Any real chanes in the global metagame, Post Trinsisphere?

[LotusHead]

I am part of the Northern Calirfornia T1 population, and recently, we have had our own "Power 9 Tourney Series". In this case, 9 tournies with an individual piece of power as the 1st place prize (store credit for top4/top8. Hey, anything is better than nothing).

Well, the first tourney was under the cloud of Trinisphere/Crucible which  had to force the T1 community to deal with.  And we did. Trinisphere was restricted in T1 anyways. Good or bad? Right or Wrong? Vintage can deal with it.

Anyways, the Post-Trinisphere Tourney (which I sorta scrubbed out on technically) had a metagame seemingly like last months metagame...just no 1st turn Trinispheres.

Has T1 evolved to a point where most decks can deal with (for the most part...) 1st turn Trinisphere, but even with restrictions gone, the meta remains just the same?

Is there anything different to today's Metagame than say, last months?

I was hoping to get a flood of tourney reports from all over the world spouting Combo Hell or Anti-Combo Coups or something other than "Same ol' deck last months wins 1st again"

For the record, the last tourney I went to had I think 4 Oath decks in Top 8 (out of 32 total), and Control Slaver/Oath split for 1st.

Has the restriction of Trinisphere impacted Vintage in any way other than forcing us to play basics? Or has it only made Magic only "more fun" as Wizards has said?

(this is stuff on my mind for the last 2 weeks...I thought somebody would bring this up...)

Your thoughts, please...

[JuJu]

Control decks that were too slow are now viable. Combo hasn't changed much. They could go through a tsphere pretty easily actually. It was chalice+tsphere that screwed them over.

[Mark_Story]

I know that in toronto, Fish has made a huge resurgence, winning one of the most recent tourneys.  It's not just U/R fish that is doing well, U/W fish has also been making a number of appearances.  With trinisphere gone, the little fishes can compete.  combo has never been a widely played archtype in toronto, and only a few players consistently play it and do well.

[Lunar]

Hey lotus, I myself was dissapointed with the turnout of Eudemonia 2, 4 oath decks and 2 CS is just plain bad.  I unfortunatly did not get to attend, so I do not know what the overall meta was, but that top 8 seems to me to be pretty representative of what it will be like in our area for a little while (untill people start saying, hey instead of ALSO playing oath or CS I should play what beats those decks, which I dont see happening soon in the bay area)  Yes there will be a few guys running silly hate decks (team oakland   ) and there will be some interesting combo (yourself included lotus) I will probably try running 7/10 again for the time being, I really like that deck, and I was playing it before trini got restricted (it really doesnt lose anything)

The thing that suprised me was to not see any full fledged combo coming through.  I simply figured that there would be an overwhelming number of combo decks there last week so some would make it through sheer numbers.  I will be watching the next SCG tournie closely to see how things go back east to see if we have just a really anoying meta or if it will be much the same all over.

Take a look at the recent results in our area

Shortly before Trini getting restricted.

Who's On First PSA Qualifyer:

#1 Oath
#2 Riddler (me   )
#3 Tog
#4 Stax
I forget the rest but it was 4 different decks I think

Eudemonia 1:

#1 Salvager Oath (you   )
#2 CS
#3 TPS
#4 Oath
#5 3CC (Kevin   )
#6 Landstill (I think)
I forget the rest and I am pretty sure this was also 2 different decks

then after trinisphere goes we get

Eudemonia 2:

#1 Oath
#2 CS
#3 Oath
#4 CS
#5 Landstill
#6 Oath
#7 Cerebral Assasin
#8 Oath

It appears to me that really what happened is that losing trini really didnt effect combo, it simply allowed control to dominate again because they really dont have to worry about mulligans to hit a FoW to stop first turn trini, which hoses them as bad as it hoses any other deck.  IS it a good thing that control seems to be the winner with the loss of trinisphere? I dunno, its kind of boring to see that many of the same deck in the top spots (CA player is dissapointing for not doing better than 7th against those decks   )  

We will have to see how it goes on the 17th for E3, hopefully people will pull their collective heads out of their arse and play something to stop these decks. (I know I will, down with control    )

