What distinguishes between a Tier 1, Tier 1.5, and Tier 2 decks
Modern forum
Posted on April 2, 2014, 6:26 p.m. by forestlore44
Obviously, a Tier 1 deck is in the top wrung of decks in the format, and subsequently Tiers 1.5 & 2, but what are the exact criteria that distinguishes a deck in those categories as such?
fluffybunnypants says... #3
Not a whole ton, honestly. Prettymuch the amount of play they see in the meta.
Due to the toolbox available to you to build from in Modern, there's a lot of play between tiers. I've been piloting what used to be considered a T2 deck, now a T1.5 deck, for a while now and I still regularly manage to get through the UWR, Melira Pod and Twin matchups that I frequently run into. Want to win in Modern? Run a viable deck and know it inside and out.
We'll take legit 4 Color Gifts for example (that means Tarmogoyf
, Iona, Shield of Emeria
, Life from the Loam
, Raven's Crime
, mana dorks, etc. not a random build). That deck punishes the crap out of you for poor decision making, but rewards your good decision by letting you do hilariously powerful things when you get it right while maintaining a solid midrange game plan. This Gifts build is considered T1.5 pretty universally, maybe even T2. What other deck does this sound like? Melira Pod sounds like a dead ringer to me. Now, arguably the number one deck in the format, Melira Pod is an extraordinarily resilient deck... when played correctly, which requires a ton of time behind the wheel due to its large number of moving parts. Honestly, nothing really screams "round bye" at Modern FNM like an inexperienced Pod player... except maybe an inexperienced UWR player. So, both decks in question highly reward solid play, and severely punish poor choices and have a beatdown backup plan, but one is T1.5 maybe even T2 and the other is T1.
While the two sides are very extreme with Pod and Gifts, they aren't much further off with a lot of the other decks in the format. This is, again, due to the amount of tools you have to play with in Modern. Almost all the decks do things that are stupid good. Even T2 ish decks are capable of doing really stupid powerful things. GR Tron for example: turn 3 Karn Liberated
anyone?
Last example: I know a player who will run either Scapeshift or GR Tron almost every Friday like clockwork. He still top 4s with alarming frequency regardless of the fact that he almost exclusively plays two of the worst decks in the current meta. On the other hand, there's this other guy who went out an dropped $800 on goyfs for Tarmo Twin who I've absolutely massacred every time I've played him since he built it.
April 2, 2014 7:22 p.m.
ColdHeartedSith says... #4
Tiers are opinions of cards in the top 8 of constructed tournement play on a national average of all these numbers combined. Card prices are generally reflections of the amount of each card that is played in a tier 1 deck. There are some pre-conceptions by the R&D dept about how good a card will be when a card is released into the meta and prices start there but don't remain months after release if the card dosnt find a home. Tier values change rapidly in standard but are stable to a good degree in eternal formats. To be clear tiers refer to how well a card is doing like the best players to have in fantasy football this month or year are? The cards are like football players competeing in their respective decks to be the number 1 seed. Lots of wins lots of copys equals tier 1.
April 2, 2014 10:49 p.m.
APPLE01DOJ says... #5
Rock with DRS was tier 1, Rock with Obliterator is tier 1.5
April 3, 2014 1:43 a.m.
tier 3 was Rock Paper Scissors
As far as labels and numbers are concerned 1.5 doesn't actually exist, like it was stated before that the tiers are intangible, because right now no one actually freaking knows with new sets coming out every-how-many-months and cards being more or less restricted to players based on prints or reprints. So 1.5 is kind of a cop-out to say, "idk but I'm afraid to say that deck is bad and be wrong about it."
Epochalyptik says... #2
There are no tangible restrictions for classification. Tier is merely an indicator of popularity. Tier 1 is comprised of the meta's dominant decks. Tier 1.5 is present and powerful, but not omnipresent or omnipotent. Tier 2 is closer to fringe, but viable.
April 2, 2014 6:43 p.m.