Competitive....defined?

[Xenophon]

One simple, I guess maybe noob, question.  Obviously, what makes a deck 'competitive' will vary from deck to deck...but consider this specific case.

A combo deck, with no disruptive ability at all, that goes off turn 3 on occasion but almost always on turn 4 (in 45 tests, only about 1-3 times has it taken longer than 4 turns), and has a 100% success rate after going off.

I don't think that this is competitive, especially against control, but it is decent.  Is a turn 4 kill competitive?

[Kowal]

A combo deck at turn four?  Not a fucking way.  In type one, that means you're slower than aggro.

[Ephraim]

Out of curiosity then, why hasn't Easter Tendrils been nuked from orbit?

[Ric_Flair]

The fundamental turn of the format general defines the speed with which a combo deck needs to win.  Combo needs to win turn 2 about 50-60% with no disruption.  Otherwise, no chance.  

As far as Easter Tendrils, I think it has no chance.  I have never seen it do well in any tournament, so I think that is the answer.  If it is slower than Draw7 then it is not good enough.  Draw7 isn't winning right now, I can't imagine how Easter Tendrils would.

[jpmeyer]

Out of curiosity then, why hasn't Easter Tendrils been nuked from orbit?

I think mostly because it started drifting down the page and then didn't get bumped back up again until people stopped caring about modding the forum since the activity was more under control.

[yugg]

I think it's still mostly theoretical.  A combo deck has a very specific function, to go off as soon as possible.  Other decks, like control and aggro decks aren't completely geared towards an explosion.

Every card in a combo deck, leads to the combo (at least that should be the plan).

You have to leave room for regular opening hands.  Some people will mulligan down to 4 cards if it means having a FoW, but in reality the possiblity of an average hand is obviously more likely than a God-hand.

So, a combo deck needs to be able to theorectically go off consistently on turns 1-3 to be competitive, but in reality won't always happen.

I've seen my share of bad draws and I've seen other people with bad draws.  It happens.  And just because you mulligan down to 3 or 4, doesn't mean that you will get what you want.

[Marton]

A competitive deck is a deck that can beat up most of the expected decks in a given metagame and have answers/strategies against the other decks. A competitive deck is a deck that can adapt its play to your opponent. By that, I mean many things. It could be simply an aggro deck that can suddently turn into combo, like FCG. Your deck is competitive when you can adapt your strategies depending on what your opponent does (that is, outside of playing combo). Your deck can aso be good if it can abuse tempo, like fish does and like GAT did (where it drained a random spell to fuel it's draw engine).

The most important factor of a deck is to have a general strategy with, and stick to it (stay focused). The deck must be built to focus on it's core strategy while still having a way to deal with your opponent's cards. If you play MUD or stax, you don't have answers to your opponents threats if they play them before the lock, but then at least you can tanglewire and then have that smokestack eventually take care of the opposing threat. *Every single competitive deck must have some form of disruption*. I tried explaining this onto another thread. At the very least you need strip mine unless you plan on winning on turn 1. If your deck can't answer your opponent threats after they are played (other than just winning and/or lock the game with mindslaver), then your deck isn't what I would consider competitive. This is why sui is so bad.

Theres a small link between the fundamental turn and the competitiveness of the deck. The fundamental turn that your deck can go off is important in relation to the fundamental turn your opponent deck can go off. A competitive deck must absolutely understand this and play around this very crucial rule. This is why disruption is mandatory in every competitive deck. You want to play disruption in order to change your opponent fundamental turn more in-line with your own (or better yet, bring your own even further, but that should be considered a win-more situation which is unnecessary from a theorical point of view).

[Xenophon]

Thanks everyone.  That was very very useful.  I posted the decklist I was reffering to in the Budget Forum, so please go have a look.

[Ephraim]

A competitive deck is a deck that can beat up most of the expected decks in a given metagame and have answers/strategies against the other decks.

This is an interesting statement and it can serve as an important reminder and encouragement to new deck builders. Whether a deck or competetive or not is a function of your metagame. Although TMD serves as a focus for the development of universally competetive decks, not everybody is going to live in an ideal environment. As an example, Easter Tendrils is competetive in my area. With weak control and aggro that can't win until turn five or six, Easter Tendrils is just fast enough to pull off a lot of wins. I am lucky that the deck remained alive long enough here to get it even to the level at which it is now. Altogether too often, such decks are discounted early.

Something that occurs to me, as a result of having worked on Easter Tendrils, is that non-competetive and almost-competetive decks can serve as valuable stepping stones in the development of Vintage Magic in regions where it isn't currently popular. Although not all decks will be competetive by the standards of a serious, global community, like TMD, those decks can demonstrate sound principles of deck building that will serve fledgling deck designers well, even when they've moved on to more powerful decks. I'm not about to advocate the full embrasure of every suboptimal idea that passes this way, but I think it would be good for the community to help deck designers with mediocre decks to develop those decks as far as they may be taken. For myself, I've learned a lot by optimizing poor decks. The fact that the deck is my personal creation means that I have every incentive to learn why various choices would be better than others. This incentive is far less prevalent when somebody is told just to play a deck created by another person. At the very least, a thorough discourse on how/why their deck would eventually evolve into that other deck could be illuminating and probably interesting to read.

[Marton]

I will add to my previous post that all I said about a competitive deck assumes that the player knows the deck in and out. Having a good deck but not knowing how to play it properly (like with keeper and long) is as bad as having a non-competitive deck when you go to a tournament. If I had to choose between a deck I am comfortable with and a netdeck I don't know well the intricaties of, I would probably, as a player, be more competitive with the deck I am comfortable playing with.

Also, a competitive deck must avoid dead cards as much as possible. A dead card is a card that is situational, and which you can't play. For example, drawing a stifle vs an aggro deck, or drawing a standstill when you're in a loosing situation. I am not saying that stifle and standstill shouldn't be played in a given deck, I am just giving example of cards that are usually good but that can become useless under some conditions. One dead card equals roughly to not drawing a card, which more-or-less equals to loosing a turn. This is the reason that explains why playing the crucible of worlds/fastbond/zuran orb combo is a bad idea: Fastbond alone is generally useless if you don't draw it on turn-1, and zuran orb is only necessary when you're already loosing, and it probably won't even save you anyway. Playing a deck with that 3 card combo is a bad idea/not competitive because the chances of having your cards stay in your hand are too high. Generally a competitive deck should play with cards that have proven their power. For deckbuilders out there, I have posted a list of the best cards in type-1, all sorted out in categories/colors. Here is the link for reference: http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18568

-marton

EDIT:

I wanted to add this: There are no bad threats, only bad answers. Having no answers is possibly the worst answer you can give other than loosing the game. Disruption is a must to all competitive decks. Counterspells are so good in decks not only because it is disruption, but in contrast to other discard cards like duress/xantid, they have the other advantage of 'stealing' mana/resources to the opponent. Your opponent must still cast the spell, and when it is countered it is less likely that your opponent will be able to follow with another spell since he is tapped out. 'Stealing' that mana means stealing tempo. In some cases they may prove to be a virtual time walk, since you countered all the spells (in this case, the one spell that took all his mana) the opponent could play.