1. What do you predict the turnout to be?  672

2. How many Force of Wills do you expect to see in the Top 8? 24

3. How many Wastelands in the Top 8? 8

4. In the top 8, what will be the most popular:
a. Blue card: Brainstorm

b. White card: Swords to Plowshares

c. Green card: Protean Hulk

d. Red card: Goblin Lackey

e. Black card: Duress

f. Gold card: Meddling Mage

g. artifact: Umezawwa's Jitte

h. non-land card (most popular of 4a-g):  Force of Will

5. What's going to be the highest placing combination deck? Hulk-Flash

6. What's the most common basic land type in the Top 8? Island

7. What's the most common dual land in the Top 8? Tundra

8. Goblins in the T8? (yes or no) Yes

9. Hulk Flash in the T8? (yes or no) Yes

10. Threshold in the T8? (yes or no) Yes

11. Fish in the T8? (yes or no) Yes

12. Survival.dec in the T8? (yes or no) No

13. High Tide in the T8? (yes or no) No

14. Landstill in the T8? (yes or no) No

15. BW Deadguy Ale (Disruption) in the T8? (yes or no) Yes, but retooled to beat hulk-flash

16. Gamekeepers/Salvagers in the T8? (yes or no) No

BONUS
17. ___Fish________ [deck] will take first place.
18. Who will win: Pro or Not?  Not
19. The winner will be: _____Nicholas Cortez___ ______. (Specific player name)

Before the Split Second effect actually matters, the trigger to remove the final counter for this card is put onto the stack.  Once that trigger resolves, the card is played.  If you stifle the last trigger, you effectivley stop the spell from being played.  Therefore, the card stays removed from game, but never triggers to be played.

I do have testing bias, but it is almost always against my deck for the following reason:
I do not use the same rule of thumb for my deck as I do my opponents for mulligans.  In testing, if I find that I have to mull too much with an aggro-control deck, that means that there are mana issues (either not enough, too much, wrong colors, bad curve, etc...).

In response to your claim that those number should count... since I rarely play "tier 1" decks, numbers for matches against my deck rarely matter.  So I tend to be more critical of my deck and thus the bias is just imposed on it in this manner.

When I am testing a deck, I spend the first 5-10 games attempting to learn the matchup.  Usually, I'm right-on in how to address critical cards just by looking at them.  Occasionally, I do find that the matchups are not as straight-forward as I had anticipated and am forced to play more matches to "learn" how to beat the deck with certain cards.  My best example of this was learning the pikula vs threshold matchup in legacy before gencon last year.  I couldn't improve the matchup over 50-60% post sb until I actually realized that the problem was dark confidant.  Once I started sideboarding him out, the matchup went to 80% postboard (very counter-intuitive since he is the reason to play the deck).


Edit:  To adress the issue of Long type decks, combo has a tendency to just lose to itself.  I agree that you should address mulligans in your matches with combo decks that often mulligan most questionable hands.  This is not usually the case for aggro-control as the redundency built into them usually allows them to consistently keep 6-7 card hands since their power level is usually of close to the same caliber in all of their cards.

@moxlotus - I definitely understand what you are saying, but I don't think that people undesrstand what this deck does well, or even why it would do well against the named decks.

I'll give a brief synopsis of how it affects slaver and gifts.  Slaver and gifts are considered "drain decks" because they run mana drain and are built to exploit the large tempo boost granted them from casting mana drain or spell.  Mana Drain is usually active on turn 2.  1/10 times it will be castable turn 1, but thats part of what most people consider the nuts draws...

If you design your deck to setup on turn 1 so that it can overpower decks turns 2-5, you can almost negate the affect mana drain can have on a deck.  For example: 

Turn 1, drain player plays land, off color mox and merchant scroll for fow / gifts / ancestral (if gifts) or a turn 1 welder / brainstorm (if slaver).  This play is to setup a turn 2 explosion into a turn 3-4 win.  My deck (based on statistics), will do something incredibly pertinent to the board or hand of the opponent on turn 1.  A turn 1 hypnotic specter (approximately 20% of the time), a turn 1 confidant (30% of the time), or a turn 1 duress (35% of the time) is the usual play of the deck (this is why cutpurse is a bad call for this deck). 

Since all of the decks listed do some setup on turn 1 (mine actually can attack their hand on turn 1 erasing their setup), turn 2 is where the action starts.  Gifts and slaver both usually have between 3 and 4 mana on turn 2 due to acceleration.  This allows them to go for tutoring their crushing game finishers (gifts, thirst, recall).  Gifts and thirst are often turned off with leyline, but in the event they are not, they cast a gifts.  Statistics say that by turn 2, I should have a daze or fow between 70-80% of the time, so I would usually cast a counter on their spell.  If my opponent counters my counter, they resolve the final piece of their setup puzzle.  Now, 40% of the time, leyline has neutered their ability to flat out win with their gifts.  20% of the time, I should be able to swing with hypnotic specter and force them to dump a critical piece of the puzzle.  Or 35% of the time, my duress hits one of their counters and I actually counter their bomb card.

