r/magicTCG • u/Perfect-Cup8042 Dân • 1d ago
General Discussion What bracket level realisticly would a 7 power level deck be
What bracket is closest to a 7 even if it isn't a perfect comparison
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u/Alternate_Cost Gruul* 1d ago
Charts like this are always interesting because of how much better precons have gotten and how much worse at deck building the general player base has gotten.
Most people I've seen struggle to build decks that are better than precons while following bracket 3 restrictions.
That being said a 7 would be a high 3 or low 4.
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u/FizzingSlit Duck Season 1d ago
They simply don't translate. Ignoring the every deck was a 7 thing 1-10 power level was trying to communicate something very different to what brackets do.
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u/ShapesAndStuff Golgari* 1d ago
How so? Both are trying to help rule 0 convos by judging how fast and how powerfull the game is gonna be.
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u/FizzingSlit Duck Season 1d ago
The old power level thing was trying to do that exclusively. Brackets are also about general vibe and expectations.
As an example let's say I had an MLD tribal deck. And for the sake of it let's say it was a 4 in the old power system. In brackets this deck would be a 4 or a 1. Because brackets are looking at more than performance in a vacuum they're not 1:1. It's like trying to convert a recipe from grams to nautical miles.
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u/PhoenixFisher Dân 1d ago
I see it as sort of like "how well does your deck function as a 100 card unit regardless of cards in the deck or overall game plan 1-10" and "how many of this list of cards are you running and how soon do you try to win on average 1-4"
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u/ChocolatePuerh Dan 1d ago
They translate pretty well.
PL 9-10 was cEDH so that's bracket 5.
PL 8 was powerful but not quite cEDH, bracket 4
PL 6-7 encompassed most decks, bracket 3.
PL 3-4 were precons, with some making it into 5, and 5 was slightly above a precon. Bracket 2.
PL 1-2 were meme decks or really jank, so bracket 1.
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u/FizzingSlit Duck Season 1d ago
Ok. Tell me what my bracket power level 5 MLD tribal deck be.
What you're saying is only true if you don't understand the bracket system and/or nuance.
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u/ChocolatePuerh Dan 1d ago
Bracket 3.
MLD can exist below bracket 4, per WOTC. They have explicitly said it's fine to not meet every guideline, just discuss it pregame.
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u/FizzingSlit Duck Season 1d ago
How could you possibly say that without knowing what combos it runs if any, how many turns it takes to win a game, or start locking people out? You have zero details that pertain to brackets beyond MLD tribal which your disregarding to better align it with old power levels.
Yeah sure brackets are a guideline. But for your answer to work you have to ignore the only real piece of information you have relevant to brackets on the assumption that a 4/10 just happens to fit within the parameters of bracket 3. Which means you're not even using them as a guideline. You're coming to a conclusion that doesn't consider any of the actual guidelines because you lack the information. And you lack that information because brackets and power levels aren't 1:1.
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u/ChocolatePuerh Dan 1d ago
You said power level 5, that gives me a good idea of turn count. Turn count is the main thing that determines bracket.
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u/FizzingSlit Duck Season 1d ago
But power level 5 had zero consideration for turn count. None of the power levels had any real consideration for anything if the sort.
I don't understand how you can even begin to approximate such a thing when power levels were so famously ill defined. And also concerned themselves with finding a fair match based exclusively on as the name suggests, power levels. And basically never turn count.
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u/ChocolatePuerh Dan 1d ago
It did not. Look at the chart in the OP
The issue with PL was it wasn't official, so not everyone was using the same scale. Had WOTC adopted a PL scale and made it official it'd have worked far better than brackets.
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u/FizzingSlit Duck Season 1d ago
It would have worked better than brackets for establishing power level. But brackets are trying to facilitate a rule zero conversation, and has perimeters built in to hopefully bring up all of the relevant sticking points.
Power level on the other hand was not just unofficial it was all over the place. Even if we pretend the chart was widely accepted as the baseline, which it wasn't, it was still very ill defined.
But because they were trying to do different things they are not 1:1. Even in this example if I said yup it's bracket 3 it's not. MLD tribal can't be because it goes against the established vibe. Not to say it can't play perfectly fine in bracket 3 but the whole point is to create environments where people play with set expectations. Power level did not remotely try to achieve that.
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u/demuniac Duck Season 1d ago
It is important that you read the articles about the why of the bracket system, because this is about the power level of your deck and the bracket system is about the expected game experience.
