Journey hardly changed the current meta-game at all (although Mana Confluence did allow people to squash cards that were already good in their respective decks into one deck). We still have two more sets to go before we see a fresh meta. Will Red Aggro still be viable at that point? The answer is purely speculation. MTG Salvation welcomes speculation, and I'm sure you would have a more enjoyable back and forth in that setting. I also recommend TappedOut for getting feedback on a particular deck.

Pointing you to all of these other places is my way of helping you before I vote to close your question as Primarily opinion-based.

@GendoIkari Well, I disagree. I believe he was asking if certain sets favor specific archetypes so that he could use that information to determine how viable his Red Aggro deck will be in the future. I also disagree that the question as you read it is objectively answerable. Mark Rosewater may tell you that Theros was designed to push a Two-Color Midrange archetype, but you might argue that it favored Red Deck Wins, and I may argue that it really strengthened Control.

@Gendolkari That said, if someone finds a credible article with convincing statistics that says that the first expansion of every block has favored a specific archetype X% of the time, then I concede my point.

@Rusher If you haven't already, I would encourage you to read Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Beyond that, the OP definitely asked a question with both a general form and a specific example form, and is probably in the best position to clarify his intent, rather than letting us second-guess.

@Jefromi The Board and Card Game community is plagued by users who have sorely misinterpreted the contents of that article and now apply it in such a way that nearly any question can be salvaged. This question simply begs for confirmation bias. Answers will be looking to confirm the patterns that they think they see. I don't think that the question adds value to the site because it almost certainly will not be useful in making predictions or even determining where the Journey into Nyx meta-game will be two weeks from now.

@Rusher I am not trying to make a definitive statement about this question. I am trying to (1) stop people from saying that questions are off-topic purely because they're subjective (the community here is plagued by people who do that), and (2) stop people from putting words in the OP's mouth.

@Jefromi I didn't vote to close the question because it was off-topic. I voted to close because the question it is primarily opinion-based. There is already one answer claiming that Red Deck Wins is nearly always "efficient". I might disagree. Red aggro decks are notoriously cheap to build and carry the illusion of being easy to pilot, and so they sneak into competitive play whether they are viable or not. The point is that I might disagree with the diagnosis of that answer and could provide my own dissenting answer, but it's all just noise.

@Rusher I don't know what you're trying to convince me of, again, I'm not trying to say that much about this specific question. Re-read my last comment, and find me in chat or on meta if you want to discuss something.

@Jefromi Your last two comments were both directed toward me. I neither voted as off-topic nor did I put words in the OPs mouth. If you had not started your comment with @Rusher, I might not have responded at all.

It was not my intent to convince you of anything. You are welcome to disagree about the quality of the question. I was merely protecting my own point of view.

@Jefromi I can also imagine that you didn't intend to accuse me of either of those two things. I'll just say that the comment had my name on the front and nobody else had voted to close as off-topic, and I can't imagine who else you were talking about. If you were just trying to be proactive, then I don't really understand your attitude of "I need to stop anyone who might vote in a way that I disagree with before it even happens."

In other words, you were talking about me, talking about someone else that doesn't exist, or you were just making sure that nobody casts a vote for reasons you disagree with.

Please ping me with @Rusher if you respond.

@Rusher You said "I believe he was asking if..." - and this is what I was responding to. There was back and forth in the comments arguing about what the OP meant as a preface for further discussion, and I was trying to say, let's just let the OP say.

@Rusher When you replied to my comments, you kept saying things about the merits of the specific question, and I was trying the entire time to stay completely out of that, and just try to keep the discussion to productive things.

@Rusher None of this was really about voting, vote how you like.

I mentioned Good Subjective, Bad Subjective because you seemed to have the idea that any question that's not objectively answerable is primarily opinion-based, and therefore you should vote to close - and I wanted to make sure you were aware that's not generally the consensus on StackExchange.

But as long as you know that, you can draw the line where you want, vote how you want.

Beyond that, I couldn't care less whether red aggro is viable in four months. I'm not really interested in the specifics of the discussion (especially not in comments instead of meta).

Also, I just noticed that you responded in main chat - apologies, if there was a notification for that I missed it.

@Jefromi Actually, in that same comment, I addressed both interpretations of the OP's question. I don't need clarification from the OP, because there is no foreseeable interpretation of the question that would temper my point. My argument is not going to change drastically due to a clarification, because it doesn't really matter if the OP intends to use the information he gets to make future predictions.

@Jefromi Addressing the merits of the question that we were commenting in does seem more productive to me than questioning the validity of my (or someone else's? or someone who is yet to come?) voting habits on subjective questions as whole.

@Rusher I was merely trying to steer the discussion (and people's decisions) away from the over-simplified "it's subjective and therefore should be closed" to "if it's too subjective, it should be closed".

@Jefromi None of this was about voting? I explain why I close voted, and you respond with an article about good subjective and suggested that I read it. Was that completely unrelated and, if so, what made you bring it up?

