Trinisphere, The Fundamental Turn, and You

[virtual]

Alright, the topic you love to hate.  

In the following paragraphs, I will propose to you why Trinisphere is the problem with our current metagame, and why Nuking it alone will solve our problems.  

To start, lets enumerate what makes a deck able to have a good win percentage versus a trinisphere? In short, the answer is: Force of will, or Workshops.

Wastes/Strips help. Welders of your own help.  But if your deck doesn't run forces or workshops, trinisphere will break your deck. Running into 2 trinisphere decks in your swiss without the above answers, means you lose.  

To dismiss the notion that Trinisphere is the thing keeping combo in check, and we will all die a horrible flaming death to dark ritual the instant we restrict trinisphere:  Sphere of resistance.  When combo is trying to go off, a single sphere will also make its going off nigh impossible.  Combo already bounces the trinisphere when it's ready to win, so bounce the sphere, and ta-da.  Combo needs to remove both Trinisphere and Sphere of Resistance, so we're at the same place...

So, lets look at some results for which decks had 4x workshop or 4x force of will.

Top 8 on morphling.de right now

Trento 13.02.2005- 1st:  4 workshop (54 people)
Karlsruhe 06.02.2005- 1st: 4 Forces (47 people)
Iserlohn 30.01.2005- 1st: 4 Forces (126 people)
Heidelberg 15.01.2005- 1st:  FCG (22 people)
Wittlich 29.01.2005- 1st: 4 workshop (99 people)
Faraos Cigarer 29.01.2005- 1st: 4 workshop (53 people)
Mostoles 23.01.2005- 1st: 4 workshop (70 people)
Eindhoven 23.01.2005- 1st: 4 Forces (23 people)
Venice 16.01.2005- 1st: 4 Forces (63 people)
Essen 04.12.2004- 1st: 4 Forces (23 people)

Lets look @ Smem's list from his welder article:
T1 Vintage Championship at Gencon- 1st: 4 Forces (151 people)
Starcitygames P9, VA 10.2004- 1st:  4 Forces (88 people)
Starcitygames, Chicago 11.2004- 1st: 4 Workshop (142 people)
The Waterbury - 1st: 4 Forces (202 people)
Starcitygames, VA Jan, 2005- 1st: 4 Workshop (58 people)
Vintage Evolution at Grand Prix Boston- 1st: 4 Force of Will (64 people)


As a Note:  From all of the top-8 decks in Smem's lists:  4/48 had either Forces of Workshops
(Might be 2/48 but 2 dragon lists weren't available, so I assumed the worst)
(From the Morphling.de 10/80 had no workshops or forces. 3/10 were from the 22 person tournament.  Tournaments > 40 people.  5/56 had no workshops or forces)

So, it seems like Forces are all over the place... But... but... but I thought Trinisphere was the problem.  
It is.  And here's why.  

Remember the 5-axis metagame?  http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=6811

Control is all over the place right now.  CS, Oath, etc.  And what beats it?  Aggro-Control, and Aggro, maybe combo.  

Now, this Force of Will issue goes a little deeper.  Every archetype except aggro and prison right now can run Force.  Aggro and Prison can both run Trinisphere.  

People are complaining that Control Slaver is too strong.  However, the decks that beat it in the meta-game are destroyed by Trinisphere.  

"I outlined it above. The decks that have game against Slavery are terrible against the rest of the field. Thus, they don't get played. Since Slaver has a 50/50 matchup at worst with the entire field outside of these decks, and seeing as the decks that beat it don't show up, I'd say it was a pretty good choice to play because you'll never encounter the decks that will beat you."

The meta-game equilibruim has been reached, until we have a significant mixup (either some big changes from BoK, new innovation, or bannings/restriction).  The decks aren't the old archetypes of Combo, Control, Aggro.  They aren't even the hybrids of Aggro-Control and Prison. They are of 4 new types now. (Or new classification of old types)


Our metagame is as follows:  Trinisphere decks, Force of Will Decks, Mini-Beatz, and Belcher decks.  

Trinisphere decks: The Riddler, 5/3,Stax

Force of Will decks: Oath,TPS,Fish,Control Slaver,Mono-U,4cc

Mini-Beatz: FCG,White Speed, Oshawa stompy

Belcher:Belcher,Meandeck Tendrils

In general, (may vary by specific decks, but) Trinisphere Decks beat Mini-Beatz.  Mini-Beatz beat Force of Will decks.  And Force of will decks beat Trinisphere decks.  Given the degrees of variation within these groups, these generaliztions don't hold true entirely, but they should be close.  Lastly,  Belcher decks beat everything when going first, and lose to everything except mini-beatz when going second.  

When we break this down more specifically, and start to analyze matchup percentages, it becomes obvious that Control should be the deck that wins.  

Then the metagame would look like: Slaver (beats "Workshop/Combo" 60-40), Workshop/Combo (beats "R/G" 80/20) and R/G (beats "Slaver" 60/40). The most played deck in the format should be the one which has a hate deck with the worst bad matchup (each decks splits 50-50 with itself). That is, since R/G has the worst bad matchup (gets crushed by "Workshop/Combo"), then Slaver should be the most played deck in the format. Sound about right?

Lets replace this with:  
Then the metagame would look like: Force of Will (beats Trinisphere 60-40), Trinisphere (beats Mini-Beatz 80/20) and Mini-Beatz (beats Force of Will 60/40).

So, meta-game stabalization is reached when people play Force of Will decks.  Both Force-of-Will decks, and Trinisphere decks have a chance in any given tournament, but Mini-Beatz decks are unrepresented in the meta, mostly because of Trinisphere.  Without the meta-game being able to adjust to Control decks (because Trinisphere exists) Control decks will dominate (they've always been good, but their foil is unplayable) and we will have to argue about how to "nuke the format" to fix it where Trinisphere isn't controlling the fundamental turn of the game.  

Kill Trinisphere, and give the meta-game a chance to respond to Control in its current monstrosity.  Isn't it obvious?

-Virtual


For Reference:

T1 Vintage Championship at Gencon- 1st: 4 Forces (151 people)

(More breakdown)
1) Control Slaver - 4 forces
2) Workshop Aggro - 4 workshop
3) Workshop Aggro - 4 workshop
4) Goblin Charbelcher Combo
5) Mono Blue Control - 4 workshop
6) Stax - 4 workshop
7) Workshop Aggro - 4 workshop
8) UR Fish - 4 forces

Starcitygames P9, VA 10.2004- 1st:  4 Forces (88 people)
(More breakdown)

1) Oath - 4 Forces
2) JuggerStax - 4 Workshop
3) Oath - 4 Forces
4) Workshop Aggro - 4 Workshop
5) Control Slaver - 4 Forces
6) Oath - 4 Forces
7) Oath - 4 Forces
8) Workshop Aggro - 4 Workshop

Starcitygames, Chicago 11.2004- 1st: 4 Workshop (142 people)
(More breakdown)

1) Workshop Aggro - 4 Workshop
2) Workshop 7/10 Split - 4 Workshop
3) Doomsday Combo - 4 Force of Will
4) Stax - 4 Workshop
5) Control Slaver - 4 Force of Will
6) Psychatog - 4 Force of Will
7) Workshop Aggro - 4 Workshop
8) Fish - 4 Force of Will

The Waterbury - 1st: 4 Forces (202 people)

1) Goth Control Slaver - 4 Forces
2) Goth Control Slaver - 4 Forces
3) Storm Combo - 4 Forces
4) Storm Combo - X
5) Control Slaver - 4 Forces
6) Control Slaver - 4 Forces
7) Rector Trix - 4 Forces
8) Workshop Combo - 4 Workshop

Starcitygames, VA Jan, 2005- 1st: 4 Workshop(58 people)

1) Workshop Masknaught - 4 Workshop
2) Workshop JuggerStax - 4 Workshop
3) Worldgorger Combo - 4 Force of Will
4) Oath - 4 Force of Will
5) Food Chain Goblins - X
6) T1 Dump Truck - 4 Force of Will
7) Control Slaver - 4 Force of Will
8) Stax - 4 Workshop

Vintage Evolution at Grand Prix Boston- 1st: 4 Force of Will (64 people)
1) Control Slaver - 4 Force of Will
2) Control Slaver - 4 Force of Will
3) Control Slaver - 4 Force of Will
4) Stax - 4 Workshop
5) Red Burn - X
6) Dragon - 4 Forces?
7) Control Slaver - 4 Force of Will
8) Dragon - 4 Forces?

