Are Enough People Trying to Break T1?

[Smmenen]

Read Kevin's comments here ( http://www.starcitygames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=296097#296097 ) and then discuss the question here.  

I suggested this one to Kevin.  Thoughts?

[Dante]

Because there are more "part-time" or 2nd Tier players in Type 1 (at least ones that show up to big tournaments anyway).

I think of it in my own mind this way:

tier 1 players - people (typically on teams) who know the environment really well as well as constantly creating new ideas and decks (even if they don't work out).  People I would put here are teams like Meandeck, shortbus, ISP+canadians, CAB, Atoglord/ELD, etc players like that (I apologize for leaving off non-german/dutch European players, but I'm just not that familiar with you).  These players follow TMD as well as other sites for ideas.  Obviously these players have all the rules basically down pat.

Tier 2 players - people who follow TMD/comparable foreign sites regularly (i.e. every day or every other day-ish), who know the established environment and basic matchups.  Playtesting for these players generally falls into tinkering/tweaking/tuning established decks because of a lack of a team (or lack of a quality team), lack of more time than following TMD/SCG/etc and matchup testing, etc.  Playskill and rules knowledge varies from excellent to above average (compared to type 1 now...) (for example, they recognize why the replacement effect of Samurai of the Pale Curtain makes it playable whereas the triggered effect of Planar Void hasn't proven effective yet.).  I would put myself in this category.

...and then there is the "other" category, who rarely matter.

This is how I generally think about grouping players

I think compared to other formats (e.g. ones that pay $20k to first prize not $1,000 in prizes), there are way more people [percentage-wise] in what I call the Tier-2 player level.

Bill

[Mark_Story]

I think few people are putting serious effort into breaking the format, I know I'm not.  I think this is occuring for a number of reasons.
 
     The first is economy of time.  I personally don't have the time to comb through the immense card pool and look for any floaters that haven't been picked clean.   Why invest the time to look through all the cards, when I can continue to tune and play the deck I currently am, or perhaps another pre-developed deck?  I find that with school work and non-magic activities I have little to no time left to search for diamonds in the rough.

     Another reason that vintage development isn't as quick to respond iss nostalgia, and familiarity.  Nostalgia inexorably stifles innovation.  Why look at cards you are unfamilliar with, when your psychatog's, workshops etc, are still around.  You had good luck and lots of fun with them in the past why not now.

    The complexity of vintage decks is another limiting factor in vintage.  The development decks like TPS, deathlong, and Stax, is not something that a single person can slap together on their own in a few hours.  The necessary skill and knowledge to build decks of this calibur usually lies in teams and not individuals.  Even when a team is assembled it takes a great deal of invested time to get the necessary results.  If you look at the major deck developments in the recent past the majority of it has come from teams.  I think that teams have much easier access to the resources of time, money and intellect that are needed for groundbreaking deck design
 
   In other formats such as standard or extended it's the pros that bust the formats in half, not the average joe.  Those pros are motivated by big bags of money.  That kind of incentive is not present in the general vintage scene, at least not on the scale of the Pro tour.  SCG's power9 tourneys are a huge step in creating events that create incentive for development.  At all of the prior SCG's a new deck archetype was premiered and later became a driving force in the metagame.  Without the incentive, and resources to create new designs the familliar is played out again and again.

(edited for spelling, I think I got it all)

[Komatteru]

I'll build on what has already been said about the majority of players not being able to innovate.  Teams factor in immensely.  Most players are not on a large team and are limited to three or four friends to test with.  It is often likely that one or two of those members are much better than the others, and that hampers testing, since the other members can't contribute quite as much as the best ones.  In addition, when you only have a few people trying to come up with something, you aren't going to get the wide variety of insight and ideas you might get from ten people working on something.  Since a new idea has to be able to win in the given environment and have some sort of strategic superiority over established decks, and there are so many decks to consider (plus anticipate which of those decks will be present at a tournament), the task of creating something new is just too large for most players to bear.

Interestingly enough, one of the greatest assets of our community is also one of its greatest drawbacks: our age.  In general, Vintage players are older than the average T2 (non-pro) player.  Most of us are in our early to mid twenties.  This is a very busy time of one's life.  There's college and all the things that go with that: classes, homework, work, social life, girlfriends, etc.  We have a future to worry about that was still years away while we were in high school, both in terms of relationships and work.  Plus most of us live on our own (no parents to take care of us), so there's all the little things that need to be done that take time: laundry, housekeeping (to an extent), paying bills/expenses, making/obtaining dinner, etc.  Coursework in college is generally significantly heavier than in high school, and matters even more (since D may stand for "diploma" but it doesn't stand for "job" or "internship"), as there are less chances to make up a bad test, etc.  All of this means that not very many players have hours upon hours to spend on Magic.  And what little time we do have is spent actually playing the game--since that is the most enjoyable part.  The only people who can really afford to put forth the huge effort of discovering something new are the big teams.  The number of quality members they have is their greatest asset, not necessarily the exact people who are on them.  If it takes 30 hours a week for X weeks to develop a new deck for a tournament, if you have 10 members, it's possible for everyone to find 3 hours a week to get that done.  If you have 2 or 3 members, you need to find 10 or 15 hours per week to get good results--that's not the kind of time anyone really has to throw around.