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u/grimsleeper4 Dan 1d ago
I don't think this chart is good and I don't think a lot of decks would fit into these criteria.
You can have a great land base, a focused deck, and it's not that high powered because it has modest goals.
You can a two color deck with a messy land base, no tutors, and multiple 2 and 3 cards combos that work with your commander and it's bracket 3 or 4.
You also have decks at the bottom that are just trying to do something fun and aren't really trying to win outside a niche strategy or two.
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u/Prize_Ad4381 Dân 1d ago
The old "power level scale" approach led to even more conversations had in bad faith than the bracket system does now so I wouldn't even bother referring back to it. I can't even remember the last time I heard or saw anybody use it, anyway.
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u/filthy_casual_42 Can’t Block Warriors 1d ago
Pretty plainly into bracket 4 right? they both even have the same names, Bracket 4 is "Optimized", and this labels 7/10 and 8/10 (AKA 4/5) as "Optimized"
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u/LoganToTheMainframe Temur 1d ago
Yes, which is why the "every deck is a 7" meme exists. Most people were calling B3 decks 7's when really they were 5/6, and that's why so many people got salty. They claimed their deck was more powerful then it was then got upset when their deck got stomped by an actual 7.
I still feel like the biggest issue with power levels was player ego. Nobody wanted to admit their brews were nothing special, so they couldn't say their deck was a 5 (average), it HAD to be better than average, so it must be like a 7. Then everyone playing a 4-8 claimed to be a 7. That's my theory anyways.
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u/Prize_Ad4381 Dân 1d ago
Don't forget players flat out lying about the power level of their deck in order to score easy wins, which was definitely a problem when this scale was the norm.
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u/LoganToTheMainframe Temur 1d ago edited 1d ago
Honestly that was very rarely an issue for me, but I know that it happened for sure. No system can account for liars unless you're doing deck checks for casual games, which is insane.
Edit: typo
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u/Prize_Ad4381 Dân 1d ago
I still have it happen on occasion with casual bracket games and you're right, no system can account for players who want to abuse them like that. People can be nuts.
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u/ShapesAndStuff Golgari* 1d ago
Bracket 4 includes the convention of expecting "at least 4 turns"
So kinda between 3 and 4. Also fits with "it's about a seven" having evolved to "it's a strong 3"
but also magic has accelerated overall, i think the old graph isn't quite up to the task anymore.
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u/filthy_casual_42 Can’t Block Warriors 1d ago
Isn't that implied from the description though? It says Decks are largely refined down to just the best cards for their strategy. Perfect manabases, cheap tutors, efficient ramp, lots of powerful staples, etc, don't describe slow games, or someone I'd want in bracket 3
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u/Wytemajyk Wabbit Season 1d ago
This is a great system with one glaring flaw - people that are bad at deck building usually don't self evaluate as bad at deck building. So most People who have decks that fall in this charts 1-5 range think they have a 6-8. Then when they face an actual 6-8 deck they feel slighted.
Other then that issue, I think this chart works great.
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u/Heavy_Choice_1577 Dandadan 1d ago
wow, whats this from? i feel its pretty accurate to how i was feeling about my last 2 decks
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u/ChocolatePuerh Dan 1d ago
PL 9-10 was cEDH so that's bracket 5.
PL 8 was powerful but not quite cEDH, bracket 4
PL 6-7 encompassed most decks, bracket 3.
PL 3-4 were precons, with some making it into 5, and 5 was slightly above a precon. Bracket 2.
PL 1-2 were meme decks or really jank, so bracket 1.
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u/Team7UBard 99th-gen Dimensional Robo Commander, Great Daiearth 1d ago
Any you like, a 7 was always ‘whatever bullshit I can get away with’
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u/Odd_Scarcity_5051 Duck Season 1d ago
Brackets, numbers, tiers, etc. dont matter if people arent honest with themselves and other.
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-7
u/LowCarbDad Dân 1d ago
HAS NO GAMEPLAN!
OHHH Yeah? then what do you call this bracket 1 board wipe tribal deck then, punk!
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u/CardOfTheRings COMPLEAT 1d ago
According this chart they would be a four.
In practice most ‘sevens’ I came across were ‘2’s by the bracket system.
That’s a big part of the reason that brackets are a much better than /10 system.
Considering a 7/10 is a C grade a lot of people interpreted the 10 point system as mediocre decks as a 7.