Lastly, as a note, welder is both integral in 1 whole archetype (Trinisphere decks), and it also happens to be the win-enabler in the "#1" control deck right now.  Hence it's played more than some other pieces.  It's still VERY vulnerable, etc, so it isn't restriction worthy in my opinion.  Killing it destroys 4-5 viable decks...

[Toad]

To dismiss the notion that Trinisphere is the thing keeping combo in check, and we will all die a horrible flaming death to dark ritual the instant we restrict trinisphere:  Sphere of resistance.  When combo is trying to go off, a single sphere will also make its going off nigh impossible.

I have been playing some games with Stax packing 4 maindeck Sphere of Resistance AND 4 maindeck Trinisphere against TPS. Oh god that's a slaughter. TPS destroys you. Trinisphere is your best shot at winning If you can pull some gas after it, which is quite hard since they run billions of basic lands and fetchlands. But Sphere of Resistance is terrible. You go first turn Sphere of Resistance and they go Land, tap It for Mox, tap It for Mox, and they have turn 2 Rebuild online. You've lost that game on turn 1 because of Sphere of Resistance.

Kill Trinisphere, and give the meta-game a chance to respond to Control in its current monstrosity.

That's a funny argument. I would basically reword this "Control is far too good now so let's just kill what prevents the decks that beat Control from being good". This would hardly solve the deal, since those Aggro decks would still die to Combo.

There is NO tournament evidence to back up Trinisphere's restriction. People have adapted to it. People run basic lands. People run artifact hate. People have learnt how to metagame properly. A first turn Trinisphere is still a threat, but I consider this threat as being a fair one. I've won far more games through turn 1 Dark Ritual or turn 2 Mana Drain than through turn 1 Trinisphere. And yet I've been playing Stax for ages.

[virtual]

You go first turn Sphere of Resistance and they go Land, tap It for Mox, tap It for Mox, and they have turn 2 Rebuild online. You've lost that game on turn 1 because of Sphere of Resistance.

As I said, They can't go off with either in play.  They have to bounce it in either case.  Rebuild is an adaptation to Trinisphere, and it can be a good answer, however, TPS Still needs a decent amount of mana, so at least in that case, it won't be going off turn 2 in general.   There are plenty of ways to handle (Turn X) combo in its current and future incarnations.  Trinisphere happens to be a card that not only hoses combo, but also is pretty damn good against everything else.  Every color has an answer to combo, assuming they get a chance to play something.  Combo that has proven to consistently go off turn 1 right now risks everything in doing so, and Would be as  adversly affected by sphere as they were trini.  

that's a funny argument. I would basically reword this "Control is far too good now so let's just kill what prevents the decks that beat Control from being good".

I don't personally think Control is too good, or control is too bad, etc.  However, people are complaining about the current meta-game, or at least a large number of people are unhappy.  

In my opinion, and as I tried to prove above, this is because a Single card is removing at least an entire archetype from being playable.  The Combo beats Aggro beats Control relationship is healthy.  The existance of 1 card which beats an entire archetype, and is at least maindeckable against the rest of the field (not to mention the rest of its nice effects early), is truly format distorting...  

This would hardly solve the deal, since those Aggro decks would still die to Combo.

There are 2 types of combo.  Turn 0 combo, and Turn X combo:

Any deck can sideboard against Turn X combo.  

Only blue decks can do anything about turn 0 combo.   Turn 0 combo decks suffer from the "coin-flip" affect, and don't allow you to outplay your opponent as much as they allow you to ignore your opponent.  They will be present, but they won't ever be prolific.  Why play a deck that 5% of tournaments you go to it will automatically top-8, when you can play a deck, use your skill, and top-8 50% of the time.  

There is NO tournament evidence to back up Trinisphere's restriction. People have adapted to it. People run basic lands. People run artifact hate. People have learnt how to metagame properly. A first turn Trinisphere is still a threat, but I consider this threat as being a fair one. I've won far more games through turn 1 Dark Ritual or turn 2 Mana Drain than through turn 1 Trinisphere. And yet I've been playing Stax for ages.

People HAVE adapted to it.  As I said, look at the numbers.  You Have to play workshops or forces.  That is my point.  If you're happy with that, then leave everything the way they are.  People run basic lands. People run artifact hate.  Neither of these are enough... and the numbers show that.  If they were enough, then you might see Mono-R with rack and ruins floating around.   We don't see any aggro at all.  So either fix that, or live with Control as top dog.

Even though we have a "lot" of viable options for decks right now, when you are forced to play Workshops or Forces that seems like a problem.  This reality of your limited deck design choices hasn't been pointed out before to my knowledge, so I wanted to bring it up.

[Toad]

Even though we have a "lot" of viable options for decks right now, when you are forced to play Workshops or Forces that seems like a problem.

I don't think you are "forced" to run either Mishra's Workshop or Force of Will. You just *happen* to run these in Type One because, well, these are the best cards available in the format. You can hardly blame people for playing with the best card available to them.

I would probably never play a deck that can't
* win on turn 1.
* prevent the opponent from winning on turn 1.

Restricting Trinisphere would not make Sligh or Suicide Black good. These decks were bad far before Trinisphere was printed. They starting being bad when people starting deckbuilding a bit more seriously (Tools And Tubbies era). Killing Trinisphere would hardly change the deal. Traditionnal Aggro decks would still be bad, because they *have* to take what the opponent is doing into account and pray he doesnt do something broken.

[Wollblad]

I think your reasoning has many flaws. If your arguments were correct, people would not have to play FoW if Trinisphere would be restricted. I personally think that a restriction of Trinisphere would lead to (using the same argument) that you'll have to play FoW since every deck in the top 8 would then contain 4 copies of FoW. That is of course an absurd conclusion, but on the same logical level as the one above. Aggro decks won't be more successful because, as Toad suggested, they sucked even before the release of Trinisphere. When I choose not to play aggro, it is because I fear combo decks like Dragon and TPS, not decks with Trinisphere. Actually, the there exist viable aggro decks like 5/3 and 7/10 thanks to Trinisphere. Removing Trinisphere and you'll remove the only alternative to play FoW.

However, people are complaining about the current meta-game, or at least a large number of people are unhappy.

People are always complaining. In general negotiations, a fair agreement is when everyone is unhappy. The meta game today shows a tremedous diversity. Don't try to mend what is not broken!

[Matt]

Restricting Trinisphere would not make Sligh or Suicide Black good.

I keep seeing you guys saying this and it frankly baffles me. I haven't seen ANYONE wishing for "traditional" aggro decks to be viable again. You say that like those kind of weenie decks are the sum total of aggro, and that simply isn't true. Stuff like FCG and Affinity and Madness are intelligent, well-built aggro decks that are currently unplayable even with maindeck hate. All of them can kill on turn three and two of those decks can run Artifact Mutation main and all of them can run Rack and Ruin and even hateless all of them have strong games against Control Slaver (and all of them trounce traditional aggro too, for what that's worth). But none of them are viable.

[Toad]

Stuff like FCG and Affinity and Madness are intelligent, well-built aggro decks that are currently unplayable even with maindeck hate.

I've just read "The SCG Guide to Vintage 5 Proxy Decks" article on StarCityGames, and one comment about FCG is "5/3 and Stax are both great matches for you". So I doubt restricting Trinisphere would change something there. A friend of mine designed a Type One Modular based deck (Arcbound Crusher and Arcbound Ravager being the only Modular creatures used) and his build also beats 5/3 and Stax. I doubt restricting Trinisphere would change something there. And most of the french Madness players report having fine matchups against Stax.

Restricting Trinisphere would *not* allow these decks to consistently win tournaments or even Top8. They are too slow and can't prevent the opponent from winning. That's a tremendous weakness. Combo will always own these decks.

[Matt]

So let's see. There are decks that beat Trinisphere AND CS, but they're unplayable due to combo. I think virtual had the right idea but the wrong target. What's more I think that if you asked WotC to weaken combo they would be far more responsive to the idea than if you asked them to weaken control or even prison.

