iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

So next time you read "nobody's playing it and it's busted, how come?", in limited or in constructed: it's probably busted because nobody's playing it. The moment people start, that stops being true. 14/14

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Biologists call this negative frequency-dependent selection: a variant's fitness drops as it becomes more common. This keeps rare traits exactly that - rare. Becoming popular is what breaks it, so naturally they revert back to being rare after successful period. 13/14

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Niche limited decks work the same way. Dovin's Acuity decks in RNA were great while unknown and close to undraftable once the secret was out: key cards stopped wheeling, cards that used to come for free got contested, and sure-thing drafts turned into trainwrecks. 12/14

Biology knows this strategy. Some traits succeed only while rare. Example: New Zealand mud snails. Parasites evolve to infect whichever snail clone is most common, so common clones crash and rare ones rise, with a lag. Being common is what makes you a target. 11/14

Our example BR is the best deck in a vacuum. But they understand, we're not in a vacuum. Their drafting becomes almost constructed-like: prepare a detailed plan and a skeleton for an underdrafted strategy, then draft it through the holes in the metagame, unopposed. 10/14

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This happens often but rarely gets communicated: the early data volume drowns the signal, and the narrative has already formed. Shrewd players know this and learned how to exploit this persistent gap format after format. 9/14

That opens space for other strategies, not necessarily the ones with the most raw power: - we've had time to find the right cards for them - we know they're open - we know the weak spots of the power decks - the power decks now face competition in the draft 8/14

The reality is more complex. Around week 2 the metagame stabilises, and only then can you game it. But by then the narrative exists, and the top pairs from weeks 1-2 dominate the narrative. They are also drafted far more than on day 1. 7/14

The first week produces the most data: most games are played and logged on 17Lands then. It's a useful dataset, but I think it carries too much weight in the community, given its quality. If week 1 says BR is best, the post-mortem will likely read: "It was a BR format." 6/14

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Early on we're all in the dark. We don't know how to build decks or what the terms of engagement are. This stage runs mostly on raw card power, general skill, and how well players carry lessons from previous formats into the new one. 5/14

Three ideas of evolutionary biology carry over to draft: selection, timing, opportunity. A draft format works like an ecosystem: the set defines what's possible, but so do pick orders and players' understanding of how to build decks. That's why formats evolve over time. 4/14

Our genomes record this. Immune gene variants (e.g. ERAP2) were favoured during the Black Death: if your village was dying, carrying one was a large advantage. Today some are linked to autoimmune disease, but the costs are small enough for them to prevail in populations. 3/14

Evolution runs on diversity. Life keeps generating variants, and natural selection favours the ones that fit current conditions. Those spread. The rest don't vanish: they persist at low frequency at the margins, and when conditions change, their time can come. 2/14

Sierkovitz @sierkovitz.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Today: evolutionary biology, ecology and draft metagames. A new format is upon us, so some thoughts on how to read an emerging limited metagame, and maybe metagames in general. Magic will appear, but first some biology, you can survive it - you are fit. 🧵 1/14

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Springbok is helping a community that organises old drafts online. XMage Draft Historical Society even has software to help playing the games. Miss drafting Tempest? Never tried Conflux? Check them out here: discord.gg/tpdSfgdAMc 3/4

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Join the XMage Draft Historical Society Discord Server!

A welcoming community for Limited Magic players of all skill levels to experience each set released throughout the history of the game! | 2099 members

Sierkovitz @sierkovitz.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The Rosemary Tea is one of the most interesting drafters on the market, with great gameplay and incredible intellectual capacity to make any deck durdly. Did I mention a great eclectic taste in music? www.twitch.tv/therosemarytea 2/4

twitch.tv

therosemarytea - Twitch

The Patron Saint of MTG Mediocrity. She/her. Buy my spooky beats here https://sweetpermadeath.bandcamp.com/ — therosemarytea streams live on Twitch! Check out their videos, sign up to chat, and join t...

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Sierkovitz @sierkovitz.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

New Magic Numbers are up on YT. Our eccentric, deck-centric set review looks at how my esteemed guest (see below for how to find them) would build decks for all 10 supported archetypes. Through that we learn about the set, synergies, removal data, etc. youtu.be/N99E4pfp0_w 1/4

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Sierkovitz @sierkovitz.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Join me, Rosemary Tea and Springbok7 live now for our traditional Skeleton Crew. We will be looking at Reality Fracture draft deck skeletons in out eccentric, deck-centric set review. twitch.tv/sierkovitz

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Sierkovitz @sierkovitz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My group coaching set review was a great experience - we spent hours talking about the FRA and evaluation strategies. So time to try it again - this time the aim of the session will be evaluation of early FRA data and learning on what to do and don't with early 17Lands data. 1/2

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I saw potential for every pair to be ok. Got really slapped around by a BUG deck, making me think a well built UG or BG can be good. Played a pretty bad UB and still is seemed competitive. There were 2 WG trophies in my Discord - format looks deep.

