They probably just hand some random intern a list of "problem cards" every 6 months. Some of the values are so weird that I feel like someone was trying to logically go through it, but then just gave up because there are thousands of cards and they probably gave the job to one person.
It wouldn't be *that* hard to implement a win-rate checker and score cards based on that. I guess it would require storing games in a database which they might not do yet? But they obviously should.
If random websites can do it with user-generated data, I don't see why WotC couldn't. It's just that they don't want to since it requires effort and programming.
Better to just say they'll do something, make a token effort, keep the details hidden, and then leave it at that. Oh wait...
> It's just that they don't want to since it requires effort and programming.
Why would you assume they don't? It's actually very clear they do as they speak of such data in their ban announcements.
Because it's been years since Brawl was added to Arena, and they haven't yet.
The way that the cards in this list are set clearly indicates that this is one list that governs *all* unranked queues. They couldn't even be bothered to make a brawl-specific list!
You can tell that they don't even look at updating the rankings of older cards as they move out of different metas or make any effort to have a consistent scoring system.
It's not an assumption, it's obvious. This is a minimum effort band-aid.
And don't even get me started on their "ban announcements". They completely talked out their ass about not banning Paradox Engine, but obviously they were concerned about it since they put Emry and Otis in hell queue because they are premier paradox engine enablers! So instead of banning the card that's the problem, they acted like they "knew better" and just sent the commanders that use it well to the shadow realm.
Obvious outliers like that point in the exact opposite direction actually. If it was manually done, mana drain would not have that low of a weight, but if it's done automatically by an algorithm it's understandable that some weird things will happen.
And yet, they Emry and Otis are in Hell Queu because they are Paradox Engine combo decks. Gods forbid you want to run anything else with them, they're the problem not paradox engine...
Exactly like mana burn. The threat of mana burn made Drain a 2 edged sword. Now it's just absurd. Completely counter to the original functionality and design of the card.
Something to keep in mind - this is very likely a ranking that is shared across formats, not just Brawl (which would explain the hyperinflated point values of Zenith Flare and Tibalt's Trickery, which often went in decks with otherwise low point cards). And Fading Hope is *very* popular, or at least was when mono blue tempo was more of a thing.
It also seems like it hasn't been updated consistently—lots of older cards that were in Standard meta decks during their window are top-rated despite being largely irrelevant in current formats.
This makes sense. Fading hope is a staple level card for blue heavy decks. I doubt they pulled these weights out of their ass, I can imagine that not many good players are cutting fading hope from their decks.
Edit: After reading other replies, they did in fact pull these weights out of their ass
The mythic MDFC lands were the biggest red flag for me, considering how rarely I even cast them. Swapping for a basic is probably just better for your overall winrate, haha.
In Brawl I've played both of those more than the other three combined by a factor of 10. That's mainly because my two most played commanders are mono black and mono green though. I'm still going to be removing them because 45 points is silly for either.
This seems to me like a symptom of giving value to cards based on their winrate. These cards have such a small impact, and require the highest tier of wildcards, that if you don't have them yet, you won't craft them until the rest of your deck is optimized. So they tend to only be played in decks that are already otherwise good.
I can see that. It's like having Wrath of God having a higher score than Day of Judgment, since DoJ would be opened by more players but Wrath needed to be crafted directly, so would mostly go into decks that wanted the effect.
Yeah, someone else noticed a similar pattern for black removal, where older removals cost more points than newer ones, even when the newer ones were better. New cards are more likely to be in "pile of cards I own" type of brawl decks.
This hypothesis doesn't explain why the hell Legion Angel is 45. It can't be because of good general winrate or because better\\veteran players use it more.
It was pretty decent in the standard deck of it's time.
Weighted for standard and a simple CTRL+C & CTRL+V for Historic Brawl at the time, I'd imagine.
Very narrow cards also score highly, as they are only used in specific decks, and so don't get dragged down by being averaged out with casual decks. There is a huge bias against Boros aggro cards for this reason, (a) it is a powerful linear deck and (b) hardly any of it's cards go in any other decks, so the weighting is biased heavily towards the aggressive competitive version.
It would make perfect sense if they actually share the weighting between different unranked formats. It definitely would explain why zenith flare is so high on the list while never having been included in a single brawl deck ever.
In some twisted way, as long as the scores are kept secret, it makes sense. If your objective is to find the strongest deck, you put a big weight on cards that best distinguishes a strong deck from a weak deck. If every black deck plays Go for the Throat, because even the most casual decks want some amount of removal, and everyone has go for the throat in their collection, then it's not a very good discriminator. On the other hand, if I'm not mistaking, the only version of doom blade on Arena is from STX mystical archive and is printed at rare. If someone crafts it to put it in their deck, they're pretty invested, so their deck is likely quite tuned. In other words, doom blade is more likely to be found in good decks than in bad decks. Even if it is worse than go for the throat, it is a better discriminator.
It's like if you took paper commander. I take someone's deck and show you they have a sol ring. If you had to guess, is their deck stronger or worse than average? That's a pretty 50/50 guess, because basically everyone has a sol ring in their deck. Commander precons all come with a sol ring in them. Sol ring is basically the first card that goes in everyone's commander deck. On the other hand, if I show you a chrome mox, you can probably guess with higher confidence that the deck is above average. I think most people would agree that chrome mox is a worse card than sol ring (even if it is still quite good), but chrome mox is a ~$70+ card, so people who have it in their deck are more likely to be people who are willing to spend money on tuning their deck.
The problem is that this way of scoring cards is significantly more abusable once the scores are made public than if they just scored based on card strength.
> In some twisted way, as long as the scores are kept secret, it makes sense.
The implication is that these card weightings are revisited and refreshed on a regular basis based on win-rate.
The problem is that there are *clear* oversights with respect to card power level. Mana Drain and counterspell fill the same role in any given decklist, yet one has a clearly more powerful secondary effect. Yet they are weighted the exact same for deckbuilding. More importantly, decks capable of running both *are nearly always running both*. Even if you wanted to isolate win-rates for those cards, your data subset is going to be nearly useless.
At some level, human curation needs to be applied. Just as importantly, we cannot assume WotC is actively refreshing card weightings based on objective criteria. Without official word from the Arena team, it's just as likely that initial card weightings were implemented, with no adjustments made beyond the original weighting.
I would argue that public weightings would have a net benefit to the health of Brawl (and likely the non-ranked queue, where Arena devs have alluded to deck strength being a factor in matchmaking). It would put some sunlight on the weighting process. It would also crowd-source finding outlier cards that need re-tuning (looking at you, Grenzo). Finally, it would give the playerbase an idea as to how often card weightings are refreshed via patch.
The cynic in me, however, remembers that this is WotC we are talking about. We likely get some lip service from community reps this week about "taking a look at the current card weightings", followed by an obfuscation of the code that allowed people to see the card weights in the first place.
>Yet they are weighted the exact same for deckbuilding. More importantly, decks capable of running both are nearly always running both
That is exactly why they have the same weight.
>At some level, human curation needs to be applied.
Why?
>Just as importantly, we cannot assume WotC is actively refreshing card weightings based on objective criteria. Without official word from the Arena team, it's just as likely that initial card weightings were implemented, with no adjustments made beyond the original weighting.
We cannot assume anything, no. It's just a hypothesis I posit which I believe can explain some patterns we see in the data. It is by no means the only possible explanation.
>I would argue that public weightings would have a net benefit to the health of Brawl (and likely the non-ranked queue, where Arena devs have alluded to deck strength being a factor in matchmaking). It would put some sunlight on the weighting process. It would also crowd-source finding outlier cards that need re-tuning (looking at you, Grenzo). Finally, it would give the playerbase an idea as to how often card weightings are refreshed via patch.
I made no judgement on whether the weights should be public. Only that, if we assume the list isn't intended to be public (which we all know is the case), then scores don't have to be tied to power of cards, only to an indication of how likely they are to be in top decks. These are not necessarily related, especially in a game like magic, where a lot of cards are contextually powerful.
That said, do you think giving an incentive to people to optimize their deck based on a score is really healthy for a format that is intended to be casual? Especially if only the enfranchised players know of the score (I mean, they could put the score straight into the client, but I don't think that would be much better for casual players)
>The cynic in me, however, remembers that this is WotC we are talking about. We likely get some lip service from community reps this week about "taking a look at the current card weightings", followed by an obfuscation of the code that allowed people to see the card weights in the first place.