The reason people are more willing to accept Mana Drain dominance over Trinisphere or combo dominance is that control's natural foil is aggro, and people love aggro, especially when they've been told forever that it can't be played in this format. Do you remember players' love affair with TNT? People held onto that deck like a meth addict - WAY, WAY after it had been left in the dust.

It's not that people like Drain more than Trinisphere, it's that they like Drain's foils better than Trinisphere's foils.

[Machinus]

Matt - do you really think it is a love of aggro? In the US, especially in the northeast, control has always been the most popular archetype, especially drain-based control. For a long time this was the reactive, k33p3r style of deck, and it was only recently that drain was switched on and turned into an offensive weapon.

Combo seems to be the more popular style of deck in Europe, which really has the opposite kind of relationship with aggro that control does.

I don't find it true, at least for myself and many players that I know, that an affinity for aggro causes the popularity of mana drain based control decks.

[Smmenen]

I think the flaw in your analysis is the assumption that mini-beatz should be viable.

If Vintage was a pro tour format, do you think any pro tour player would play mini beatz?  Obviously not.  

I do not beleive that aggro should be viable unless it has a combo finish.  Minibeatz is only played becuase of budget constraints.  Such decks are not, nor will they ever be, guininely good Vintage decks.  Fish on the other hand, IS a good deck and should be played.  But Aggro-control has Force of Will.

That said, Trinisphere is clearly not the problem.  

You assume that just becuase combo has to remove Sphere of Resistence that it is an equal threat.  The problem is that removing Sphere of Resistence is extremely easy.  That is the difference.  Sphere of Resistence and Chalice are pitiful substitutes for 3Sphere against Combo.  

The reason the fundamental turn is turn one is becuase of mana drain in the format and restricted 3sphere would kill the workshop archetype.  Before 3 Sphere, Workshop decks had barely any representation in Vintage Top8s.  After ward, it has grown a bit.  But Workshop decks are at the beginning of a long term decline for reasons I cited in another thread in this forum on interactivity.

[Matt]

I don't know if people still love aggro. They did when I last was paying attention to the format. What's popular is not necessarily what's beloved - there's plenty of people who will forego their favorite deck for one with a better shot of winning. They'll play CS or combo or whatever as long as those're winning decks but if you ask them what the format would look like ideally you get people calling for reactive decks and aggro.

I think that given a choice between an aggro deck and a combo deck with approximately equal shots at taking home a tournament (i.e. equally good against the expected field), people will prefer the aggro deck by a wide margin, when on paper you would expect a pretty even split. Maybe because they like aggro better or maybe because "absence makes the heart grow fonder," I can't say which.

There's not so many people who actually stop playing when the decks they like aren't good, so you get people who play a lot AND bitch a lot.

[ELD]

IMO Workshop decks are not better off facing combo.  If they get a lock, no deck can fight out.  If not, most good decks will win despite being slowed down.  3sphere has to be followed by other lock parts.  The only exception is decks like belcher or "tendrils"

TPS and Deathlong will bounce 3sphere and go off.  

Dragon will cast an animate, despite it casting 1 more.  

This is if the combo player doesn't go first and win.  

Control Slaver will find rack and ruin.

The games that staxs wins tend to be ones that it completely shuts out the opponent.  If an opposing deck gets to 3 mana, it is often game over in my experiance.  My point is, that 3sphere is a threat when followed by mana denial.  Other than that, it can be handled, as workshop can't really stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

[Smmenen]

IMO Workshop decks are not better off facing combo.  If they get a lock, no deck can fight out.  If not, most good decks will win despite being slowed down.  3sphere has to be followed by other lock parts.  The only exception is decks like belcher or "tendrils"

TPS and Deathlong will bounce 3sphere and go off.  

Dragon will cast an animate, despite it casting 1 more.  

This is if the combo player doesn't go first and win.  

Control Slaver will find rack and ruin.

The games that staxs wins tend to be ones that it completely shuts out the opponent.  If an opposing deck gets to 3 mana, it is often game over in my experiance.  My point is, that 3sphere is a threat when followed by mana denial.  Other than that, it can be handled, as workshop can't really stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

Well said.  That is the fundamental problem.  And it also explains why Workshop decks failed to put up consistent results before 3Sphere.  Workshop Prison can't win unless it can completely shut you down.  And it can't completely shut you down unless it can prevent you from doing anything whatsoever.  Otherwise, most good decks can break out.  And Workshop Prison can't really do anything to stop you unless it has completely locked you down since it has no hand disruption or countermagic.

[dicemanx]

My point is, that 3sphere is a threat when followed by mana denial. Other than that, it can be handled, as workshop can't really stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

When you have an entire deck devoted to mana denial, or card drawing/tutoring to find denial, or Welders to recur denial, then of course Trinisphere is a major threat. It is pretty rare to see Workshop decks sit there contentedly doing nothing because they shut you down with a Trinisphere for three turns.

I also call bullshit on those who keep repeatedly trying to suggest that decks like TPS, Control Slaver, Oath etc maul decks that establish first turn Trini locks because all they need to do is drop three lands in a row and then bust out their bounce/RnR/Flux. It is of course the case that regardless of how many copies of Rebuild you have, you WILL draw it in your opening ten. You will also not miss any land drops. Oh, and the deck that dropped Trini won't play anything else. And of couse, once you Rebuild, you are pretty much GUARANTEED to go off. Just like its pretty much guaranteed that Drain decks just slaughter anything on turn 2 by draining a 3cc spell and go off with Intuition and Thirst. Yeah, this happens ALL the time. People don't even play around Drain anymore. They'll just happily walk into it and get owned because Intuitions or Thirsts are joined at the hip to Drains. Oh, before we forget, Control Slaver gets 1st turn Welder, then 2nd turn Thirst into a Mindslaver pretty much all the time. Nevermind that it's essentially a three card combo.

OK, I'm digressing, but I think all this theoretical nonsense is starting to be a tad bit misleading. The environment is far more interesting and interactive than theory or the notion of a "fundamental turn" would suggest. From my perspective, we are getting too wrapped up in statistical analyses. I really don't see much of a problem with this current environment. I have just one issue, and that is with a specific card that, upon resolution turn 1, says "you are at my mercy bitch, and you better hope that I don't follow up with any business spell over the next three turns - maybe more if you can't muster 3 straight land drops, which better be basics/fetches". Like I said many times before, no card should have this power turn 1. I don't remotely buy into the claims that Trini is so easily beaten, as people are trying to make it seem. In their delusional fantasies, they always have the perfect mix of cards to not only overcome the Trini but actually "go off", while their Trini-wielding opponent merely twiddles his thumbs and does nothing.

I played in a tournament yesterday. I was involved in many exciting, skill-intensive cerebral battles. My only losses? I lost on turn 1 to Trini with business back up (gee what a surprise) twice. Gee, how stupid - to be playing some amazing magic, full of reversals of fortune and maximization of opportunities generated through skillful and deliberate play, and then to be shut down by something so randomly retarded like that.

So what about the argument against getting rid of this abomination of a card:

1. Trini is integral to stopping combo
2. Trini makes Workshop playable

Argument #1 is a fantasy not based in reality. In metas where Workshop is not popular, combo is hardly dominating. TURN 1 combo cannot punch through. So how is Trini integral to keeping combo in check? For example, at Waterbury Meandeck SX had extreme difficulties in dealing with the rest of the field - did they even have to contend with 1st turn Trinis an appreciable amount of time? There are plenty of tools in the environment that are sufficient in containing the combo beast to significant levels. Furthermore, according to the "experts", Trini packing decks are annihilated by combo such as TPS and Deathlong, just on the phenomenal strength of 3 land drops followed by Rebuild/Hurkyl's Recall. Wow, so does Trini stop anything at all these days? It seems so ridiculously easy to play around, so why is it considered such a sacred cow all of a sudden?

