That actually opens up a whole new world of issues. Shoal is a phenomonal budget card, and IMO, is the reason we should leave Trini where it is for the next 3 months, just to see. Our dilemma right now is wether we want to restrict three cards or none at all. If we kill Trinisphere, we MUST also restrict Intuition and Dark Ritual, and possibly Goblin Welder as well to keep the balance that we've achieved. Unfortunately, neither is a good option. Trinisphere may have a horrible effect on interactivity and fun, but it isn't causing the problems that cards such as Lion's Eye Diamond and Gush did, and killing it alone will throw the format completely out of balance, meaing we need as many as four restrictions to restore balance, which most people feel is excessive. Our only real option is to hope Wizards prints a card that helps smooth things out soon. But something does need to be done.
I agree with every word in this post excep tthe very last sentance. It's almost bizaare that you can admit that the format is a) balanced, b) diverse, and c) interesting and yet saythat something must be done. I think that Shoal will make an impact as well, and we should see what that impact will be.
The problem I have with arguments that aren't based upon objective data in top 8s is that they are subjective, by and large. Looking at your claims, I have to filter them through what I perceive is your preference set. I know you play Dragon and enjoy playing Dragon. But let's be honset, Dragan is a deck that, undisrupted, winse the game on turn two or three. Therefore, any claim that a deck shouldn't win on turn one necessarily bolsters your deck of choice. Your example suggests the very reason we need trinisphere: it was your only losses. Therefore, it has some role in keeping you and your broken combo deck in check.
Moreover, your deck is much less eqipped to deal with Trinisphere if it has resolved on turn one. You have FOW, but you have so few blue cards that without activating your draw engine, you are probably as likely not to have any blue card as you are. Second, you run no Wasteland - the second and probably most imporatnt tool against Turn one Trinisphere. Therefore, it is much easier for you to make the snide remarks about "delusional fantasies." I just want everyone else reading your post and this thread to see the truth about where you are coming from. Hopefully my comments here shed important light on that.
To be fair, even "objective" top 8s contain a lot of subjective meaning. Consider, for example, Meandeck's result in the tournaments listed in your article. Meandeck made 8 top 8s from what I can remember (Stax, Mono U, Doomsday, 4 Oath, Meandeck Tendrils). Of these top 8 decks, only one of them involved Welder (Stax). Of the other 40 decks in the sample, 26 of them used Welder. That is, 65% of non-Meandeck top 8s used Welder and 12.5% of Meandeck top 8s used Welder.
I think we are talking about different things. I was talking about normative claims that something should be done becuase of some reason OTHER than dominance. Dominance is the most easily quantifiable data point. We can simply look at the GroATog results from 2003 and transpose that data to today.
What you are talking about appears to be the subject of another thread. This thread is about the role of trinisphere in Vintage - you are conflating that with the thread about my article which covered different ground.
Moreover, you are right in one thing. Even if we have an objective data point about dominance or distortion, the data set we used is based upon subjective cutoffs. I definately used my judgment to narrow my data sets. But I didn't presume to be perfectly objective in that. Dr. Sylvan does. His data set has a cut off 50 players per tournamnet - a cut off point that is neither dictated by statistics, math or logic.
Beyond that, I honestly have no idea how that relates to the rest the paragraph. I don't understand the connection between subjective data sets and meandecks performance. I don't see the connection at all. The only thing I can guess is that you are not using the word subjective properly in this context. The only other point is that Meandeck doesn't play workshops. But that usually cuts the other way - that suggests that I would be anti-Workshop. I generally perceive that people who are a proponent of a particulkar deck would be, other things equal, more in favor of harming archetypes that threaten their pet decks, rather than less or neutral. That's probably a fair assessment. Yet if my team tends not to play Workshop decks, then wouldn't that make me more likey to call for Trinspheres restriction, even marginally so? Am I missing something?
You had 16 decks based around Workshop in your article. Of these, 14 used Welders. If Workshop had half the number of spots that it did now, there would be less Welder decks per tournament. Unless most of the Workshop top 8 spots were taken by Slaver decks, this would be a significant reduction.
When you point to a tournament like Gencon as an example of what happens in a high powered metagame, you should be really aware that 2/3 of the Welders played were used in Workshop decks. If you really think that tournament in indicative of what future tournaments will look like, it is hard to simultaneously assert that Workshop decks will suffer a large decline.
This is a fair point but easily explained. I didn't say that Workshops are going to suffer a large decline - i said they were in a "long-term" decline. See the difference? Here is the deal. I see nothing in near-future sets that will make Workshops stronger. Mirrodin block is in the past. Their numbers peaked and are now falling. I think this trend will continue indefinately. Month by month, their percentage will continue to fall. I'm not sure where it will level off, but I can't see that point yet.
Besides the tournaments in New England (one tournament the largest tournament in the data set and the other tournament the second smallest), not a single tournament had more than 2 decks with Welder but not Workshop (ie., Slaver/Belcher). Plus, Waterbury, with 200 people, only put 16 Welders in top 8 while Vintage Evolution, with 64 players, put 20 Welders in the top 8.
Yes. So? I only suggested, and Dr. Sylvan supported this, that there is a correllation between tournament size and number of welders per top8. That doesn't mean that there can't be data points outside this correlation or that the correllation isn't weak. It is a weak, but still valid, correllation.
