Hello and welcome back! In today’s article, I will make good on my Vintage New Year’s resolution: to follow European Vintage more closely. Today’s article will focus on the results from the January Catalonia Vintage League (LCV) tournament and what these results likely mean for Vintage players around the world!

First, I would like to thank Guillem (PeAcH from TMD) for all of his work and for helping me get started with the LCV.

Catalonia has long been a hot spot for Eternal activity, which is reflected in the high attendance and popularity of the monthly LCV tournament series.

For the first time, this year I chose to track and include European tournament results in my SCG Vintage Year in Review series. Though admittedly incomplete, the experience was ultimately one from which I was able to learn a lot. The insight I was able to gain about the Vintage metagame and how it worked by mapping the trajectory of the format with American and European tournament results side by side was amazing.

I had always envisioned the European and American metagames as being fairly separate entities that ran along their own unique set of tracks.

For instance, if I am an American player, there is no reason that I would specifically construct my deck in such a way as to be most effective against the LCV metagame. If I was planning on playing in a NYSE tournament, I would build my deck against my anticipated local metagame.

An example of this is that when Aven Mindcensor became widely popular last year and saturated one European Top 8, the American metagame didn’t respond by suddenly becoming hateful toward Aven Mindcensor or by playing Aven Mindcensor. I even wrote about the Mindcensor thing in an SCG article, so it isn’t like people didn’t know about it.

The fact that Aven Mindcensor was a pretty big thing for a while across the pond but didn’t make a blip over here in the States suggested to me exclusivity. Each metagame is comprised of players, and because these players know each other they will build their decks with specific people in mind. An example of this is when I was playing on the SCG Power 9 Vintage circuit back in the day when the tournament series traveled all over the central and eastern United States (Boston, Chicago, Charlotte, and a bunch of places in between).

Both geography and specific people played a big part in deck selection and construction. Geography was important because one knew that certain types of decks were popular in different regions. When one went to Chicago, they never wanted to forget their Rack and Ruins because Midwesterners loved their Workshops, just as to this very day the Northeasterners are known for their love of blue decks.

Geography wasn’t the only thing that was important. Specific players and especially teams also played a large part in deck selection and construction. Before I joined Meandeck, my friends and I tried to figure out what the Meandeck guys were likely to be playing so that we could be sure to beat them. If one could figure out what an entire team of good players were all on, then one had probably figured out a well-positioned deck to play (if a team of people good players all concluded it was good, it probably was). Or you could just be prepared to beat what the good players were playing.

Are these elements still relevant? I know for a fact that players still matter to other players. It matters at all levels of Magic; the same thought I used to figure out what Steve, Rich, Tommy, and Kowal’s teams would be playing back in the day still goes on at all levels of Magic, including Constructed Grand Prix and Pro Tours. The day before an event, the most hotly discussed topic of conversation is speculation about what the well-known teams are playing.

The people are important and still play a role in how players think about deck selection and construction. However, the thing I have begun to question is how much geography really matters in Magic.

I’m not really trying to answer a huge question like that right now, but what I am interested in discussing is how the European and American metagames are connected.

As I have already stated, I used to think of both as fairly separate and stable entities. We look at your lists for nifty pieces of technology and vice versa, but the metagames themselves move forward of their own accord. Sure, if the Europeans broke the format and invented “The God Deck” that beat everything, Americans would pick it up and play it and vice versa, cards would be restricted, and we’d both go back to living our separate lives.

I now believe that both metagames are much more connected (despite the fact that we rarely play together, if at all) than I did before. There are trends that overlap but don’t always occur at the same moment in time, while there are also some trends that catch on for a short while in one and then die out but never take off in the other.

“Everybody loves Forgemaster.”

One example that suggests a connection between metagames is the progression Kuldotha Forgemaster decks in both metagames.

Forgemaster is a card that would have gotten played in both metagames eventually even if there was no way to transmit information from one meta to the other. The card is simply too good not to eventually find its way into a deck somewhere by someone somehow. The amount of time that might have taken and what the progression might have looked like if there was absolutely no back and forth between all metagames is impossible to tell.

The fact of the matter is that with Kuldotha Forgemaster, it is very clear that there is a back and forth taking place between metagames. The best early Forgemaster innovations came from Europe, where the deck performed well. Those decks were taken and built upon in the United States, which bred the Martello deck, which in turn was transmitted back to Europe.

The evolution of decks that use Kuldotha Forgemaster and the way these decks have shaped the larger Vintage metagame is a phenomenon I view to be emblematic of how major and sustainable Vintage trends are synthesized from all metas.

Trends that tend to be separate should in the long term be proven to be fleeting.