And what about argument #2? While the numbers might suggest that Trinisphere upped the number of Shop decks in the top 8s and might have made them more "competitive", there are some conflicting arguments that I keep hearing. So many are screaming for Workshop's head (for reasons that we are all aware of at this point), and yet for many it's just one card that is making the Shop archetypes *playable*??  WTF? So on the one hand people would rather restrict Workshop than Trini, but on the other hand Trini shouldn't be restricted because it would weaken Shop to the point of unviability? I appreciate that these conflicting arguments are coming from two different sets of players, but still, this is ridiculous. I challenge the contention that Workshop is untenable without Trini. There is essentially the suggestion that without a very early Trinisphere, Stax is totally crap as an archetype. However, given the fact that Stax only gets a turn 1 Trini that matters 20% of the time (50% die roll, and 40% of getting the right combination of cards), are you people suggesting that Trini somehow makes the deck viable? On 20%? No.

Anyways, I think the Workshop decks have a lot of powerful weapons at their disposal, and I believe that once Trini is reduced to a 1-of the games against Workshop decks would become far more interesting and interactive. And hell, if it *does* diminish the power of Workshop, perhaps it will reduce the number of Welders in top-8s and with it the barely justified whining about Welder being some sort of "problem card" (because, after all, it isn't Control Slaver that's a problem, its all Welder packing decks, right?). I have about as much of a problem with the high number of Welders in the environment and in the top 8s as I do with the numbers of FoWs, Wastelands, or basic Islands. As long as we continue to have amazing diversity in T1 as we do now I don't think there's a problem. I only have a problem with cards that say: turn 1: you don't get to play anymore. Only if you're lucky, then maybe you'll have a slight chance at recovery.

[Machinus]

Diceman, I think you are right. Putting aside the other reasons for leaving the format alone for a minute, I think the interpretations of many of these decks being talked about are very distorted - specifically, as you mentioned, the conception of their power level. It is really wrong to say that these cards can't be played around, like drain. Workshops have to mulligan constantly, and without a draw engine. And even the "broken" combo decks aren't doing very much. TPS has probably had the most success, and it's ideal game plan is to wait at least a turn or two before going off.

If there was another deck as good as Slaver right now - dominating tournaments in the same fashion (lets just say Slaver would own NE, and deck X owns everywhere else) - I don't think people would be bitching nearly as much.

[Milton]

In the world of the theoritical, the "Workshop" deck always has a turn one Trinisphere while the "control" deck always has a turn 2 Drain and the "Slaver" deck always has a turn 1 Welder.

We don't need restrictions.  We have them.  It's called a 4 card limit.  That alone is enough.

If you keep looking at the theoritical you will miss out on the fact that our matches are actually quite interesting and the metagame isn't nearly as broken as some believe.

[CF]

entire post

My thoughts exactly. Thanks for sparing me having to write them down. :p

--
Chris

[TheWhiteDragon]

I for one just want to say, I love aggro.  Nothing makes me happier than turning fat men sideways and beating my opponent to death.  If it were a matter of using an atom bomb (combo), trip wires, booby traps, and a grenade (control), or a hellswarm of retarded midgets with clubs (aggro) to win a war (game of magic), I'd say "Run my little Corkyesque minions, run! Hazzah!"  As it is, I have made my last two creations to abuse trinisphere, as it is one of the best cards in the format, but also because it allows me to beat people up with creatures.  Control can't aide in critter beats all too well, and Combo is no deck for critters (for attacking - not Kobolds), but trinisphere lets you play juggs, dreadnoughts, su-chis, or equally wonderful smashbots.  I could belch someone out in a turn....or channel/fireball them....or tie up a game to go to time with counters and decree tokens....or I could just smash their face into mud repeatedly with big dumb guys.  I choose the latter.

[Purple Hat]

I don't think I'm even gonna get involved with the original post.  There's not that much to say.  You don't have to play force of will to stop trinisphere, you have to play force of will so you don't lose to some broken turn 1 or 2 play.

I agree with diceman's post in a lot of ways, but I also see trinisphere as somewhat of a borderline card.  I think there's a clear case for it's restriction based simply on the fact that it gives workshop a doubble timewalk if you play it on turn one.  Would we really be having this conversation if there were a card that had the text

Broken trinisphere sorcery
One of some color of mana, sorcery, If you play broken trinisphere sorcery on your first turn you take two turns after this one, your opponent cannot play spells durring those turns.  at the end of those two turns your opponent may draw two cards and put two basic lands into play.

I mean the card is just insanely powerful.  I think I would have been ok with a sphere variant that still worked like sphere of resistence (affinity would still work) but added 3 instead of one.  I think I would have been ok with a trinisphere that added one or even two.  Yeah, it'd be rough, but you could get around it.  The problem is that in the real world workshop players who play turn one trinisphere and nothing else out of anything other than a 5 card hand never win.  The argument that sphere is easier to play around is just stupid.  Of course sphere is easier to play around.  That's the whole point.  I don't think that stax would be a bad deck if it was forced to play 1 3sphere and 3-4 spheres.  If a tendrils deck goes turn one land, tap mox, tap mox that's 3 cards that don't count towards storm.  If dark rit only produces +1 mana it can be rough to force storm to go off without rebuild/hurkyll's.

Now we get to the part where I question whether or not trinisphere needs to be restricted.  If you don't play trinisphere on turn one it's just annoying.  That's all it does.  It annoys both players.  it makes the game more complicated and makes people play around it.  it doesn't do so symetrically but seriously what GOOD card actually has a symetric effect in practice?  draw 7's are probably the closest thing and they're basically only played in decks that rely on either having no cards in hand when they cast the spell or drawing a broken hand off the draw 7 or both.  There are clearly good, viable responses to trinisphere, even when it's played on turn one.  I beat Outlaw in a game where I kept a hand with a single non basic land because, while it'd have a rough game against turn one trinisphere it droped a turn one eon flux if he didn't have the 3sphere.  Turns out not only did he have the 3sphere, he also had crucible and a wasteland.  But I won the game by jester's capping his entire deck away while we were under eon flux.

so I guess my thoughts sum up as 1) whether or not trinisphere gets restricted it should be a card that defines the level of where we restrict things.  2) cards like trinisphere are probably a little too powerful (I'd include mana drain in this category as well).

On a side note I think that thirst for knowledge is really a card that people should spend more time talking about restricting.  I really think that the TFK discussion is not only more interesting but also more productive.  you'll never convince someone who believes that trinisphere should be restricted that it doesn't because it's simply too demoralizing to lose to a turn one trinisphere.  You'll also, probably, never convince someone that loves control that mana drain needs to be restricted because it's "inheirently less broken than combo cards" seeing as how it's intereactive in that it requires your opponent to play spells.  the argument here lacks content.  Thirst is a more interesting card because it is immensely powerful (draws cards and is frequently mana positive--->restriction as per the gush restriction announcement) and has resulted in an archetype which is dominant in at least some percentage of major tournaments.  yet this discussion never takes place.  Lets talk about cards that make the top deck too good before we worry about the cards that make decks that are worse than CS able to play with it.

Hale

[virtual]

I haven't seen ANYONE wishing for "traditional" aggro decks to be viable again. You say that like those kind of weenie decks are the sum total of aggro, and that simply isn't true. Stuff like FCG and Affinity and Madness are intelligent, well-built aggro decks that are currently unplayable even with maindeck hate. All of them can kill on turn three and two of those decks can run Artifact Mutation main and all of them can run Rack and Ruin and even hateless all of them have strong games against Control Slaver (and all of them trounce traditional aggro too, for what that's worth). But none of them are viable.

This is just the truth.  

Restricting Trinisphere would *not* allow these decks to consistently win tournaments or even Top8. They are too slow and can't prevent the opponent from winning. That's a tremendous weakness. Combo will always own these decks.

They might not consistently win, however they would be represented in the metagame again.  Something which Trinisphere has removed entirely.  

I think virtual had the right idea but the wrong target. What's more I think that if you asked WotC to weaken combo they would be far more responsive to the idea than if you asked them to weaken control or even prison.

My target isn't wrong, as I'm going to show you soon.

I do not beleive that aggro should be viable unless it has a combo finish. Minibeatz is only played becuase of budget constraints. Such decks are not, nor will they ever be, guininely good Vintage decks.

But we're learning what an underrepresented piece of the 3 leaves us with.  It was underrepresented before, Trinisphere has just made it ~3 times worse.

