This weekend heralds a major calendar event for the Vintage tournament circuit. Ben Carp is awarding two sets of power nine at the ICBM Xtreme Open. Don’t miss it. From there, it will be a dizzying tournament season culminating in the Vintage Championship at Gencon.
Without a doubt, the looming question of the summer is: what is the best design approach to Mana Drain-based Time Vault decks (a.k.a. Tezzeret Control)? This is question I will explore in painful detail next week.
Arguably, the second most important design question for the summer is how (or if) Workshop decks will take advantage of unrestricted Crop Rotation.
Here is my 5c Stax list:
Creatures (8)
Lands (18)
Spells (34)
Before explaining my card choices, let me highlight a few of the major issues with Workshop Prison going forward:
1) How Many Colors Should be Run?
2) How many Spheres should be included, and which ones?
3) What is the role/value of Bazaar of Baghdad and how many should be included?
4) What should the win conditions be? Sundering Titan? Barbarian Ring?
5) Does Time Vault have a place?
6) How Many Crop Rotations should be included, and how many Crucibles to support them?
The answers to many of these questions remain frustratingly unclear. The answers will come, if at all, in time through tournament results. It’s not even clear that Workshop Prison, a.k.a. Stax, will be a better performer than Workshop Aggro, such as Mono Red Workshop Beatdown or some variant splashing for Crop Rotation.
That said, let me speak to some of these issues and explain my card choices at the same time.
Although some Workshop decks are mono-brown, the first color that almost every single Workshop deck adds is Red. The primarily reason for this is the incredible power and synergy of Goblin Welder. Addition reasons include Gorilla Shaman, Red Elemental Blast, Barbarian Ring, etc.
Since the idea here is to see how we can abuse unrestricted Crop Rotation, we are necessarily adding a second color.
It is my view that the marginal cost of expanding from a two color to a five color is far less than benefits of such a manabase. Experience with five color Stax lists supports this contention. There are very few two color Stax lists. Stax decks tend to be mono-brown, mono-Red, or five color.
I believe that the two most powerful cards in the deck are Trinisphere and Balance. Recent testing has once again reminded me how incredible Balance is. You can read the log of a game I played against Mike Solymossy here where Balance wrecked him, forcing him to discard all but one card from his hand and sacrifice a few lands. Balance is one of the few cards that can save you from a seemingly unwinnable position. It is Workshop’s equivalent to Yawgmoth’s Will.
Trinisphere’s power is also beyond question. Its ability to quickly end games by turn 1 Trinisphere, turn 2 Smokestack or some equivalent play is appreciated. Its sheer disruptive force is not quite as well understood. Trinisphere deeply constrains your opponent’s ability to chain together broken plays and to develop their board. For example, I was playing an endgame against Mike Solymossy where he had managed to break whatever soft lock I had achieved, but he had run out of resources in hand fighting me off. When he topdecked Gifts Ungiven, he was unable to use to win the game despite having almost 10 mana on board.
Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor would all be automatic inclusions in my view for power level reasons alone, as their respective restrictions attest. However, the power of Trinisphere and Balance make these cards even more necessary. Many Stax pilots do not run Imperial Seal, mistakenly, in my view. Turn one Imperial Seal for turn two Trinisphere is not only a perfectly legitimate line of play, it is one that will produce many victories. In addition, Imperial Seal can be used in the mid-game to find Balance. However, all three cards also find Strip Mine, for Strip Mine recursion. The difference between Imperial Seal and Vampiric is significant, but not so significant to justify running one and not the other.
Tinker and Ancestral Recall are obvious inclusions in a five color list that require no explanation.
Crop Rotation is very powerful in this archetype. Its chief uses are to Rotate for Strip Mine with the recursive intentions, either now or in the long-term, or to dig up an early Mishra’s Workshop or Tolarian Academy. I would caution from relying on hands with a single five-color land and a Crop Rotation. Your opponent will attempt to Force of Will it. You can use this fact as bait to draw out turn one Force to resolve a turn two threat. Many players believe that Crop Rotation is a good reason to include a cornucopia of suboptimal lands. The demands of a five color mana base are so great that I believe that the 4th Gemstone Mine should be included over Barbarian Ring. Post-board, Tabernacle is a nice Rotation target to fight anything from Oath to Ichorid.
Every 5c Stax list ran a singleton Crop Rotation since 2005. Stax pilots have never had to confront the option they now face. Why have I chosen three Crop Rotations? To be perfectly honest, I don’t have a completely persuasive answer. The primary answer is inertia. I started with 3 Crop Rotations, and in testing I haven’t felt the need to lower or raise that number. Four Crop Rotations could be the proper number, or two. I’ve liked three. This is an issue I’ll explore in more detail if I continue to work on this deck during the summer. Relatedly, I’m not sure whether to run four Crucible or three, the number run in most 5c Stax lists.
On account of Crop Rotation and the five-color mana base, there is a good case to be made that we should include four Crucibles. I would if I knew what to cut.
It is my opinion that Bazaar of Baghdad is fool’s gold in five color Stax. A few years ago, Robert Vroman innovated a Stax variant known as “Uba Stax.” This Stax variant is typically mono-Red and used 4 Bazaar of Baghdad, 4 Null Rod, and 4 Uba Mask. Bazaar of Baghdad was used to discard artifacts that could be returned to play with Goblin Welder as well as to draw cards with Uba Mask. Many 5c Stax pilots subsequently started running a single Bazaar for its synergies with Welder. It is also claimed that Bazaar will help you find your win condition in the late game.
My main criticism of Bazaar is that it is a ‘win-more’ card. The point that it will help you find your win conditions requires us to ask why not just run a win condition in that spot? Another criticism of Bazaar is that it does not actually help you win when you are in a losing position. Bazaar appears as if it might help you salvage an otherwise unplayable hand, but rarely ends up helping you win such games. It’s interaction with Welder is undeniable, but the opportunity cost of the slot is often overlooked. My enduring belief is that the better your deck is, the worse Bazaar is in it. But if your deck is unturned and full of junk, Bazaar might be okay.
One of the most important issues which I have not yet resolved is how many Spheres to run. I have taken a page from the Nick Detwiller playbook and am running Thorns over Spheres of Resistance on account of their synergy with Goblin Welder and Gorilla Shaman. However, testing from the other side of the table has reminded me how incredibly powerful Spheres are. For the time being, I am running 5 Spheres. One reason is that I do not feel comfortable cutting anything else. I could see cutting a Crop Rotation, a Goblin Welder, or/and a Tangle Wire, but I’m not sure what the rationale would be. I think we need a clearer understanding of the need for the Spheres and the function they provide in the new metagame as well as a better sense of where potential cuts should come to make room for Spheres.
I feel that Sundering Titan, while powerful, is also suboptimal for 5c Stax. The fundamental problem with it is that it is dead in opening hand. I goldfished 30 games with Sundering Titan in my opening hand, just to see how quickly he could be cast. With little variation, it was a turn 6 play. That is simply too slow for this deck. This deck must focus on creating a soft lock immediately, and running cards that do not immediately contribute to that end can diminish your chances for victory. Sundering Titan is primarily a Tinker target, and its value as such is indisputable. I do not think that its Tinker value outweighs its dead weight cost in the opening hand. I could easily be wrong. But even if I were, that’s a very, very difficult issue to answer, since even if it is suboptimal, it’s virtually impossible to prove that to a reasonable degree of certainty using tournament statistics.
One of the more intriguing possibilities is Time Vault. With so many tutors, Time Vault could become a serious option and a potential win condition. Patrick Chapin espouses the theory that Vintage is Time Vault versus Null Rod, and all viable decks run one or the other. Depending on how strongly you agree with that idea, you may want to consider Time Vault. I am not interested in including Time Vault for reasons similar to those I expressed regarding Sundering Titan.
There is much more to say about Stax, including possibilities like running a single Pithing Needle or a Seal of Cleansing, options I am very interested in testing out more. But these are questions I will save for another day.
Last year was the first time in Vintage history that a Stax deck did not make top 8 at the Vintage Championship. I will safely predict that a Workshop prison deck will make top 8 this year. What it will look like is beyond my predictive abilities, but I think it will answer many of the questions I have examined today.
