The Hulksmash.dec Overrated?

[Dr. Sylvan]

Hulk Smash is the best deck. I'm working on the March summary article today, and the top of the results looks like this:

9 Hulk Smash (1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3,8)
5 Keeper (3,4,6,7,8)
4 Dragon (1,2,7,8)
4 Rector (3,5,5,5)
4 Fish (2,6,7,7)
4 Food Chain Goblins (4,6,6,8)

In nine tournaments, Hulk won four of them. And this excludes the NJ Lotus tourney (Top 4 including three Hulks and a GAT) because I don't have lists for it. This is hardcore tournament evidence that Hulk is the best deck.

[Razvan]

I'm sad because It looks like you've never played against good Tog players.

Maybe. However, I am not sure that the deck is that complex that no one here can pilot it well.

[DragonFire]

@Spizzard
The high amount of Chump blockers come from two Reasons, the first is Karn (2x) and a lot of Artifacts, i.E. Tangle Wire, Smokestack and so on. I must just chumpblock it for 1-2 times, because then the permanent advantage is high enought to get rid of the tog. The second is what you could make out of a lot of mana...

@Toad
Each broken start ended up in a Gamewin (if not FoWed), even a broken Goblinstart kills each Deck Round 3.
What do you define an "insane draw engine"?

@The Atog Lord
I'd never said, that Hulk is a bad Deck, but some people won't see other decks than Slaver and Hulk, this is kind of strange for me, because I've made other experiences. Top players sometimes totally ignore the other decks. We have the great time, that we have an very healthy environment, but too many people just play tog.

@Dr. Sylvan
Statistics says nothing. I believe this, because for a really good statistic u must play more tournaments AND each tournament with the same summary of decks in the start position. (ex. 4 togs, 4 keeper, 4 MUDs, 4 Madness...)

@Razvan
I'm in you're line. Tog isn't that complex, it has some basic tactics and tricks (intuition on three coffin purge, par example), the rest is brokeness. Sure more experienced players can choose the right way, but often it is just an autopilot.

[nietzreznor]

@DragonFire:  Echoing what JP said, the difficult part about Tog is not necessarily the tactical decisions, but rather adopting the correct gameplan.  Anyone can sit there and drain stuff and cast draw spells; the <tricky> part is knowing what role you should be adopting in a particular matchup.  And hence why some people seem to find the matchup against Stax unfavorable...

[Razvan]

@DragonFire: Echoing what JP said, the difficult part about Tog is not necessarily the tactical decisions, but rather adopting the correct gameplan. Anyone can sit there and drain stuff and cast draw spells; the <tricky> part is knowing what role you should be adopting in a particular matchup. And hence why some people seem to find the matchup against Stax unfavorable...

Against Stax, it might be the simplest one of all. Kill before they lock you. You CANNOT attrition Stax, unless you get really lucky.

If a Tangle Wire is active, just cast the instants to get your hand and yard full, and swing when needed. If a Stax is online, just count and make sure it works. The Spheres, of course, are a real speedbump. Etc...

[Dr. Sylvan]

@Dr. Sylvan
Statistics says nothing. I believe this, because for a really good statistic u must play more tournaments AND each tournament with the same summary of decks in the start position. (ex. 4 togs, 4 keeper, 4 MUDs, 4 Madness...)

This makes no sense. We play Magic in tournaments for prizes. The decks that win tournaments are the good ones. I analyze the largest tournaments so that decks appearing in my analyses have gone through the toughest resistance possible. You yourself are claiming that Hulk is not good in certain matchups, and I'm showing you evidence that over a very large set of data (nine tournaments with an average of 93 players) Hulk Top 8ed as much as the next two decks combined, winning nearly half of the entire data set. This proves that either the matchups aren't as you say (I feel Toad and JP have adequately shown that this is the case) or they aren't very important (variable by metagame). Merely because each tournament has a different set of decks (aka a metagame) the statistics are invalid? I am perplexed by this attitude, to say the least.

[Razvan]

Phil:

Maybe the unseen difference is the total representation of a deck in the field. I am thinking that maybe you should consider it in your analysis. I know this is next to impossible, since you can't really get a breakdown of all the decks that attended, but maybe that could explain the dominance?

Maybe this will be more clear. Here (in Toronto), I have only really seen myself, Petko and Balzary play Workshop decks at most Type 1 tournaments (and I know that Bebe does as well). There's more Tog players than that. This could be a reason as to why this is.

And, of course, the head-to-head is another strong indicator.

Maybe I am totally off. Just a thought...

[Ultima]

I think that first it should be clarified that the stats between Worksop decks and Hulk cannot be compared for the simple reason that Workshop decks are not in the same bracket of available card pool and affordable expense.  You can play Hulk at a 5 proxy tourny wihtout breaking a sweat if you own 1-2 power pieces. Workshop is far cry away from that.