Entire post

You are my hero dicemanx.  I wish I was that eloquent.  People didn't even want to respond after you posted.  I felt like I should dispell this myth about combo killing aggro however.

So the feeling that i got from quite a few posts was that Trinisphere wasn't the death of non-WS/non-FoW decks.  

Let's see some numbers:  

Jul-03  0.325
Aug-03   0.25
Sep-03   0.2916
Oct-03   0.328125
Nov-03   0.332
Dec-03   0.25
Jan-04   0.2916667
Feb-04   0.25
Mar-04   0.181818
Apr-04   0.2573529
May-04   0.19444
Jun-04   0.25
Jul-04   0.1532258
Aug-04   0.1590909
Sep-04   0.1111111
Oct-04   0.109375
Nov-04   0.2142857
Dec-04   0.138889
Jan-05   0.1704545

Shown here are the percentages of decks in Top-8's on Morphling.de (of all available lists) from the months of 7/03 until 1/05.  I counted the number of decks that had 4x force of will or 4x workshops, and marked the percentage each month.  

Let's look at those numbers.  

From Jul-03 until Feb-04, the percentage of non-WS/FoW decks was ~30% (with slight variation month to month.)  

Darksteel became legal late in Feb: 2004.  Immediately in the months following, the meta-game started to begin to adjust to Trinisphere entering the Fray.  Decks which didn't pack Forces or Workshops of their own dropped below 20% for the first time in March, and hit an alltime low in October.   The metagame slowly stabalized, each month on a downward trend as those decks that couldn't compete were forced out of either top-8's or just not being played because of the strangulation of trinisphere.  The number of decks not playing FoW or WS since Trinisphere became legal has at least halved, and may be 1/3 of the old number.  

Now, note, Starting around July 03 Tendrils of Agony became legal.  Long.dec was around, but the percentage of non-Fow/ non-WS decks didn't decline significantly.  (Granted Long.dec itself had neither, but after its restriction, Jan & Feb had similar numbers representing non WS/Fow decks)  

Regardless of this, whatever we determine, we won't change the coming announcement.  But I thought it interesting, and at least eye-opening to expand upon my theory and find the numbers so revealing.  

-Virtual


(This analysis was done by hand, so there may be some small errors... I assumed 3x == 4x, and 1x == 0x.  Withheld lists I assumed had workshops or forces, though if someone wants to recalculate just removing those from known data, be my guest.  By the time I realized I should go back, it was too late)

[Purple Hat]

I'm fairly confident that combo beats aggro. I've played both before. If the combo player is compotent and the deck is decently designed you should be able to goldfish better than turn 3-4 consistently assuming that you don't do anything at all to disrupt your aggro opponent (ie. force of will disciple of the vault against affinity). Combo generates a faster clock than aggro does. If, as in this discussion, we are restricting ourselves to aggro decks which don't run EITHER force of will or 3sphere the best possible answer available to them against combo is pyrostatic pillar. Pillar doesn't beat dragon, probably doesn't beat trix and is not even guarenteed to beat storm combo (tutor-->chain of vapor) EVEN when backed up by beats.
Look, traditionally aggro beats control through consistency of threats. You just can't counter everything. The problem with this theory against combo-control like tog was that tog didn't have to counter everything. It just had to counter something that gave it enough mana to draw enough cards to beserk a tog. While the current rendition of combo control, CS, doesn't have as fast of a universal solution it does have one in slave lock. It therefore severely limits the timespan over which it needs to control the game.
The problem aggro decks have against combo is that you just can't deal 20 points of damage by attacking as fast as you can resolve tendrils for 20 or animate dead on WGD. If you don't believe this you need to test more but here's an example anyway. I was playing dragon in a tournament over the summer against TrixR4kidz. He was playing 5/3. He went broken on turn one and droped a sundering titan on me. I played bazaar of baghdad, bazaared and passed, took 7, he thirsted, I bazaared, played a land, passed, took 7, he did something else, I pitched the dragon laid a land and cast animate dead. The problem with the aggro vs combo scenario is that the only thing that aggro can effect is something in which combo is only marginally interested, the combo player's life total. Combo players, unless going off through Necro or Bargain simply don't CARE what life total they're at, just so long as it is above 0.
You play force of will so that when your opponent land grants revealing esg, land grant, belcher, channel, lion's eye diamond, lotus petal you don't have to shuffle your hand into your library, you don't play it because 40% of the time that you play against workshop AND lose the die roll someone will drop a 3sphere on you and that MIGHT be game. Belcher is much more of a problem for a deck without 3sphere or force of will than decks with 3sphere are. if the decks that can ONLY win by removing 3sphere from play have been able to beat it I think it's certainly possible for decks that can actually beat workshops without doing so to win.

Hale

[jpmeyer]

a lot of stats

To be fair, that drop in the percentage could also be due to the increase in combo--especially Dragon, which runs Force of Will--during that time.

[Dr. Sylvan]

a lot of stats

To be fair, that drop in the percentage could also be due to the increase in combo--especially Dragon, which runs Force of Will--during that time.

The Dragon phase was Oct-Dec 2003, before Virtual's detected drop.

Darksteel became legal late in Feb: 2004

March 20th.

The problem I (of course) have with using the entire morphling.de dataset is that it includes tons of ~20-person events, which are utterly determined by who overslept their alarm clock and who didn't care to drive more than twenty minutes for such a small event. Rudy berates me for leaving out the competitive Eindhoven environment, but tournament size is really an important indicator of results validity. In Steve's open forum thread, when I did Welder stats for his requested 100-person cutoff, the averages were about 50% more Welders in just those events compared to the 50-person cutoff I like.* That demonstrates to me that more people has a strong effect on results; it's just a matter of how much uncertainty we have a tolerance for, and which variable is causing us uncertainty (too few players or too few events as data points).

* : Caveat of course that there were far fewer events to judge from, which is my main reason for not using such a high minimum.

So considerthe following when pointing to combo or Workshop trends. (This is for my entire dataset as included in my articles.)

(number of copies per Top 8)
2003, Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May., Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep., O-N., D-J.
_4.8, _7.0, _6.4, _4.2, _8.9, _4.2, _6.6, _9.8, 11.4, _7.5, _9.8, _7.1 Mishra's Workshop
___, ____, ____, _1.1, _6.3, _3.5, _6.1, _8.4, _9.6, _6.8, _9.2, _6.6 Trinisphere
___, ____, ____, ___, ___, ____, _0.4, _4.6, _8.2, _7.3, _7.3, _5.6 Crucible of Worlds

Workshop average pre-Trinisphere: 18.2 / 3 = 6.1
Workshop average since Trinisphere: 69.5 / 9 = 7.7
Workshop average since Crucible: 52.2 / 6 = 8.7

2003, Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May., Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep., O-N., D-J.
_8.2, _1.6, _5.6, _4.0, _4.7, _4.0, _4.6, _4.8, _6.4, _4.6, _3.9, _7.1 Dark Ritual

Also, Ritual's perceived rise is somewhat ephemeral because most of my Ritual numbers are TPS from Italy, which people barely noticed except to adopt it grudgingly after noticing that the Italians were right all along.

As proxy variables for aggro decks, I'm using the following creatures.

(per Top 8)
2003, Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May., Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep., O-N., D-J.
___, ____, ____, _0.7, _2.9, _0.0, _2.1, _1.3, _0.0, _1.0, _0.4, _0.0 Arcbound Ravager
_1.2, _2.4, _2.4, _1.8, _0.4, _1.3, _2.3, _0.4, _0.0, _0.0, _1.6, _0.8 Goblin Piledriver
_2.4, _4.0, _2.8, _2.2, _3.1, _1.8, _2.3, _2.3, _3.8, _2.1, _2.7, _1.0 Juggernaut
_5.2, _5.0, _3.2, _4.4, _3.3, _4.5, _1.6, _4.9, _3.2, _3.8, _2.8, _1.9 Mishra's Factory
_1.2, _5.6, _3.2, _1.8, _1.3, _3.3, _1.7, _2.2, _0.8, _1.9, _1.2, _0.0 Wild Mongrel
 10.0, 17.0, 11.6, 10.9, 11.0, 10.9, 10.0, 11.1, _7.8, _8.8, _8.7, _3.7 TOTAL

Aggro pre-Trinisphere: 38.6 / 3 = 12.8
Aggro post-Trinisphere, pre-Crucible: 32.8 / 3 = 10.9
Aggro post-Crucible: 50.1 / 6 = 8.3

Oh snap! Crucible caused an even bigger swing than Trinisphere! That is wicked harsh, dawg.