…
My two hundredth article for this website was published last year without note or salutation. I only became aware of the milestone a few weeks later. Rather than compose a belated anniversary article, I postponed the celebration for this moment.
For my 100th article I entertained bulging mailbag of kudos and queries, and closed with an Ode to Black Lotus (an homage to Keats). For the 250th I wanted to do something different, something more interesting. After months of brainstorming I stole a page from the Chapin playbook, with a twist. For his 100th article, he took a brief look at the first 49 articles he wrote for the site.
But rather than just re-present my first fifty, this Article is the stories behind the articles. At the same time, it’s an opportunity for critical reflection, an unflinching look into my archive.
My First Article: Mask – A Force in Type One (11-8-2002)
I was probably reading one of Oscar Tan articles when the thought popped into my head that I, just like Oscar, could write a Vintage article for StarCityGames.com. In retrospect it seems odd that it hadn’t occurred to me before. I had been reading Oscar and Darren Di Battista, the Vintage authors for the site, for some time. But it was as if there was an impenetrable barrier between the reader and the author, and it was only at that moment that that barrier came down for me. The task was to decide on a piece to submit.
I had helped popularize and develop Illusionary Mask decks in Vintage, although the person who first innovated it was Chris Flaaten. I thought I could help write a primer on the deck so Chris wouldn’t have to. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I could bring insightful analysis to the article, but I was anything but confident in my ability to write an entertaining article. I felt that my writing style was too dry, too technical. I asked my buddy Paul Mastriano to help out. I wanted him to write a witty opening and provide as much analysis as he could. What Paul gave me was less than helpful. Getting him to contribute was like trying to pull teeth. He gave me a title, a couple of paragraphs, and I’m not even sure how much of that survived into this article.
It’s apparent where my writing begins. I’ll give you a hint: it’s the sentence that has the word “homogenized.” I also wrote the two paragraphs above it, but I was awkwardly melding my voice and Paul’s, and it shows.
One would think that writing an article like this would have been simple. My initial article was so convoluted and wordy that it took my roommate Chris Stevenson to help me hatchet through those sentences to have a readable article.
As it stands, this article is still a pretty poor. I took a lot of time to say things that didn’t matter, and not very much time to focus on things that did.
For amusement, check out the forum responses to this article.
Article Two: Gardening in Vintage: How To Grow-A-Tog and Clip a Lotus (2-28-2003)
Paul and I saw a Kentucky tournament announced for a Black Lotus. We traveled down there in early 2003 for a weekend and swept the tournament, taking first and second place. Our success prompted me to write this tournament report, which I thought would be a perfect way to introduce the deck to the Magic community. Primers are nice, but primer + tournament report allows the author to explain the deck and show how it works at the same time.
This was really my breakout article and it came together perfectly, down to the title. Once again, I was not confidant in my ability to write an entertaining article, so I asked Paul to help draft some text. What he gave me (aside from his tournament report) was unusable. Instead, I decided to follow my own voice this time, rather than try to merge Paul’s and my own. The article’s quality, I believe, reflects that. It’s really astounding, now that I look at it nearly six and a half years later, how on the one hand my writing style and voice has evolved and grown, and yet how much of it has remained the same. I no longer use the double hyphen, something you’ll find throughout my early articles. It was a habit I acquired from reading too many posts by writer/author Warren Ellis on the old Warren Ellis Forum and USENET.
I remember sitting in the law school during my lunch break making stylistic edits to punch up the piece. There were no deadlines for this article, and I took my time to make sure I got everything the way I wanted it.
The way that I separated the bulk article between Paul’s section and my own rather than try to meld them as I did in the previous article produced a stronger overall piece. Paul’s tournament report is very entertaining. The ribbing of Trey Van Cleave throughout the report is still funny, although more poignant in light of this.
My tournament report is impressive for one simple reason: I took no notes. Since I had no idea that I’d be writing an article, I had no reason to takes notes. I recall sitting at my desk willing myself to remember details about the matches by image streaming (a technique I learned from a book I read in 2002), closing my eyes and slowly reconstructing my memory of the event a detail at a time. Just to illustrate how difficult this feat was, I remembered nothing whatsoever about the first round until I sat down more than a month later to recall the details of the match, not even the archetype my opponent was playing.
This article might have been the end of my brief SCG writing career if not for a chance encounter with the owner of StarCityGames.com.
Article Three: The Ten Principles of Type One (6-25-2003)
I had no plans or interest in writing another article for SCG in the near future, but at Grand Prix: Pittsburgh, which I attended to compete in the Vintage side event, I met Pete Hoefling, the owner of SCG. He was very friendly and complementary, telling me that my articles had been hugely popular. This got me thinking about what else I could write about.
I decided I wanted to write something that would be analytical rather than another deck primer. This was another major article that drew a lot more attention to the format, but was also controversial, purposely so.
This was my attempt to somewhat cabin the format as it existed in 2003. Whether consciously or not, I was trying to impose some contours of Vintage, some unifying boundaries that would make it less casual and more competitive. For example, saying that ‘spells which cost more than 4 are unplayable unless they are blue or artifact’ created a stir. This was at a time when Vintage was far more defined by totally random local scenes than a unified metagame. Some people interpreted this principle as saying that ‘their decks weren’t real.’ At the same time, I wanted people to also feel like I was open-minded and come away upbeat. Hence, Principle #10.
Article Four: The Four Thousand Dollar Solution To The Type One Metagame (7-02-2003)
Another great primer, possibly better than the GroAtog primer, and just as timely. Matthieu and I (along with Carl Winter) were the founding members of secret team we dubbed “Meandeck” (there’s story behind that). Together, along with Kevin Cron, we helped develop the archetype “Stax.” The value of the article today is a peek into the origins of the Stax archetype, to understand its development and its trajectory.
When we published this article, most people didn’t know about Workshop prison in Vintage. Matthieu, Kevin, and I were playing the deck at local tournaments, cleaning up, especially since most players had never seen this deck before, and therefore didn’t even know how the cards worked, let alone had a plan for us. The downside to publishing this article was that we felt we might hurt Kevin’s chances of making top 8 or winning the vintage Champs, but Kevin had little trouble doing that anyway.
Matthieu and I were ideal co-authors and complemented each other very well. We adopted the same outline as the GroAtog article, and just fleshed the whole thing out one part at a time.
This article was published only a week after “Ten Principles of Type One,” but Matthieu and I had been working on it for several months.
Article Five: The World Championship Metagame, Part 1 (7-22-2003)
I was studying in Oxford, England for the summer of 2003, which meant that I couldn’t compete in the first Vintage Championship. Believe me, I wish I could have been there. I tried to make flight arrangements, but flying out of England was just too expensive. Instead, I went to Amsterdam for the weekend, holing up in a hostel with a fellow law student. The Van Gogh museum was not as exciting as the news of my teammates kicking butt. I was practically lived at the complementary guest computer checking for updates that weekend.
Since I couldn’t go the Vintage Champs, and since I wanted it to be a success, I put together this primer, which I felt would be the most helpful thing I could do for players who were interested in playing.
I also wanted to diversify my article repertoire and move away from writing mostly deck primers, and this was the logical next step. Since I was in Europe, I wasn’t able to test much or play with real cards, but I did have some down time to write articles.
This was also my first article in which I was named a feature writer.
Take a look at the opening paragraph:
Before we get under way, I’d like to take one moment to introduce this series. I’ll be writing a continuing series where each month you’ll get a more serious look into the world of Type One. The topics will range from Metagame Analysis, such as this article, to introductory principles (such as The Ten Principles Of Type One), to in-depth analysis of an archetype as I did with GroAtog and Staks, sprinkled with occasional ‘issues’ articles.
That was a subtle jab at the other major Vintage writer of the time, Oscar Tan. I was trying to create a contrast between Oscar’s entertaining, fantasy style, and a more technical/analytical style that I was hoping to foster.
This intro set the tone for every article I’ve written since. While I’ve broadened my subject matter, I’ve stayed remarkably true to this initial vision.
