[Discussion] Isn't it obvious?

[Hi-Val]

Truth be told, I pulled the 50/50 outta my ass as an illustration of Slaver's lack of really bad matchups. It has a few poor matches and a few good ones, but it's like Keeper in that Mindslaver, Pent and Plat can answer pretty much anything the format can throw at it.

[forests failed you]

I agree it is a very strong deck, and is particularly consistant.  However, the point of this entire thread was that Control Slavery breaks to format, and that something, *restrictions, must be done in order to correct the format.  50/50% against the field hardly seems to break the format in my mind.  And thus, hardly warrants restrictions.  My entire point was that the deck is balanced within the current metagame, and that, in fact there are other options with even better odds to choose from.

Honestly, when I sit down to play game one of a round in a Vintage event when my opponent cracks a Polluted Delta for a Volcanic Island on turn one and casts Welder, I'm not happy about it.  However, I am a little bit thankful it wasn't an Underground Sea for a Dark Ritual.

[Jacob Orlove]

His point was not that slaver goes 50-50 against the field. He said that, except for a few decks that are never in the winning brackets (eg RG beats), slaver never has worse that about 50-50 against anything. Against a lot of decks, it does much, much better.

[forests failed you]

I understand what his point was.  However, I was challanging the validity of the statement that Slavery goes 50-50% against all of the winning decks in the field once they have properly metagamed for the existence of Slaver.  Our metagame in Michigan had been infested by really good players, playing Slaver for some time now; and accordingly it has adapted to deal with it.  Its very difficult to win here playing Slavery, even for extremely competent and talented Slaver players.  There is no doubt in my mind this will be the case at the next major event, after seeing the results from Waterbury.

[Nehptis]

Honestly, if I have learned anything over the past two weeks it is that Tendrils is the deck (props to onelovemachine for new tech on the TPS build), partly because it WRECKS Control Slavery if built correctly.

@forcefieldyou: Care to expand upon this?  As a long time TOA combo player I'd like to believe that I've explored every viable MD and SB option to battling the Tier 1 decks including CS.  But, I'm always open to new ideas.

[ELD]

I predicted that if Control Slaver rose to power, it would be brought down by cheap beatdown decks. Well, why hasn't this happened?

Lava dart and Flametounge Kavu.  They beat the snot out of most budget decks.  Fish and Goblins hate lava dart's ability to destroy their early game.  Madness/Sui/EBA can't handle the wrecking ballage of the FTK.  RG beats would require a differant sideboard to "hose."  I don't feel it actually needs to get hosed though.  

One thing with slaver is it has the ablility to sideboard very well.  Give me a list and I can nearly gaurentee that I'll hose it w/o the use of White or Green mana.

[onelovemachine]

Don't we, as the type one community, generally get truly busted decks restricted by virtue of their near perfection and ability to own the rest of the decks in the format?  The two decks always talked about as format breakers: 4gush gat and long.dec were so unbelievably powerful that the format absolutely could not deal at the time.  It's not that those decks didn't drop games now and again, but they consistently did well to the point where no given matchup was bad.  

Now this sounds like an argument for killing off slavery; in truth, if you look at things closely and the abundance of decks out there, it is just the opposite.  As long as slavery is perfectly capable of losing match ups to decks prepared to beat it, and it doesn't do something crazy like burning wish for yawgmoth's will on turn one, it shouldn't see restriction.  Long and 4gush gat were oblivious to the metagame.  They had no idea there was a deck to beat because they were more than capable of wrecking everything on accident let alone with good play.  Slaver requires a combination of good play, ignorant opponents, and a slaver friendly metagame to be dominant.  It is a dominant blue based control deck, but not a domination machine in the metagame.

@forcefieldyou: Care to expand upon this? As a long time TOA combo player I'd like to believe that I've explored every viable MD and SB option to battling the Tier 1 decks including CS. But, I'm always open to new ideas.

I'll field this if you don't mind, Brian.  
This is not a tps sideboarding forum, but I will say that the obvious decklists of tps give away slaver's weakness to it.  Against other tendrils, say deathlong or meandeck tendrils, slaver can attempt to slow them down with force of will, manadrain, and duress if it has it, buying enough time to play sphere with tinker for platz being its number one goal.  Against tps artifacts like platz aren't the safe zone.  While tps is guaranteed to give the opposing slaver more time to set up counters, its ability to bounce artifacts and its inevitability make it a rough time for the control deck.  Mindslaver helps out a lot.  If a build running intuition can quicklock you, you're dead.  But trying to race tendrils doesn't work as often as one would like.

[CMass]

If Stax dominates a European metagame for months, it must be because those stupid Europeans don't know how to metagame.  If Control Slaver "dominates" New England for like two weeks, "OMG it's crazy stupid borken and I <<<<3 it!!!!1!!!!11"  Everyone panic together on the count of three.....

[Nazdakka]

If Stax dominates a European metagame for months, it must be because those stupid Europeans don't know how to metagame.  If Control Slaver "dominates" New England for like two weeks, "OMG it's crazy stupid borken and I <<<<3 it!!!!1!!!!11"  Everyone panic together on the count of three.....

Exactly. I can remember the reaction on TMD to the complaints about Workshop which came from Scandanavia a while back: 'Learn how to metagame guys'. The trouble seemingly was then (correct me if this is wrong) that all the good players found that Stax was winning all the time, and so they kept playing it and got REALLY good with the deck, and so won more and more. It looks like the same pattern in New England right now... there's a history of Mana Drain obsession in NE, lots of good players have found they like Slaver, and it wins. So they play it, and through playing it, become better with the deck. It's only become an issue because NE has a lot of big voices in the Vintage community, and this thread is the result.

[forests failed you]

Thanks Josh.  Well said.

[CMass]

I agree with your assessment, Nazdakka, and in fact I see it as the major reason no restrictions are called for.  If Control Slaver is such a force, why does Europe have varied metagames largely made up of Stax and combo?  If Stax and/or combo are so unstoppable, why is Control Slaver the flavor of the month in New England?  As long as we have multiple strong decks capable of balancing each other, the format is fine.