Discussion: Teams and Type One

[Smmenen]

Type One has made some serious advances in the last few years.  Notables include:

* Development of an anticipatable metagame in most major tournaments

* A metagame of decks that are not mono-white (parfait), mono-red (sligh), mono-black (suicide black), mono-green (stompy), mono blue, five-color control, and a random combo deck.  

* A growing number of Type One tournaments - how laucky are we that there are more tournaments than we have time to attend.

* A number of analysts, writers, and experts who document, report, and discuss Vintage on a serious level.

* Lots of good Proxy Tournaments

Most of you weren't around on the old Bdominia days, but that resembles something like the www.mtg.com forum.  It was basically a very large message board with one Vintage forum and the most scrubtastic decklists/suggestions/posts.  

These boards have a veritable STAFF of people who do monitor T1, but they also are all very competent.  The Type One community has bred a group that knows the format and can monitor his own.  

That's where we have come.  The means to advancing the format has been the spread of the community to a large degree.  Without a place like this, there is no common store of knowledge that people can look to to learn the format.  

But there is something lacking.  Type One can only go so far on the back of a board like this.  Even with a great community, good writers and heavy diffusion of tournament data, there is one key ingredient missing: Teams.  

Last year I came very, very close to quitting the paragons becuase I felt that a team split would re-energize the Paragons to get their shit together.   I was disillusioned becuase I believed that the focus of a good team was a number of Spikes (Johnny's are welcome as well - so long as they have a good Spike side) and TESTING.  

Teams are the critical and final step in the evolution of Type One, imo.  I think the meandeck/ shortbus rivalry this summer is going to be extremely healthy.  Let me outline why, and what this entails.

Teams are engines of Creativity:

* Now that big name and big game tournaments are on the line, teams are the most logical organizational unit for serious t1 tournament players who can afford to do so.  Making teams is less important for small events.

Benefits of Teams:
- You get to test against the same people - you can find a group to test with on a regular basis and have both sides report their results
- Your teammates pick up on your playstyle and your general magic habits.  Everyone has magic habits - how you draw cards, how you hold your cards, how you idle with your cards (I shuffle my hand back and forth and tap my hand on the table); knowing these little things in strategic and tactical areas is a huge asset.  Your teammates can be invaluable.
- More minds are better than one.  If you want to win Origins, trying to work on a deck by yourself is always worse than having more people helping - and you don't want everyone to see it because you want it to be tech - then the Drain isn't necessarily the most appropriate place for it.  
- Teams focus on performance.  They create team solidarity and cohesion and spike internal competition and looking out for your buddies in a way that a more generalized community simply cannot provide.  There is a reason that the Pros organize into teams.  
- I've said it once, and I'll say it again: Test, test, test.  that is really the core of Meandeckers' philosophy.  Testing is the most surefire path towards winning.  

So, What can be done to help teams out?

- Organize a Team!

- Understand why Decklist Withholding is okay.  If a team puts in an effort to help develop a deck, understand that if they request a decklist to be withheld - that is not "gay" or "dumb."  That enables teams to play the same deck at different events maintaining the secrecy over small deck changes that are often important.  

The reason you don't see decklist withholding in other formats is because a) each pro tour is a brand new format and b) things only change in type one when a new set rotates in or a restriction takes effect.  Vintage technology could theoretically never change.  And the tournament technology is driven not be new sets, but by availability of Lotus tournaments.  Each time a new PT happens, the Pro Teams break the format anew - here we don't have that luxury.  Therefore, withholding decklists is a reasonable temporary request until the season dies off - and even reasonable if not temporary.

- Support your team!  Do your testing and report on it!

* If the decklist thing still concerns you - just remember that Gencon is where all the technology willl be fully released.  Every team's efforts will be shown and no stone will be left unturned.  That is where our format really solidifies and becomes more than what it currently is.

One final comment:
People respond to incentives.  The reason communism failed is because the economic system didn't work without a pricing mechanism.  Without proper incentives to support teams, teams won't grow.  And even if they grow, they won't thrive unless conditions support it.  

In order for teams to thrive, you have to be able to convince a team that its efforts can be kept secret in order to get each person to speak completely openly.  Withholding decklists protects someone else's technology, but benefits you.  Anyone who thinks this is a bad thing is a luddite .