My analysis is pretty good, although I definitely downplayed Psychatog (the eventual tournament winner), since I knew my teammates were going to play it. MLerra called me out on it in one of the first forum posts. My rationalization at the time was that my analysis was accurate with respect to the list I posted, a list which was outdated. My team, Paragon (and secretly Meandeck), was running an updated list.
Article Six: The World Championship Metagame, Part 2 (7-23-2003)
This part of the article is mostly an analysis of combo decks, and has some interesting historical tidbits regarding the history and development of Long.dec.
Article Seven: The Vintage Conundrum: Why Did Hulk Smash Win The Vintage Championships? (7-30-2003)
Oscar Tan sent me an email expressing his desire to coordinate our post-First Vintage Worlds articles. I thought that was a fine idea.
I wrote about the importance of and the role of teamwork. Oscar wrote about the role of the individual. While we reflected on the developments in modern vintage (and the emergence of the first modern metagame of Drains, Workshops, and Mask decks), Oscar made sure to reprimand the anonymous 25 players who piloted Keeper in the first Vintage Championship, since none of them made top 8. Today, this article is interesting for the detailed historical information about the Vintage metagame of the era through an analysis of the tournament results.
Article Eight: That’s Gush, Boys! Why Gush Needed To Be Restricted (8-20-2003)
I was still in England when this article was written. These are tournament reports from earlier in the summer from Origins, where I piloted GroAtog in three Vintage tournaments just before Gush was restricted.
Article Nine: How Should We Restrict Cards In Vintage? An Analysis And A Suggestion
(8-26-2003)
This was my first “issues” article, and the first article in which I tackled Banned and Restricted list policy.
Although I had put alot of thought into the principles that should guide the management of the Vintage restricted list, I had never really tried to do a statistical analysis of the restriction policy tool. I began by recounting a conversation had about Vintage at the first Vintage Champs, when Academy Rector looked like it was about to get restricted.
This article was – so far as I am aware – the first time anyone had ever done a statistical analysis of Vintage Top 8s. I took a look at all of the tournament leading up the June restriction of Gush and analyzed it.
Here’s what I found:
[F]or the tournaments when four Gushes were legal, Gro variants showed up fifty times in seventeen top 8s, or 36.7% of the top 8s. Now that is not only distorting, it’s dominating as well. When a deck is nearly 40% of the top 8s, then you know something is horribly amiss. Fortunately, Wizards corrected the problem.
I then explored and analyzed all of the other cards that people had talked about restricting at the time, including Burning Wish, Cunning Wish, and Fork, which I argued should be unrestricted.
Article Ten: Burning Through Type One With The Fastest Deck In Magic (9-25-2003)
Upon my return home from Europe I was excited to play some cards. I didn’t take any of my cards to England with me since I had no intention of playing Magic there. When I returned, the first project I wanted to work on was Long.dec. A teammate, young Max Joseph, had been playing a Long.dec variant with some success. I wanted to sit down with Roland Bode’s list and try it myself. After the first couple of goldfishes, I quickly realized what a degenerate deck we had. I began feverishly working on this deck on my team message boards.
I woke up one day in the fall, opened SCG, and about crapped my pants. Koen van der Hulst, a teammate, had published a primer on the deck without telling anyone or letting anyone know of his intentions. You can read it here.
Suffice to say, I was furious. I had fully intended on unveiling our tweaks to Long.dec at the next major tournament rather than reveal this insane technology. Not to mention, Koen did not even credit me or the team for the lion’s share of the work we put into it. Had I not promoted it, he never even would have started to play it.
Koen is the first person ever to be ejected from Team Meandeck.
Looking back at it years later, it’s still a sore spot (and the more I think about it, the sorer it is, especially in light of the restrictions two months later). Long.dec was, in my view, the best deck ever at the time. But no one in Vintage new it. I intended on smashing people for a very long time with this deck as a secret deck. And I did. In the first tournament I played with it, I won a Beta Mox Sapphire. My team was traveling to any tournament site we could in an effort to clean up as much power as we could before this deck became public knowledge, which is why what Koen did was so infuriating. We were going to make a lot more money off of this deck before it was understood just what the heck it was all about.
But we went too far. If Koen is out there somewhere, reading this article per chance, you should drop me a line. I’d like to apologize for how angry I was, and I’m sure Koen was sorry as well.
Since Koen had published his article, and generated quite a bit of buzz, I decided that I had to do the same. This article was the first of my three part primer on the deck. Mike Long and Mike K came up with the concept. Roland Bode took it a few steps further. But Roland’s draft was still rough. In this article I unveil what is now understood to be the “standard” Long.dec. In fact, in the restriction announcement a few months later, Randy Buehler pasted my decklist from this article.
This article was the primer, with a look at the aggro matchup just to illustrate how this deck operates. Rather than organize the deck by function, I tried to present the deck by types of opening hands you might draw.
Article Eleven: Burning Through Type One, Part 2: The Control Matchup (10-1-2003)
In response to my first article on this deck a number of people chimed in to say that this deck can’t possibly beat Mana Drain control. That was not unexpected. Many experienced Vintage players were (and remain today) Drain pilots with little experience with Dark Ritual-based combo. They had little understanding of how to properly pilot this deck to beat Drains, which was the point of this article. This deck is incredibly difficult to pilot. Kevin Cron and I recorded a large set of games and I turned those notes into this article.
This article remains fascinating reading to this day. It’s an excellent glimpse into Vintage of late 2003. Nick Eisel props in the article response were a nice pat on the back. He wrote:
Excellent read. Stephen does the same thing I’ve been doing (and plan on continuing) with my recent Limited articles. Sample games are great and he does a fine job of getting down to the nuts and bolts in what is without a doubt the most complex constructed format in Magic. Sure, a lot of luck is involved, and yes there will be a number of degenerate draws that are simply unbeatable, but the format also resembles a sort of bizarro world of Magic in terms of the thought processes you use. When you play Type One, you hafta switch your mind into a totally different gear than any other kind of Magic and the amount of decisions and options you have is simply ridiculous. This article is a must read for everyone, regardless of the amount of Type One experience you’ve got. Very well done.
It was a joy to see feedback of sort. This was the first time that I had any clue that people outside of Type One might be reading my articles. The big Kanoot even excerpted Nick’s post for the teaser line for the next part of the series.
As for the article itself, being a technically improved player today I see a number of little things I would do differently today, or considerations I might not have thought of at the time. But this article is remains a fascinating for anyone interested in learning what the original Long.dec was all about.
Article Thirteen: Chalice of the Void is the New Black Vise (10-6-2003)
I interrupted by Burning Desire series to talk about an incredible new card spoiled for Mirrodin: Chalice of the Void.
Oscar Tan had a stranglehold on new set reviews for Vintage, often breaking each new expansion set review into two or three parts. My view at the time was set reviews were a bunch of guesswork, at best. Zvi’s infamous Quiet Speculation prediction is emblematic of the hazards in trying to predict future card usage. I was happy to leave that to Oscar. Ironically, today I am far more confident in my ability to predict Vintage card usage with a high degree of confidence. That doesn’t mean I won’t misjudge or overlook some gem, it just means that we (the Vintage community) can now tell if a card is going to be good in Vintage or not almost from the moment it’s been spoiled. We are miles from the days when people predicted that Fact or Fiction was ‘an overcosted Impulse.’
This was the first time, and one of the few times in 6 years, that I wrote an article about a card that had been spoiled, but not yet released. It turns out that this card was specifically designed for Type One, the first such card in many years. The title came from a comment by JP Meyer. As I read it now, the title doesn’t make much sense.
In order to understand this article, I think it is important to understand that in 2003 people still played decks like Sligh and Stompy, which were just decks full of the best 1-drops in the card pool. Although the modern era of Vintage had already arrived and those decks were disappearing, this card hastened their demise.
I correctly predicting its impact in Workshop decks, but I also thought it would see play in Control sideboards, a prediction that was overstated. That said, this article was too much fear-mongering and catastrophizing. It’s made me leery of bold claims made about new cards, and is the reason I’ve only written an article about a spoiled card few times since (Tezzeret & Trinisphere). It’s amusing, at best, to think about the fact that the DCI heard enough complaints about Chalice that it actually seriously considered it as a restriction candidate.