Hulk sees more popularity because its a strong and consistent and affordable deck.  Workshop is alot more expensive and has alot less showing outside of a 10-proxy event in reality.

As far as whether its hyped, well personally I think Hulk is strong but by now, too slow. I think the metagame is fast enough where 5 turns before killing is too slow.  I prefer GAT (3rd-4th turn most of the time).

[JuJu]

I haven't read the entire thread because it's basically the same thing being said about a zillion times, if I've said something that someone had already ststes, pardon me. Anyways, in the MUD and $74X Matchup you have to let there deck work against you, this is much harder where Stax trys to block you instead of clearing your board. One rule that I always use is if Smokestack is on the board, The Mud player is feeding your Tog. Toad or JayPee(Forget who, probably both) are right when most people misassign there roles, versusu most decks this is rather simple, but against Workshop decks and a few others (Madness and TnT are good examples) this confuses a person; does the Tog player want to drop that Tog fast, or leave mana open for the Mana Drain? It's really confusing for a player overwhelmed with pressure or one who hasn't tested the specific Matchup yet.
Running red really helps in the Workshop match of course. One thing people playing tog must remember, and something that Smmenen pointed out in one of his articles is that Tog is customizable, other then Togs, Drains, FoW, AK and Intuition engine, the deck is practically customizable. If you have alot of Workshops in your meta, then metagame your deck correctly.
Once Again, I'm sorry if someone already posted something of this sort.

[Grand Inquisitor]

I'm showing you evidence that over a very large set of data (nine tournaments with an average of 93 players)

We all appreciate your work, but can you really claim any statistical significance here?

Before people place me in the wrong camp, I'll admit that I believe Hulk is the most consistently powerful deck in the format.  However, that doesn't help it in certain matchups and certain scenarios.

Although I have confidence in JP and other's testing, I think they are still oversimplifying prison's options when they say drop Tog and win.  Especially post-board when prison has access to REB, it becomes all to easy to either chump or remove the tog while setting up lock pieces behind spheres.  When going first and Hulk not having FoW, any sphere backed up with smokestack or tanglewire should promote an unrecoverable game state for the prison player.  There are certainly exceptions based on prison's inconsistent draws, but my experience is that this is a very low-probability scenario for Hulk.  I'm not talking about broken openings by prison, I'm talking about two early lock pieces with something to supplement them (Welder, waste, draw, etc)

Additionally, its not like Hulk runs more than three copies of Tog (less than 40% opening hand), or has the time to draw/tutor for it.  More often than not, Hulk is forced to play the control roll, which according to JP and Toad is a losing proposition.  I'm guessing you don't mulligan into a tog, do you guys?

In the Tog player's defense, most of the better versions of prison I've been seeing lately don't rely on Metalworker, and don't run more than 1 copy of Karn.  This makes it unlikely that chump blockers as opposed to lock and reb will carry the day.

[jpmeyer]

Actually, I DO mulligan a hand if it doesn't either have a) turn 1-2 Tog or b) 2 "counters."  Really, pretty much the only times I won't are if I'm on the play and I've got acceleration because that'll mess up their symmertrical cards.

Just because a hand has land and spells doesn't mean that they'll do anything.  Be aggressive!

[Dr. Sylvan]

We all appreciate your work, but can you really claim any statistical significance here?

Perhaps I misimplied that this is a truly statistical sample. "Large set of data" here means: "Every available source of data."

In order to be a statistically significant sample, IIRC, I would need n > 30. A normal curve needs that many data points to distinguish itself to a reasonable degree of accuracy (or something along those lines, I don't remember last year's data analysis class perfectly by a long shot). Ideally, I would have about a thousand or fifteen hundred tournaments, at which point I could speak in terms of "certain to within X%". However, these data would also have to be controlled for time separation. So I do what I can with what I've got.

Edit: Oooh, it just occurred to me that the more reasonable outlook might consider the decks as the sample size, in which case I've got n = 72 for this month. Muuuch better. Consider this a new component of my claims to intellectual 'rigor'.

Thanks for making me think about that. :)

[Smash]

The truth is, all the decks will NOT get played equally, so the number crunching does not matter as much as you think for several reasons.

1) Money. Not all tournies are unlimited proxies, and money does limit decks. This makes tog a cheaper choice than a workshop deck. Also note, that tog fits fairly well with the 5 proxy plan (ancestral, lotus, sapphire, jet, walk), so good players with not infinite money will be more likely to play a given deck (tog)

2) Trends. Most people grab their deck for a tourney from the buzz on here, or at starcity. If smenarch makes a post about how welder-stompy-twister.dec is the best deck in the format, guess what? There will be plenty of people packing welder-stompy-twister.dec at the next tourney. The frequency that used to be Rasko articles helped keeper earn a kind of legendary status about it, which often accounts for more than it's fair share of a metagame.