Here’s my argument about a proposed tournament size correlation with the number of Welders in the top 8. I do not think that a higher number of players in and of itself could explain any significant amount of variation in the number of Welders in top 8 (because the number of rounds goes up very slowly compared to the number of players: 33-64 players already gets you 6 rounds but it takes 129-256 players to get 8 rounds) .
The only things that could explain why there are more Welders at larger tournaments are:
More players (though proportionally of the same quality as at smaller tournaments) bring Welder to a tournament at big tournaments (so the top 8 simply reflects this). This could be due to players simply owning more cards and being able to make Welder decks. Without any assumptions about changing player skill or card availability, though, it becomes hard to see why Welder decks would show up that much more at larger events (since this would require that Welder decks were either overplayed for no particular reason at large events or underplayed for no particular reason at smaller events).
Why are you so opposed to the possibility that in a larger tournament it weeds out weaker decks and Welder decks are just better, other things equal. Goblin Welder is an insane card that is ridiculously undercosted in a format where every deck has Moxen. Is that so hard to accept?
Another explanation could be that the “Good Players” (who almost all play Welder and do better because the combination of Welder and “Good Player skill” is particularly effective) make up a significantly higher percentage of the field at larger tournaments (compared to smaller tournaments). I am not saying that either of these later two arguments is correct; I just found first number of players completely insufficient to explain the number of Welders in top 8.
I'm simply not sure why you spent your whole post talking about Welders. Nothing I said in the intervening posts was primarily or exclusively about Welders. It is ancilliary to the topic in this thread.
Can you use your better numbers to graph how many non-WS/non-FoW decks there are in top 8's over time? I tried contacting you to discuss this, but you weren't around... Whether I'm right, I think at least we're losing viability for non-Workshop, non-blue decks. Some more vocal members think that this is just fine, but I tend to try to remember that there are more than 2 colors (blue and artifact) in magic. I want to place that blame for this trend somewhere, and Trinisphere seems right. The numbers don't seem to indicate that combo was the cause. Perhaps it was trinisphere alone, or a combination of trinisphere+ crucible, or some other factor that showed up with or around the time of Darksteel.
Here is the problem though: I think you are missing the point that Workshop decks are often blue. Why? Becuase blue has the power nine. That is a fundamental flaw in this format. This goes to Dr. Sylvan's subsequent post: The problem with Vintage is that there is a core of cards that simply must be played in any good deck.
Is it distorting that every deck has to have artifacts (because every deck has Black Lotus and a Mox)? If we don't consider that distorting, then there is non cause for alarm over blue. The reason blue is included in every deck is because Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are blue. I would be more interested in the number of decks that don't have Ancestral.
I'm not more concerned about the number of blue cards than I am about the fact that Moxen belong in good decks. Imagine if Dr. Sylvan ran a statistical analysis of the number of decks that don't have Moxen. You might be quite alarmed at the number of Lotuses in the environment given its restriction. But you shouldn't be. Why? Becuase it obscures the variety of decks that use Lotus and that use Ancestral Recall.
I can't really say that it is a bad thing if every deck in the format starts with: 4 FOW or 4 Workshops if the variety is almost without bound. It is a fundamental flaw and rule of the format that every deck has moxen. I see no reason to see why FOW or Workshop should be significantly different.
But lets be honest - lots of decks don't have FOW: Belcher, Meandeck Tendrils, MEANDEATH, and I'm sure that there are others that don't run FOW maindeck but are still viable.
The real metagame triangle or quandrangle is: Fish type decks, Combo, Workshop, and Control-Combo. Anything else is just an aberration. Remember, the Control decks that have evolved to compete against Combo and Workshop are basically control decks with a hybrid finish: Oath, Control Slaver and Tog. They combo you out. How can bad budget aggro decks really compete against this?
Madness and FCG aren't really bad budget aggro. Also, I tend to think that hate.dec should be at least viable even though not tier 1.
I actually agree. I think Madness and FCG are good decks. I think Madness is probably the best of all - but I'd hesitate to call it budget. Short Bus has developed a savage madness deck with 4 FOWs, Bazaars, and full power and that deck is actually quite impressive.
I agree that the metagame has turned into the aforementioned "quadrangle" (square?). Maybe the result of fish-type decks being in lower numbers right now are because not only does WS have trinisphere, and big fat men, but Control-Combo has adapted to have a better game against it than before. Oath or fat men. I don't think this quadrangle was an accurate representation of the meta before trinisphere though. Something disappeared at that time... whether this is good or bad is left as an exercise to the reader.
If something dissapeared it was the development of the format not being forced out by FOW or Workshop. I mean, let's be honest, did R/G beats every really have a shot to administer 20 points of damage before getting Dragowned? What happened was that once Keeper got dethroned, all those people who thought that bad budget decks were good were in for a rude awakening. The persistence of these decks in weak fields is a remnant of that past, but not truly representative. Alternatively though, some of these decks can show up in no proxy fields. I remember an article that Steve (Zherbus) wrote about top 8 results - he said it was not uncommon to see a budget deck sneak into a top 8 with no proxies but that it became much more difficult in a proxy environment. I don't think it was a result of 3Sphere or any particular card that this change to decry happened - it was a result of development in general as people tapped into the full potential of the format.