Article Fourteen: Burning Through Type One, Part 3: The Prison Matchup, And The Future Of Long.dec (10-17-2003)
The article is longer and even more detailed in terms of the decision trees. You can tell that I was growing as a Magic writer. This part resembles more recent matchup articles rather than the first two parts of this series. Still an interesting, albeit less intense and more analytical, read. There may some tension between being detailed and entertaining.
Article Fifteen: Old Format, New Conflict: Old-School Versus New-School In Type One (10-22-2003)
Having established myself as a known writer, I threw out a cultural grenade.
This article was an attempt to describe a cleavage in the player base that had erupted above the surface in the previous year, as much it was intended to polarize and provoke players on both sides of that cleavage. There was a wide swath of Type One players at the time that had been essentially playing Type One for many years in a much more casual environment. To me, Oscar Tan represented them. He was the articulate, intelligent figurehead of the casual Vintage player. I tried to position myself on the other side of that divide.
Over the previous months, as Vintage became faster and more brutal, with GAT, and Rector, and Stax and then, perhaps most disturbingly for many players, Long.dec, Vintage had gone from a snail’s pace of change to a rapid succession of momentous evolutionary shifts. The response was loud. I excerpted what I felt were representative statements about the changes in Type One, and responded to them. But rather than simply calling them out intellectual Luddites, I needed to sketch out a positive vision for Type One, which is why the article closes on such a high note.
Looking back I think it’s fair to say that my vision for the format has come to fruition, even if it is not quite enjoying the same heights it reached a few years ago, and few years into the future at the time of this article.
Article Sixteen: Mirrodin, Mirrodin, On The Wall, What’s The Best Deck Of Them All? (10-30-2003)
Mirrodin was putting a massive imprint on Vintage. Its impact was broad and deep. (Given that, isn’t it funny that it took 6 years for anything to be restricted in Vintage from the set, a set that has seen many cards banned in every other format?)
Although I had latched onto Chalice as a card that had been changing Vintage, in retrospect it’s incredible that I wasn’t paying attention to the many other cards that would have a lasting impact, most importantly Thirst For Knowledge. Instead, I wrote this unremarkable article on trying to find ways to incorporate Chalice of the Void into Mana Drain control decks. Although the forum response was positive, I find this article vapid in terms of understanding, even though it is rich in terms of detail. Probably my weakest article to date. I was also in the first semester of my second year of law school, the most difficult, and had little time to devote to Magic.
Article Seventeen: Treating Yourself To A (Late) Halloween Trick With The New Masknought (11-11-2003)
This article is less vacuous, but it also shows that I wasn’t spending that much time on the format, and was searching for something to write about rather than writing about something compelling. Mask – a big hit from 2003 through the Vintage champs, had essentially disappeared. I speculated that Spoils of the Vault could bring it back. Again, the forum response was very positive, but nothing really became of this deck.
Article Eighteen: Swimming In Less Broken Waters? Dabbling with Desires in Extended (12-16-2003)
The Holy Kanoot, Ted Knutson, came up with the title.
Extended was so degenerate that they banned a bunch of cards. In the last few months of that format, I found myself intriguing, loving the Japanese Twiddle-Desire deck, especially since it afforded me an opportunity to play with quadlaser of two of my favorite Vintage cards: Tinker and Mind’s Desire, in addition to multiple Gilded Lotus, a card that is just so cool. Not to mention, I got to play Alpha Twiddle! But perhaps the best reason to play this deck is my favorite draw7, Diminishing Returns!
As I was re-reading this article I realized that I got to play the designer of this deck on the Pro Tour in Valencia!
This article is basically written in the same style as my other primers.
One of the most interesting aspects of this article is the analysis in the middle, where I begin to flesh out concepts for the first time that I have later refined over the years, specifically the distinction between what I now term ‘pattern recognition’ and ‘forward thinking.’ I had forgotten about that, so it’s always interesting to see where some of my ideas germinate.
The various test games in the last half of the article are somewhat less interesting to read that I may have expected, if only because that format was so bizarre.
Article Nineteen: Power, Consistency, and Resiliency – Dabbling With Desires In Extended, Part Two (12-23-2003)
More of the same from Article Eighteen. This was published just around the corner from Tinker and company getting banned.
Article Twenty: The Long.dec and Winding Road, Part 2 (1-7-2004)
This article is basically a long-form stream of consciousness essay of where I see Vintage going in the new year (2004). This some good analysis buried under some mediocre writing.
Article Twenty-One: The Long.Dec And Winding Road, Part 1a – Type One Triumphant (1-14-2004)
This pair of articles is the most embarrassing garbage I’ve ever written for SCG. It’s so self-indulgent, ego-serving, and ultimately uninformative.
I was so full of myself that I convinced Ted Knutson – god knows how – to run Part Two before part one. But worse, I actually split part one into two parts.
So, Part Two (Article Twenty) was basically forward looking. Part One (Article Twenty-One and Twenty-Two) are basically retrospective, and quasi-year in reviews. I first take a look at the major impact that Mirrodin had on Vintage. Then I say some things that are so embarrassing that I cringe reading them, let alone suggesting that other people read them. I had made a name for myself writing on SCG, and it all went to my head, but I didn’t even know it.
Article Twenty-Two: The Long.dec and Winding Road Part 1b (1-15-2004)
Because the previous article is so cringe-inducing, I hadn’t clicked this article in half a decade What a loss! This article contains two excellent, well-detailed tournament reports with Long.dec.
Look at the round five zaniness:
My opening hand was: Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Black Lotus, Mind’s Desire, Chromatic Sphere, and Demonic Consultation. How sick is that? My opponent was playing first. He dropped Wasteland and everyone behind me snickered.
I then drew a fourth Lion’s Eye Diamond. I played all four Lion’s Eye Diamonds as my opponent looked in awe.
Those were the days!
Article Twenty-Three: Matchup Series: Psychatog Vs. Tools ‘N Tubbies (1-26-2004)
Kai Budde and other pros were pumping out “Matchup Analysis” articles on other sites. People seemed to enjoy reading detailed tournament reports. I naively felt that comprehensive matchup analysis articles would do all sorts of good things for Vintage, including help create greater consensus about various archetype builds and matchup percentages. I thought I could definitively answer questions like: who wins what matchup? Or identify and categorize those hands and lines of play that create wins and those that lead to losses.
It appeared that Workshops and Drains would be the major players in the metagame of 2004. This matchup analysis article was designed to help breakdown the intricacies of one of the potentially key Shop v. Drain matchups. Although set in the context of a particular matchup, this article explores ideas such as tempo and inevitability not in the abstract, but at the very tangible level of real life game play. What do inevitability and tempo really look like? This article answers that.
The six games recorded here provide a historical snapshot into what Vintage looked like at the time. The six recorded games were drawn from a larger set of games between me and friend/test partner Joe Bushman. I was piloting TnT and he was playing Tog.
Article Twenty-Four: The Harmony Of The Spheres: A Closer Look At Trinisphere In Type One (2-2-2004)
Trinisphere was just spoiled, and I wrote this article specifically exploring its potential application in Vintage. Everyone knew that this was the card from Darksteel for Vintage.
The mode of analysis in this article, trying to create a balanced picture of the card being analyzed, seems incredibly inappropriate and ill-fitting for the subject matter. I went out of my way to identify all of the problems with Trinisphere, including the fact that it’s not as powerful on the draw and does not help address weakness to Wasteland. My explication of the upsides of Trinisphere were understated as well. The first upside I point out to Trinisphere is that it will help the Dragon matchup. While that may be true, it’s a funny sort of thing to cite as the first positive thing to say about something as phenomenal as Trinisphere. I describe Trinisphere as only a marginal improvement against Mana Drain based decks. While that may be true, in general, I glossed over the frustrating, lock-out, game-ending power of turn one Trinisphere on the play. Even though I stated that many of the best spells cost 3 (such as Thirst or Necro) and most anti-Shop answers cost 3 (such as Rack and Ruin), what I didn’t acknowledge is that development in Vintage, and making consecutive land drops, often requires plays such as turn one Brainstorm or being able to play Moxen.
