[Discussion] Big Events: Changing the Way You Play Magic?

[Nightwind]

Toad from themanadrain.com boards gives a grand discussion about this variant of Control Slaver/Goth Slaver/Meandeck Titan and many other variants of Welder decks.

One thing that I see a lot more now than anything in the past year of Magic the Gathering and the Type 1 scene that I have been re-introduced to is this: The increased amount of blue cards in each Type 1 deck archetype. Meandeck Oath is basically mono-blue with Oath kill. I am not trying to water down the deck by any means, instead I am trying to pick the pieces that it is made of apart... By doing so I want to find out why and how it worked and hopefully use those methods to increase my own win percentage.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8339

// "Cruci Slaver"
// Mana Sources -- 25
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Flooded Strand
1 Strip Mine
2 Darksteel Citadel
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
5 Island

// Expensive Artifacts -- 4
2 Mindslaver
1 Pentavus
1 Platinum Angel

// Recursion -- 5
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Goblin Welder

// Draw -- 19
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Thirst for Knowledge

// Protection -- 8
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain

The continued use of blue control along-side great kill methods is causing me to re-think the way I am building my decks as well. I took a moment to look back at the last 2 Vintage World Championship Decklists:

Control Slaver
2004 Vintage World Champion Decklist
 
4 Goblin Welder

4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
2 Mindslaver
1 Pentavus
1 Sundering Titan
1 Platinum Angel

1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl

4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
4 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Darksteel Citadel
4 Island

Sideboard
3 Old Man of the Sea
3 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Flametongue Kavu
2 Mogg Salvage
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Duress

The strengths of this deck were it's inherent ability to play off it's opponent while including the basic counter magic followed up with great draw power. The meta-game for GenCon 2004 was heavy with Fish and Workshop variants. It was very apparent that Vintage magic players wanted to play off the game-breaking Goblin Welder + Mishra's Workshop power. This deck said "Yeah, that's cute. Now I'd like to introduce you to my main man 'Old Man of the Sea'."

Hulk Smash
2003 Vintage World Champion Decklist

3 Psychatog
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Duress
1 Mind Twist
1 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
2 Deep Analysis
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
4 Mana Drain
1 Time Walk
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island

Sideboard
1 Artifact Mutation
1 Berserk
1 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Deep Analysis
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Naturalize
1 Psychatog
1 Rack and Ruin
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Snuff Out
1 Starstorm
1 Vampiric Tutor

The strengths in this deck are the draw power coupled with the cunning wish versatility. With the cunning wish(es) it has more answers than any other Main Deck Archetype currently being used.

A new consideration that needs to be taken when you come back to today however, is it's disruption: 8x Counters and 3x Disruption. Currently we see decks that include 12 counterspells + other disruption and that is a lot to overcome even for this build. While it looks great on paper (Hulk Smash), it appears that the meta-game and Decks in general are "beginning" to plug slots with 4x FoW, 4x Mana Drain, 4x Mana Leak, and then varying amounts of Misdirection, Stifle, Chalice of the Void(s), etc...

Sure it seems like I am only speaking of Mono-Blue at this point, but look at Meandeck Oath: 14 Main Deck counterspells. I don't like to base my deck-building on trends in general, but the fact that 4 of the top 8 decks at the SCG Richmond tournament were packing 14 counters main is enlightening to say the least. It paints a picture that begins to blend my old school Type 1 roots into today's meta-game.

When I first began playing Magic the main winners were either Mono-Blue Control or Heavy Blue 2-color decks. I speak of a time when 4x Counterspell, 4x Control Magic, Vesuvan Dopplegangers and Clones ran rampant in our area and they won because they were able to either say "no" or say "ok that's a cool creature, I want it or one myself as well..."

Now start looking a little at other decks that have been taking the Large Tournaments over the past couple years. The Vintage World Champions for the past 2 years have one thing in common, they eached included 4 Force of Will(s), 4 Mana Drain(s) in their builds. Then each included a great amount of draw power into their decks: 4x AK for 2003, and 4x TFK in 2004. Does this mean that a winning deck needs to include these cards?

After looking at these previous decks and considering the current trends. If I was building Control Slaver myself I would probably re-think the builds that have been used already. Especially upon noting what happened in Richmond, VA. Let's try to map the deck out:

Counter Spells:
4x Force of Will
4x Mana Drain
4x Mana Leak
2x Misdirection/Stifle

Slaver Components:
4x Goblin Welder
2x Mindslaver
1x Pentavus
1x Platinum Angel

Draw:
4x Thirst for Knowledge
4x Brainstorm

Restricted:
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Tinker
1x Mystical Tutor

Total: 34 Spells

Mana:
5x Mox
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Black Lotus
4x Volcanic Island
4x Fetch
5x Island
2x Darksteel Citadel (Indestructible Welder Component)

Total: 23 Mana Sources

Total: 57 Cards, with 3 slots left.

