[Free Article] The August/September Vintage Metagame Report

The August/September Vintage Metagame Report
by bluemage55

There were 7 sufficiently large Vintage tournaments (33 or more players) reported from August 1st through September 30th, giving us a data set of 56 decklists from Vintage Top 8s around the world. I use 33 players as the cutoff to ensure at least six rounds of Swiss played. This guarantees that the decks which made Top 8 faced at least four different opponents. All credit for this methodology is due to Smmenen, and further explanations for it are found in Metagame Reports in his article archive on the Star City Games website. The tournaments, including links to decklists, are found in the appendix.

Here are the results. The numbers in parenthesis represent placement within a Top 8 (‘2’ = second place). Behold:

Tournament Results – Raw Data

10 Gush Storm (2,4,4,5,5,5,5,6,7,7)
7 MUD (1,1,1,3,6,7,8)
6 Cat Stax Fever (2,3,4,4,6,7)
5 Dredge (1,1,2,6,8)
4 Bob Gush/Control (1,2,3,4)
4 Oath of Druids (3,5,7,8)
3 Tezzeret Control (1,3,8)
3 Remora (1,5,5)
2 Painter (3,7)
1 GW Fish (2)
1 Jace Control (2)
1 ANT Tendrils (3)
1 TPS (4)
1 UR Fish (4)
1 UR Stax (5)
1 Dragon (6)
1 Noble Fish (6)
1 Goblins (7)
1 Bob Control (7)
1 BUG Fish (8)
1 Welder Control (8)

(1) Archetype as a percentage of Top 8s

While it is important to see how each of these decks performed, the tallied tournament results do not give us a very good sense of proportion. The breakdown by ‘archetype as a percentage of Top 8s’ is the statistic that tells us how well these decks performed against the field as a whole. Specifically, it tells us the archetype proportion of the total Top 8 pie. It is calculated by dividing the total copies of a deck’s appearances in Top 8s by the total number of decks that made Top 8.

Here are the numbers from August and September:

Gush Storm (17.9%)
MUD (12.5%)
Cat Stax Fever (10.7%)
Dredge (8.9%)
Bob Gush Control (7.1%)
Oath of Druids (7.1%)
Tezzeret Control (5.4%)
Remora (5.4%)
Rest of the Metagame (23.2%)

The "Rest of the Metagame" category captures all of the archetypes that individually performed less than 5% of total Top 8s into one total number.

(2) Breakdown as Percentage of Total Top 8s by Engine

The term “engine” has traditionally referred to card advantage engines. That’s not the usage I’m working with here. Instead, I define “engine” as the primary means by which a deck accelerates itself towards victory, typically by cheating casting costs or generating unusual mana advantage. The singular exception to this is the Null Rod/Wasteland engine, which instead decelerates the opponent.

It can be noted that this approach means that the list of engines bears a striking resemblance to the pillars of Vintage (Drain, Ritual, Shop, Bazaar, Null Rod). However, this approach will also include Gush (which generates mana advantage through allowing extra land drops, especially with Fastbond and Lotus Cobra) and Oath (which cheats expensive creatures into play), engines not considered members of the pillars. It could be theorized that Gush and Oath should be added to the list of pillars, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

In this dataset, the ten Gush Storm decks, the four Bob Gush/Control decks, and one of the three Remora decks all used the Gush Engine. The seven MUD decks, six Cat Stax Fever decks, and one U/R Stax deck all used the Workshop engine. The three Tezzeret decks, one Painter deck, one Bob Control deck, one Welder Control deck, one Jace Control deck, and three of the four Remora decks all used the Drain engine. The five Dredge decks and one Dragon deck both used the Bazaar engine. The one GW Fish deck, one UR Fish deck, one Noble Fish deck, one Goblins deck, and one BUG Fish deck all used the Rod Engine. The four Oath of Druids decks used the Oath engine. The one TPS and one ANT deck used the Ritual engine.

August/September Breakdown by Engine:

15 Gush decks (26.8%)
14 Workshop decks (25%)
10 Drain decks (17.8%)
6 Bazaar decks (10.7%)
5 Rod decks (8.9%)
4 Oath decks (7.1%)
2 Ritual decks (3.6%)

(3) Analysis

I will actually decline to offer too much commentary on this data, both because my sample size is small and because there are far more experienced Vintage adepts here on TMD who can likely provide better analysis than I can.

However, I would like to draw attention to the engine breakdown Smennen did here, which indicated that in the two months prior to the Vintage Apocalypse, the engine breakdown looked like this:

May/June 2008 Breakdown by Engine:

28 Workshop decks (25%)
26 Gush decks (23.2%)
9 Flash (8%)

Ironically, the Gush decks (and the Shop decks which prey on them), actually appear to be slightly more dominant today than they were when the DCI unleashed a wave of restrictions to neuter blue.

Make of that what you will.

-bluemage55

Appendix

1) Indianapolis, IN (54 players)
August 5th, 2011

1) Dredge
2) Bob/Gush Control
3) Bob/Gush Control
4) Cat Stax Fever
5) Gush Storm
6) Dragon
7) Painter
8) BUG Fish

2) Alcoy, Spain (54 players)
August 14th, 2011

1) MUD
2) Gush Storm
3) Tezzeret
4) Gush Storm
5) Gush Storm
6) Dredge
7) Goblins
8) Welder Control

3) Cherry Hill, NJ (82 players)
August 21st, 2011

1) Bob/Gush Control
2) Dredge
3) Cat Stax Fever
4) TPS
5) U/R Stax
6) Cat Stax Fever
7) Oath of Druids
8) Dredge

4) Milan, Italy (44 players)
September 11th, 2011

1) Remora
2) GW Fish
3) Oath of Druids
4) UR Fish
5) Oath of Druids
6) Noble Fish
7) Gush Storm
8) Tezzeret

5) Camaiore, Italy (40 players)
September 18th, 2011

1) MUD
2) Jace Control
3) MUD
4) Gush Storm
5) Remora
6) MUD
7) MUD
8) Oath of Druids

6) Zurich, Switzerland (45 players)
September 18th, 2011

1) MUD
2) Cat Stax Fever
3) Painter
4) Bob/Gush Control
5) Gush Storm
6) Gush Storm
7) Bob Control
8) MUD

7) Mataro, Spain (51 players) (split finals)
September 24th, 2011

1) Dredge
1) Tezzeret
3) ANT
4) Cat Stax Fever
5) Gush Storm
5) Remora
7) Gush Storm
7) Cat Stax Fever