The critical point I would make if I were to write that article again is this: The biggest advantage of Trinisphere is the power to shut an opponent out of the game before it has begun with turn one Trinisphere. Although they may have the tools to emerge, your follow up plays and their stunted development will keep them from coming back.
Also, the Stax list I developed in this article basically assumes that Stax would just swap Sphere of Resistance for Trinisphere, an assumption that proved to be totally untrue in time. Instead, because of Trinisphere, Workshop Stax decks were redesigned from the ground up. Draw7s, commonly used cards in pre-Trinisphere Stax lists, disappeared after the printing of Trinisphere. Stax decks no longer tried to draw a ton of cards and lock up the game by overwhelming the opponent with lock parts, but instead played a few choice lock cards. Thus, instead of replacing Sphere of Resistance, Trinisphere joined it.
Article Twenty-Five: The Type I Metagame or Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tog (3-2-2004)
As I was rereading this article, my brain oscillated between two thoughts: that this was pedantic, showy fluff (which the forum responses, although positive, reinforced) to every so often remarking that I was trying to do something interesting, and came up with a few pearls buried in a piece that is poorly composed although organized.
The last few months had reshaped Vintage. My playtest group had been testing furiously, and this was another theory article, trying to articulate the structure of Vintage.
The two most interesting things in the article are this: First, I try to expand the old ‘rock, paper, scissors’ metagame triangle into a five point star, which I call the ‘five axis metagame’ (thanks to Kevin Cron for making those images five years ago):
It was a bold (although, in retrospective ineffectual) attempt to provide some conceptual coherence to the otherwise rapidly fragmenting and diversifying Vintage field. I tried to flesh out this idea by providing some descriptive analysis of each ‘axis’ across the star.
Years later, I think some Vintage players look back on this idea with fond memories. It just makes me smirk.
The second interesting thing I was trying to do was show how Tog had broken the mold, beyond the obvious. This is perhaps the most lasting lesson. For example, I was trying to teach the reader to approach the Aggro match not as a control player, but as a beatdown player, where the combo is to Berserk Tog over your opponent’s weenie armies. Also, my discussion at the end is about how best to approach the Tog mirror.
Ultimately, the article is too many words without quite enough art or substance to carry the whole piece. It’s a nice experiment, and somewhat fun to read 5 years later, but something that I should have put more effort and time into before publishing. Still, I think a lot of people were taken with this piece.
Article Twenty-Six: Many Happy Returns (3-17-2004)
Hrm.
My memory of this article was a terse, direct informative primer for Draw7, well-written and clear. This article didn’t read as smoothly as I my recollection of it Still, it is miles ahead of the previous couple of articles in terms of writing. But more importantly, it’s a fun read. The article proposes a new (then) Tendrils-based combo deck using 4 Diminishing Returns as additional Timetwisters for mass card advantage.
While the deck never took off in the tournament scene, it remained an idea that people took inspiration from and enjoyed playing with. It’s another nice snapshot into Vintage history, if little else.
Article Twenty-Seven: Stealing Turns and Perms with Slavery in Type One (4-04-2004)
Our team took the wrong direction with Mindslaver in Vintage. We put a lot of energy and effort into building Workshop-based Slaver decks, when it was the Drain-based versions that dominated Vintage for much of the future. This is an exhaustive primer on Workshop Slaver. Although that deck never really did much on the scene, it provided the shell for many Workshop variants that have since emerged. It was nice to work with Matthieu again for this article.
Article Twenty-Eight: How to Run a Type One Tournament (4-22-2004)
Bottom line is that this article is a persuasive essay on why Vintage tournament organizers should allow proxies. Many TOs at the time were adamantly opposed to them. From the forum responses, it looks to have worked. The person who ran the Central Coast Championship announced that they’d allow proxies in their tournament.
Oddly enough, this article is the best written of the year so far. It flows very smoothly and is an easy read.
My analysis of proxies is remains cogent, clear, and compelling. Although, after years of proxies, I’ve now come around to the view that there are long-term costs associated with high proxy limits that have ultimately hurt Vintage. I’ve done a virtual 180. It’s probably too late now, but we had to do it over, I think that proxy limits should be closer to 5 than 15. Today I see how proxies have hurt Vintage and the Vintage community in the long-run, even as they provide a short-term boon by lowering the immediate cost of entry. Specifically, one of the problems with proxies today is that it is frankly stupid to own power, unless you are insistent upon being able to compete in the Vintage Championship and you lack the means to borrow the requisite cards, or you simply derive enjoyment from collecting older Vintage power cards. As a result, people are more inclined to sell off their power, and inadvertently sell of their interest in the format as well. In the article, I admit that there is no answer the claim that proxies remove the incentive to own power, since it’s obviously true, but I fail to recognize the full extent of the costs. For example, I suggest that by lowering the demand for power, you make power more accessible to people who want to accumulate it. The problem is that people who don’t own power tend not to want to accumulate it for the same reason that people sell off their power in the first place. With proxies, it’s mostly irrational to own power. Unlike years past, people who win their first power do not follow the traditional route of power accumulation, but are encouraged to sell that prize for cash. My article failed to acknowledge the extent of this possibility. Moreover, back in 2004, Gencon and Origins held a larger pie of the annual competitive Vintage tournament scene. Today, Origins isn’t even considered part of the Vintage scene, and the Vintage Championships is the sole exception to proxy tournaments.
Back in April of 2004 I was writing on the other side of the Vintage curve. The future of Vintage was bright, and it burned bright for several strong years. Today, it’s sort of like the party’s over, and the hotel room has been trashed. The Vintage community is working hard innovating ways to clean up the mess, but it’s not easy. Proxies were a free meal, and we gorged on it. We got fat, then sick, and now the Vintage community is dealing with the fact that most Vintage players don’t own power, and we’ve been bleeding players for the last couple of years. For the Vintage community, retention of existing players is the number one priority, and proxies has made retention harder than ever. I explain why in my article “Reviving Vintage.”
Article Twenty-Nine Part I and Part II : Tough Nuts – a Balanced Type I Metagame? (5-3-2004)
I believe Ted Knutson split this article in two on account of its length. He also provided the title for the article.
This is the best article of the year so far. First of all, it’s incredibly information rich. I tried to canvas half of the Vintage metagame in one article. It’s the 2004 equivalent of my 2008 and 2009 Vintage Metagame Primers But it’s even more detailed. Instead of just describing the game plan, remarking on the buzz around the deck, and highlighting its weaknesses, I talk about the difficulty of play, and strengths, as well as any pertinent background information about the archetype. Looking back, it’s remarkably objective. I wrote in the article that I didn’t dislike Control Slaver. That’s hard to believe in retrospect. I was a die-hard Tog player. It’s a Vintage historian’s dream piece, for capturing the state of 2004 Vintage, taking lists from recent tournaments with detailed analysis.
It’s fun to read even today! I even walk through sample hands. Check out the Belcher goldfish.
Article Thirty: Running the Vintage Gauntlet: G Through M Part I (5-14-2004)
and Part II
Again, this is extremely information-rich. It’s like a stroll through memory lane for me. I get to see all of my old favorites (almost like long-lost pets) and old enemies (like Marc Perez’s UR Fish!). The level of detail and good information in these articles is incredible. The “Concluding Thoughts” section on UR Fish is worth the price of admission alone. There’s a lot of interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout, including old axioms that are no longer true (“Black Lotus, in my opinion, is the best card in Magic because it functions in every deck. Every deck can use Black Lotus because it is not color specific.” – We know that’s not true anymore!)
Article Thirty-One: Matchup Analysis: Goblin Charbelcher vs. Psychatog (6-4-2004)
Another matchup analysis article. Back at that time, our team was a full believer in recording test sessions. Joe Bushman and I met up at the local card store for some weeknight testing, and I recorded the games. They were so interesting that I decided to turn them into a full length article. What’s so mystifying to me, five years later, is how the previous two articles got very few forum responses, but this one got an enormous volume of feedback despite being much less informative, even if it is just as interesting.
