[Free Article] The Guide To Vintage’s Landscape – All Things That Gush

[Womba]

For the past few months I have been talking to a lot of people who don't play Vintage and I wanted to know why. This is a culmination of that as well as my push to make Vintage seem more accessible to the masses. I wanted to get together a guide for some of my friends to show them all the decks they could play in Vintage. This is the result of that also. I present the first part of a series in which I plan to layout the landscape of modern Vintage for new and old players alike. Enjoy!!!


http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/23221_The_Guide_To_Vintages_Landscape_All_Things_That_Gush.html

[voltron00x]

Great work, Mark!  I was thinking about doing a Vintage deck compilation but this is more thorough than I was planning.  Will bookmark this for future reference and looking forward to the next one!

[Smmenen]

Mark, this is obviously a labor of love, and it shows.  I really liked the article, but I think it would have been great to have a bit more detail in some cases (like the standard dday pile) or more information on how these decks play out.   In some cases, you did just fine, but more info in general would have been better.   I know there is a limit to how much info you can give.

One of the things I noticed in your vintage champs report was that you are a gifted writer with some really inspired turns of phrases.  I saw more of that here.  Keep writing, but write your passion. 

[Elric]

Very nice article.  Re: proxies, high-quality proxies are clearly desired but are quite constrained by WotC's legal actions.  ELD even had to stop giving away his proxies as door prizes, for example.  I'm sure others know more details.  

Good instructions on creating high quality proxies may help.  However, even if you make instructions were easily accessible, most people wouldn't find it worth the effort if they're only going to make 10-15.  The "printing out slips of paper" solution works great among friends but not for tournament play.

[Onslaught]

Great stuff! I like keeping a running mental tally of all the viable builds in Vintage, and it's always really fun to think about the subtle differences in builds (let alone the huge differences, like Cobra Gush vs. East Coast Wins etc). The crazy thing is, in the time between you writing this article and it being published, another viable Gush variant (Delver of Secrets/Tarm Groish deck) appeared to win a tournament. Vintage diversity is just so delicious right now. When the entire series of articles is completed, I'm guessing the list of distinct/viable builds is around 35-40.

Edit: Unfortunately the comments on the article are a real downer, oh well. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink...

[ErtaiAdept]

Very nice article.  Re: proxies, high-quality proxies are clearly desired but are quite constrained by WotC's legal actions.  ELD even had to stop giving away his proxies as door prizes, for example.  I'm sure others know more details.  

Good instructions on creating high quality proxies may help.  However, even if you make instructions were easily accessible, most people wouldn't find it worth the effort if they're only going to make 10-15.  The "printing out slips of paper" solution works great among friends but not for tournament play.

This is indeed a concern, with making proxies.   I was really sad to hear when ELD got that cease and desist from WoTC.  As far as instructions on making proxies I think what you said is true.  I for one put a lot of time in to make good proxies for my decks, but this is only something I will do if I know I'm going to be running the deck for a while, otherwise making the proxies is too time consuming. (I use the card wipe, and print onto card method)  However this is a service I wouldn't mind providing to other people should they not have the resources to do it themselves however after ELDs issues I'd be afraid of giving them away for fear of backlash.

Otherwise a great article, and I look forward to more in the series.

[Prospero]

Great article, Mark. The detractors pissed me off enough to get a response from me. I'm interested in seeing where this goes.

[Zieby]

Great article, Mark. The detractors pissed me off enough to get a response from me. I'm interested in seeing where this goes.

Your reply was awesome and way better written then I did.

[boggyb]

Great article, Mark! I really appreciate your warm, accessible writing and I'm sure the community does too.

