[Article] Players Guide to the Type One Championships

[Smmenen]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/224

An article written for everyone.  Let me know what you think!

Stephen

[yodoblec]

Great article. I really liked how you pointed it out so someone could get started out in type 1. It may increase the play of fish more though .

You explained the match-ups and good cards for that match-up, very well written, I enjoyed reading it all.

[Marton]

Wow, really this is a great article, particularly considering that it is featured unto wizards website. The article may be turn out to be very technical for the casual player that reads wizards website (I'm thinking here mostly about type-2 players), but at least for ONCE it provides them with totally new information they are not used to see (type-1 articles are like extremely rare otherwise than articles explaining new restrictions). I believe it is definately a step in the right direction, a step towards getting more players to play type-1, ultimately leading to bigger tournaments, better prizes and of course, more tournaments.

Great article!

[Rapalaman1]

Awesome article!
That anti-fish fish deck seems kinda strange,but may be the thing that swims through the sea of fish decks to the top.

[Jacob Orlove]

Awesome article!
That anti-fish fish deck seems kinda strange,but may be the thing that swims through the sea of fish decks to the top.

WTF actually has more than just a good matchup against Fish going for it. MD oxidize is going to be key in a crucible-heavy environment, and SB Artifact Mutations are gold against anything Workshop. Boa helps against random aggro. And SB Naturalize is insurance against randomness/secret new tech.

[theorigamist]

I haven't had a chance to read through the whole thing yet, but I like what I've read so far.  I just wanted to say that with Fish not running any Merfolk anymore -- and instead using generally blue creatures -- should we start calling it Sea Men?  Or even Gay/r Sea Men.

EDIT:
Now that I've read the thing, I have a comment about this quote from your Belcher matchups:

But you have one big advantage compared to other combo decks. If you resolve a belcher, their Trinisphere won't stop you.

I wish that were true.  Then I might have had a chance in NH for an Emerald.  But since most of your mana doesn't stay on the table, if you play Belcher with two mana on the table and they play 3sphere, you're probably going to lose.  The Workshop deck will buy enough time from that to find a Smokestack and kill your standing mana, or do whatever with Wastelands/Sphere of Resistance/etc. so that you cannot win.  Unless you're holding ESG's when you play your Belcher, you still are probably screwed by 3sphere.

[Squee]

Excellent article.  Your overview of matchups is dead on and should help bring more people towards type 1 when the top deck in the format can easily be made in a 5-Proxy metagame.  

Also the fact that is on the Wizards homepage should give it a large audience of all types of players.

[Moxlotus]

Maybe this can help dispell some of the myth that type 1 is a "Turn 1 kill every game format."  The article was very well written with examples of each of the top decks with tournament placing for each of them.  The article was definitely very good.

[glenchuy]

at last! something interesting to read about t1 on wizards!  mad props to you.  very good read.

although

on FCG
 

Fish: This should be a favorable matchup for you. Fish can't deal with infinite goblins.

i always thought FCG vs fish was a 50/50 matchup?

[Frappie]

Excellant article. Very thoughtful and well spoken. Congrats! Hopefully we will see some newbies at the gencon event because of this. Maybe they will be packing JPMeyer's bane, Sui Black.

[rvs]

Well written Steve, and congrats on getting posted on Wizards. Doesn't SCG see that as a problem (seeing how you're a featured writer and all?). Anyway, I think you overdid it a little on the fish, but overall is was very good.

[TheFram]

Great to see an article like this getting such a public berth. I notice you skirted the issue of proxies entirely. Without 5 proxies, even fish is mad expensive, so it made the argument seem a lot weaker.

Was the non-mention of proxies at WoTC's request ? (I assume it was for either monetary or legal reasons)

Also, while I really like that your trying to expose the format to the public, I definitely felt that the article seemed rushed. You were blazing through alot of information with minimal explanation in a number of places.

Did they impose length restrictions on you, or simply offer no guarantee of being able to write a follow up?

Again, really impresive article.

-Avi

[MarkPharaoh]

Why was this posted on WotC and not SCG?  I'm guessing because more non-T1 players are there and want to start then SCG?