One of the reasons that this article succeeds where many other Matchup Analysis articles fail is that I tested such a large sample of games, that I was able to trot out a particular game to illustrate certain recurring principles in the matchup. Plus, the variety of interactions (surprising, like Artifact Mutation on my Belcher!) make for a fun read.
Article Thirty-Two: Running the Vintage Gauntlet R-Z (6-11-2004)
Part three of my Vintage Primer.
It’s interesting how bad my Trinistax deck was at the time. I was way off on that one.
Article Thirty-Three: Tempo IS Interesting (7-9-2004)
An intriguing read. Here are some things that struck me as I was reading it for the first time since I wrote it five years ago:
The introduction is a little bit sloppy. I could have made the same point without sounding slightly arrogant and hard on Mike Flores. For example, I opened the article:
Mike Flores speaking about tempo wrote”[m]uch as you would like, you can’t quite put your finger on it… but you sure know it when you see it.” Mike is more perceptive than he probably realizes. The difficulty in identifying tempo is that it has an effect that is different from what it is.
There is no reason that I had to say: “Mike is more perceptive than he probably realizes.” Instead, I could have just written: ‘This article will attempt to identify precisely what that enigmatic ‘it’ is ‘when you see it’.
Also, when I read the third sentence in the introduction, I admit I was a bit skeptical. But by the end, I think I made a very good case explaining this distinction. In short, Tempo is defined as Time Walks, or parts thereof, but the effect of tempo is different. By gaining tempo you actually take away your opponent’s tactical, and eventually strategic, options. (Jacob Orlove made the observation in the forums that card advantage is in some ways an opposite analogue in that it enhances your options).
This may be the first meaty theory article I wrote that really holds up. In my estimation, its stood the test of time.
But the distinction I draw in trying to help define tempo and its effect may actually be less interesting than the examples.
Two of the five scenarios I built are really powerful and illuminating. The first and the last scenarios are basic (but illustrative). However, the second is an in-depth look at Worldgorger Dragon combo versus Mana Drain control. I walk turn by turn through a hypothetical game, showing how the potential to combo out at instant speed with Necromancy deeply constraints the control player’s potential lines of play until the Dragon player leaves the control player with no options at all. Even more educational is the six turn hypothetical game between UR Fish and Mana Drain ‘Tog Control.
These scenarios are interesting for at least three reasons. First, they powerfully support the basic thesis of the article. Secondly, they document common Vintage scenarios from the era. But most importantly, they show very critical, in-depth analysis of crucial turning points in Vintage games of the time. It’s not just that these examples show you what Vintage was like in 2004; they underscore the depth of the format at the time, which is, in ways large and small, very different from what Vintage looks like today, for metagame reasons if nothing else.
This is an article from the past that I’d recommend Vintage players read today. The cards are known well enough that most Vintage players should be able to follow the examples, and I imagine that most players would find the article educational.
One last thing: it’s strikes me as funny that I was able to hone in on the most important tempo play of the era in the final example, but failed to fully underscore this point in the article I wrote about that card a few months earlier.
Sure, there are sentences I would compose differently today, but my main regret is the subtle digs at Mike Flores. So what if Tempo is broader than virtual card advantage? I could have made that point without being condescending.
Article Thirty-Four: The Banned Plays Again: An Encore for Magic’s Greatest Decks (7-22-2004)
The lovable Doug Linn came up with the clever title.
So what did I do here? My teammates and buddies held a small tournament in which we ran six decks from Vintage past, all of which were then illegal thanks to one restriction or another. The idea was to run decks from Type I’s past against each other to see what the best deck of all time might be. Unsurprisingly in retrospect, the more recent decks crushed the earlier decks, which were hampered by a much smaller card pool.
Running the tournament was pure fun. The epigram at the beginning of the article was a quote from Joe during the tournament. Joe is a well-known carnivore, allergic (or so he claimed) to anything ‘green.’ Hilariously, Joe actually beat Marc Perez in an eating contest at one of the SCG P9 parties with Meandeck and Shortbus. For every Richmond SCG P9 tournament the Team Shortbus guys would invite us to stay down at their house for the night. We bought boxes and boxes of Macaroni and Cheese, loaded them up into large vats and watched Joe and Marc spoon mound after mound of Macaroni into their mouths. It was hilarious…
This is sometimes cited by people as one of their favorite article’s I’ve written. Every once in a while someone asks me to update this article. When I entertain the idea it usually devolves into two camps: one group wanting me to use the same approach I used for this article with another asking me to try to update the decks for the modern card pool.
While I’ve often wanted to update this article, I’ve never gotten around to doing it. For this one, I actually had teammates participate in a physical tournament, so I didn’t need to actually do all of the work myself. Reviewing my article cache for this article has actually inspired me to consider running this experiment again. However, this time I’ll have a much larger deck pool to work with. Wouldn’t it be fun to play Meandeck Gifts against 8 Duress GroAtog or 4 Thirst Tezzeret? The only real problem I foresee is that my skills with some of these decks have atrophied badly. The last time I tried to play original Long.dec, I didn’t even know what I was doing! Well, I’ve reawakened the muscle memory by practicing with Long.dec.
Article Thirty-Five: A New Dawn for Type Four (7-28-2004)
Paul and I wrote an article for MTG.com on Type Four and were looking for ways to promote the format, which Paul and I developed in college. While we hyped up Fifth Dawn, it really was an amazing set, per capita, for Type Four. Vedalken Orrery, which I give a lot of word space, is an amazing card from a theoretical standpoint, and should be played in all Type Four stacks, even though it’s not really a high draft pick.
Interestingly, the largest chunk of the article argues in defense of Door to Nothingness, a card many players felt was too powerful and too unfun to play in Type Four. Experience has shown that the card is a lot of fun, and risky, especially with effects like Reroute and Word of Seizing having seen print since. Not to mention the backlash engendered by having temerity to play a card like Door.
Article Thirty-Six: Scrutinizing the Storm: Storm-Based Combo in Type One (8-9-2004)
Phil Stanton had joined the SCG fold as a regular writer. But rather than write strategy Phil exclusive wrote articles aggregating Vintage Top 8s and providing composite decklists, something I do today in lieu of Phil’s retirement. Phil provided a very valuable service to the Vintage community, and did something that I bet players in other formats wish people did. Some people on the ‘mothership’ do something similar, but it’s a mode of analysis that could and should be used in other formats, especially Legacy.
Phil contacted me online and asked me to co-write an article with him. In retrospect, much of my early archive is collaborative, with Paul, Matthieu, even Oscar. He would provide the data, but he wanted me to write the analysis. My contribution is lacking in quality. It’s not just that my remarks aren’t terribly insightful, they are clearly biased in favor of 5c Combo lists and away from European TPS builds, which were by far the most successful combo variant. Today, I understand why. The format was far more warped by Trinisphere than I think I acknowledged. TPS decks used a strong basic-heavy mana base to survive a Trinisphere attack and Crucible + Wasteland recursion. I don’t think I took this article very seriously. I wish I had.
Article Thirty-Seven: The Return of Ophie, the One-Eyed, Card Drawing Snake (8-23-2004) Part I and Part II
The deck I had been playing all summer was Psychatog, which is funny since I barely wrote about it. It wasn’t getting me very far at the bigger tournaments. I lost in the top 8 to Marc Perez at the Central Coast Championship that summer (odd that I didn’t write a tournament report). Then, I got knocked out of the first SCG Power Nine tournament, held in July, as early as round 7 (hence, if you look in my article archive for July, 2004, you’ll see my match coverage). As much as I enjoyed playing Tog, I had a very difficult time beating Fish.
One humid night at Kevin Cron’s, where we held our weekly testing, I had the idea of trying mono blue. The half dozen guys who were at Kevin’s each threw a dollar in the pot. I ended up crushing everyone. It turns out that the field defined by Trinisphere/Crucible Workshop decks and Fish could be smashed by mono blue control. I refined my deck, wrote this article, and asked Ted not to publish it until the Monday after the Vintage Championships. This deck was a secret for nearly a month. This article was a pleasure to write, although it isn’t as well written as it could have been.
