Let's talk about vintage.

[Kasuras]

Well put.  I was very intrigued by the Flores article.  I think he had it backward.  It wasn't that decks that force interaction win.  It's decks that prevent your opponent from interacting with you that win.  That's why Force of Will is best in combo decks and aggro-control and combo-control.

So, Smmenen is saying here that the winning decks are the decks that prevent other decks from interacting. I agree with him there, just like most people: just look around at the boards here and the recent top eights. And he’s right: why try to kill your opponent’s stuff when you can also kill him? And that is what combodecks, or enigma if you want to call it that, in every format is based on. Of course, when looking at the fundamentals of every deck: their aim is to kill you. The difference between combo and other such decks however is that combo decks want to play the game entirely their way, while other decks must devote some of their strategy to interactivity.

This leads me to my point:

From the explanation on the restriction of Trinisphere by Aaron Forsythe, at the 4th of March 2005:

Now that it has been floating around for a while, the Vintage crowd understands that the card does good things for the format, and bad things to the format. While it does serve a role of keeping combo decks in check, it also randomly destroys people on turn one, with little recourse other than Force of Will. And those games end up labeled with that heinous word—unfun. Not just “I lost� unfun, but “Why did I even come here to play?� unfun. The power level of the card is no jokes either, which is a big reason why I don't feel bad about its restriction.
Vintage, like the other formats with large card pools, always runs the risk of becoming non-interactive, meaning the games are little more than both players “goldfishing� to see who can win first. Trinisphere adds to that problem by literally preventing the opponent from playing spells. We don't want Magic to be about that, especially not that easily. If combo rears its head, we'll worry about it later. But for now, we want to people to play their cards. Really.

(Emphasis by me)

Not even a year ago; a card was restricted because of the reason that it lead to non-interactivity. Now look at our format: it’s fundamentally based on non-interactivity. What has gone so wrong in the past year that our format has changed so much? And, more important, what are we planning on doing about it? Since it must be obvious from Aaron’s quote that this path is not a right one: non-interactivity leads to goldfishing, goldfishing leads to unfun… and unfun leads to the dark side. Can we go back from this path or is it really too late?

Not only does non-interactivity make sure that the game is not fun anymore, there are also other factors at work here. I think that most people playing the game enjoy it because they can “outplay� the opponent; they enjoy solving difficult and complex puzzles. And that is the reason that non-interactivity alone is not the deciding factor when measuring the fun a format offers: the Meandeck SX is the perfect example for this. While the deck was meant to be as non-interactive as possible, but there were a lot of very difficult and complex puzzles: often even as difficult that the deck is avoided by everyone as if it has the plague.

No, I think that the other factor is that non-interactivity also leads to blurring or even dismissal of ye theories of old. And a major factor in the complex situations you can encounter is that all sorts of theories can be applied. And they apply less to situations if the theories an sich don’t even apply to the format anymore. 

The fundamental turn? Not in a format where everything can be played at the first turn, especially when there is so much randomness due to restricted cards that the fundamental turn cannot be ascribed to a single turn. Compare this to the example Flores gives in his article: control can play their Wrath of God on the fourth turn, so that deck’s fundamental turn is 4 when playing against an aggro deck. And look at Oath: they can play their Oath the first turn, and the chance of that is pretty high. Is the fundamental turn then 3? No, because the fundamental play there is playing the Oath; not the killing itself.

Another one? Look at the metagame clock: it just doesn’t apply anymore because aggro does not exist anymore. Matchups nowadays are decided by the inclusion of certain cards over the choice of the deck itself, simply because of the sheer power of the standard cards played in that deck. Hell, even aggro-control decks are now trying to kill as soon as possible instead of trying to control the game.

I think I have touched a sample of the underlying reason why so many discussions are about the format itself, and it being unfun over discussions regarding certain decks. What can we do about it? My belief has always been that bannings in vintage are inevitable: the metagame does change because of a restriction, but we have now reached a point where simple restrictions are not enough anymore to warrant a change in the metagame of a scale big enough to make the theories apply again and destroy the current trend of non-interactivity over interactivity.

[BigMac]

I think there is another problem as well. People used to react to a deck trying to beat it. Nowadays people copy a deck or an idea to make a better chance at winning. This does not seem a big difference. But the difference is that a few decks, the decks being considered the good deck, are played a lot and nobody tries to beat those in a new way.