What I think it comes down to is that losing trinisphere will really only make for small meta changes, nothing revolutionary (at least until new sets come out) I still think it was a bad idea for the DCI to restrict the card in the name of it not being fun.  Stax and decks like 5/3 were really only dominant in certain areas, and not anymore so overall than decks like Oath and CS have been (yet I dont see the DCI saying welder or intuition or oath, should go)  Trinisphere was to me just a card to have in the back of your mind always, a fact of life, if you will, of the T1 format.  When you murder a deck that wasnt ALWAYS taking 4 of the top 8 spots, then your really not affecting the overall meta that much.  If you look at the results I posted above you will notice that there were only 2 decks running trinisphere making top 8 recently anyways in our area.  E1 didnt have a single trinisphere in the top 8 I dont think (maybe 1 if brent, pox_reborn, made top 8 with stax, sorry I dont remember)  I never came into our tournies thinking I need to have something to kill trinisphere or im gonna lose. (although I played riddler that ran them  :lol: )

The meta for the whos on first tourny was something like

7 Oath (2 or 3 were your salvagers builds tho I think)
5 CS
4 Stax (1 might have been aggro, 1 was 5c, 1 was U/R I didnt get to see the other)
2 Tog
6 Doomsday
1 DeathLong (sorry I refuse to call it MeanDeath)
1 Riddler
1 Sligh
and then some random decks to round out the 32 player field

With a meta like this was stax something that was even warping our area anyhow?  There were only 5 decks out of 32 that ran trinisphere.  Chances were that you might not play against a trinisphere deck all day anyways.  I actually DID play against 2 stax decks (David Ochoa round 4 playing UR, and Brent In the top 4 playing I think 5c stax)  Which means that (where is a calculator or philip stanton when you need one) something like 75% of the field never had to think twice about trinisphere all day, it might as well have been restricted anyways.  

My friends and I (sorry not really a "team") have been wondering much the same things as you lotus.  What WILL the meta look like now that trini is gone.  I think it will look almost the same.  Take E1, you lose a couple of trinisphere decks (I think I only saw 2 stax builds and no aggro builds) and replace them with the 2 7/10 decks that me and tony brought.  No apparent change.  Then at E2 you probably saw - the 4 stax decks and +4 Oath/CS decks.  I would still probably run 7/10 if I was able to go to that last one (with some fun tech)

My primary question seemed to be answered though.  What will win? The combo decks that 8 bazillion people will be running, or    the decks that beat up on combo (namely the best control decks around).  The answer was apparently the decks that take advantage of people trying to abuse combo now that trini is gone. (I personally liked my matchup against stax when I was playing Belcher, the stax player HAD to have trinisphere all the time or it didnt matter at all)

Well ill end it there, sorry if I rambled on a bit  

[forests failed you]

In my opinion Oath is the deck to beat right now, especially in 10 proxy events.  (Where the issue of 'having' power is not an issue).  The deck in general is difficult to hate out, it has a combo finish, and it is so simple to play that even awful players can figure out how to cast Oath of Druids with Force of Will backup.  Combo on the other hand is difficult to play, and therefore tends to only get played by a select number of good players.  

Anyways, right now Mana Drain rules the format:  either play it, or play something that is fast enought to beat it.

[virtual]

With Trinisphere gone, many more things become viable.

 The metagame won't change overnight however, as most people find it easier to let other people do the work + then they netdeck the best list.  Since no one knows what's really best right now, they just go with their old favorites, which should be solid decks if they were solid before Trini was gone.  

Expect it to take a month or two until a large metagame shift is seen.  It will be evident in small advances, but only in hindsight will it be obvious how big of an effect this had.  

Aggro-control and aggro are both once again viable archetypes.  Combo may be more powerful, but we'll see if it shifts towards dominance.  

New deck design is very difficult right now, as the metagame needs to develop as a whole to reach its optimal state.  What I mean by this is that if you take 5 giant leaps and come up with "the best deck" that the format can handle, it might not be the best deck for the format because the metagame hasn't yet incurred the appropriate shifts for that deck to be dominant.  

