State of the Vintage Metagame (Post Champs/BoM)

[Onslaught]

While there haven't been any official reports posted from the Vintage Championships or Bazaar of Moxen, there is still a fair amount to discuss just based on which decks made top 8. These were two huge tournaments with a lot of great players participating, so it's exciting to start forming some conclusions about everything that went down. For now, my mind is focused on the shift towards creatures. The finals for Champs had Merfolk vs. RUG Delver, and BoM was once again won by BUG Fish. That is a lot of representation/success for decks based on playing small creatures and winning in the attack step.

Realistically speaking, creatures are the easiest thing to hate out of the format. Disruptive hate creatures like Thalia, Teeg, Mindcensor, etc. can make it difficult to toolbox creature removal, but it is still possible. Yet, the aforementioned decks don't even really play creatures with disruptive effects. Delver and Tarm do nothing except hope to end the game in 3-4 swings. Aside from Cursecatcher, all the Merfolk creatures just get big and hopefully kill you quickly through unblockable attacks. DRS is an element of disruption in the BUG Fish list, but again there isn't a heavy element of denial in these decks outside of Wastelands/some Null Rods.

Is it possible that creature based decks continue to do well because they are extremely underestimated? Running a few copies of Toxic Deluge, or Pyroclasm, or some Sower of Temptation - these are all extremely powerful answers to creature decks yet nobody is willing to dedicate the slots to them. For every Volcanic Fallout or other narrow weenie blowout card you add to your 75, that's one less slot that could have gone to Dredge sideboard cards, or resilience against Workshops, or a conditional counterspell for the blue mirror, etc.

A lot of decks are good against creatures simply by ignoring them. It doesn't really matter if you are two turns from dying against a full board of creatures if you combo out and win. Also, a fair amount of decks also are inherently powerful against creatures by sheer splash damage.
It's no coincidence that Bob/Jace decks have remained consistently dominant over the last year while running 3-4 Lightning Bolts. It's great in every matchup. It is very convenient to have something that removes Lodestone, Bob, and Jace while also incidentally shutting down many aggro strategies for one mana. So besides mana efficiency, what other adaptations can be made to prepare a deck to face the ever increasing amount of efficient beaters in the format? It's a tough call. Again, a board sweeper is nice, but only useful in the specific aggro matchup. Versatility and maximizing usefulness across matchups is something I've been paying close attention to in Keeper builds lately. So, something like Toxic Deluge is clearly great against aggro, but in a pinch it is also relevant in some other matchups. Killing a BSC for 11 life and 3 mana or trading one for one for Bob for 3 mana at sorcery speed is not ideal, but the versatility is there. Fire/Ice is similar in that it is great at removing creatures, but relevant in other matchups for cutting off UU, cantripping, pitching to FoW, buying a turn vs BSC, and so on. Following this line of thinking, it may be best to have an emphasis on flexible spells maindeck that moderately address creatures, and then play only a few narrow blowout spells in the sideboard like Volcanic Fallout, Massacre, or other things of that nature. This lets you save sideboard slots for Shop and Dredge, but at the expense of playing potentially suboptimal spells maindeck. The Toxic Deluge you're holding against a Storm deck will be annoying if you cut a Flusterstorm to fit it.

[TheWhiteDragon]

I've always been a big fan of bombs/wishes.  Balance comes to mind as a fantastic sweeper.  It is also good vs decks that try to build a hand.  The wishes are great simply because they get you said card or a combo piece or an answer to whatever matchup is at hand.  For +2 mana in most cases.  In blue decks, I still haven't given up on a single or 2 C-wishes just because they can snag MisD/fluster in a pinch or rav trap, grudge, etc on the spot.

[tribet]

From what I see, when playing 9 rounds + Top8, picking up linear decks with a lot of 4-off looks like a wise option.

For every broken play you may miss by not running singletons and a multitude of restricted cards, you gain on consistency.

As much as I love sligging broken cards, going through convoluted lines of plays, fatigue is unfortunately a very important parameter on such tournaments. 4-off decks will probably give you the edge, less decisions making: similar game states, similar problems, same solutions, round after round after round.

Next, one thing with such big events is that they will drain the crap out of you. Because it is a very long day and because it is only once a year so there is a lot of pressure.  That's could also explain why random pro-players can pull out great results out of nowhere in such event because they are trained, they are used to it (and they understand the game obviously). However, leading to that, my main tip would be “Don’t turn up with Landstill and look after yourself, give yourself some time in between rounds to: drink, eat, and get some fresh air”.

All this to say, that the Top8 coming out from such big events reward consistency. Also fatigue is an important factor so, it is my opinion that the Top8 decks do not necessarily represent the most powerful decks in the format.

Anyway, all this give me good reasons to persist in working on my Rector/Show deck and chump-block these BUGs and Merlfolks all day long.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Is it possible that creature based decks continue to do well because they are extremely underestimated?

No, they are estimated just fine.  The metagame has already adapted to compete with creatures, that doesn't mean that creatures won't continue to do well.

what other adaptations can be made to prepare a deck to face the ever increasing amount of efficient beaters in the format?