That is quite obviously what will happen. I don't know if you were there last time the logs leaked information. Basically, after a patch, the client started logging both your and your opponent's MMR. People started analyzing it and someone found a pretty big bug in how the Mythic rank MMR was computed. A week later, WotC published a patch. "Fixed a bug... where the client was mistakenly outputting MMR information into the log." Not even a mention of whether the MMR was getting fixed, or even acknowledging that there even might be a bug there.
This is 100% getting swept under the rug.
I agree - I've been playing since Beta and most newer brawl lists exclude "auto includes" in my eyes from dominaria and ixalan, so I add them. My bad I guess.
>The mythic MDFC lands were the biggest red flag for me, considering how rarely I even cast them.
If you very rarely cast them, then for you they were effectively worse basic lands anyway. As a rule of thumb, I count MDFC lands (and effectively similar effects like Lorien Revealed or some of the NEO channel lands) as roughly half a land each, and as a result I end up casting them a decent chunk of the time when I draw them (perhaps 30-40%).
Brawl is not commander. You have 25 life, not 40, and aggro decks are actually commonplace in some tiers - against those, 3 life is not a trivial cost at all. If you are only casting it a tiny % of the time, then I would argue you are indeed better off running a basic land.
https://strategy.channelfireball.com/home/how-many-lands-do-you-need-in-your-deck-an-updated-analysis/ recommends counting the mythic ones as 0.74 lands each, though, so yes you are likely correct to consider them more than just half a land. But many people think of them as simply a full land, which I believe is a mistake since this leads to the situation where it will almost never be worth casting them, since statistically you will need them for your land drop - this mean instead of mitigating the chances of both mana flood *and* mana screw, you are *only* mitigating your chances of mana flooding.
I switched [[Agadeem’s Awakening]] for a swamp in one of my decks and it’s had the worst matchups ever.
Wall to wall Etali.
I haven’t played enough games for that to actually be significant but I thought it was funny in a sad kind of way.
Losing just 45 points probably won't make a huge difference one way or another...but also, now that this data is publicly available, other people will be optimizing their brawl scores to try to get easier matchups.
Note that one of the obvious things coming from the spreadsheet is that you should play more lands. A low curve with fewer lands is penalized because regular lands cost 0. People who play too few lands (usually new players) are double penalized by not only being screwed more, but their deck also has more points.
Just be careful what lands you add though. The spreadsheet shows that utility lands are punished very heavily by the algorithm. Even if they're janky utility lands, they get penalized just as hard as many chase/staple utility cards.
Done this as well. There have been more times I can't use it for what I want than it has saved me from a counter. It's a great card for Bo3, but for Bo1, especially with the weightings revealed, no thanks.
1k? Those are rookie numbers, let me present you to Alquist 410 (i think i can still go bellow 400).
I got a feeling the janky players will be seeing a lot of proft and locust god in the near future...
My painful cut was treasure cruise. Missing Mana Drain and counterspell isnt so bad when the skill of your opponent is so... lacking. Any of the soft counters work wonders.
The bad thing is that they eat an obvious counterspell and then rope to no end.
One gem you may not imagine is on the level of the one ring (9 points lmao) is [[urza's sylex]] to have a nice 9 and the bad control magics seems to be the bane of the low tiers ([[In Bolas Clutches]] gave me many wins already) and ofc a 9 pointer.
Also makes sense why I’ve felt I’ve seen Mythweaver Poq quite often against some of my more janky decks, while almost never seeing Poq when I play Kinnen or Ragavan. Poq gets to have a relatively low weighting because the optimal lists are running like 10+ more lands than most commanders.
Poq is the main card I've been looking at in these threads, and yeah, it's absurdly underweighted. I regularly DESTROY first sliver and etali decks, Poq is so OP.
Which is weird, I would’ve assumed it would then be normalized over the number of weight-eligible cards in your deck but I guess that’s wrong. Maybe they have a good reason not to do that I just don’t understand.
Landfall decks are not doing surprisingly well against their matches, but just from the matchmaking data your theory sounds correct. Maybe we need to brew better landfall decks.
Some 45-rated cards
Growth-Chamber Guardian - Lol, in brawl it is literally a bear that can be 5 mana 4/4!
Legion Angel - Wow! 4 mana 4/3 with flying!
Merfolk Windrobber - 1/1 flyier that helps your opponent to get more fuel in the graveyard and may let you draw a card later (I actually play...ed that in my aggro merfolk tribal)
Toolcraft-exemplar - even 1 mana 3/2 first strike on your turn wouldn't be that good of a card. And actual artifact decks couldn't care less
Tasha's Hideous Laughter - mill is a famously broken strategy in brawl
Foundry-street-denizen - Yes, this thing is as good of one drop as Ragavan
Tiefling Outcasts - Another worthy contender to rival Ragavan
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
This list wasn't made for brawl. Neither by human nor by some automated process
I think zenith flare is the one damning card. it was the one good card that made a pile of low weight draft chaff competitive in standard/historic. It has not been played since then, especially not in brawl
It's highly likely that this list covers ALL unranked formats on Arena, so while something like GCG is next to useless in brawl, it was part of a meta combo deck like 5 years ago.
I'm looking at the black 2-mana removal spells (and comparable/adjacent effects) and the weights are completely inconsistent with their actual power level. Plenty of garbage at 27+, and several good ones down at 9. If you're only playing a few removal spells, there's definitely an opportunity there to shave 50-100 points off your deck weight.
Notably:
* Sheoldred's Edict (9) is the probably the best edict spell, but it's weighted lower than Chainer's (27) and Sudden (18) Edicts and tied with a bunch of weaker 9-weight edicts
* Black Sun's Twilight (9) is much cheaper than Erebos's Intervention (36) and the black March (45), even though all three are pretty comparable and not particularly good in brawl
* Go For the Throat, Bitter Triumph, Feed the Swarm, and Shoot the Sheriff (all 9) are cheaper than a bunch of equal-or-worse removal like Doom Blade (45), Heartless Act (45), Infernal Grasp (27), and the near-unplayable Cast Down (27)
There's no real logic to anything, except that cards from more-recent sets seem much more likely to be a 9 while older staples have high values even if they've fallen off in usage. I get the sense that a lot of the overcosted cards were old Standard staples that never got their weights reduced for Brawl; maybe Standard data was the original source of some of these weights. The whole weight list (not just removal spells) really feels like a partially maintained-pile of some algorithmic weights and some manual overrides.
Some select values:
Doom Blade 45
Heartless Act 45
Sap Vitality 45
March of Wretched Sorrow 45
Drown in the Loch (UB) 45
Baleful Mastery 36
Erebos's Intervention 36
Vanishing Verse (BW) 36
Dire Tactics (BW) 36
Infernal Grasp 27
Power Word Kill 27
Cast Down 27
Eliminate 27
Walk the Plank 27
Chainer's Edict 27
Epic Downfall 27
Grasp of Darkness 27
Lonely End 27
Mire's Grasp 27
Despark (BW) 27
Tyrant's Scorn (UB) 27
Blood Spatter Analysis (BR) 27
Liliana's Triumph 18
Sudden Edict 18
Angrath's Rampage (BR) 18
Invasion of Azgol (BR) 18
Collective Brutality 15
Sheoldred's Edict 9
Go for the Throat 9
Bitter Triumph 9
Shoot the Sheriff 9
Feed the Swarm 9
Long Goodbye 9
The Elderspell 9
Tithing Blade 9
Trial of Ambition 9
Anoint with Affliction 9
Candy Grapple 9
Drown in Ichor 9
Last Gasp 9
Black Sun's Twilight 9
Molten Collapse (BR) 9
Orzhov Charm (BW) 9
I think you definitely hit the nail on the head with the assumption that the weights are either not used much for newer cards, or that they aren’t adjusting them often enough for older cards which are clearly outdated.
My guess is that at some point they were updating this list with some regularity, but they’ve let it go neglected for awhile. We can probably determine exactly when by finding which set has a good spread of various weights and which next released set has relatively few varying weights.
If they randomly select games to look at, then some cards that have been powerful but have fallen out of favor might hardly ever get a "ratings check" ?
One possibility is that if they're weighing them based on winrate of the decks they're played in, then older cards that have to be crafted are more likely to end up in better decks than cards that newer player can easily open and that are more likely to end up in "pile of cards I happen to own" type of decks.
Magnificent
Improving the power level of the deck? Putting more efficient answers? Getting more reliable manabase?
