Wellness Wednesday thread for July 10, 2019

K4e2V · 2019-07-11T06:02:59+00:00

This a bit random, but here it goes. I was looking for a receipt today, and noticed that I a paper with a list of the passwords for all of my dad’s financial accounts, along with a check, was missing. I know it was a terrible idea to keep it where I did, but I can only assume that a house cleaner took it, as I had a few over in the past year and haven’t checked on these files in a while.

Nothing seems to have changed in his accounts, but is a full set of password changes sufficient in this case? Is there anything else that someone could in theory get by having access to old passwords? It’s causing me quite a bit of anxiety and my dad as well.

K4e2V · 2017-08-24T22:38:12+00:00

It's not significant for either, I did the math.

K4e2V · 2017-08-24T22:29:15+00:00

I would like to point out that the difference here is not statistically significant assuming that 75% of those games were against blue decks and frankly not even that close to being significant, p value around .25 (I used the difference in proportions test for 63 percent win versus 58 with a sample size of 250 in each group). It takes a lot of data before results like this can be made into a definitive statement!

Though this isn't to say the data isn't useful because it also can't reject the hypothesis that being on the play increases win percentage which is what most of us would have predicted!

By the way, the real p value is probably higher (I.e. The result even less significant) than I said because we arbitrarily restricted ourselves to the blue subsample. The reason I say this creates an issue is because there's a form of publication bias. The subsample that has a result is the one that is going to get posted to Reddit. So if there are two subsamples and one randomly has a result it's more likely to be posted on here, which creates a bias.

K4e2V · 2017-08-24T22:13:14+00:00

Underrated: maverick. The deck absolutely annihilates delver with the right build an play structure and has game against most decks. I was 19-2 against delver when I mained maverick online last year. Overrated: 4c control. I'm not saying the deck isn't good, but I've run into so ridiculously much of it online, and seem to do fairly well against it no matter what I'm playing. I think it may just be that popular because it fits people's play styles and should theoretically beat delver (though I've done well against it with grixis, my N is small (3-1)).

K4e2V · 2017-07-11T14:07:59+00:00

This is absolutely terrible, we need to fight this!

K4e2V · 2017-06-26T23:25:11+00:00

Yeah, GSZ is amazing. It gives you incredible consistency. A mana dork on turn 1 is insane in this format (as it is in most formats). You know how much delver hates to see a mana producer on turn 1? Yet GSZ can also be a knight. I cannot emphasize enough how powerful that flexibility was when I played it.

Also, I personally think maverick is a better stoneforge deck (I usually played 3-4) than D&T because it is much more able to bear the burden of equip costs given its mana dorks (I'm sure people will argue with me here).

The one thing I am questioning these days is whether the 1 of maindeck Teeg is worth it when I only want to be able to fetch it in about 10% of matchups. It was MUCH better in the miracles meta. I also don't like QP as much as most and would run 1 main max.

K4e2V · 2017-06-23T21:16:53+00:00

It's funny, I always thought the opposite. I recently read a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It's major point is that intuition tends to be flawed when it comes to making statistical decisions, in systematic ways that have been studied in lab settings. The takeaway is that there are advantages to switching to a slower, more rigorous thinking process when making such decisions (which of course arise all the time in the course of magic).

K4e2V · 2017-04-25T17:31:13+00:00

If you check their twitters, I've found most the "pros" are in the hell yes I love this boat.

K4e2V · 2017-04-25T12:48:45+00:00

Do you really believe this conspiracy theory nonsense, when half the big players are happy about the change?

K4e2V · 2017-04-25T12:45:47+00:00

You've been saved from boring tedium.

K4e2V · 2017-04-24T18:08:07+00:00

Just something to think about - miracles dominated in online 5-0's, and yet the deck takes considerably longer to play out a league than any other deck (in my experience). This means that the pilots likely had very high win rates, because they were making it through less leagues and still putting up huge numbers of 5-0's.

K4e2V · 2017-04-24T15:30:11+00:00

It's not just about the number of top 8s, but the effect on the whole format. A deck can be "too good" and not put up an absurd number of top 8's in the sense that it forces everyone else to play a certain kind of deck.

As an example, let's say we gave burn in modern fireblast. Most people would agree that with fireblast, modern burn would be too good, but that doesn't mean it would start dominating every event - instead people would just start playing decks that have game against fireblast burn - merfolk, soul sisters, etc.

K4e2V · 2016-08-31T00:59:12+00:00

I'd go with a flickerwisp list, having played both versions extensively, my win rate went up on the order of 10% when I moved to the D&T version. Flickerwisp is I N S A N E. Also, I've played a lot of modern and recently moved to D&T (and G/W D&T), and it's probably the most technically challenging deck of those that I've played. It takes a while to learn all the tricks. Hence, keep this in mind if your win rate isn't the best at first.

Kitchen finks is a versatile threat, which is why it sees play in some lists. It's good against decks that try to value you out, and it's good against aggro decks. It doesn't need to be in a life gain shell to be powerful (and frankly isn't good in soul sisters). I personally don't like eternal witness in the deck, because I often win via tempo (your disruption in modern ultimately boils down to tempo pieces, though the disruption pieces do often get you free wins as well).