One question here for the community, re: proxies. What are the exact rules here, as far as intellectual property issues go? How 'closely' are we allowed to copy and mass-produce proxies? I was just wondering if it'd be worth it to start a small community effort to get a proxy printing-press going, to make attractive, useful, standardized, and most importantly CHEAP proxies for the community to use in tournaments and in recruiting new players. What are the rules? Can we:

• Copy a card's artwork?
• Copy the modern card frame?
• Copy the standard fonts WotC uses? (They might have a few proprietary typefaces.)
• Copy a card's text?

and print those out on a mass scale? My expectation is that we could copy everything except the artwork, which would be fine -- we could solicit designs from the community for card artwork donations and print those out (might be fun actually). Another issue is selling the proxies -- I'm sure you wouldn't be allowed to make money on any part of this, maybe even as tournament winnings. Might even be you couldn't even give them out on a mass scale, if WotC is anal about protecting the cards' identities. We might even initiate a dialog with them to figure out a solution -- if they're not willing to issue reprints for the format's staples, I'm worried its health will deteriorate as time goes on and prices go up. Anyways I don't wanna hijack the thread, just stirring up thoughts -- can start a new thread if people are interested.

[voltron00x]

Something I was thinking about today... I think one of the reasons that people (as in, Joe Average Magic player) struggle with comprehending Vintage and the pace of Vintage (or what they perceive as its pace) is that unlike many other formats, when you start to lose in Vintage, you often lose the game almost immediately.  If you've only played Standard and Limited, and didn't start out in the Eternal formats first, this is a tough pill to swallow.  To some extent this is also true in Legacy, whether you lose immediately (See:  Resolved Show and Tell, resolved Ad Nauseam, resolved Goblin Charbelcher, resolved Glimpse of Nature, resolved Reanimate/Exhume/Animate Dead) or whether it takes some time to literally lose (See:  Resolved CB/Top, resolved and untap with Stoneforge Mystic). 

However, in many other formats, you can literally be losing on turn two but feel "in the game" for another five or six turns (or many more) before you literally lose.  Faeries in Standard / Block was a great example of this. So many times, I watched players who thought they were having a close game filled with meaningful interactions, when in fact the game was over on turn two and the other player just didn't realize it (and probably never did, even after he or she lost).  Caw variant decks were also among the worst games to watch, where players were just dead for so long and soldiered on for 15, 20 minutes thinking there was still a game going on.

Standard and recent Extended both had terribly non-interactive decks like G/W Eldrazi, Valakut, and Scapeshift; how these are worse than Dredge or Shops, I'm not sure, as at least in Vintage you can sideboard meaningful cards if you want, whereas some decks in standard are just literally dead to others with no way to fix it.

Vintage tends to cut away all that nonsense; you get behind, you lose in a hurry.  Unfortunately, sometimes that means you only get one turn, although your deck choice really affects that a lot.  I still think that some things, like BSC and Key/Vault, pushed Vintage too far down the wrong path, but any format with fast mana, Recall, Will, etc is going to have hands that are tough to impossible to beat and you don't get a "real" game, just like sometimes your sealed opponent has 5 on-color bombs or your standard opponent is playing a match-up you're 10% against; sometimes that's cool and fun, and sometimes its just like "Enough already" when you're on the wrong side of it too many times in a short period of time, and I think that goes for all formats of Magic.  I'm just not sure that "thoughtseize, bitterblossom, spellstutter sprite, cryptic command" was any better than turn two BSC with Force back-up, in that the Faeries unbeatable draw is just getting slow-rolled so that those not good enough to realize they're dead think they're playing a game that at least lasts more than 3 turns.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Standard.  I really like Standard, and honestly like every format of Magic, even though I know most people are clearly biased one way or another.  The beauty of Magic, for me, is that there's so much to explore and try to master, even though almost no one can master everything; it's a shame that some people just don't even try, and make proclamations about the format without even trying it.  It bums me out even more that sometimes writers inadvertently reinforce this stereotype by giving people sharply worded quotes that taken out of context portray the format in the exact opposite way it should be portrayed.

[disrupting specter]

I'm glad you are trying to create a dialogue about what people dislike about Vintage. I'm very hopeful that this may iron some problems out and bring some popularity back to the format.