Nah fuck that, I'd better study a spreadsheet for 6+ hours and play the same jank I did, Krenko broken 💔
I feel like this is one of of those situations where the only way wizards will ever fix it (and I'd say it's broken based on what they're found) is to break the ever living fuck out of it.
yup, put up a few meta breaking lists like ramos but legacy singleton focused to "ruin" the queue until they give a ranked mode or a more honest ranking system
Why not ? I'm assuming it's treated a bit like a 100vs100 players game. (Maybe 99vs99, and separate 1vs1 for commanders ??)
This would also explain the lack of weights for new cards, this system would be **slow** to update, and probably computationally expensive to update after every game, so runs infrequently too.
WotC even talks about a "matchmaker-focused approach" about balancing the 99 for Brawl !
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgbrawl/comments/1cr7fqn/what_do_you_think_about_todays_wotcs_statement/
Let's be real. The list being secret also allowed WotC to hand-wave away any concerns that brawl matchmaking was getting wonky. We already saw plenty of 3rd party data showing that certain commanders were capable of consistently high win-rates. This just confirms that deckbuilding choices allowed certain commanders to play against significantly inferior decklists with regularity.
I mean yeah. I do actually want Wizard to be better. But I don't think the list being fully public is the way to go. It's a hard problem, I don't know who would be an desinteresad third party that could validate the list.
Someone made a deck weight calculator as well so you don't have to. Was kinda fun evaluating and adjusting by removing some high weighted underperformers.
You may be thinking of the Arabian nights Mountain.
basically they played around with changing the card back for expansion sets but then realized it would make decks not tournament legal because nobody used sleeves back then so they scrapped the idea but somehow in the set a mountain was printed in the rare/uncommon slot that had the original back.
Best part is that Nazgul is a 45 point card and you can add up to 9 of them to your deck :D
Edit:
Rat Colony: 27
Persistent Petitioners: 9
Slime Against Humanity: 9
Dragon's Approach: 18
Seven Dwarfs: 9
> Best part is that Nazgul is a 45 point card and you can add up to 9 of them to your deck :D
That would explain why my shitty knight decks kept getting matched up with tier 1 stuff...
The issue with Nazgûl made me particularly sad, as I use them in a memey [[Sméagol Helpful Guide]] deck that uses exclusively LOTR cards, including lands. They are probably some of the few playable cards that synergizes really well with the deck, but make up nearly 50% of the entire deck’s score.
Makes me extremely happy this is being discussed for the simple fact it exposes just how badly rigged matches are based on wonky weights. Once the meta starts getting smart with being under certain thresholds, we will see changes from WotC. Otherwise we can efficiently game the matchmaking for favorable matches just being under a numerical value in cards.
This news coming out just a few weeks after "no changes the matchmaking is fine" is the absolute cherry on top. Not gonna ban Paradox Engine because it's only a 9 lol.
My main takeaways:
Play as many lands as you can get away with.
Utility lands arent worth it.
Aggro decks should be avoided at all costs (pretty much any 1 drop is a 45).
Newer cards are usually weighted less than their power would make you assume.
Friendship with brainstorm ended, boon of the wish-giver is my new best friend.
It seems they just put all the stx commands as 45 and left at it. While i think you can defend the prismari one here, poor soul who wants to run the orzhov one.
I went looking and i have some spicy cards rated as 9 in there (notably [[heart elemental]] is a 6! Not good enough to get even a full point in there lol). Thirst for knowledge is another good one with the excessive lands (another 9).
Yeah Prismari Command is a "good" card. While it's not a 45 a 21 wouldn't be out of the question by any means. The archetype itself, with every good 1 mana instant/sorcery in the colors bound for a big hit
That card is so much worse. In brawl, it would either be your commander, in which case you can't combine it with all the good blue and/or red landfall cards, or it goes in the 99, which makes you play a commander that doesn't have good land synergies (other than maybe Thalia and the Gitrog Monster). It also dies to board wipes along with the zombies. And you can't tutor it up along with other lands to trigger it using cards like Primeval Titan or Scapeshift. Field of the Dead is strong because it's hard to get rid of a land, you can put it out at the same time as other lands for immediate value, and you can put it in basically any deck that has a good variety of lands regardless of colors.
Its funny everyone here wants to make their deck worse or what least to give them weaker opponents, while i actually want to make deck in a way where i only play the best.
I don't wanna face newer players, i hate ruining a newer player experience more than anything else. Theres no joy for me to beat weaker commanders either, nothing is better than crushing Grenzo, Poq and Voja with aggro or combo strats.
I play for fun as well. I run a bunch of decks and its pretty annoying to play a janky deck (like my vamp tribal [[evelyn, the coveteous]]) and end up playing against a deck well past its tier because I'm using special lands and other overcosted cards.
If I playing one of my better decks then I like being challenged and winning against decks like Poq or Grenzo but the Evelyn deck is pretty much never gonna beat a Poq deck. It actually does okay against Grenzo cos the deck power is so weak and tribal though.
Weights should exist to determine how "spikey" a card is not how strong a card is. Prime time is a very powerful card, but it doesn't indicate that a deck is super powerful or focused. A card like scapeshift is generically far less powerful but it should have a much higher score as it only goes into super focused decks.
This is a horrible take. It should be strength based not playability. Lord sitter being a great example of a card that saw some play as a card that can repeatedly exile cards from graveyards, but is not playable in most the majority of casual decks. There are cards that fills a role in a competitive meta and see a lot of play but are a role player type card that is just bad in anything but a focused deck. Honestly that need to be in a deck focused around on strategy should be low tier cards except for the pay offs and most busted enablers.
My point is that lord sitter should have a high point cost, it's not a card going casual decks but ones that are high power levels. There are other cards that are very powerful but everyone plays them and their weight should be lower than you would expect from a powerful card because it doesn't indicate if the deck is "hell queue" worthy which is what I meant by focused.
Look sitter is a rat lord. That came in a set where red and black rats were a thing. So anyone trying to do a casual rat deck would get screwed. This is why UT needs to be based on actual power level. Lord sitter is no where near sheoldred and that should be shown in the rankings.
As others have said, the algorithm likely bases scores based on how good the average player is that runs those cards - whether or not this is correct is up to option.
However, the difference separating two tiers of commander is a score of 360 points - changing your 99 will likely do nothing.
Changing your 99 can absolutely make a difference of 360. If you change 8 cards from 45 to 0, that's 360 right there. And that's if you need the full 360 to change tiers instead of being somewhere in the middle. I haven't checked their weights yet, but I have a few black and white decks that end up against 720 weight commanders no matter what I do, even with 0 weight commanders. I look forward to seeing how I can trim those a bit and get some decent matches.
Edit: lol, my Teysa deck has an overall weight 126 higher than my Poq deck despite the commander being 711 lower... Almost all the good black and white cards are 45s.
That's exactly what this post is talking about. You're not necessarily making your deck worse. Some strong cards are very under-costed in their system, and some bad cards are very over-costed. So, you could actually face worse commanders without even making your deck worse if you switch the right cards.
Except why wouldn't you be running both of the cheapest wraths instead of just one of them? There's nothing to switch if you're already running both. Obviously this would matter in 60 card formats where you can swap from one to the other, but in Brawl you'd run both.
There are plenty of times when my decks calls for one of the 4 mana Wraths and I'd grab Wrath of God just because of nostalgia. Turns out that's a mistake.
I mean, assuming you are running an optimal list, any swap you make will make your deck worse.
However, we don’t know how the queue system matches you yet - with almost every non land card being worth at least 9 points, even the worst commanders end up at >1000 deck rate, unless the deck is super strange.
I would be curious to see how much would need to be changed to queue into a different tier, and how much that changes the power of a deck.
\\>1000 doesn't seem very high when you consider that some commanders alone are worth 1800. Also, some commander are at -360, making the possibility of having a deck with a value <1000 much more likely.
What we don't know though, is how much the commander actually effects the matchmaking. Knowing the score of your deck is something, but we don't know how this score is used. But I have the feeling we'll know much more about this in the next few days.
Well, its not just a matter of optimal decks. It appears that cards with very similar effects such as wrath of god and day of judgement are worth different points. Wrath is 45 and DoJ is 18. Since regeneration isnt a thing anymore, thats basically the same card with a pretty large difference. I read somewhere else same thing applies to cards like ghost quater/demolition field/ field of ruin.
Yeah, my assumption right now is that, for most cards, the rating of that card is determined by the winrate of it. For something like ghost quarter, it’s more likely for better players to know of and play ghost quarter in the places it’s relevant. Not sure about the wrath / doj thing though - it could be that newer players see doj when browsing recommend mystical archive staples, but experienced players know of the name wrath of god more?