[Methuselahn]

Why was this posted on WotC and not SCG?  I'm guessing because more non-T1 players are there and want to start then SCG?

Working for WotC=Winning the PRIZE!

Nice and basic, perfect for the intended audience.  Good read Steve.

[MaxxMatt]

Hi Steve.
Really a good article. It describes really well what to fear and fight at GENcon.

On the other hand, when you write about the strategies against Fish,  I dislike some of your hints, because they canno't be always applied as can be understood from the reading:

Don't wait to break Standstills. The only correct time to break Standstill is immediately. Fish is a great deck with terrible cards. If you wait to break the Standstill they will make the most of their turns to deal more damage and it will be too late to win later on. It will most likely draw Faerie Conclave, Mishra's Factory, and a Curiosity.

In my experience, I usually break Standstill during their EoT and usually I'll expect 2 or 3 turns until they have a full hand. This move negate the effect of the Standstill at all, while on the other hand you lose only 3 or 4 lifes during this process.

It seemed to me that your suggestion to the unprepared T1 reader is: "Don't Counter Ancestrall AT ALL. It would be better to let them draw3 cards.".

In some case your suggestion is perfectly true, but there are a billion of different situations during which you can work around the resolved Standstill with positive results without breaking it.

Playing with Tsabo's Web is a good idea if you can fit it in your sideboard.

I found that CoWs and Fire/Ices are the perfect fit against a deck that win with denial and critters. Those cards are useful against other different decks so I think that they would remain in my side for a long time

Don't let the fear get you. That's how Fish capitalizes against you...

I tried to apply this way of reasoning to my personal experience against Fish and I realized that the only thing that is always worth of note is that if my initial hand contain only 2 lands I would be in a bad position, while with 4 I can resolve a lot of my key spell, whatever Spiketails or other tricks they have. As soon as I start to lose land drops Fish begin  to win.
CoW and a mix of good removals ( F/I in primis and Rebs & StPs as additional backup  ) are enough to stabilize, expecially because both CoWs and F/Is are two "1forX" answers to their specific treats.


I agree with all your analyzes excluding the one that put Atog's builds in a secondary step towards the other top-tiers.

Add removals ( Fires and Deeds and maybe more Wishes ) to the maindeck, stabilize the mana base ( with at least 2 Islands ) and you would improve your matchups against Fish and Welder.decs, without losing a single 1% of your usual winning rate against all the other decks. I know that you are not with me in this thing, but IMHO it is the only reason why Atog and/or Hulk continue to win our tourneys while on the other hand it started to be considered a sort of Tier2 in America. A well built and played Hulk can easily win in a full field of Fish and 4C-C  just by doing these little modifications.

..Many decks bring in Tormod's Crypts, hating this deck out of the format...

From my tests, I noticed that a build with 3 Duress, 3Stifle/Xantid and 4 FoW maindeck can do really well even against all the hate usually packed by the prepared opponents.
Who had specific graveyard hate nowdays? Reading the last lists proposed, 4C-C and American-Hulk are not prepared at all. Fish had Stifles, Daze, Rods and FoWs but a good and quick combination of DARgon's Stifles and Xantids can work around them. I don't know how is the exact gaming situation in America, but a prepared DARgon player can always win against all the top-tier of the field even nowdays.



I think that a lot among the smart Magic's readers could note the absence of TPS.dec in your analysis and decide to test and play this deck for GENcon to take advantage of a deck against which the field is totally unprepared. IMHO it would be a really good choice for the field you so well describe in your article.





I'll hope to be constructive and I reall appreciate reading articles like yours, because they tend to enlarge the interests of the "common" people for our format
Good Work.


Maxx

[Toad]

..Many decks bring in Tormod's Crypts, hating this deck out of the format...

Who had specific graveyard hate nowdays? Reading the last lists proposed, 4C-C [...] are not prepared at all.

Swords to Plowshares, Disenchants and Wastelands are better than Coffin Purge.

[MaxxMatt]

Swords to Plowshares, Disenchants and Wastelands are better than Coffin Purge.

