Vintage Learning Curve

[Ephraim]

As a player relatively new to Vintage, I'm surveying the many possibilities before me and I find them rather daunting. The makeup of a Type 1 deck is unlike that of a deck in any other format. Nowhere else will a player have such resources available so early in the game. Nowhwere else will a player be forced to make so many critical decisions. Although I consider myself an aware and skilled Magic player, I do not feel that I am well-equipped to pilot  a Vintage Magic deck in a competetive environment. Suppose then, that my budget was not a concern at all. Which decks allow the player to learn the most about the way Vintage works? Which decks allow an intermediate player the best opportunity to experiment with design and innovation?

Then, given an appropriate deck, how does a novice player go about developing experience? Ideally, I recognize that a player would have an infinite budget and no time constraints. Every tournament would be open to that player. In reality, the money invested in a deck may be small compared with the expenses associated with travel and accomadations to attend tournaments of any size. It is [hopefully] understandable then that a novice player can not afford to attend a tournament unprepared. Discussion on TMD is a fine way to develop theoretical knowledge, but it has limitations and requires a certain degree of beginning expertise, which a new player may not have, before productive discussion can be had. How can such a player gain expertise in judging the composition of a field, in preparing unconventional maindeck and sideboard cards to handle that field, and in assessing game situations while sideboarding? In my eyes, such skills are fundamental to Type 1 beyond their import in other formats, where the field is often pre-defined and the available technology is well-documented. In short, what is the solution to the paradox that an inexperienced player lacks the minimum [intellectual] resources to approach a competetive tournament, but that an inexperienced player can only develop those resources through experience. It would be a disappointment if the only solution was that a novice must simply enter the tournaments and suck up losses until he or she gets better.

[Apollyon]

Learning how to Paris properly is an essential skill. Especially for decks that are low-redundancy, such as combo decks. The trick is to determine how much better it can get vs how much worse it can get. If you find yourself saying "This hand is good, but _________ would be really nice", it is an indication that you might want to Paris that hand.

Another key to Parising is getting silver bullets. Certain cards are extremely powerful vs certain decks. At which point, you can Paris more aggessively until either your  hand is good enough without the silver bullet or you have that silver bullet with a good extra hand. Don't forget that just because a card is powerful doesn't mean that it can't be dealt with.

I've seen many games where someone has gone turn 1 Workshop, 3Sphere, only to get Wasted, and ending up with little to no mana. Or they keep land-heavy hands with a turn 1 3Sphere, but find themselves start losing because of a lack of threats.

For sideboarding, you have to consider key cards in the matchup, and know what makes decks tick.

For example: Control Slaver is a deck based around a few combos and some broken stuff:
Welder/Thirst for Knowledge
Welder/Pentavus
Welder/Mindslaver
Will, Demonic, Tinker, random not so broken.

The key card in that is Welder. Meaning that when you board against Control Slaver, for example, Juntu Stakes would be a good card, whereas something like Blood Moon would be a worse card, as Control Slaver packs 5 Islands and Blood Moons MD as well. Note: I'm not advocating the use of Juntu Stakes against CS, but it is a potential card, plus unlike burn, CS can't turn your own burn against you when you get Mindslavered.

Another key is playtesting. Lack of playing kills. It's great to have all of this theoretical knowledge, but there is no substitute for first-hand experience. Find a good player (so no playing randoms on MWS), proxy decks or whatnot, and play many games. Find out what is good, and what is bad. This is also a key for learning how to sideboard as well, finding what is good MD in certain matchups, and finding what turns out to be weak in matchups.

[Azhrei]

Play out dummy hands to see how fast you can get a lock/win/defense thousands of times. I did about 50 goldfish hands a day with Reap, and after 3 weeks of that I still found a new way to win faster.

Read everything you possibly can about Magic theory. Develop a philosophy regarding the game. Here's mine, for example:

"Magic is about the successful use of resources and the denial of those same resources to the opponent. A playable deck will either prevent the opponent from playing his game, or will win before the opponent's strategy becomes a factor. The faster you can remove the opponent from relevancy, the better."

If your philosophy is a good one, make every deck you build conform to it. In my opinion, if a deck doesn't fit with my philosophy, it's not worth playing. When I was active, I used this philosophy to name what I felt were the three best decks in Vintage at the time: Hulk, Mask, and Stax-- the top 3 at GenCon in 2003 were Hulk, Mask, and Stax, in that order. I don't play enough any more to be on top of things like that, but the philosophy is sound and I believe that using it will save you many steps of learning.

[wuaffiliate]

You also must know how to play every deck, this is an extremely useful tool to know what your opponent will do next. It's all about knowing how to play what you are playing against just as much as what you are currently playing.