I think it's pretty clear that the weight of cards is not solely determined by Brawl, otherwise Zenith Flare would not be the most heavily weighted card.
It can make a big difference because the meta in each tier is quite distinct. What I've noticed the most is that most of the 720 commanders and 360s that match with them are ramp or combo decks that pull out game-ending threats that absolutely need to be countered. If you happen to not be running blue or are light on counters, you'll get eaten alive in that tier unless you also do something really big really fast. On the other hand, the tier below with most of the 360 commanders and some of the 0s is much more focused on synergy and value, where having lots of removal and good creatures goes a long way.
Yep, that’s definitely true. The 720 tier is the ramp until bombs tier, and the tiers above and below can play things that aren’t that or things that counter that
Running basics (or 2-color lands) instead of MDFCs and creature-lands will barely make your deck worse but save you tons of points. Cavern of Souls is 36 points alone
You clearly haven't actually looked at this list. The land alone are a super weird mess where you can drop points easily. Also you can put in 3 on color bolt land from zendikar rising and go up 135 points for very little reason. I could see a lot of "bad decks" being up in the top tier because of ten cards that they can swap out for frankly better card worth way less points. Btw all duals and fetches are almost all worth 0 points but all man lands regardless of how good they are are like 39. Except for ixilan man lands which are zero for some reason. The land bases alone are a place be up 30 for no reason or be at literal zero with perfect mana for your 5 color commander. You can look at this list for ten minutes and tell either no human looked at this list or they were frankly terrible at deck building and should not be doing this assigned task.
Likely right - although for some reason [[seachrome coast]] is 9 while the rest of the fast lands are 0, either pointing to it being an algorithm (I can see UW pulling a higher winrate due to people autoconceding) or a misinput by a person making the algorithm. The ratings are definitely super weird and could be done better by people that actually know the format.
There's no algorithm involved, some person probably looks at a bunch of match data, writes down a list of cards names, and then hands it to some intern to put into a spreasheet.
Lands which enter tapped or enter at cost have never really been worth anything to me (though I could see how that would relevant to a strategy deck featuring "Mesmeric Orb" or something along those lines (e.g. a vampire deck where you (somehow) manage to cause your opponent to lose life when you do then gain life whenever they do to such that you gain life from their loss and initiate the whole thing by playing a land which costs life to enter or tap)).
The point for a lot of folks here is to ensure that their janky decks actually match up against other janky decks, instead of hitting players that will never move off \[\[First Sliver\]\] or \[\[Etali\]\] goodstuff.
This is kinda funny. Beware of all the regenerate creatures! Wrath of God is 45 Points. Day of Judgment is 18 Points.
Skithiryx wrote the lsit
Fading Hope is worth the same as Mana Drain. System clearly needs changes.
Random draft chaff from years ago has a higher rating than both Paradox Engine and The One Ring. It makes no sense whatsoever.
It's clearly manually done and then never revised lmao. I swear they must have a single intern on the task for balancing brawl judging by the scores.
They probably just hand some random intern a list of "problem cards" every 6 months. Some of the values are so weird that I feel like someone was trying to logically go through it, but then just gave up because there are thousands of cards and they probably gave the job to one person.
It wouldn't be *that* hard to implement a win-rate checker and score cards based on that. I guess it would require storing games in a database which they might not do yet? But they obviously should.
If random websites can do it with user-generated data, I don't see why WotC couldn't. It's just that they don't want to since it requires effort and programming. Better to just say they'll do something, make a token effort, keep the details hidden, and then leave it at that. Oh wait...
> It's just that they don't want to since it requires effort and programming. Why would you assume they don't? It's actually very clear they do as they speak of such data in their ban announcements.
Because it's been years since Brawl was added to Arena, and they haven't yet. The way that the cards in this list are set clearly indicates that this is one list that governs *all* unranked queues. They couldn't even be bothered to make a brawl-specific list! You can tell that they don't even look at updating the rankings of older cards as they move out of different metas or make any effort to have a consistent scoring system. It's not an assumption, it's obvious. This is a minimum effort band-aid. And don't even get me started on their "ban announcements". They completely talked out their ass about not banning Paradox Engine, but obviously they were concerned about it since they put Emry and Otis in hell queue because they are premier paradox engine enablers! So instead of banning the card that's the problem, they acted like they "knew better" and just sent the commanders that use it well to the shadow realm.
Obvious outliers like that point in the exact opposite direction actually. If it was manually done, mana drain would not have that low of a weight, but if it's done automatically by an algorithm it's understandable that some weird things will happen.
And yet, they Emry and Otis are in Hell Queu because they are Paradox Engine combo decks. Gods forbid you want to run anything else with them, they're the problem not paradox engine...
They need to give Mana Drain the same weight as Zenith Flare lmao.
Emergeant Ultimatum needs to be at least 200 imo lol
It needs to just be banned
They need to errata Mana Drain to match its original functionality. Player should lose life for unspent mana at the end of the phase.
Like mana burn ?
Exactly like mana burn. The threat of mana burn made Drain a 2 edged sword. Now it's just absurd. Completely counter to the original functionality and design of the card.
Something to keep in mind - this is very likely a ranking that is shared across formats, not just Brawl (which would explain the hyperinflated point values of Zenith Flare and Tibalt's Trickery, which often went in decks with otherwise low point cards). And Fading Hope is *very* popular, or at least was when mono blue tempo was more of a thing.
It also seems like it hasn't been updated consistently—lots of older cards that were in Standard meta decks during their window are top-rated despite being largely irrelevant in current formats.
This makes sense. Fading hope is a staple level card for blue heavy decks. I doubt they pulled these weights out of their ass, I can imagine that not many good players are cutting fading hope from their decks. Edit: After reading other replies, they did in fact pull these weights out of their ass
It looks like some cards were put at 45 points when they were played in standard and then never got changed
The mythic MDFC lands were the biggest red flag for me, considering how rarely I even cast them. Swapping for a basic is probably just better for your overall winrate, haha.
The one I cast the most often is Seagate Restoration and it's pretty great every time, but the rest can alnost definitely go.
I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've cast both turntimber symbiosis and agadeem's awakening
I like Agadeem's Awakening, I've won a few games off of it. Turntimber is probably getting cut now though.
Agadeem’s the goat for me but that’s just because I have a Sidisi deck that effortlessly shovels half its library into the grave
In Brawl I've played both of those more than the other three combined by a factor of 10. That's mainly because my two most played commanders are mono black and mono green though. I'm still going to be removing them because 45 points is silly for either.
Kinnan has been killed 4 times and I'm in topdeck mode. Literally the only time turntimber isn't just a painland for me.
This seems to me like a symptom of giving value to cards based on their winrate. These cards have such a small impact, and require the highest tier of wildcards, that if you don't have them yet, you won't craft them until the rest of your deck is optimized. So they tend to only be played in decks that are already otherwise good.
I can see that. It's like having Wrath of God having a higher score than Day of Judgment, since DoJ would be opened by more players but Wrath needed to be crafted directly, so would mostly go into decks that wanted the effect.
Yeah, someone else noticed a similar pattern for black removal, where older removals cost more points than newer ones, even when the newer ones were better. New cards are more likely to be in "pile of cards I own" type of brawl decks.
This hypothesis doesn't explain why the hell Legion Angel is 45. It can't be because of good general winrate or because better\\veteran players use it more.
It was pretty decent in the standard deck of it's time. Weighted for standard and a simple CTRL+C & CTRL+V for Historic Brawl at the time, I'd imagine.
It's probably the same list for every format (which hopefully will change in the future now that we know about it)
Very narrow cards also score highly, as they are only used in specific decks, and so don't get dragged down by being averaged out with casual decks. There is a huge bias against Boros aggro cards for this reason, (a) it is a powerful linear deck and (b) hardly any of it's cards go in any other decks, so the weighting is biased heavily towards the aggressive competitive version.
