iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I looked at some similar approaches a while back, but ended up on a different path as I was focusing on constructed which has a different set of problems due to how homogeneous the decks are within clusters.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Nice, love me some TF-IDF -> UMAP. There might be some settings you can tweak to get more of the micro structure to show, e.g. fewer nearest_neighbours (opposite of what you normally do for good UMAP clusters cos our macro scale is so clear here).

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

What are you using to build vectors and do the clustering? Every time I’ve tried something similar colours end up dominating any finer archetype distinction.

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Robert Taylor 🔥 @fireshoes.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

The Week That Was: Linabury Lands the Trophy and Heads to the World Championship #mtg #mtgStandard 🖋️ @chosler.bsky.social Featuring Simon Linabury, winner of the Regional Championship for Australia-New Zealand! www.magic.gg/news/the-wee...

magic.gg

The Week That Was: Linabury Lands the Trophy and Heads to the World Championship

Mono-Green Landfall is a common sight in the Standard metagame. But, as Simon Linabury proved, there's still room to innovate with known archetypes.

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Play Magic @playmagic.com · 15/03/2026

🎉Congratulations to Simon Linabury, the winner of the ANZ Super Series Final in Sydney, Australia!🎉 Simon defeated valiant runner-up Ryan Jonns Lewis in a Mono-Green Landfall mirror, and will represent the ANZ region at the next World Championship. GGWP Simon!

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Ended up 5-3, pretty happy with my play. My round one delirium opp had my number, had some focus issues round 5, and had a tight loss in the last round that was a land short of being a tight win. Congrats to my team mate for making top 8, probably the only way he wasn’t winning the limited tomorrow.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Currently 3-1 in the Aus RC after LCQing in yesterday on the same lessons 75 another team mate LCQd with. Matching swag courtesy of the crew at @mtg_bazaar, @AIEGames and @GatherersTavern.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Telling time is such a banger, name, effect, flavour text are all 10/10.

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Reposted by Rk9

Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

🧵 Announcing Ursa's Research Desk - a flexible dashboard for analysing MtG tournament results and deck performance brought to you by team @busstop-mtg.bsky.social and MtG Bazaar! arckaynine.github.io/Urzas-Research…

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

9/ The project also would not have been possible without the support of my friends and team mates (@busstop-mtg.bsky.social) and our sponsor, MtG Bazaar. I hope you enjoy your own exploration of the data, let me know if you find anything interesting!

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

8/ particularly the analysis done by @jkyu06.bsky.social and @ajlvi.bsky.social, the data work done by @sierkovitz.bsky.social and mtgds.bsky.social, and of course the inimitable @frankkarsten.bsky.social and @fireshoes.bsky.social

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

7/ This project has been built on the fantastic work of many people, including fbettega's work to continue the data collection efforts of Badaro (github.com/fbettega/MTG_decklistcac…), and has been inspired by the work of many others, ...

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

6/ Urza's Research Desk is built with #python, #panel the #holoviz ecosystem. It is deployed with pyodide and GitHub pages. You can see all of the code in the tcg-research-desk repository - and try it yourself by installing the library from pypi! github.com/ArcKayNine/tcg-research-…

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

5/ We can also see the matchup win rates for each archetype in the "Matchup Matrix" tab (hovering over each value will provide the 95% confidence interval for a matchup):

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

4/ An interesting split between builds of the archetype is that some PT teams cut metallic rebuke. With the "Card Performance Analysis" tab we interrogate how they did and see some indications that trimming them might be the way forward (error bars are 95% confidence intervals):

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

3/ Ursa's Research Desk can help you answer these questions and more! Start by selecting an Archetype to see what people are playing across all MTGO and Melee data - for example Affinity, which had a variety of builds show up at the Pro Tour last weekend:

