You are clearly unfamiliar with my work if you think I would ever suggest playing a questionable deck. The article suggests putting time into the learning the deck you intend to play, not to play something bad just because you know it. Your comment suggests that you have missed the point by a very large margin.

FYI, I’m the editor of this site. If I recall correctly, I’m the one who actually named that section. But in any case, it’s a rhetorical statement. It isn’t tantamount to saying, “Playing the exact deck you know best is correlated with the highest chance of winning.” I think his argument is pretty clearly stated, assuming you’re not willfully ignoring it.

His conclusion would suggest you’re wrong, which is literally titled “Play What You Know”…

You’re mistaken if you think Ryan is telling you to play with a non-tiered deck over Tier 1. His claim is that there isn’t an absolute “best deck,” not that no decks are better than others.

Modern isnt Legacy. None of these decks are all THAT difficult to play. Is there a little wiggle room? Sure, but nothing that ripping through 10 Leagues online wont fix.

Play the best deck, then you’ll have experience with the best deck and you can play it some more. Make the switch out of your heaping pile and play the best deck.

Play the best deck and stop listening to people who tell you that you compete with your Tezzerator deck just because you’ve played it forever.

This is a sentiment that continues to be echoed throughout the Modern community and one that I’ve advocated for some time. Hence my Facebook Modern UWx community – https://www.facebook.com/groups/MTGModernUWx/ – and why I stick to UW Midrange as my main deck. It’s my bread and butter.

As I once mentioned in an article I wrote about UW in Modern, there are those who prefer to play the flavor of the week/month, which is typically the ‘best’ deck, in order to increase their probability of winning, or at least making Top 8. The proof is in performance, but the pilot, and adapting to the meta, absolutely matters. It is as important, if not more important than the deck we choose to play.

There are several pros, Patrick Dickmann, Shaun McLaren, Jeff Hoogland, Wafo Tapa, Craig Wescoe, etc., who stick to 1 or 2 decks and master them. They experience these decks through the motions, such as shifting metas, and continue tailoring and adapting their decks to the field. There’s an inherent and invaluable advantage of mastering your deck, knowing the ins and outs of your 75, understanding the format, and being able to show up at a tournament – while knowing the angles of opposing decks – and successfully perform through experience, skillful play, and being ahead of the curve. In a wide open field, it’s just best to play what you know, but the deck has to be reasonable (i.e. competitive).

I think that there are many examples of similar looking decks in Modern that have significantly different play patterns. I could play the more tempo drive builds of Delver decks, though if I saw somebody playing one of those builds or Grixis well I would not assume that skill translated to the other builds. Grixis enables you to let more spells resolve and be more reactive, while Temur and Izzet force you to play a far more proactive role.

Similarly, I don’t expect Jund or Abzan players to necessarily be able to pilot the other deck as well. The play patterns for Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt are very different. Sometimes even just being a couple cards off can significantly alter play patterns, minimally when it comes to specific matchups. I think that even if you’re only making minimal changes before an event with a deck that you’re proficient with, it would be wise to play a lot of games with the new configuration.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I have been quite busy as of late, so I don’t have a ton of experience with the Fulminators yet. Spreading Seas would be better against Tron, though the major reason I landed on Fulminator is so I can board out both Delvers and Terminates against Jeskai and be happy with what I’m bringing in, and Spreading Seas just isn’t effective there.

Question for you about mastering a deck. How literal are you being? For example, you’ve made your Modern success piloting Grixis Delver. Would you still consider yourself comparably proficient in UR, or Temur? Or what about the different flavors of Abzan, as another example? With a few exceptions of decks with very large cores (Affinity, Infect) where does knowing your deck and experimenting with new cards and builds that support an equivalent strategy diverge?

This obviously isn’t a question that can be answered in percentages, but I’m curious how strictly one adheres to a set of cards, or even a tertiary color, when trying to evaluate how well you know a deck.

You are bringing very unique content to modernnexus and extremely down to earth statements and opinions. When speaking of a math teacher who lectures and teaches theory vs the one who actually gives insight and makes it concrete, i see you as the latter one. Great job and keep it up.

Has the fulminator trial in the SB worked out for you in grixis delver? Any love for spreading seas in the SB ?

Sorry for the offtopic post.

I think that Infect is actually a deck that rewards familiarity more than many, and when it comes to pro players and Modern I don’t believe that many of them are invested in the format enough to be masters of their deck beyond just being very good at Magic. I think that for many pros they are just trying to play the best deck and playing it from the perspective of being good at Magic, in no small part because they have to invest a lot of time into keeping up with Standard and Limited.

How in the world does “audible” mean “change your mind”?
*does some Googling*
Oh. Huh. Now I wish I knew where else I’d seen the term so I could re-read. Hm.

I believe that the meaning in this context comes from football. It means to change your mind at the last minute. “To audible to a different play”.

“Perhaps Death’s Shadow or Infect will have better percentages against a given set of pairings, but if the only deck you know is Jeskai Control audibling could be disastrous.”

So, back when I first played Magic, to “audible” (as a verb) was not an existing expression. Then I took a hiatus, and now that I’ve come back, I see this term every now and then. The context in most of my encounters with the term suggest that it refers to the act of making an audible vocalization in response to a game event (such as saying “Yes!” when you topdeck what you needed or sighing loudly when you draw your fifth land in a row). I was comfortable with that understanding and it seemed to work whenever I encountered that term, until I got to the above-referenced sentence from this article. What am I missing?

On a completely different note, you’re in Minnesota? Me too! 😀