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TL;DR at the bottom
I was testing "fun and gimmicky" decks through historic for a week, not only to find enjoyable decks to play, but also to check if they were any good or if they stood a chance among other meta defining decks.
Over the past week I've played 100 games or more of Historic best of one on multiple decks and I've gathered information about how they performed.
What I found was curious, as some of the decks seemed to have a lot of nonmatches, so many, in fact, that I chose to start recording my stats.
The first deck that made me question the matchmaking was "Historic Gates" also known as "Maze's End"
This is my current list, not awesome, not bad
This deck had the most nonmatches of all the decks I've played, with this one specifically having 58/132 matches lost on oponent's turn 2 (most of the time, my turn 1)
This deck got paired against [[Minion of the Mighty]] a staggering 68 times over 132 matches (The reason it's 132 and not 100 was to try and beat this deck 10 times).
Of the 58 losses against Minon of the Mighty, 32 were on the draw and 26 on the play.
Of the 32 on the draw, 30 were on oponents turn 2, with the game being "Land, Minion, go" I play tapland "Land, [[Scale up]] (or any other way to get Minion to 6) plus attack into dropping a dragon, usually a 7/7 that put treasures on the battlefield but, yesterday, a 5/5 that gave a creature double strike.
Of the 26 losses, the plan was similar, but I was on the play.
Of the 10 wins against this deck, the games that I played had [[gates ablaze]] to kill the minion on turn 2 or 3, via [[Arboreal Grazer]] or [[Kami of bamboo]] forest in turn 1/2 and Gates Ablaze in turn 2/3.
One of the wins, and the only one in which I survived a dragon attack was a delayed game in which I could play [[Baldur's gate]] and [[circuitous route]] early to drop a 7 power Gates ablaze while being at one life.
That is, 1 win out of 132 games in which I could beat the deck after it had done its combo.
Though I say I played 132(EDIT there was a typo) games with this deck, the truth is that there are 23 games I started that ended on auto concede by the opponent after at least 2 mulligan.
I'd like to asume, after seeing what decks I played against, that those 23 wins should be added to the stats against Minon of the Mighty's deck. The opponent just didn't find the pieces and conceded.
That's a real possibility, but since I didn't even see a card from their deck I can't say that "all" of those 23 were against that specific deck. (Though I really think they were)
Of the 84 games remaining, I played against Dimir self mill, with [[narcomoeba]] [[bloodghast]] and the like for 46
I won 24 games against this deck and lost 22, on the play for 25 games and on the draw for 21.
This matchup was always the same, each one of us playing alone untill we won.
I played 20 games against an artifact combo deck based around [[Paradox Engine]] and [[Karn the great creator]] which goes into an infinite combo of mana and drawing potential untill it draws [[Aetherflux Reservoir]] and pings me for 50.
I lost 12 games and won 8, with the victories coming mostly from [[Farewell]].
Being on the play in this matchup was way more important than against the dimir one, since I only won a game while on the draw.
Of the 8 games remaining 2 were against Hammer Time [[Colossus Hammer]] And I won once and lost once. Won on the play.
3 Games were mirror matches, where I won 2 and lost 1. One win on the draw and one win on the play and the loss on the play.
1 Game was against rakdos with bowmasters, ring and fable, which I won
2 Games were against random jank that I didn't understand, won both times.
The second deck I tested was Izzet Wizzards, which was my second historic deck and hasn't been updated in a long time, but it still works.
There's nothing much to say about this one, if it works it kills really fast
This deck faced mostly mirrors, at 37/100 matches.
I won 15 of those and lost 22, being on the play was extremely important in the matchup, as we could both ignore eachother and go for the face. I won 12 games on the play and 3 on the draw, losing 19 on the draw.
I played 16 games against Hammer Time, won 8 lost 8, 5 wins on the play and 3 on the draw, this pairing seems to be pretty average for who'll take the game.
I played against the Karn artifact deck 15 times and I won 13 out of those, with 6 wins on the draw and 7 on the play.
I played 13 times against [[Goblin Charbelcher]] winning 8 times, 6 of them on the play. This match has no interaction and insta loses against a really fast hand, but also can combo off really fast with treasure production and has a really good chance of having you dead at turn 4.