I know you gave a pretty complete response, and that's great; I was really just trying to say let's not keep arguing about what the OP meant, because that's kind of the direction a lot of the existing discussion had gone.

I'm not saying it's totally unrelated, I'm saying that your explanation suggested that things were more black and white than they really are.

So in case you hadn't seen it, and since in general board games is more anti-subjective than other sites I've been active on, I wanted to point it out.

If it was an unnecessary pointer, sorry.

But it was about the general idea of closing questions because there is no objective answer. I didn't say this question was necessarily Good Subjective. I just wanted the thought to be Good Subjective vs Bad Subjective, not Objective vs Subjective.

@Jefromi I didn't claim that my interpretation was black and Gendolkari's was white. I acknowledged that my interpretation of the question may not be the interpretation. I completely discounted the one answer provided by saying that I could disagree with it. Everything in the question and the answer is the opposite of black and white.

You seem to be indicating that you didn't necessarily see a need to step in and make a point, and yet you stepped in anyway. You do not need to proactively remind every user that votes to close as Primarily Opinion-Based that you read an article on Good Subjective vs Bad Subjective. Instead, you should let the vote take its course. All you are doing is undermining the vote, the same way that you undermined my last close vote by accusing me of vote abuse.

I was responding to what I saw in the discussion, not the voting. As far as I could tell, there were some points about "not objective -> bad" and I responded to that.

I didn't say "you should change your vote" I just said "hey you should check this out".

I agree that everyone can make their own decision, but at the same time, we don't all have to stay silent in the comments about things, we have discussion about questions. Discussing (including responding to others) isn't the same as interfering or undermining voting.

It's similar to discussion in comments on an answer "-1, I disagree with X", "well, +1, I think X is fine because Y".

It sounds like maybe I also misunderstood some of what you said, so I apologize for linking you to things you already knew about. I think you've also misunderstood some of what I said, but it's fine, doesn't seem like there was any harm done besides some annoyance.

Subjective may not be bad, but I specifically pointed to the amount of pure speculation that this question was likely to generate.

Well, again, sorry if I misunderstood how black and white you were trying to make the decision.

I even tried to help the OP out by considering the case that maybe he wanted to use this information to make future predictions.

What I don't understand is why you didn't elect to find any interpretation where the question would add value to the site.

I really, really was trying not to make a judgment

(which is funny, because you ended up interpreting it as a really strong judgment)

Wow you really are not listening

Let me walk you through this from my perspective ok?

@Rusher so, that's how I feel too, so let's try to calm down please?

I think it's great that you tried to help the OP.

Let's start with this comment - @Rusher I am not trying to make a definitive statement about this question. I am trying to (1) stop people from saying that questions are off-topic purely because they're subjective (the community here is plagued by people who do that), and (2) stop people from putting words in the OP's mouth.

Who was number 1 addressed to?

Baby steps please, or we'll be right back where we started.

(1) You and others (hence @you), because I felt your comment suggested questions should be judged that way. This wasn't your intention, so I'm sorry about that; still I think it's good for others to see even if you didn't need it.

(2) you and others, because you (and someone else) had disagreed about OP intent, so I was just trying to say, okay, we have our guesses, maybe let the OP say now.

Don't take the @ too too literally, it doesn't always mean "everything in here is for your eyes only", it's just kind of "hey here's a reply".

I understand that. The sentence even said "people" so I understood that it may not be directed towards me. But who is it directed to? If the answer is "potential future viewers", then you obviously feel a need to warn them of something. What are you warning them about?

Okay this is super confusing, in what I just said I was talking about my original intent in saying those things.

In the context of this specific comment, I was already replying to your reply to me, so it was all directed at you of course...

But no part of that comment has anything to do with me.

Which comment?

@Rusher I am not trying to make a definitive statement about this question. I am trying to (1) stop people from saying that questions are off-topic purely because they're subjective (the community here is plagued by people who do that), and (2) stop people from putting words in the OP's mouth.

The first sentence appears to say that you didn't have a point to make.

The second looks like you are proactively stopping users from voting in a manner that nobody has even voted (unless you believe I voted that way, but you said you don't).

Okay, so this comment has to do with you because in the comment just before it you said (@me) that boardgames has huge problems with subjectivity etc etc (so I said (1) to clarify my intent), and (2) was just again to clarify my intent on the other part (because it sounded like it'd been misunderstood)...

...and the part before (1) and (2) was because you responded to me with a lot of stuff about the specific question, which didn't seem to have anything to do with what I'd said in my previous comment, and I was trying not to cause even mroe debate about that.

Which part of your previous comment did I misunderstand?

So no, the first sentence doesn't say "I have no point", just "my point was restricted to these things, not trying to say I think that metagame/red aggro questions are universally good/bad"

@Rusher Is this really worth it? I feel like we maybe understand each other's viewpoints about the issues here, and we're just trying to backtrack and understand the exact meaning of every comment.