Now, for professional Magic, you're looking at earning a few thousand dollars for your new creation. This is much more of a motivation to spark something new than the thought of a Black Lotus.  If you spend 200 hours on a new deck and win a $600 card, you just "worked" for $3 an hour.  The thought of $3 per hour when you really have other things that are very important is not very enticing.  Whereas if you win $20,000 for that 200 hours of work, you just pocketed $100 per hour you spent on that deck.

[Cross]

I would like to echo what JDizzle iterated. Not only is the thought of winning type 1 invariably not worth it, the thought of not winning is even worse. Consider what I have spent most of my break doing: buy $80 in much needed new cards; Play test with new found deck for two weeks with a few friends who casually play; Then drive four hours to pay twenty dollar entry, and ten dollars in gas money to get stomped for three consecutive rounds before dropping out and trading. Not only is this style of play wildly expensive for a college student, it is  wildly frustrating.

I am a dedicated reader of the drain and theabyss.biz and I would like to contribute to the format as much as possible. I am also a member of, as far as I know, Maine’s only Vintage magic team. With so few people to play test with, coming up with our own tech is seemingly not plausible.
As someone who is dedicated to the format (even through major expenses of my own time and money, and socially through the ridicule of my other non-magical friends), I can see very easily why it would be very difficult for more people just to jump into type one.

Many people have said that the ten-proxy rule helps this situation if not solving the problem; I however, feel that this is a very one sided view. Consider, hypothetically, that a new player wants to play tog. Immediately eight proxies are taken by power, this player still needs to proxy drains, seas, volcanic islands and or tropical islands. Obviously they cannot do this, and to buy these cards is insane to just play in a vintage tournament now and then. Play sets of revised underground seas will fetch $100 on ebay, and trading for them is nigh impossible. Consider then that they need to get polluted deltas, which can run as high as $10 a pop, and force of wills which are on the high side of $15 a piece. Even getting these utility type 1 cards can run someone around three to four hundred dollars. I am not just saying this because I am unwilling to spend the money to play with these cards, cause I have, and I have won myself some power, but I must say that I completely understand why no one wants to get into the format when they can spend $80, or even trade into a reasonable type 2 deck.

I think if we are going to break open the format so that there are more than just two magic teams we need to enact a standard proxy limit set at a level so that everyone can play any deck. I would not say that unlimited proxy is necessary, but a level so that anyone can play with power, and drains/workshops, and duals. With more people able to access a larger card pool we will see more people trying to break the format.

I think incentive is another issue. While we have Star City Games, and the Waterbury tournaments offering up full sets of power nine; is even this enough? We see on our own tournament forum and community forum the leaders of the type one community announcing already who will win. When we know that the big names of magic are already set to win the tournament, is it interesting for less well known people to even attempt to play at these tournaments? I think that this is a problem that coincides not only with card pool but team play in magic. Can we as a community teach new Vintage players to be good players via tools such as this forum, or are we set in such a rut that only the pros of vintage will win tournaments?

I, as Dante suggests, would place myself in the tier 2 of magic. Is there such a barrier in Vintage that these tiers really do exist, and if so does that make it almost impossible for a breakout player to win large events? Personally I would like to believe this to be false, but as evidenced by my own experiences this weekend I feel that this is almost certainly the case. As a community we should work to obliterate this barrier and create new means of play testing so that we will not have to have one of the longest threads on this site be “OMG look at what this N00b did on MWS/Apprentice!” (even though this thread is a delightful read). Also, I think if people were more mindful in their posts in explaining what they mean, or actually testing the suggestions of others, then we could work together to break the format rather than bicker over trite variations in card and deck selection. I feel that this was the case when trinketmage.dec showed up (the one with the infinite mana combo with lotus and that fifth dawn creature). At time the thread became malicious, and many feelings were hurt over something very silly. Although I was very much apart of the camp that did not like the deck, I feel that a majority of players wrote the deck off very quickly without ever suiting it up; at the same time people were championing the deck without putting up real numbers at real tournaments. Again I feel that this issue could be solved by a standard of play testing being published, and more thoughtful contributions by everyone.

-Crossman

[jro]

smmenen, I have a question about the line of inquiry you are pursuing here.

The major thesis of your Vintage year in review article at mtg.com was that Vintage is a "PTQ" style format, where success is the result of (as you put it) "breaking the metagame" rather than "breaking the format".  If that is so, then how is a question about "breaking Vintage" relevant?  Wouldn't players instead be trying to break the current metagame?

Are you suggesting that Vintage is not really a PTQ style format, and that it simply lacks the necessary attention for the "one best deck" to be found?  Or that Vintage is still a PTQ style format, but that the present "decks to beat" are not the most powerful set of decks possible in the format?  Or just questioning why players may not be appropriately responding to the metagame?

[BigMac]

I think several answers have allready been given.

First, as most vintage players are somewhat older than the average magic player, time is an issue, making it that team efforts are less time consuming for the allready busy scedules of most people playing vintage.

Second, the complexity of type 1, diverse as it is, makes it difficult for innovations as most decks will start with power and will go from there. I should say most people start with power and go from there. It should be, people start with a deck concept and look what cards are best suited for that deck. People (most poeple anyway) are getting lazy(ier) as netdecking is easy and people (we trust being good) are saying what is good and what is crap.

