Congrats to DJ0045, winner of this spike round getting votes by 6 out of 10 voters
It was funny to try some good decks for one round, i think we can maybe do it again at the beginning of next season. It conflicts with the upcoming tournaments, but maybe we can start this earlier after the release and i hope it was useful to someone for the tournaments (it would be because of the control fest).
Next round will start after 2 or 3 days, so the submission time will be between the second half of the first round and the first half of the second round of the tourneys. The theme will be related to Amonkhet...

Congrats DJ!! Loved that deck

Modulo getting only one vote (from me!) is a travesty and I think Sjoks deck deserves more love

Good job newcomers Cucho and Red Acuta getting 2nd place. Lové Cuchos deck

Congratulations DJ I still have to test your deck xD!



You are right, that recommendation does not take into consideration -as far as I know- is at what point of the match you have to have your lands, for example the Hellbent Madness with 19 lands really needs the 3 land drop to finish the game but not on the 3rd turn necessarily you can still put pressure with tons of 1 and 2 drops, but you really have to drop that land on turn 5. So that kind of struggles with this recommendation



Here is a different approach I found on the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMuIezb ... nm&index=6

Calculator
http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/h ... etric.aspx

If you don´t like to watch that video here is the resume.

Population size : Cards on deck
Number of successes in population: Number of lands
Sample size: number of cards you draw/ 7+turn in which you NEEED the land drop magic number
Number of successes in sample (x) = Land drop magic number in this case 3
-----
so we put in the numbers and we get this:

For 19 lands

that is a 81% rate of success on getting the 3 land drop on turn 5 and 86% on turn 6 (different calculation not attached)

For 20 lands

that´s 85% rate of success on getting the 3 land drop on turn 5 and 89% on turn 6 (different calculation not attached)

What do you guys think of this?
how do you chose the number of lands on your decks?

PS: Barney I will never grow tired of reading that you love my deck!

awesome! so if I need to hit 3 drop every game (over 95%), what is the suggestion?
What if I want to hit 4 lands by turn 4 with over 95%?
With a free mulligan, we can say 85% I guess? rather than 95%.

I ran the calculator. 25 lands gives exactly 95% to hit 3 land drops by turn 3.
I probably have some great maths or deckbuilding instinct. or I played too many games. It's like experienced constructor gets some incredibly subtle "golden ratio" work done without having to learn architect lessons.

Hey thanks guys! Sorry I threw some inefficiencies into the deck prior to this contest that hurt the build slightly. Glad it was still good enough to attract some votes. I'm not sure the best deck won, but I'll take it all the same. I can't wait for the next one!

Thanks also to everyone that tested the decks, you guys rock!

The best deck did not win. One of the best builders did though, and that's what's important.

It never does BB, at least not in terms of pure win percentages.

I think the best deck won. Vehicle versions were more stable than hellbent/madness versions. The 'living in the edge' feeling of hellbent/madness versions is way more fun for me, but they lack the resiliency of vehicle versions and if they can't win around T5 then they're prob not winning the game. They kick butt all over the ladder, but that's way less competitive than a tourney (face a good deal of opponents who don't cast their first spell until T3-4) - especially on xbone.

If taking one of these lists to tourney and my primary goal is to place as high as possible, I'd run a vehicle version (personally would take hellbent tho because fun). WWs list is very good, but the Harvesters in DJs list push it to the top imo and got my vote. I wanted to put in a vote for hellbent too, but ran out of time for an elimination round.

I'd really love to see some good analysis of DJ's deck versus WW's Old Brutal. I really feel the latter is the better build:

I prefer Bomat to Ballista (it's faster and I can potentially get more gas)/
DJ's Glint-Sleeves are awesome but a little slow and they make terrible pilots.
WW is playing a Key to the City which is a card I've grown to absolutely love and get more cards with Bomat.
WW is playing Pia which strong players love to abuse.
To TIMH's point, DJ is playing Harvesters but I think WW's Hellions are way better (especially with Key)
Now, here's a big one: WW is playing 4 Fiery Temper as opposed to DJ's 3 Fatal Push and 2 Harassed Lightning and 1 Cut/Ribbons. The Fiery Temper can get triggered by Key to the city and Bomat and Hazoret and Copter (especially Copter in my experience). This is the KEY difference in my games with the two. DJ's deck has very little burn but tons of removal. The fact that Temper can go face has been HUGE in my games with WW's deck.
DJ's deck has two Glorybringers which are awesome but with WW's deck, the game is over by then.

I love both decks to death, but MAN is WW's deck ever more my speed (only slightly). The burn is huge. Bomat and Pia add all sorts of interesting tactical possibilities to the deck that I can abuse (if I'm having a good night).

Well I won't argue too much with that BB, because I too have played something akin to WW's deck to great success over the seasons. I totally disagree on Key to the City, and I'm not a huge fan of Bomat, but I've certainly played that deck, and can confirm that it is very good - especially discard outlets for Fiery Temper - YUMMMZ Y'ALL! I think you may remember me asking you if you thought Bomat was the better option - over Walking Ballista - back when I first came up with the Rakdos deck, and you actually convinced me to stick with Ballista, so at least at one point you thought the opposite of what you're currently saying.