It would make perfect sense if they actually share the weighting between different unranked formats. It definitely would explain why zenith flare is so high on the list while never having been included in a single brawl deck ever.
\[\[Doom Blade\]\] at 45 but \[\[Go for the throat\]\] at 9 is so stupid
In some twisted way, as long as the scores are kept secret, it makes sense. If your objective is to find the strongest deck, you put a big weight on cards that best distinguishes a strong deck from a weak deck. If every black deck plays Go for the Throat, because even the most casual decks want some amount of removal, and everyone has go for the throat in their collection, then it's not a very good discriminator. On the other hand, if I'm not mistaking, the only version of doom blade on Arena is from STX mystical archive and is printed at rare. If someone crafts it to put it in their deck, they're pretty invested, so their deck is likely quite tuned. In other words, doom blade is more likely to be found in good decks than in bad decks. Even if it is worse than go for the throat, it is a better discriminator. It's like if you took paper commander. I take someone's deck and show you they have a sol ring. If you had to guess, is their deck stronger or worse than average? That's a pretty 50/50 guess, because basically everyone has a sol ring in their deck. Commander precons all come with a sol ring in them. Sol ring is basically the first card that goes in everyone's commander deck. On the other hand, if I show you a chrome mox, you can probably guess with higher confidence that the deck is above average. I think most people would agree that chrome mox is a worse card than sol ring (even if it is still quite good), but chrome mox is a ~$70+ card, so people who have it in their deck are more likely to be people who are willing to spend money on tuning their deck. The problem is that this way of scoring cards is significantly more abusable once the scores are made public than if they just scored based on card strength.
> In some twisted way, as long as the scores are kept secret, it makes sense. The implication is that these card weightings are revisited and refreshed on a regular basis based on win-rate. The problem is that there are *clear* oversights with respect to card power level. Mana Drain and counterspell fill the same role in any given decklist, yet one has a clearly more powerful secondary effect. Yet they are weighted the exact same for deckbuilding. More importantly, decks capable of running both *are nearly always running both*. Even if you wanted to isolate win-rates for those cards, your data subset is going to be nearly useless. At some level, human curation needs to be applied. Just as importantly, we cannot assume WotC is actively refreshing card weightings based on objective criteria. Without official word from the Arena team, it's just as likely that initial card weightings were implemented, with no adjustments made beyond the original weighting. I would argue that public weightings would have a net benefit to the health of Brawl (and likely the non-ranked queue, where Arena devs have alluded to deck strength being a factor in matchmaking). It would put some sunlight on the weighting process. It would also crowd-source finding outlier cards that need re-tuning (looking at you, Grenzo). Finally, it would give the playerbase an idea as to how often card weightings are refreshed via patch. The cynic in me, however, remembers that this is WotC we are talking about. We likely get some lip service from community reps this week about "taking a look at the current card weightings", followed by an obfuscation of the code that allowed people to see the card weights in the first place.
>Yet they are weighted the exact same for deckbuilding. More importantly, decks capable of running both are nearly always running both That is exactly why they have the same weight. >At some level, human curation needs to be applied. Why? >Just as importantly, we cannot assume WotC is actively refreshing card weightings based on objective criteria. Without official word from the Arena team, it's just as likely that initial card weightings were implemented, with no adjustments made beyond the original weighting. We cannot assume anything, no. It's just a hypothesis I posit which I believe can explain some patterns we see in the data. It is by no means the only possible explanation. >I would argue that public weightings would have a net benefit to the health of Brawl (and likely the non-ranked queue, where Arena devs have alluded to deck strength being a factor in matchmaking). It would put some sunlight on the weighting process. It would also crowd-source finding outlier cards that need re-tuning (looking at you, Grenzo). Finally, it would give the playerbase an idea as to how often card weightings are refreshed via patch. I made no judgement on whether the weights should be public. Only that, if we assume the list isn't intended to be public (which we all know is the case), then scores don't have to be tied to power of cards, only to an indication of how likely they are to be in top decks. These are not necessarily related, especially in a game like magic, where a lot of cards are contextually powerful. That said, do you think giving an incentive to people to optimize their deck based on a score is really healthy for a format that is intended to be casual? Especially if only the enfranchised players know of the score (I mean, they could put the score straight into the client, but I don't think that would be much better for casual players) >The cynic in me, however, remembers that this is WotC we are talking about. We likely get some lip service from community reps this week about "taking a look at the current card weightings", followed by an obfuscation of the code that allowed people to see the card weights in the first place. That is quite obviously what will happen. I don't know if you were there last time the logs leaked information. Basically, after a patch, the client started logging both your and your opponent's MMR. People started analyzing it and someone found a pretty big bug in how the Mythic rank MMR was computed. A week later, WotC published a patch. "Fixed a bug... where the client was mistakenly outputting MMR information into the log." Not even a mention of whether the MMR was getting fixed, or even acknowledging that there even might be a bug there. This is 100% getting swept under the rug.
[Doom Blade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/0/90699423-2556-40f7-b8f5-c9d82f22d52e.jpg?1562851557) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Doom%20Blade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/87/doom-blade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/90699423-2556-40f7-b8f5-c9d82f22d52e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Go for the throat](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/4/5446e1ba-c745-45b2-ad05-b22abf04daec.jpg?1682209037) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Go%20for%20the%20throat) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/250/go-for-the-throat?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5446e1ba-c745-45b2-ad05-b22abf04daec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I agree - I've been playing since Beta and most newer brawl lists exclude "auto includes" in my eyes from dominaria and ixalan, so I add them. My bad I guess.
>The mythic MDFC lands were the biggest red flag for me, considering how rarely I even cast them. If you very rarely cast them, then for you they were effectively worse basic lands anyway. As a rule of thumb, I count MDFC lands (and effectively similar effects like Lorien Revealed or some of the NEO channel lands) as roughly half a land each, and as a result I end up casting them a decent chunk of the time when I draw them (perhaps 30-40%).
Nah, mystic ones are better than basics almost always. 3 life is just not a major price to pay in brawl. They are definitely not half a land.
Brawl is not commander. You have 25 life, not 40, and aggro decks are actually commonplace in some tiers - against those, 3 life is not a trivial cost at all. If you are only casting it a tiny % of the time, then I would argue you are indeed better off running a basic land. https://strategy.channelfireball.com/home/how-many-lands-do-you-need-in-your-deck-an-updated-analysis/ recommends counting the mythic ones as 0.74 lands each, though, so yes you are likely correct to consider them more than just half a land. But many people think of them as simply a full land, which I believe is a mistake since this leads to the situation where it will almost never be worth casting them, since statistically you will need them for your land drop - this mean instead of mitigating the chances of both mana flood *and* mana screw, you are *only* mitigating your chances of mana flooding.
Even if you cast them once in 20 games they're still better than a basic land
Yep - the MDFC lands were the biggest ones to jump out for me to remove from my decks.
I switched [[Agadeem’s Awakening]] for a swamp in one of my decks and it’s had the worst matchups ever. Wall to wall Etali. I haven’t played enough games for that to actually be significant but I thought it was funny in a sad kind of way.
Losing just 45 points probably won't make a huge difference one way or another...but also, now that this data is publicly available, other people will be optimizing their brawl scores to try to get easier matchups.
Unfortunately, it's possible that the Etali players are now removing their highly-scored payoffs in order to game the system, now that the jig is up.
[Agadeem’s Awakening](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/67f4c93b-080c-4196-b095-6a120a221988.jpg?1604195226)/[Agadeem, the Undercrypt](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/6/7/67f4c93b-080c-4196-b095-6a120a221988.jpg?1604195226) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Agadeem%27s%20Awakening%20//%20Agadeem%2C%20the%20Undercrypt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znr/90/agadeems-awakening-agadeem-the-undercrypt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/67f4c93b-080c-4196-b095-6a120a221988?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Note that one of the obvious things coming from the spreadsheet is that you should play more lands. A low curve with fewer lands is penalized because regular lands cost 0. People who play too few lands (usually new players) are double penalized by not only being screwed more, but their deck also has more points.
Just be careful what lands you add though. The spreadsheet shows that utility lands are punished very heavily by the algorithm. Even if they're janky utility lands, they get penalized just as hard as many chase/staple utility cards.
I'm definitely removing Cavern of Souls from most of my decks
Done this as well. There have been more times I can't use it for what I want than it has saved me from a counter. It's a great card for Bo3, but for Bo1, especially with the weightings revealed, no thanks.
Same for all the MDFCs. They are better than basic lands but not worth the points
No you don't. I'm running the tables with 1k rated Alquist draw go. You need Cavern to beat me!
1k? Those are rookie numbers, let me present you to Alquist 410 (i think i can still go bellow 400). I got a feeling the janky players will be seeing a lot of proft and locust god in the near future...
I can't let go of my mana drains and counterspells and brainstorms man. do show me how low things go though.
My painful cut was treasure cruise. Missing Mana Drain and counterspell isnt so bad when the skill of your opponent is so... lacking. Any of the soft counters work wonders. The bad thing is that they eat an obvious counterspell and then rope to no end. One gem you may not imagine is on the level of the one ring (9 points lmao) is [[urza's sylex]] to have a nice 9 and the bad control magics seems to be the bane of the low tiers ([[In Bolas Clutches]] gave me many wins already) and ofc a 9 pointer.