The bottom line is that the best tech is going to come from teams.  But teams will only work if the conditions are in place for them to be encouraged and function.  If you guys want cool surprise decks of Gencon, let the teams do their job and support them in the process.  The potential that a community board like the mana drain has is great, but the engine of growth that 5-6 serious Type One teams could have on the format is far more potent in terms of serious innnovation (along with the drain for more general community purposes).

[Klep]

Here's one flaw with this idea:

You can't get Pro Tour-quality teams in Type 1.  The prizes aren't good enough.  A Lotus is a nice prize, true, but it pales in comparison to Pro Tour prizes.   You simply will not get enough people willing to put in the effort to have an environment entirely defined by teams of this calibur.  Until you can,  the environment is going to still be largely defined by individual players, or friends playing casual games at their local store to "test" their own tech.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Steve, I must call you on false analogies.

(False Analogy 1: Pro Tour)
The PT is not an isolated event. Immediately following it are Grand Prix, PTQs, etc. Thousands of dollars on the line. At each stage in the process, decklists are released so that the metagame can be revitalized. They're not all kept in a vault and released when the next PT season rolls around; they're let out immediately. This is so that the end of the season can be as exciting as the beginning: tech must be refreshed for continual victory. Every shift in the metagame can be countered, but only if the results are known. A PTQ season would be pretty silly if only whispered rumors and archetype names detailed the results until after it didn't matter.

Moreover, your 'continuous vs. discontinuous format' argument is specious because seasons recur in formats like Extended, Standard, and Block (only every other year). Most of the ideas from last time are still valid, as well as many decks, it's just a larger jump because there's a larger time between Worlds and the 1.X PT than between, say, Waterburys. Standard is certainly analogous in this regard because each tournament in the chain from States through Regionals and Nationals to Worlds contributes large tech evolutions based on what won. Each successive tournament creates response tech for the next, but at no point would secrecy make things 'more interesting'. It would just be a blatant attempt to keep an edge by whoever's currently on top. Like Standstill [insert witty JP-style remark here]. Or like extending copyright laws to 100 years so that Walt Disney can keep making money off Mickey Mouse instead of getting a new damn mascot.

What you meant to (or should have meant to) contend was 'rotating vs. non-rotating format', on the theory that in a format where continuity lasts forever, there should be greater secrecy because tech lasts forever. However, this is specious, too! Decks and cards rotate out of Type One in all but the legality of their play. You could make an argument that decks last longer, but there are decks in Extended that have been successful for years. Does that mean they should be secret? Clearly not.

(False Analogy 2: Capitalism)
Growing, productive capitalism requires dynamic interaction. No one argues that for reasons of 'encouraging corporate innovation' that companies shouldn't have accounting transparency that other companies can analyze to use their own tactics back at them. The details of a winning marketing campaign are plain as the billboard on your local highway and the reports being made to the public. The incentive to continuously innovate is to stay ahead of the competition. When you are already ahead and people can't take advantage of any groundwork being done, you turn into a lazy king of the hill, which cannot be good for the format.

(Don't argue about capitalism with a libertarian; I will win. ;) )

What this stance of decklist-secrecy is based on is a blatantly anticompetitive strategy that seeks to keep other teams from competing with those already in place. By obscuring what the metagame looks like* you inhibit realistic testing by individuals on their own teams and encourage a "Magic Colony"-like inbred metagame syndrome. Magic is not based on objective mathematical answers that anyone should arrive at if they do enough work. A perfectly reasonable team can't just come up with the best decks automatically without any metagame input. You yourself expressed this:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=186473#186473

Assuming for the moment that there is a "decline" in the meta - I have another theory to explain it. Teams can only be a small part. I think there is no one tournament people look to for metagame results anymore. The coherency peaked from March to August of 2003. That was before and shortly after the Gencon tournament. After that, it all came crashing down and now its almost entirely random[...]

If there's no results, how can we gain the coherence required to develop tech? In fact, when there are results available, JP has told us what a smart team will do:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=275432#275432

And besides, if you know what you're doing, providing decklists for stuff that you win with lets you stay one step ahead of the game. You win, decklist goes out, people play that list or try to figure out how to beat that list. You, OTOH already did that so now you get to work on beating what they're working on. Serving > receiving.