3) Play skill. While tog is say, really hard to play "perfectly", it is fairly easy for anyone with decent playskill (like a good T2/1.x player) to pick up and do fairly well. In t2, there isn't really anything like playing weldermud or draw7.dec.  I think that while weldermud and tog are both very hard to play "perfectly", tog is a lot easier to play at say 90%, and just win sometimes. Just picking up mud tends to lead to a NOT very good game.

4) Metagame. The decks in the lower rounds, and the pairings determine who makes top 8. You would need to say "okay tog beats FCG 76% of the time, and the field was 35% FCG -> which led to tog being in 4 of the top 8 slots". Without such information of the previous rounds, its hard to say tog is the BEST because it won that tourney. Maybe tog won because it was a good metagame choice right now, but if the meta shifts, it will not do as well.

[Smmenen]

Workshop Prison in general.

It's weird.  Tog is a pretty easy deck to play on a tactical level, but it is misplayed on a strategic level more than any deck that I can think of in Type 1.

Wow.  So True.  People do not understand what tog is capable of - you JUST WIN!

I want people to try to see how quickly they can win with Tog - they'd be surprised.

Steve

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

Smmenen is right. I had mad doubts about Tog, then Joe Bushman and Steve told me to goldfish it and it won by turn 5 sooooooooo consistently. And that was before I put Gush MD.

[Eastman]

I'm not dumb, I know how to play - as does GI. Don't tell us that missassignment of role is the only reason workshop lock can be a tough matchup for tog. The fact is that they sometimes have hands that you just can't beat.

Winning by turn 5 against good workshop lock is a ridiculous idea. Sure if they decide not to play the goldfishing strategy works, but trying to win under lock components is just a bad idea and will usually result in a game loss. The workshop player lays out his hand by turn 3 so unless your goldfish is faster than that they could usually care less.

Granted when you break free of the lock for any period of time the first thing you want t do is go get a tog and win, but you're forced to play through the control elements early most games unless you get lucky enough to find yourself with UU and a mana drain on one of your opponent's early main phases, which is rare if they have any kind of a hand.


The more likely scenario is to see the workshop player drop several lock components in the early turns, without achieving a hard lock, and stall out with only a partially built lock while they try to find the final few components. In the average game the hulk player can win by:

A. Draining workshop's topdecked threat into a good sized turn or mana for wish into r&r or just the kill
B. Using wishes on the upkeep (or eot if no wire) to break a crucial lock component  - usually over the course of 2 turns.
C. Having Gorilla Shaman and casting it

to break free of this early lock enough to get a tog of respectable size attacking.  It takes a bit of early brokenness to prevent stifling lock pieces from ever coming down - not that it doesn't happen but it certainly isn't the average game.

Hulk is an AWESOME deck and the workshop lock matchup is often totally winnable, but not by randomly spitting out a tog and pumping it. Let's be realistic.

[jpmeyer]

Actually, that really is one of the best ways to win it.  As we said before, if neither deck goes broken (since really neither deck can match the other's broken starts) that's the best way to win.  And because of those broken starts, that's also why we mulligan very aggresively on both sides of the matchup.

The reason that just dropping Tog trying to just plink them until they die is great is because while they can play a lot of lock parts, they can't handle the Tog in any timely fashion since Smokestack will probably take 3-4 turns and because the Workshop decks tend not to run anything to really beat down with so you don't need to spend cards (read: potential damage) to kill creatures.  And once you've dropped Tog, the number of cards you need to counter (as opposed to just wanting to Drain stuff, which you always want to do) is pretty much reduced to just Karn, meaning that you've got more damage sitting there in your hand.

We will say that this is definitely not the case game 2 however since then the Workshop decks can side in REBs and you can't simply just drop Tog the second you have 3 mana and win.

[DragonFire]

Good Morning ,

@Clown of Tresserhorn, Smmenen
Huh, this says nothing. Goldfish by turn 5 with an Aggro/Control Deck is nothing special, and 5 turns could be to slow against most of the decks.

@Smash
Yes, you're right, the Trends often makes the Metagame, this is another Problem with the Proxies. Each just look at the new list of the Guru players copy it and when it is not too hard to play, they win. When the next deck comes out, they play it. Netdecking is not the best answer for a healty environment.
Why Keeper isn't that popular, I think it is its complexity. It is much more hard to play and to choose the right decisions. Hulk can return to win with a single tog, ran over and game over. With Keeper you could easilly loose every game, or win it.