No, I'm not saying that 95% of the time this means I win, but it means that my deck forces my opponent to have "the nuts" or just get buried in card advantage by dark confidant and / or hypnotic specter.  This is actually completed by having a more relevant turn 1 play for the matchup.  Duress, hypnotic specter, and dark confidant are much more pertinent to the game than merchant scroll and welder.  MDGifts accels at setting up a bomb spell (ancestral recall or gifts ungiven) and then winning with a series of plays based off card advantage after that.  Slaver's heavy reliance on the graveyard allows them to just run neutered against leyline most of the time. 

Most decks aren't prepared to deal with leyline game 1.  Gifts often runs echoing truth / chain of vapor game 1, but that means that they spend a tutor and usually turns 2-3 to get rid of a spell that I paid no mana for and can usually just replay at that point.

In both of the games I lost to gifts in the tournament, my opponent was smart enough to realize how to play against my deck. 
Game 1 should have been a blow-out because he countered 4 spells before turn 4.  Instead, Leyline turned off his gifts, and he got lucky on two straight mana crypt coin flips that allowed him to end the game at 1 life after I spent a turn 4 tendrils to try to get myself out of yawg-win range.  He ended the game at 1 life and had just enough copies of tendrils to erase my tendrils +20.

Game 2 was extremely close.  I actually lost game 2 to a resolved rebuild -> tendrils because confidant hit 2 straight leylines putting me at 9 life and allowing him to steal the game.  The game played out almost exactly as scripted above.  I opened a hand with 2x confidant, lotus, fow, delta, and usea.  He forced the 1st confidant, but the 2nd resolved.  He tried to gifts on turn 2, which got fowd (pitching brainstorm).  I cast a turn 3 hypnotic and was swinging.  I was one turn away from winning (yawg will in hand but needed a ritual effect to finish the tutor chain), but did not have the counter in hand (2x leylines).  He cast rebuild into tendrils to put me at 1 life and I died to revealing duress off the top of my library.

<3 becker for implying that i'm a better player than my opponents most of the time

Maybe it is a question of playskill, but I feel that any competent player can play much better if they have a good idea of whats in their opponent's hand 90% of the time.  This deck is built to exploit knowledge of the opponent's hand and most deck's vulnerability to leyline.  In short, I believe this deck has strategic superioirity to drain decks.  I'd love to take it to Becker's tourney saturday, but the best part of this deck is the surprise of getting hit by leylines and dazes.  Once that is gone, it becomes a lot harder to stop cards like gifts and thirst when your opponent knows not to tap out for them.

Anywho, I hope that this explenation has been sufficient.  Please feel free to provide counterexamples, but keep them within them reasonable.  I don't take pleasure in hearing something like:  well, they go lotus -> recall -> gifts on turn 1 you lose!

Edit - I usually throw out games in my results that ended where someone mulled to 5 and had 1 land or something.  To try to make testing reasonable, events in which my opponent has to mull to 5 or less, I have them draw back up to 6 or 7. 

Yes, I do mean that any reasonable hand will beat any slaver hand...
I've watches my opponents first turn welder, 2nd turn tinker countering my counter, and still just lose the game off the back of 1 bounce spell.  Leyline, duress, and daze wreck their early game.  The only problem I've had with the deck comes from when I don't see a hypnotic specter and my opponent knows to play around daze.

In terms of this being a "bad" ss or fish deck, I don't like running decks that can't just win the game.  Fish, ss, and tmwa (to add more decks into this category) cannot just overpower the opponent.  They all play to disrupt the opponent to the point in which they can get a turn 6-9 win.  I find this often leaves many players enough time to answer the problems laid out before them.  This deck aims to win on turn 5.  It usually plays out with a turn 1 confidant, duress, or hyppie, leaving it a little weak on turn 1, but creating an excellent strategy for beating decks on turn 2.  Turn 4 is usually spent playing draw spells / tutors to find yawg will so that it can just win the game with a lethal tendrils.  Creatures can do it all by themselves if necessary, but thats not the strongest part of the deck.

@kobefan - I decided not to run this saturday due to its inability to deal with oath and its clock being too slow to deal with draw7 combo.  Considering that against both gifts and slaver, a turn 1-2 leyline is just as potent as a turn 0 80-90% of the time, I would suggest running this deck if your metagames are packed full of those decks.

@stamford - This deck does appear to be unfocused on paper.  It is even slightly unfocused in play.  Its ability to knock an opponent out of the game as early as turn 2 is the reason I would play it.  The reason I did end up playing it was because I couldn't put together anything that had a good matchup against ichorid and I was expecting ichorid to show up at the small tourney.  To answer the question of card choices, I thought it would be plainly obvious that the goal is to get either a turn 1 dark confidant, hypnotic specter, or duress.  Replacing hypnotic specter with dimir cutpurse severely hurts the chances of having the turn 1 piece of disruption.  As far as leyline vs jotun grunt - Grunt is nowhere near as effective at hosing your opponent's graveyard as leyline is.  The fact that it can be uncounterable is a huge boon, also.  The primary reason whey leyline is used instead of withered wretch / jotun grunt is that this deck only needs 2 extra cards in its deck to go the combo route:  Yawgmoth's Will and Tendrils of Agony.  Tendrils is the only dead draw as Yawgmoth's Will can just provide extreme card advantage even without having a tutor to get the tendrils.  Grunt hurts my own graveyard as well as my opponents, but without the ability to shutoff goblin welder (my turn I thirst, pitch titan, weld titan and win), doesn't stop ichorid fast enough, and doesn't answer eot gifts ungiven.