The United States experienced a creature renaissance for the first third of the last year on a level of magnitude that wasn’t shared by the European meta. Ultimately, the metagame was not a three-way battle between Mishra’s Workshop, Blue Time Vault decks, and creature decks; it was only ever the first two decks, and the creature decks never stood a chance in the long term or in the big picture.

However, the battle between Time Vault and Mishra’s Workshop (which is the biggest and most important narrative taking place in Vintage) is absolutely central to both metagames.

A very basic summarization of my thoughts on this issue:

Important and lasting Vintage trends are made BETTER and pushed forward more quickly by synthesis that takes place between both metagames.

Short-lived and fleeting Vintage trends are pushed forward locally by individuals and may or may not be transmitted between metagames.

Catalonia Vintage League January 2013

The major trend I noticed while writing the 2012 Vintage Year in Review that I anxiously anticipate watching unfold in the first quarter of 2013 is the possible collapse of Mishra’s Workshop’s dominance to the new wave of best blue decks.

Let’s take a look at the metagame breakdown (posted by Roger Riera, longstanding official statistics keeper for the LCV series, at eternalcatala.com):

The most important thing about this chart right off the bat is how blue-heavy it is. There were a ton of blue decks in this tournament and comparatively not many not-blue decks. In a 49-person tournament, I would expect to see more than six players on Mishra’s Workshop and three players on Dredge.

We are at a crossroads in the metagame where Mishra’s Workshop and Dredge have had a slow go of it lately, which could certainly explain the low turnout of MUD players. To Workshop’s credit, with only six of the 49 slots in the event it did manage to make Top 4, which is overachieving based on WS’s low headcount (or perhaps the deck is still very good and grossly underrepresented based upon people’s perception of the trend of it being on the downslide).

So Vintage has once again decided to embrace the blue deck, with well over half of the tournament being comprised of blue midrange decks, combo-control, and control decks.

One interesting storyline in this tournament was that the two biggest players (as far as raw numbers are concerned) were midrange creature decks (which comprised about one-third of the field) and blue control and combo-control decks (which comprised another third of the field). To be fair, I am going to guess that most of the non-Landstill “control decks” have Time Vault and Voltaic Key and are technically combo-control.

Either way, in this battle control-combo absolutely slaughtered the midrange decks. The creature decks, despite being one-third of the population of the tournament, only put one deck in the Top 8, while the controlling decks overperformed by eating up over half of the Top 8 with five decks!

Let’s take a look at the creature deck that got there before moving on to talk about the blue decks:

BUG Tempo

Francisco Javier Pina

8th Place at Miscellaneous on 01-20-2013

Vintage

Creatures (16)

Lands (16)

Spells (28)

Sideboard

I really like this deck a lot and am not even a little bit surprised that this was the version of midrange that cracked the Top 8.

I have talked fairly extensively about Deathrite Shaman as a card to watch moving forward, especially as a card that helps decks find consistency against Workshops. Sure, it isn’t good against the nuts on the draw (almost nothing is), but other than that it is one of the better cards a player can have against MWS.

The one thing that worries me about this decklist is the construction of its mana base, which is something that could pretty easily be improved upon.

However, I cannot and am not hammering the pilot for having a bad mana base for this particular event. In a tournament with almost zero Workshop decks, cheating on lands isn’t necessarily a bad thing and could in fact be considered to be a pretty masterful move (you draw less lands against decks when you don’t want to flood).

The mana base here looks Legacy-ish to me and could use a Vintage makeover. I would recommend:

2 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Bayou

Two things: +1 fetchland for Deathrite Shaman at basically zero cost, and the Bayou adds so much versatility that not having it seems crazy to me (the deck isn’t trying to cast Mana Drain!). The Bayou also lets the deck play nine fetches to get the sideboard basic Mountain.

I also would want to play Strip Mine and Wasteland in this deck (which would very much change the way I valued other cards in the maindeck and would possibly require a reevaluation of some of the cards in the deck). Strip Mine effects are sweet with Deathrite Shaman since they gas him up twice on land and adding a mana pushes the advantage of setting them back a land at the expense of costing yourself one!

“I find it hard to believe that BUG Tempo can find 75 cards better than a Strip Mine…”

4 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bayou
2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
(at the expense of cutting a spell)

I might also consider sideboarding Chalice of the Void on the play Turbo Tezz style decks if I played Wasteland to further leverage my mana destruction theme.

I really like the disruptive creatures and spells that Francisco chose to play in his BUG deck and believe similar decks could turn out being very good if blue combo-control decks continue to grow in popularity while Workshop continues to decline.

The finals of the event was contested by two combo-control style decks, Tezzeret and Bomberman.

Tezzeret Control

Carles Minon

1st Place at Miscellaneous on 01-20-2013

Vintage

Creatures (1)

1 Blightsteel Colossus

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (16)

Spells (40)

Sideboard

Bomberman

Alex Delgado

2nd Place at Miscellaneous on 01-20-2013

Vintage

Creatures (8)

Planeswalkers (3)

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (16)

Spells (33)

Sideboard

For being completely different decks, these decks actually have a lot in common.