Seriously. Withholding decklists is discouraging teams, not excouraging them. The financial incentives aren't going to make Pro teams for Type One, and attempting to keep anyone from doing accurate playtesting is a ridiculous double-blind move that will not help your own or other teams. How can anyone plan their card choices if they have little clue how well other pieces of tech are doing? Open competition 4L, results secrecy never ever ever.

* : Historically, the metagame has been equal to some combination of what won and what got hyped, with winning being the superior criterion for good players.

[Machinus]

No participant in organized play, whether on individual terms or as a member of a team, has any obligation whatsoever to disclose his/her developments or discoveries to anyone else. This reasoning does not stem from the existence of a few hundred dollars' prize. It comes from the nature of the game. The game being addressed here is not M:tG, but something of a higher nature; it is the game of competition itself. All of the necessary information to succeed is available to anyone - the complete list of all legal cards, all restricted cards, and all of the game's rules and errata, can be easily found. On top of that, there is an enormous wealth of history and strategy available to the curious player who wishes to explore the format - something which is not a privelege by the exclusive and expensive nature of the format, but is a privelege by the coincidence that Type 1 players happen to be orderly, reasonable, intelligent people. So it is not something which we should demand or expect, but something which we should recognize as a gesture of a higher sense of community when a player or team gives back to theirs. I am not addressing any motives of stimulating growth or maintaining health of the format; I am not so sure that considering those things should be of great concern to the average player. I think they are essential, certainly, but without genuine competition and an honest desire to succeed individually (or as part of a team), there is no "game." So what we have here is not a discussion on the merits of privacy, but a general query that seeks to establish the superiority of making our best efforts public information. So, - and I am playing the devil's advocate somewhat here - tell me, if it increases a player's chances of winning that next tournament, whether it is for a lotus, or just to achieve victory over his/her opponents, why shouldn't they keep their weapons a secret?

[Klep]

Ok, first of all, what we are talking about here isn't free and open development of decks or team-based internal development of decks.  What we are talking about is the release of decklists after a tournament such as the Central Coast Championship or Origins.   No one here wants to force people to reveal the tech they are going into a tournament with,  the argument is instead about whether people are justified in hiding their lists after they have used them in a tournament.

Next:

I am not addressing any motives of stimulating growth or maintaining health of the format; I am not so sure that considering those things should be of great concern to the average player.

Just who the hell do you think this issue affects?   I assume you mean average competetive player since that is what this forum exists for.  This is an issue of importance to anyone who takes the competetive side of Type 1 seriously.

That's all I really pulled out of your post.  Looking at it made my eyes hurt, so please use paragraphs in the future.  Paragraphs are what let people know when they can stop to think about what they just read.  If you don't use them, people just gloss over your words until they come to the end.

[Machinus]

It doesn't seem natural that a player who is designing and testing to win a tournament has the health of the format at the top of his/her list of priorities. While everyone wants to play in an interesting and diverse "metagame," I think most people want to win more than they want that.

At the risk of sounding confusing, I DO think that stimulating growth is particluarly important, and I would prefer it if Phil had all the data he wanted to analyze; but this is not what I was really getting at. I was merely pointing out that I don't think there is any good way to convince players to share their decklists, since they don't HAVE to and it is entirely possible that witholding that kind of information could lead to a slightly increased measure of success. That success for the individual player may come at a greater cost to the players around him/her and to the format itself, but can we really expect everyone to draw the line at a reasonable place?

On the issue of paragraphs, I have spent a lot of time using the forum structure to communicate, and too many paragraphs in a post makes me feel like what I am reading is incoherent or disconnected. But I will make note of the "glossing" effect and try to correct that; thanks for tip.

[rozetta]

I have to also comment that these periods every year, when the boards practically grind to a halt due to secrecy before a new set becomes legal or before a large tournament are frustratingly boring.

Naturally, good ideas do come out of teams, but I believe better ideas could come out of larger scale collaboration on these forums.