I kept testing the deck before the tournament to see what I should sideboard against do to poor matchups and concluded that stax and shop aggro had to be answered (ergo the energy fluxes).  I didn't get enough time to test oath, but dystopia appeared to be solid against angel oath and coupled to do well vs fish which is a sore spot for the deck. 

When I finally found a competent gifts player, we played 12 games preboard (not nearly enough of a sample size, I know), but I won 11 of them.  He felt overpowered the entire way.  If he did a turn 1 merchant scroll, I would kill his hand with duress + daze or fow.  Leyline turned gifts off a majority of the time which totally allowed my hypnotics and dark confidants to gain me enough card advantage to just win the game with a mid-game tendrils, twice without using yawg will.


@everyone reading this thread - The point of me posting this decklist is that I think its important to reazlie that hybrid strategies can and do work.  I also wanted to share my thoughts and experience with a deck I doubt I will pick up again, but I still feel deserves some respect if the metagame fits. 

Tendrils + disruptive aggro can win games and beat up on many decks.  The reason why I think this deck is soo successful at what it does is due to its ability to answer graveyard recursion without spending mana (leyline is better than crypt), control the stack turns 1-2 while it sets up (the primary reason daze is run), and finally finish the game by wrecking the opponents hand and tutoring up yawg will.

Early in this deck's evolution, I was running phyrexian negators and nantuko shades.  My goal was to make a sui-black deck that had some excellent card draw and disruption.  I quickly cut the shades due to how mana hungry they are.  I started looking at the shell of the deck and going, I really would like a couple tutors to find my recall, darkblast, and timewalk.  Then I sat there with the answer staring me in the face...i'm running dark ritual, cabal ritual, moxen, both lotuses, and tutors, how good would yawgmoth's will and tendrils be in my 3 phyrexian negator slots.  I found that Yawg Win was very easy to achieve with this deck, and usually won the game faster than negator could.


Anyways, the reasons for me posting this list have been stated.  I just wanted everyone to see a creation that could be an answer to some metagames.  I never really meant to post this and then try to spend 2-3 hours of my time defending it.

Control Slaver is as close to a bye as you can get (somewhere close to 85%) in type 1.  I've tried various dry slaver and and burning slaver builds, but they all fall victim to discard, darkblast, and leyline. 

Gifts is right at about 55-60%.  Sometimes Gifts just goes broken, but usually cards like duress and leyline hit their gameplan hard.  I haven't really had gifts be able to do too much to this deck so far.

Fish is somewhat bad game 1.  The biggest problem they have is identifying what to name with meddling mage game 1.  Most of the time they will just think you are a bad sui-black deck / u/b fish which allows you to steal game 1s.  Game 2 and 3 get significantly better after boarding dystopia's and tinker + titan.  I think the matchup (u/w or u/w/b fish is all that is considered here) preboard is: 30/70, postboard:  75/25.

Ichorid matchup is highly dependent on leyline of the void.  I find that games where I don't have it in opening hand I can still win if its in my top 2-3 cards per brainstorm -> dark rit -> leyline on turn 1-2.  Post board gets better after crypts and the fact that they have to nuke their gameplan.  Preboard:  40-45% / 60-55%.  Postboard:  65/40.

ICBM / Chalice Oath lists is something like 20-80 game 1.  Only getting to about 50/50 games 2 and 3.

I played this deck at Becker's last tournament and it did very poorly for me (largely in part to me "testing" something at a tournament).  In testing, I've found that it beats up on the following decks (60% wins or better):
Fish, Gifts, Ichorid, and Control Slaver.  Its combo match is okay, but can't really deal with a resolved necro / bargain.  At any rate, here is the decklist:

U/B Disruptor

4 Dark Confidant
3 Hypnotic Specter

4 Leyline of the Void
4 Duress
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timewalk
1 Darkblast
1 Echoing Truth / Rebuild (meta dependent)
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrills of Agony
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

3 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual

5 moxen
1 lotus petal
1 black lotus
1 tolarian academy
4 polluted delta
4 underground sea
2 swamp
2 island

sb:
4 Dystopia
4 Energy Flux
1 Echoing Truth
2 Rebuild (stax.meta)
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 ??? (tinker + titan is good here)

Reasons for my failure with the deck at the tournament include the following:
I tried cutting 2 brainstorms for the tinker + titan plan maindeck...
Round 1 I lost to confident damage on myself (flipping titan up)
Round 2 I beat the poo out of slaver piloted by a gws member
Round 3 I lost to my test partner playing gifts (he knew I was maindecking 0 echoing truth, 3 daze, and 4 leyline)...I saw 0 leylines in opening hands in both games, but was totally outclassed by him countering 4 spells by turn 4 in both games including a pair of duresses against me game 2 (not much you can do against the nuts, even if its 2 games in a row).
Round 4, I lost to what I call mana flood, (drawing 10 mana sources out of 20) in both games against oath.