In summary, numbers tell us many things. They do not reveal direct causation, they do not necessarily present the complete picture, real world data are not laboratory falsifiable, categorization is somewhat subjective, and Crucible may or may not have much to do with the drop in aggro. Just don't be so sure of your theoretical causation chains, because I have these giant tables here that may not agree. ;-)

[Elric]

Aggro pre-Trinisphere: 38.6 / 3 = 12.8
Aggro post-Trinisphere, pre-Crucible: 32.8 / 3 = 10.9
Aggro post-Crucible: 50.1 / 6 = 8.3

Oh snap! Crucible caused an even bigger swing than Trinisphere! That is wicked harsh, dawg.

Shouldn't the card that is released second have an effect based on the card that is released first?  So any effect from when Crucible is released measures (Crucible interacting with Trinisphere)- (Trinisphere alone), while Trinisphere’s effect when it was released measures (Trinisphere alone) – (No Trinisphere).

I would like to second DicemanX's point that it requires a weird set of assumptions to conclude that Welder is too powerful (and will continue to be too powerful) while Workshops are going to go into decline.  Since Belcher doesn't seem to be making a comeback (and proposed builds like Scott Limoges' don't even use Welders), the only way Welder could stay as a high percentage of top 8s is if the majority of the environment becomes Slaver.

[Smmenen]

My point is, that 3sphere is a threat when followed by mana denial. Other than that, it can be handled, as workshop can't really stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

When you have an entire deck devoted to mana denial, or card drawing/tutoring to find denial, or Welders to recur denial, then of course Trinisphere is a major threat. It is pretty rare to see Workshop decks sit there contentedly doing nothing because they shut you down with a Trinisphere for three turns.

Is it a threat?  Sure.  No one is denying that it isn't.  But your post isn't quite right.  The measure of the threat is how effectively it keeps you from finding and playing answers.  

Under this measure, Trinisphere is leagues above any substitute card.  As an avid Combo and Control player (and an occasional Stax player), I can tell you that Combo can break out of Chalice and Sphere of Resistence with alarming Consistency.  Part of it is like my mana Drain argument that T1 is a dialectic of Mana drain and non mana drain decks..  The decks around Mana Drain have all gotten stronger so the surviving Drain decks are those that have evolved to compete again drain decks.  So that if you restrict the cards around Drain, you'll leave Mana Drain in a more dominant position than when you found it.  Similarly, the environment has grown accustomed to 3Sphere.  It knows it is there and expects it.  Therefore, plans are shaped around that expectation and restricting Trinisphere would leave the rest of the environment in a position of at least somewhat being able to answer 3sphere yet giving Stax and its bretheren a far, far weaker threat that can very, very easily be answered in comparison.

Moreover, I think you are mistaken to use Welder as a reason that 3Sphere is so threatening.   Most of Combo's answers to 3Sphere have developed as Hurkyl's Recall type cards (Rebuild) that bounce instead of destroy.  This has occured becuase of Welder, not becuase bouncing is inherently superior.  

Therefore, anytime you talk about the strength of a prison component in a combo context, the analysis has to be: how effective is this card at preventing combo from finding and playing their answer?

I also call bullshit on those who keep repeatedly trying to suggest that decks like TPS, Control Slaver, Oath etc maul decks that establish first turn Trini locks because all they need to do is drop three lands in a row and then bust out their bounce/RnR/Flux. It is of course the case that regardless of how many copies of Rebuild you have, you WILL draw it in your opening ten. You will also not miss any land drops. Oh, and the deck that dropped Trini won't play anything else. And of couse, once you Rebuild, you are pretty much GUARANTEED to go off. Just like its pretty much guaranteed that Drain decks just slaughter anything on turn 2 by draining a 3cc spell and go off with Intuition and Thirst. Yeah, this happens ALL the time. People don't even play around Drain anymore. They'll just happily walk into it and get owned because Intuitions or Thirsts are joined at the hip to Drains. Oh, before we forget, Control Slaver gets 1st turn Welder, then 2nd turn Thirst into a Mindslaver pretty much all the time. Nevermind that it's essentially a three card combo.

While you are right to show that these examples that have been asserted are not 100%, you are wrong to suggest that these aren't the norm.  Mana Drain decks win after resolving drain far more often than the lose.  For that reason, your argument falls flat here.

Moreover, you are flat out wrong that anyone has asserted that any combo deck that draws Rebuild, etc flat out wins under Trinisphere.  I don't think anyone has actually asserted that.  What has been aserted is that the tools that combo has to answer Trinisphere are sufficiently powerful that they can make these decks have favorable matchups overall.  They increase the probability that turn one Trinisphere will not be game.  But they also make any play other than turn one trinisphere going first significantly weaker, such that you can actually have a legitimate claim at having a favorable matchup.  Particularly when you consider that many of these decks run Force of Will, something that must not be dropped from the analysis.  

Once again, it is a matter of degree.  We may not common speak in these degrees - but we aren't doing so out of ignorance, but simplicity.  If every time I analyzed any particular matchup in a sketch form I tried to explain the nuances and variations on play orders, it would consume my post such that it would be useless to read.  You can show that we are oversimplifying, but I admit it.  That does not remove the validity of my claims or the force of my arguments when I am well aware of what I am doing and am doing so for clarity, not to obfuscate.  

OK, I'm digressing, but I think all this theoretical nonsense is starting to be a tad bit misleading. The environment is far more interesting and interactive than theory or the notion of a "fundamental turn" would suggest. From my perspective, we are getting too wrapped up in statistical analyses. I really don't see much of a problem with this current environment.

I agree that the format is far more interesting and interactive than a) theory, b) the card pool, c) the top 8s, or even the fundamnetal turn suggests.  But I don't think we are getting to wrapped up in statistical analysis.  In fact, I don't think we have even gone far enough.  If there is a problem with our statitiscal analysis - the problem is that we can't all agree on what the proper cutoffs should be.  I may say that distortion is 16 copies per top 8 for three months in a dispersed geographic area.  If that is wrong, that is a matter for debate - a debate that has not been sufficiently engaged.  I have tried to start a dialogue in my thread on the restricted list in the Open forum, but few people have taken me up on my hard questions.  If I am drawing the wrong conclusions, its not hte data that is lying, but my interpretation of it.  

I have just one issue, and that is with a specific card that, upon resolution turn 1, says "you are at my mercy bitch, and you better hope that I don't follow up with any business spell over the next three turns - maybe more if you can't muster 3 straight land drops, which better be basics/fetches". Like I said many times before, no card should have this power turn 1. I don't remotely buy into the claims that Trini is so easily beaten, as people are trying to make it seem. In their delusional fantasies, they always have the perfect mix of cards to not only overcome the Trini but actually "go off", while their Trini-wielding opponent merely twiddles his thumbs and does nothing.

I played in a tournament yesterday. I was involved in many exciting, skill-intensive cerebral battles. My only losses? I lost on turn 1 to Trini with business back up (gee what a surprise) twice. Gee, how stupid - to be playing some amazing magic, full of reversals of fortune and maximization of opportunities generated through skillful and deliberate play, and then to be shut down by something so randomly retarded like that.

The problem I have with arguments that aren't based upon objective data  in top 8s is that they are subjective, by and large.  Looking at your claims, I have to filter them through what I perceive is your preference set.  I know you play Dragon and enjoy playing Dragon.  But let's be honset, Dragan is a deck that, undisrupted, winse the game on turn two or three.  Therefore, any claim that a deck shouldn't win on turn one necessarily bolsters your deck of choice.  Your example suggests the very reason we need trinisphere: it was your only losses.  Therefore, it has some role in keeping you and your broken combo deck in check.  