I then started thinking about the decks themselves and noticed that this past year's Vintage Champion played a lot on the fact that there would be definitely be other Welder decks at the top. Instead of trying to out-do the other decks in the meta he decided to use their strengths against them. He concentrated on his Slaver-control and then post sideboard enlisted the Grand Old Man of the Sea's assistance in board control. Not only did this help him against other Welder decks, but it also assisted him in controlling the Fish match-up (which happened to be another deck that was reaking havoc around the world at the time).

Mark Biller's meta-gaming may not have been meant as a lesson in Magic the Gathering for those watching the Vintage Championship at GenCon this past August, but it did give me reason to change how I build decks today. Instead of packing every restricted card into a deck and hoping that the God Hands would come up enough for me to win a Game, I now start with a base card pool. The base card pool are those required for a deck to run. After that I begin thinking about what others in the area are playing and I begin to find ways to capitalize on the decks of others.

When looking at the above build for Control Slaver you find what works and then are left with 3 slots that can be used for Main Deck meta-game tech. After GenCon this year I've had to admit something to myself: I no longer think about each individual game anymore, instead I think about the Match.

When I start thinking about the Match instead of each game I am able to understand why it is so important to learn what the meta-game is going to be for an area. Those 3 slots that are left open for meta-game tech in my opinion are going to be the difference between winning the Match and continuing on and losing the Match and dropping out.

Before you dismiss me as an idiot think for a moment. If you can win the first game hands down what has happened to the match? You now need to just get a decent draw and win 1 of the 2 remaining games. Correct? You've just finished seeing what your opponent is playing and so you should be able to beat them based on what you know about their deck at this point. You've built your deck and Sideboard with ways to deal with every deck. If you haven't then you didn't really want to win the tournament anyhow right? Why lose the first game and then hope that for the next 2 games you get a fair draw and your opponent doesn't get a God Hand?

So if you can increase your chances of winning by including Main Deck answers to either a: decks that you have a hard time beating or b: decks that will be over-abundant in this meta-game, then you should be able to win more Matches and then more Tournaments.

How has Vintage been treating you? Have you changed the way you build your decks based on the techniques you notice other players using? Are the well covered large-scale events changing the way you play Magic?

[An_American_Heart]

For me personally, the well covered events (gen and scg1 and 2, waterbury, hadley) show me what decks are threats.  I love moreso how everyone writes reports.  Most people play decks just like that report.  For instance, one of the milwaukee kids is running "Cerebral assassin" JUST like eastman's report.  It makes it easier ot prepair.  at the same time, i am always trying to find random things that people wouldn't expect to break certain decks.

the only time the 'big coverage' events really effect me is, for instance, right now, when Team Dark Horse is prepairing to tear Team charlie-in-a-box a new a-hole in chicago.

[andrewpate]

Well-covered large scale events have certainly changed things for me.  When I was first trying to get into Type 1, I could only design souped-up versions of decks I knew well.

I knew that Moxes and other power cards could make decks like U/G Madness or Tog a lot stronger, and I could build what were, to me, powerful Suicide Black or MonoU decks based on what I knew about Napster and Draw Go.  But Type 1-only decks such as Neo-Academy and the mysterious "Keeper" were always baffling to me.  At this time last year, I had no idea how a Storm deck really worked:  I could netdeck Long and do disgusting things with it, but I couldn't tune it at all, and I sure as anything couldn't have come up with a coherent list if you had said to me, "Look, Will+LED+Burning Wish=broken.  Build a deck."

Being able to read coverage has allowed me to learn how to create my own decks from what I'm able to figure out, just like I do in Standard.  I attended my first major Vintage tournament at SCG in Virginia last weekend with a completely self-styled Orchard Oath build that I was able to go 2-2 with, which I would say is pretty good given my inexperience.

So speaking as a relative newcomer to the format, I would have to say that I have definitely changed my deckbuilding ways and gameplay based on my studies of high profile events.

[JACO]

Now start looking a little at other decks that have been taking the Large Tournaments over the past couple years. The Vintage World Champions for the past 2 years have one thing in common, they eached included 4 Force of Will(s), 4 Mana Drain(s) in their builds. Then each included a great amount of draw power into their decks: 4x AK for 2003, and 4x TFK in 2004. Does this mean that a winning deck needs to include these cards?

Winning decks don't need to include any of those cards. But generally speaking, if you can draw more cards than your opponent, and can 'say no' to a few key spells, you will have done enough to swing the tempo of the game in your favor.