Outsiders are always maintaining that the Type 1 community is not as innovative as it could be. Of course this is wrong, since we've seen a great deal of innovation in the past few years. What's unfortunately happened since the innovation boom is that people with good ideas have formed secret societies and are not collaborating on the forums' general ideas as much. Maybe this is due to time constraints. Maybe it's because others are discussing tech that the teams have also discovered and want to keep secret.

Many good ideas are brought forward on these forums and it's a shame that some of them go seemingly unnoticed or just passed off based on how they look on paper.

I believe that we'd see better innovations if people got together on these boards more and brainstormed, shared results and were generally a little more accepting of new ideas. The team secrecy thing only serves to strengthen outsiders' views that our community is full of stubborn and elitist know-it-alls.

[Laertes]

  No one here wants to force people to reveal the tech they are going into a tournament with,  the argument is instead about whether people are justified in hiding their lists after they have used them in a tournament.

I think that there is a difference in how we view the burden of proof.  There is no rule stating that people must share their lists ( unless a organizer makes one and warns people ahead of time ).  The question shouldn't be "Are people justified in hiding decklists?", but instead "Is anyone justified to post a DL without permission?"  The obvious answer is "no - only the owner has that right"

Yes, I wish I knew that tog list that won 3 times in Europe that Dr. Sylvan can't get his hands on- but I have no right to that information. Yes, I wish I knew the recipe for Coke, they'd pay me millions to not publish it.  I think that it needs to be recognized that decklists are intellectual property in some sense.

[mogote]

Yes, I wish I knew that tog list that won 3 times in Europe that Dr. Sylvan can't get his hands on- but I have no right to that information. [...]I think that it needs to be recognized that decklists are intellectual property in some sense.

Imo this is what seperates T1 from the Pro Tour. All the decklists from important PT related events are available to the public. While in T1 decklists from big tournaments are sometimes withheld by request this is not the case there. Withheld decklists will hamper the evolution of decks and the development of metagames. It would help if tournament organizers made decklists obligatory for the top8 so everyone knew that participating in combination with a good enough final standing result in a published decklist.

[SliverKing]

A few premises:

Intense competition breeds a need for innovation

Good innovations (or tech) takes time and extensive testing to create.

People are more willing to invest time/energy when the rewards are higher

This summer's convention season has the highest ratio of prize support/big tournaments to timespan of the entire year... effectively making it Type 1's pro tour.  

A team of dedicated players can advance Magic further than individuals working alone.

At the end of GENCON there will be no further need for secrecy  and all technology will be put forward for mass consumption and general type 1 improvement.

From these premises I draw the following conclusion:  That allowing teams to work in secrecy with the allure of multiple power tournaments in a short time frame, and the ability to minimize diffusion of their innovations for the span of those tournaments will encourage tremendous work from those teams and greatly improve the quality of thier decks, and directly from that, the quality of Type 1 in general.

If you force people to divulge decklists after the very first tournament of the summer, it creates disincentive to innovate except for the single most valuable tournament. The greater benefit people/teams can reap from innovation, the more likely they are to invest the time and energy.
When that summer season is over and all the decks go to general knowledge they still get the same global scrutiny that people want, that will encourage further innovation and advance our format. Only it will not come at the expense of the people who did the original work.

[Kushluk]

Type One has made some serious advances in the last few years.  Notables include:

* Development of an anticipatable metagame in most major tournaments

These boards have a veritable STAFF of people who do monitor T1, but they also are all very competent.  The Type One community has bred a group that knows the format and can monitor his own.  

That's where we have come.  The means to advancing the format has been the spread of the community to a large degree.  Without a place like this, there is no common store of knowledge that people can look to to learn the format.  

Teams are the critical and final step in the evolution of Type One, imo.  I think the meandeck/ shortbus rivalry this summer is going to be extremely healthy.  Let me outline why, and what this entails.

Steven Menendian is a High Modernist?

Teams will come eventually, if Type 1 continues to have a renaissance. Wizards might be moved to somhow support the format growing in populairty as this one is, thus making "real" pros flood in. Or, if Wizards dosen't deign to care about us, Type one players themselves might set up gradually larger tornaments (as they have been doing)and set up more teams/alliances at the least.

However, the idea of an undivided prize will still gather individualists. Smaller the tornament>less teams. It could even be said that there is an incentive for staying solo at small tornaments and teaming up for large ones (small, but undivided prize vs. large divided prize w/ higher chance of victory).