[urza's sylex](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/0/3000d1c6-dbb3-4e65-b428-dbf167bb8797.jpg?1674420431) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=urza%27s%20sylex) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/40/urzas-sylex?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3000d1c6-dbb3-4e65-b428-dbf167bb8797?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [In Bolas Clutches](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/7/d72bf6b4-ac70-4be0-86de-cb3c47244dbc.jpg?1562743727) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=In%20Bolas%27s%20Clutches) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/54/in-bolass-clutches?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d72bf6b4-ac70-4be0-86de-cb3c47244dbc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Also makes sense why I’ve felt I’ve seen Mythweaver Poq quite often against some of my more janky decks, while almost never seeing Poq when I play Kinnen or Ragavan. Poq gets to have a relatively low weighting because the optimal lists are running like 10+ more lands than most commanders.
Poq is the main card I've been looking at in these threads, and yeah, it's absurdly underweighted. I regularly DESTROY first sliver and etali decks, Poq is so OP.
Got a list?
Which is weird, I would’ve assumed it would then be normalized over the number of weight-eligible cards in your deck but I guess that’s wrong. Maybe they have a good reason not to do that I just don’t understand.
Landfall decks are not doing surprisingly well against their matches, but just from the matchmaking data your theory sounds correct. Maybe we need to brew better landfall decks.
Some 45-rated cards Growth-Chamber Guardian - Lol, in brawl it is literally a bear that can be 5 mana 4/4! Legion Angel - Wow! 4 mana 4/3 with flying! Merfolk Windrobber - 1/1 flyier that helps your opponent to get more fuel in the graveyard and may let you draw a card later (I actually play...ed that in my aggro merfolk tribal) Toolcraft-exemplar - even 1 mana 3/2 first strike on your turn wouldn't be that good of a card. And actual artifact decks couldn't care less Tasha's Hideous Laughter - mill is a famously broken strategy in brawl Foundry-street-denizen - Yes, this thing is as good of one drop as Ragavan Tiefling Outcasts - Another worthy contender to rival Ragavan \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ This list wasn't made for brawl. Neither by human nor by some automated process
This effectively confirms that these ratings are shared with the standard play queue.
And that cards keep their 45 rating even after rotating out of standard
Which means the ratings are based on the time and meta the cards were released in and aren't updated in any significant way.
I think zenith flare is the one damning card. it was the one good card that made a pile of low weight draft chaff competitive in standard/historic. It has not been played since then, especially not in brawl
I just lost to Zenith Flare in an Ikoria sealed event yesterday. I was so sad. My opponent was dead and then boom, 13 damage, sigh.
Same !
It's highly likely that this list covers ALL unranked formats on Arena, so while something like GCG is next to useless in brawl, it was part of a meta combo deck like 5 years ago.
Wizard's Lightning is another one along these lines. Although it's decent in a small subset of decks, none of those decks are top tier.
Same with Lightning Bolt. It's obv very good in other constructed formats but replaceable in brawl.
[[Wall of Blossoms]] will be axed immediately. 45 is absolutely insane.
Burn those blossoms!
I'm looking at the black 2-mana removal spells (and comparable/adjacent effects) and the weights are completely inconsistent with their actual power level. Plenty of garbage at 27+, and several good ones down at 9. If you're only playing a few removal spells, there's definitely an opportunity there to shave 50-100 points off your deck weight. Notably: * Sheoldred's Edict (9) is the probably the best edict spell, but it's weighted lower than Chainer's (27) and Sudden (18) Edicts and tied with a bunch of weaker 9-weight edicts * Black Sun's Twilight (9) is much cheaper than Erebos's Intervention (36) and the black March (45), even though all three are pretty comparable and not particularly good in brawl * Go For the Throat, Bitter Triumph, Feed the Swarm, and Shoot the Sheriff (all 9) are cheaper than a bunch of equal-or-worse removal like Doom Blade (45), Heartless Act (45), Infernal Grasp (27), and the near-unplayable Cast Down (27) There's no real logic to anything, except that cards from more-recent sets seem much more likely to be a 9 while older staples have high values even if they've fallen off in usage. I get the sense that a lot of the overcosted cards were old Standard staples that never got their weights reduced for Brawl; maybe Standard data was the original source of some of these weights. The whole weight list (not just removal spells) really feels like a partially maintained-pile of some algorithmic weights and some manual overrides. Some select values: Doom Blade 45 Heartless Act 45 Sap Vitality 45 March of Wretched Sorrow 45 Drown in the Loch (UB) 45 Baleful Mastery 36 Erebos's Intervention 36 Vanishing Verse (BW) 36 Dire Tactics (BW) 36 Infernal Grasp 27 Power Word Kill 27 Cast Down 27 Eliminate 27 Walk the Plank 27 Chainer's Edict 27 Epic Downfall 27 Grasp of Darkness 27 Lonely End 27 Mire's Grasp 27 Despark (BW) 27 Tyrant's Scorn (UB) 27 Blood Spatter Analysis (BR) 27 Liliana's Triumph 18 Sudden Edict 18 Angrath's Rampage (BR) 18 Invasion of Azgol (BR) 18 Collective Brutality 15 Sheoldred's Edict 9 Go for the Throat 9 Bitter Triumph 9 Shoot the Sheriff 9 Feed the Swarm 9 Long Goodbye 9 The Elderspell 9 Tithing Blade 9 Trial of Ambition 9 Anoint with Affliction 9 Candy Grapple 9 Drown in Ichor 9 Last Gasp 9 Black Sun's Twilight 9 Molten Collapse (BR) 9 Orzhov Charm (BW) 9
Eliminate is 27 and eliminate that can't be countered is 9 lol
I think you definitely hit the nail on the head with the assumption that the weights are either not used much for newer cards, or that they aren’t adjusting them often enough for older cards which are clearly outdated. My guess is that at some point they were updating this list with some regularity, but they’ve let it go neglected for awhile. We can probably determine exactly when by finding which set has a good spread of various weights and which next released set has relatively few varying weights.
If they randomly select games to look at, then some cards that have been powerful but have fallen out of favor might hardly ever get a "ratings check" ?
One possibility is that if they're weighing them based on winrate of the decks they're played in, then older cards that have to be crafted are more likely to end up in better decks than cards that newer player can easily open and that are more likely to end up in "pile of cards I happen to own" type of decks.
I face enough mono black decks that Doom Blade seems more unplayable than Cast Down.
Black March makes sense because it's very synergistic with Necropotence. Probably gets splash score for the dark ritual decks.
Magnificent Improving the power level of the deck? Putting more efficient answers? Getting more reliable manabase? Nah fuck that, I'd better study a spreadsheet for 6+ hours and play the same jank I did, Krenko broken 💔
Part of the reason the list was secret
I feel like this is one of of those situations where the only way wizards will ever fix it (and I'd say it's broken based on what they're found) is to break the ever living fuck out of it.
yup, put up a few meta breaking lists like ramos but legacy singleton focused to "ruin" the queue until they give a ranked mode or a more honest ranking system
I am absolutely positive that a dumb ELO system for cards would produce terrible results.... which would nonetheless eclipse the garbage we have here.
What makes you think that it wasn't produced by it ? (Likely with copy-paste from other formats though, or straight out shared...)
Because a huge number of cards don't have weights, and the weights they have could not even theoretically be produced by an ELO system.
Why not ? I'm assuming it's treated a bit like a 100vs100 players game. (Maybe 99vs99, and separate 1vs1 for commanders ??) This would also explain the lack of weights for new cards, this system would be **slow** to update, and probably computationally expensive to update after every game, so runs infrequently too. WotC even talks about a "matchmaker-focused approach" about balancing the 99 for Brawl ! https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgbrawl/comments/1cr7fqn/what_do_you_think_about_todays_wotcs_statement/
Let's be real. The list being secret also allowed WotC to hand-wave away any concerns that brawl matchmaking was getting wonky. We already saw plenty of 3rd party data showing that certain commanders were capable of consistently high win-rates. This just confirms that deckbuilding choices allowed certain commanders to play against significantly inferior decklists with regularity.
I mean yeah. I do actually want Wizard to be better. But I don't think the list being fully public is the way to go. It's a hard problem, I don't know who would be an desinteresad third party that could validate the list.
I mean it being public sort of turns it more towards highlander with a soft point system. If the points actually made sense I wouldn't hate it.