With trinisphere gone (though crucible is still around), people can start once again to go more crazy with their mana bases, and hence more decks will be viable.  

In general, I predict large changes in the global metagame, but as I stated before, not overnight.

[LizardCZ]

Combo decks are now a lot more powerful that once were, thanks to the restriction of Trinisphere and the development of new fast archetypes like Meandeck SX.

The fact is that those decks are not easy to play, you can make a lot of mistakes playing fast combo decks due to their huge amount of options they offers to you. That is what overwhelm most of the inexperienced players that try to play combo in a tournament without playtesting sufficiently.

In the other hand Oath is a easy deck to play. Oath and other easy-to-play decks will experiment a grow in their play numbers, whereas fast combo numbers will remain the same. The main change that would happen to fast combo is that it will perform better in tournaments than before the restriction of trinisphere.

[Wollblad]

Last week, there were two large Vintage tournaments here in Gothenburg in Sweden. Before, the metagame was dominated by Stax, TPS and Slaver. Now there were virtually only combo like TPS a few Oath, lots of Fish and only one or two Stax out of 63 and 62 competitors. The situation looked like this much because poeples sideboards were full of Stax hate leaving TPS and other combo free to rampage the metagame. Stax might come back, but it has to find new forms.

Top 8 for the first tournament was:
1. Placebo Blue
2. Rector Tendrils
3. Clamp/Palinchron/Witness-combo :shock:
4. TPS
5. Control Slaver
6. 4c control
7. TPS
8. Oath

The second top 8 looked like:
1. Dragon
2. Oath
3. Mono brown aggro
4. Landstill
5. Rector
6. TPS
7. MonoU
8. Reanimator

The new meta game is not yet stable, but combo seems to dominate.

[Gabethebabe]

Top 8 for the first tournament was:
1. Placebo Blue

WTF is Placebo Blue? (and don´t call me lazy, I did a TMD search and only found Placebo in some music-related thread)

[Wollblad]

@Gabethebabe
Sorry, there should perhaps been some kind of explanation. I don't know where the name comes from, but here is at least the deck list:
1Platinum Angel
1Morphling
3 Back To Basics
1 Tinker
4 Thirst For Knowledge
4 Mana Drain
1 Rushing River
1 Echoing Truth
4 Impulse
4 Mana Leak
1 Fact Or Fiction
4 Force Of Will
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Chalice Of The Void
2 Powder Keg
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
8 Island
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Library Of Alexandria
4 Flooded Strand

[Sagath]

Soooooooo...its Mono-U with some random cards thrown in, and a new name!

No hate to the europeans (much <3), but damn you guys are crazy  

[pox_reborn]

With condsideration in mind to eudomia and whos's on first metagame scene I am thinking along the lines of TPS builds of combo to be the ones to suceed in these metas possibly. TPs has been known for its strong matchup against control and was the combo deck most capable of dealing with prison in trinisphere era.

Faster combo decks will have a hard time fighting control decks with force of will. Meandeck tendrils may be claimed to be able to fight through force of will but sometimes that costs a sacrifice in resources that gives control a window of opportunity to get 2 blue open. TPS style seems the way to go. Either gifts or draw 7 style (I'm leaning with gifts)

Sensie sensei may also be a viable alternative but I havn't tested that deck so I wouldn't know yet.

[Wollblad]

Soooooooo...its Mono-U with some random cards thrown in, and a new name!

No hate to the europeans (much <3), but damn you guys are crazy  

Some people need to get this explained really carefully. The top 8 i Sweden before this was like 4 Stax, 1 Control Slaver, 2 Combo and 1 random. Now, there wasn't a single Stax in any of the top 8. That at least what I call a new meta game.

The full lists for the top 8 decks of the first tournmanet are posted here.

[Ender]

Wow, placebo blue has only 2 win conditions, morphling and plats. Not even the loveable blue snakes we all hate aren't there.