I know that every deck has its weakness, Oath could easily be this deck's weakness.  It's reliance on creatuers to gain card advantage is a huge drawback.  It probably packs it up and loses to u/b fish due to a lack of creature control.  Limited testing has shown that darkblast can be a great card against them, though.

The big problem for the turnout stems from the fact that there were 3 competing gpts on the same day.  With this many at any given time, it will be very difficult to get a high turnout, especially when Indianapolis is far from the middle of any large eternal scene.  The competition for the byes was pretty steep, though. 

I'm still scarred by the tournament considering my results, but I seem to do that (top 8 one large tourney, lose horribly in the next).

Goblins drew into 3x vial and infy land in game 3 which is apparently amazing against smokestax.

He won game 2 based off dumb luck since he had the win for 3 turns in a row but didn't see it with his opponent at 1.  He had a vial at 5 on the board and 1 mountain and drew seige-gang off the top to vial out and sack the tokens for the smokestack.

Only 12 people showed up for this event as it was a side-event for the 2hg ptq.

the 12 decks were:
2 Goblins (1 R/w, 1 mono-red)
2 4c Threshold
1 Alluren (Dyole Bledsoe)
1 Salvagers (Tash)
1 Suntower (R/G Stax, Emidln)
1 U/W/r Landstill
1 Hanni-Fish
1 Mono-Red Burn
1 Gaea's Might Get There (Domain Zoo)
1 G/b Rock

Top 4 was: 
1 R/w Goblins
2 Stax
3 Salvagers (lost to gobs)
4 Alluren (lost to Stax)

Goblins took the finals in 3 very close games.
I'd go into more detail, but i'm a little scarred by the tournament.
 

can someone do me a favor and pm me / post the top 8 of that tourney...I can't view most gaming websites at work due to a long list of restrictions they have placed on our internet access.

Thanks,
Nick

@dicemanx - This is an amazing peice of insite and I would love to echo it.  Thanks for a great string of posts!

Change stimulates creativity.  Creativity stimulates innovation.  Innovation stimulates more change and ultimately interest in something (in this case, a format).

Throughout the life cycle I have defined above, there is built-in change 3-4 times a year.  These changes occur every time a new set comes out.  Unfortunately, the changes that are being made with these new sets have been so small, that the creativity sparked from these changes leave very little room for innovation. Very few archetypes have died out in Type 1 over the past few years.  Very few archetypes have been created over the past few years.  I'm not arguing that Type 1 should be the same as Type 2 (mass overhauls every year).  I'm simply stating that in the desire to generate interest in something, change has to occur.  It is extremely important that this change is enough sustain the interest of people.

Type 1 is not changing fast enough to keep the people listed in groups 2 and 3 or the above categories interested in the format.  I don't think that it would be very healthy for type 1 to ban all of the power of 9.  I do think that some combination of restricted limits and card bannings would be very healthy for the creative element of people that play the format.

I hypothesize that in addition to the 3 categories of people that play Type 1, it can be further analyzed that people that play magic get enjoyment out of it for a variety of reasons.  Many people enjoy simply playing the game of magic.  Others enjoy the process of creating a deck.  There is some combination of the two, but it is important to note that Type 1 is not a good format for the "deck builders" of magic due to its infrequency of change.  Type 1 is a lot of fun for deckbuilders when they originally discover the format because of the HUGE cardpool available for them to create new things.  The primary problem, however, is that their ideas are severely hindered by the ability of cards to do more "broken" things than the cards on the restricted list.  If the average deck in type 1 plays 14 lands and 6-7 restricted artifact mana sources, then includes approximately 7-10 of the same restricted spells, then another 8 of the same "disruption" cards, how much innovation can there really be?  We have already listed out approxmately 40 cards.  The real deckbuilders of the game only get to play around with approximately 20 cards.  I know that this is a broad generalization, but the meat of it is the fact that there are only really 4 kinds of type 1 decks:  blue based decks including mass lists of restricted cards that finish with either tinker or a storm based kill, combo decks that finish with either a belcher or storm based kill,  aggro-based strategies that can either run blue, black, or red as the primary color, and finally, workshop based decks that rely heavily on broken mana sources to get overpowering artifacts into play.

I know that there are exceptions to this generalization.  I also know that many people enjoy playing in a format like this.  I'm not arguing against people playing a format like this.  What I am arguing against is the ability for a format like this to live and thrive without giving the deckbuilders of the game something to look forward to and play around with.

Grr, I wish that I could spend more time on this post, but I am still at work and have an obligation to actually get stuff done    .

I definitely agree with moxlotus on this one.  If the average tournament is 5 rounds of swiss, you will know if you are mathematically eliminated after the 2nd - 3rd round.  You now still have plenty of time to trade and do whatever, but at least you spent 2-3 hours playing instead of 1 round. 

