Back in November, Knut suggested to find the ten most important issues to Type 1 players and to base an article on this. I thought of ten questions on my own which I polled members of The Mana Drain on. Helping me to interpret the data is Steve”Smmennycakes” (he loves it when you call him that) Menendian and providing color commentary is Vintage World Champ Carl Winter.
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.
Is it just me, or has the Type One community seemed particularly irate these past few weeks? Some advocates of Type One have been whining more than my four-year-old sister when she wants cheese. What is all of the hullabaloo about, anyway? Mark Rosewater reprinting an article with a few extra blurbs? This article, however, is not really geared towards people who have their minds made up, so don’t confuse them with the facts. Instead, it is focused on the average person whose head is spinning from all of the Type One Speak. I will try to speak English to you, and in doing so, will probably annoy an entire chunk of the Type One community.
Before anything else, you have to give him credit. I criticized – too violently, some said – Mark Rosewater’s column because it was just a cut-and-paste of an old column and was certainly unflattering, sounded patronizing in a number of areas, asked for Type I articles on topics that had already been debated to death on Star City and TheManaDrain, and focused on what they wouldn’t do without saying much about what they would.
Forget all that.
To paraphrase George Santayana, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
If so, let’s hope Mark Rosewater didn’t get a life sentence.
More playtesting coverage from Oscar. Bea Arthur conversations are not included.
Today’s feature demonstrates an updated but still skeletal version of Suicide Black, to illustrate how the”modern” deck plays. The only truly modern development incorporated at this point is the obvious substitution of Chalice of the Void for Null Rod, so we don’t take in the changes all at once, and to better appreciate the latest post-Mirrodin tech.
“I don’t trust R&D to make what they think are”Type I-specific” cards. No one there knows enough about Type I, and their little gift might prove more abusive than they realized. Then, we’re stuck with it until DCI says something, and no one knows whether or not they’re looking at the new mistake until they actually make a restriction.”
The above text seems to suggest that you do not think Wizards can make cards for, or even designed with half an eye towards, Type 1. In fact, Wizards themselves have admitted they simply have not the time and resources to playtest Type 1 (a statement which, although I find it disappointing, I fully sympathize with), and they would probably agree with your assertion that no-one at Wizards knows enough about Type 1 to design cards for it. But, my question is, does anyone?
This week Oscar plays in a real life Type I tournament, writes about his performance, and goes in-depth on the Keeper versus Dragon match-up. Everyone who has ever complained that Oscar rarely writes about his losses needs to read this one…
Since the printing of Hymn to Tourach (and its eerie wolf-head art), Discard has been Black’s most prominent mechanic. The reactive Blue counterspells can be used in both control and aggro-control deck structures, and the same goes for proactive Black Discard. You have to distinguish Black aggro-control, for example, from more control-oriented strategies such as Pox and Nether Void. In the same way, you distinguish the feel of Tempest-Urza’s Saga-era Type II Suicide Black decks from what you called Type II Mono Black Control.
I’d like to begin my demonstration of Black-based aggro-control, however, with the original”old school” Suicide builds, the kind that was played against”The Deck” and mono Blue back when Fact or Fiction was still unrestricted. These decks featured the simple skeleton of beatdown, discard, and mana denial, and today’s more complicated blends are best understood with the classic foundations.
You have to admit that War Elemental is one of the spoiler entries that immediately catches your eye. You’re tempted to do some mental weighing. You can just attack with your first-turn creature or fire off an extra Lightning Bolt like a cumbersome Chain Lightning, then every other burn spell in your hand deals at least twice its damage. Normally, its triple-Red, three-mana cost would be enough to merit it just a passing comment, but things have changed with Chalice of the Void… So is War Elemental better and does it raise the value of the three-slot in Type I?
After a dozen test games, I came to some preliminary conclusions which held true. Spoils of the Vault was amazing in a MaskNaught deck. Furthermore, in many ways, a budget build of this deck gets some huge benefits against certain matchups. One of the more frustrating aspects of Type 1 tournament play is that the people who own power have the best chance at winning more power and thus expanding their collection. Well, this deck gives all you budget players an excellent shot at those prizes, too.
What I fail to understand is why people pooh-pooh Type I players who call for a brake on the format’s still-unrestricted broken tempo cards and call them”casual” players, but not bat an eye when Kai Budde says:”I hate the format. Basically, if you want to win, you have to build a deck that wins on turn 2 or turn 3, and if you do that it always becomes really inconsistent.” It’s pretty much the same problem in Type I. But hey, I like being on the same side of the argument as Kai Budde.
Hulk Smash was the big story of the Vintage Championships last GenCon, but a lot of people forget about the finalist’s deck: Vengeur Masque. Masque has since established itself as Type I’s premier aggro deck. The philosophies behind The Funker and Stacker 2 merged somewhat into Benjamin Rott’s Tools ‘n’ Tubbies, which was in turn supplanted by Vengeur. The two are very similar in spirit, with Survival of the Fittest providing the card advantage for both, but with Illusionary Mask playing the key tempo booster for Vengeur.
I think the common perception going into this month is that Welder Mud, Keeper, and Dragon are the only viable decks. The picture as I now see it is far more complex. It may be presumptuous to say it this early, but I don’t think any more testing is going to get me much further, or lead me to a radically different answer: We have one of the most balanced, complex, and interesting metagames I have ever seen in Type One. With that said, let me show you two updated builds of Keeper and a new, Chalice-proofed Sligh!
