Budget Infestation of Type One

[Smmenen]

Two tournaments in two weeks and both touranments were won by decks that do not run full power.  

Why?  I'm not entirely certain, but I do want to say this: I don't ever want to hear people bitch and whine about budget decks in Type One.  As far as I am concerned, this is as close to dominance budget will ever get in this format.  

Here are two possibilities that I'll put out there and then I'll as the question to all of you:
First of all, deck design has had alot of focus on improving budget decks recently.  PTW's Gay/Red, Oshawa (not really budget anymore), JP's UG Madness, and improvements on FCG.  
The second possibitity is that 5 proxy tournament are distorting results - either by giving people who have no moxen, just enough to play a partially powered deck, or in comparison to the full proxy environment, people might not be as inclined to play partially powered decks.  

Whatever the cause, it's clear that these partially powered decks are here to stay and are likely to continue to win.  Anyone have a different take?

Steve

[jpmeyer]

While I played U/G Madness as a metagame choice in Columbus, if I was playing in some large tourney like GPDC or Waterbury I would still be playing Tog.  You can't really play Tog or combo at a 5-proxy and you definitely can't play a Workshop deck.

It'd be interesting to see a big deck breakdown to see what percentage of the decks at the tourney were only partially powered because that's all the proxies that they could run.

[bebe]

I've mentioned this before and will do so again. Playing budget decks has always been viable. Of course, we do not expect to see them dominating the format. But sites like this one have encouraged a number of players to experiment with Type 1 despite the fact they have little access to power. I've been moderately successfull with budget builds over the years myself. This is not indicative a trend beginning where budget is a force.

JP though has hit the nail on the head.

While I played U/G Madness as a metagame choice in Columbus, if I was playing in some large tourney like GPDC or Waterbury I would still be playing Tog.

You need to be judicious in your choice of deck. I played budget Dragon when the field allowed it to succeed, Electric Ave., when the field began to evolve and change and am now slowly working on a few new budget variants that play Slaver and Tog with some hope of success.
The card pool allows for budget to do well. U/r fish relies on Rods and counters. It loses little without power as Standstills can break your back when combined with these resources. Dragon relies on pure speed. Even in its budget form i was able to win turn 2 -4 rather consistently with Duress and Unmask back up. So yes, its possible to have some success at times with budget. But my power decks have always been the more consistent.

I don't ever want to hear people bitch and whine about budget decks in Type One. As far as I am concerned, this is as close to dominance budget will ever get in this format.

I don't think that the dedicated core of budget and rogue players are doing the whining. Quite the opposite. It is a number of Vintage Adepts who regularly discourage the budget players with ' you can't expect to do well consistently without full power'.

I can tell you that I've been ambarrased by Slivers, Zombie decks and poor discard decks when playing Tier 1 powered decks at tournaments. I've ambarrased players that have played Tier 1 decks just by packing four Blood moons and four CotVs main deck while playing some jank combo deck. I remember getting my ass handed to me by dicemanx with his Eureka deck when playing a fully powered Workshop deck. Shit happens.

I still believe that following good deck building constructs and testing against Tier 1 decks can allow you to build a decent budget deck. FCG was worked on by Vegeta nad Godzilla ( and myself to a lesser extent) for some time before Vegeta came out with a primer that popularized the deck. Now everyone is playing it and it does quite well. JPs deck is the new FCG and the band wagon is filling fast. When played in greater numbers it is inevitable that we will see some of these decks succeeed.

I see nothing to be alarmed about here. Slaver, Tog, Dragon, et all will continue to dominate in the right hands simply because they are better decks. I liken this to the discussions on the decline of the mana drain. The site is not declining. We are just getting new players entering the field who are still honing their knowledge. I can still an excellent discussion here if I look for it. The fact that we see these decks as anomalies speaks volumes. We rightfully expect certain decks to rise to the top. They will but as in life there is always a few unexpected bumps along the way.

[Fishhead]

Why? I'm not entirely certain...

At least in our neck of the woods the metagame has rotated around to include a lot of Workshop and/or Slaver decks and suddenly Sligh or FCG are decent choices again.  Fish remains strong against these decks as well.

But, looking one layer deeper:  With TnT falling out of fashion (an indirect result of many people with Workshops migrating to Slaver), suddenly Fish and Sligh aren't getting ground down in Round 1 by Juggernaughts and Triskellions any more.

[Wollblad]

Most budget decks are good if they're up against tier 1 decks, but are often rather bad if they're up against random.dec. But like all decks, they can take benefit from some power. Fish gets better with Ancestral, blue Mox and Time Walk and Suicide becomes more explosive if including Black Lotus and Mox Jet. In Sweden, we don't have many proxy 5 tournaments, but in the few that have been, most player owning some power proxy the power they miss and play decks like Tog and Keeper while people owning no power hot up there decks by proxying the appropriate power. The result is that there are more standard archetypes and fewer random.dec, thus making the budget decks better than they would otherwise be. In a non-proxy metagame, the budget decks seems less viable. At most there are two budget decks in our top 8 and they often have a few moxen.

[wuaffiliate]

budget decks have really evolved quite abit, they stray quite far from the "loses to random.dec" syndrome. FCG does not lose to random decks, and adding red to fish (gay/r) improved much of the random matches.

with such a large card pool there are going to be more and more ways to be broken without power, its inevitable.

[ELD]

I think that another factor contributing to the popularity of budget decks is how easy they are to play and win with.  FCG, Fish and Madness are all examples of decks that don't have (by comparison) too many tough calls to make during a match.  Compare the number of options a FCG player has on turn 1 to a combo players options.  Turn 2 with fish is pretty much always the same, where as a control player has many tough calls to make in every stage of the game.  

I play in alot of proxy enviornments, and people rarely proxy control or complicated combo.  It's mostly aggro or straight foward combo such as belcher or dragon.  The budget decks available are both easy to assemble and easy to play.  Unlike the budget of the past (sui, sligh, stompy) they actually have a shot at winning.  I think this is good, as a weaker player can atleast get a game win every once in a while just cause his deck does what it's supposed to do.  Just my 2 cents.

[Methuselahn]

 
The second possibitity is that 5 proxy tournament are distorting results - either by giving people who have no moxen, just enough to play a partially powered deck, or in comparison to the full proxy environment, people might not be as inclined to play partially powered decks.  

In talking with Pip the other day about this very subject, he mentioned that most of his stats come from Europe/sanctioned tournies.  This assumes you use DrSylvanInc. stats. obv.

Whatever the cause, it's clear that these partially powered decks are here to stay and are likely to continue to win.  Anyone have a different take?

Well, the cards are bound to fall in their favor once in a while.