Helsinki :
33 players, 12 drain decks.
36.36%

drain decks in top 8 : 1
12.5%

(1) = 12.5/36.36
(1) = 0.3437

Blue Bell :
44 players, 21 drain decks
47.72%

drain decks in top8 : 3
37.5%

(1) = 0.786

Zurich :
54 players, 19 drain decks
35.2%

drain decks in top8 : 3
37.5%

(1) = 1.065

Levalois :
52 players, 24 drain decks
46.2%

drain decks in top8 : 4

(1) = 1.08

We got an average of : (33*0.3437+44*0.786+54*1.065+52*1.08) / 183 = 0.9197 < 1

I've done the calculation on the few tournaments for which i could find a breakdown (thx Wiley for help). As you can see, the result show us that a lot of players bring a drain deck to tournaments. But the ratio in not that good for those decks.
Even me thought that (1) would have been generaly far more than "1.00", but it appears it's not significant.

I have to admit that my sample may not be significant since it's only based on 4 tournaments. The study deserves to be extended to a bigger sample.

Lots of drain decks. Lots of top8's.
Is there a real problem ?
Or is all this just a new blabla ?

nowadays, Ubased Control decks just pack the best cards of Vintage and most of them are restricted. Restricting all the good remaining blue cards will not mean those decks will become average. They will still be played a lot and they will still be a lot represented in top8s.

It would be interesting to have the breakdowns of the 15 tournaments you are based on. If 30-50% of the decks played are drain-based, then it would be normal that 30-50% of them are top8ing, since they are good decks. The interesting number would be :

breakdown :

(1)   % of the top8
        % played in the tournament

The result would give us a better way to appreciate DrainBased dominance.
If (1) >> 1 then, something may be done.
If (1) >= 1 then, lot of written lines for nothing
If (1) < 1 then all the energy spent there is just a waste of time.

Why do you want people not to play the best spells of Vintage ?
As i previously said, blue/black just pack the best cards ever printed. People play mana drain because it's just the best counterspell effect available. They play TFK because it's with intuition/AK the only remaining blue draw spell.

But i sware that even if you restrict both of them, people will still play Ub decks. Because they ARE Vintage.

don't worry, nobody took your deck for being his

If mana drain decks are still dominant, it's mostly due to the fact Power Cards : ancestral recal, brainstorm, tinker, mystical, gifts ungiven, merchant scroll and time walk are .... blue.
At the same time, the counterspell plan is the best disruption way to slow down opponents, before playing and defending our threat.
Blue has all : the engine, the tutors, the threats and the disruption.
Now we have to say that your whole article is talking about Blue decks with black splash and we then have all the overpowered blue restricted cards being 3-4 off rather than 1off. Blue can then be consistant even by running only spoilers.

Who cares about manadrain in those conditions ? who cares about thirst for knowledge ?

the ISLAND is the best card of blue based decks. Why not restrict all the cards that lead to it ? Restrict flooded strand and polluted delta. Maybe restrict also underground sea. Now we'll have drain decks with poor mana base and nobody will cry around mana drain anymore.

I'm not saying we have to do it. I'm just telling that restricting manadrain or TFK is a mystake.

My 2 cents.

I worked around with that list at the beginning. I didn't run the red splash, but a black one, for a few confidant, DT, VT, yWin and a tendrils and my kill was most of the time the tendrils after a bit of beatdown from my creatures.
the original list of the deck is :
// Lands
    2  Tundra
    1  Strip Mine
    1  Library of Alexandria
    3  Flooded Strand
    3  Polluted Delta
    3  Island
    2  Underground Sea
    1  Tolarian Academy

// Creatures
    4  Jotun Grunt
    3  Dark Confidant

// Spells
    4  Brainstorm
    1  Mystical Tutor
    3  Misdirection
    4  Merchant Scroll
    1  Mox Pearl
    4  Force of Will
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Time Walk
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Fact or Fiction
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Demonic Tutor
    1  Chain of Vapor
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    4  Mana Drain
    1  Rebuild
    1  Lotus Petal
    1  Repeal
    1  Tendrils of Agony

repeal and chain of vapor + a rebuild, cause the chalice we don't wan't to face is for 2. I play fact or fiction as a fat drawer easily recursable but i think gifts would be better since it can grab utlimate without worying when they go to graveyard.