The big killer for me was the inclusion of the new dragon in my deck, which I was certain would be an upgrade, and now I'm not so sure anymore. I think it's not that the card isn't good, I think instead that the card just isn't going to work in an low CMC aggro deck, and we already have a better finisher with Flagship. The dragon just isn't needed, and it certainly isn't needed with flagship as well. I should have stuck with the old vampire, or switched over the P&K - I think I mentioned this earlier, but I'll admit to it now, if not.

I think TIMH is right though, I firmly believe vehicles are the best deck in Rakdos, and while mine may not be perfect, it's the right framework. I would definitely chose my type of Rakdos deck for a tournament (perhaps slightly edited, but still), and I'm fairly sure it would perform extremely well if I did - better than the Mardu decks did for example. I just think the all around consistency is there (and consistency above all else is the reason I do not include Fiery Tempers), the stability is there, and the win percent is there. It's a deck that has to be answered to win the tournament, whether it would be the winning deck or not is uncertain.

Eh, Barney's system is flawed, as it's based on a smallish sample and subject to what decks he runs into.

Your deck was definitely one of the two most solid builds, in my opinion, which is why it got my vote.

These really don't compete for the same space in the deck, as one is a 1-drop and the other is typically about a 4-drop. I know you hate everything that isn't pure aggro af, but DJ's deck has necessary hedges that make it much more consistent vs. other good decks.

Like, if you wanted a real analysis of their deck strengths, a win vs. a rank 30+ should count for the equivalent of about 5 wins vs. someone sub-10.

Take Esper for example. I can easily pilot it to 20 or 30 straight wins without much thought, but if I get a bad draw or a bad matchup, and I could have a night where I go 4-3 or something. It's not so perfectly smooth and you cannot control for the matchups you face in a small sample. I appreciate your efforts actually going out and playing all these decks, but going 0-1 doesn't mean a deck is necessarily worse than a deck that went 13-1, it just means it ran into that "1" alot earlier than the other deck did.

Also, FWIW, I suspect DJ wins the mirror vs. WW's deck.

mirrors are totally meaningless tho. I take both to the ladder, fairly, and compare the result. It's a flawed system for sure but it's the best I can do with 10 different decks cuz otherwise I'd have to playtest for a month.

DJ's deck losing to mill in the first round is hilarious and humiliating (for me as well, btw). I'm going to be playing Old Brutal for a long time and if it makes it as long as DJ's did, then we'll have a decent basis of comparison. Anyway, neither deck were my favourite two in the end anyway.

My votes were DJ's and Red Acuta's build. My analysis was looking at the list, critiquing the list in my head, and then eliminating the 5 that were clearly the worst. Then I tried to figure what decks are truly competitive at higher levels. This was also done in my head.

The process took about 15 minutes and is as close to a perfect system as there is.

that sounds BORING. I like my method of using empirical evidence populated by total random garbage, lol

anyway my method is more about being entertaining mostly for me (and hopefully to some others that are rooting for their deck to make it deep).

Temper needs discard to be better than the red Trial. WWs deck has a total of 4 discard sources (not counting Courier, which needs things to line up correctly unless you're ok with wasting other cards in hand), two of which can be Pushed before you can even trigger discard, so odds are good that you're having to spend 3 mana (needing double red) to cast the spell a fairly large % of the time - thus limiting the number of spells you can cast per turn. My loss with WWs deck exemplified this problem - tho it was the 3 mana needed to cast UD, but principle is the same - removal wasn't cheap enough to cast that and build my board presence at the same time. It's not a bad spell in WWs deck, but not as reliably boss as in hellbent decks with more discard sources to reliably cast for . Firecrafts/Defiances might offer better value in the spot.

Hellion isn't better than Harvester here imo. Evasive attacker > landlocked one, and Harvesters don't have a 2 turn clock till death. Harvester was the most run vehicle in last seasons tournaments for a good reason. I think saying Hellions are better because of Keys isn't persuasive to me because we can only run 2 keys and can't expect to draw them every game.

Congrats Dj.
Sorry I didn't get around to testing all the decks...
I didn't vote, but I'm pretty sure my deck wasn't the best. Just tried to go with something slightly different.
Anyway, I'm a little burnt-out on rakdos and mono-red. Just had a really bad run, were I lost something like 6 or 7 games to opponents who pulled off incredible top-decks or ninja'd me with sneaky kills the turn before I'd win.
I then went and played azorius spirits, which has been doing pretty good. I was finally beating a ramp deck after a long game and the damn Duels client goes and crashes...
I hate long games...
I'm getting kind of bored with the meta.
Its control, Vehicles, zombies, rakdos and superfriends over and over and over again...

Please do not make any of these archtypes the next one for the Competition. I will not take part.

I just hope the next one will be fast decks again

I read that as



I would vote, however I lack too many to be able to build all the decks - and I don't trust myself to evaluate them in my head