You’re missing the point chief.

Read, inform, learn.

The best deck in the format isn’t D&T, but the article does not accurately reflect what the deck is.

I’m surprised Titanshift has sort of fallen off the map, though I guess that a lone Courser of Kruphix or Obstinate Baloth isn’t quite enough to stem the Dredge tide long enough to beat the Dredged-up attackers back.

We are almost done with the month of July and heading into August. How come no data from July is being used here? How long does the process of compiling data actually take? I would have loved to see at least SOME data from the month of July, given that’s the metagame we actually are playing in. Granted, the changes from month to month cannot be so drastic that this data is completely useless, but one could argue that the extrapolation of this data is going to lead to conclusions that are slightly irrelevant because the actual metagame is a whole month ahead of the Metagame Update.

It’s not a problem with your article specifically, just a long-time issue with the deck classification itself.

One of the members of the thread on MTG Salvation made a great post for searching for results. It can be found here:

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/tier-2-modern/724274-death-and-taxes?page=15#c362

Even if you look just for June, you’ll find that the random naming and cross-listing of this deck skews the statistics heavily and that the results for it here will differ. The reason that so many of the lists that come up “Death & Taxes” are Eldrazi-based is that those are the only versions of the deck that are being listed under that name.

The defining difference between D&T and Hatebears is that D&T plays Aether Vial and Flickerwisp while Hatebears, for the most part, does not.

For reference, here’s the MTGS forum for Hatebears:

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern/220191-gw-hatebears

Notice none of the sample lists in the primer include either of this cards. While there is overlap in posts regarding Vial and Wisp, generally, this is due to mislabeling from events or articles.

It’s just especially frustrating to see the deck drop here when it did nothing but trend upwards last month. Based on the article, this is completely due to, yet again, the annoying mislabeling issue.

*wah, my deck isn’t described as the best*

First off, modern’s diversity relies in large part on very few tiered decks having 20/80 type matchups. Silver bullets exist to beat all sorts of strategies, which in turn shut down decks and allow wins from out of nowhere. Tron may be the one exception – it has a lot more matchups that skew heavily for or against it.

Maybe you should consider reading how these numbers are determined – how often the deck is played, along with results over a long period of time. Two good finishes don’t make a deck the best in the format because modern generally has an “any given day X can win” meta. Hell I play blue tron and that has won some tournaments, 5-0’ed some MTGO leagues.

Or better yet, don’t look at these stats as an indictment of you as a player. We all have our pet decks, no reason to get offended.

Keep in mind, this is data from June, not July. Although it does seem I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board regarding D&T to make sure we’re classifying it correctly. Another project for the July update.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/deckshow.php?event_ID=36&t%5Bevent%5D=28&start_date=2016-07-23&end_date=2016-07-24&city=&order_1=finish&limit=8&t_num=1&action=Show+Decks

The problem for the deck has ALWAYS been a naming issue, but it’s that the deck isn’t consistently listed as Death and Taxes. Many players playing it have submitted our decklists with Death & Taxes as the archetype only to have it listed under hatebears, flicker, and a number of names that aren’t Death & Taxes. This constantly skews the results it puts up and causes it to be misrepresented.

The deck has arguably the best cardpool and most diverse set of choices it’s ever had available in Modern; enough to run it monowhite, white-green, or white-black successfully; and it’s still relegated to Tier 3 status with most unaware of how well it actually performs in the meta.

The deck has spent a lot of time justifiably in Tier 3 obscurity, but that’s just not the case right now, neither statistically nor performance-wise.

For goodness sake, built properly, the deck is even or better against most of the listed Tier 1 decks.