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Anyway - in my adventures I managed to get a trophy with a simple, but effective Gruul deck. Kioras did a lot of work here. And removal was premier. As were the opponents so it was a hard fought one. Luckily dragons prevailed in most of them. 4/4

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this measure will go down but I am also pretty sure it won't go down by that much, so potentially we are dealing with a much slower format than anything in recent years. But it's not KTK "I ran out of stuff" slow. It's "we both do stuff but snowball advantage is hard" slow. 3/

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I know, Early Access is different, one can't concede, strong players. Sample size is small. But we are talking about average 12 turns here. 11.8 to be specific - in comparison, Khans of Tarkir had 9.8 and was considered glacially slow. I assume looking at larger sample... 2/

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Sierkovitz @sierkovitz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thanks to WotC I had the pleasure to participate at least a bit in the Early Access event and boy, do I regret I didn't have more time. Set played phenomenally. Wins, losses all felt fun. And it's a format like we didn't have in years: here's game duration from 3 drafts: 1/4

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That is definitely not true as math is for blockers.

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But let's leave that for other time - before this thread goes out of control. Hopefully it was a bit of a food for thought for you and changed your way of thinking about the game dynamics! 15/15

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And once you do measure that you can link the size of that amplitude to the efficiency of life-gain strategies. In general I think there is a lot of life in this type of measures - how fast does a good aggro deck need to be, what are the life dynamics of midrange, etc. 14/

But after I started thinking - on our turn we mainly gain life, on opposing turn, mainly lose life, so it makes sense to see this shape. But that is a property we can use - the amplitude of those wobbles can be measured for specific life-gain archetypes. 13/

Lastly a funny discovery that may lead to something. Initially I looked at survival curves in half-turn intervals not full turn cycle. I noticed, the curve looks weird and thought there is an error - they go up and down all the time: 12/

Fewer games were ending by thin margins (winner at 1-5 life) in SOS as well - 10-11% for SOS and ~16% for MSH. Reasons can be many - lifegain color pair, control being successful, would be interesting to see some specific sets and speculate - e.g HOB and its lightning pace. 11/

Generally the breaking point is somewhere in 15 life area player on the play is much more likely to end up at 15 or more life. But there are also set-specific differences. For example SOS games have over 20% chance of ending >20 life, for MSH it was only ~14-15%. 10/

Lastly - how does winner's life total look like at the end of the game? For both sets there is a clear P/D effect. More games end with winner at 5 or less life: in MSH 19% of games on the draw end like this, only 13.5% on the play. Similar trends for 6-10 and 11-15 life. 9/

This is potentially set-specific, so I checked SOS too. But the curves look similar - the breaking point is slightly later at T8-9. Interestingly in both cases 17L users lose advantage earlier than their opponents. Still have to wrap my head around why would that be. 8/

Here's where it gets interesting. In longer games on the play advantage is small but persists until resistance is finally broken in a couple of turns. On the draw, losing player has, on average, life total advantage until T7-8, when they run out of steam and collapse. 7/

For the curve shapes - in games ending in 7 turns for winners on the play their life barely budges. 17L player ends their wins with 17.2 life on average. Opponents - with 16.7. On the draw it's less lopsided. Winners end on 14 life on average. But what about longer games? 6/

curve for opponent and vice versa. But that means that dynamics of the games are the same (minor differences) for 17L users and opponents, 17L users just manage to achieve it way more often. 5/

Otherwise, the sample sizes for each turn cycle would be uneven and potentially confusing. So here is a survival curve for MSH for games that lasted 7 turns. First thing that should strike you is similarity - those are pairs of basically identical graphs with flipped colors. 4/

Survival curves tracked life totals throughout the game. For better comparison I looked at 4 cases; in all combinations of Play/Draw and W/L. I also only compared like with like - so only games that lasted 7 turns, only lated 8 turns, ... only 12 turns. 3/

First the data. I looked at concluded games - so those where a final life total of 0 or less was recorded. That means I trimmed concessions, I lose some volume but gain a consistent dataset I can reliably compare. It's sometimes a call based on preference. 2/