July
Karlsruhe T1 (38)
7/3/2004
1) Landstill
2) Tog
3) CounterBazaar
4) 4cControl
5) Landstill
6) Landstill
7) 4cControl
8) FoodChainGoblins
Maine T1 (31)
7/11/2004
1) Gay Red
2) ControlSlaver
3) ControlSlaver
4) Dragon
5) Gay Red
6) ControlSlaver
7) ControlSlaver
8) B/W Aggro
Myriad Games T1 (44)
7/17/2004
1) UGMadness
2) 4cControl
3) Titan.dec
4) CrucibleStax
5) Gay Red
6) Titan.dec
7) Belcher
8) NinjaMask
Eindhoven (41)
7/25/2004
1) 4cControl
2) 4cControl
3) 4cControl
4) 4cControl
5) ClampGoblins
6) ControlSlaver
7) Titan.dec
8) Mud
Pittsfield, Ma T1 (47)
7/24/2004
1) Dryad Hate
2) Titan.dec
3) CrucibleStax
4) Landstill
5) CrushingChamber
6) 4cControl
7) Gay Red
8) Dragon
Copenhagen T1 (43)
7/25/2004
1) Draw7
2) 4cControl
3) 4cControl
4) TriniStax
5) Juice
6) FoodChainGoblins
7) Titan.dec
8) Landstill
Top 8 breakdown for July Type 1 Tournaments for midsize (30 to 50 people) environments.
This month’s breakdown includes six tournaments that average just shy of 41 players. From my research, all of the tournaments that are inclusive are in New England and Europe. There were some in the North East, West Coast, and Midwest that were found to fall short of my 30 person requirement. These typically ranged from 20-28 players.
*Authors note: Philip Stanton has an excellent meta-breakdown featured at StarCityGames.com right now. However, he only covers tournaments that meet or exceed 50 players. While this can be useful, I find that it’s only marginally helpful to those who also frequent mid-size Type 1 tournaments. Conversely, Neither Phil’s or my own articles will be as helpful as a small metagame breakdown would be.
The Eindhoven top 8 is comical with a notable top 4 pattern. I attribute that to the current hot trend 4cControl is having in Germany and the Netherlands. It’s a classic case of whatever the good players play will always do well. There are also two decks that don’t see much (or any) in the way of top 8 success in the rest of the t8’s.
Mud is showing up in the Top 8’s of larger tournaments (check out Philip’s article for specifics), but strangely it’s making rare appearances in mid-size tournaments. I feel that with Crucible of the Worlds, its potential manabase, utility, and speed, Mud (particularly with Welders) could be flying under too many peoples radars.
The Clamp Goblin deck looked like crap at first glance, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. It’s Goblins with a draw engine and a few ways to go off. Could this deck have real staying power? I’d say probably not. I do think that this deck has a good premise that can be refined and even in its earliest forms should be able to pull the ol’ surprise factor out on enough people to earn it some wins.
The Maine top 8 is indicative of a new environment. Many experienced players made it to this event, but the player base for this tournament was apparently novice. Control Slaver is a hard deck to play against for just about anything, it also just so happens that Gay Red does well against it. Control Slaver is another example of whatever the good players play will always do well. Also, as I’ll mention further down, the proxy system in place makes both decks relatively easy to build on a budget.
The Myriad Games top 8, I actually attended. Three out of the four Workshop decks in attendance made the top 8. In the small to mid-size fields, Workshop decks pack such a punch in a low Workshop environment that I believe they are probably your best way of making a top 8. To clarify, New England in particular is generally control and aggro-control heavy.
This is in part to the proxy system we have set in place for most places that hold Type 1 tournaments. This store is one of the first to increase the standard 5-proxy system to a 10-proxy system. The former made it easy to run decks like Fish that do not require a full set of power. Most control and aggro control decks generally require you to only own a few pieces of power and maybe a set of Mana Drains. This makes the default choices of control and aggro-control instantly more attractive than aggro decks, but still don’t give you enough deck building freedom to build some of the Workshop monstrosities. This in turn makes them sparser than either an unlimited proxy environment like Ohio or a high density Workshop area like Germany. Now, once you add 5 more proxies to the mix, 4 Workshops and another Mox isn’t so hard to cough up suddenly.
(By the way, rumor has it that a few years ago, the Germans bought up as many Workshops as possible and are all hoarding them. Blame the Germans!)
What happened here was basically a metagame that is accustomed to playing control, since we have at least one Type 1 tournament per weekend, and that carried over to a fundamentally different environment that a few people caught on to. I personally didn’t expect much in the way of Workshop decks, but faced all four of them in a row.