Third, there is a very large group of people dismissing a deck as being bad without even thinking about it as most people (we trust being good) are saying it is not a tier 1 deck (whatever that means). Decks that are played in numbers will always be good and many will reach top 8. At this moment only top 8 decks are mentioned (in most results) as those are the ones that count right. Lets say in a tourny of 40 people, 10 people play sui black, chances are at least 1 will reach top 8, probably more as there are so many. (getting lucky, playing eachother, id against friends and a 4 1 1 will make top 8 with 40 people) What happens next is that people will say it is a crappy tourny for having sui black in the top 8, dismissing it being the meta for that tourny. What is happening now is that people say a deck is good, many people start playing it and it all of a sudden becomes tier 1 because so many top 8 are recorded. If loads of people start playing sui black, would it become higher tier just because it makes top 8 more often.

This brings me to point 4.
Fourth, is a deck that makes top 10 often but misses top 8 often a bad deck when it is the only deck in the field. What i suggest is this. With every top 8 ever printed i think it should be great to know what decks are played how many times and also would like to see what places the other decks made. When you play a new innovative deck to place 9 in a big tourny, nobody will ever hear about it as it is never printed. People will up front dismiss it as being a bad deck as it never has been seen in a top 8. But perhaps with an open mind innovation will be seen and a deck could become better.

Brings me to point 5
Fifth, teams can have deckconcepts ready, perfect them over time, and then play them agter perfecting them. Single players do not have that luxury, perhaps not the knowledge, perhaps even not the cards. I used to be one of those, untill friends pulled me back into the game. I always played rogue decks, doing well but not winning. Then we started talking, started teaming up, discussing, playtesting, innovating. But still i can see certain ideas being dismissed as being bad while many decks can have a lot of difficulties with the idea.

So in the end i think innovations always will tyake time and effort, but also the accessabillity of the cards. And i am not talking about the power 9, MWS or manadrains everybody is talking about. I am talking Sacratog and Eon hub-wise, untill somebody finds a deck with a use for a card nobody will see that card as a good card or even playable, dismissing those cards to tradersbinders, selling them to traders. Untill a card is made broken, or even playable, it is just another dustfinder.

For those of you that still are single to all of this, try and keep finding the time and keep trying to find solutions in whatever little time you have, as there are still hidden gems, i am sure of it.

[Smmenen]

smmenen, I have a question about the line of inquiry you are pursuing here.

The major thesis of your Vintage year in review article at mtg.com was that Vintage is a "PTQ" style format, where success is the result of (as you put it) "breaking the metagame" rather than "breaking the format".  If that is so, then how is a question about "breaking Vintage" relevant?  Wouldn't players instead be trying to break the current metagame?

Are you suggesting that Vintage is not really a PTQ style format, and that it simply lacks the necessary attention for the "one best deck" to be found?  Or that Vintage is still a PTQ style format, but that the present "decks to beat" are not the most powerful set of decks possible in the format?  Or just questioning why players may not be appropriately responding to the metagame?

Here is what I wrote in that article with things I want to emphasize in bold:

PTQ Circuit

The real lesson of the year is that metagaming and innovation are the twin pillars of Vintage success. The theory that Vintage was a format prone to the dominance of an objective "best deck" was a casualty of 2004. The theory suggested that Vintage had such a deep and powerful card pool that it would be possible, always, to discover a deck that would come to dominant the format. This was acceptable because restrictions would continually neuter these decks. I'm not certain whether it was the three restrictions of 2003 that ended the cycle of a dominant deck or whether the Vintage metagame became more respondent to the shifts that it was facing. The greatest strength of Vintage is the depth and range of the card pool. There is a hoser for anything you might want to play – although it might be obscure.

The moment a "best deck" is crowned is the moment that it dies. It took the Vintage metagame some time to realize the role and power of Fish in the format, but once it was recognized, Fish started to fade. This idea has been repeated throughout all the major tournaments of the year. Tog rose up, and Fish and others rose to beat it. Fish rose up, and Workshop Aggro rose to beat it. Then Oath was designed to beat the Workshop Aggro, and Oath dominated Star City Games P9 II, but got utterly destroyed at Star City Games P9 III. This trend suggests two points. Metagaming is crucial - having the proper deck at the proper time is the central key to success. But finding a new deck will likely assist a great performance. In four consecutive tournaments, I played Tog, Mono Blue, Meandeck Oath, and Doomsday. Variety is not just the spice of life – it can be a strong weapon. Marc Perez was forced to stop playing his pet U/R Fish deck after a bad defeat at Gencon. The only vintage player who comes to mind that continues to play the same deck is Rich Shay. I wish Rich the best of luck and continued success, but for the rest of us, success will have to come from playing the metagame well.

For these reasons, my teammates view the Vintage tournament scene as a sort of PTQ Circuit, in that you have to be abreast of a constantly shifting metagame. Instead of trying to break the format (as one might do on the Pro Tour), you should be trying to break the metagame.

With the upcoming Star City Power Nine circuit in 2005, metagaming will become more critical than ever as the metagame shifts from tournament to tournament. Identifying which decks can best the field and tuning them to maximize their chances will likely lead a great number of people to win some power in 2005. This task, it appears, is greatly aided by the efforts of teams. Teammates can provide critical test partners, a source of ideas, a great resource for deck tuning, and a critical motivator to perform well.

