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[Remi]

"Despite this development, the Artifact Academy deck as well as the Underworld Breach deck, which also exploits the powerful land, are still among the best performing decks."

I would like to see data specifically the dominance of artifact academy decks.

Sure you have data you used to make the decision to ban the whole archetype?

What is the winrate on academy for the past 2 years?

Which data did you use to make this ban decision?

[Remi]

I already know breach is a strong deck, and I couldn't stand a chance against it with my Academy. But banning academy completely shuts down Artifact combos, while just weakening breach

Animator placing 1st and 2nd last 2 consecutive years on Finnish HL champs...No artifacts in top8 for either year iirc

[SpielRaumThrias]

Maybe I can point you to this analyse:

Analysing the CamLander and Master Series in Vienna

Appart from that, a personal comment: Of the 14 tournaments that took place in Vienna in the past 3 years, I played decks that featured Tolarian Academy in 10 of those tournaments.
Out of those 10 tournaments I won 7 and placed 3rd in the other 3.

[Remi]

Maybe I can point you to this analyse:

Analysing the CamLander and Master Series in Vienna

Appart from that, a personal comment: Of the 14 tournaments that took place in Vienna in the past 3 years, I played decks that featured Tolarian Academy in 10 of those tournaments.
Out of those 10 tournaments I won 7 and placed 3rd in the other 3.

That is still relatively small sampling in such high variance format...How was the meta? Did people play a lot of different decks? Were they tuned to play against in specific kind of meta?
Did they actually make optimal decisions against artifacts, did they know the deck and knew what was coming?

I have not seen Artifact dominance in finnish meta...If anything, Animator (and perhaps i could say storm also) has been doing absurdly good in bigger tournaments.

[Remi]

I don't think i am not even exaggerating much by saying that while playing artifacts academy on tournaments, around half of the times i won a match it was because my opponent did decisions very far from optimal...And most of the time I could see their suboptimal (or even plain wrong) play without even seeing their remaining cards in hand. Seeing them would have mostly likely made the decisions look even worse.

So many people lacked experience playing against the deck, and some people really seemed playing like it was the first time they ever encountered such combo.

People having no experience, or just unwilling to learn how to play against it may increase the winrate, or make it feel unfair deck at some stores/places/tournaments
Some players just put in hate cards like Collector Ouphe in their but did not actually learn the deck they were facing and kept playing bad (Of course Ouphe and similar cards give some free wins just by themselves)

[r4nd0m1]

First of all, thanks everybody for your efforts to advance the format we all love so much. I hope my feedback below will also help with that.

I have to say today, recent decisions made it even more difficult for me to play, please let me explain.

In my view, the analysis, which seems to be the basis for the bannings, vastly lacks samplesize and representitiveness. Its a low number of tournaments with roughly the same few players playing over and over again - i guess with very different levels of competitiveness, skill, preferences, card-availability, and so on.

Furthermore, the large amount of math used on very limited data and arguable assumptions, lead too often to questionable interpretations. The case to make these decisions should be clear-cut and based on massive amounts of data. In addition to all the tournamentresults, playtesting a gauntlet of decks and presenting hundreds of gameresults - with and without certain cards - is the least I would like to see with decisions that important.

Next, im absolutely not aware of certain decks dominating the format, not even if I follow the analysis all the way (and include pretty much all the results that are publicly available). We have incredibly powerful individual cards and some of them, like Academy, sometimes do look too powerful. These are the spikes that players talk about, but every experienced Academy player knows, what regular games in tough(er) matchups look like. Basically, after losing Sensei's Divining Top, the deck lost too much inevitability to be tier 1 already (except for the very best builds, perhaps).

Briefly on Treasure Cruise, banning a card like this in a vintage format, while a number of even more powerful cards still remain legal, in a meta that is pretty healthy, seems like the wrong approach to me. Its in the nature of the format, to have cards like that.

Lastly, I have to let you know, that pretty much every player I talked to (recently and over the years), is usually straight up disappointed and frustrated with the way the format has been managed, so please everybody, lets work together on some urgently needed improvents, thank you!

Nothing but love, Kurt

p. S. please consider to return the Free Mulligan rule again, because the amount of non-games is too high without it.