Perhaps it is not possible to find it but i do not think people are really trying. Why try to find something when you can do well an easier way.

But i think with the cardpoole at our disposal we should be able to find new and innovative decks that beat the old ones. I also think that banning cards is not a solution as vintage is the format you get to play all cards. I also think the next big tournaments will feature some new decks and perhaps one will get a foothold. But as long as the establiished players keep to their winning decks innovation is hard and long.

PS as of late i have not been innovating myself. I am part of the problem as well. So nobody has to feel attacked by me, this is how i percieve things at the moment.

[Kasuras]

I think there is another problem as well. People used to react to a deck trying to beat it. Nowadays people copy a deck or an idea to make a better chance at winning. This does not seem a big difference. But the difference is that a few decks, the decks being considered the good deck, are played a lot and nobody tries to beat those in a new way.

I think that the reason for this is actually very simple: if you try to beat a certain deck, you are playing a strategy that opposes that strategy: a deck with specific hate cards. The problem is that those decks often do not possess the ability to be non-interactive themselves because the current non-interactive decks are that good at playing that role that you have to create a very interactive deck.

This means that you will only have a good matchup against that particular deck because the non-interactive decks are so diverse that you cannot possibly hate all of them sufficiently. Moreover, your options of beating other interactive decks are highly decreased.

[The Atog Lord]

One further item of note regarding the recent number of combo decks. I recall a time, some number of years ago, when the latest deck innovation was Extended Trix. Not illusions-donate, but the Trix deck itself, made by Michelle Bush. This deck was not only  a very powerful deck itself, but it also represented a fundamental breakthrough in deck design theory and understanding how Magic works. Now, we are starting to see those same lessons being applied to Type One.

Trix ran a very potent array of both search and draw. Necropotence, Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Consultation, and Brain Storm all combined to create a brilliant and overwhelming draw engine. Then there were the control elements of Trix, used not so much to stop the opponent as they were used to push through Trix's own spells. Duress, Force of Will, and perhaps a maindeck Seal of Cleansing (for opposing seals) and Firestorm (for opposing Elvish Lyrists) rounded out the deck's control. Thus, Trix sported ten or so permission and control cards none of which required much mana.  In fact, the concept of having single maindeck cards to deal with specific problems, in a deck running sufficient card draw and tutoring, is a concept that I still apply today in Control Slaver.

Finally, Trix had very quick mana acceleration, with Dark Ritual and Mana Vault. So, the deck combined amazing draw, search, control, and mana acceleration. Yet, this took up almost every spot in the deck. The deck was already at 52-53 cards, and had no way to kill the opponent. Illusions/Donate wasn't just selected for the kill because it was amazingly quick; it was also selected because it occupied so few slots in the deck. That two-card combo allowed the deck to dedicate very few card slots to winning the game, and more to drawing, searching, control, and acceleration -- in other words, to those elements which make a deck broken.

In modern deck design in Type One, we are seeing the trend emerge as it did in Extended. Victory conditions are becoming more and more concentrated as deck design improves.  In the past, having few win conditions would often mean having a win condition spanning several turns. For instance, Morphling was a one-card way to win, but he took several turns to do this. Even Decree of Justice suffers from the problem that unless a huge amount of mana is spent, it will take several turns. Whereas, the Trix combo enabled that deck to win in one or sometimes t wo turns.

So, having a combo win condition is the natural evolution of control decks. Even in extended, we see this pattern -- the two control decks most commonly seen had single card win mechanisms, either Psychatog or Scepter. Now, granted, this is not without some flaw either. Having a more concentrated and faster win mechanism often leads to having a more and more narrow mechanism. This means that certain cards and strategies can take advantage of this concentration and exploit it. Null Rod, for instance, is much better against Control Slaver than it was against Keeper. And few decks outside of Trix had to worry about an opposing Elvish Lyrist.

[Jacob Orlove]

No, I think that the other factor is that non-interactivity also leads to blurring or even dismissal of ye theories of old. And a major factor in the complex situations you can encounter is that all sorts of theories can be applied. And they apply less to situations if the theories an sich don’t even apply to the format anymore.

I completely disagree. There may be incomplete theories, or theories with narrow areas of application, but playing "non-interactive" Magic hardly makes old theories obsolete.

