February 11th was a pretty good day for people who play Pauper. Lee Sharpe, long time member of the Magic Online team, announced his new position as Event Manager. At the same time he released a new event schedule that would be effective February 18th. The number of Pauper Daily Events tripled: one on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday; two on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. While the number of event results will only double, this represents a level of support that has not been glanced upon since the pre-November 2013 Crashes (also known as KiblerGate). Rumors of Pauper’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

The increase in events demonstrates that the Magic Online team values Pauper and sees it as part of the program for the foreseeable future. More events means more information and hopefully increased attention to the format. While Pauper is healthy in its player base it is plausible that Cloud of Faeries and Treasure Cruise are worthy of the ban-hammer. The additional data will allow Sharpe and his team to monitor the results and make a decision in the best interest of the format.

That discussion is for another time. Today we are primed to enter a new information age. For invested Paupers and newcomers alike this means one thing: decklists. The question arises how do we determine the genuinely good decks from those that only win.

To elaborate - I manage a page where for the past 18 months I have tracked the results of every Pauper Daily Event, Weekend Challenges, and even some single elimination queues. Invariably a deck will go 3-1 and someone will comment about the deck. They will fawn over a so called rogue deck making it to the winners circle or an old favorite showing it has something left in the tank. What nearly always follows is some variant of “Alex, do you think this deck is good?”

My answer is nearly always: wait and see.

A single strong performance simply is not enough information to make a valid conclusion. Occasionally a list will catch the eye of many and then proceed to get picked up, even if it is an inferior list. The inferior deck then continues to put up numbers (perhaps due in part to volume) and gets touted as something “good.” This is an Information Cascade.

Background: In 2006 Patrick Chapin wrote the incredibly important “Information Cascades in Magic.” Nearly ten years later it is still worth the read. The setting of the article is a team unified constructed Pro Tour Qualifier season during Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard. All three teammates had to go by what is now known as Unified Constructed rules. An arbitrarily correct strategy was to have one Orzhov deck. The article goes on to describe Ghost Dad - a deck based upon a Tallowisp engine- that had a great weekend and then caught fire. There was a second Orzhov option known as Ghost Husk, so called due to its ability to generate tons of damage from Nantuko Husk and Promise of Bunrei, that was objectively a better choice. However Ghost Dad was more popular. Again, an Information Cascade where a worse deck became more popular due to sheer volume.

We have already seen this to a certain extent in Pauper. Esper Familiar is not identified as a problem by participants at large due to its relatively small footprint in the metagame despite its success. Delver, on the other hand, is often hailed as the problem of the format even though in aggregate it puts up middling results give the sheer volume of Delver decks.

The big difference between the time when Chapin was penning his piece and today is the proliferation of Magic events and information. In 2006 Magic Online was still relatively new and event results were few and far between. Video coverage of the Pro Tour was limited to the top 8 and neither Grand Prix nor independent tournaments had live streamed commentary. Speaking of, streaming was still years away. It was easier for worse versions of decks to remain popular simply due to the lack of spotlight.

Today between multiple high level events occurring regularly and increased visibility due to video, there are just more eyes and more collective energy directed at having the best possible list. Iteration takes less time and a rapidly changing metagame means that technology is in constant need of updating. At least for high profile formats.

Pauper exists in an interesting pocket universe. The lack of high profile/high stakes events means that optimal lists are never really found. Daily Events are capped at four rounds which means a deck just has to be good enough to spike three games to get noticed. Now over a long enough period of time a true top tier will emerge - this is how we can safely posit Delver as a top deck while also make the estimation that Domain Zoo is fringe at best. But the variety in these decks show us that a best option may not emerge.

An anecdote: before the crash of November 2013 it could be debated that Mezzel was the single most successful pilot of Delver. Mezzel’s list was unique in many respects, not the least of which was its 19 land and inclusion of Brainstorm. Despite this success the deck had almost no one else pilot it as effectively. This could mean Mezzel was just a better pilot than others or that the deck was better, or perhaps that it was worse and Mezzel ran incredibly hot for a summer (that last one is unlikely). Here is an example of a time where information did not cascade.

Currently we are seeing the result of a cascade in Pauper. Back in early November of 2014 a hybrid deck emerged. The deck sought to blend the board control elements of Izzet Control with the combo style kill of Izzet Blitz. The deck, which I’ve been calling Izzet Midrange, has been a fixture ever since:

The deck from the original week is inaccessible on the mothership so I am using an example from this past weekend. I bring this deck up because in the past three months this deck has been performing worse than both decks from where it draws influence. While it has been performing only slightly worse than Izzet Blitz (the true combo kill version of this deck), it has been slaughtered in performance by Izzet Control - an epitome of consistency.



Note the lack of Temur Battle Rage in place of Assault Strobe here.

The persistence of the Midrange list could be the result of an information cascade. Despite the fact that it is objectively the worst Swiftwater Cliffs deck it still sees play. Many things may factor into this but if the data can be trusted then currently blowing up creatures is better than trying to Kiln Fiend someone in the face.

My hope is with the additional events we will see the cream of the format rise to the top and get a far more true picture of the metagame. I just hope we like what we see.

Keep slingin’ commons-

-Alex

SpikeBoyM on Magic Online

@nerdtothecore

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