Metagame breakdown sorted by % of Top 8’s placements
Deck | Finishes | Count | Percentage of Field |
1 4cControl | (4,7,2,1,2,3,4,6,2,3) | 10 | 20.83% |
2 Titan.dec | (3,6,7,2,7) | 5 | 10.42% |
3 Control Slaver | (2,3,6,7,6) | 5 | 10.42% |
4 Landstill | (1,5,6,4,8) | 5 | 10.42% |
5 Gay Red | (1,5,5,7) | 4 | 8.33% |
6 Food Chain Goblins | (8,6) | 2 | 4.17% |
7 Dragon | (4,8) | 2 | 4.17% |
8 CrucibleStax | (4,3) | 2 | 4.17% |
9 B/W Aggro | 8 | 1 | 2.08% |
10 NinjaMask | 8 | 1 | 2.08% |
11 Mud | 8 | 1 | 2.08% |
12 Belcher | 7 | 1 | 2.08% |
13 Clamp Goblins | 5 | 1 | 2.08% |
14 Crushing Chamber | 5 | 1 | 2.08% |
15 Juice | 5 | 1 | 2.08% |
16 TriniStax | 4 | 1 | 2.08% |
17 Counter Bazaar | 3 | 1 | 2.08% |
18 Tog | 2 | 1 | 2.08% |
19 UGMadness | 2 | 1 | 2.08% |
20 Dryad Hate | 1 | 1 | 2.08% |
21 Draw7 | 1 | 1 | 2.08% |
There were a total of 21 archetypes present in 6 tournaments which breaks down to 3.5 decks per top 8. I don’t know whether I’d prefer there be more or less viable archetypes in Vintage, but I lean more to an open metagame. We do have the entire card pool and because of this I’d expect there not to be a set list of 60 cards that is perpetually dominant. Rogue decks are making top 8 appearances, and I love that. The Clamp Goblins deck looks to show some promise as I mentioned above, and the Dryad Hate deck seems to be worth looking into as well.
4cControl is packing the biggest punch all over the map. It missed 1 top 8, but from what I have learned this was because the only 4cControl deck that appeared ran no draw, opting of Chains instead. The reason why this was a bad idea can be written in a whole other article, but common sense with regards to playing control should tell you why without another article.
This leads me to a common misconception; everyone in New England plays 4cControl. Using July as a model, you can see there are three New England Tournaments: Maine, Myriad Games, and Pittsfield, Mass. There were a total of two 4cControl decks in the top 8 in all three. As for the player base, there was only one rumored 4cControl build (sans draw in favor of Chains) in the Maine tournament and when I was at Myriad, I only saw one other 4cControl build apart from my own.
Statistic Breakdown
Crucible of Worlds and Goblin Welders are shown to be the top two threats. Keep in mind that this is early in Crucibles lifespan; I expect it to catch up to Welder and even actually exceed Welder’s numbers on the list soon. Triskelion comes up for third which goes hand in hand with the number of Welders.
Rack and Ruin, Fire / Ice, Gorilla Shaman, and Swords to Plowshares are the most popular removal cards. This should really come as no shock, since Control Slaver and 4cControl both run the top 3 of those.
Unless you count Cunning Wish, Demonic Tutor and Tinker are the two most popular tutor spells, with Vampiric bringing up a close third. One might think that the two cheaper Mirage Block tutors would be far more popular, but they would be wrong. Since Tinker actually turns a turn 2 Tinker-Mox into a Sundering Titan or a Darksteel Colossus, the speed in which the Tinkered card wins the game offsets any limitations set forth on this tutor.
Thirst for Knowledge and Standstill lead the way for draw spells, though this is in part due to the fact that 4cControl can run anywhere from two to four Skeletal Scryings. Even so, Ancestral (an obvious one-of) takes an overall second place.
