[Article] January-February Vintage Gauntlet

[Vegeta2711]

If your covering Fish, that should be good enough. Besides where else out of like 1 or 2 showings has EBA ever shown up?

As Jacob mentioned to me in IRC, EBA is just a Fish deck with different cards. And to be honest I always thought on the whole EBA was -weaker- than Fish or U/R gay was.

[Smmenen]

I don't agree.  The purpose of a guantlet is not necessarily to see how a deck performs in certain matchups.  That would be a waste becuase beyond a few matchups, your probability of facing any given deck approaches such a low number that testing it for that purpose becomes a greater cost than the potential benefit.

I beleive the purpose of a good gauntlet is to gauge type one pressure points.  In my view, a good gauntlet has a) the best decks in the format - like Hulk, Slavery, Mud/Stax, Dragon, and Big o becuase there is a good liklyhood of facing those decks.  But b) you should also test decks that try to do specific things or implement certain tactics or strategies.  For instance, the belcher deck can gauge your deck's strength against all-or-nothing combo decks.  Or, against mono blue to see what happens if you play against a wall of counters.  These decks aren't necessarily good so much as they test key type one pressure points at extremes.  The same reasoning applies to testing against Stupid Red Burn.  I would put EBA on that list becuase it tests a good mix of creatures in an aggro control deck that has access to different colors than most aggro control decks and cards like Meddling Mage.

Steve

[Kerz]

I talked some stuff over yestarday with Hyperion and Keith (ctthespian), and I really want to keep the gauntlet to a core 12-16 decks that you will almost always see at tourneys. Then, I am going to go off into more fringe decks that you might see at tourney's but not consistantly. Then i'll have the budget section.

[Kowal]

I really agree with Smmenen's view of the gauntlet testing theory.  Knowing your weaknesses is twice as important as knowing your strengths, and testing against a deck focused on something you consider a weakness really teaches you how to leave your soft spots unexposed, so to speak.

[Zherbus]

One thing I really want to bring up is that while many decks may be great, the gauntlet that is presented should give a good general snapshot of the metagame. For instance, while EBA might be an excellent metagame choice sometimes, it's not format defining or out in enough force to really influence how people build decks. That's really why it's good; if EBA ever got big enough to metagame against, it would probably lose its appeal, then fall back into obscurity.