obscure.

RME
Feb 20, 2012

this topic would be strictly better in D&D forum

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

RME posted:

this topic would be strictly better in the gas chamber

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110
Just watched MattiasNL pull a draft win out because he blocked down to one and popped an evolving wilds instead of a fetch.

Wheres your strictly better now nerds

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013




Death Bot posted:

Wheres your strictly better now nerds

In Constructed, which is what we're talking about. :smug:

black potus
Jul 13, 2006
jesus christ goons are terrible

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

Also fetchlands are not strictly better than Evolving Wilds because Evolving Wilds can fetch any basic subtype rather than just 2 and also you don't have to pay life to activate it

Rojo_Sombrero
May 8, 2006
I ebayed my EQ account and all I got was an SA account

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Also fetchlands are not strictly better than Evolving Wilds because Evolving Wilds can fetch any basic subtype rather than just 2 and also you don't have to pay life to activate it
I agree you gain much more flexibility with Evolving Wilds as opposed to fetch lands.

black potus
Jul 13, 2006

black potus posted:

i do think this scenario is rare especially with the push in creature quality. you can get such good value with a lower tempo investment (especially relative to removal) nowadays that i don't think this scenario shows up in constructed. in limited this shows up more i think, with limited being rarer, more expensive, and less tuned to a meta.

all this said i think it's a line in which cards are playable even though they ostensibly die to removal. hero is something i'd class like this, it coexisted with removal like doom blade and go for the throat so you could spend half as much mana to deal with it (vs like hero's downfall now to deal w/ polukranos), but untapping with it put you really far ahead. you're positive on value overall (across games) because the value gained when you stick it is so huge that it eating removal is a reasonable risk to take.

i do think the threshold is fundamentally going to tie to the cost/quality of removal in the format. maybe that's a better way to state it.

lets talk about removal again because apparently the phrase "strictly better" gets some peoples undergarments in such disarray that the thread is destined for poo poo if we talk about it. or if someone wants to pick a different topic go for it. above's the last post i made, i didn't see a reply but someone quote that if there was one.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Bubbling Muck is strictly worse than High Tide because it is a Sorcery and not an Instant.

Although I imagine it has some appeal, they're similarly fetchable, and black can do good stuff with mana as well.

Zoness
Jul 24, 2011

Talk to the hand.
Grimey Drawer

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Also fetchlands are not strictly better than Evolving Wilds because Evolving Wilds can fetch any basic subtype rather than just 2 and also you don't have to pay life to activate it

counterpoint though evolving wilds can't find nonbasics

realistically I don't think anyone plays evolving wilds without maxing out on fetches in their colors first in any format where that's an option

so when comparing cards I think that's the relevant criteria - does card B see play to perform a similar role as card A before card A sees 4 copies in a format where they both are legal?

Zoness fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 9, 2015

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

Obviously in formats with true duals everyone runs them because they are stupendously good to the point of being a no-brainer, but in Standard there is the real benefit that it can find all your colours rather than just two. Some people even do run it before maxing out their on-colour fetches.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9307&d=253419&f=ST
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=8689&d=249642&f=ST
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=8689&d=249663&f=ST
In any case this kindof shows the value of the term "strictly better". One card may be obviously entirely better than another in one format, but that doesn't necessarily translate to other formats unless there is genuinely no upside to using the second one.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Wilds and Expanse also put the land in play tapped (unless my memory is faulty no Oracle access right now) so it isn't a "fair" comparison. A red green sligh ish deck doesn't want to lose tempo by waiting a turn for its drop, but a higher curving one doesn't care as much, and might also run ramp as well.

Things get more complex in decks with more colours, and formats with duals/shocks of course

LordSaturn
Aug 12, 2007

sadly unfunny

Attempting to carry this out of the Eternal thread, where it was causing problems:

Emerson Cod posted:

In a deck playing 3 Grim Lavamancers (which seems to be the current load-out), why not play 3-4 Sonic Seizures instead of Price of Progress? There is a risk - you may topdeck it without any cards you're willing to pitch. But how often do you have a "dead" card in hand that isn't going to help you on the board and can't be directed to your opponents face? Every single match, I've ended up with a dead card - whether it be a land that's not going to help me or a creature that can't get through.

I bolded the question that he seems to be asking - why not play Sonic Seizure as a way to leverage dead cards?

The short answer is that Burn should never have dead cards. Every single card goes right to the opponent's forehead, no questions asked. The two exceptions, as he pointed out, are creatures, and lands beyond the third.

If you anticipate having extra lands, play Shard Volley. If you anticipate having extra creatures, play Collateral Damage. Compared to Seizure, they have the same downside - you have to know what you anticipate having too much of, and you have to actually make that thing, rather than holding it in hand.

They also have the crucial upside of not requiring a random discard. You absolutely cannot afford to pitch a burn spell to Seizure, which will lead you to hold Seizure as long as possible, casting all your other gas cards first. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of the worst possible outcome - two Sonic Seizure in your hand at the same time. It also generally makes your sequencing decisions more complicated, and Burn already has a very narrow path it needs to walk.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



LordSaturn posted:

Attempting to carry this out of the Eternal thread, where it was causing problems:


I bolded the question that he seems to be asking - why not play Sonic Seizure as a way to leverage dead cards?

The short answer is that Burn should never have dead cards. Every single card goes right to the opponent's forehead, no questions asked. The two exceptions, as he pointed out, are creatures, and lands beyond the third.

If you anticipate having extra lands, play Shard Volley. If you anticipate having extra creatures, play Collateral Damage. Compared to Seizure, they have the same downside - you have to know what you anticipate having too much of, and you have to actually make that thing, rather than holding it in hand.

They also have the crucial upside of not requiring a random discard. You absolutely cannot afford to pitch a burn spell to Seizure, which will lead you to hold Seizure as long as possible, casting all your other gas cards first. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of the worst possible outcome - two Sonic Seizure in your hand at the same time. It also generally makes your sequencing decisions more complicated, and Burn already has a very narrow path it needs to walk.

That's a pretty good impression. Bolded the most important parts for emphasis.

Now, of course, in actual play, there will be times when you'll have dead cards. A match where you mull to a crap hand and draw nothing but lands or something, that's a statistically possible thing. But, in deckbuilding, Burn isn't the kind of deck that wants to have plans for dead cards. It's why Burn runs Lava Spike instead of Flame Slash, for example.

That said, I feel that randomness is what breaks Sonic Seizure. If Sonic Seizure's additional cost was "discard a card", it would be a reasonable card, comparable to Shard Volley or Collateral Damage. Unless you have just Sonic Seizure and a dead card in hand (which means you've cast all your live stuff), it's a coin toss at best. And if you do get that best-case scenario, why Seizure and not a card that's live more often? Shock Galvanic Blast (strictly better! :v:) would be an acceptable substitute most of the time, I'd say.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

Shard Volley lets you use the land before you bin it, unlike a similar spell with "discard a card" instead. It's not really good enough for Legacy but in Modern it works as a 2-of because you can cast them when you no longer need the land.

Irony Be My Shield fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Apr 14, 2015

  • Locked thread