Let's look at your fundamental turn example:
First of all, it is matchup-specific, which means a lot more in T1 than in other formats. Control Slaver's fundamental turn against Combo is when they get UU up, but against Fish, it's either when they sneak out a protected robot, or when they chain enough card drawing and mana to make Fish's tempo plays irrelevant. Draining something in the Fish matchup is often irrelevant to the outcome of the match, to the point where the card is sometimes sided out, whereas Drain defines the combo matchup.

Second, and I already touched on this above, the "fundamental turn" does not correspond to a specific numerical turn, so much as it does to a specific game state threshold (above, "when they get UU up"). Because of all the acceleration and restricted cards in T1, it can be impossible to predict with certainty when this turn will be, but we can draw some general conclusions, such as noticing that combo's best chance against Drains are one-mana spells, such as REB and Xantid, rather than more expensive solutions like City of Solitude. Often, we can draw these conclusions with only an intuitive understanding of the Fundamental Turn, but that does not make the theory useless, just so useful that people apply it automatically!

You are also confusing a deck whose goal is a non-interactive game state, with one whose methods are non-interactive. There are no longer good decks that seek to create an interactive game state and then win it--that is simply inferior to creating a non-interactive game state, by either winning (Yawgwill) or locking down the opponent while you kill them (Null Rod). However, in order to create these non-interactive states, decks have to interact with their opponents--through counters, wastes, bounce, removal, lock components, creatures, etc. It does not matter that the ultimate purpose of this interaction is to shut out interaction--as long as interaction is part of the methods, the game itself is interactive.

[PucktheCat]

Vintage, like the other formats with large card pools, always runs the risk of becoming non-interactive, meaning the games are little more than both players “goldfishing� to see who can win first. Trinisphere adds to that problem by literally preventing the opponent from playing spells. We don't want Magic to be about that, especially not that easily. If combo rears its head, we'll worry about it later. But for now, we want to people to play their cards. Really.

It wasn't that decks that force interaction win.  It's decks that prevent your opponent from interacting with you that win.  That's why Force of Will is best in combo decks and aggro-control and combo-control.

Stephen and Aaron are talking about Magic from fundamentally different perspectives.  Steve's whole goal is to build decks that dominate the format.  Aaron's goal is to prevent just that.  Not suprising that what Steve describes as a great deck is pretty close to Aaron's description of what is worth restricting.

Leo

[Kasuras]

Stephen and Aaron are talking about Magic from fundamentally different perspectives.  Steve's whole goal is to build decks that dominate the format.  Aaron's goal is to prevent just that.  Not suprising that what Steve describes as a great deck is pretty close to Aaron's description of what is worth restricting.

Yes, and Steve's ultimate goal is to win power. Aaron's goal is to create a healthy format, which we eventually all want.

You are also confusing a deck whose goal is a non-interactive game state, with one whose methods are non-interactive. There are no longer good decks that seek to create an interactive game state and then win it--that is simply inferior to creating a non-interactive game state, by either winning (Yawgwill) or locking down the opponent while you kill them (Null Rod). However, in order to create these non-interactive states, decks have to interact with their opponents--through counters, wastes, bounce, removal, lock components, creatures, etc. It does not matter that the ultimate purpose of this interaction is to shut out interaction--as long as interaction is part of the methods, the game itself is interactive.

Of course, and this was exactly the argument that the opposers of Trinisphere's restriction used: Trinisphere alone won't kill you. It's the Wastelands and Crucibles following that do that job: all of which is actually interactive. It's just that your chances of winning are highly decreased or even nullified when the Sphere resolves.

Look at Oath: what cards are in there meant to interact? The counters, yes. But those are, as you said, only meant to stop interaction: and is that the only interaction there is? I could go on and on with examples, but the question now probably is whether that little bit of interaction there is left, the interaction when trying to achieve non-interaction, is sufficient to keep the format fun.

And if, as you say, this is indeed the only part of interaction left: are we not on the brink of destruction? What stops us from leaping to that very end? The power of cards can only increase, if not; then the format will stay as it is now since no other card is worth playing over the cards we already have thereby making the format stable and not fun. Increasing power will lead to even less need to interact because Force of Will will eventually be the only interactive card worth playing because other decks are that powerful at establishing a state of non-interaction so fast that interactive cards that require mana are not even worth playing...

An improbable doomscenario? Tell me, because I honestly believe that banning of cards is inevitable in a format where every card can be played.

[BigMac]

Banning of cards is bad because this is the format you can play all cards in. If you want cards banned go play legacy.

If you outplay your opponent without him doing a thing you will win. It is as simple as that. Eventually all games are won that way. You do something your opponent can do nothing about. You win. And if all decks win this way there should be something out there that could beat them all, we just have not found it yet.

But again, banning cards is not the answer.

[Kasuras]

Banning of cards is bad because this is the format you can play all cards in. If you want cards banned go play legacy.

Suppose wizards prints a card: U, instant, you win the game. Would you not advocate banning it?

..

Granted, that's an example which we will never see happening. It is however possible that they will print a card so good, either by sheer own power or by interaction, that merely restricting will not decrease that card's impact on the format sufficiently, this due to the insane number of tutors already in the format. And that's my point: this will eventually happen. Are we far away from it? I don't know, but with the current state of vintage I am sincerely in doubt about that.

If you outplay your opponent without him doing a thing you will win. It is as simple as that. Eventually all games are won that way. You do something your opponent can do nothing about. You win. And if all decks win this way there should be something out there that could beat them all, we just have not found it yet.

Yes, but as said: the problem is that your opponent cannot do anything before you win besides playing Force of Will in a situation described above. In other formats, people still have a chance against combo decks because they still have at least some way of winning: a turn 1 Scepter + Chant is not game, you can still destroy the Scepter before it comes online.

[rvs]

Banning of cards is bad because this is the format you can play all cards in. If you want cards banned go play legacy.

Suppose wizards prints a card: U, instant, you win the game. Would you not advocate banning it?

That is not an argument. Even if they wanted to print something like that, they would at least require you to have a sufficiently filled graveyard with other good stuff.

[PucktheCat]

Yes, and Steve's ultimate goal is to win power. Aaron's goal is to create a healthy format, which we eventually all want.

Right, but you seem to be using Steve's quote to show that the format is unhealthy.  It doesn't show that at all.  It just shows that Steve is trying to break the format, which is no secret to anybody.  In any format, healthy or unhealthy, the best decks are also going to be the ones that come closest to requiring a ban or restriction.  That's pretty close to a tautology.

Leo

[Jacob Orlove]

Before you start advocating banning cards, here's a short list of stuff that could be restricted to (potentially) weaken whatever "uber-decks" come along:

Brainstorm
Gifts Ungiven
Dark Ritual
Grim Tutor
Goblin Welder (this is to belcher what disciple was to extended affinity)
Thirst for Knowledge
Intuition
Oath of Druids
Mishra's Workshop
Crucible of Worlds
Bazaar of Baghdad
etc. etc.

Now, I don't expect to see any of those cards restricted anytime soon--they are purely to show that there is a lot of room for restrictions to still have an impact.

The only card that could ever reasonably be banned in T1 is Yawgmoth's Will, for all the reasons Smmenen has explained in the past. Nothing else operates in remotely the same way.

[Kasuras]

Please, be assured that my intention is not to discuss cards in particular: while I do think that Tinker and Yawgmoth's Will are probable candidates for a banning, that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I try to illustrate here.


Put simply, this is what I think:

-Past situation: decks devoted quite a few slots and strategy to being interactive; keeper, burn packing 1 damage goblins, etc. I think this is due to the fact that decks did not have the power to be non-interactive, and if they did: the restricted list was sufficient to keep them in check. This era probably ended when the storm mechanic became legal: Tendrils of Agony was a mistake.

You could also give as an argument that at this time the people just sucked at magic, but I wouldn't know that because I can only theorize.

-Current situation: decks try to be non-interactive, but can't be solely non-interactive yet because the power of the cards is not at a high enough level to accomplish that. So they play a strategy that plans to win, etc. See the rest of the thread for my opinion on this era. A notable peak of this era was the top8 finish of Meandeck SX, among others.

Now, we have 2 options for the future. Just 2 because restrictions are not enough anymore to make highly interactive decks viable again.

1) No interesting cards are printed for vintage anymore. Vintage will die because the playable card pool will not increase anymore. I don't see this happening because wizards wants to make money.

2) More interesting cards than the ones we have now are printed. The power level of the cards only increases, and decks increase to be non-interactive and better at it too. Vintage will die because interaction will be eventually at a minimum that is not fun anymore.

So, the solution is that we consider bannings. Not now, perhaps not even in the near future: but eventually it is inevitable.


Now, this is just a summary of what I was trying to say in my other replies. I hope this clarifies the point I am trying to get across.

[Jacob Orlove]

You're making one flawed assumption: that new cards in our format have to be more powerful than what we already have. That's not exactly true--there are a lot of new cards that people use because they fill a specialized role, rather than because they're simply better than everything that came before them. Lava Dart isn't more powerful than Lightning Bolt, but it has seen more Vintage T8s. Likewise, Uba Mask isn't so powerful that it's destroying the metagame, but it does allow an interesting mono-R Stax build with Bazaars, which, depending on your metagame, can be better or worse than regular stax.

I don't think we're going to get more than one or two archetype-creating cards per block (stuff like Gifts), but we can reasonably expect to get at least a few solid utility cards from every set (stuff like Uba Mask, Ninja of the Deep Hours, Pithing Needle, Darkblast, Shattering Spree). This leads to a kind of cyclical evolution, where players must adapt their archetype and card choices to their particular metagame, as that metagame evolves. If Gifts dominates, then people will prepare for it, perhaps opening the door for Stax, which sets up CS to win the next one, and by then people have forgotten about combo, so Belcher takes it, and then people adjust and lose to Gifts again. Anticipating decks and tech and being one step ahead lets savvy players exploit what is essentially a continuously fresh metagame.

[Machinus]

You're making one flawed assumption: that new cards in our format have to be more powerful than what we already have. That's not exactly true--there are a lot of new cards that people use because they fill a specialized role, rather than because they're simply better than everything that came before them. Lava Dart isn't more powerful than Lightning Bolt, but it has seen more Vintage T8s. Likewise, Uba Mask isn't so powerful that it's destroying the metagame, but it does allow an interesting mono-R Stax build with Bazaars, which, depending on your metagame, can be better or worse than regular stax.

I think he is kind of right about cards needing to be better. While new cards will rarely be strictly better than old ones (unless they are creating a new archetype, like Gifts), most of the time they are generally "better" for the way that Vintage uses cards. While the graveyard has been a resource since the beginning of the game, in recent years there has been a very strong mechanical shift towards utlizing card advantage through the graveyard, and these cards have replaced previous ones. Vintage is well prepared to exploit graveyard based strategies. Lava Dart is better because it can be used twice; in Vintage, this is magnitudes of order more important than the extra point of damage. The same goes for cards that abuse threshold, or dredge, or the properties of artifacts. Newer cards often increase the standards of flexibility and versatility without being strictly better than previous cards.

[Jacob Orlove]

That was my point--you can incorporate new cards into the Vintage cardpool without power creep, if those cards are more specialized/flexible/cheaper. Echoing Truth, Chain of Vapor, and Rushing River aren't going to break the format, but each one is optimal under certain circumstances, and all of them add to a deckbuilder's options.

[jpmeyer]

I talked about this like six months ago in an article, but the colored to colorless ratio in a spell's CC also provide a way to ensure that a card comes out on the "proper" turn in Standard while being able to vary the turn that it comes out in Type 1.

[sean1i0]

First of all, I believe that it was kevin cron who described the state of the format best; I think that the quote went something like this:  "The goal of every [competitive] deck in the format is to seek strategic non-interaction via tactical interaction."

Secondly, we have to ask ourselves why the format would move from the Weissman controlled state that it was in to what we have now?  Because strategic non-interaction is stronger than strategic interaction and because tactical interaction is stronger than tactical non-interaction.  Tactical interaction is stronger than tactical non-interaction because no matter how your opponent is trying to win, tactical interaction makes them doing so more difficult.  That much is obvious.

Next is the question of why strategic non-interaction is greater than strategic interaction.  This one is also fairly obvious once the question is considered:  strategic interaction depends on both yours and your opponent's game state to win whereas strategic non-interaction depends only on your game state to win.  The situation which depends on less variables will always be stronger and more dependable.

So now we recognize that every metagame will always tend towards what vintage is now, we really shouldn't find it threatening; vintage represents the maturing of magic theory, not the destruction of it.  (Grant it, other formats will never become what vintage is, because of bannings and cardpool limitations, they do still tend towards it.)

Of course I also have to say that I agree with BicMac when he says that if you want cards to get banned, then go to legacy.  That's what legacy was made for:  to give players who wanted to play an eternal format a chance to play with non-broken decks.