Here are the raw numbers for these July tournaments:
144 Force of Will
126 Wasteland
106 Volcanic Island
99 Mana Drain
95 Brainstorm
88 Red Elemental Blast
77 Polluted Delta
74 Island
72 Rack and Ruin
70 Underground Sea
67 Flooded Strand
61 Goblin Welder
57 Fire/Ice
51 Thirst for Knowledge
44 Mox Sapphire
43 Ancestral Recall
41 Swords to Plowshares
40 Standstill
39 Black Lotus
39 Time Walk
39 Tundra
38 Blue Elemental Blast
36 Crucible of Worlds
36 Cunning Wish
36 Mishra’s Factory
35 Mox Jet
35 Skeletal Scrying
35 Sol Ring
34 Strip Mine
33 Duress
33 Mox Pearl
33 Stifle
32 Gorilla Shaman
30 Exalted Angel
30 Mox Ruby
30 Null Rod
27 Chalice of the Void
27 Library of Alexandria
27 Mox Emerald
27 Trinisphere
26 Demonic Tutor
26 Faerie Conclave
24 Flametongue Kavu
24 Mana Crypt
24 Mishra’s Workshop
23 Mountain
22 Naturalize
22 Yawgmoth’s Will
20 City of Brass
20 Fact or Fiction
20 Nevinyrral’s Disk
20 Shivan Reef
20 Tangle Wire
19 Ancient Tomb
18 Blood Moon
18 Misdirection
18 Tropical Island
17 Tinker
17 Tormod’s Crypt
16 Cloud of Faeries
16 Curiosity
16 Grim Lavamancer
16 Smokestack
16 Spiketail Hatchling
16 Sundering Titan
16 Vampiric Tutor
15 Chain of Vapor
15 Damping Matrix
15 Disenchant
15 Mindslaver
15 Mystical Tutor
14 Intuition
14 Memory Jar
14 Xantid Swarm
13 Balance
13 Decree of Justice
13 Maze of Ith
13 Tolarian Academy
12 Accumulated Knowledge
12 Goblin Lackey
12 Goblin Piledriver
12 Mana Vault
12 Mind Twist
12 Squee, Goblin Nabob
12 Triskelion
12 Wooded Foothills
11 Goblin Warchief
11 Swamp
10 Bazaar of Baghdad
10 Ground Seal
9 Daze
9 Echoing Truth
9 Fire / Ice
9 Pentavus
8 Bayou
8 Circular Logic
8 Compulsion
8 Dark Ritual
8 Elvish Spirit Guide
8 Flametongue Kavu
8 Food Chain
8 Goblin Recruiter
8 Goblin Ringleader
8 Juggernaut
8 Mishra’s Factory
8 Mishra’s Workshop
8 Pyroblast
8 Skullclamp
8 Taiga
8 Worldgorger Dragon
7 Animate Dead
7 Chill
7 Duplicant
7 Gemstone Mine
7 Genesis Chamber
7 Gilded Lotus
7 Goblin Sharpshooter
7 Lightning Bolt
7 Platinum Angel
7 Viashino Heretic
6 Goblin Charbelcher
6 Gush
6 Necromancy
6 Oxidize
6 Tormod’s Crypt
6 Tsabo’s Web
6 Voidmage Prodigy
6 Wheel of Fortune
5 Annul
5 Artifact Mutation
5 Back to Basics
5 Coffin Purge
5 Deep Analysis
5 Forest
5 Gempalm Incinerator
5 Goblin Matron
5 Hurkyl’s Recall
5 Lotus Petal
5 Siege-Gang Commander
5 Skirk Prospector
5 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
4 Aquamoeba
4 Arcbound Crusher
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Careful Study
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Control Magic
4 Cranial Plating
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Exhume
4 Frogmite
4 Glimmervoid
4 Grim Monolith
4 Hidden Gibbons
4 Hydroblast
4 Illusionary Mask
4 Juntu Stakes
4 Land Grant
4 Memnarch
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Metalworker
4 Mind’s Eye
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Night’s Whisper
4 Ornithopter
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Plains
4 Plated Slagwurm
4 Price of Progress
4 Psychatog
4 Pyroclasm
4 Quirion dryad
4 Reanimate
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4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Tendrils of Agony
4 Timetwister
4 Tinder Wall
4 Triskelion
4 Unsummon
4 Volcanic Island
4 Volrath’s Shapeshifter
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Arrogant Wurm
3 Birds of Paradise
3 Chrome Mox
3 Dance of the Dead
3 Diminishing Returns
3 Energy Flux
3 Exploration
3 Firestorm
3 Flametongue Kavu
3 Hurkyll’s Recall
3 Mogg Fanatic
3 Mox Diamond
3 Planar Void
3 Putrid Imp
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Root Maze
3 Shattering Pulse
3 Teferi’s Response
3 Teferi’s Response
3 Trinket Mage
3 Vindicate
3 Windfall
3 Zombie Infestation
2 Ambassador Laquatus
2 Berserk
2 Constant Mists
2 Defense Grid
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Ebony Charm
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Fastbond
2 future sight
2 Gaea’s Blessing
2 Gigapede
2 Karn Silver Golem
2 Karn, Silver Golem
2 Kill Switch
2 Lim Dul’s Vault
2 Living Wish
2 Masticore
2 Misdirection
2 Necropotence
2 Perish
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Phantom Nishoba
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Rack of Ruin
2 Rule of Law
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Timewalk
2 Unmask
2 Wash Out
2 Windswept Heath
2 Winter Orb
2 Wonder
1 Attunement
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bone Shredder
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Caller of the Claw
1 capsize
1 Channel
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Counterspell
1 Crop Rotation
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Deconstruct
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Dust Bowl
1 Elvish Lyrist
1 Entomb
1 Forest (2)
1 Frantic Search
1 Gaea’s Blessing
1 Gilded Drake
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Keldon Vandals
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Mana Leak
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Moat
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Phage the Untouchable
1 Plagiarize
1 Scavenger Folk
1 Slice and Dice
1 Sliver Queen
1 Symbiotic Wurm
1 Tainted Pact
1 Terminate
1 The Abyss
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Undiscovered Paradise
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain