[Discussion] Single Cards in decks

[Freelancer]

Looking through the decks from the French championships I noticed some odd looking card choices (death spark, caller of the claw, tendrills of agony and read the runes) the purpose of this discussion is to find out if single cards that are only really powerfull in particular situations are optimal.


First of the pro's and con's:

Pro:
1) Some situations require one card to get out of, adding singles allows this.
2) It will improve certain matchups where the card is very good.
3) The more tutors the better 1-offs become.

Con:
1) It makes your deck slightly more inconsistent because you will draw this one off in situations where you don't need(/want) it.
2) It makes the next card you draw more difficult to predict.
3) Adding a 1-off can be difficult in tight decklists.
4) You don't always draw the 1-off when needed.

If anybody has more pro's or con's to add I will edit it in.

My opinion:
Singe card choices can very well be optimal for a particular deck, but only if you keep the total number of situational one-offs low. If you keep the number low it will mean that con 1 and 2 are mostly negated. And the pro's outweigh the cons than, however if you add to many one-offs con's 1 and 2 are going to be kicking in which is probably not worth it. When you reach this turning point depends on the deck in question.



What I want from this discussion:
I want a productive thread that neatly lists the pro's and con's of running single cards in various decks.
Only unrestricted cards are considered, also we are not talking here about 1-of's that are merely added as a additional draw spell (or additional counter etc.).
You can use the results from french championships to solidify your argument, but please don't make the championships the argument. This means I want no drifting towards the direction of; '1-offs rock because people managed to get into the top 8 in the vintage world championships with them' (or the other way around).

[M]

Hmmm you probably mean the French Championship

Some more points:
-The unpredictability works both ways, you don't know if you'll draw a random 1-off or not, but that also makes you harder to defend against.
-All the T1 tutors make random 1-of's much less random because you can often find them when needed.
-Some unrestricted cards are 'natural' 1-of's and not random because of that, for example 1 Recoup. Including multiples of this type of card would probably suck, but as 1-of's they are fine.
-Some "random" 1-of's aren't really all that random. For example, 1 Death Spark in a deck with 4 Squee.

This is an interesting topic that I have given a lot of thought. There are many more pros and probably also cons to add, but let this be a start.

[warble]

Assuming this thread doesn't talk about Restricted cards (the obvious 1-ofs) the metagame potential of unrestricted cards has always been high.  Metagaming means a lot of 1-of's so the properly metagamed decks you saw in France did have not just 1-of's but the CORRECT 1-of's, and some 2-ofs and 3-ofs that may have been unexpected.  I'm not sure you can criticize or compliment 1-of's without a full metagame breakdown, in all likelihood cards like Deep Analysis are there to supplement draw against a control deck, serve a double purpose in not being dead, and overall strengthen certain matchups while being playable although weak in matchups where they aren't a complete house.  We can all likely name 20 1-of's that could make Dragon or any Bazaar deck better, but we can't name the correct 1 of the 20 that we could choose unless given a metagame to cater to.  Also, tuning 3 Chalice + 1-of versus 4 Chalice changes the percentages of consistency versus resilience so it would be quite a project to evaluate each of 20 cards at this pace.

I believe the phrase "pretty powerful" and "in particular situations" are kind of ambiguous leading to a meandering argument.

[Bouli]

I think that force of will is really good, and it own the metagame right now!

[Freelancer]

Hmmm you probably mean the French Championship

I believe in the announcement it was vintage world championships in France, I'm not entirely sure however and changed it to French championships.

Some more points:

I added them, but elaborate the last one. Do you see it functioning as a 5the squee?

Assuming this thread doesn't talk about Restricted cards (the obvious 1-ofs) the metagame potential of unrestricted cards has always been high.

Yes I was talking about unrestricted cards, it was however so obvious in my mind that I forgot to add it. (added it)

Reading the rest of your post I realized I need to define what single cards I am talking about, I am not talking about adding a 5the draw spell to supplement the other draw. I am talking about utility cards that are powerfull enough against certain decks to turn the match up around. (like lava dart in CS vs. CS)

I'm not sure you can criticize or compliment 1-of's without a full metagame breakdown

As I tried to make clear in my original post this thread is not meant to criticize anyone, it is merely a discussion if 1-of's are powerfull enough to be included.

We can all likely name 20 1-of's that could make Dragon or any Bazaar deck better, but we can't name the correct 1 of the 20 that we could choose unless given a metagame to cater to.  Also, tuning 3 Chalice + 1-of versus 4 Chalice changes the percentages of consistency versus resilience so it would be quite a project to evaluate each of 20 cards at this pace.

For now this thread is merely a discussion if 1-of's serve a purpose in deckbuilding and if so what that purpose is. When we defined that we might be able to make a list of cards and archetypes they can be used in and against.

I believe the phrase "pretty powerful" and "in particular situations" are kind of ambiguous leading to a meandering argument.

I tried to make it as widely applicable as possible (ie. the 1-of saves your butt in a certain situation no other card could have), but if you want you can change it to powerfull and metagame.

I think that force of will is really good, and it own the metagame right now!

You seem to have no idea what purpose this thread serves, and on top of that its a useless one liner. I would suggest reading the TMD rules.

[Rico Suave]

I'll run singletons of many cards.  Misdirection is a good example, because in addition to Force many decks don't necessarily have the draw engine to support multiples of these.  A single copy of that is very normal in many decks.

A singleton removal spell, like Chain of Vapor, is common in both Tendrils combo decks and other decks such as Gifts Belcher. 

Caller of the Claw is, I'm guessing, from a Dragon deck that has Bazaar/Compulsion to find it once the deck goes infinite.

When people use Merchant Scroll, oftentimes they only run 1 because drawing multiples after Ancestral is gone is a waste. 

There are many cards that are best run as singletons.  They have enough use that they fill in the gaps that restricted cards don't hit, but they're not good enough that you want to see multiples of them or the deck simply doesn't have enough space for what the card does.  In any case it's never "wrong" to include a 1-of in your deck, but it should always have sound and logical reasoning behind it if you want to play the best deck possible.

[Webster]

Looking through the decks from the French championships I noticed some odd looking card choices (death spark

The Death Spark in the infestation/tog deck acts as a 5th squee; discarding death spark and squee to make a zombie token or pumping tog lets you choose the order that cards go to your graveyard for the same cost/resolution of a spell (armageddon, wheel of fortune, etc). So you put the spark on the bottom of the two and the squee on the top which effectively lets you return the death spark each turn.


David Ochoa

[nataz]

stuff

-much agreed. Best point was that often time less powerful cards can serve to fill in gaps (see misdirection used as FOW #5+ in oath or Death Spark as a "squee"). Note that both cards also have alternate benefits, which ranks them higher then other possible choices as gap fillers. It may help to think of certain cards less as singletons, and more as additional slots in categories.

-Another reason for singletons are you may not want to see it during the game until a certain point. Look at E. Witness in dragon, P. Portal in CA decks, etc.

*edit

after re-reading the bottom of your initial question

Only unrestricted cards are considered, also we are not talking here about 1-of's that are merely added as a additional draw spell

and

I noticed some odd looking card choices (death spark, caller of the claw, tendrills of agony and read the runes) the purpose of this discussion is to find out if single cards that are only really powerfull in particular situations are optimal.

I think it would be possible to put

RTR and DeathSpark in the additional X spell catagory

and Caller and Tendrils in the "only when you want to win" catagory.

[Cross]

I assume that when you mention tendrils it is in relation to the 5th place top deck. As a top player the main board tendrils seems unnecessary. When you are going off you draw your entire deck so there’s no need to worry about gaea’s blessing, as someone in the other thread had mentioned as being the reason for running it. Access to all your wishes lets you coffin purge or stifle the blessing away.

Also, lacking dark ritual, which (in combination with yawg’s) I see as the best storm generator in TPS, it seems like it would be difficult to consistently storm into a tendrils based win. Once you are “going off” with future sight it is pretty easy to find all your combo pieces, again making tendrils unnecessary. I could see tendrils in a rector based build, but here it looks dead to me.

[Lord of the Goats]

most of the time when people run single cards it's because they have devoted a certian number of cards to preform a specific function. really if you look at the 1 death spark along with 4 squee's in that french deck, it devoted 5 slots to recursion effects. the death spark replaced the 5th squee, but it could have just as easily replaced the 4th squee if only 4 recursion effects were desired. it could also have been added in a removal spell slot useing the same logic

another example of this is carls gifts deck that runs 2 thirst, 1 skeletal scrying, and some other draw spell. this could easily be 4 thirst for knowledge, and when building the deck, carl cut specifically one draw spell for another draw spell. no matter what the settup is, as long as the number of draw spells is the same and the cards are playable, it doesn't matter in terms of consistancy. does sligh really care if it draws chain lightning of lightning bolt?

so every deck has a certian number of slots devoted to certian functions. as long as single cards don't unbalance that or aren't clearly inferior given the metagame, then it's reasonable to do. the death spark was probably a very good metagame choice because of goblin welder. however the fact that it doubled as removal lets it satisfy both the removal and recursion aspect of the deck in 1 card thus creating redundancy and/or opening aditional slots.

the last aspect of singleton cards is things like chain of vapor in combo. however i don't think it's as much an issue of running single cards as it is how many slots the deck needs to devote to removal. the number in a lot of combo happens to be close to one card + tutors.  a perfect example of this is sensei sensei. in the original verisions they ran no main deck removal and no kill card. these must have slots were filled with cunning wish which alllowed it to run up to 2 kill cards or 2 removal spells (or draw spells because cunning wish rules).  i'm sure ray would back me up in saying that this was not enough because he was lost  2-3 matches in that first tourney with no kill card because he needed to use them both for removal then had no kill. the problem wasn't that he didn't have the main deck removal, it was that there weren't enough overall slots devoted to it if it shared slots with the kill. in any of those situations a 3rd wish, or removal spell of kill card in the deck would have won him the game. 

[forests failed you]

I believe that popular decks have a specific skeleton that you begin with; specifically, certain cards that under almost no circumstance does one not run as a four of.  For instance in Control Slaver, Force, Drain, Thirst, Brainstorm, et cetera.  After you take all of those cards under consideration, there is usually somewhere between 8-15 slots that can be tinkered with, (maybe less) that can be changed and swapped out depending on the metagame that you are playing in.  Many times, these random one of are metagame solutions, based upon what you expect to play against in a given tournament.  Especially if one is running tutor effects, like DT, Mystical, or Intuition, it makes sense to run one ofs like Lava Dart, Crucible, or even Fire/Ice, to combat different decks where those cards really improve ones chances of winning.  Although this example doesn't directly apply to the French Tournament, the concept is sound.  In decks running Bazaar the pilot can afford to play singleton situational cards, because if they are not needed he or she can just pitch them to Bazaar; much like a Slaver player can pitch them to Thirst for Knowledge or Brainstorm them away and fetch. 
Although the recent trend brought on by the streamlining of Standard decks, tends to be to run mostly four ofs to maximize efficiency.  Most good Type one players realize that because of the ability of Vintage decks to tutor and draw lots of cards, there is more wiggle room with how one can construct a deck and what type of situational cards he or she can get away with playing maindeck.  For instance, the chances of a Type one deck being able to find a situational one of answer over the course of two or three turns is much greater than that of a Standard deck, just because Vintage decks draw many more cards and have many better low coasted tutors;  also, most Vintage decks have more outlets to get rid of situational cards and not directly lose card advantage, in the way that in standard many times drawing a situational spell is a dead draw sits in ones hand for the rest of the game.  With the innovation of new decks, such as Gifts, that reward players for having many different options available to them in their deck, I expect singleton strategies to become even more widespread thought Vintage.  Honestly, with the amount of cards that the average deck sees over the course of a game, there is no reason to not have an answer to maindecked hate cards for your strategy.  I always think it is quite humerus when Dragon players scoop game one to a random ground seal, or combo players have no way to stop a Chalice of the Void.  Singletons are often included to at least give players opportunities to not flat out lose to specific strategies.