Innovation – There is Still Much To Be Done

Almost every successful deck has been a new deck to the format this year. Think about all the new decks: Fish, Belcher, Doomsday, Slaver, Meandeck Oath, MeanDeath, new Workshop Aggro decks, and new Four Color Control decks. Yet, there remain many untapped ideas out there, or some which are only now beginning to see success. Mike Long has come up with a fascinating Ravager deck, which I'm convinced is a solid deck. The parts to Kobold-Skullclamp have been in place since Glimpse of Nature was printed, yet it hasn't shown up yet in major tournaments. Competitors bold enough to step up to the plate with a new deck stand a good chance of being rewarded by it.

I have no doubt that 2005 will be even more interesting than 2004. This will be the first time that a massive sustained year-round Vintage tournament circuit will exist. It will undoubtedly be important to pay close attention to the results of each tournament in order to predict and gauge what to play at subsequent tournaments. Surprise will be an important factor, but unless the rest of Champions block provides a number of great new archetype components or some key card becomes restricted, only the bravest players will be able to come up with new decks and have the guts to play them. For everyone else, good old fashion metagaming will be the key to success.

Breaking the metagame is important, by surprise ccan help do that better than anything else.  Breaking the format leads to breaking the metagame, imo.  

I think the way to break the PTQs is also surprise.  I think somewhere along the way we developed the misnomer that a PTQ format is not about breaking a format.  I beleive that the most successful PTQers are those who are innovative.  

When Meandeck develops a deck, we don't want to make a solid deck.  We don't want to develop or tune a good deck.  Often times I see around here posts with tuning a  generic deck.  What about aiming at the format with a loaded gun and instead of asking: what can I do to make GroAtog or Fish better, how can I *break* this format in half?  

If people truly break the format, I promise that they will be successful in the T1 PTQ Circuit.  As I tried to show, surprise is a potent weapon.  Playing new decks is absolutely a key ingredient to success in a T1 PTQ Circuit.  

Like I said: Innovation and metagaming are the twin pillars of success, imo.

The question I'm asking though: is are people trying to *break* the format .  That is different from asking whether they are trying to win, or merely whether there is innovation.

[Rico Suave]

Not enough people are breaking T1 because not enough people are willing to put in the time required to do so.  When people find a netdeck, they stick with it and refuse to change it in fear of it becoming a worse deck and also because they are afraid to run a card which others deem "inferior."  Certain changes do make a deck worse, however not enough people are willing to experiment and find hidden synergies that do not appear at first glance.  There are many cards (and archetypes!) in the card pool that are VERY strong, yet underused.  

That is my experience, at least.

[Smmenen]

But people seem to have no trouble finding time to infinitely tweak GroAtog or Psychatog decks.  And how often when people suggest new ideas are they shot down?

[thorme]

Are Enough People Trying to Break T1?

Sigh - so many people giving answers to an unanswerable question.  The question as stated is not well defined.  Enough?


Enough people are trying to break Type 1 to maintain a healthy environment with several new decks and archetypes appearing each year.

Not Enough people are trying to break Type 1 to have a new virtually unbeatable deck created regularly.


So, you must define your goal to determine whether enough people are trying to break the format to reach that goal.  


Sadly, it seems that most people share Steve's goal.  As a moth to the flame, Steve seems to be drawn to the day when Vintage is a well-understood, pro-like format - the same day that Vintage loses all appeal for most people and the day when Steve turns into the next Rakso.

[Mixing Mike]

In light of this thread, I'm going to go ahead and post my Possessed Portal deck, and hopefully get some positive feedback.  I'm pretty sure it could use some help.

I said it on SCG and I'll say it again here.  Teams are what's making the format grow, and are also stunting the format.  Look at the time during 4Gush GAT.  We had people publicly innovating Stax variants, MUD, Hulk, Dragon, Long, Madness, FCG, Rector based Tendrils and Trix, and probably many more that I'm missing.  Now every group has their own message board and everyone does their work separately.

[bebe]

There are a few problems with these assumptions. First I'm seeing a number of new decks emerging ... Let's just look at recent history ...
Transmute deck
CAB deck
Cerebral Assassin deck
Oath deck
SuiVirus
Doomsday
DracoExplosion ( I had to - sorry )

The last tournament I played at in Toronto was a ten proxy tournament. There were a number of decent rogue ( by this I mean new ) decks that made a showing and a number of old arch types revisted. Certainly Stax, Oath, Slaver were prominent. But after these decks were knocked about we ended up with a Parfait deck and a Highlander ( yes my Gimp deck ) making the top eight. I lost to Stax narrowly but I know Ray beat Stax with Parfait in Swiss ( please stop saying Trini beats Parfait as I've seen Ray beat them time and again).  TPS was present, SuiVirus was present, Salvager was represented and Peter played a new Dragon build. At the last 60 person tournament in Toronto we had a meta gamed Sui deck in the top eight - one of the decks I defeated this time around.

Look, Rudy won with a DracoExplosion deck in Europe. I feel TMD is one of the culprits in these discussions. Waterbury and GenCon are considered the only valid results by many in the community and consequently Canadian or European deck that do not fit the established mold are  considered a one of abberation that cannot be repeated.