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

2/ This project grew from wanting to answer some of the specific questions my team had leading up to the Pioneer RC last year - specifically how many Artist's Talent to play in Phoenix. After writing some python I wanted to provide a way for my team to explore the data themselves.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I almost certainly got my current job as a direct result of being able to sell the former as an asset of mine.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Reposting for other time zones. Might be interesting for folks like @lordoftheboard.bsky.social, @spacecatspod.bsky.social, and I know the @loadingreadyrun.com crew enjoy a game of root every now and then.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

I continue to be fascinated by @leder.games’s Root, and have written up an analysis of 9,000 games played by the Digital League community: compulsiveresearchmtg.blogspot.com/2025/08/back...

compulsiveresearchmtg.blogspot.com

Back to the Woodland: A Retrospective on the Marauders Era of Root

Welcome back fellow woodland warriors! It's been a while since my initial blog post trying to understand the complex faction interactions in...

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Reposted by Rk9

Team BusStop @busstop-mtg.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

🚨Even more Australian 7pt Highlander content alert 🚨 The team's resident combo enjoyer @brennancrawford.bsky.social sits down with Steven Hitchcock to talk about one of 7ph's premier combo decks: Lurrus Breach! www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCYx...

youtube.com

Australian 7 Point Highlander | Lurrus Breach | Deep Dive | Team Bus Stop

YouTube video by Team Bus Stop

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Lost my win and in for top 8 and the PT at the ANZ RC today, finishing 17th. Quite happy with how things played out, slickshot main was the right play. Congrats to @bentudman.bsky.social for making top 8, keen to watch him repping @busstop-mtg.bsky.social tomorrow!

MainDeck
5 Island
4 Opt
4 Stormchaser's Talent
4 Burst Lightning
4 Monstrous Rage
3 Into the Flood Maw
3 Mountain
1 Spell Pierce
4 Cori-Steel Cutter
4 Stock Up
4 Riverpyre Verge
4 Spirebluff Canal
4 Shivan Reef
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Slickshot Show-Off

Sideboard
1 Disdainful Stroke
2 Abrade
2 Torch the Tower
2 Ghost Vacuum
1 Witchstalker Frenzy
1 Into the Flood Maw
2 Drake Hatcher
2 Ral, Crackling Wit
1 Spell Pierce
1 Lithomantic Barrage

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Had a great time yesterday running the conclusion to my Ravnica DnD campaign, involving this over-engineered shadow puzzle that required a scavenger hunt across my bookshelves (mirroring in-universe bookshelves). Very proud of how it came together.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Despite playing magic all weekend and losing a bunch of modern matches, it took until the mystery booster sealed for me to actually lose to Thassa’s Oracle.

My friend with his Thassa’s Oracle/Doomsday combo in sealed.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

I believe in you! Could always go for a third screen if you’re getting impatient.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Pretty easy when you can’t see without glasses, just stare at the blur of your reflection and wait it out.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

I had wandered if GW being on top was because of outliers.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Ah, yep, that makes more sense. The takeaway then is not consistency on a set by set scale but that modern limited design sensibilities have only a slight bias towards certain pairs, but are consistent overall.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

It’s wild to me how temporally consistent these are from set to set. I’d expect a lot more shifting and outliers across the archetypes.

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Emrakul, the Promised End doesn’t count?

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Rk9 @arckaynine.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Well past time for my Annual*** Ravnica Rotisserie draft (RAV, GPT, DIS, RTR, GTC, DGM, GRN, RNA, now with MKM and RVR), but better late than never! We're off to an interesting start, with MKM and RVR additions shaking up the metagame. I'm in Seat 4 with an OK start for a Selesnya aggro/mid deck.

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Leland McInnes @lelandmcinnes.bsky.social · 03/11/2024

A recent new addition to umap-learn was the ability to have ParametricUMAP embeddings that can be smoothly updated with new incoming data -- creating new clusters as needed, and gently adjusting the rest of the embedding to make space for them. umap-learn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tr...

MNIST embeddings trained with the 2 class removed in UMAP and Parametric UMAP, with new data transformed in that includes the 2 class. The updating parametric UMAP successfully creates a new cluster, in comparison to the other methods which blur the 2s in amongst the other points.

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