[VGB]

The reason that decklists are released after each Pro Tour, Grand Prix, or what have you is because it translates into money for Wizards.  Whenever a new winning deck comes out, people need to buy the cards to build it online and irl.  Thus it is in corporate interest to publicize decks - and the more variety, the more $$$ overall.

Wizards does not foster a continuous T1 gaming circuit of any kind - nor will they ever, because the entry barrier (exorbitant premium card prices) will foment the ultimate sin of turning a customer off to your product - not something a company that prints $20 dollar bills on a regular basis wants to do.

Deck secrecy in T1 is a natural byproduct of the nature of the format - it is free from the strictures of corporate mandate, thus operates on a more individual level - "why should I share my tech, when I am making money by keeping it secret as long as possible?"  And this is absolutely fine.  Competetive T1 takes a different (read: better) kind of player, because it calls for something that Block, T2, and 1.x players don't have to deal with - a B&R list of dozens of cards, a card pool in the multiple thousands, and understanding of the entire comprehensive rules set, so those who put in the effort to master the format should be allowed benefit from the rewards of all that effort.

I do agree with you, Smmenen, in that the best innovation and ultimately decks come from teams, because good decks simply cannot emerge from a vacuum - it takes testing and multiple player input to prove a deck in this format, since a single person absolutely cannot account for all the variables in T1.

[Mr. Channel-Fireball]

If you're not going to contribute anything useful to the discussion, please don't post.
-Jacob

[bebe]

These boards have a veritable STAFF of people who do monitor T1, but they also are all very competent. The Type One community has bred a group that knows the format and can monitor his own.

Here lies the rub. The metagame now is not predictable. We have to work with fuzzy logic - that is expecting irregularities and inconsistencies in play and design of all the decks. It is the preparation for these irregularities that have been a hall mark for most of the Canadian deck builders. Most initial designs for decks here - landstill, dragon, o. stompy, etc., were not created by any organized teams but rather a group of familiar faces helping each other out. I designed and won with Spoils Dragon after Dicemanx and Shockwave tweaked the design of my deck. O. Stompy won after Ray included EsGs in his mana base after consulting with numerousb friends in the game.

I clearly remember conversations with Marc Perez when Fish was being developed. E-mails bertween Razor, myself and Marc were sent out weekly. We never organized to do it but we did share tech and tournament results.

We have a few informal testing groups in Canada where ideas are exchanged and development does continue. But we are not all Spikes and Johnnies are encouraged to join in because that is where the inconsistencies and irregularities stem from and often the best tech.

This thread has moved from discussing team organization to the discussion of withholding deck lists. I do not see that as productive to the conversation. There will be a lot of contention over the appropriateness of hiding lists from major tournaments and this might be best left to another thread so we can deal with the issue of how teams can be organized and their contributions to the Type 1 as a whole.

[Kushluk]

Wizards does not foster a continuous T1 gaming circuit of any kind - nor will they ever, because the entry barrier (exorbitant premium card prices) will foment the ultimate sin of turning a customer off to your product - not something a company that prints $20 dollar bills on a regular basis wants to do.

They won't ever? You own a crystal ball eh?

First of all I disagree with your argument, I'm sure they can come up with a way to make money off T1. Companies are good at finding ways to do that, all it would take is some ingenuity. There are also ways to avoid the price inflation to lower barriers to entry - like proxies or whatever (I'm not saying that this is likeley at all, but certainly possible), so your argument that it "can't ever for never happen" is wrong, since it cerntainly CAN. Will it happen, that is the question.

Of course, happly, WoC will say (to anyone complaining about high prices): "There is always our fairly priced well regulated T2 environment for those that don't enjoy the rollercoaster ride that is T1 brokeness".

[Smmenen]

Please, please, please do NOT bring in the Pro Tour to this discussion.  I wasn't comparing Type One to the Pro Tour AT ALL.  I was merely pointing out that Teams are an important element of the Pro Tour - not comparing T1 to formats in which the Pro Tour compete.

Any attempt to say I was analogizing to the Pro Tour is FALSE.  