I notice I spend too much time rehashing history/development at the beginning of many of my articles instead of diving into the heart of the matter. That said, it felt so good to have this article published the day after I made top 8 at my first Vintage Champs with such a rogue, unexpected choice.
Article Thirty-Eight: One-Eyed Ophie Romps His Way to Top 8: Vintage World Championship Report (9-23-2004)
This was more than just a tournament report, it was my first Gencon. So the story behind the article is also part of the article. I played Mono Blue as a metagame deck. Mike Panas had won the first SCG P9 tournament a month earlier with four color control in a top 8 full of Fish. That reinforced my interest in Mono Blue control. It paid off.
I remember Aaron Forsythe coming up to me just before the Top 8 was about to begin, grabbing my decklist, quickly peeking through it, and making some remark about how I was playing the same deck as everyone else. This was puzzling to me. The top 8 was four Workshop decks, two prison and two Juggernaut-beatdown, a Control Slaver deck, me, a Belcher deck, and a Fish deck. How was my deck the same as the others? He basically said that all of the decks were prison decks. What’s the difference if it’s a billion counterspells or Trinisphere or Mindslaver?
Article Thirty-Nine: The Case for MeanDeath (10-1-2004)
The other deck I had been working on during the summer was Death Long (i.e. Long.dec with Death Wishes instead of Burning Wish). I awkwardly tried to rename the deck for this series. Forum comments properly called me out for the rename. I played Death Long at Gencon during the prelim tournaments, so as to keep my main event deck choice a secret.
Article Forty: The Case for MeanDeath, Part II: How the Heck Do I Play This Thing? (10-7-2004)
This is the heart of the primer, and it’s full of really useful information, such as guidelines for mulliganing and practical advice for operating heavy machinery.
Article Forty-One: The Case for MeanDeath, Part III: Sideboarding and Matchup Analysis (10-18-2004)
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/8279_The_Case_for_MeanDeath_Part_III_Sideboarding_and_Matchup_Analysis.html
This article is full of great tidbits and info, but I feel like I misunderstood the Stax matchup. Relying on Elvish Spirit Guides to support Hurkyl’s Recall was more prayer than practical. I wish I had just sideboarded in more lands instead.
It’s funny to read the recap of the match between Carl Winter and Andy Probasco.
Article Forty-Two: Meandeck’s Angels: A Look at the new Oath of Druids Deck (10-29-2004)
This article was a return to form, a full-fledged one-article primer on Meandeck Oath (Orchard Oath). As I said in the article, my team had already decided on playing Oath at the next SCG P9 event. The Gencon Top 8 was full of creatures, with half of the top 8 using big fat artifact creatures with Trinisphere. I knew that Oath would be the deck to play. It just so happened that Wizards made that decision even easier by printing Forbidden Orchard in the intervening month.
This deck was such a metagame monster it put half my team in the top 8. The biggest innovation was using Spirit of the Night and Akroma to generate 18 damage in two turns. For something that is so obvious in retrospect, it was far from a given at he time. That’s why so much of the article is spent comparing the merits of various Oath configurations. Aaron Forsythe made the trip out to this tournament to compete in Vintage. He also played an Oath deck, albeit a combo version with Dark Rituals. This was such a sweet deck.
We knew it had certain weaknesses, but we designed the deck with those weakness conscious that the players at the tournament wouldn’t be able to design to exploit them until it was too late. Oath would need to look different if we wanted to play it in the future, but by then we’d have another weapon.
Article Forty-Three: Crucible of Worlds is the New Library of Alexandria: Constructing a Coherent Restricted List Policy
11-05-2004
German Vintage notable Carsten Kotter and Canadian Rich Mattuzzio had both written articles arguing for the restriction of Crucible of Worlds. Much had changed in the last year. Mirrodin brought with it a bunch of Vintage playables. Darksteel brought Trinisphere, which changed the Workshop decks were built. Fifth Dawn brought Crucible of Worlds, which gave Workshops another major boost. By this point, Workshop decks using both Trinisphere and Crucible of Worlds had become more than a serious metagame player, they were a major nuisance, but no one knew what to about it. If you read the forum posts, there was a major call for the restriction of Mishra’s Workshop. The DCI went a different route and Workshop dodged the bullet. Within a few months, the DCI restricted Trinisphere. Another example of the DCI being smarter than the Vintage community and pundits alike. I don’t think I really appreciated how big of a problem Trinisphere/Crucible was. After all, I kept piloting decks that played to them, like Back to Basics mono blue and Oath.
Article Forty-Four: The Doomsday Device: The Coolest Win Condition In Magic
(11-10-2004)
StarCityGames.com held its third power nine event in Chicago. The DCI had recently unrestricted Doomsday, and we discovered an incredible combo. As with the Oath article a few weeks earlier, this is a primer and tournament report. I spent several weeks with test partner Joe Bushman ironing out the kinks from the decklist. The warm fuzzy I remember was the comment by SCG owner Pete Hoefling in the forums.
Article Forty-Five: A Look At the Remaining Chaff On the Restricted List
(11-18-2004)
This was my first article presenting arguments that the DCI remove cards from the restricted list, and far from the last. The DCI had started, at the urging of the community, unrestricting cards like Fork, Berserk, and Hurkyl’s Recall. But there was still a bunch of chaff on there. I finally felt bold enough to devote an article to possible unrestrictions. I can remember when it first occurred to me to write an article on the subject. The restricted list has always been a hot topic, but the discussion was always dominated by what should be restricted, and very little discussion about unrestricted. That has changed, and I think that this article, and subsequent ones, have helped create an atmosphere where that discussion is embraced.
In this article, I argued that Stroke of Genius, Mind Over Matter, Voltaic Key, Dream Halls, Time Spiral and Mind Twist could all be unrestricted. Most of these were extremely controversial, and judging by a scan of the thoughtful forum responses, most tended to think that only Stroke was unrestrictable. As of last year, all six of those cards are now unrestricted.
I was afraid of the reader response (see CursedFrogurt’s and RapidWombat’s responses in the forums as the kind of response I feared), so I actually asked Ted to not publish the section on Mind Twist. The Ferrett convinced me to keep that section in, with the editor’s note you can see in the article. I also took a look at both the pros and cons of unrestricting as a way of presenting a balanced viewpoint. But a balanced viewpoint doesn’t mean that arguments on both sides are of equal weight. There is a reason that these cards are now legal in multiples.
Article Forty-Six: Type One Skills (11-29-2004)
Back in the day, SCG hired me to post discussion questions in the forums. I did that job for about 9 months, and handed the job off to Kevin Cron, who performed admirably until premium was instituted and the discussion question of the day was discontinued. This article came out of a discussion question that Kevin posted about the degree of skill tested in Type One.
This is a really smart article, but I’m not sure how easy it is to understand or how well I’m unpacking the ideas I’m presenting. Also, I am not sure that the Fish example or the distinction I’m making between probabilities and variance actually holds up under scrutiny. I think, rather, the more accurate point is that probabilities are hard to gauge in Type One on account of so many restricted cards. Instead, you need a well developed sense of your deck’s variance to make optimal decisions.
One of the things I liked is how I contextualized deck selection for tournament play, an idea I develop in later articles. The opening bit about the two ‘contradictory and flawed assumptions,’ the idea that either the cards are the only thing that matter or that the player is the only thing that matters was nice. I believe that deck selection is a major skill that involves understanding how other people make choices.
Article Forty-Seven: Meandeck Tendrils Primer (2-1-2005)
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/8825_The_Meandeck_Tendrils_Primer.html
This is one of the most popular articles I’ve written, along with the Doomsday Scenario article I wrote a couple of months later.
As soon as SCG Chicago concluded, I went into the tank (the meandeck lab) and began developing a few ideas. I latched onto an idea I had of trying to build a storm deck without an engine, one whose entire idea was nothing more than trying to play 9 spells.
This article was published on the second day of the premium schedule. This was the beginning of SCG Premium.