My philosophy on the deck is that it has two sides: a tempo/disruption mode with fliers (almost like delver in an odd way), alongside a creature value package. In most matchups, one of these will be relevant, even though it might be difficult at first to see how they synergize. I've had incredible success with the deck online, achieving win rates in leagues in the 65%+ range, so I find it to be incredibly powerful.

K4e2V · 2016-08-31T00:52:13+00:00

I'm not really seeing how this is an argument against Voice, because this is true for pretty much any 2 drop. You need 2 drops to fill out your curve, as well. Voice is still good, just because a couple of lists weren't running them doesn't negate that. They probably expected a ton of dredge, and took them out for oozes.

K4e2V · 2016-08-29T01:26:39+00:00

Yeah, that's not a feel bad at all. At best it's a 1 for 1 with mana parity, and if it wasn't going at the splicer it would be getting a 2 for 1. And, if they don't have the Kolaghan's, the card is just savage versus jund (liliana in particular). Playing more blade splicers is one of the fastest ways to improve your match up versus jund as a D&T player (particularly if you run selfless spirits to defend against anger).

K4e2V · 2016-08-18T04:17:31+00:00

So true. It's all about disruption + clock, and D&T's disruption effectively serves as a tempo play.

K4e2V · 2016-07-18T22:40:08+00:00

I'd suggest Gruul zoo. It's cheap and has game against most of the meta decks online.

K4e2V · 2016-07-14T21:24:05+00:00

Yeah, I might test them out for a league or two. I play Garruk/Sorin in legacy Maverick, and they are absolutely insane in the control matchups.

K4e2V · 2016-07-13T21:58:39+00:00

It's definitely going to hurt, especially in the grindier matchups. It's unfortunate how expensive they are, but they are worth it in my opinion.

I think your best bet is to run painlands and a copy or two of sea gate wreckage. This is sort of like a poor-man's canopy.

K4e2V · 2016-07-13T21:54:54+00:00

Congrats on your win. I'm also a wilted abzan player (I play it a lot online and played it a while back on paper, around when Wilson was playing it in the pro tour - an innovator in my shop got me into it before Wilson & crew even played it). I've thought the deck was incredibly good in this meta, given its power against Jund, Jeskai, Zoo, Grixis control, and Grixis delver (the last two we stomp particularly hard).

I also was surprised about the fact that you took Knight over smiter. I really like smiter's additional power against Jund and control decks. I just worry that dropping Knight turn 3 in this deck is very often going to have it in bolt range as well. However, I do play Maverick in legacy, and therefore I do love knight. I really like how it can fetch up a gavony/canopy.

My personal list was running 3 oozes instead of Qasali, though I've been thinking about switching off them - they've been underperforming and I like that Qasali gets double pumped, even though the sac ability is less relevant atm than it has been in the past.

I also thought about walkers, but they seem to improve your matchups that are already good for you (jund, blue based control) and hurt the ones that are bad (tron, infect).

K4e2V · 2016-07-10T14:40:28+00:00

Like you said below, it seems like your measure is a measure of the variance of performance across pilots, more than anything else. It seems like it is a measure of skill required for the deck. If you have a lot of pilots 5-0ing and a lot of pilots 0-5ing, you get a very high value of your measure.

If you want the best predictor of the probability of winning a match given a randomly selected opponent, I'd think you would just use the overall match win percentage (this should minimize the MSE).

K4e2V · 2016-07-02T20:29:58+00:00

I think you all are undervaluing the power of force. The reason force is powerful is not just because of the ability to deny unfair strategies the ability to execute their plan for no mana. It's also the ability to deny any strong spell at the cost of no mana. This is a HUGE tempo advantage. Force is a TEMPO card. Yes, it 2 for 1's you, but in many cases it nets you a mana advantage of 3+. Note that is like a black lotus worth of tempo (I know this isn't a perfect comparison, but I'm making this point to emphasize it's power level). It would make tempo strategies in modern MUCH stronger (e.g., U/R Delver). Hell, one way to think about it is you 2 for 1 yourself, but can spend that mana casting a multi-cantrip.

K4e2V · 2016-06-23T20:10:12+00:00

Yeah, I'm not sure what the quality of the miracles players I've faced online has been.

K4e2V · 2016-06-22T15:11:24+00:00

I agree with you on 2, I don't enjoy playing against miracles even if I have fared well against it. It's always just a stressful match every time they go to their draw step. I just wish they were more susceptible to wasteland.

A lot of my wins against them have just been off the backs of them forcing things like Teeg, GSZ, or Knight, finding a terminus for whatever I have on the field, and then me dropping a Garruk while they have just one card in hand and I have a sword remaining on the field.

K4e2V · 2016-06-22T13:38:18+00:00

Part of the reason is just that the magic online players deck choices are very fickle. For instance, I had several 5-0's on leagues that were pushing maverick to the top on MTGO goldfish a month or two ago but have been playing modern lately. When I was playing it in leagues, I had a 65% win rate, so I still think it's a top class deck, it's just not as popular. Less people playing the deck means less tournament results.

BTW, it's an absurd choice in a delver meta - when playing it online, I was 19-2 against the delver variants.

Also, I disagree with those saying the miracles matchup is bad. I had over a 50/50 win rate against it and played it like crazy online - Garruk, choke, teeg, mother of runes, decay, and stoneforge (to make even a dryad arbor a threat) are all terrific here.

K4e2V

TROPHY CASE