[WildWillieWonderboy]

The first ever vintage tournament I played in was an infinite proxy tourney for a mox, and I tested for two months before entering. These two months were my introduction to Type 1 and mostly I just opened two apprentice windows and squared two decks off with one another. From this I came to the conclusion that tog and $+4X was the best choice, as it had the most new toys that answers hadn't really been found for and the other dominant deck was tog, which I just wasn't as good with. My first match was with the great Kevin Noel Cron, one of the many personifications of Meandeck savagery present for the event, and it was a mirror match. Looking back on the match, what I most remember is that I could have won had I been smarter and gotten immediate win condition instead of Slaver recursion (it was February and the deck still played that maindeck) given that the board had just been nuked and a hill giant would have closed the game fine. As it turned out, the record for that game was 1-1-1 and I went on to smash sufficient face to top eight, then get beaten by one of the first instances of Belcher.dec, built by Travis, piloted by Simester and orgasmed over by Steve Menendian, because I left out Trinisphere as a metagame choice, as I was only expecting Tog and Stax (what can I say, I only played standard before this).

So, to summarize all of that tangential retroactive tournament reporting, the learning curve in type 1 is a wonderful thing, and the best thing to do is just pick up the decks and test against yourself in your spare time and against others fairly regularly. I am lucky in that nearly every week, I can test with Bushman, Dickinson and Menendian and every other month or so I get to play against the players who find their way to our humble less than thirty people mox tourneys with the infinite proxies. Just as a reminder, I remember a fairly large tourney being won by a Vintage n00b (term of endearment) and it just goes to show that hard work pays off in vintage like no other format.

[g0tenks00]

As was already pointed out, it is really important both to have a group of people you can playtest with, to playtest against every deck in the meta game (playing with it and against it), and to have a general idea of what the metagame is like when you're going to a tournament. This brings us to the sideboard. Sideboarding is often very flexible in type 1, and while there are usually some "metagame sideboard cards" for each deck, it is easy, given the huge cardpool, to create your own tech for a certain metagame that you are expecting. The use of Lava Dart in the CS sideboard recently at Waterbury is one example. You should always be aware of unused or forgotten cards that are potentially good sideboard choices.

[Ephraim]

I wish to redirect the answers I've been getting a little. The responses are informative, but they aren't quite what I was looking for.

Wu suggested that a novice player learn how to play every deck, but one of the questions I asked was which decks are best for learning the way Vintage plays. I am well aware that eventually, knowledge of every deck will be critical. In what order should decks be tackled to maximize the effectiveness of studying them?

Gotenks also suggested that it's is really important to a general idea of what the metagame is like and to have playtested against every deck in that metagame. This is a fine suggestion. However, recall that one of the questions I asked was

How can such a player gain expertise in judging the composition of a field, in preparing unconventional maindeck and sideboard cards to handle that field, and in assessing game situations while sideboarding?"

Certainly, I acknowledge the imprtance of understanding the metagame. However, one of my chief concerns is learning how to determine the makeup of the metagame. It's fairly easy in a local tournament. A few discussions with the other players can sometimes reveal valuable information about the decks they're playing. If a tournament is being held in Waterbury, Connecticut, that's a luxury I haven't got. What tools are most effective for determining the metagame in a situation like that?

Azhrei, your comments were helpful. As a typically casual player, I balk at advice like,

Azhrei wrote:
"Magic is about the successful use of resources and the denial of those same resources to the opponent. A playablel deck will either prevent the opponent from playing his game, or will win before the opponent's strategy becomes a factor. The faster you can remove the opponent from relevancy, the better."

However, if I am honest with myself, I must recognize that, having payed to play in this tournament, ruthless pursuit of the prize (within the boundaries of fair play) is appropriate and expected. It doesn't really address any of the specific questions I asked, but it's a good mentality to keep in mind when making all the decisions associated with competetive play.

[WildWillieWonderboy]

Generally, my metagame predictions involve what alot of the online discussion has been centered on, and what beats those decks. You can also generally expect, in the case of tourneys where you actually have to own the cards, to see outdated, non-viable aggro and the erstwhile popular decks.

[Covetous]

If you want to learn to play type 1, search this site for some of the "decks to beat" (I think SCG also has some lists of that type as well) and build or proxy them up (i.e. use fake cards if you need to), then play with them.  You can "goldfish" = play without an opponent and go dof festest kill, or you can play vs. yourself or hopefully another experienced player.  Goldfishing is more useful for combo and aggro decks, because playing control decks by definition depends what the opponent does.  What Wu was saying is that the best way to learn how to beat a deck is to learn how to play it.  For example, learn what causes you to lose when you play that deck and then try to cause that condition when you play against the deck.  A few specific decks to try to learn how to play are 4-color control (aka Keeper), mono-blue control, control slaver, workshop aggro (i.e. TnT, stacker, the man show, 5/3), workshop prison (stacks/weldermud), Fish, food chain goblins, masknaught and psychatog variants (GAT and Hulk are fairly different so try both).  These are some of the more/most common decks that you will face at a real tourney (about 9 or 10 total types of decks).  Building all of these decks may seem like a daunting task, but competitive type 1 has a lot of good decks (unlike other formats which usually have only a handful of playable decks).  There are also specific skills to learn, such as how to Brainstorm (I personally suck at this--it forces you to plan up to 3 turns ahead), how to Force of Will (what to pitch and what to counter), and what to tutor for in a specific situation (most decks run tutors and knowing what you need when you need it is important).  