Magic : Clichy#17 Vintage Tournament

Date :

Sunday, january, 14th

Address :
22-28 rue Henri Barbusse - CLICHY-LA-GARENNE (92) (near paris)

->   Métro RATP :    Mairie de Clichy (7 minutes by foot)
->   trainstation SNCF :    Clichy-Levallois (7 minutes by foot)

Info:
Door opening : 9h30
tournament start : 10h30
Cost : 12€
Maximum number of player : 120
DCI sanctionned

Dotation !!!!! :

Top8

Beta Mox Emerald !
Unlim Time Walk!
Library of Alexandria
Mana Drain VI
Unlim Berserk
Revised Tundra
Revised Tropical Island
Force of Will

1st Unpowered :
Mishra's Workshop

best team of 3 players (based on the cumulative results at the end of the tournament) :   
Steam Vents
Blood Crypt
Godless Shrine

Instant prizes : Italian Legend Boosters  (Reserved to Unpowered deck beating a powered deck at the first round)

Many Boosters for the people with the most points bellow the top8

Contact:
PI ---> preinscriptions@eternal-magic.com

Good Luck !

// Lands
    1  Strip Mine
    5  Plains
    1  Library of Alexandria
    3  Flooded Strand
    3  Scrubland
    3  Swamp

// Creatures
    4  Dark Confidant

// Spells
    1  Balance
    3  Goblin Charbelcher
    2  Tithe
    2  Seal of Cleansing
    4  Duress
    2  Abolish
    4  Land Tax
    1  Mox Sapphire
    4  Scroll Rack
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Black Lotus
    3  Chains of Mephistopheles
    4  Chalice of the Void
    3  Swords to Plowshares

here is the last list of parfait i worked on. Parfait is the first "competitive" deck i've played after casual.. I wanted to adapt it to the beginning of dragon's/slaver metagame.
Dark confidant was a more recent inclusion..

I have a few questions for the organizers :
- how many byes were distributed before the tournament ?
- since which round did people without byes meet some people with byes ?


The fact people with byes have a better pairing than people without is certainly modifying the results

I mean : if 32 pairs of 2 byes are distributed :
round 3   -> 16 match where people with byes meet themselves with 6 points
136 other men   -> max 34 other 6 points people that meet themselves (17 match)


round 4   ->  16 match  with 9 points for people with byes AND people without. byes meet byes ...
we can see that people winning with byes do not meet people winning without byes until the 5th-6th round. Abroad people would have always been behind the others ..

I think this is the main factor that lowered the number of participants. I would have been glad to come (from paris) but doing a 2500km trip to be the "victim" of a huge imbalance would have discussed me.

the quantity of byes (won in 12-20 people tournament) lead to imbalance..

sorry for my difficulties to explain myself in english, hope you understood...

kLu
 

the average cost in not that superior to most of decks : this one runs only 2 5Cc spells and more 3 Cc.

I made a similar list but i've opted for some options :
only 3 workshop cause you don't absolutely need it cause of the number of colored spells
only 3 waste cause most decks runs many basics
i would not play the masticors for the "only 3 shop" reason.
i would run only 3 grunts because it's a very bad first turn drop..
i may prefer jitte raze than null rods but that depends on the metagame you are evolving in.
tolarian academy is often a bad card since you run very few high Cc. I would prefer stabilizing the mana base with more colored lands/fetch.
i've tried some bazaar for it's great synergie with confidant and the fact it gives you a way to entertain the grunts. i used to play 2 but 3 may be the good number.

my 2 cents,
kLu

A friend of mine is really found of that deck.
the list runs red rather than white for 2 rebs and 2-3 gorilla shamans main deck.
Intuition is god in that deck, since it fetchs bazaar+ strip + life from the loam..
wastelands, sol ring, full moxen are needed in the deck to have the intuition/deep analysis open fast enough (or even hardcast logic).