Magic really is about finding a deck to beat the meta game.  The pros do it well. But we Type 1 players are a bit more relaxed in this regard. We have decks that we play because we ENJOY playing them. Sure, we want to win. But I know quite a few good magic players that are determined to update and tweak their favorite deck to the meta rather than net deck the current fad. I will play Gimp until it wins. I played Mask ( a deck I'm very comfortable with)  when everyone and their Uncle insisted it could not win and ended up fifth at Ontario Vintage with only one loss all day.
Marc Perez is a good example of a player who loves his deck. He played Fish when it was scoffed at but stuck to his guns until it became an established arch type. Rich did the same with Landstill and Peter followed with Dragon. I won't even go into Toronto and Oshawa Stompy, Lock, Stock and a few other decks that were laughed at and denigrated.

My two cents ...

[Zeke]

I have to agree with what MixinMike just said.  It seems like the only time innovation occurs is during the time right after a major tournament, when a team unveils it's newest "super secret" deck.  That's when all the non-team players flock to the message boards to begin swaping ways to take it down.

While the team are creating new deck designs and new archetypes, they are also not allowing the community as a whole know about it until they are good and ready for it.  I do agree that secrecy is a good thing.  But the Vintage community, as a whole, is small.  Rather than seperate ourselves we should be comming together to share deck ideas and "secret tech".  

Now, I understand that this secret tech does allow you to win a tournament, and I'm all for that, but I still think something along the lines of "we are currently working on a build of oath" or "we do believe doomsday can be a deck" can go a long way into inspiring other people who aren't on the team to go out and experiment for themselves.

Man, I'm starting to sound like a civil rights leader, so I'll end this here.

[Moxlotus]

Tier 2 players - people who follow TMD/comparable foreign sites regularly (i.e. every day or every other day-ish), who know the established environment and basic matchups. Playtesting for these players generally falls into tinkering/tweaking/tuning established decks because of a lack of a team (or lack of a quality team), lack of more time than following TMD/SCG/etc and matchup testing, etc. Playskill and rules knowledge varies from excellent to above average (compared to type 1 now...) (for example, they recognize why the replacement effect of Samurai of the Pale Curtain makes it playable whereas the triggered effect of Planar Void hasn't proven effective yet.). I would put myself in this category.

I would put myself and probably my entire team in this category.  We usually don't think of new ideas-we just tweak a deck to suite our metagame and focus on the playskill aspect of type 1 rather than the deckbuilding aspect.  Sometimes the deck we are tweaking changes 20 or so cards and at the end barely looks like the original-but it still started out as metagaming the established deck.  We are college students and I live away from everybody.  I also have a girlfriend who I am with most of the time I am home.  Time is limited-especially when Dungeons and Dragons gets in the way.  Jeez-we really are a bunch of nerds.

[Mixing Mike]

bebe, I know that Assassin wasn't released until it already had a few wins under it's belt.  Oath wasn't really mainstreamed until after it took 4 spots at one of the SCG events.  SuiVirius, please oh please find me a thread on that where innovation is taking place.  

Doomsday is the only deck you've listed that was released, and then taken to a tournament, making top 8.  The CAB deck that was just put on SCG has yet to prove itself to the community through tournament data, though I'm sure it easily could.  Another deck could be 5/3, but even that is scarcely discussed here.  I also would like to thank CAB for opening one of their innovations for discussion by the Vintage community.

[Smythen]

I love TMD -- I come here regularly, play Type I exclusively, and have to say that I'm quite good at it.  I am ranked 8th in my state for vintage, do well in tournaments, and have won against strong competitors.

With that said, I have trouble believing that people on TMD wonder why innovation is so rare.  We all know that new ideas on this site are STOMPED into the ground if they do not come from one of the "elite".  There is no healthy atmosphere where people can share ideas and get good feedback from others.  I agree that the best format for new innovation comes from team membership and the ability to dedicate time to brainstorming and testing, but there are a LOT of cards and combinations out there screaming to be broken.  On the internet, we do not have any place to go to simply put forth ideas to let others chew on as well.  If a deck or idea has not been thoroughly tweaked and tested beyond belief, it and its creator will be ostracized from the community and summarily dismissed.

Those of us who have professional lives (I am a physician) can only dedicate small to moderate amounts of time, and we would have a lot to add if we could pool together on one internet site and mass-process tons of each-others ideas.  That can't happen on this somewhat fascist, often closed-minded site.

[Zherbus]

We all know that new ideas on this site are STOMPED into the ground if they do not come from one of the "elite".

Oooh. I love it when the ill-informed take a shot at TMD's site policy.

I would say that the ideas that get STOMPED into the ground are often (read: most of the time, but theres been a few gems that have slipped by)rightly done. "Innovation" isn't rare, format breaking ideas are. Entertain me by following the logic chain that makes TMD what it is:

* The other side of the coin where good and bad ideas are welcomed by the community attract the people with bad ideas because they certainly don't want to be scoffed at a site that is only receptive to good ideas.  

* When you attract more people with bad ideas, you have a site with more bad content.

* When you have a site with more bad content, the people with good ideas stop benefitting from being part of that site.

* When people with good ideas are no longer part of a site, then all that generally remains is people with bad ideas.

* When you have a site with mostly/only bad ideas, noone wants to visit the site.