[Kasuras]

I am basing my assumption not on cards mentioned before, bounce or creature destruction, but on tutors, direct kills such as Tendrils or Belcher and draw engines. Those cards will help decks become better at being less interactive, you're all mentioning interactive cards being put in a deck that wants to become as non-interactive as possible, that is what is flawed.

The reason that I created this thread was not to point out to people that my scenario will happen but to discuss what the near future will look like: we now have a certain level of non-interactivity, as said; this can only increase, so how do we see the near future?

As said, I think that restrictions will still have some effect on specific decks but definitely not anymore on specific archetypes, the non-interactive one in this case.

[Smmenen]

I've only read the first post - but interactivity and non-interactivity are complicated relational things.  Flores point about forcing the opponent to interact is how a deck prevents itself from losing.  I.e. the suicide black deck playing Sphere of Resistence to stop High Tide. 

I tend to be extremely suspicious of calls for greater interactivity because they always or almost always tend to come from control players or mana drain players who want their decks to be the best decks again (assuming you don't think that Gifts and Slaver are the best decks - and I think they are 2/3s of the best decks). 

A truly interactive format requires reactive control decks.  Aggro is inherently non-interactive and doesn't NEED to be interactive so long as reactive control decks are reacting to it - that is, it is presenting threats that require that the reactive control deck react.  The only strategy in magic that is inherently interactive or that requires interaction is reactive control.  Aggro control doesn't ever need to play a counterspell.  Aggro control is a close second though. 

interactivity in magic is elusive.  Flores formula is simply the axiom that a deck will lose if it can't force its opponent to interact - and my point was that the goal of every deck in vintage is to prevent its opponent from interacting with it.  There is a ton of tactical interaction that goes on to make this so (is Trinisphere an interactive or a non interactive card? - to the extent that Sphere of Resistence in the Flores example is interactive, why isn't trinisphere?). 

Fun is also very subjective.  A huge number of magic players enjoy burn decks and like beatdown.  Beatdown, remember, is also non-interactive or at least, seeks to be non-interactive. 

Every magic deck would prefer that its opponent did nothing.  The goal then is to someone force the opponent to interact.

I never felt Trinisphere was a problem because msot decks ran these careds:

4 Wasteland
1 STrip Mine
4 FOW

Assuming you got anyone of those in your opening hand, you should be able to combat Trinsiphere quite effectively.  Therefore, there were chances to interact even with Turn one trinisphere. 

If you weren't running those cards or you weren't running a sufficient amount of basics, who's to say that you didnt deserve to lose?

[sean1i0]

The reason that I created this thread was not to point out to people that my scenario will happen but to discuss what the near future will look like: we now have a certain level of non-interactivity, as said; this can only increase, so how do we see the near future?

As said, I think that restrictions will still have some effect on specific decks but definitely not anymore on specific archetypes, the non-interactive one in this case.

Well, to comment on what I think the near future will look like,  I will say this:  I honestly think that the near future will look the same as most of 2005.  There is a chance that guildpact or dissension could be the next scourge for vintage, but I really don't think that they will be.

I don't think that the environment will realistically become more non-interactive then it is now, because those types of decks seem to be the ones that struggle the most and, in such extreme cases as meandeck tendrils, die to the tactical interactivity of the rest of the format.

[Jacob Orlove]

I would have posted, but I am not allowed to in this thread. :[

That was my point--you can incorporate new cards into the Vintage cardpool without power creep, if those cards are more specialized/flexible/cheaper. Echoing Truth, Chain of Vapor, and Rushing River aren't going to break the format, but each one is optimal under certain circumstances, and all of them add to a deckbuilder's options.

I think that this is power creep, though. Type I players do not tend to play weaker cards when they can simply run a more powerful card. In certain respects, Lava Dart is more powerful than Lightning Bolt, in that it exploits the Design Space that I was talking about in that long post on the thread that I started about Keeper. While Lightning Bolt is clearly superior in nearly every way, it doesn't get used very often (if at all) by winning decks. Lava Dart does. Why? Because once you have it, you can use it twice. Searing Touch (if it had the Flashback cost of Lava Dart as its Buyback cost) would be even more popular. The fact of the matter is that Lava Dart does something that Lightning Bolt doesn't: It gets reused. Does this make up for its lack of ability to kill things bigger than a 1/1? Apparently, the answer is yes. The ability to kill two Welders, instead of one, makes it valuable. Darkblast is similar. Dredge is not nearly the cost in Type I that it is elsewhere, so I expect Darkblast to make its way into a few decks here and there.

