What 'Tier' is my modern deck?
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on June 14, 2015, 11:13 p.m. by jackanukealty
Fairly self Explanatory
I think it's maybe Tier 2-1.5, but I'm really not sure. Can someone with a better understanding of modern tiers answer this?
To be honest, it isn't tiered at all, or at the very least it's below tier 2. Tiers are defined by the popularity and success of a deck in the meta, and Tezzeret control is basically a rogue brew that is hardly played. Therefore, while you may be able to make it win some, it isn't really defined as a tier at all.
June 14, 2015 11:26 p.m.
jackanukealty says... #4
So while it is reasonably powerful, it can't be Tiered, because very few people play it, thus, it has a low turnout rate at events, thus, sees little success. This is correct?
June 14, 2015 11:39 p.m.
Yes that's right. Tiers are defined by percentage of the meta that a deck takes up. Tez control is very few are far between, therefore rated as a "rogue brew."
June 14, 2015 11:46 p.m.
I dislike that definition of tier and go for the matchup definition instead. For reference - people use tier in two ways the first is popularity, and the second is competitiveness.
You DO have competitive decks that don't see a ton of play - the reason being that a lot of the competitiveness comes from being surprising. Amulet Bloom is an example. Soul Sisters is another. These are decks that thrive on your opponent not being prepared to deal with what they're doing.
Therefore I feel the popularity concept of tiers is not that useful.
Instead I use tier as an indication of overall competitiveness with /some/ attention to popularity but not a lot. Though Tezz control is around T2. It can do good things - but not against enough of the T1 crowd to be decent.
Edit: the most useful thing to ask yourself is 'how much of the T1 crowd can this deck beat?'. If the answer is only one or two decks then it doesn't belong in the upper echelons.
June 15, 2015 7:06 a.m. Edited.
Named_Tawyny says... #7
Yeah, up until here, I've never heard of anybody defining Tiers based on popularity - it's about competitiveness.
Now, that doesn't mean that Tier 1 decks don't tend to be popular - of course they are, they're good decks! - but I think there's some cause and effect confusion going on here.
If tomorrow, 90% of players started playing the same janky brew (they wouldn't, but this is a hypothetical), that wouldn't make it Tier 1, if it still sucks.
Likewise, if tomorrow everybody abandoned Affinity (but it was still a great deck) it wouldn't drop tiers.
Tier is about quality and competitiveness - popularity follows from that.
June 15, 2015 9:30 a.m.
SerTimtheJailer says... #8
From what my understanding of the "tier" system is its based on popularity and how well it performs at tournaments and MTGO. So if you have a deck that consistently hits the top 8 online and in big tournaments its going to be upgraded to a tier 1 or 2 deck which will also increase its popularity. If you have a deck like merfolk for example. Its pretty popular, it can contend with tier 1 decks but wont hit the top 8 as much as the other tier 1 decks. This deck is considered "tier 2" Other examples of tier 2 decks are like g/w hatebears, elves (which may upgrade after there showing from charlotte) and zoo. Your deck isn't graded in a tier. Not saying its not good but it would have to perform well in a tournament or start doing well on MTGO for it to pick up popularity which would in turn increase its chances of performing well in tournaments which would then upgrade it to tier 1 or 2.
bigguy99 says... #2
"Tier" is relative. If you can do well with it against the better decks of the format, then it's obviously high up there; conversely, if you fold to stuff like Twin and Jund then you also know where the deck lies.
June 14, 2015 11:26 p.m.