I aggree with you that the card is probably really bad in the current format.
But we don't have all the cards of Timespiral yet and the mechanism is new (never saw what it looks like)
I'm not trying to bring it in any current archetypes but i'm brainstorming arround what cards could give you enough tempo to prevent the opponent to win since you don't have drawn your cards.

mmh, my mystake, i'll edit my post
my brain is not fonctionning well at early morning

Vintage deck will soon be able to run up to 5 ancestral recall.
The suspend mechanic appears not to be good in vintage but there are some cards in the extension that can make it viable (because of a low Cc and the possible synergies with someothers cards) :


This card can accelerate the coming of the ancestral by 1-2 turns

It can also be used against stax : to remove the tockens of the smokestack/tangle/triskel each turn. Deals with chalice even @1 (costs 4)
EDIT : doesn't deal with chalice for 1
It can have some other utilities like deplating a gemmstone mine or removing counters from an aether vial/jitte or remove a fate counter from the myojins 
Another thing, if you run tangle wire in a non-WS deck, you can wait for your suspend spells to come by keeping your wire to 4 (or more)


Even if the card does nothing by itself, earning a second upkeep can be quite synergistic with some other cards : dark confidant, oath of druids, squee ... but ..nothing fantastic.

Just some food for Thought

The problem with the lotus in stax is a bit different because it won't stay as a permanent mana source. So, if you kept a had with only 1 mana lands and try to resolve a cap or an uba mask with bazaar in hand, facing a fow or a bounce causes you to loose the game. A friend of mine was so upset by that "1shot mana" that is not a permanent and that made him loose many game against fow or any bounce (chain of vapor) that he put his lotus in the sb ... only for the combo match up. At the beginning, it was a joke but he never missed it in the appropriate match up.

I really aggree with Moxlotus on this :
A broken hand can lead anyone playing baddly and doing mystakes to the win.. But once you face a good opponent, or any broken game, the only way to win is to do a few enough wrong plays and take a slight advantage on each mystake he could do.
I've won a bunch off games (and tournaments) watching my opponents loosing alone... Last top8 i've played, i finished second. But it was not because my opponent was better, it was because I did give him the game by doing mystakes.

In fact, facing a broken opponent don't allow you to do any mystake if you want to have a chance to win. In revenge, if you are broken (like resolved ancestral in the 2 first turns) you are allowed to do some little mystakes and still win against an average player. To win a tournament, you must be skilled enough not to play in wrong ways. to win games, you can  be only broken.
kLu

I've played against a deck running witness and the synergies are pretty good.
works with the lotus too.

the engine looked like :
3 merchant
2 gifts
2 cunning wish
1 will
2 demonic / vampiric

disrupt was like :
2 remands
3 mana drain
4 fow
1 misdi(?)

remand is quite good in oath, since you are mostly looking for tempo. it's about to never be a dead card and sometimes is a lot better than counter spell (against stax for example)
you can remand your own spells to have them not countered and draw a card, really strong with ancestral recall which is easily fetched with merchant scrolls.

Wipe Away
Instant

Split Second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't play spells or activated abilities that aren't mana abilities.)
Return target permanent to its owner's hand.

What are the 4 Mana ritual speed spells we currently have in vintage ?
Some stax artifacts : uba mask, juggernaut ... (colorless and can be played with shop).
Deep analysis : drain is usefull here and flashback is really cheap. The effect is really awesome
Flashbacking recoup : this makes you win the game, no ?
Ninja of the deep hours : his ninjutsu ability is used a lot more often than its hardcasting cost.

a few cards worth more but those cards are a lot more broken than this will ever be : memory jar, Ybargain, desire and all these cards can be played with the mana of a drain or from dark rituals

Well, i think all the discussion about that card can be restricted to : is that card powerfull enough to be the most extensive (color and cost) ritual speed spell of Vintage ?

The fact it costs UU1 doesn't matter that much (dependings on the deck) because you don't have to keep the UU for drain  aside. Being sure that your spell resolve whatever is the situation in the game is at least a great guarantee of efficiency and 3 mana is not that expensive when you are sure your opponent can't answer anything.
Even fish may be able to run some of these rather than stps to deal with big guys.

