[Discussion-Strategy Issues] Workshops appearing in NE

[Kerz]

After Waterbury's extreme lack of Mishra's Workshop decks allowing much combo to run rampant, a backlash of sorts happened at the TMD Championships- there was tons of stax and artifact aggro at the top tables, with 8 Workshops in the top eight (keep in mind New England tournaments usaully have zero).

This traditional deficiency of the New England metagame looks like it is starting to weaken. Is New England finally going to get a Workshop element?

[The M.E.T.H.O.D]

I think Crucible has had a major impact on workshop.

People didn't play workshop because of the consistency issues of running Workshops was kind of bad. A lot of the "good" players tend to shy away from running combo and workshop because of the conistency required for tournements with lots of rounds. Crucible stops all of the and adds another mana denial element as well.  We will see a lot more workshops in the T8's of New England.

[CF]

Agreed. With Crucible, stax currently has -no- flaws in its armor. The deck is nuts if tuned and played (read: mulliganed) correctly.

--
Chris

[Smmenen]

Stax still has flaws, but its flaws are much, much fewer.  The primary weaknesses of the deck:
1) inconsistency
2) mana instability
have basically dissapeared thanks to Crucible *4.

[Grand Inquisitor]

This traditional deficiency of the New England metagame looks like it is starting to weaken

I know I sound like a broken record, but this really is old news.

NE'ers got over there workshop phobia earlier this year.

@Kerz, I don't know how you can still say this after seeing Jeff Green kick so much ass this spring & summer with 4040s.  I don't know his exact record, but he won around 4-5 medium size tournaments with a deck that isn't too far away from what passes for Stax in Europe.  Most of these events get very little press on the tourney forum here, but I know you were at Somers, and that was over 50 people.

It's the problem I had when I first started looking at results from Europe.  You have no idea what the tournament looked like, except for the T8's, which only show you what won.

The same thing is true of Waterbury.  There were plenty of workshops both a few weeks ago, and in April, but they just can't crack into the higher rounds of elimination.  My opinion is that slaver kept stax and aggro workshop out of contention in both tournaments.

[The M.E.T.H.O.D]

Jeff Green did kick a lot of ass with 40/40s

The problem is though his streak was really insane, his lack of tourney reports and the lack of hype/coverage of the tournies he played in didn't impact the metagame by showing the deck off to the public.

But when David Allen, Gio, Nick Trudea, all made it to the T8 at worlds with some kind of workshop aggro, it gave workshops the spotlight. Now because of this people are starting to play them and its going to affect the metagame.

[Shock Wave]

Hooray for more Crucible induced silliness  

[Akuma]

I know Rich loves those Crucibles, he thinks all decks should run them  

In all seriousness,  I agree with what has been said. Crucible 'fixed' one of the problems that used to affect Workshop decks (mana inconsistency).

[wuaffiliate]

Most decks should run them...