idSurge wrote: ↑4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote: ↑4 years ago
Interestingly, this is a great point for reasons I'm not sure were intended. Many players and prominent pros were either convinced BBE would make Jund a thing again, certain JTMS was too good for Modern, or certain JTMS was unplayable. Basically all of those strong opinions were wrong. BBE is playable but by no means the thing Jund needed; that was W6. JTMS was unquestionably appropriate for Modern, absolutely playable, but not nearly as decisive as many hoped.
You played UW for a time, do you actually think without all the other additions to the format, that Jace was playable in a Tier 1 deck?
At the time JTMS was unbanned, probably not, for reasons we've discussed. But then the evaluation of JTMS should've been "Right now, JTMS does not address the biggest issues facing Ux control and will not enable the archetype on its own. It will, however, be a strong tool for the deck if/when it picks up other tools to fix other issues." That's the kind of measured, open-minded opinion that appreciates the complexities of metagame development with new cards in the picture. The point is not whether or not JTMS was (un)playable at the time it was unbanned. It's how hard it is to predict what unbanned cards will do because metagame evolution includes so many complicate and unknowable factors.
cfusionpm wrote: ↑4 years ago
ktkenshinx wrote: ↑4 years ago
The lesson should be clear for anyone trying to say "New card X/unban Y/ban Z will have effect A/B/C on the metagame." These types of statements reduce an intricate, complex issue to a meaningless generalization in order to prove a point and distract from the underlying complexities.
I definitely agree with this sentiment. This is why I, personally, would try to rationalize or quantify any of my opinions with supporting evidence or reason. (side note: in teaching, we commonly use CRE, or Claim-Reason-Evidence, to justify answers. Basically, you make a claim of some sort, and then support that claim with some kind of reasoning, and then use evidence to both support your reasoning.) So I don't think that claims of "New card X/unban Y/ban Z will have effect A/B/C on the metagame" are inherently bad, but they are incredibly bad when made in a vacuum and with no supporting reasoning or evidence.
I agree with this. Those claims can be quite good with evidence to back them up. But the strength of a claim needs to be proportionate to the strength of the underlying evidence. For instance, not to pick on Bearscape who retracted this statement a few posts later, Bearscape initially claimed a few pages back that Izzet Phoenix would remain Tier 1 after Looting was gone, suggesting the CMC 2 discard/draw enablers were good replacements. I don't know if that's true, but at the time, Bearscape provided very little evidence to support this claim and all available evidence has historically proven HUGE differences between CMC 1 and CMC 2 enablers, to say nothing of Looting's added flashback benefit. Again, Bearscape totally admitted he was off base here which I respect, but this is an example of the kind of strong claim-making we need to avoid without strong evidence to back it up.
Ironically, Jeff Hoogland applies this to both his Twitch chat and Twitter feed; forcing people to justify and support their opinions. He is heavily criticized for it, but it's likely because people simply don't want to take the time, effort, and thought into justifying their claims. People are lazy, and it's much easier to just say a thing, then say a thing and say why that thing should be true. I think more CRE around here would be beneficial to all.
Hoogland is not a great Magic personality to demonstrate this. As a recent example, in April 2018 he published this under-researched article on CoolStuffInc:
https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/jeffhoog ... nlist-talk. This article, although better than his truly outrageous 2017 piece (
https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/jeffhoog ... anned-list) is a great example of strong claims being made without strong evidence. His justification for removing two of Modern's strongest, most prevalent pillars is just 400 words with zero statistical backing, despite Wizards including numerical justification for basically every ban in the last 8 years except the shoddily written Probe/GGT article. No GP T8s. No MTGO #s. No MWPs. No nothing. I get that we have limited numbers and Wizards throttles data, but it's not hard to use some of the numbers we have to predict Wizards' ban decisions and inform ban cases. He even dismisses the counter-argument to Looting/Stirrings being unbanned in about three sentences, again with no numbers:
"
I do not think removing them would single handedly kill any major archetype. While some people will disagree with this assessment, I would like to remind everyone out there that people thought banning Eye of Ugin would kill Tron or that banning Summer Bloom would kill Amulet Titan. As with those bannings, though, they simply made these strategies weaker, but still competitive. "
I don't even think half of this statement is true: did anyone really think an Eye ban would "kill Tron"? He doesn't even discuss alternate spell replacements for these banned cards. I'm not saying he needs to write a peer reviewed journal article to justify a ban. But a banning argument is probably the strongest Modern argument you can make. Authors and claimants need to justify those arguments with the same kind of numerical analyses Wizards includes in articles. "Wizards throttles data" is not an excuse to exclude the data we do have, especially when there is a ton of data out there that many people (authors and players alike) either don't care to look up, don't care to include in arguments, or don't care about generally.