What I think is very interesting about Lava Dart is that it doesn't really generate card advantage, it is not a great card, and it still gets run, because it answers a threat. It is fair to say that the only resource that it capitalizes on is Design Space (and a little bit on mana, because you can sacrifice a tapped mountain). What this effectively means is that players are starting to harness that resource as well. This, in turn, means that card valuation has to change. Perhaps the days of measuring a cost/damage ratio on a burn spell are over forever. Perhaps Lava Dart (its almost unspeakable, but it may be true) is actually more powerful in Vintage than a Lightning Bolt. In most other formats, this would not be true, because creatures are expected to enter the Red Zone. In Type I, though, as you pointed out in your article on SCG, creatures are ridiculously inefficient, and they are a bad investment, if you are going to use them to attack. Welder, in a proper sense, is not a creature...he is an artifact with color that is (unfortunately) attached to a body that can be pinged. While this is not entirely accurate, it is not accurate to consider him a normal creature, either.

So, in short, I think that you are wrong. I think that there is a power creep of sorts going on. Not necessarily the kind we have been looking for, but it's there nevertheless. Vintage players (top ones, like those on your team and you) are not dumb enough to run suboptimal solutions. (I appear to be different, though; I really, really would like to bring Keeper back! If it is being run, then it is the best. If it is newer, then the power level has crept up. Perhaps there is an ebb and flow in power levels (and I think that this is likely to the point that we will simply accept it as fact), but without rotation in Vintage, the most powerful cards are going to aggregate and the chaff will fall through. As such, the power creep will continue in Type I. I don't think that there is any way around it. I think that you are defining what power creep is differently, but if you look at it as I just wrote in this paragraph, you will realize that the optimization and diversification of answers means that the power level is going up. Granted, utility becomes less common, but that doesn't mean that the new cards are less powerful, just less versatile. If it serves a need, and it is new, and it replaces something old, then it is - essentially - more powerful.

I think that the problem, once again, is one of definitions.

My two cents.
Harkius

[bebe]

I think there is another problem as well. People used to react to a deck trying to beat it. Nowadays people copy a deck or an idea to make a better chance at winning. This does not seem a big difference. But the difference is that a few decks, the decks being considered the good deck, are played a lot and nobody tries to beat those in a new way.

Perhaps it is not possible to find it but i do not think people are really trying. Why try to find something when you can do well an easier way.

But i think with the cardpoole at our disposal we should be able to find new and innovative decks that beat the old ones. I also think that banning cards is not a solution as vintage is the format you get to play all cards. I also think the next big tournaments will feature some new decks and perhaps one will get a foothold. But as long as the establiished players keep to their winning decks innovation is hard and long.

The problem is that the new tutors and powerful effects have skewed the meta. The old excuses are not valid anymore. Saying that net decking leads to a dominance of particular archtypes is somewhat spurious. Particular archtypes dominate today because they are simply the best and most consistent path to a win. Innovation will and does occur when a new and powerful effect is again released by WotC in a new set that they have not recognized. Good players will recognize the potential of these effects and always abuse them. This inevitably leads to less and less interaction. There are just too many tutors and poweful effects today to revert back to the good old days so go play legacy if vintage is not your flavour.

I'm sure you can design a deck to beat Stax. However, it would probably lose to evry other deck in the field if it was solely focused on the Stax match up. We've seen this happen in the past when particular decks dominate. It does not however resolve the problem of creating decks designed to win with little or no opponet interaction. In fact you beat Stax by not allowing them to inteact with your deck. I'm not convinced that this is so terribly bad aqnd wrong. 

There will always be abberations. Fish, Oath and Threshold decks will win the odd tournament because draws, weak deck choices and luck favor the player that day. This doesn't make them better decks. I always - repeat always - play some rogue deck or another. Surpriseingly, I have had some very good results at large venues.  But inevitably, if I play a very experienced player with a very good deck I lose in the top eight ( I've had about seven top eights and no wins in the last year and a half).

There is indeed a power creep that has been progressing over the last few years. Some of the first turn 'I win' decks have been castrated a bit by restrictions but the fundemental principles of Vintage remain. We want to have our table set for a win between turns 1-3 with cards in play or in hand that will prevent or severly inhibit our opponent from disrupting whichever win condition we have chosen. Who cares which win condition we use these days when games are decided before they even come into play.