We at TMD are usually skeptical, in our somewhat tight-knit community (meaning when people are good, we tend to know about it) and rightfully so. We've been flooded over the years with terrible ideas and poorly tuned lists.

If you want to talk about the little man and how he can't get any credability, take a look at Toad, CrazyCarl, Phantom Tape Worm, and myself for example. We were all noobs too and we all did what was necessary to catch everyones ears.

Oh yeah.

You're a doctor, so I can only assume you're smart enough to know that TMD's strict guidelines of quality and 'fascism' are two different things.

[bebe]

bebe, I know that Assassin wasn't released until it already had a few wins under it's belt. Oath wasn't really mainstreamed until after it took 4 spots at one of the SCG events. SuiVirius, please oh please find me a thread on that where innovation is taking place.

Doomsday is the only deck you've listed that was released, and then taken to a tournament, making top 8. The CAB deck that was just put on SCG has yet to prove itself to the community through tournament data, though I'm sure it easily could. Another deck could be 5/3, but even that is scarcely discussed here. I also would like to thank CAB for opening one of their innovations for discussion by the Vintage community.

Thank you for agreeing with me. We were not discussing when a deck was released. We are discussing whether or not newe decks are breaking ground. I think I particularly noted that decks do not enter the mainstream easily but that does not mean they do not exist or are not being played in metas that get little or no recognition.  You completely ignored Transmute deck, BTW. Oath was played immediately following Orchards. That Meandeck is the known arch type just enhances my argument that many TMDers look at the large American  venues at the true lightning rods when in fact a good many arch types were formed outside of the States.
I won't discuss SuiVirus yet. Just mentioning that these aberrations do appear as does Affinity in many forms especially in Europe.
 

We all know that new ideas on this site are STOMPED into the ground if they do not come from one of the "elite".

Well most of us did not start out as Vintage Adepts. In fact I hate the title as it makes me a big juicy target at tournaments. No. We posted decks and primers and discussed new arch types and were often villified for it. I wrote a Fish primer before Marc Perez ( albeit a rather early and untweaked one). I was told Fish was not viable. Marc persisted, wrote a better primer and the arch type took root. I also wrote an Earthcraft/Squirelnest primer and a GroMask primer. Both had lukewarm receptions. But I still persist. Maybe I will write a Gimp primer ( just kidding Zherb). Do not be afraid of criticism. Just be prepared to back up your assertations with tested and well thought out replies and results. There is only an elite if you percieve an elite. I don't discredit anyone with a decent presentation. For the record, I'm a professional with two University degrees. This never stopped me from posting or testing out new ideas.

[jpmeyer]

Another reason that vintage development isn't as quick to respond iss nostalgia, and familiarity.  Nostalgia inexorably stifles innovation.  Why look at cards you are unfamilliar with, when your psychatog's, workshops etc, are still around.  You had good luck and lots of fun with them in the past why not now.

I think that this might actually be the reason.  I remember when I made that survey and one of, if not the most common reason that people liked Type 1 was like "I like playing with my old cards" or some derivative of that.

I generally don't think the "I have a job/marriage/whatever" is really the explanation, because that is more about logistics (When can I play?  How often can I test?) than about a mindset.  The idea is not infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters, but thinking "What's a powerful play in this environment?" and figuring out how to get that done.  I haven't seen too much of that in the last 6 months (note: I haven't played the Transmute Aritfact deck yet).

The only real deck in the last 6 months from outside of Meandeck was Cerebral Assassin (whether or not the deck is good or bad right now or whatever is irrelevent.)  What I'm looking at here is the thought process behind the deck:

1) Sundering Titan is a powerful card in this environment
2) A turn 2 Sundering Titan is usually enough to win
3) Let's try to figure out how to get turn 2 Sundering Titan consistently

And voilla, they did!

[wraith985]

With that said, I have trouble believing that people on TMD wonder why innovation is so rare.  We all know that new ideas on this site are STOMPED into the ground if they do not come from one of the "elite".  There is no healthy atmosphere where people can share ideas and get good feedback from others.

Personally, I believe the de facto ban on bad decks is a good thing for Type 1 newbies such as myself. I've been soaking up as much information as humanly possible over the last few days on TMD, trying to get a feel for the monster that is Type 1. I've played mostly Standard despite being in Magic since The Dark, so Type 1's ridiculously large card pool is a bit overwhelming for me. The last thing I need is for this forum to be flooded with threads for bad decks that can't compete with the current meta - quite frankly, I don't have that kind of time to waste when I'm trying to learn as much as I can as fast as I can. If a posted list is bad, then as a user I want to know ASAP whether it sucks or not, so I can decide whether I want to keep reading.

As for being a professional and not having time - I'm sure most of us feel the same way you do. But this is Type 1 - the cards aren't going anywhere (unlike Standard). You can take as long as you want to tweak an idea into a viable deck and playtest it at least a little bit before you submit it to the general body of the forum. If I had to decide between having to keep an idea a little longer in order to write a more well-thought-out post/primer and having the forum flooded with bad decks, I'd pick the former in a heartbeat.

[Vegeta2711]

Really breaking T1, just like all formats, would require stumbling onto something new and unexplored. This sometimes happens through endless searching and/or dumb luck.