Moreover, your deck is much less eqipped to deal with Trinisphere if it has resolved on turn one.  You have FOW, but you have so few blue cards that without activating your draw engine, you are probably as likely not to have any blue card as you are.  Second, you run no Wasteland - the second and probably most imporatnt tool against Turn one Trinisphere.  Therefore, it is much easier for you to make the snide remarks about "delusional fantasies."   I just want everyone else reading your post and this thread to see the truth about where you are coming from.  Hopefully my comments here shed important light on that.

So what about the argument against getting rid of this abomination of a card:

1. Trini is integral to stopping combo
2. Trini makes Workshop playable

Argument #1 is a fantasy not based in reality. In metas where Workshop is not popular, combo is hardly dominating. TURN 1 combo cannot punch through. So how is Trini integral to keeping combo in check? For example, at Waterbury Meandeck SX had extreme difficulties in dealing with the rest of the field - did they even have to contend with 1st turn Trinis an appreciable amount of time? There are plenty of tools in the environment that are sufficient in containing the combo beast to significant levels. Furthermore, according to the "experts", Trini packing decks are annihilated by combo such as TPS and Deathlong, just on the phenomenal strength of 3 land drops followed by Rebuild/Hurkyl's Recall. Wow, so does Trini stop anything at all these days? It seems so ridiculously easy to play around, so why is it considered such a sacred cow all of a sudden?

Again, you have distorted the argument.  It isn't that Trinisphere is integral to STOPPING combo, but that diversity is imporatnt because it applies pressure in a way that can't be ignored.  If Combo didn't have to worry about Trinisphere, it could devote a much greater proportion of its resources to dealing with Control - a position that would make it more powerful in the environment.  In addition, Trinisphere does indeed make the Prison and Aggro-Prison matches significantly harder.  So it isn't that Trinisphere is integral to stopping combo, but it does place an irreplacable burden on combo that must be deatl with.  No other threat is equal to the task.  As a result, the environment is much more balanced and healthy than it otherwise woudl be.

And what about argument #2? While the numbers might suggest that Trinisphere upped the number of Shop decks in the top 8s and might have made them more "competitive", there are some conflicting arguments that I keep hearing. So many are screaming for Workshop's head (for reasons that we are all aware of at this point), and yet for many it's just one card that is making the Shop archetypes *playable*??  WTF? So on the one hand people would rather restrict Workshop than Trini, but on the other hand Trini shouldn't be restricted because it would weaken Shop to the point of unviability? I appreciate that these conflicting arguments are coming from two different sets of players, but still, this is ridiculous. I challenge the contention that Workshop is untenable without Trini. There is essentially the suggestion that without a very early Trinisphere, Stax is totally crap as an archetype. However, given the fact that Stax only gets a turn 1 Trini that matters 20% of the time (50% die roll, and 40% of getting the right combination of cards), are you people suggesting that Trini somehow makes the deck viable? On 20%? No.

Actually yes.  In the process of straw manning the opposinig argument you missed the fact that its a threshold question.  Mishra's Workshop decks need not just a sufficiently powerful turn one lock component, they also need a critical mass of sufficiently powerful cards.  Like I said, it's a threshold question.  Before Trinisphere and Crucible, Mishra's Workshop prison simply could not hack it.  In fact, Trinisphere alone wasn't enough to get the Workshop decks to their current position in the environment.  Crucible was the threshold card that pushed Workshop into the tier one.  Without Trinisphere, Workshops will remain tier two for the forseeable future.  

Some people are confused about what they want in regards to restriction Workshop or Trinisphere - but sometimes people just use the two interchangably to signal their distaste for what Workshop does.  I see that as a non-issue, really.

Finally, as I said in the opening, decks have evolved to understand and appreciate the 3Sphere threaet.  If you remove that, they will have all the potent answers that have been developed but Workshop decks will have a significantly decreased threat power.  As a result, it is, I'm sorry to say it, absurdity to say that Workshops won't be worse off if 3sphere is restricted.

I do not beleive that aggro should be viable unless it has a combo finish. Minibeatz is only played becuase of budget constraints. Such decks are not, nor will they ever be, guininely good Vintage decks.

But we're learning what an underrepresented piece of the 3 leaves us with.  It was underrepresented before, Trinisphere has just made it ~3 times worse.

I honestly have no idea what you are saying here.  And if you think that non-workshop aggro is viable, its probably becuase you are playing hate.dec instead of an actual aggro deck.  

The real metagame triangle or quandrangle is: Fish type decks, Combo, Workshop, and Control-Combo.  Anything else is just an aberration.   Remember, the Control decks that have evolved to compete against Combo and Workshop are basically control decks with a hybrid finish: Oath, Control Slaver and Tog.  They combo you out.  How can bad budget aggro decks really compete against this?

[Elric]

The problem I have with arguments that aren't based upon objective data  in top 8s is that they are subjective, by and large.  Looking at your claims, I have to filter them through what I perceive is your preference set.  I know you play Dragon and enjoy playing Dragon.  But let's be honset, Dragan is a deck that, undisrupted, winse the game on turn two or three.  Therefore, any claim that a deck shouldn't win on turn one necessarily bolsters your deck of choice.  Your example suggests the very reason we need trinisphere: it was your only losses.  Therefore, it has some role in keeping you and your broken combo deck in check.  

Moreover, your deck is much less eqipped to deal with Trinisphere if it has resolved on turn one.  You have FOW, but you have so few blue cards that without activating your draw engine, you are probably as likely not to have any blue card as you are.  Second, you run no Wasteland - the second and probably most imporatnt tool against Turn one Trinisphere.  Therefore, it is much easier for you to make the snide remarks about "delusional fantasies."   I just want everyone else reading your post and this thread to see the truth about where you are coming from.  Hopefully my comments here shed important light on that.

To be fair, even "objective" top 8s contain a lot of subjective meaning.  Consider, for example, Meandeck's result in the tournaments listed in your article.  Meandeck made 8 top 8s from what I can remember (Stax, Mono U, Doomsday, 4 Oath, Meandeck Tendrils).  Of these top 8 decks, only one of them involved Welder (Stax).  Of the other 40 decks in the sample, 26 of them used Welder.  That is, 65% of non-Meandeck top 8s used Welder and 12.5% of Meandeck top 8s used Welder.  

You had 16 decks based around Workshop in your article.  Of these, 14 used Welders.  If Workshop had half the number of spots that it did now, there would be less Welder decks per tournament.  Unless most of the Workshop top 8 spots were taken by Slaver decks, this would be a significant reduction.  

When you point to a tournament like Gencon as an example of what happens in a high powered metagame, you should be really aware that 2/3 of the Welders played were used in Workshop decks.  If you really think that tournament in indicative of what future tournaments will look like, it is hard to simultaneously assert that Workshop decks will suffer a large decline.  

Besides the tournaments in New England (one tournament the largest tournament in the data set and the other tournament the second smallest), not a single tournament had more than 2 decks with Welder but not Workshop (ie., Slaver/Belcher).  Plus, Waterbury, with 200 people, only put 16 Welders in top 8 while Vintage Evolution, with 64 players, put 20 Welders in the top 8.  

Here’s my argument about a proposed tournament size correlation with the number of Welders in the top 8.  I do not think that a higher number of players in and of itself could explain any significant amount of variation in the number of Welders in top 8 (because the number of rounds goes up very slowly compared to the number of players: 33-64 players already gets you 6 rounds but it takes 129-256 players to get 8 rounds)  .

The only things that could explain why there are more Welders at larger tournaments are:
More players (though proportionally of the same quality as at smaller tournaments) bring Welder to a tournament at big tournaments (so the top 8 simply reflects this).  This could be due to players simply owning more cards and being able to make Welder decks.  Without any assumptions about changing player skill or card availability, though, it becomes hard to see why Welder decks would show up that much more at larger events (since this would require that Welder decks were either overplayed for no particular reason at large events or underplayed for no particular reason at smaller events).  

Another explanation could be that the “Good Players” (who almost all play Welder and do better because the combination of Welder and “Good Player skill” is particularly effective) make up a significantly higher percentage of the field at larger tournaments (compared to smaller tournaments).  I am not saying that either of these later two arguments is correct; I just found first number of players completely insufficient to explain the number of Welders in top 8.