They are both packing a ton of planeswalkers, a ton of Mana Drains, and a transformational sideboard against midrange and Workshop!

The Tezzeret deck can morph into an Oath deck, and the Bomberman deck can simply trump these strategies by becoming a Stoneblade deck!

“That’s a cool creature deck you have!”

Oath of Druids and Stoneforge Mystic were the two cards I predicted to be on the verge of really taking off at the end of 2012. Using Oath and SFM as an effective sideboard plan against both aggro and MWS is a clever application because it kills two birds with one stone (or, should I say, three Stoneforges).

There’s one Jace and three Tezzeret in the winning deck. I am not exactly sure what that means, but that has never stopped me from speculating before.

First, I don’t think this trend is sustainable because Jace is enough better than Tezzeret that if we are going to live in a world of control mirrors, Jace will eventually win the war.

Secondly, the winning deck playing a three and one split on Tezzeret and Jace tells me that people are soft to Time Vault. Carles figured it out and absolutely exploited this collective chink in the armor that is the metagame. In a world where you don’t live in fear of MWS simply killing people, Key and Vault is the fastest, easiest, and best way to play. The champion had a plan: he was going to Key + Vault harder, faster, and more consistently than anybody in the room and was rewarded for his clever tactic.

“Use at the right Time.”

I was looking at the list again and realized something else. He has a Gifts Ungiven and a Noxious Revival, which is obviously pretty sweet. Then I realized he didn’t have Merchant Scroll and was confused. “He has the Gifts package but no Scroll?” Then I realized that he is Time Vaulting so hard that he wants the Noxious Revival to get it back if it gets destroyed. So the Noxious Revival is actually more important than the Gifts!

Okay, one more deck.

Burning Long

Guillem Ragull

7th Place at Miscellaneous on 01-20-2013

Vintage

Creatures (2)

2 Griselbrand

Lands (12)

Spells (46)

Sideboard

Smennen’s Burning Long has shown itself to have the ability to perform well in the Vintage metagame. The deck is capable of very powerful starts and features the backup plan of Oath of Druids (also pretty powerful).

Burning Tendrils is an exploratory deck, the progress of which will be watched closely as a marker for whether or not combo will again be a power player in Vintage.

Ever since Mishra’s Workshop went on an absolute rampage in Vintage that started early in the spring of 2012, pure combo decks have been eradicated from the format. Burning Tendrils is the first combo deck since that has been consistently successful in both the States and Europe over a prolonged period of time.

If we continue to see one copy (of the three total copies in an event) make Top 8 for a couple more weeks, it is likely the deck will become a bigger meta player in the near future.

Here are some of the questions (with my predictions) I look forward to watching unfold in the European and American Vintage metagames.

1. Is Burning Long the herald of new combo decks to come?

Combo is going to STORM back in big way in 2013.

2. Is MUD poised to take the mantle back from blue and stomp these proto-combo decks off the face of the world?

MUD is certainly at a low point and almost certain to make a comeback in the coming months. MUD can’t suck this bad for much longer, can it? As blue decks continue to metagame against each other, MUD’s stock will go up, and it WILL begin to come back. I think MUD is going to give blue a good fight, but will not dominate again.

3. If MUD comes back, is this new style combo good enough to survive it?

Yes. Combo decks will not necessarily be Storm decks. I like the idea of two-card combos becoming players. Show and Tell, Oath, Helm-Line, etc.

4. Can the midrange decks adapt to beat combo-control?

I worry that they cannot simply because they rely on synergies and lots of little things going right to win rather than the one big thing that more powerful decks need to do. A midrange deck needs to not be dead to Tinker, not get Key-Vaulted, not get locked by Shops, not get dredged, deal with Oath, not be dead to a two-card combo, counter every Show and Tell, and while doing all of this somehow find the time to kill the opponent! Whereas all any opponent needs to do in order to beat a wide range of opponents is find a way to do one of these things.

It is a tall order to expect midrange to live up to these expectations. I do not see midrange as one of the best options right now.

5. What can we expect from Dredge?

Dredge is never better than in a convoluted world of blue mirrors. Rest in Peace makes Dredge a risky pick, but sooner or later when greedy boys and girls are trying to find room for those third and fourth sideboard Red Blasts and something has to get cut… BAM! Dredge wins!

Starting this week, I am organizing an open playtesting session on Wednesday evenings at the local game store in Livonia, Michigan. The emphasis will be on testing Modern, new Standard, and Gatecrash Limited, but if people want to play Vintage, I would certainly be down to get some games in. For more information, hit me up on Facebook.

Thanks for reading everyone.

Cheers,
Brian DeMars