I also think that the driving aspect is HUGE.  Having to drive multiple hours for a tourney and losing in the first round would be devestating.  I could understand a double elimination tournament a lot better than a single elim.  Further, not publishing brackets doesn't really matter once you have reached the 3rd round.  By that time, you should have had time to scout 4 decks which would be half if not nearly all that is left of the tournament.  Therefore, scouting becomes exponentially more important.

Just my 2 cents.

I don't want to start a thread for a similar topic, but I'm curious to know what people would play in a tournament when you expect few drains?  My tourney this saturday, i'm expecting more bazaar's / shops / combo than drains (and fows for that matter).  The tourney includes sideboards (unlike the thread here) but it is also 15 proxy.  Thoughts?

How do Goblins with a green splash beat TES?  TES is designed to just beat the goblin player before even lacky comes online.  Did goblins have some tech in sb for the matchup?

I think it truly depends on your meta and your build.  My combo (eternal witness) oath deck was able to find room for duress and misdirection but it was at the cost of not running chalice and null rod.  I think that what you run as your win will definitely affect how you decide to disrupt your opponents. 

For example:  Angel Oath kills 2-3 turns after it sets up its combo (oath = orchard / opponent's creatures)

Combo Oath is meant to kill / lock the game out the first turn after it achieves its combo.

On the face, it appears that there is only 1 turn difference in the kills.  The significance comes in the turns these kills happen.

Combo Oath: turns 3-5 for normal goldfish
Angel Oath: turns 3.5-6 for normal goldfish

This means that angel oath is going to attempt to delay the game by playing cards that deny mana.  These include wasteland, chalice of the void, and nullrod.  In a vacuum, those cards are significantly weaker at stopping your opponent's gameplan than duress and misdirection.   They are very good at delaying gamestates, though.  This plays into Angel Oath's hands.

More importantly, what purpose are you trying to serve with your disruption piece here?  Are you looking to force your oath's through (cue misdirection), or are you attempting to put the breaks on your opponent at the detriment of your manabase (duress).  I don't really like chalice and null rod as solutions to the environment right now due to the prevalence of fish in my meta (chalice doesn't affect them much unless set to 1 and nullrod is run in their deck quite frequently).  I think that duress is better at fixing the matchups that oath has troubles with (combo).  Oath's manabase will be easily wasteable anyways due to orchards, so I don't think that exposing your mana for a 3rd color turns 1-2 is that serious of a problem for the deck.  You should be aggressively mull'ing hands that don't have at least 2 and most of the time 3 mana sources most of the time anyway.

Further, duress is the most amazing card at helping you not make mistakes.  So many games bog down into does he have force or not?  Duress gives you this information while affecting their hand.  Misdirection does not.  Both can affect matchups in the same way (forcing through an oath), but duress is much more versatile and can give you much more information about your opponents hand.

If I didn't work full-time and have a girlfriend, I would write an entire article about knowledge and options as it applies to my 3 favorite formats (type 1, 1.5, and 1.x).  Seeing as I barely have time to write up a top 8 report for my last ptq, I'll have to put that on hold.

Suffice to say, there are soo many times that a player makes mistakes based off imperfect knowledge of the gamestate.  Knowing what is in your opponent's hand and how it affects yours is the most important thing that you can have when you play any kind of deck.  Cards like peek are very poor at furthering their controller's gameplans, but they make imperfect desicions much much better.

Something that I noticed in your build, judge, is you are still oathing up 2 critters despite running colossus.  I think this is a mistake.  If you want to oath to kill in 1 turn, play witness; 2 turns, play angels; 3 turns, play colossus.  Witness makes you more vulnerable to graveyard hate.  Angels do not have the added ability of using tinker.  Colossus is the slowest of the 3.  Mixing angels and colossus does not actually help the clock that much.  17 damage will not be lethal against any decks not running mana crypt, mana vault, or dark confidant.  Don't forget that you have to give orchard tokens to your opponents to oath most of the time, too.  Those will reduce the damage and provide your opponent critical turns.

If you want to go for the tendrills kill and still run colossus, I would suggest the following list played by Randy Beuhler as a good starting point:

Maindeck:

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

Artifact Creatures
1 Darksteel Colossus

Enchantments
4 Oath Of Druids
 

Instants
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
1 Fact Or Fiction
4 Force Of Will
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Krosan Reclamation
4 Mana Drain
1 Mystical Tutor

Sorceries
1 Burning Wish
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Duress
1 Recoup
1 Regrowth
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Basic Lands
2 Island

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
3 Forbidden Orchard
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island

Legendary Lands
1 Tolarian Academy
 

Sideboard:

2 Pithing Needle
3 Sacred Ground
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Pyroblast
2 Rack And Ruin
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Balance
1 Tendrils Of Agony



While I think that some of the deck might be a little outdated...I still think that it is a good base to start from.