Metagame:
Tog could be a worse Metagame call in a tourney with a lot of Workshop builds and Slavers, they are definitly the Togs "natural" enemies. In my opinion a TnT Deck would be more successful in a Workshop-Prison Area, but this is just a though.

The problem with the statistic is as well a problem with the Proxy Tournaments, we have none around here, so you must always expect some strange builds, which are really no problem for either Tog or Workshop. But not everybody's playing tog or Workshopdecks.

When I read the strategy guide to win against Workshop "Schornstein" Decks, I think the best way of playing Mud is to stop the Tog AND Block his manasources. Blocking Mana Sources could be easy, because it is the nature of the Mud Deck. I never saw the problem in an early tog, just because I always found a way to handle it, but I will goldfish this later on this day.

Perhaps someone would like to test with me over MWS and yes this is for "scientific" use, not for who is right.

[Ultima]

Actually, in point to fact, Slavery is the best deck to play in a workshop prison metagame.  Slavery is hands down the best workshop deck and when its good, all the other workshop decks are bad.  It just turns out that way.

[dicemanx]

Slavery and Hulk are obviously powerful decks, but I think that the top decks of the format tend to be the decks that top players *claim* to be the top decks, and go on to play them and win with them. I'm pretty sure that if team Mean Deck, for example, proclaimed Dragon to be the most powerful deck in the format and played it more frequently, then we would have threads just like this one wondering if Dragon was an overrated tier-1 deck.

Here are my two generalizations:

All the top level decks will almost always beat anything given a broken start.

The frequency of a broken start is usually inversely proportional to a deck's consistency or resiliency, so if two decks that face off do not have broken starts, then the more consistent one (usually the one with more card drawing and/or disruption) has the edge.


This explains observations such as Hulk being favored over Slavery/wMUD/Stax if both decks don't have explosive broken starts, but this advantage can be partially or entirely negated by the more frequent busted hands that Slavery or wMUD/Stax could start with. Another example is draw-7 vs Dragon - Draw-7 will see busted hands more frequently, but Dragon is much more resilient against the field.

[Razvan]

The frequency of a broken start is usually inversely proportional to a deck's consistency or resiliency, so if two decks that face off do not have broken starts, then the more consistent one (usually the one with more card drawing and/or disruption) has the edge.

Is it scary that I was thinking the same thing in the exact same order of words?

This is why Stax often can't win the whole tournament. There's only so many broken hands it can get.

Also, does everyone that agreed on Hulk being the top deck finally agree that Workshop does NOT need to be restricted?

[Smash]

No, the whiney people with a $20 total deck budget will still call for it to be restricted, as well as those who whine about prison, as well as those who think mask and morphling are "overpowered"

[BreathWeapon]

Tog is more flexible than Stax. Even if what you say is true, Tog can simply mutate its MD or SB to deal with the problem more aggressively. Thats the true beauty of Tog, its immensely powerful and highly flexible ... those two attributes combined make it "The Best Deck."

We have come to terms, Tog>MTG

[Jamino]

Whilst it is true that most often the best players will promote a deck, win with it and it will then become more played and thus will most likeley win tournements, It also happens to be true that there is a reason the best players will play a certain deck.
Every single tier one (as far as that system goes) deck can be considred the best deck at the moment. But what most of the time is failed to talk about is the metagame.
In one metagame Hulk can absolutely destory everything, in another it can be complete shit.
Its what you call metagaming but every single deck in the format can be hated out. Some easier then others but there is no single deck at the moment that completely over powers every other deck.

Is Tog the best deck? Probably not
Is Dragon the best deck? Probably not either
It all depends on your metagame, and almost every deck if played correctly has a chance to suceede.

Sure, tog may seem overhyped and it probably doesnt need as many threads going as it does (although its nothing compared to Void, Sui, and Eba threads. Must be the new "cool thing to do") but it is a perfectly healthy deck and keeps everything in place.

Also, it was pointed out that most of the good players will play what the "pro's" are playing and while it isnt completely true, there is a reason for it.

Most of the time they have tested won and lost with the deck and have a good insight on what's happening.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes and "frenchism's" my spelling check is not working very good.

[nev]

No, the whiney people with a $20 total deck budget will still call for it to be restricted, as well as those who whine about prison, as well as those who think mask and morphling are "overpowered"

Some would say that this was the reason gush was restricted. Grow made every other aggrodeck pretty much obsolete iirc. Workshop has somewhat the same effect. O-stomp is the one and only budget aggro right now.

Still, I don't think it's workshops that is the problem, more often it seems to be that turn one 3sphere which stops sui/gobbo in their tracks...

Sorry for the off-topicness of this post, just needed to get that out.

[Jacob Orlove]

This has outlived whatever marginal usefulness it once had. Closed.