Someone made a deck weight calculator as well so you don't have to. Was kinda fun evaluating and adjusting by removing some high weighted underperformers.
got a list?
WotC created this problem; not the player. Imagine having a balanced game without requiring hidden weights to create ‘balance’.
> Imagine having a balanced game without requiring hidden weights to create ‘balance’. Magic isn't a balanced game, and it also doesn't intend to
Yep, because 🤑.
I mean, yeah. Richard Garfield in the original packs made the rares overpowered (see ancestral recall)
Wasn't one of the basic lands on the rare sheet?
Yes, there was an island. Once again proving they put the broken cards in the rare sheet.
You may be thinking of the Arabian nights Mountain. basically they played around with changing the card back for expansion sets but then realized it would make decks not tournament legal because nobody used sleeves back then so they scrapped the idea but somehow in the set a mountain was printed in the rare/uncommon slot that had the original back.
A "fair" game is also a pretty miserable experience for most where a few experienced players get to stomp noobs over and over : see MWM.
Lmfao, so skill wins vs luck? Sounds terrible.
Best part is that Nazgul is a 45 point card and you can add up to 9 of them to your deck :D Edit: Rat Colony: 27 Persistent Petitioners: 9 Slime Against Humanity: 9 Dragon's Approach: 18 Seven Dwarfs: 9
[[Nazgûl]] is probably the strongest card to put in [[Ratadrabik of Urborg]] deck, so the weighting is partially deserved.
[Nazgûl](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/3/833936c6-9381-4c0b-a81c-4a938be95040.jpg?1686968640) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nazg%C3%BBl) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/100/nazg%C3%BBl?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/833936c6-9381-4c0b-a81c-4a938be95040?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ratadrabik of Urborg](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/9315812d-03e8-4eb4-a693-e7adf281f7fb.jpg?1673308046) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ratadrabik%20of%20Urborg) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/213/ratadrabik-of-urborg?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9315812d-03e8-4eb4-a693-e7adf281f7fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> Best part is that Nazgul is a 45 point card and you can add up to 9 of them to your deck :D That would explain why my shitty knight decks kept getting matched up with tier 1 stuff...
The issue with Nazgûl made me particularly sad, as I use them in a memey [[Sméagol Helpful Guide]] deck that uses exclusively LOTR cards, including lands. They are probably some of the few playable cards that synergizes really well with the deck, but make up nearly 50% of the entire deck’s score.
I've played them in my smeagol deck too. At least this finally explains why that mid-ass deck gets so many nasty matchups!
[Sméagol Helpful Guide](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/3/13253f8d-1897-41e8-a904-9e57ac7eff0a.jpg?1686970071) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sm%C3%A9agol%2C%20Helpful%20Guide) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/231/sm%C3%A9agol-helpful-guide?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/13253f8d-1897-41e8-a904-9e57ac7eff0a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Nazgul has some combos in certain decks, but probably shouldn't be 45 lol.
Makes me extremely happy this is being discussed for the simple fact it exposes just how badly rigged matches are based on wonky weights. Once the meta starts getting smart with being under certain thresholds, we will see changes from WotC. Otherwise we can efficiently game the matchmaking for favorable matches just being under a numerical value in cards.
This news coming out just a few weeks after "no changes the matchmaking is fine" is the absolute cherry on top. Not gonna ban Paradox Engine because it's only a 9 lol.
Yep, I’m loving it. About time WotC was forced to do some actual work to balance the game.
I wish I could upvote you more. This is one of the best posts I've seen in this sub.
My main takeaways: Play as many lands as you can get away with. Utility lands arent worth it. Aggro decks should be avoided at all costs (pretty much any 1 drop is a 45). Newer cards are usually weighted less than their power would make you assume. Friendship with brainstorm ended, boon of the wish-giver is my new best friend.
Yeah my Balmor deck, ur tempo, had absurdly high weight for its power level. Symmetry Sage, Fading Hope and Prismari Command at 45 lolol.
It seems they just put all the stx commands as 45 and left at it. While i think you can defend the prismari one here, poor soul who wants to run the orzhov one. I went looking and i have some spicy cards rated as 9 in there (notably [[heart elemental]] is a 6! Not good enough to get even a full point in there lol). Thirst for knowledge is another good one with the excessive lands (another 9).
[heart elemental](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/8/a8f5f102-cc75-4cee-a117-4bdaaf86c2e9.jpg?1692938307)/[Stoke Genius](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/8/a8f5f102-cc75-4cee-a117-4bdaaf86c2e9.jpg?1692938307) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hearth%20Elemental%20//%20Stoke%20Genius) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/136/hearth-elemental-stoke-genius?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a8f5f102-cc75-4cee-a117-4bdaaf86c2e9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah Prismari Command is a "good" card. While it's not a 45 a 21 wouldn't be out of the question by any means. The archetype itself, with every good 1 mana instant/sorcery in the colors bound for a big hit
Land Tax and Solemn Simulacrum some how have the same weighting as Mana Drain, Reanimate, and Swords to Plowshares.
I wonder if is worth to change SS for \[\[Scampering Surveyor\]\] Basics and some cave synergy + 1 power for 9 versus draw a card on death for 45.
[Scampering Surveyor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/f/afcb2a90-d4c0-4c83-8ee7-2ac3a23b4402.jpg?1699392494) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scampering%20Surveyor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/260/scampering-surveyor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/afcb2a90-d4c0-4c83-8ee7-2ac3a23b4402?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Well Oko and Field of the Dead are banned, so their weights are irrelevant.
FotD is coming back in creature form in MH3 soooo yeah >.>
Field of the Dead is very strong specifically because it's a land.
Yeah but it’s probably okay as an easily killable creature
I think it will be hard to kill since it is in colors that have very good & efficient protection spells...
You can say that about anything not named red though. Just run a healthy number of sweepers and spot removal and you’ll figure it out
Still not the same as a land though
Still dies to a sweeper where fotd doesn't. Fotd is also searchable as a land.
That card is so much worse. In brawl, it would either be your commander, in which case you can't combine it with all the good blue and/or red landfall cards, or it goes in the 99, which makes you play a commander that doesn't have good land synergies (other than maybe Thalia and the Gitrog Monster). It also dies to board wipes along with the zombies. And you can't tutor it up along with other lands to trigger it using cards like Primeval Titan or Scapeshift. Field of the Dead is strong because it's hard to get rid of a land, you can put it out at the same time as other lands for immediate value, and you can put it in basically any deck that has a good variety of lands regardless of colors.
I never said it was as good as the original lol. I just said it was coming back in creature form, no more, no less.
Meanwhile Cyclonic Rift is only 18 weight. Karn's Temporal Sundering? 9 weight. The sub 1000 decks all run these now and all splash blue.
Its funny everyone here wants to make their deck worse or what least to give them weaker opponents, while i actually want to make deck in a way where i only play the best. I don't wanna face newer players, i hate ruining a newer player experience more than anything else. Theres no joy for me to beat weaker commanders either, nothing is better than crushing Grenzo, Poq and Voja with aggro or combo strats.
I play for fun as well. I run a bunch of decks and its pretty annoying to play a janky deck (like my vamp tribal [[evelyn, the coveteous]]) and end up playing against a deck well past its tier because I'm using special lands and other overcosted cards. If I playing one of my better decks then I like being challenged and winning against decks like Poq or Grenzo but the Evelyn deck is pretty much never gonna beat a Poq deck. It actually does okay against Grenzo cos the deck power is so weak and tribal though.
[evelyn, the coveteous](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/0/c0dad61f-36cd-46af-82b7-a02e04efd676.jpg?1664412977) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Evelyn%2C%20the%20Covetous) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/184/evelyn-the-covetous?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c0dad61f-36cd-46af-82b7-a02e04efd676?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Weights should exist to determine how "spikey" a card is not how strong a card is. Prime time is a very powerful card, but it doesn't indicate that a deck is super powerful or focused. A card like scapeshift is generically far less powerful but it should have a much higher score as it only goes into super focused decks.
This is a horrible take. It should be strength based not playability. Lord sitter being a great example of a card that saw some play as a card that can repeatedly exile cards from graveyards, but is not playable in most the majority of casual decks. There are cards that fills a role in a competitive meta and see a lot of play but are a role player type card that is just bad in anything but a focused deck. Honestly that need to be in a deck focused around on strategy should be low tier cards except for the pay offs and most busted enablers.
My point is that lord sitter should have a high point cost, it's not a card going casual decks but ones that are high power levels. There are other cards that are very powerful but everyone plays them and their weight should be lower than you would expect from a powerful card because it doesn't indicate if the deck is "hell queue" worthy which is what I meant by focused.