I think harlequin was attempting to point out that if we (the vintage community) were to totally ignore the DCI and to create our own sanctioning bodies, it would create further disturbance.  The primary point Harlequin is making is that the creation of a new sanctioning body would create more problems in the fact that it is impossible to get all players to agree on one idea, and would thus spiral into 5-10 different regional sanctioning bodies.  

Something to the following could easily happen:  The northeast TO's come together and decide that workshops are bad for magic...they get the boot.

The midwest TO's disagree with the northeast, shops are great...But that pesky gifts ungiven has to go away.

SoCal TO's think that every two mana or less tutor card ruins the format...so say good bye to vampiric tutor, demonic tutor, merchant scroll, etc...

Thus, we have a major problem within the community.  The game loses its universality and much of its camaraderie.  

While I do agree with Dicemanx that many people in forums do not know what they are talking about (haven't fully considered the ramifications of their words and actions or even fully thought out what they say), saying something to the effect of 80% of people in forums don't know what they are talking about is counterproductive and insulting.  I'm not asking for an apology or anything, just simply pointing out that comments like that could be made in a different way to be more productive.

edit:
- wanted to post even though harlequin replied while typing

Null rods have been the primary "extra" card in those slots that you mentioned for the basic reasoning that they can easily shutoff the mana in combo decks.  It also facilities the tfk draw engine in being able to pitch useless rods + artifact mana you draw late game.

Lotus petal is almost a necessity considering its ability to give turn 1 oath.  If you are looking for something to use that gives better draw, I would go for gifts ungiven, fact or fiction, or impulse.  All of those cards would be really good at searching out oath / disruptions.  I prefer gifts due to its ability to help post board when you bring in loam and factories or singletons like darkblast to beat up on welders / xantids.

Just my opinion.

Good luck with your deck, though.

I guess its time for me to touch on two very important points in which I disagree with smennen's analysis. 

#1)  What chance did the gifts player really have game 1?
After watching the long player discard very good cards after necro, you really aren't going to win unless you topdeck a recall, lotus, or some other bomb.  Thus, something many people overlook, the best play turn 1 for the gifts player is to concede the game...revealing as little information to the opponent as possible about the deck you are playing (more important if you are playing against an opponnent that has no idea what you are playing...not as good a decision if it is the top 8 of the tourney and they would have had ample time to scout you and your deck. 

So, assuming its top 8 and thus you don't just scoop and call game 1 theres and start boarding, you continue your fight and ultimately lose game 1.

Onto Game 2.

The grim long player is confronted with a bad hand, but it is very disruptive.  Smennen has him punt his disruption into hoping that turn 2 on the draw will actually be enough to sufficiently disrupt the opponent.  A very INCORRECT turn 1 play of playing the swarm ends up having the grim player fall on his face as his opponent has plenty of time to set up brainstorms to hide key spells.  The gifts player even tells him what the correct play is by tapping out to scroll up a force.

Not only is duressing on the first turn the best play for turn 1, it is a far superior play to watching your much needed swarm get forced for no apparent reason.  If your opponent taps out and you are holding duress, that is a critical point in which you get to take huge advantage of their hand.  If he forces the duress, you get the same outcome but with you having a second duress in hand and the ability to drop the swarm on the 2nd turn setting up a probably turn 4 kill. 

If the gifts player does not force the duress, you get to pillage his hand before brainstorm can hide it.

So, to replay the 2nd game...in which the long player does not play the swarm, you have 2 possible outcomes: gifts player forces duress, or they don't.  This is the same decision tree as the swarm, but the duress on a tapped out gifts player is much "less" of an immediate threat to the gifts player than the swarm. 

Now, why would you play your weaker threats early?  First, duress gives you much more information on your opponents hand than xantid does.  Having a very slow long draw with double duress means that you have to be flexible enough to play to the role of the hand you drew.  You are now attempting to slow down the gifts player long enough so that you get a chance to go off before the gifts player. 

Now it is important to note what happens if you play the swarm turn 1 and the gifts player is holding a darkblast or lava dart.  You spend a huge threat to the gifts player and gain no tempo off it.  This can easily be remedied by using the information you can gain through a first turn duress.

Here is an analysis of what could happen based off the two decisions the long player has:

A) Play turn 1 swarm
    1) Gifts allows swarm to resolve
    2) Gifts uses force of will and pitches a blue card (gifts or merchant scroll)


B) Play turn 1 duress
    1) Gifts allows duress to resolve
    2) Gifts uses force of will and pitches a blue card (gifts or merchant scroll)

So, we have choices: A1, A2, B1, and B2.

I believe that A1 can be discounted based off the fact that the gifts player does not want swarm to rsolve.  But under more careful consideration, why would gifts allow swarm to resolve?  They must have a removal spell in their hand to want to allow that.  But this gives us an important caveat that must be fully realized.