From the Philly top 8:
RUG Delver, 5 burn spells + 3 anti-artifact cards all in the main
4c Control, 5 burn/anti-artifact cards + 3 JTMS + Life gain from Shaman
UW Flash, it has 7 four-drops that can deal with creatures, 3 Cliques which can act as instant speed removal and 3 Trinket Mage for its 2 Eng. Explosives...and 4 StP in the board
Oath, need I say more

Dredge, TPS, and even Merfolk effectively ignore the ground war, but they all have some form of removal between MD/SB in the form of Chain of Vapor or Dismember, etc.

This is exactly what a metagame adaptation should look like.  It's also a highly balanced T8.

[Varal]

Creatures decks are bad and have some serious weaknesses. It is easy to make a deck that will completely crush creatures.

The problem is the same holds true for every other strategies. In vintage recent past, creatures were underwhelming and decks didn't really worried about them. This is no longer the case, decks now include Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Toxic Deluge. I feel decks have never been so much prepared for creatures, since at least Keeper domination against Sligh, with control decks playing Dark Confidant, Trinket Mage or Deathrite Shaman and MUD playing Lodestone Golem.

Sure, a long time ago you would see cards like Balance, Moat and The Abyss being played but I doubt we'll go back to this now that creatures don't need to attack to be good since they can draw cards, ping, tutor and regrowth.

I feel like the 5 pillars have never been so equal in the history of vintage and this creates and this thinly stretch sideboards. A typical sideboard contains 6-8 cards against Dredge and 3-8 cards against MUD. This doesn't leave a lot of room against Control, Storm and Aggro-Control.

[vaughnbros]

Realistically speaking, creatures are the easiest thing to hate out of the format.

This is just not true.  Along with a few other conclusions from the OP.  We've had a diverse 5 archetype format for some time now, creatures, artifacts, graveyard, combo, and control (along with combinations of those).  Due to this diversity, and the adjustments of each archetype its impossible to just hate an entire archetype out of the format.

The lesson that these tournament results teach those that didn't want to believe it before is that:  Life totals now matter.  BUG, RUG, and merfolk aren't going any where and they will punish you if you ignore it.

[vaughnbros]

Regarding vintage champs:
I'm stunned that there isnt a single Dark confidant in the top8. Also, i am honestly a little sad that the decks now so closely resemble decks from other formats (Mainly legacy). Fortunetly no single deck is overly represented, but where are the shop decks? And since that are no shop decks, what happened to Gush?

At vintage champs: Gush finished in 9th place.  Shops finished in 12th, possibly higher since I'm not sure what everyone was on.  Shops and Gush were both rather under represented at the tournament as a whole compared to the piece of the pie that they usually take.

[Varal]

Regarding vintage champs:
I'm stunned that there isnt a single Dark confidant in the top8. Also, i am honestly a little sad that the decks now so closely resemble decks from other formats (Mainly legacy). Fortunetly no single deck is overly represented, but where are the shop decks? And since there are no shop decks, what happened to Gush?

The top8 isn't everything, the difference between an 8th place and a 17th place can be really small. Sometimes a single mistake or a bad pairing can make the difference. MUD like Dredge can have varying performances depending on the hate found in other decks. I personally had 3 destroy artifacts MD and 6 SB. I feel like it is hard to fight against a lot of hate for MUD unless they can completely destroy their opponent mana rounds after rounds without letting an Hurkyl's Recall or an Ancient Grudge through.

There was 8 copies of Gush in the top 8 even if it wasn't Gush Control or Gush Combo. I feel like Gush Aggro has a better MUD match-ups than the other versions.

[Twaun007]

Regarding vintage champs:
I'm stunned that there isnt a single Dark confidant in the top8. Also, i am honestly a little sad that the decks now so closely resemble decks from other formats (Mainly legacy). Fortunetly no single deck is overly represented, but where are the shop decks? And since that are no shop decks, what happened to Gush?

At vintage champs: Gush finished in 9th place.  Shops finished in 12th, possibly higher since I'm not sure what everyone was on.  Shops and Gush were both rather under represented at the tournament as a whole compared to the piece of the pie that they usually take.

I don't think that shop decks were under represented. I believe it's just the natural cycle of Vintage. If you take look at GenCon's results people were up in arms about the workshop menace.

It kind of mirrors the cyclical trends in Legacy. Just take look at Sneak and Show. That deck is in and out of legacy top 8's all the time. Just like Workshops in Vintage.  

[V is for Vintage]

As mentioned above, I piloted a gush tendrils variant to the 9th place slot.

I lost to Kevin Cron in a tight 3, and was smashed by the Blue Angels deck lol

I beat Pyromancer, Shops, 2 dredge, Plateaus, BUG fish, and Oath. I was paired up against some world class players, but I was running pretty hot.

One of the lifesaving tech of the day was a pair of toxic deluge. I had one in the main and one in the side.

Typically, I've been able to create gush decks that perform well against both Shops and Blue but have had lackluster performances against the massive amount of creature decks in the meta I'm usually a part of.

I've tried everything from pyromancers to bolts to pyroclasm

The big answers lately have been targeted removal, namely bolts and decays, with snapcaster backup. Both of these options take up way too many slots in a combo deck. Deluge, being black, is a game changer, because I no longer need to commit to the 4th color to deal with aggro threats. I now have a card that is one-slot dedication for aggro decks.

That being said, since the commander decks came out right before the tournament, not everyone that wanted deluges had them.