[virtual]

virtual wrote:
Darksteel became legal late in Feb: 2004

March 20th.

They become legal in Constructed on the following days:
·   Darksteel         February 20, 2004

Was it delayed?  I seem to remember something like that, but I'm not sure.  

Reference: http://www.wizards.com/dci/downloads/03-04_Magic_FR.doc

Dr. Sylvan:

So you've proved that we can't draw a conclusion on the casuality of this change, but we can identify a change.  

Can you use your better numbers to graph how many non-WS/non-FoW decks there are in top 8's over time?  I tried contacting you to discuss this, but you weren't around...  Whether I'm right, I think at least we're losing viability for non-Workshop, non-blue decks.  Some more vocal members think that this is just fine, but I tend to try to remember that there are more than 2 colors (blue and artifact) in magic.  I want to place that blame for this trend somewhere, and Trinisphere seems right.  The numbers don't seem to indicate that combo was the cause.  Perhaps it was trinisphere alone, or a combination of trinisphere+ crucible, or some other factor that showed up with  or around the time of Darksteel.  

The real metagame triangle or quandrangle is: Fish type decks, Combo, Workshop, and Control-Combo. Anything else is just an aberration. Remember, the Control decks that have evolved to compete against Combo and Workshop are basically control decks with a hybrid finish: Oath, Control Slaver and Tog. They combo you out. How can bad budget aggro decks really compete against this?

Madness and FCG aren't really bad budget aggro.  Also, I tend to think that hate.dec should be at least viable even though not tier 1.

I agree that the metagame has turned into the aforementioned "quadrangle" (square?).  Maybe the result of fish-type decks being in lower numbers right now are because not only does WS have trinisphere, and big fat men, but Control-Combo has adapted to have a better game against it than before.  Oath or fat men.  I don't think this quadrangle was an accurate representation of the meta before trinisphere though. Something disappeared at that time...  whether this is good or bad is left as an exercise to the reader.


Force of Will still is the "glue" that keeps Type 1 together.  However, I believe that decks building should be able to begin without automatically going, 4x force of will or 4x workshop.  Some of you (many of you) may disagree.  Now, given that blue has the big 3, forces (and other counterspells), and since

"drawing cards is winning"

blue has been the best color in magic for some time.  I think that shouldn't preclude decks that don't play blue from having a fighting chance.   Yes, you can play workshop instead, that is a given.  However, in reality, you don't have many other choices these days.  Now, I think Trinisphere is a brilliant card when it hasn't caused a turn 0 win.  (And I own workshops so there's no bias there).   I do think that workshop decks having trinisphere allows them to play the same game as turn-0 combo decks 20% of the time.  That game goes "FoW or No?".  
The other 80% of the time, the decks themselves are strong, and Trinisphere is a solid maindeck addition to their gameplan.  Now, given the entrance of DShoals into the meta, a restriction may not be necessary to cause trinisphere to be less of a problem.  However, if DShoals is the answer, that seems to make non-blue decks even worse than they are.  I'm not sure what can be done, maybe it's just the essence of type 1.

-Virtual

[Dr. Sylvan]

The date thing is my mistake---no Trinispheres appeared in my February report, so I misremembered events.

Whether I'm right, I think at least we're losing viability for non-Workshop, non-blue decks.  Some more vocal members think that this is just fine, but I tend to try to remember that there are more than 2 colors (blue and artifact) in magic.

I'm in the middle of another article about white right now. :)

December-January
(1386 land)
(Out of 4992)
2128 blue - 42.6%
1383 artifact - 27.7%
555 black - 11.1%
482 red - 9.7%
178 white - 3.6%
157 green - 3.2%
109 gold - 2.2% (most are blue)

This is egregiously bad. There is no way for the picture to end up balanced in Vintage, but there is also no reason for it to be this insane. Blue is well beyond the combined strength of the other four colors combined. Duress+YWill is almost a third of black. R&R+Welder is a third of red. This is not merely an aesthetic issue---when different colors can compete, more different approaches are available to the metagame and more strategies have the possibility of success. Far more players are satisfied in such a situation, and metagame balance is more likely.

As for finding non-FoW, non-Workshop counts, it's not especially difficult. However, the reason I didn't straight up do that was that the highly green Madness decks often also include FoW decks, and I was trying to catch aggro. Mishra's Factory was selected to capture Fish decks, while Negator was not selected because that would be almost entirely Belcher. Things are not as they appear in the world of highly hybridized archetypes, and it's important to keep that in mind.

I want to place that blame for this trend somewhere, and Trinisphere seems right.  The numbers don't seem to indicate that combo was the cause.  Perhaps it was trinisphere alone, or a combination of trinisphere+ crucible, or some other factor that showed up with  or around the time of Darksteel.

Elric's got a great point that I didn't really clarify before, namely that Trinisphere may be what makes Crucible affect aggro, rather than CoW itself. It's pretty much impossible to find out which piece of the puzzle is causing a specific pressure when there's so many variables, but we can say what was going on with only one of them and what changed when the second entered the metagame.

To dig a little deeper into the combo-removes-aggro thesis, though, we'd have to separate by metagame and try to isolate factors. Considering Southern Europe separately you'd see Control Madness appearing less in recent months, and it might even be caused by Oath, a Mana Drain deck. In America, Dark Ritual may have a closer relationship to declining aggressive decks than it does overall. However, in both cases we'd have correlations between the appearance of multiple closely-timed factors and the end result: less aggro, less of the nonblue colors.

[Purple Hat]

Dr. Sylvan wrote:

December-January
(1386 land)
(Out of 4992)
2128 blue - 42.6%
1383 artifact - 27.7%
555 black - 11.1%
482 red - 9.7%
178 white - 3.6%
157 green - 3.2%
109 gold - 2.2% (most are blue)

Wizards simply needs to print more good/broken green or white cards.  The only truely broken green and white cards I can think of are Balance , Oath and Crop Rotation, and rotation is quite a stretch.  Survival is pretty good and mongrel is pretty good but I wouldn't really say that either is broken.  Maybe Beserk?  The real problem here is that as wizards has realigned the color wheel white lost both cheap creature removal (StP) and artifact/enchantment removal (disenchant) and gained...well white appears to have gained suck.  But it did gain suck in the form of more 2/2 creatures for WW, so that's a plus.  Green got madness and naturalize/oxidize but while those cards are good they just aren't enough when compared to the utility of such cards as Rack and Ruin, REB, Welder, Wheel, etc.  I'm not even gonna get started on the blue cards.  the reason no one plays white is that wizard's idea of a powerful white card is the white Shoal, and honestly if I'm playing lots of pitchable, high casting cost white spells I'm probably losing alot.  It's a shame but wizards really needs to toss us some cards here if they expect us to start using these colors.  The card pool for white and green is just incredibly weak as well as shallow.  As power levels go up people are going to have to shy away from these colors simply because they NEVER (with the exception of balance and oath) let you do anything powerful enough.

So instead of restricting some things so we can all play bad green and white cards to our hearts content why don't we lobby wizards to throw us some decent white and green cards?

hale

[virtual]

As for finding non-FoW, non-Workshop counts, it's not especially difficult. However, the reason I didn't straight up do that was that the highly green Madness decks often also include FoW decks, and I was trying to catch aggro.

This is a difficult call.  Those green-blue versions almost go along the route of fish when they play, so I don't know if I'd label them as pure aggro.  Their critters are bigger than fish, but they still play like aggro control depending on how they draw.  

I'm trying to assess the cause of death of "pure" aggro, or aggro-combo (without the blue control element).  It's been recent I believe.  It was announced dead with chalice, but now it's deader than dead.  It is most assuredly a combination of factors, one of which (how much it contributes is unprovable) is Trinisphere.  I stand by my original statement, but I'm tired of arguing it, being that whehter I'm right or wrong, it won't affect March 1st.  

So instead of restricting some things so we can all play bad green and white cards to our hearts content why don't we lobby wizards to throw us some decent white and green cards?

Not only make them powerful, but give them a prohibitive casting cost that causes you to devote significantly to that color (as exalted angel did).  

Oath isn't really green with how it's played.  My team's current oath build uses green exclusively for Oath, and sideboarded oxidize, and No other reason.  

-Virtual