[Remi]

We have incredibly powerful individual cards and some of them, like Academy, sometimes do look too powerful. These are the spikes that players talk about, but every experienced Academy player knows, what regular games in tough(er) matchups look like.

This is something very true. When Academy deck has a good draw and is comboing off early, it sure may look like "wow this shit is busted", and it's totally understandable. It seemingly does very wicked stuff.
But you have to look realize it's just how to deck works, and it's not something that happens every game...or even every other. It sometimes loses to a single hate card that doesn't have to even be "silver bullet" against it. Too many time I remember just being completely locked out by Aven Mindcensor or the new 3mana Ashiok

You have to be able to look at the bigger picture, and the meta you're playing on. It's like me playing Jeskai control against my friends jund midrange...Of course my winrate is high because the matchup is so favorable.
Also, like I earlier said, I was well aware and knowingly abusing the fact the high % of the opponents i faced on tournaments lacked the experience and/or skill to paly against Academy...It was an actual factor i considered when i chose which deck to play.

[firestarter]

This is something very true. When Academy deck has a good draw and is comboing off early, it sure may look like "wow this shit is busted", and it's totally understandable. It seemingly does very wicked stuff.
But you have to look realize it's just how to deck works, and it's not something that happens every game...or even every other. It sometimes loses to a single hate card that doesn't have to even be "silver bullet" against it. Too many time I remember just being completely locked out by Aven Mindcensor or the new 3mana Ashiok


Also, like I earlier said, I was well aware and knowingly abusing the fact the high % of the opponents i faced on tournaments lacked the experience and/or skill to paly against Academy...It was an actual factor i considered when i chose which deck to play.


[/quote]

This!

[firestarter]

We have incredibly powerful individual cards and some of them, like Academy, sometimes do look too powerful. These are the spikes that players talk about, but every experienced Academy player knows, what regular games in tough(er) matchups look like.

This is something very true. When Academy deck has a good draw and is comboing off early, it sure may look like "wow this shit is busted", and it's totally understandable. It seemingly does very wicked stuff.
But you have to look realize it's just how to deck works, and it's not something that happens every game...or even every other. It sometimes loses to a single hate card that doesn't have to even be "silver bullet" against it. Too many time I remember just being completely locked out by Aven Mindcensor or the new 3mana Ashiok

You have to be able to look at the bigger picture, and the meta you're playing on. It's like me playing Jeskai control against my friends jund midrange...Of course my winrate is high because the matchup is so favorable.
Also, like I earlier said, I was well aware and knowingly abusing the fact the high % of the opponents i faced on tournaments lacked the experience and/or skill to paly against Academy...It was an actual factor i considered when i chose which deck to play.

And this! There is no reason to ban Academy because of any dominance at the last "tournaments". I need some valid data to understand that reason. It is hard to play this beautiful format without understanding its development...
Patrick

[Vazdru]

The community demanded that their voice should be involve more in the council decisions....

Community Cup, 90 players (last big tournament):

These card(s) should be banned:
(absolute frequencies)
(relative frequencies)
(cards currently on the Watchlist are italic)



There are (only) two cards which get more votes for BAN vs UNBAN (for the ones with at least 10 votes).
One of it even got 10 times more votes for BAN vs UNBAN.

[Vazdru]

I guess it is more a rhetoric question?
It's quite obvious that there is no resilent data available showing the dominance of ANY deck or card in such a small format. This is true for now, the past and the future.

What could be the conclusion? Ban nothing eternally?!

[DarkLight]

As far as I read and understood the thread yet, the main reason for those who are trying to justify an UNBAN of 'Tolarian Academy' is because it is not dominating the format hard enough? You guys should consider that the price tag and the specific Solitaire playstyle are other reasons why Academy-Decks like "Eggs" are not dominating tournaments more!
My conclusion on the points are made yet "expensive and specific niche decks shouldn't get BANNED out keycards, because many people don't play those decks in tournaments to create a big enough dominance". Sounds reasonable, not.

In my opinion you could justify the BAN of 'Tolarian Academy' just with it's own power level, this is why I think the BAN is still coming a few years too late. You don't need to look with every BAN necessarily  at the dominance of certain decks. Several other cards on the BAN-List are BANNED for their own power level and not because of the dominance they are creating.
Are you want to UNBAN them all, too?