[Necrologia]

Faster combo decks will have a hard time fighting control decks with force of will. Meandeck tendrils may be claimed to be able to fight through force of will but sometimes that costs a sacrifice in resources that gives control a window of opportunity to get 2 blue open. TPS style seems the way to go. Either gifts or draw 7 style (I'm leaning with gifts)

Combo learned to deal with Force of Will like a decade ago. Competent combo players can easily beat control by some combination of Duressing their counters away, going off before they have UU up or simply throwing too much at them at once. Sure, there are hands with Lotus, 5 moxen and Windfall, but keeping that hand against control is asking to get destroyed by force.

TPS's strongest matchup is and will always be STAX. Rebuild is just that good. Without Trinisphere, most people who used to play the deck are trying something else. Is the deck still viable? Sure, but until people finally take those Rack and Ruins out of their SBs, I don't think STAX is going to show up in numbers. And without a lot of shops, I just don't think TPS is going to be the deck to play.

If I had to play a combo deck right now I'd be running Deathlong, or Sensei Sensei. Both decks are solid once you've really put some play time in with em. Outside of that, maybe some slightly janky Rector build could show up.

[Moxlotus]

The really good playres who always won with Stax will just win with other decks, or continue with Stax.  It is really hard to judge that accurately though now because in the US there hasn't been a major tournament post restriction.

[forests failed you]

I think that there is a global metagame, at least when one attends a large enough scale tournament.   One would expect to see these decks, (in no particular order) at the top tables.  

Control Slavery, Oath, TPS, Stax, 3/4CC, CA, Deathlong (and other fast combo decks Meandeck Tendrils or Belcher), Dragon, MonoU, random aggro control stratgies (fish or birdshit), Aggro Shop

Anyways, I think that the first four decks are the ones one would expect to play, whereas the rest are still very strong decks, but for whatever reason (playskill required to pilot or assumed bad matchups) appear with less frequency at large scale tournaments.  

However, to answer LotusHead's initial question more directly, I wouldn't expect the metagame to change significantly.  Even without Trinisphere, Stax is still and extremely potent deck at the moment and will still see signifcant play.  Especially in Chicigo, a region where there are a lot of Workshops.  If anything Oath and Slaver should maintain the status quo as the two top decks to beat, and perhaps people underestimating the appearance of Sphere of Resistence and Orb of Dreams will be gutsy and play Belcher, Doomsday, or the new turn one Tendrils deck.

Tier discussion deleted. That's been banned on TMD since forever.
-Jacob

[onelovemachine]

The metagame has changed.  It will continue to change.  We do not play in a format of 'pros.'  The bigger teams will innovate and improve upon existing decklists as well as try out some new stuff, but overall much will remain the same for awhile at least.

#3 Tog
#4 Stax

Decks that weren't viable will become viable, decks that were thought dead will resurface but it will all take time for things to settle.  If the first few tournaments after restriction hold no new info I am not surprised.  People are still working on their monsters.

[forests failed you]

Unlike Standard, Block, and even Extended, the Vintage format never rotates.  As a result of this fact existing archtypes tend to stick around longer.  Also the extremely high power level of certain cards (such as Mana Drain, Dark Ritual, and Mishra's Workshop) must be taken into account at all times when building new decks or retooling existing decks.   For the most part in Vintage the same decks stay around until something new gets printed and outdates an old build or concept.  

This is evidenced through 'tog taking over for Morphiling a few years ago, and Tendrils replacing Neo-Academy as the premier combo deck in the format.  The restriction of a card in Vintage doesn't tend to so much open up the door for new Archtypes, as it tends to give the other top decks to catch up and take their proper place of dominance in the format.  Mana Drain decks and fast combo-decks that beat Mana Drain decks both seem extremely strong right now.  I wouldn't be surprised to see a Oath V. Doomsday or Deathlong final matchup at Star City Chicigo next week.  Perhaps the reason there has been so much innovation in Vintage over the last year or so is that Mirrodin gave players a huge card pool of Type I worthy cards to experiement with.  But from my experience as a Vintage player (which goes way back) I would assert that the printing of new cards tends to create new stratagies, whereas the restriction of existing cards tends to only booster the strength of pre-existing archtypes.