They are a lot better but sometimes they are not enough to fight the "quantity" of treats that DARgon pack in his deck.
DARgon have Duresses and FoWs for your Drains and FoWs and Bombs.
DARgon have Xantids for your StPs and F/I.
DARgon have Stifles and Bazaars for your Wastelands.
Some good build of smart DARgon's players can pack CotVs to get rid of all the common 1cc and 0cc hate sided agaisnt them and then go to town with nearly unstoppable Verdants.
IMHO against DARgon is preferred to add "quantity" with additional purges  rather than going with "quality" siding less treats.


On the other hand, because I used Purges in a lot of unusual situations with some good results ( Squees, Y.Will, post Duress,  againsts Deeps and Wurms in the grave etc... ) I think that one of them could be alwas added in my side if the field present a lot of Squees/Bazaars' decks.
It is my 3rd FTK until now.

I tested my CoWs against DARgon ( recurring Wastelands ) and it isn't that bad even if sometimes they are terribly slow.


MAxxMAtt

[Whatever Works]

4cc has an amazing matchup against DARgon from my experience. It plays the strongest game vs. dragon game 1 of ANY deck in the format. 4cc only has to achieve a few things to be successful to win easy...

1.) Limit the ammount of time you see Bazaar on the board (i.e. if you can cast demonic its never a bad idea to grab a wasteland/stripmine.)
2.) Just hold on to the several maindeck answers to DARgon that literally say I WIN!!! (Swords/Wish --> for a large # of options/8 Counters)
3.) Balance and Fire/Ice help deal with swarms that can get ennoying

Post board the matchup is very very good for 4cc so i am having trouble seeing the difficult in the matchup... Post board 4cc usually has 7-9 maindeck answers to DARgon not counting counters.

Great Article by the way, and its hard to disagree with anything in the article. Im glad that it got put on such a mainstream sight, and how you focused on making a budget deck appear to be so dominant (not that you did it because it was a budget deck, but because it really is that dominant.) Though Gay/r is going to be hated out of the metagame worse then dragon (post long) ever was after it was declared the best deck for a few months when my Bazaar of Baghdad's jumped $80 each  

[Smmenen]

Thanks for the feedback.  Avi is right that in some places the article was a bit rushed.  I worked very hard on the opening and final fourth of the article and much less time on the deck analysis.

It is very difficult to straddle that line between too much information and too little.  I tried to really minimize jargon and slang, and while I could have said that the decks I was about to mention in the tier listing were going to be explained, I thought that was self-explanatory.  I modeled the article off an a Regionals advice article Kai wrote.  

One thing that really hamstrung me was my inability to link to SCG - but in a way, it made a stronger article.  I think my analysis of the SCG and Gencon Top 8 and the five lessons at the end are among the strongest parts of the article.

Fleshing out deck analysis is something I have done alot of in the past, and if I'd rather someone read a little bit about a deck than skip that section entirely becuase they aren't interested in that deck.  

If I made the article too long, people might not reach the end either.

I did mention proxies - in the context of the fact that Gencon doesn't permit them and how that would skew the metagame.  I didn't argue for proxies becuase I've done that plenty in the past and becuase this was to introduce the format, not argue for proxies.  

Stephen

[VGB]

1) No TPS?

2) Draw7?

You haven't addressed these questions.

[Smmenen]

I did, but not in that article.  Go to SCG and read my article with Phil.

Steve

[brturn]

Smmenen,

Loved the article!  A little too 'meaty' for the average joe on WotC in my opinion, but well worth the read for tournament players.  I hope it generates enough interest to get regular Type 1 coverage over there.

I've been searching on wizards for an article about the 'new artwork' for Black Lotus & Timetwister.  Where can I find a picture of the Black Lotus from last year?

Thanks!
--Bryan

[Philatio]

Smmenen,

Loved the article!  A little too 'meaty' for the average joe on WotC in my opinion, but well worth the read for tournament players.  I hope it generates enough interest to get regular Type 1 coverage over there.

I've been searching on wizards for an article about the 'new artwork' for Black Lotus & Timetwister.  Where can I find a picture of the Black Lotus from last year?

Thanks!
--Bryan

Check out CrazyCarl's Avatar.