Just to get this out of the way:

My opinion of the Pro Tour is rather low.  The payout is rather low for the work/effort required to succeed in terribly unexciting formats.  Can you imagine having the task of breaking T2?  You have to build up guantlet decks and test the most boring decks against each other, design after analyzing every card in the format, etc.  I'd rather read Nathaniel Hawthorn novels (and I'm not kidding either).

[riggy]

Your teammates pick up on your playstyle and your general magic habits.

While I agree that those are benefits, you also have to think of the downside of teams. As you pick up on one another's play styles, you also tend to start thinking in similar ways. It may not necessarily be exactly the same, but enough so that your vision concerining card picks, play choices, etc. will be narrowed significantly.

More minds are better than one.

If more minds are better than one, why limit yourself to a team? Join the larger community and share your ideas! I have friends in half a dozen cities that I talk to regularly about magic and bounce ideas off. And they will come to me for the same reason. I test those ideas in my regular tourney setting as well as in fun pick up games, or in day-long testing workshops.

While the idea of a testing group is similar to a team, it's not as close-minded. The sharing of tech  is what furthers innovation. I posted a while back about a Lattice Prison deck and the ideas generated there plus the contribution of ill_dawg has helped to spawn what is a fairly competitive deck. With a bit more work, I may take it to Origins.

And a quick point about team secrecy (since it is an issue in this thread), how often has the tech that was hidden at one tourney been relative in the next tourney that you go to? The answer I've always gotten is not usually. The meta shifts and evolves and is constantly forcing people to keep their tech fresh. I personally think that hiding your tech hurts yourself more because then you can't keep yourself a step ahead of the meta (as was mentioned earlier).

[Ric_Flair]

I think there is an undercurrent of intellectual property here.  People have been beating around the bush about who "owns" a deck list.  First,off the four times of intellectual property two are inapplicable--patents and trademarks.  Patents are valid only when registered, so they are out.  Trademarks require use in commerce and generally are brand related.  As such they are out too.  The remaining types, copyrights and trade secrets are probably best suited.  In a famous case, a party copied a phonebook and was held not to violate a copyright held on the phonebook by the original creator.  There was not enough creativity in a compliation to warrant a copyright.  I think the same would apply here, as the deck, however innovative, in the end is just a compliation.  Only if there is some unique organizing principle can the list maker claim a copyright.  Also the deck itself not fixed, it is really just an idea.  The list maybe copyrighted in that it is fixed, but the deck and the decklist are two different things.  So what, I can't copy your writing of a few cards without your permission?  I will just play the deck.  The idea is not fixed.  Furthermore, there is an exception to copyrights for what is called "archetypal" material.  No one can copyright basic elements of ideas.  For example, no one can copyright Dracula.  They may be able to copyright a particular rendition or story about Dracula, but Dracula is a stock or archetypal character.  I would say that many deck ideas would be covered by this exception.  This leaves trade secrets.  A trade secret is any commercially valueable secret.  A deck design qualifies.  However, trade secrets are protected only to the extent that they are kept secret.  If a person can get a hold ofthe idea, reverse engineer it, or otherwise obtain it legally, there is no protection of the secret.  So while teams may have a legal right to keep the decks secret it is really an emphemeral right.  Also, a right is only valuable to the extent that it is enforceable.  How enforceable is this right?  Not at all.

This may seem like a crazy aside but I think it speaks to the issue.  Secrets are valuable 1) if they do something better than a non-secret; and 2) remain secret.  Teams, some at least, do this well.  As such those teams are successful.  But I think the true value in a team is not the deckbuidling powers but in the playtesting capacities.  Extended is a perfect example of how people on teams with well known decks can still win (Zvi and turbo land) without secrecy.  The power in the team is not the secret, it is the skill.

Since the vast majority of players in Vintage have poor skill, the core advantage of the team is not skill.  Team players will likely already be the most skilled people.  Therefore, the advantage in a team in Vintage is not skill building, but the secondary team benefit of deckbuidling.  Vintage is essentially teams warring with each other with secret decks.  The average non-team player in Vintage is terrible.  Whereas, at least here in Boston, the average non-Vintage, non-team member has tons of skill.  Creed Allen was the Mass State Champ and played on no team.  Josh Smith, though loosely associated with YMG, is not on any team and does well.  