Resource theory is very useful if you already understand how to play specific decks, but I think it is more advanced than you are looking for (maybe I'm wrong).  However, it is a great way to understand why decks win--how do they gain resource advantage over an opponent?  Many decks and cards are or are not good because they do or do not gain resource advantage over the opponent.  However, in the beginning, just trust what experienced people say.  You don't need to understand why certain cards are good--just that they are good, and what decks they are good in.  You don't need to understand why brainstorm is good--just that it is, but only in some decks.  Knowing which decks can benefit from Brainstorm is more important than knowing why these decks benefit from Brainstorm.

[Jacob Orlove]

I don't think it's too important to know how to play every deck immediately, but do look at all the decks in the format and figure out just what you need to worry about. Against mono-U, clearly counters and B2B can be problem cards, but what happens if they play chalice at zero? at one? Figuring out what cards you have to worry about--in the maindeck AND in the sideboard--is key to preparing for that matchup.

[Azhrei]

I
Azhrei, your comments were helpful. As a typically casual player, I balk at advice like,

Azhrei wrote:
"Magic is about the successful use of resources and the denial of those same resources to the opponent. A playablel deck will either prevent the opponent from playing his game, or will win before the opponent's strategy becomes a factor. The faster you can remove the opponent from relevancy, the better."

However, if I am honest with myself, I must recognize that, having payed to play in this tournament, ruthless pursuit of the prize (within the boundaries of fair play) is appropriate and expected. It doesn't really address any of the specific questions I asked, but it's a good mentality to keep in mind when making all the decisions associated with competetive play.

Glad I was useful. And you're exactly right-- casual play is no place for that mindset. Tournaments are inherently competitive, and you need to be ready, willing, and able to spoil someone else's day if you're going to drop $30 on an entry fee.

Being honest about that and accepting it is one of the biggest hurdles that players need to overcome to be consistently successful.

[Anusien]

I find myself in a sort of similar situation.  I don't know.  I'd say I have a decent grasp on the T1 metagame and how to play most of the decks (I'm up to 30 or so goldfishes on MeanDeath, and counting).  The first step would be Starcitygames.com.  Read every single thing on their site, especially about Vintage.  Take their decks to beat archive and proxy a few of them up and play them.  Take a deck and play online or in a group as much as possible.  If you want a deck to learn how T1 plays, I'd probably suggest U/R Fish.  It's tempo based so if you're more familiar with Standard, you might find it an easier transition into T1 then say, a Workshop based deck.  It's also fairly basic control.

Good luck!

[dandan]

I think a lot of the answers are about skilled Type I players getting better. However if someone is new to Type I they are unlikely to be aware of how fast an aggro deck can kill you, how quickly combo can go off and how easily control can find solutions. IMHO playing Gr Stompy against TPS against 4CC would be a reasonable into (and show you the chance of winning with pure aggro). After that try aggro-control in Tog and Stax.

Although you won't have seen stuff like Mindslaver in action, you will be aware of how bad things can happen to people who let stuff like that be cast or have an Active Welder against you.

Once you have played a reasonable number of games so you see the pace of Type I, you will need to concentrate on the current 'top' decks. IMHO it is pointless to try to understand the current top decks until you are familiar with the principles these decks follow (and try to break!). Top players will know just about all of the options an opponent has as soon as they identify their deck. The best players will be able to correctly identify which of those plays is key and take the necessary action (stuff like mulligans into FoW).

Finally, as Azhrei stated, most successful decks aim to make the opponent irrelevant so knowing your own deck in vitally important. Good players will usually do better with a tier 1.5 deck they know than a tier 1 deck they don't. Type 1 offers a player a large number of choices, familiarity with a deck means that you will know from experience what to do, meaning you will make the correct decision automatically 90% of the time. The last 10% is harder work.

P.S. Don't hassle me about Gr Stompy

[WildWillieWonderboy]

It would be a disappointment if the only solution was that a novice must simply enter the tournaments and suck up losses until he or she gets better.

It seems to me that you really just need to play competitive magic. The most beneficial way to do this is to draft, as it gets you more cards and teaches you the fundamentals of Magic, including the correct mindset.