I think this card has a very low floor and in certain situations an extremely high ceiling. Based on the 2 in the cost this card is going to be best in a full Moxen, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt Deck. I would not be surprised if this starts as a fringe 1 of and then works it’s way up from there.
I enjoyed this a lot, especially the Metagame analysis and prediction.
This tournament has very unique attributes (Price, non-proxy, location, timing) which I was pleasantly surprised that you debated and came to a logical consensus on. For what it’s worth, I think there will be more Jeskai and less Shops which is more in line with Steve than Kevin’s predictions.
I may have missed this, but I would have liked for a prediction of attendance, because I think that will determine a lot of the Metagame. My thought is somewhere between 100 and 150 players and I think the expected metagame will be different at 100 vs 150 players. Vintage is a format with a lot of die hards who show up and play their deck regardless of what is at the top of the heap. I think that if this event got to 200 players the meta would more closely resemble NA EW 2017 than Waterbury.
One thing which is more a compliment to the work that Ryan Matt do than a criticism of your analysis is the limited value of just having Top8 data as compared to full MW% by archetype. I know you cannot control what data is published and available, but in your analysis I think it would be beneficial to spend less time stressing what deck won the event. It goes without saying, but there are a lot of factors other than what archetype someone played that contribute to whether someone makes Top8 or not let alone wins the event outright. I think more value could be drawn from looking at the non-stock cards in the lists rather than Workshops Top8%.
I really like this card for all the reasons you said. The inevitability it provides you once resolving is massive and could make it very impactful. I wish this card were printed back in the heyday of Turbo Tezz, it would have been a great addition there. I would try something with even more artifact mana, like Grim Monolith, Voltaic Key, and maybe even a Chrome Mox or two.
I’m looking forward to playing with this card. Glad it’s an uncommon too.
@vaughnbros said in Mishra's Self-Replicator [DOM]:
Isn't this just better than Precursor in a lot of scenarios?
Precursor’s strength is that it’s 9 power for 5 mana. You need to spend 9 mana to get 10 power out of this card.
My friend, Bryan Manolakos and I just recorded the following podcast:
@womba said in Math and Max: A statistical analysis of "100 Matches with the Best Deck in Magic":
@maxtortion said in Math and Max: A statistical analysis of "100 Matches with the Best Deck in Magic":
I'm curious if anyone has been Game 1 Mulliganing against you, thinking you were on Dredge. I know I've done that against you once. I threw away a totally reasonable 7 because it couldn't beat Dredge, and you opened up with Blue spells! Learned my lesson.
@Maxtortion this is a common occurrence, more so in paper but to an extent in MTGO haha.
One day someone will get blown out against me by doing this, but if the last 9 years are any indication, it won’t happen any time soon unless the DCI has something to say about it.
Thank you so much for putting this together. It brought me back to my econometrics days in college when I read this. A somewhat random aside and I may be mistaken, but I think that Max was running Steel Overseers while many of the “Shops Mirrors” he played in may have been against Ravager decks that did not run Overseer. If that’s the case, Max had a huge leg up on his opponent’s from a deck design standpoint as Overseer is one of the best cards in the mirror. Similarly, Phyrexian Metamorph if played correctly can be one of the best cards in the mirror, preventing you from falling behind to your opponent’s best plays. There is a lot more I could say about the Workshop mirror, but the main takeaway I have which was mentioned is that a Ravager mirror is more similar to a game of limited than Vintage in the traditional sense. Combat math rules the roost and generally a PTQ player does more combat math than a Vintage only player and thus should be better at that, vital aspect to Ravager mirrors.