Essuyage is the french name of that new bounce.
This card will be able to deal with colossus even after a ywill, bounce a welder eot without him bringing in mindslaver


split second : this spell can't be counter, can't be answered by any ability .. (last card on the pile)
Bounce target permanent

well, just a bomb for blue enough producing decks.

Edit : What do you think about that card?, what decks will be able to support the UU of the casting cost? and in what way it will act on the vintage metagame?

If you feel bad with the auriok, you can just switch it for a second tyrant and the spell bomb for an additional cunning wish, to feet better to the thread.
but there are real synergies between the 2 crea : auriok gives artefact to feed the tyrant, enabling the bounce ability even if you have no cards in hand and tyrant gives the auriok the way to kill without the lotus.


What i wanted to show in my "auriok oath augmented with tyrant" is not the way to kill with auriok but the core of the deck : Packing 3 intuition, 3 deep an, 2 merchant scroll, 2 cunning wish, 1 demonic, and some other cards like ywill that can all win once tyrant on board. What i wanted to show too is that once you've won a counter war to have your oath into play (because in control mirror, once your oath is in play, you don't have a lot of cards in hand) you can easily go off with your tyrant with some deep analysis or a recoup. Even krosan reclamation can be flashback to have a bounce.

i think you forgot the way to get the cunning wish

!! you really want me to argue over that?

the goal of those deck is to disrupt you efficiently in that way you can't counter it. If only you had run mana leak, i would say ok, but you run drain + fow, as does 95% of blue "control" based deck. Cards that a deck like icbm oath is designed to roll over.

it costs 7 to play your ywill + 3 (cunning wish) + 3 (rebuild) !.

I see 4 kill condition  in malhavoc version, 4 in mine and only 2 in yours. I'll explain : to be able to cast a brainfreez for 15 in a game, you need either ywill, or a good draw engine... or both. Cunning wish on its own can't be counted as a win condition without one of these or the tyrant and the chalice version lacks a good draw engine, it has no late game.

3 Deep analysis.

intuition, merchant scroll...

The matter with oath is in fact not to win once oath can be activated but to have oath in play with orchard.
If you have more question about my specific build, i pray you to send me a pm rather than saying wrong things aboue auriok.

we'll say it explains to everybody who didn't understand the combo how it works, but thx, i knew

It's is slower because you first have to bounce your chalice and you have to have 2 accel on board where both other decks have stuff to play from graveyard or way to bring back the moxen.


I really see no interest to stop blessing to trigger and in both case, once you got your crea on board, you do not fear having a few cards in library. Krosan also puts on top of library the cunning wish, the ywill or the black (for auriok) for the kill. It nearly never happened to me to loose cause of a counter on the krosan, because once I've oath most of my library, i've already drawn a lot of cards with the deep analysis and found a counter to ensure krosan will resolve.


If you gift for regrowth and will, the 2 other cards will probably be walk and the missing element of the combo (orchard/oath) and you've got the krosan to shuffle the will in the library


"you" was still for the original list but your explanation is quite good too. Even if i really don't like extract : good players / decks don't care of at least the first one. but one thing is sure, you will loose the first game because of their land control superiority.
What i don't like in your list is that it relies a lot on the oath to bring the kill on board. ywill is a kill card and win nearly whatever happened during the game, giving you enough mana to hardcast what you want or simply giving you the possibility to wish for brainfreez without the creature on board.
that's why i really like the intuition + cunning wish way to win with the auriok in the mirror.
Plus, with the 2 crea, you can win easily even if you have removed lotus to will, no mox on board and no business spells in hand. (taking back pearl from grave, then ruby, then infinite mana then pyrite)

Edit : spelling

My comments on your decklist would be : 1 creature seems not enough cause with the tyrant in hand in the early game or in the late game without back up  means you do not activate oath.