Therfore, I propose that the decision table is the following instead:
A) Play turn 1 swarm
    1) Gifts allows swarm to resolve
        i) gifts player has a removal spell for swarm
        ii) gifts player does not have a removal spell for swarm    2) Gifts uses force of will and pitches a blue card (gifts or merchant scroll)


B) Play turn 1 duress
    1) Gifts allows duress to resolve
    2) Gifts uses force of will and pitches a blue card (gifts or merchant scroll)



Now, in all of my time playing magic, I have learned that giving the opponent a choice is usually the wrong decision.  But if we carefully analyze the two trees, at first glance, choice A appears to give the gifts player no choice but to use their fow on Swarm.  Choice B gives the gifts player a choice.  After analyzing the situation, however...the long player could potentially be walking themself into an even worse interaction where the gifts player still has an option tree.  While that tree is dependent on a card being in their hand, it is still important to realize this.  This means that Option A for the long player should not be realized based off the possibility of walking right into a trap.

Choice B should be selected (playing duress) for a couple reasons that can best be understood after analyzing what the gifts player did on turn 1.

If the gifts player already had fow in hand, they probably would have scrolled for ancestral unless they already have it in hand. 

The gifts player does not have brainstorm in hand to protect against duress.

The gifts player is trying to bait a first turn swarm play by feiting a lack of counters in hand while having a removal spell in hand.

The list of possibilities is pretty long here, but these three are the ones I find most pertinent.

I would love someone to take the time to refute what I have said in rebuttal of Long's turn 1 play game 2.  Sorry for the delay in getting back to this.

Thanks for reading.

- Nick


ps - sorry for misspells and incorrect grammar / formatting, at work again and trying to do this quickly.

@ kelme:  whle this "generally" true, it is extremely important to note that this is not the case for all people.  I would suggest that if the random sample of people was taken that that would likely be true.  If a sample of statiticians is taken, that figure would be grossly underestimated. 

To relate to other posts, Kasparov can calculate end games much farther out from the end than that of the average player because he has "exercised" the part of his brain that allows for calculations.  This "exercise" should be taken into account using physiology.  He has trained his brain to perform these functions, thereby forcing his neural pathways to digest and process this information much easier than say the information required to accurately time the playing of a musical instrument or catch / throw a ball (crude examples).  This is important to note when giving generalizations. 

@ smennen:  I want you to know that i paid for scg premium just to read this article.  I do appreciate the time and work you put into stuff like this.  You have demonstrated that you care about your work simply by coming here and asking for feedback.  I am not an expert on vintage magic play (nor probably any other format for magic), but I have put in that kind of work into other formats / decks.  I do plan to do some sort of critique of your work this afternoon as time comes available (still at work).

As far as successfully picking out the best plays at any given time, it is important to note that this article was strictly using the cards as how to play the game.  This was brought up by someone else in this thread in passing, but i believe that this is the most critical piece of evidence to support / refute the claim of someone being able to successfully play a deck as complicated as MDG or Grim Long.

The most critical piece of evidence that I believe is missing in a matchup analysis is the analysis of what you observe the opponent doing.  So much is read from body language during movements and common gamestate plays that you can glean tons of information about your opponents hand through succesfully observing a few of their characteristics.  I do not want to take anything away from Smennen's work as it is nearly complete as a card / play analysis.  I do disagree with one premise, however.  This entire body of work was assuming that you knew your matchup when you sat down.  You have carefully examined / built both player's lists and are basing many calculations done based off knowledge existing prior to the game.  To successfully continue a line of thought as such, a player must be okay with a certain level of uncertainties. 


Please forgive my spelling errors as I am at work and trying to do this quickly.
I will get back to this post later.

Thanks for your time.

its a 3/3 for 5 mana...it is blue which could make it more attractive.  At 5 mana, though, dragon's breath won't auto attach to it from the yard.

I would play leyline over wretch.

It is a devestating card vs most tendrils storm decks and has the benefit of hurting control slaver, ichorid, oath, stax, and bomberman, too.

Its start in play affect is awesome in combination with discard, too.

i don't think you need the cabal rits at all.

If the goal is to oath up most of your library, just include hurkyl's recall / rebuild to build up your storm.
You should have some mana artifacts in the graveyard, too.  Yawg will, recur the moxen + lotus, recall / rebuild (after tapping for mana), replay moxen + lotus, tendrils.

Its pretty straight forward.  All you need are the artifacts in your graveyard and a bounce spell to buld up your storm.  Tapping them for mana is usually all you need to do, also.

If you want to include 1 dark rit / cabal rit, that wouldn't be a bad idea...but you don't need 4 of either, much less 8. 

I found that I usually had all the mana i needed when doing this for a couple reasons...1) black lotus generates absurd amounts of mana for you while jacking your storm count up  2) you can play tolarian academy out of your graveyard to tap for a bunch of mana with your moxen out.

This also gives you a good reason to run engineered explosives (great for fish matchups) as a free spell to play from your graveyard and then out of your hand again after hurkyl's / rebuild.

I'm not going to say that dark ritual / cabal ritual wouldnt be handy in "going off" sometimes, but its important to note that they really aren't needed that much.  Yawg will = win 98% of the time

running eternal witness instead of obstinate familiar lets you do the following:
-8 rituals
-1 familiar
-1 recoup
+2 eternal witness

hurkyls recall / rebuild is plenty once you have dropped 5 pieces of jewelry to bounce back to your hand.

that leaves you with a net gain of 8 cards to help you find your oaths and protect your combo.