[defector]

Good read, has Workshop Slavery simply been hated out?  If so, why am I stillplaying it.  I'll be out of the country for Gen Con, good luck for everyone that goes.
defector

[Thissa2]

VERY nice article. We need the laymen who don't read Starcity to understand that Type 1 is not a mythical format of turn 1 kills and all p9 decks...anymore

[DragonFire]

Very solid article, but i don't like it.

Because a hate deck could never be successfull in any balanced Metagame and so it can'te be the best Deck in the World. The Article is so much about this <°)))>< deck, which ist just overhyped. I think the CoW Decks will make it harder for Fish to survive in a balanced Metagame. And perhaps an TnT Deck will make Top8 at Gen Con when all People who believe in Fish play it there.

Some sentences makes absolutly no sence, Landstill will not beat 4cc or Tog by choosing the control way to victory.

There's so much in the article I could not agree and not only its Metagame dependent direction. The "in-Game-Tipps" are also not the best ones... (breaking a standstill imidieatly..)

[everythingitouchdies]

I was surprised and excited when I saw your name on the wizards site. I loved the article, its a strong introductory piece for anyone starting type 1 right now.

The attention to fish was very appropriate, as it is both a heavily played piece and an easy deck for people to pick up and learn. You spent less time discussing some of the more complex decks, still offering small bits of tech. Solid across the board, I hope to see it successfully open up more attention to type 1.

As for some of the discussion, Dragon is not so hard to win game 1 against 4cc if 1. you know what you are doing with dragon and 2. you know what you are doing with dragon. I win the first game more often than I lose it, its the next two games that get rough.

EITD

[Dozer]

Very solid article, but i don't like it.

Because a hate deck could never be successfull in any balanced Metagame and so it can'te be the best Deck in the World. The Article is so much about this <°)))>< deck, which ist just overhyped. I think the CoW Decks will make it harder for Fish to survive in a balanced Metagame. And perhaps an TnT Deck will make Top8 at Gen Con when all People who believe in Fish play it there.

Some sentences makes absolutly no sence, Landstill will not beat 4cc or Tog by choosing the control way to victory.

There's so much in the article I could not agree and not only its Metagame dependent direction. The "in-Game-Tipps" are also not the best ones... (breaking a standstill imidieatly..)

Hoh, hold your horses! I agree with you in that the article focuses too much on Fish, but we all know Smmenen's preference for the deck. But you should be aware that Fish is not a hate deck, unless you call it a hate deck for the whole format. It is a different strategy that has a lot of tools to beat the current metagame, but it is not built as a hate deck against anything specific. It's quite the opposite: Fish has been built as a deck for maximum use of tempo-denial. Any resulting hate is only a byproduct of an optimal use of a certain strategy.
Crucible will certainly make it harder for Fish, but survive it will for sure. I am not a fan of the ><(((°> deck either, but I think that is a force to reckon with and a deck that cannot be ignored (anymore). I still don't believe it is the Über-deck, and I know it can be beaten. It should nevertheless not be easily dismissed.

Landstill beating Tog and 4cC if it assumes the control role is not so far off. More often than not it will not be able to take this role, if aggro-control is played correctly, but if it has it (for example by resolving a Disk with Standstill backup), beating Landstill is difficult for aggro control decks.

As for the breaking of Standstill, I totally agree with Steve that you should break it as fast as possible. I regularly do it with an EOT-Brainstorm the turn after the Standstill came into play. Also, remember that the article was written for T1-beginners, who are most likely not yet able to distinguish the fine differences when to break Standstill immediately or when to wait a turn. There are exceptions to every rule, but as general advise, breaking it right now is correct.


I liked the article, although I think Landstill and GAT might have deserved a little more space when compared to the epic on Fish.

Dozer

[dandan]

An excellent article and another step in the right direction by Wizards to put it out. I am fairly sure that some people will disagree with anything you write regarding matchups and playing but the article presents Type I as a varied format where shuffling the Restricted List is not the way to win.

[StarOrc]

First off Smmenen congrats on the article and nice job....

I don't really mean to change subject but either I'm missing something big or there are some REALLY crazy europeans out there...

"There is also a rumor that the Europeans might bring a Shared Fate deck. "

Does anybody have any idea if this is even competetive or what it looks like? Or is this only a rumor or worse a joke?

Corey