@Vartemis : your decklist may be quite good in a specific metagame (mostly combo and stax) but it's a lot slower than malhavoc's list or mine.
our 2 lists are combo oriented, mostly killing once the crea is on board.

gaea's blessing really is a bad card where krosan can wreck some early ywill or animate on combo. plus you do not run yawgmoth's will which is just too good not be be played.

In the topic's list, you already run regrowth so your gifts setup may not require recoup. Without saying adding red weakens the manabase.
i really prefer tfk in sb rather than fact because cunning wish costs 3 and you may not have the 4 mana to cast fact or the B to cast vampiric, wishing for a useless card
The cost of holystic wisdom seems too color expensive to me. i think you should replace it by something more operational.
i aggree with you for most of your other choices but i was just wandering how is your match up against standard oath? how do you deal with wastelands and opponents orchard ?

A friend of me is working on an auriok oath since a long time but had a lot of difficulties against stax or even graveyard hate like wretch or leyline. Since he tried tyrant with his auriok, the stax match up became highly favorable.
auriok is really a good beast since the deck runs intuition and cunning wish : you can intuition for auriok, pyrite and auriok and just cunning for the shallow grave.
It enables the tyrant in a great way even if you do not have any cards in hand.
All the auriok hates are soluced by a second activation of oath revealing tyrant.

// Lands
    1  Tundra
    2  Tropical Island
    4  Forbidden Orchard
    2  Flooded Strand
    2  Polluted Delta
    3  Island
    1  Underground Sea

// Creatures
    1  Tidespout Tyrant
    1  Auriok Salvagers

// Spells
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Mana Crypt
    2  Merchant Scroll
    1  Mana Leak
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Mox Emerald
    4  Mana Drain
    1  Time Walk
    1  Ancestral Recall
    4  Force of Will
    4  Brainstorm
    4  Oath of Druids
    1  Mox Jet
    2  Misdirection
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Sapphire
    3  Intuition
    3  Deep Analysis
    1  Krosan Reclamation
    1  Demonic Tutor
    1  Pyrite Spellbomb
    2  Cunning Wish

// Sideboard
SB: 1  Misdirection
SB: 1  Echoing Truth
SB: 1  Chain of Vapor
SB: 1  Rebuild
SB: 1  Shallow Grave
SB: 1  Brain Freeze
SB: 1  Vampiric Tutor
SB: 3  Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1  Life from the Loam
SB: 1  Strip Mine
SB: 1  Thirst for Knowledge
SB: 1  Orim's Chant

Here is the list. The deck only weakness is his mana base but resolving a single oath doesn't need much resource.
merchant scroll is a really good card, i cannot imagine cutting them.

For information :
XIII : Florian Faucheux who was playing frigorid
kLu : Jean Baptiste Aymes, i was playing kI.merchant.

The "French Vintage Championship" is a selection of the 32 best french player over all the tournament that were played the previous year. The fact we were only 18 is due, as stated adrienger to various reasons. The most obvious one is that the organisator didn't choose the date but Wotc did and i think they choosed the worse day they could  .

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=27005.0

You should check on that topic : I've built a similar deck that performs really well for a quite small budget.
Unpowered version is quite easy to build with that structure.

tell me what you think about it

Edit : url

I would personnaly play, turn 1 duress and say next.
I don't see any reason to play brainstorm from the lotus petal on the first turn. That play could be done the turn after without any loss of tempo and it digs a card further.
going to necro turn one could be pretty good, but facing a fow means you loose the game.

What are you guys thinking European metagame is?  :shock:


In my oppinion, a deck loosing to any form of combo can't be a good deck ATM because combo is a lot present in our meta.
People now know how to play against aggro deck (hear ichorid) and now have some solutions like silent arbiter or echoing truth.
Another thing is that i really can't see in what way draw7s can be good when you do not run some disruption to stop all the broken thing you'll let your opponent do

I think the deck is able to beat any bad slaver player that goes to the welder path were any nowadays control player does not have to counter any threat of your deck to go goldfishing into yawgmoth's on turn 3. (i don't even say anything about draining a wurm )
You claim a good match against stax?
with a good 0 basic lands, who are you playing against???

Ninja of the deep ours looks like a good card with jotun