At this time, my article output had begun to decline. I hadn’t written an article in over two months and a strategy article in three months. Then, StarCityGames met its feature writers and announced a new transition to ‘premium’ service. SCG had grown a strong stable of writers, but it was becoming financially difficult to support that service. Premium offered a way to do that, and increase writing output at the same time. Although I love writing about Vintage, I couldn’t justify it without premium. Without premium, I would probably submit 3-4 articles a year. With premium, I write about 50 articles a year. Because of the service, you will know that there is always someone writing and talking about Vintage.
This article is nicely organized, composed, and an entertaining read. Admittedly, it’s not nearly as entertaining as my teammate Justin Walter’s “Playing Meandeck Tendrils,” an article that Ted Knutson thought was the best article of the year. In my view, it’s one of the greatest Vintage articles ever written. If you haven’t read it, stop reading this article and read that instead. I’m serious. It’s not too late.
I think there is a lot to like about the primer I wrote here, although I needed to clean up some of the middle. Rereading it, I got lost in the flow chart. Still, the example is slightly-mind blowing. Love the YawgAtog graphics.
Article Forty-Eight: Meandeck Tendrils Primer Part 2: The Card Choices
(2-10-2005)
This article is a lot less interesting, just as JP predicted. Cool graphics though.
Article Forty-Nine: Another Look At the Vintage Restricted List
(2-18-2005)
This article is interesting for several reasons. First, this article was written less than two weeks before the DCI restricted Trinisphere. The month or so before the restricted list changes were announced were some of the most intense debates over the restricted list in memory. Everything was on the table. Even my team’s failed Meandeck Tendrils experiment prompted people to demand the restriction of Dark Ritual, let alone Mishra’s Workshop, Trinisphere, and other cards.
Secondly, this article is another early instance of me using tournament data, canvassing all of the recent major American tournaments to analyze potential restrictions. Third, the card that I ultimately suggest for restriction, oddly enough, is Goblin Welder. The reason was simple: it was the one card that showed up in largest quantities in Top 8s. It was Control Slaver, Workshop Aggro, Workshop Prison, and even combo (Belcher). There were twenty-four Goblin Welders in the Vintage Championship top 8 of 2004. Since, Welders averaged about 18 copies per top 8, or about 4.5 decks per top 8. That’s outrageous numbers. Those are Force of Will-like numbers.
Finally, this article articulates the danger of Mana Drain dominance for the first time. I wrote:
The development of Vintage is a history of the development of archetypes that can compete with Mana Drain. The first card to do so is Illusionary Mask–Phyrexian Dreadnought. Others have emerged: Bazaar of Baghdad, Mishra’s Workshop, Gush, Dark Ritual, and so on.
How true. Four and half years later, it seems like Mana Drain is still just as central as it ever was.
Article Fifty: A Closer Look At Slaver in Vintage (3-1-2005)
This article was intended to be a rebuttal response to Rich Shay article “Training Wheels: A Reflection on the Use of the Intuition/AK Draw Engine in Control. Our team had developed Goth Slaver, which relied on the Intuition/AK engine, which he described as ‘training wheels.’
This article was sloppy, poorly organized, and hastily composed. It’s definitely one of the articles I’m least proud of, not just from the first fifty, but out of all 250 (in fact, this article was my fiftieth article).
I think the bigger issue was not the writing deficiencies, but the fact that I was wrong. The point that Control Slaver should play Yawg Will is too obvious for serious debate. The real purpose behind the article was to argue that Goth Slaver was a better Slaver option. Yet, very clearly, I was proven wrong. The reasons why I failed to grasp the power of Slaver remain somewhat elusive to this day, but it has to do with the fact that Control Slaver was a blind spot for me. The way that I positioned myself in the metagame at the time made it difficult for me to understand how a deck that a) drew less cards b) seemed less powerful, c) had a less powerful Yawg Will could be better than one that drew more cards, seemed more powerful, and had a better Yawg Will.
What I misunderstood, and it’s a lesson that all players should learn from: to oversimplify, Control Slaver wasn’t amazing at any one thing, but it did 3 things very well. (In Truth, Control Slaver had the best Tinker). Control Slaver couldn’t over power Grim Long or outdraw Tog or out-counter Meandeck Gifts, but what it did do was win anyway. It’s not about how well a deck does any one thing, but a combination of factors that matter. Thirst-based Slaver was more resilient, less linear, more ‘agile,’ to borrow Rich Shay‘s phrase. Against Gifts, you might not have the ability to combo out as fast, but you can use simple tools like Tormod’s Crypt to put them in a bad spot or Boseiju to punch through a counter wall. And so on. The efficiency of thirst – and flexibility that affords – allows more options and greater resilience.
I kept saying that Goth Slaver was more ‘powerful,’ but what I meant was that it ‘seemed more powerful’ because I drew a bunch of cards, played a ridiculous Yawg Will and won the game. But that didn’t make Goth Slaver a better deck.
Blind spots are a function not simply of one’s perspective, but one’s position. The way in which I was positioning myself in the metagame at the time, playing Grim Long, for example, made it very difficult for me to see the advantages of Thirst-based Slaver. Just as my choices of Mono Blue in Worlds 2004, then Oath at SCG II, two decks designed to attack the Trinisphere/Workshop metagame, made it very difficult for me to understand just how distorting the dynamic of Workshop/Trinisphere/Crucible truly was. These are lessons that I learned the hard way.
Conclusion
As a hobby, Vintage Magic has been a passion. Writing for this website has afforded me incredible opportunities personally and to promote the format. I want to thank StarCityGames.com for their support through the years and, most importantly, you, the reader, for your interest, constructive feedback, and goodwill.
Last summer I made the mistake of wandering into IRC’s #themanadrain chatroom to subject myself to some nasty remarks. Rather than ignore them, as a sane person might, I engaged them.
I know that the internet is full of people freed from social norms thanks to the veil of anonymity. There is a fantastic article from the New York Times last year profiling malicious web culture. That said, I can’t resist. Some of the IRC folks started to criticize my writing. My initial impulse is to try to get people to talk to me on the phone. Since they rarely agree to talk with me on the telephone, I probe using the private chat function.
I know from my own fearless life inventory that I can be abrasive and use a condescending tone on the web when I’m frustrated; it’s a problem I have been trying to work on. And I know that that attitude can create its own backlash. By the same token, I know that just being as visible as I can be in the community creates its own backlash as well.
One of the individuals I questioned told me something that I’ve carried with me ever since. First, they said that I had long ago stopped being relevant. That I had been relevant a few years ago, but that I had jumped the shark some time ago. Most crushing, they said that I had an opportunity to make Vintage a great format, fostering community and spreading knowledge. Instead, I had squandered that opportunity.
I considered their words. I scanned my article archive. I reflected on the unique position I had as an ambassador to the Vintage format. While I think that what this person was saying was untrue, there was a kernel of truth in it. While I thought that my writing, analysis, deck development and design remained quite relevant and on point, I decided I could do better. I needed to refocus to consider more deeply the needs of the audience and the community. I believe that my writing in the last six months of 2008 reflects that. I also considered the opportunity this person spoke of. I thought about it and recognized that I do have a unique role and that role does afford me a great opportunity to shape Vintage in various ways. That isn’t an opportunity that is gone. While it may be diminished from what it might have been, it hasn’t disappeared. It just means I have to work harder and be smarter.
Which brings me to this: After having written 250 articles, it would be easy to believe that the best writing and the best days are behind me. Let me be unequivocal: the best is yet to come, both as a player and as a writer. This is not a hollow promise.
I believe that my writing — in general — is better than it’s ever been. As always, there is room for improvement. Reader feedback is instrumental to that process. At the Waterbury, Anthony Grasso told me that he and his friends felt that I didn’t write to their level. That prompted me to write the TPS Masterclass article, which they said they really enjoyed.
As a player, there are many more broken Vintage decks to design. There will be new cards to break. There are many more adventures to share. There are many more Vintage Championships I intend to win. There is an inexhaustible supply of power to accumulate.
I’m just getting my second wind. I hope you hang along for the ride.
Next week I will take a close look at possible Tezzeret Control configurations, exploring design options in the wake of Thirst’s restriction.
Before you leave, please jump into the forums and share with me your first SMIP! I’d like to know where people first started reading and what interested them enough to click the article link.