Teams: skillbuilding first and secret decks second.

[Klep]

If you force people to divulge decklists after the very first tournament of the summer, it creates disincentive to innovate except for the single most valuable tournament.

It also creates an incentive for them to keep working for the rest of the summer just like everyone else.  Indeed, why can't people plan ahead for such things?  It isn't like the con season is surprising anyone, it comes once a year, regularly and without fail.  We hear about how the Paragons would often have tech planned 2 or 3 stages ahead, so that they always knew what would be thought up with to deal with their current tech and how to answer it.  What is stopping teams now from doing the same?  To me it just seems like laziness and a sense of entitlement that since you worked up to the first tournament of the summer, you shouldn't have to keep working for the rest of it.

Please, please, please do NOT bring in the Pro Tour to this discussion. I wasn't comparing Type One to the Pro Tour AT ALL. I was merely pointing out that Teams are an important element of the Pro Tour - not comparing T1 to formats in which the Pro Tour compete.

Any attempt to say I was analogizing to the Pro Tour is FALSE.

So you're saying that teams are an important element of the Pro Tour, and that teams should also be an important element of Vintage, and you discuss the differences between the two in your original post, and you seriously expect us to believe you weren't drawing comparisons?

[Triple_S]

When you refer to the current teams being too lazy to plan ahead on the metagame you are refering mostly to teams that were created out of the near demise of the paragons list (Meandeck and Short Bus).  If you are not a member of either team, how can you make assumptions that either outfit is not currently working towards swaying the metagame in a direction that we prefer?

[Klep]

When you refer to the current teams being too lazy to plan ahead on the metagame you are refering mostly to teams that were created out of the near demise of the paragons list (Meandeck and Short Bus).  If you are not a member of either team, how can you make assumptions that either outfit is not currently working towards swaying the metagame in a direction that we prefer?

Because your desire to withhold your lists indicates a desire to keep the metagame in its current state.  We can't advance the metagame at this stage without knowing new tech.

[Triple_S]

You, and the community in general, have the ability to do testing yourself to develop decks which will in turn impact the metagame.  No one, Paragons, Meandeck, Bus, Santa Claus should have to spoon feed you tech when it is easily discovered on your own with the necessary work.

Last year Paragons worked 3 months to break the format and came up with what we felt were the 2 best decks in the format at the time:  Hulk and Mask (Vengeur and Mono B).  This year Bus and Meandeck are doing the same I am sure.  We want to win.  You play games to win.  Maybe we just want to win more than most people and our work is indicative of this.

[MarkPharaoh]

And people called me an asshole, spoiled brat, etc etc. when I didn't support the idea of proxies yet there are others who want to withhold there damn decklists so that they can win more... Both can be protrayed as wanting to win more and in a way I find it amusing that people like Steve (just an example) support full proxies to have a more competitive field and then go and support withholding decklist is kinda two-faced in my opinion as having zero proxies has an effect similiar to withholding decklists, both only benefit the people with the cards/tech and doesn't give room for others to advance.

[thorme]

What is stopping teams now from doing the same?  To me it just seems like laziness and a sense of entitlement that since you worked up to the first tournament of the summer, you shouldn't have to keep working for the rest of it.

I think you're right on with the fact that we're dealing with a sense of entitlement.  I disagree on who is entitled to what though.

An individual who develops, tests, and pilots a deck to a strong finish SHOULD have a sense of entitlement.  They ARE entitled!  

The problem comes when others feel that they are entitled to the fruits of that man's labors.  

Why is this whole discussion making me think of Ayn Rand?  I believe that the masses are upset at the lack of cooperation from the Type 1 "Prime Movers."

[PucktheCat]

As long as teams can keep their tech secret it will always be in their best interests to do so - I can't fault anyone for that any more than I fault someone for playing a degenerate combo (which is to say, not at all).  Both are simply the best choices available given the rules structure.

However, I am not so sure that the same thing that is good for the teams is good for the format.  Think about the Pro Tour for a moment.  The Pro Tour is sponsored by Wizards to encourage a certain type of player to get serious about playing Magic.  To acheive that they don't just advertise the money prizes on the tour - they make sure to have lots of deck analysis and match coverage as well.  The latter is probably at least as important as the former in encouraging people to take magic seriously.