As Azhrei often used to say (I'm paraphrasing), "the best way to construct a deck is to make it so you get can get to a game state as quickly as possible where it doesn't matter what your opponent is doing." Decks like the new MeanDeck Oath and ShortBus Doomsday just use a wall of counters to force through what they want to do, and tend to ignore the opponent as much as possible. While that might not be fun for most of you old school players, the reality of the situation is that strong tournament decks tend to have a narrow focus, and try to execute their plan as quickly as possible.

[Smmenen]

The original poster raises a number of disparate and important questions.

The number of counterspells in our Oath list flucutated.  At one point we had test builds with just 4 Misdirectios, 4 Drains, and 4 FOW.  The reaon we went with Mana Leak is almost entirely tempo oriented, not control oriented.

As for control design, all control decks will start like this:

4 +Islands
4-5 Fetchlands
4-6 Dual Lands
X other lands

[majestyk1136]

One issue that always boggles my mind is the fact that blue-based control players tend to get out-controlled and trumped (typically) as Chalice=>2 or Sph3re make countermagic sort of, well, bad.  Winning decks don't necessarily have to contain those cards.  It goes back to the 5-way pentagram that Smmennen proposed in his SCG article earlier this year, where when one archetype becomes too dominant the natural reaction is for the "rock, paper, scissors" deck that happens to beat the current popular deck to come to prominence.

Workshop decks got you down with mana denial strategies?  Switch to an aggro combo deck that doesn't really require mana to generate a fatal threat that it can then protect with it's tempo based Countermagic and ride to the finish line.  The next iteration will no doubt be a more coloriffic toolbox-style deck, i.e. "The Deck" and its brethren (4cC and others) that can deal with the limited quantity of threats that a deck like Oath presents.

Upon seeing the SCG P9II results I immediately modified my Sideboard and maindeck to accomodate the Oath matchups that I expect to run into in the next 2 months.  Then, when Betrayers of Kamigawa comes out no doubt this whole thing will start over again.

[timmy]

I would have to agree with you.  Having 3 - 4 maindeck slots devoted to whatever the metagame is, is a great idea.  I have always done this with u/g madness, switching null rod to naturalize, to oxidize, to other things.  It has really helped the deck.  We also saw this at SCG virginia, the 2nd place workshop deck had maindeck seal of cleansing.  This was pretty unexpected and probably helped him to win a couple matches that he might have had a problem with otherwise.

[Nightwind]

One issue that always boggles my mind is the fact that blue-based control players tend to get out-controlled and trumped (typically) as Chalice=>2 or Sph3re make countermagic sort of, well, bad.  Winning decks don't necessarily have to contain those cards.  It goes back to the 5-way pentagram that Smmennen proposed in his SCG article earlier this year, where when one archetype becomes too dominant the natural reaction is for the "rock, paper, scissors" deck that happens to beat the current popular deck to come to prominence.

Workshop decks got you down with mana denial strategies?  Switch to an aggro combo deck that doesn't really require mana to generate a fatal threat that it can then protect with it's tempo based Countermagic and ride to the finish line.  The next iteration will no doubt be a more coloriffic toolbox-style deck, i.e. "The Deck" and its brethren (4cC and others) that can deal with the limited quantity of threats that a deck like Oath presents.

Upon seeing the SCG P9II results I immediately modified my Sideboard and maindeck to accomodate the Oath matchups that I expect to run into in the next 2 months.  Then, when Betrayers of Kamigawa comes out no doubt this whole thing will start over again.

I especially agree with the highlighted portion of your reply. That is the likely transition that will happen up until the point that Oath is either hated out of the environment (that you currently play in), or another deck is able to take advantage of the changing meta-game to either stage a come-back or even a new arrival.

How has Vintage been treating you? Have you changed the way you build your decks based on the techniques you notice other players using? Are the well covered large-scale events changing the way you play Magic?

What I tried to do for this discussion was set up a situation that I personally had gone through that changed my deck-building process entirely. By looking back upon dominant decks I was able to find a good procession of techniques used to build those decks. It probably wasn't the intent of the person who built the deck, but it was what I got out of it. A good portion of that comes from the Event Coverage as well.

The important aspects of the game that I have learned since returning from my 4 1/2 year stint in the Marine Corps are as follows:

1. The meta-game matters.
2. Every card counts in the deck-building process.
3. If you research and pay attention to what others are playing in your area (the meta-game) then you should be able to come up with a strong deck to begin with.
4. The sideboard is not about hosing a particular deck archetype, instead it is about strengthening that already strong deck under certain circumstances as set by your current opponent.

This is what I have learned, I guess I was wondering what the rest of you were learning. It's natural to have a progression of decks from time to time. I've heard more than once that aggro is supposed to beat control, control is supposed to beat combo, and combo is supposed to beat aggro. For me I'd like to take what I've learned and build my decks to fair well against them all.