Now just going and creating a 'broken' deck usually doesn't equal a good one. As JP said, CA took a concept and pushed it to it's evolutionary end. I know myself a few others have done this same course and gotten decks that seem amazing, but only in a vaccum. Decks that are incredibly powerful, but not enough protection, ones without enough consistency, etc.

How many people do this, I'm not really sure. I'd just like to point out that sometimes the broken decks aren't even that good and vice versa. Otherwise we'd all be playing Belcher or something similar.

[Whatever Works]

Breaking type 1 isnt an easy thing to do, and in my opinion hasnt been broken sinse Long.dec, (or you could argue 4cc but only in europe).

This is the case because every single time you come up with a new Idea you have to ask the following questions that end up making you scrap the idea quickly...

1.) Is this deck idea im building better then the closest similar style deck.
2.) Can this deck handle trinisphere?
3.) Does this deck lose to X-deck
4.) Is this deck fast enough?
5.) basic lands?

I believe personally that trinisphere is the ONLY reason koboldclamp.dec isnt dominating the format, and same goes for belcher... alot of new decks waiting to be invented are either inferior versions of what exist, or lose to a card in the format like trinisphere.

[Revvik]

Another reason that vintage development isn't as quick to respond iss nostalgia, and familiarity.  Nostalgia inexorably stifles innovation.  Why look at cards you are unfamilliar with, when your psychatog's, workshops etc, are still around.  You had good luck and lots of fun with them in the past why not now.

I think that this might actually be the reason.  I remember when I made that survey and one of, if not the most common reason that people liked Type 1 was like "I like playing with my old cards" or some derivative of that.

...when playing with your old cards is no longer what this format is all about.  Casual environments are better suited for nostalgia.  When players would rather find ways to make their old Parfait or Illusions/Donate deck work than try new ideas that the metagame might be susceptible to, then development stagnates, because it is left to less people.

[Miniature Kenny]

I personally consider myself a tier 1.5 or 2 vintage player.  I've only been around since tempest and I quit for two years at one point.  However, I do enjoy trying to innovate.  It's just that using certain cards that could become potentially "broken" have great flaws in them for vintage.  

1. The card itself.  If it's too slow, or requires multiple cards to break, it isn't worth trying due to point 3.  
2. Acceleration isn't a problem.  If the card conflicts with acceleration used, if it's overcosted by 1 even, it becomes problematic in playing thus not being the bomb that I wanted it to be.
3. Combo.  It's some cards that have great combo potential, but the other cards that must be used in making the combo lethal generally exceed two, thus making a less consistent build.  This becomes a problem when facing experienced players who have builds that don't allow mistakes or inconsistency.

I want to be the guy to break a card in type one, but I don't have time or the resources usually.  Even if I did, it might turn out that I fail horribly at what I did.  I appreciate the fact that sites like TMD exist, that way, I don't have to cough up twenty dollars at a tourney to find out what i have made isn't going to work.  I have trouble organising my thoughs sometimes so my post may be illogical.

[Mr. Channel-Fireball]

After playing in GenCon this year I will say this:

Doing well at a tournament and making the "right call" for a sideboard or deck choice requires at least two weeks of consummate playtesting with more than one person.  

Aside from that it's always been my belief that new deck ideas sprout from old deck ideas and wacky multi-player games.  I've seen some very good "tech" come from random dudes playing their combos in multiplayer!

There is no reinventing the wheel, and frankly, why bother?

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Doomsday is the only deck you've listed that was released, and then taken to a tournament, making top 8. The CAB deck that was just put on SCG has yet to prove itself to the community through tournament data, though I'm sure it easily could. Another deck could be 5/3, but even that is scarcely discussed here. I also would like to thank CAB for opening one of their innovations for discussion by the Vintage community.

Well, thanks for the praise, but we already took the deck to two tournaments, the data is just lying on my floor till I get around to type it and sent it to Womprax.... :/. We wouldn't have given out the decklist before at least playing it once, either, actually I won me half a Mox with it already. The big difference here is, we don't have a P9-tournament regularly, so we can be more free with our tech, because waiting to cash in big time would be rather stupid, considering the deck would probably be out of date by the time that big a tourney comes around.
Btw, bebe, it's "Gifted", not CAB.dec . We're planning on producing other good decks in the future .

I generally don't think the "I have a job/marriage/whatever" is really the explanation, because that is more about logistics (When can I play? How often can I test?) than about a mindset. The idea is not infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters, but thinking "What's a powerful play in this environment?" and figuring out how to get that done.

That's one of the truest statements I read in a long time. CAB isn't good because we test that 15h a day, but because we know what we're looking for. We have some great deck-theorists in the team, as well as some dedicated apprentice-junkies, but I'd be really surprised if we got even remotely close to the testing time pro-tour-players put into their decks.

For example look at my Gifted-article, do you realize how close to the original the current decklist is? We are able to build the decks in a way so that they are good already and just need fine-tuning, which saves a lot of testing time. This is mainly because we know what we want - something broken. We don't set out with "lets build a cool new deck" or "lets make this deck good again" (usually), we see something has power, recognize it and try to find the skeleton that will break the card or interaction in question as much as it seems possible.

Broken things don't happen through testing a deck enough, broken things happen because your mind is tuned to recognize the signs of inherent brokeness. What testing does is raise the regularity with which the broken thing you found happens in the deck you've built.