I'm glad the article and threads  are creating a positive dialogue about proxies rather than the "proxies ruin vintage" stance. I've run into the problem that a proxy often does not have the complete rules text, casting cost, creature type or is written illegibly. One solution to this could be having a price minimum on the card that you are trying to proxy or a list of card that are allowed to be proxied. Lets say moxes were allowed as proxies. If you actually need to read the rules text on a mox, then you might not be prepared to play Vintage. Using this guideline, a player would be required to shell out the $5 for a Necropotence, rather than trying to make their opponent remember all the nuances of it. I understand that people would then need to tack the cost of niche sideboard cards, newly remembered ancient tech, or the latest printed chase card to the bill of tournament entry fee and travel costs, but that is the price of competing. Sure, I've done it. I've gotten a sudden fear of aggro days before a tournament and made a makeshift Blazing Archon to uglify the table but we would need to give that up.


( I hope this makes sense. My new stomach meds are making things fuzzy)

[Troy_Costisick]

Reall good article, Mark.  Can't wait for the rest of them

[Womba]

Thanks for the feedback guys!! I think fundamentally I slipped up by not doing a brief overview of the entire format before diving right into Gush based on the comments on SCG I am seeing. I plan to lay out a "Vintage road map" to the modern metagame at the beginning of the next one. Matt, I think you really hit it on the head in a lot of ways; I usually equate it to playing against mono red in format X. How do you beat the 3 Goblin Guide draw? = Turn one Tinker-Blightsteel. In all formats you have the "nut" draw but because in Vintage the game almost immediately ends as opposed to having the false hope of hitting something over 3-4 turns really turns some people off, even though I equate them to be equal as you have mentioned. That is another point I hope to start a discussion on in the next part.

As I mentioned in the article I want to address proxy discussions in another article but I appreciate the feedback on that as well. 

[Smmenen]

Re: Proxies

Maro's article this week I think really suggests a huge reasons why people don't play Vintage.   It's ridiculously complicated to play.  The strategic complexity, largely on account of all of the tutors and mana decisions, interacted with a compressed turn structure make Vintage basically very difficult for new players to learn.

I am partly responsible for helping create recent controversy around proxies, and I regret it.   Proxies are a necessary evil.

I've come to believe that the deterrents to Vintage are already so substantial, that it makes no sense whatsoever to allow any other barriers to exist.   I would prefer unlimited proxy systems without reservation. 

[MaximumCDawg]

Smemmen, you've had success in influencing WotC's decisions before.  What would have to be done to convince them to sanction proxies for use in Vintage (maybe even Legacy) tournaments?  Or is there simply no hope of ever doing it, as WotC is quaking in their boots about the people on the secondary market flipping out?

[BaronSengir]

Smemmen, you've had success in influencing WotC's decisions before.  What would have to be done to convince them to sanction proxies for use in Vintage (maybe even Legacy) tournaments?  Or is there simply no hope of ever doing it, as WotC is quaking in their boots about the people on the secondary market flipping out?

The problem I see with sanctioning proxies is that the people who spent so much time and money collecting real power 9 and cards like the duals, Time Vault, etc would never stop complaining like you said, if people could suddenly start using Collector's Edition power for sanctioned events. I am not necesarrily disagreeing with you, but I don't know that I like the idea entirely either.  

[Smmenen]

Smemmen, you've had success in influencing WotC's decisions before.  What would have to be done to convince them to sanction proxies for use in Vintage (maybe even Legacy) tournaments?  Or is there simply no hope of ever doing it, as WotC is quaking in their boots about the people on the secondary market flipping out?

no hope.  their business model would be jeopardized -- at least, as they understand that model. 

[tito del monte]

Hey Mark, nice read - but I can understand why some readers who aren't Vintage players may have walked away shrugging their shoulders a bit at the notion of diversity. As you've admitted, maybe this one was Gush overload.

I think a good middle ground for this series would be to highlight two or three different decks and highlight why, despite packing a lot of similar cards they play out differently - for example with Gush decks, instead of aiming for a comprehensive list, pick Doomsday, Gro and East Coast Wins and go into a bit more depth about how distinctly they play out.

Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing and you now have the benefit of those comments (which are admittedly saddening) - but the perception that Vintage deck building just involves chucking some FOWs and the restricted list together is clearly another one of those myths that is putting people of the format.

Anyway, thanks for the article. I hope the series helps win a few hearts and minds.. .