What’s the second-most played Scourge card in Type I? What’s the average casting cost breakdown for all Type I Top 8 decks in 2004? What does a 36-24-36 woman really look like? The answers to all this and more are just a click away!
Not since Fact or Fiction was unrestricted have we seen the hypothetical question”can control be too good?” But recently, Hulk has made us all think about it again. It’s certainly not to the point of”restrict something” yet, but many of the big names in the format agree that not only is Hulk the best deck, but it has no truly bad matchups. In fact, even its number of appearances underestimates it, since the majority of the nine showings were in the finals, with no other deck having more than two finals placements.
My constant requests for article ideas finally yielded the suggestion from Oscar”Cinnamon Buns” Tan that, in lieu of a substantial issue to discuss, I develop a new deck, like in the days of olde tyme Tog-Growing. So I skimmed over a list of set mechanics, figuring it shouldn’t be too hard to find one that hadn’t been broken yet. Kicker was wicked bad, so I finally settled on Threshold.
Last week’s”all numbers, all the time” article elicited two requests for data, which was perfect, because this was my week of crazy midterms, so I needed material. The first request, from Rudy van Soest, was that I take my assorted collection of data and find some trends, so I compiled a listing of all the IsoKeeper builds from September on and tried to figure out the optimal build. The second was from JP Meyer, who said,”My loins are quivering in anticipation. I love the set breakdowns, but you know what I love more? When you list what cards appear the most per set.” How can you resist a request like that?
Have you ever wondered just how much things like Alternate Casting Cost, Madness, Flashback, and your favorite mechanic affects the Type One environment? Are you curious to see how much each set is represented in Type One top 8s? Maybe you’re simply looking for a Magic article that features less blow-hard opinion, and more analysis based on facts? Whatever the case, Phil Stanton has the scoop, so all you need to do is check inside…
Just as I opened the year, so I’m now exploring the most prominent, large tournament results of February Type One. January was filled with”atomic” (Bazaar and Workshop) aggro, and now we’ll see a rebound of other categories, most notably control in the form of Hulk Smash.
To most, Type One tournaments are twenty to forty people battling for a Mox at indeterminate intervals, or even smaller weekend gatherings. Not everyone has Power cards, proxy policies vary (most aren’t sanctioned events for this reason), and people will not be playing the absolute best decks (ah, Psychatog, how I hate thee so…). So today, I’ll explore some of the available data for small tournaments in January and February that were still big enough to get posted on www.morphling.de and try to find some insight into small metagames based on their differences with larger ones.
Phil Stanton is the best Type One writer you haven’t read. He’s logical, insightful, and downright entertaining. He’s even achieved the coveted JP Meyer Stamp of Approval! So with those qualifications, how can you pass up taking a peek at what”Dr. SylvanBunns” has to say today, which just happens to investigate whether there really is a lack of White in the Vintage metagame and what Wizards should do about it?
Last time, I approached design for Vintage from the perspective of whole sets, trying to use general trends to show how a set could be aimed at Vintage without individual cards designed for Type 1, even if the sets that came out on top were overrepresented because of a couple of cards usable in a wide variety of decks. In the forum thread after the article, I got multiple requests to look at the individual card breakdown, so that’s my objective this time.
Last month there was some discussion of designing cards for Type 1, or whether it was even possible to do so. Last week, I took ten major T1 tournaments and analyzed them for what they told us about the metagame, and this time I decided to take the same Top 8s and see how sets in the past have managed to sneak their cards into Vintage.
In the wake of a very crowd-pleasing Banned and Restricted announcement on December 1st (DCI: Seriously, Type 1 players adored it) and much ado about the future of Vintage caused by the wrecking-ball of a combo deck, Burning Desire, I decided to look at the tournament data for late 2003 and break down the results. The one criteria for B&R changes that everyone openly accepts is tournament distortion/dominance, so really, the way to approach the community’s most controversial issue in the least controversial way is obvious.
If you want to know which decks and cards really dominated in Type I, you must read this article.
Burning Desire has shown us the way of the future: There are enough ways to break the rules that they barely exist anymore for a Type 1 combo deck. Granted, I didn’t play during Combo Winter – but I’ve never seen a deck before where drawing the eye-popping three-land hand was considered a serious blow to the probability of that hand being playable (even Gro decks and ten-land Stompy don’t hate drawing their land as much as this). So what can we do about it?
When you mention you play Magic, what people think – if they think anything at all – is an instant stereotype of a gamer: Reclusive and not inclined to be a positive force in his community, and most likely with poor personal hygiene and no experience talking to girls. Me? I hate this stereotype. I want it gone. When people hear”I play Magic,” I want them to think of it like they would think of”I’m on the math team” or”I play chess” – respectable, intellectually challenging, perhaps nerdy… But not a sign of hopeless removal from reality. So how can we combat this image?
