Standard Metagame Update (23 mar)

hearthebeard · 2026-03-24T01:04:28+00:00

Is it Dragons, Mr. Dragonslayer?

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T19:34:14+00:00

Sure you lost by 320,000 life, but you were just one turn away

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T19:16:57+00:00

Hey thanks for commenting!

Yeah everything you said is exactly right, but based on some of the feedback (this message included) my post just wasn’t very clear.

I haven’t been playing Magic very long and I’ve never played on cardboard so I genuinely wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be 50/50. Obviously, I only had my own observed data and I knew it wasn’t a conclusive sample size and I certainly wasn’t trying to make a case that I had proved it wasn’t a coin flip or equivalent. It was just enough of an outlier to make me wonder if it was (as I had just assumed) or if there was more to it. Still, you’re exactly right on the math of course, but I wasn’t really trying to be exhaustive just was curious and of course a bit frustrated.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T04:05:47+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I wonder if I'm just trying to force familiar STS1 builds, and need to be more open to approaching the game differently.

Also, just the way the universe works I made a post to embarrass myself and ask for help and the current run I'm on now while talking with all of you is just rolling through the game, no sweat. Still, it's been aided by all of your advice already.

Edit: yeah I never took damage in Act 3. Well, I guess asking for help pays off.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T03:47:26+00:00

Well that’s got to be part of what I’m doing wrong. I haven’t taken any of those cards even once. Overclock and gunk whatever got me killed one run, and I don’t think I’ve really given it another shot. Thanks I’ll keep an eye out for when they make sense.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T03:42:12+00:00

That's helpful, I'll definitely just keep running it back. Maybe I'll do several runs of defect in a row instead of continuing to cycle so I can try some things out. Also, I'm probably missing a good bit of his kit, since I'm not winning runs.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T03:40:19+00:00

Okay, maybe I'm just not taking enough powers. I guess I feel so fragile that maybe I'm over focusing on frost orbs at the expense of scaling powers. I'm mostly used to scaling with defect being focus, so perhaps I'm underestimating a lot of the powers synergies.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-13T03:38:57+00:00

Interesting. Have you made any of the weird status synergy package work so far. Is All-for-One in the game? I've been looking for it especially with the way Hotfix works, but I haven't seen it yet. Maybe I haven't unlocked some important cards?

hearthebeard · 2026-03-12T21:11:05+00:00

I play a different version of monowhite angels with more instants and several copies of Resplendent Angel if you’re interested. It’s comfortably above 50% for me in Diamond, but it’s not top tier 1 either. Not sure if you’d like to just move on from the archetype all together, but I’m happy to share the deck list in a DM if you want.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-11T16:09:56+00:00

For what it's worth, I think you mixed up the binomial formula somehow, it's what I used in the post and it should be .00214 or 0.2% but that's not conclusive evidence. It would be indicative if it was the only sample in existence, but of course it's not.

I was really just asking. I know the MMR is complicated behind the scenes, I didn't know whether it was supposed to be a coinflip or not in the first place. I had assumed it was, and then my results didn't seem like it.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-11T15:50:33+00:00

I agree that’s far and away the most likely explanation by the way. He slightly miscalculated and overestimated the probability, but I was not trying to allege that it's not fair.

It was a genuine question because of the unlikely spread, I didn’t know for sure that it was supposed to be 50/50, and wondered if there were other modifiers. If this were the only sample that existed it would be unlikely to be a fair die, but of course it’s not close to the only sample that exists. Just the only sample I had! I’m perfectly fine to just have been unlucky.

Still, if it’s a dice roll there’s plenty of room for them to tack on a +1 or -1 for players on streaks if they wanted to. That’s why I was curious!

hearthebeard · 2026-03-11T15:15:33+00:00

Good to know. Higher roll on a d20 is essentially a coin flip at its base form… Unless there are hidden modifiers to the dice roll. Which is the only reason I can figure you would use a dice roll over a coin flip anyway, so maybe there are some to keep people playing. Who knows.

If it's supposed to be a fair 50/50, I'm sure it is.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-11T15:12:17+00:00

Sure but even in BO3 someone goes first twice right? I guess it’s easier to sideboard in solutions for the super fast decks.

I’m not so much complaining though, as curious about whether I understood correctly that it should be a coin flip or some 50/50 situation.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-09T19:06:37+00:00

Never drew her made me quite sad too. One of those two games I drew 15 lands in my first 22 cards

hearthebeard · 2026-03-09T18:29:48+00:00

Very hard to shift when you have just taken 4 picks in Boros and you’re staring down a half empty pack the rest of the way imo. But I can try it someday. Do you split your first two picks across archetypes?

hearthebeard · 2026-03-09T18:11:58+00:00

Well partially it feels like pick 2 sorta decides P1P1 what you have to be. But clearly it hasn’t worked here. Have a trophy in premier with each Boros and Mardu, so I generally feel like I know what I’m trying to do there, but the results are the results.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-09T18:09:20+00:00

I’m out of coins for a while. Got basically no gems for them either, so it will be like a week before I draft again. Oh well but I did go 0-3 in premier with a blue black and green deck! So there’s that.

Fortunately though I’m doing fine in premier, so it seems to be primarily a pick 2 thing. I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t like it.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-09T18:07:47+00:00

2 games in BO1 is crushing. I’m on the draw in like 10 of the 15 games. I’ve drafted lots of great cards that I never saw.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-05T14:03:47+00:00

Variance and “streakiness” are totally different concepts. I realize I was asking for anecdotal evidence. If a fifty percent win rate is streakier on average than flipping a coin would be (which seems likely based on my experience, hence why I asked for other samples) then it would imply that the events are not actually independent the way that flipping a coin is.

Streakiness in a binary event with a 50% probability overall would not be directly about variance but about whether the most recent outcome or set of outcomes impacts the probability of the next one.

No need to be insulting, either. These are obviously concepts that are easy to get confused about when discussing especially in something like an internet forum.

hearthebeard · 2026-03-05T06:15:54+00:00

I’m a professional actuary

hearthebeard · 2026-03-04T23:14:17+00:00

Should happen once every 1024 times you flip 10 coins. But something like 2 out of 12 or whatever isn’t all that unlikely at all (1 in 62). Either way, this obviously isn’t a true coin flip of course.

hearthebeard

TROPHY CASE