Why are pro's decklists always available after a Tour?  It isn't because the format keeps changing.  Tech is worth money to some pros afterall, in the form of getting paid for articles and so on.  I strongly suspect that it is because Wizards simply won't let them keep the secret after they play in an event.  Why would they?  Its in their interest to keep the average Spike feeling like he is just a half step behind the pros.

Wizards doesn't do that for Vintage, but there is a group that could play a similar role if they chose to.  Tournament organizers and shop owners benefit much more from the formats growth than the success of any one individual and they could easily require deck registration if they wanted to.  These are the people that should think long and hard about this issue because they have both the power to do something about secrecy and the incentive to use it.

Leo

[Kerz]

My opinion of the Pro Tour is rather low. The payout is rather low for the work/effort required to succeed in terribly unexciting formats. Can you imagine having the task of breaking T2? You have to build up guantlet decks and test the most boring decks against each other, design after analyzing every card in the format, etc. I'd rather read Nathaniel Hawthorn novels (and I'm not kidding either).

For a lawyer, I think you have pretty poor skills in determining optinion from fact.

Type Two may seem boring to some, especially type one players, but in reality, it is not. Just because its fundamental turn is a bit farther away from 0 than Type One's is, that does not mean the format is boring to any extent.

I would have to agree with your statement that, boring or not, the Pro Tour is not worth the effort and time required to win.

The team issue is indeed a pressing one. I realized this about 2 months ago, and organized a team fairly quickly. (http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.phpt=17406&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15) So far, its been great. Trying to get good and win in a format strictly by posting on public boards is flawed- trying to win with only information thats been published is near imporrible. I belive it was Smmenen who said that only surprise decks/choices win huge tournaments- this is completely true.

My opinion on decklist witholding is strongly towards the everyone-should-release camp. If you cant stand to have your tech released, than wait untill gencon to play it. Wanting to win more with no one knowing is understandible, but I really belive it is a stipulation to winning that your list gets published. Its a small price to pay for winning a lotus, eh?

[Klep]

An individual who develops, tests, and pilots a deck to a strong finish SHOULD have a sense of entitlement.  They ARE entitled!  

   Yes, they are entitled to their victory.  After a tournament, however, it is unreasonable for decklists to be witheld longer because it is more important that people be able to see the current status of the metagame (what decks are good, what makes them good, what makes previously good decks bad now, etc.) than for the tournament winners to maintain their secrecy.  They have worked hard, true, but after a tournament they have already reaped their rewards.  Allowing the metagame to continue to develop now becomes more important.

   The secrecy advocates say that to solve this problem everyone can just do testing like they do, but the fact is that everyone won't.  As DrSylvan and I previously stated in this thread, Vintage simply does not offer enough incentive to the vast majority of people to seriously put the effort in.  If it did, more pros would play Type 1 (Lord knows the entry barrier isn't stopping them, what with the proliferation of proxy tournaments).  Does this mean we should just dismiss what most people have to offer the format?  Of course not.  

    Vintage is still growing, and prize support grows with the size of the format.  Perhaps someday it will be realistic to expect people to do all their own testing and development, but now is not that time.  For now it is more important that we do all we can to keep encouraging people to take up the format, and that cannot be accomplished by allowing the community to devolve into a group of insular cliques who do all of their development internally and don't share their results until it no longer matters.

EDIT: By the way, is anyone going to ever actually respond to DrSylvan?

[PucktheCat]

Vintage is still growing, and prize support grows with the size of the format. Perhaps someday it will be realistic to expect people to do all their own testing and development, but now is not that time.

Actually, it will probably NEVER be reasonable to expect most people to do this.  It simply won't happen.  But be happy.  It is those people, the ones you get interested in the format by publishing your tech but haven't the inclination to actually get good themselves, whose money your are taking when you win a $500+ card.

Leo

[Vegeta2711]

So how many people actually read Dr. Sylvan's post, because it seems like it's been largely ignored for the most part.

[jpmeyer]

The biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig difference between the Pro Tour and Type 1 is that the Pro Tour is a marketting tool and therefore it behooves WotC to print the decklists so people can be like "Oh man that deck is awesome time to buy the cards in it!"