It is a priority. I’m just trying to create something sustainable that won’t require constant upkeep, which is something of a project. The actual writing of the article each month was the easy part.

Jason, I know that you’re working on the metagame updates. I hope it’s a priority; I feel like the majority of the people who used this site in the past primarily used it for metagame data.

Glad to hear this piece captured your interest. Right now my priority is getting the metagame database fully automated so that I can do updates without hours of data entry. We hope to be bringing you more “big picture” stuff on Modern soon.

First, let me say I have deliberately kept mum about this as I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. I’m sort of a one-man team when it comes to the metagame updates, and the work load is… sort of breathtaking.

We actually only relied on MTGO data for a section of our analysis. The rest of it came from a bunch of different sites (MTG Top 8, MTGdecks, etc.), which reported results from paper events. Part of the reason our metagame analysis always looked different (and usually more nuanced) than other sites’ is because we gathered ALL the decks that were available publicly, and assigned different weights to different types of events.

So, while the change in MTGO reporting definitely hurts, it doesn’t make that impossible. I will probably assign slightly less weight to the MTGO data points, and play around with it to see what makes sense intuitively. The biggest obstacle at this point is much more mundane—I have to program some code that will automate inputting all that tournament data, as I can’t sustainably do it every month/week by hand. Unfortunately I don’t have a clear time frame on that right now.

It’s possible perhaps to partner up with a store that does semi-regular large sanctioned modern events, and maybe even go as far as offering a little branding to the tournament.

For instance, Birmingham in the UK is the site of Manaleak, which consistently holds the largest regular modern tournaments here. Less frequently we have the MagicMadhouse large tournaments as well, one of which is modern.

There will be equivalent places in the US, as well as Japan, France etc etc etc.

Who knows, it’s possible however unlikely that you guys could broker a relationship where they provide the list of decks from a tournament and then maybe a top-8 decklist trawl.

Maybe? Haha 🙂

The problem with that kind of data mining is ignorance. I’m sure that you’re right about these events, but I don’t know where they are or who’s running them. I frequently don’t hear about events in my own area until right before. To get that data we have to know about the event in advance and then find the lists, which most don’t publish and they may not be willing to give us even if asked. Could it be done, certainly. Is it feasible? I’m not convinced.

We’re looking at various solutions and want to bring back the metagame updates, but we keep having this problem of finding enough usable data in a timely manner. Jason’s working on it.

I didn’t want to phrase it that way, but yeah, it does. If it has to stay until it gets updated, maybe we could have a little fun with it? For example, you could change the title to “Current metagame (from 6 months ago)” or “Current metagame. Just kidding”. Or have fun with the archetypes, throw in some spicy ones and unheard of combinations:

Pirate Stompy
Death’s Shadow Tron
Affinity Control
UB Valakut
Ground Seal Combo

On a more serious note, if you intend to update it, I’m curious to know, how? After this site stopped updating the metagame other sites took over for a while, but ever since WotC cut down on published results, it’s been radio silence everywhere. How do you intend to cobble together enough meaningful data to update the list, other than sporadically in periods with lots of events, such as the weeks to come? Will the updates ever become regular again? When can we expect an update?

Also if I may gush slightly; this article is the kind of article I come here for. To the point, data-driven and a great basis for open discussion on the format, with some interesting points thrown our way as well. It’s helpful, insightful and once a few decklists are thrown in, we’re talking about a properly decent bit of writing with substance and analysis.

Wizards have made it harder for you guys, and I sympathise. Is there room for you to apply this sort of methodology to something a bit more regional? There are numerous 100+ player events happening all the time, and while they aren’t “all of modern” they are at least representative of the format.

Thanks!

Your article is refreshing, because it doesn’t pander to this at all (and why should it!). Simple unbiased analysis, as much as it’s possible to do so.

Yet outside of this protected bubble we see a clamouring vocal minority crying foul and waxing lyrical about the death of modern and how ‘broken’ eldrazi and titanshift are. These two decks (as opposed to, say, affinity which is consistently one of the best things to do in the format) seem to draw more ire than I can previously remember in modern. Cries for bans and of the death of modern seem rife, and I’m genuinely confused by the lack of any sort of evidence to support these viewpoints.

However, I can and do recognise that in our imperfect world of magic, many players will bring a casual or suboptimal pile to FNM or their local playgroups (or larger events) and those ‘big mana’ decks often seem the most brutal and merciless when you’re not expecting to see them and are piloting (for example) BW vampire tribal with Felidar Sovereign as a win condition. Also, it’s a provable phenomenon (for many reasons including cost) that people are resistant to changing their decks, sideboards to respond to a metagame shift. Perhaps these are underlying causes of the rhetoric I’m seeing plastered about on the Internet?

Apologies for the tangential comment! I just felt like somehow it meshed in with the early metagame insight that we’re getting at this point from big events starting to flow in.

Bring on the ProTour 🙂

I admit that “current metagame” bar looks pathetic and useless. It is coming back eventually, so my inclination is to leave it as is for now.

Speaking of metagame, shouldn’t the “current meta” sidebar be removed from the front page? If it’s impossible to update now that’s one thing, but leaving it up after it’s 6 months out of date feels a bit useless.

Lastly, to address (partially) your question about E-tron and whether the meta in Charlotte was too hostile, consider that Affinity was the second most represented deck and it CRUSHES E-tron. The match-up for Affinity is about as positive as against Mono-U Merfolk, so that definitely hurt E-Tron’s conversion rate.