I would settle for this - you agree to stop undermining my votes and then pretending like you actually had no issue with it to begin with, (but you just felt like your accusatory comment would be useful to potential voters who might vote my way)

If you have a disagreement, you post it.

If you have a problem with my voting habits, take it to meta.

So I'm not trying to undermine votes, and especially in this case, I never even said I disagreed, just tried to frame the discussion.

My initial comment was not intended to be accusatory - in fact I tried to make it as neutral as possible.

You may not be trying to undermine votes, but you are.

Is disagreeing with someone undermining?

I didn't even disagree.

You disagree with the way I voted?

Oh you took that back fast

I didn't take it back, I'm trying to ask something. Let me ask more slowly

Let me put it this way. I called a vote, and you decided it would be a good time to educate the public on good voting habits.

I think even disagreement in comments is fine - it happens all the time - and what I said wasn't even disagreement, it was just pointing to a resource (and trying to let the OP speak).

Like I just said. If you have a disagreement, you post it.

Okay, so it really sounds like the issue here is that your reading of my comment totally doesn't match my intent.

What was the intent of your comment?

And you can stop bringing up the "let the OP speak". I addressed that multiple times now.

The objective/subjective part was primarily in response to "... I also disagree that the question as you read it is objectively answerable. ..." just trying to make sure that we weren't saying "it's not objectively answerable so it's off topic".

and things then went incredibly rapidly downhill from there

Oh, and we reach the crux of the problem!

It sounds like I just misunderstood, and didn't need to link you to it, but even with the misunderstanding I don't think that what I said undermined your points at all - the fact that someone replies to you doesn't mean that they're saying "I disagree and this article says so and everyone should vote opposite you" it just means "hey check out this article"

Gendolkari said the question was objectively answerable, and therefore alright.

I disagreed with Gendolkari that the question was objectively answerable, but did not feel the need to repeat my entire first comment. Should I have repeated the actual reason I voted to close?

And you were just responding to that, okay. I thought I picked up hints in the rest of the comment that you were making the objective/subjective black and white distinction as well, but I guess not.

(rest of comment and others,sorry, really hard to keep track of where everything was said at this point)

If you like, I can repeat every point I make each and every time I disagree with someone in order to avoid backtracking like this again.

No, of course, there is no need - but I guess the same statement from my point of view is that when I post a reply to someone, I shouldn't need to add on that they can of course vote how they like and I'm not trying to undermine them.

I guess the initial misunderstanding was mine, so I'm sorry about that.

So again I will propose my solution to this problem. The next time I start a close vote and then state my reason for doing so, you 1) disagree with all or part of it, 2) agree with all or part of it, or 3) stay out of it.

I thought I was doing (1).

Well, no, not disagreeing, but responding to.

.............

Seriously! I thought it was of the form "...X..." "about X, keep in mind Y"

Well, I give up now. We'll have this discussion again the next time my vote gets challenged without actually being challenged.

I certainly will take the utmost care in replying to you in the future, because I know if I get it wrong, this will happen.

I don't think generally people saw what I did as challenging your vote.

Could be wrong, of course, but...

There goes the OP. His question was "Do different sets favor different archetypes."

I don't think that I need an absolute rule about how I'm allowed to respond to you any more than you need one for me, though.

If you do not state disagreement and yet you feel compelled to respond with material from meta that could only point in the opposite direction of how I just voted, then do not comment a second time with "I don't understand what you are trying to say, because I wasn't trying to say anything."

Surely you knew why I responded to you with more material that strengthened my own view point.

Starting with "I don't understand what your point is." is another great way to undermine someone without actually disagreeing.

You may not see it as undermining behavior.

Your response made sense mostly in the context I thought I'd posted my comment in. I'm sorry about all the misunderstanding, but seriously, there was no ill will or malicious intent, I was genuinely trying to respond specifically to things you've said, which is what everyone (you included) do in comments.

But the fact is, the less people understand me, the less I am understood.

And if nobody understands my point, I will work to correct that.

"I don't know what you're trying to convince me of" isn't a great way to undermine, it's me fairly literally saying, I'm not sure why your'e responding the way you are now.

By that point I think things pretty obviously had nothing to do with any real or perceived issue about voting criteria.

Well, I proposed a method of avoiding this situation a third time, but you don't seem interested. So again, if you decide to "not technically challenge, but provide pointless material that could only serve to reduce the validity of" the next vote I call, we'll again have this discussion.

I agree to your method: I will only respond to you when I want to respond to all or part of what you said.

That is what I attempted to do here. There was a misunderstanding. That doesn't mean that I was behaving badly, nor that you need to dictate my future behavior.

@Rusher If that's what it takes to get along with you, though, then sure: I'll only respond to you if I disagree. If I want clarification, or want to say "maybe yes maybe no, what about this?", I won't reply. I don't want these discussions any more than you do.