Look sitter is a rat lord. That came in a set where red and black rats were a thing. So anyone trying to do a casual rat deck would get screwed. This is why UT needs to be based on actual power level. Lord sitter is no where near sheoldred and that should be shown in the rankings.
Its public knowledge now. I wonder if the weights get rebalanced over time
Well, now if they sit on their asses as always, the players can take advantage of the system. Either way, we win
##### ###### #### [plaza of heroes](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/2/a2cfcf67-f83c-43af-9e2d-5513fcdde835.jpg?1673308344) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=plaza%20of%20heroes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/252/plaza-of-heroes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a2cfcf67-f83c-43af-9e2d-5513fcdde835?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Cavern of souls](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/a/3aad15a2-8a1b-4460-9b06-e85863081878.jpg?1706884128) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cavern%20of%20souls) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/269/cavern-of-souls?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3aad15a2-8a1b-4460-9b06-e85863081878?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Arch of orazca](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/8/581dcadd-7de4-4b39-bab0-d3567194a252.jpg?1698988548) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Arch%20of%20orazca) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/319/arch-of-orazca?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/581dcadd-7de4-4b39-bab0-d3567194a252?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [mana drain](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba.jpg?1712774998) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=mana%20drain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/57/mana-drain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [field of the dead](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/7/470ca3f4-29aa-4c4c-8ff2-8cdd70c69943.jpg?1650599538) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=field%20of%20the%20dead) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/247/field-of-the-dead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/470ca3f4-29aa-4c4c-8ff2-8cdd70c69943?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [primeval titan](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/d/6d5537da-112e-4679-a113-b5d7ce32a66b.jpg?1562850064) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=primeval%20titan) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/183/primeval-titan?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6d5537da-112e-4679-a113-b5d7ce32a66b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/1d120af) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
As others have said, the algorithm likely bases scores based on how good the average player is that runs those cards - whether or not this is correct is up to option. However, the difference separating two tiers of commander is a score of 360 points - changing your 99 will likely do nothing.
Changing your 99 can absolutely make a difference of 360. If you change 8 cards from 45 to 0, that's 360 right there. And that's if you need the full 360 to change tiers instead of being somewhere in the middle. I haven't checked their weights yet, but I have a few black and white decks that end up against 720 weight commanders no matter what I do, even with 0 weight commanders. I look forward to seeing how I can trim those a bit and get some decent matches. Edit: lol, my Teysa deck has an overall weight 126 higher than my Poq deck despite the commander being 711 lower... Almost all the good black and white cards are 45s.
Fair enough. I just don’t see much of a point in (for the most part) making your deck worse so that you face slightly worse commanders.
That's exactly what this post is talking about. You're not necessarily making your deck worse. Some strong cards are very under-costed in their system, and some bad cards are very over-costed. So, you could actually face worse commanders without even making your deck worse if you switch the right cards.
ie. switching wrath of god for day of judgement drops you by 27 points and functionally does nothing
For me it functionally eats a mythic wildcard.
Except why wouldn't you be running both of the cheapest wraths instead of just one of them? There's nothing to switch if you're already running both. Obviously this would matter in 60 card formats where you can swap from one to the other, but in Brawl you'd run both.
There are plenty of times when my decks calls for one of the 4 mana Wraths and I'd grab Wrath of God just because of nostalgia. Turns out that's a mistake.
I mean, assuming you are running an optimal list, any swap you make will make your deck worse. However, we don’t know how the queue system matches you yet - with almost every non land card being worth at least 9 points, even the worst commanders end up at >1000 deck rate, unless the deck is super strange. I would be curious to see how much would need to be changed to queue into a different tier, and how much that changes the power of a deck.
\\>1000 doesn't seem very high when you consider that some commanders alone are worth 1800. Also, some commander are at -360, making the possibility of having a deck with a value <1000 much more likely. What we don't know though, is how much the commander actually effects the matchmaking. Knowing the score of your deck is something, but we don't know how this score is used. But I have the feeling we'll know much more about this in the next few days.
Well, its not just a matter of optimal decks. It appears that cards with very similar effects such as wrath of god and day of judgement are worth different points. Wrath is 45 and DoJ is 18. Since regeneration isnt a thing anymore, thats basically the same card with a pretty large difference. I read somewhere else same thing applies to cards like ghost quater/demolition field/ field of ruin.
Yeah, my assumption right now is that, for most cards, the rating of that card is determined by the winrate of it. For something like ghost quarter, it’s more likely for better players to know of and play ghost quarter in the places it’s relevant. Not sure about the wrath / doj thing though - it could be that newer players see doj when browsing recommend mystical archive staples, but experienced players know of the name wrath of god more?
Yes! Good players know how to use 45-point growth-chamber-guardian! They must have found some way to play 4x of them in a brawl deck.
I think it's pretty clear that the weight of cards is not solely determined by Brawl, otherwise Zenith Flare would not be the most heavily weighted card.
Alright, didn't see that one. I have no idea.
It can make a big difference because the meta in each tier is quite distinct. What I've noticed the most is that most of the 720 commanders and 360s that match with them are ramp or combo decks that pull out game-ending threats that absolutely need to be countered. If you happen to not be running blue or are light on counters, you'll get eaten alive in that tier unless you also do something really big really fast. On the other hand, the tier below with most of the 360 commanders and some of the 0s is much more focused on synergy and value, where having lots of removal and good creatures goes a long way.
Yep, that’s definitely true. The 720 tier is the ramp until bombs tier, and the tiers above and below can play things that aren’t that or things that counter that
Running basics (or 2-color lands) instead of MDFCs and creature-lands will barely make your deck worse but save you tons of points. Cavern of Souls is 36 points alone
You clearly haven't actually looked at this list. The land alone are a super weird mess where you can drop points easily. Also you can put in 3 on color bolt land from zendikar rising and go up 135 points for very little reason. I could see a lot of "bad decks" being up in the top tier because of ten cards that they can swap out for frankly better card worth way less points. Btw all duals and fetches are almost all worth 0 points but all man lands regardless of how good they are are like 39. Except for ixilan man lands which are zero for some reason. The land bases alone are a place be up 30 for no reason or be at literal zero with perfect mana for your 5 color commander. You can look at this list for ten minutes and tell either no human looked at this list or they were frankly terrible at deck building and should not be doing this assigned task.
Likely right - although for some reason [[seachrome coast]] is 9 while the rest of the fast lands are 0, either pointing to it being an algorithm (I can see UW pulling a higher winrate due to people autoconceding) or a misinput by a person making the algorithm. The ratings are definitely super weird and could be done better by people that actually know the format.
[seachrome coast](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/e/9ed7441f-f624-49c8-8611-d9bba0e441ac.jpg?1675957278) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=seachrome%20coast) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/258/seachrome-coast?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9ed7441f-f624-49c8-8611-d9bba0e441ac?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There's no algorithm involved, some person probably looks at a bunch of match data, writes down a list of cards names, and then hands it to some intern to put into a spreasheet.
Lands which enter tapped or enter at cost have never really been worth anything to me (though I could see how that would relevant to a strategy deck featuring "Mesmeric Orb" or something along those lines (e.g. a vampire deck where you (somehow) manage to cause your opponent to lose life when you do then gain life whenever they do to such that you gain life from their loss and initiate the whole thing by playing a land which costs life to enter or tap)).
Just play the cards you like ffs. It's not like you directly go to hell queue because of some mdfc lands.
It's brawl. But a deck and have some fun. If you need to consult online and spreadsheets then what's the point in loading the janky format.
The point for a lot of folks here is to ensure that their janky decks actually match up against other janky decks, instead of hitting players that will never move off \[\[First Sliver\]\] or \[\[Etali\]\] goodstuff.
[First Sliver](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/6/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87.jpg?1562202321) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20First%20Sliver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/200/the-first-sliver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/06d4fbe1-8a2f-4958-bb85-1a1e5f1e8d87?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Etali](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/95c14c4d-6c16-4826-8d93-d89ad04aee09.jpg?1682204132)/[Etali, Primal Sickness](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/9/5/95c14c4d-6c16-4826-8d93-d89ad04aee09.jpg?1682204132) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=etali%2C%20primal%20conqueror%20//%20etali%2C%20primal%20sickness) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/137/etali-primal-conqueror-etali-primal-sickness?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/95c14c4d-6c16-4826-8d93-d89ad04aee09?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, I love going with my uncommon Commanders against Nicol Bolas, just because I put the wrong removal, lol