[Komatteru]

2. Every card counts in the deck-building process.

4. The sideboard is not about hosing a particular deck archetype, instead it is about strengthening that already strong deck under certain circumstances as set by your current opponent.

I think these are the two of the biggest things that set Vintage apart from the other formats.  I was playing T2 Ironworks and only had included only one copy of Thoughtcast, for which I drew cricitism from some players.  Someone said "I don't see the value in having just 1 of a card."  I also made comments about my list like "4 was too many of X, but 3 is just right," and that was something that the T2 players didn't fully understand.  This is something I learned from Vintage.  Quantities have to be exact in Vintage decks because there are so many cards you could include.  We often have to choose between two cards that accomplish the same end, but do it slightly differently, and one is better in one situation while the other is better in different situations.  This doesn't happen in other formats.  I think Ric_Flair posted something a while ago about there being 55 playable cards in Mirrodin block.  You don't see a lot of redundancy in 55 cards.  Everything does pretty much something different and you can't swap one for the other, generally.  In Vintage, we have so many choices that everything has to be exact.  Duress is, for all purposes, a counterspell, but it works completely different from, say, Misdirection (another "mostly" counterspell).  Are both good?  Yes.  Are there situations where Misdirection is better?  Yes.  Are there situations where Duress is better?  Yes.  So how many copies of each do we include?  Do we include both?  Do we only run one and not the other?  These choices aren't available in other formats.  The phrase "good enough" does not apply in Vintage.  We go by the phrase "strictly better."  When you build a deck, you don't say "well, this is good enough, so it's in."  You have to say "this is strictly better than all the other choices I could make, so it's in."  With so many powerful cards available, we have to be sure that we choose the correct ones, especially since there are about 60 cards which have been deemed so powerful that they need to be limited to one a deck.  Vintage is the only format that uses a restricted list.  Unbalancing cards have been removed from the other formats, simplifying deck building: if I need to have 4 Entomb, and I can't play Entomb at all, I need to find a different strategy.  A card we dedicate 4 spots to better be essential to the deck, otherwise we might be better served by including 3 and Vampiric Tutor (or whatever) to give more flexibility.

As for sideboards, Vintage sideboards are unlike anything else in Magic.  Current T2 sideboards are full of hate cards--lots of them (like 8-12).  Hate cards are not really part of Vintage sideboarding.  When you build a sideboard, you don't sit there and say "Let's see, I need Rack and Ruin against Stax, Pyrostatic Pillar against combo, Swords to Plowshares against aggro..."  That's building a one-dimensional sideboard.  Your focus has become "cards that beat other decks."  You should be looking for cards that fill in the holes in your deck in certain matchups.  "My deck is weak on artifact removal, and there are many powerful artifacts that could make my life difficult, so I need a few of those in my board to cover that hole" is what you should be saying.  Or "I have trouble in this matchup because Goblin Welders bring back anything I counter."  The other thing we never do is oversideboard.  It's rare to find a Vintage player who regularly sides 6-8 cards in for game 2.  If you're sideboarding a lot of cards all the time, then your deck probably doesn't have the right cards in it in the first place.  Usually, the number is like 1-4 (depending on many factors, but this is a decent average).  Our sideboards are also very diverse.  Standard and Extended boards pack like 3-4 copies each of 4 cards, that that's it.  Vintage sideboards typically have different 7-12 cards in them, and something has to be pretty amazing and useful in a lot of matchups to include even 3 copies in the board.  As I said, we don't really run hate cards in our sideboards.  We run cards that will give us an edge and additional flexibility in certain matchups.  Barring the occasional transformational sideboard, we don't change our strategy very much in game 2.  In T2, game 2 often becomes "kill Ravager, then worry about my plan of action.  If I can kill Ravager, I win"  That doesn't happen in Vintage.  It would be more like "try to deal with the Ravager, but march forward with the original plan.  I can win in spite of a Ravager, but if I can deal with it, I will have a much easier time winning."

[jpmeyer]

This might be starting to get a little off-topic, but on old TMD, I proposed the idea that in Type 1, because of the fact that decks start with these more or less unchangable "cores" (both generic ones like Power, Brainstorm, etc. as well as archetype specific ones like 4 Force, 4 Drain or 4 Workshop, 4 Welder) as well as the occasional Wish sideboard that it's forced Type 1 sideboards into getting the most out of each card since you only have a few slots in the first place where you can swap out.  This is also really easy to see in Cunning Wish sideboards, where you'll see someone with like four different artifact removal spells where they could almost certainly get away with just like 1 or 2 (if they're purely to Wish for) OR running say only one and then running a more powerful card like Energy Flux (if they're their to be sided in.)