Now just going and creating a 'broken' deck usually doesn't equal a good one. As JP said, CA took a concept and pushed it to it's evolutionary end. I know myself a few others have done this same course and gotten decks that seem amazing, but only in a vaccum. Decks that are incredibly powerful, but not enough protection, ones without enough consistency, etc.

If broken means "kills you turn 2" that's obviously true. If broken means "a play that will usually win the game if it happens", that's different. After you've found that play, you think about what to do to make that play happen regularly before the other player can kill you, to circumvent the exact problem Vegeta just mentioned (by slowing the opponent, being faster, whatever works with the card/interaction in question). If you can figure out a way to do that, all is well. If not, scrap the idea. Develop first, test the product. The development part doesn't take to much time, it's much more decided by the mindset jp mentioned.

As for new decks, there are some "rules" I follow when evaluating something new:

-If it's combo and doesn't have 8+ disruption-spells, it has to be able to win on turn 2 regularly.
-If it's aggro, it has to have a way to fight against combo.
-If it's control, it has to be able to disrupt the opponent's development at least twice until turn 4-5 at the latest.
-If if doesn't have a turn 4-5 (combo-)kill, you definitly need tons of removal and counterpower.
-If it can't counter, don't plan on playing more than 3-4 turns, ever.
-Every deck has to have at least 8 slots that produce card(quality)advantage.

There are quite a few more things, which I don't remember/get into text right now.

[Elric]

I would say that some people enjoy breaking a format for the sake of breaking a format.  Other people, however, only want to break the format if it provides some tangible benefit to them.  Given the relatively low tangible benefits (as mentioned by numerous other people), only the minority that really likes to break the format is going to do it.  A few other factors affect this analysis (being on a team, being a particularly good player), but I would guess that most people trying to break the format just really like that aspect of magic.

[OptimusDeutz]

The lack of development in the Type 1 metagame has less to do, in my opinion, with knowledge of what is broken and more to do with a lack of experience developing decks. I know that I, for example, have plenty of ideas as to what is broken, but I lack the experience to build it into a deck that could compete. As a result I have little choice but to tune and tweak the hard work of others.

Is it possible that another thread could be started where we all discuss deckbuilding methods? We could discuss some of the important stylistic differences in our testing. This could help some people refine their testing methods, and could help others to design their own decks knowing they are testing using the same methods as the big boys. It would do all of this while protecting the secrecy of the decks that the various teams/individuals are developing.

I think this might be more infuential to the metagame's stagnant state (if you want to call it that) than posting our theories as to WHY.

O.Deutz

(edit to add a comma)

[Covetous]

Maybe I'm just a little slow, but I'm not entirely sure what "breaking the format" really means.  Does it mean finding a new deck, combo or card interaction that completely owns every existing deck in the format?  If so, then it's not surprising that this doesn't happen often despite the vast number of cards available for the purpose.  This is because the decks of the format are SO powerful and so diverse, each one being a consummate version of a fundamental Magic concept.  In other words, can your deck beat a deck that exists completely for the purpose of limiting your resources and ability to play spells (ex. the much-maligned Stax)?  Can it beat a deck which contains 16+ counterspells?  Can it win before turn 2?  The requirements for successful new innovations are very stringent.

In formats with smaller card pools, when people break the format, it is usually because they find a way to use a new card as opposed to finding a new way to abuse an old card.  That's the problem with breaking type 1--dilution.  The greater card (and viable deck) quantity means that each individual innovation needs to be much larger to make a substantial splash.  Think about dropping a brick in a bathtub as opposed to a swimming pool--which one will make a splash over the side?  If you have only to beat decks utilizing cards from the past 2 blocks, the power of your innovation does not need to be as great as when you need to beat decks which were effectively 10 years in the making.  An example of this is Ravager.dec--in standard (or even extended), a deck that wins turn 3-4 consistently is a monster which requires a lot of hate to beat.  But it has been said that this deck will NEVER be a good deck in vintage because it has to attack more than one time per game without substantial disruption.

The number of innovations in vintage is not lower than in any other format, but a smaller percentage of new innovations are going to be successful in this format.  In the past few months, we have seen the emergence of several new archetypes and innovations on older archetypes.  But by definition, only a few of these will actually be good--that's the nature of the format.  It's true that reduced amounts of playtime and team secrecy CAN hinder overall format growth.  But, let's be fair--not all players are going to find a format-breaking innovation.  If you assume that only good players (tier-1 players) are going to do anything useful in the area of innovation, then you can say that the level of innovation in the format is a function of the best players only.  True, some randoms can make useful contributions, but there's a reason that most of the powerful new decks come from TEAMS--most of the good players are on teams.  I know that I am not a great MTG innovator, and thus on a purely statistical basis I know that I am NOT going to come up with a format-breaking innovation (unless maybe I devote way more time to playtesting than I can afford to).  

My point is--it doesn't necessarily matter if everyone in the format is trying to "break" it (whatever that means).  It only matters how much the best players are trying to break the format, because by and large those are the players who are going to be successful.  This is a cynical way of looking at this issue, but in all fairness people who are going to innovate know who they are and people who are not going to innovate should just accept it.  This doesn't mean that people who are not great players shouldn't try to innovate--we just shouldn't be shocked when the best we can do is change a few cards from an established deck to own our metagame.