Dominaria Power Check - by Color

[DelverMage]

So the premise is that Dominaria is geared to run strong mono colored decks.

I am interested in seeing which color best meets this premise.

I am also interested in which color YOU think is the strongest.

The poll will run for 3 days.  You can change your vote as often as you like, but the overall results of the poll will not be shown until the deadline.  (No stacking the result if you don't know what it is!!!) 

I have done an exercise where I have created 5 mono colored decks, each inspired by uncommon cards within each color.  I kept each deck in line with the general themes of each color as well, so as to see how well each color does it's thing against the others. 

After a double round robin, I made minor corrections to each deck, and ran a single round robin again to get my results.

I will share those results, when we get closer to the end of the poll.

Looking forward to your votes!!

[Mnemosyne]

Personally, I think that Black is probably the best mono colour in this set. You have so many cards that benefit from black-ramp. Josu Vess, Lich Knight and Dread Shade for example. The 3 mana Dread Shade for a 3/3 with (B): +1/+1 - for each swamp tapped to pay for it, which works great with Cabal Stronghold. Josu Vess, well a 4 mana 4/5 with menace on its own is great! The Kicker just makes it a win condition!

You have great removal, Fungal Infection and Cast Down, a two-mana instant that just removes every non-legendary creature. Combined with Settle the Score, Eviscerate and Phyrexian Scriptures, which are 4 mana max removal spells. At the top-end of the mana curve, you have Yawgmoth's Vile Offering, which works well with the numerous legendary creatures in black and the Eldest Reborn which forces you to sacrifice a creature, rather than targeted removal.

Card draw? Why yes, yes we have. Usually a blue staple, you have Dark Bargain, and whilst not true card draw you have Final Parting that lets you look for that win con in your deck.

Sorry Delver-mage, I reworded your voting subject, just to make it easier to read. 

I thank you for creating these topics, they are great for involving the community.

[DelverMage]

So with a small sampling of voting, it appears White edged out Black, and Green got a single vote.

Hmm.  I was hoping for at least a few more votes, considering how many folks viewed the thread.

Oh well.  I promised to give some details on my little exercise.

Based on my exercise, the base power level for each color, based on round robin testing using mono colored decks that represented standard color based strengths.

1. White
2. Green
3. Red
4. Black
5. Blue

Blue did not get a very fair shake, as it could not be played correctly by the AI/robot.  That being said, the deck could win against any of the other colors as long as its control factors could contain the other deck.  The problem with this, as is always the problem with Blue control decks, is that if they can out race Blue's ability to control the game, then the Blue deck loses. 

Green, Red, and Black all worked very well, and were quite consistent.  Black ended up behind the other two because both Red and Green, curved a bit faster to finish off the Black deck before Black could just overwhelm the battlefield.

Red could beat Green fairly consistently, unless the Green ramp got themselves a bit ahead.  Green can go wide or can go over for the win, in Dominaria, and if the Red deck lets Green get a little too wide, or let the game go a little to long, Green stomps Red.

White has enough strong removal, and strong individual creatures that with a little bit of enhancement and well timed removal, could handle ANY of the other decks and quite consistently.

White barely squeaked out the top spot in this round of testing.  Green would have taken the top spot, but it lost one more game than White, to the Red deck.

This is NOT a scientific study.  Just a fun exercise on my part, to get a general idea on how the colors flow in the new set.  I think the most expensive deck I built was like $20. 

It was fun, and educational. 

[Mnemosyne]

Out of interest, Delvermage. What kind of methodology/techniques did you use to analyse the individual colours?

[Soren841]

Mono red is probably the strongest, but it does the support colors a big disservice by only checking mono colored

[DelverMage]

Out of interest, Delvermage. What kind of methodology/techniques did you use to analyse the individual colours?

With every new set, I build a series  of decks to try out the core themes.  My goal is to see how new abilities work, core creature mixes and play with some of the more obvious synergies within the new set.  Ixalan, of course, I built a Pirate, Dino, Vamp, and Merfolk deck and played them Round Robin as well.  As I had read somewhere that mono colors were a focus within Dominaria, I went with that idea.  I will often avoid big ticket cards as a part of this experiment.  So no Goblin Chainwhirlers, or Mox Amber, or Tefeiri cards here.

I chose an uncommon card from each color, or a saga, and ran with that for each color.
Time of Ice for Blue
Spore Swarm for Green
Goblin Barrage for Red
Whisper, Blood Liturgist for Black
Triumph of Gerrard for White

I spent about 10 or 15 minutes each to build the decks.  Often the decks are 4x9 with basic lands and a set of the special cycle lands, if they have them.
I use XMage, and play on a local server using the AI as the opponent.  Although I know that the AI does not get many nuances of a card or a deck, if it makes decisions that flat out cause it to lose when it should have won, I will concede the game.  I expect that with any given deck, I should beat the AI two out of three.  When the AI can play a deck and I struggle to win that often would be because the core design, flow, and synergy of that deck has something to it....  The AI could not play the Blue deck really at all.  It struggled with the trickier parts of the White deck.  It played Red, Green, and Black just fine.

So again, not too scientific, but the activity certainly lets me see how cards work, and ideas work, and it allows me to perform much better deck tuning than goldfish testing does.

BTW, I just made all 5 decks public on my main deck page.  They are all titled "Speed (Color) DOM", just in case you are curious.

[CardAgain Sweater]

Out of interest, Delvermage. What kind of methodology/techniques did you use to analyse the individual colours?

With every new set, I build a set of decks to try out the core set.  My goal is to see how new abilities work, core creature mixes and play with some of the more obvious synergies within the new set.  Ixalan, of course, I built a Pirate, Dino, Vamp, and Merfolk deck and played them Round Robin as well.  As I had read somewhere that mono colors were a focus within Dominaria, I went with that idea.  I will often avoid big ticket cards as a part of this experiment.  So no Goblin Chainwhirlers, or Mox Amber, or Tefeiri cards here.

I chose an uncommon card from each color, or a saga, and ran with that for each color.
Time of Ice for Blue
Spore Swarm for Green
Goblin Barrage for Red
Whisper, Blood Liturgist for Black
Triumph of Gerrard for White

I spent about 10 or 15 minutes each to build the decks.  Often the decks are 4x9 with basic lands and a set of the special cycle lands, if they have them.
I use XMage, and play on a local server using the AI as the opponent.  Although I know that the AI does not get many nuances of a card or a deck, if it makes decisions that flat out cause it to lose when it should have won, I will concede the game.  I expect that with any given deck, I should beat the AI two out of three.  When the AI can play a deck and I struggle to win that often would be because the core design, flow, and synergy of that deck has something to it....  The AI could not play the Blue deck really at all.  It struggled with the trickier parts of the White deck.  It played Red, Green, and Black just fine.

So again, not too scientific, but the activity certainly lets me see how cards work, and ideas work, and it allows me to perform much better deck tuning than goldfish testing does.

BTW, I just made all 5 decks public on my main deck page.  They are all titled "Speed (Color) DOM", just in case you are curious.

Off topic from the point of this thread - allow me to apologize - but I'd love to read a thread about how to use sites like xmage. The care and thought you put into the posts you make - that I've read - make me think I'd enjoy a breakdown of options like xmage, how it works,  what you need to do to participate on that platform, tips, etc; if you were willing, of course.

Sounds like you can't program the AI; in your experience, is it overly easy to crack the AI and anticipate it's choices? I'd think that would skew things.

Thanks for throwing out free info to all of us, that's pretty cool of you.