I would add in 4 fow and 4 of another counter (mana drain in my deck) or tutor effect here.

I personally liked adding in merchant scrolls and gifts for my tutors instead of necrop and others, but you could easily just add in leaks / rune snags and stick with your tutor / draw engine. 

Just my 2 cents on a deck i've already built and played at a tourney.  Good luck with your build.

Eternal Witness does not slow the deck down at all...it speeds it up in fact.

The deck i piloted to 3rd place at a pasttimes tourney a few months back sported 2 witnesses for the recursion aspect.

Remember, if you oath up a witness and don't hit your will, you still probably oathed up a demonic / vampiric tutor or a timewalk.  If you oathed the timewalk, just timewalk into your next turn and oath again.  9/10 times this works.  The 10th time, you just oath up the 2nd witness, recur timewalk, and then use reclamation to put the yawg will back in your librarly.

I agree with Roberts to a degree.  The meddling mage instance is the perfect example of virtual card advantage.  I disagree with most people in the thread on the idea concerning tempo and card advantage based on an important note.  Tempo can and often does create virtual card advantage by making cards in your hand null.  Trinishpere is a perfect example.  It stops tempo.  

Now, Trinishpere is also a threat to some decks.  Long cannot win most games in which there is a trinishpere sitting on the board.  Trinisphere doesn't actually do the killing, but it would be a potent defensive measure to such decks (storm types).  Trinishpere actively stops the long player from using his ritual effects to full effect and thus creates tempo (stopping the player from playing cheap spells) and virtual card advantage (nullifying cards in hand).  

Something that I am glad Roberts pointed out is that virtual card advantage can be undone.  Simply shocking the meddling mage naming your game winning spell is a perfect example.  You trade 1 real card for their 1 real card.  If the meddling mage happened to be naming a card that you had 3 copies of in hand, you undo the 3 for 1 VCA that the meddling mage had created by trading one real card for the 1 meddling mage.  Now, clarifying the loss / gain in tempo can be difficult.  If the player was forced to do nothing for 2 turns because the only cards in hand were the nullified ones, then meddling mage gained tempo for its caster.  If not, say the player who shocked the meddling mage did it the turn it came into play, it gained no tempo...in fact, it can be argued that tempo was lost by spending 2 mana to get a 1 mana instant used on it.  

Now here is where it gets tricky.  If say, the meddling mage stopped the opponent from doing something at that time and delayed it from happening by forcing them to play the shock instead of something else, it creates IMHO virtual tempo.  This virtual tempo is lost if the delay in doing casting that critical spell is not taken advantage of.  For example...
Player A has vial set to 2 counters and meddling mage in hand, Player B has 5 cards in hand, 3 cards of a combo, shock, and seething song.  Seething song would enable them to play some combo out of their hand (for this example something like sneak attack and a fatty).  If Player A vials the mage into play in response to the seething song naming sneak attack and forces Player B to cast shock and then sneak attack, then Player A has created Virtual Tempo.  If Player B still has enough mana to put the fatty into play and thats all he would have been normally able to do that turn, then the Virtual Tempo is lost.  But say instead of sneak attack and a fatty that turn, Player B only had enough mana to cast the seething song, then shock, then sneak attack with no mana left over to put the fatty into play, then Player A has genereated lasting tempo (at least a turns worth of 1 mana).

Now, coincidentally, he has also created virtual card advantage for a turn.  The fatty sitting in Player B's hand unable to come into play for that turn is now a null card until Player B's next turn.  However, Player A has generated no REAL card advantage by vialing the mage into play, he has only created a 1 for 1 card trade.

I hope this helps to shed some more light on the issue considering i put considerable time into while at work.  And to Roberts, good ideas...but be more patient / less rude to other people in this thread please.

A turn 2 win with ghouls is highly possible if you are running the mana versions including tolarian winds, windfall, and wheel of fortune.  Turn 1 wheel or windfall with dredge cards is likely a win on turn 2 every time.

I 2nd emildn.

I am much more worried about green splashes in goblins because of domain than I am white.  Most goblin decks are running to white right now because of the power of disenchant on umezawwa's jitte.  That said, black players using eplague need to beware of tranquil domain as it is a house vs pikula.

Further, I'm not sold on sinkhole.  Is it really better than smallpox?  Further, what matchup is sinkhole good in besides solidarity?

On a slightly different note, invest the $1 for a set of dystopias.  The power they have at housing a 2nd archetype (angel stompy) is absolutely important in the sideboard hate category of larger tournaments.  Further, they pick off random control decks, too (humility, solitary confinement, parallax wave, etc...)

You need 1 copy of mind twist.

probably -1 hymn +1 mindtwist

Your only answer to opposing artifacts is powder keg.  This isn't a great answer to nullrod which most fish decks run.  You should highly consider nullrod yourself if you are going for an anti-mana plan.  Unfortunately it hoses your totems.  If you want another option, think about adding challice of the void.  That will greatly help your probably poor combo matchup.