I played against Rakdos stuff 13 times as well, losing 12 out of 13 due to removal.
The remaining 6 games were against 5 diffrent decks, one with land destruction and artifact destruction that turned my lands into artifacts (how fun)
One against Mono Black devotion
2 against green white [[The One Ring]] [[Esper Sentinel]] [[Abiding Grace]] and other stuff that ramped into locking me out of the game (pretty interesting to see, although it relied on [[liquimetal coating]] [[haywire mite] and Karn to lock me out and that was akward, lost both times.
2 decks were random jank that lost to fast to see what they were and one was a [[Feather, The redeemed]] deck straight out of War of the spark standard, which lost the race on the play.
The third deck I played was Rakdos Bullsh*t but with less rares
This was the least fun to play
Out of 100 games a surprising 78 (78 OUT OF A 100!) were mirror matches with a win rate of 34/78, wins were mostly on the play with [[thoughtseize]] [[Inquisiton of kozilek]] or [[duress]] in turn one, into [[Orchish Bowmasters]] turn 2, [[Fable of the mirror breaker]] on turn 3 and one of the 2 best cards in the format in turn 4, this deck is really, really good but the matchmaking pairs it up against itself all of the time, so winning is harder than playing other decks.
The 22 games remaining were against different decks, but out of those 22, I won 8 on turn 1 via land into hand discarder.
I played against Mono white Humans 4 times, winning those 4 times, 3 times on the play.
I played 8 games against elves, which lost, badly, to bowmasters and [[fatal push]] 6 out of the 8 games and I lost 2 games miserably to an ever expanding board that couldn't be stopped by all the removal on the world.
(I should build the elf deck, it looks fun)
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I also played [[greasefang, okiba boss]] both in the control version (Esper) and the abzan version with [[Esika's chariot]] but not for many games, only to try and cluth some fast wins for the day, deck is inconsistent and loses to removal, but when it works, it works fast, so to farm daily wins it's ok.
(I do not have the historic lists but I keep a explorer one, which is basically the same)
I didn't track stats with this one, it was \"Can i combo on turn 3 or concede\"
The same goes for the Charlbelcher list, it's a deck that has really fast matches, and sometimes, when you are trying to get the 15 dailies it's better to lose 3 games and win one in the time that a control deck wins one.
I also didn't track this one's statistics because it was just to try and get fast wins
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So, after all of this, what have I learned?
Well, that some decks are destined to face eachother, and that playing the best deck in the format may not help you in your quest to get 15 wins fast, since you will most likely face mirrors and those games tend to be long coinflips.
If you are playing ranked, DO NOT PLAY BO1, not only will the game work against you with the matchups, if you are on the draw you wil have a bad time.
I have only reached Mythic once, and it was Standard BO3. Standard is a better format to grind, as there are fewer decks you'll find. And, on the opposite end, if you find a quirky deck that wins in non ordinary ways, historic is a good format to play, as the large variety of decks in the format can lead you to easy wins.
But, keep in mind that if the matchmaking gods hate your deck, you will be paired up against decks you cannot best, see the Minion of the Mighty section of the post.
TL;DR: Matchmaking is "rigged" and will pair some types of decks against eachother all of the time, if you are sick of always seeing the same decks, play other ones, as your deck is being paired against a specific pool of decks. [[Sheoldred, the apocalypse]] [[orchish bowmasters]] and [[The One ring]] decks get paired against eachother all of the time, more than any other pairing I've seen.
If your random jank loses against a type of deck all of the time, maybe it doesn't mean your deck is bad, it just gets paired against a deck, again and again, that you cannot beat.
One of my favourite decks to play back in the day was Standard RTR gates, and with the introduction of [[Primeval Titan]] onto Arena I could play a version of [[Maze's End]] that was fun, but that deck gets paired a ton against [[Minion of the Mighty]] which is a deck you have no answers for and instantly lose on turn 2. Those matches arent fun, but they last 10 seconds, so you can jump into a real game of MTG real fast.
You are in the play queue, if you see a deck that you hate, just concede and search for another game, it's way better than getting frustrated.
Hope you have an awesome day!
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