Ongoing GenCon Vintage Results

[Phele]

So the deck played more than one copy of Tendrils together with Rebuild and Confidant: What's so new about this deck?

[Mr. Fantazy]

Maybe when we see the decklist we'll know. BHWC builds solid decks which are played by solid players, and we don't even want to get into JACO's pimpness factor.

I wouldn't be shocked to see some unexpected tech out of the list, though they may have just reworked a standard build. They are in my opinion one of the most underrated Vintage Teams around, most of which is due to the lack of high-end tournaments here on the West Side.

Congrat's to Travis and the rest of the Top 8.

Congrat's Nick on one helluva weekend!

-Shawn

[Methuselahn]

MoxPearl, the legacy runner up, is 3-0 with Oath.  That's all I know.

And he, Tom Lee, goes on to face Roland in the finals with Gamekeeper/Salvagers!  I'm pretty sure he wasn't running Oath.

[Imzakhor]

I went Tie/Tie/Win/Win/Loss/Drop with Loyal Retainers. I'm sure nobody cares except me, but I will post a tournament view about my 5 matches.

I probably could have stayed longer (probably should have) but the event was dragging. 5 rounds in 7+ hours is excruciating.

Congrats to the champion... It's nice to see so many different decks in T8. That painting looked great.

Cheers,


Imzy from Indy

[Smmenen]

So, I saw Arend playing very bizarre Slaver list, the MDG list, the two pitch longs, and Nick - who was playing a tendrils list he said was insprired by Becker's IT.

Paul Nicolo made top 8 with UWB fish - but he lsot int he first round to Vroman (Grante Shard FTW!).

I did not at all see an oath and I don't think an oath made top 8.  The other top 8 deck, I thought, was that italian guy playing a Ritual deck like TT confidant. 

Ahh, well that kind of clears it up. I heard from a couple of people that Oath made it, but I guess we'll see.

Nick's deck was inspired by something I thought up less than two weeks ago, and I gave him the idea last week and we built the deck this past week, with little testing. It had nothing to do with Intuition Tendrils (no Intuitions, Grim Tutors; multiple Tendrils). More just my thoughts on how to build a new deck that would be really good right now, and Nick goldfishing with it. He was probably just not trying to give anything about the deck away before GenCon ended. The premise is basically a few things:
1) If Dark Confidant stays in play for 2 turns or more in a Vintage combo deck, you will usually win.
2) Extract beats decks that run 1 Tendrils of Agony as their win condition, and I expect to see those in tons of sideboards, especially Fish variants, which should be more popular in a non-proxy environment. Same with Jester's Cap. Let's not lose to either of those cards.
3) Rebuild is really good, and in fact, much much better than Hurkyl's Recall. Let's play multiples of those, and if we have any combination of those and Tendrils, or multiple Tendrils, we'll just win.
4) Tendrils of Agony is really quite underrated. Against pretty much any deck, including combo mirrors, you can get off a mini-Tendrils to buy you more turns to ultimately just kill your opponent, either with another Tendrils or by turning Dark Confidant sideways.
5) The mana base of TPS is obviously the best, and the emergence of Pitch Long is a testament to this. Let's not lose to Wasteland please.

While I think Pitch Long is a brilliant deck, and one on my short list of decks to actually play with at a tournament, BHWC Tendrils certainly has its place in Vintage now.

Ok, time to clear up some things:

@ WW:  Arend's Slaver list is not at all like Kowals.

Arend had some Night's Whisper, but also cards like 2 Misdirection and Impulse as well as Strip Mine and Wastelands

1) Jaco that's true, but that doesn't make BOB good.  If Smokestack is in play for two turns, you usually win, but I'm not sure how good Stack is anymore either.

2) No it doesn't.  Almost every Long player knew to expect extract game two and sbs in another win condition.  Its just like people saying that T. Crypt beats Long.  It doesn't.  They just don't know what they are talking about.

3) again, I just don't agree.  Hurkyls' REcall is infy better against Uba STax since it only costs two (and 3 under 2Sphere).  Both cards are good, they have slghtly different roles and both should be run in most situations where either could be run.

4) Multiple Tendrils isn't very good, imo, unless you are two colors.  In that case, you can't run burning wish.

5) Pitch Long's mana base looks very little like TPS.  TPS ran 13+ lands.  Pitch Long runs a veyr light mana base of 11 lands - like Grim Long (although Becker and TK cut LED for another swamp, taking it to 12.  The piont is that Pitch Long's base is still importantly lighter than TPS ever was. 

TPS is completely obsolete by the raw power of Pitch Long and the speed of Grim Long, imo.  It's place in the metagame is squeezed out.  ALthough the limitation of Grim Tutor - the limited quantities of Grim Tutor in existance may cause many others to play TPS anyway.

Also at all:  I will upload the video sometime this week.  If someone can host it, let me know and I'll transfer the video via AIM to taht person. 

You'll notice whe you watch it that the finals match was completely determined by Yawgmoth's Will.   

[moxpearl]

Top 8

Vroman - UbaStax
Mastriano - Pitch Long
Arend - CS
Paul Nicolo - UBW Fish
TK - Pitch Long
MoxPearl - Oath
Travis Spero - Meandeck Gifts
Nick T - BHWC Tendrils

Quote from: FishyFellow on Yesterday at 09:20:52 AM
MoxPearl, the legacy runner up, is 3-0 with Oath.  That's all I know.


And he, Tom Lee, goes on to face Roland in the finals with Gamekeeper/Salvagers!  I'm pretty sure he wasn't running Oath.

I did not top 8 in the Vintage.  I did play Oath, more GWS style, but with the amount of Long at the tourney, not having null rods in my main spelled doom for me.  I started 3-0 and then proceeded to scrub out as I ran into combo.  Ironically, I go to GenCon for the Vintage Championships with the Legacy Champs more of an afterthought, and then I scrub in the former, top 2 in the latter.  In any case, that was my first time at GenCon and it was quite fun playing in the tourneys and meeting everyone.  I am so sleep deprived and dazed right now, as I'm sure everyone else is.

I played in the midnight $500 Vintage but after losing to Dan Carp in the sixth round and ending 3-2-1, I ran off to the airport to get home.  Anyone know who won/split that?  I think two unpowered decks might have made the top 8.

[yespuhyren]

I am just extremely curious about the build of UbaStax that Vroman T4'ed with.

[nickvos]

Just woke up after having played literally 24 hours of magic.  The top 8 of the $500 Vintage event did include 2 unpowered decks, including Ray Robilliard,  TK (I think), Myself, and one of the other Legacy Champs top 8ers.
We chose to split in the top 4 as I felt very tired and did not want to play one more second of combo. Thanks to everyone for the inquiries to our Tendrils list, which I mentioned was based on a concept from IT; mainly, their sideboarding strategy versus control. Congrats to Travis on the win, our games were fun and well fought, I only wish I might have drawn a little more gas in the second two games.

oh yeah, lou is the Fucking man!

[JACO]

1) Jaco that's true, but that doesn't make BOB good.  If Smokestack is in play for two turns, you usually win, but I'm not sure how good Stack is anymore either.

I've read your stance on Dark Confidant multiple times, and frankly just don't agree with it. From what you've written, Confidant slows down combo, in Grim Long style decks. This isn't a Grim Long style deck, and I'll agree that it's not good in Grim Long, because it just gums up your hand most of the time when you are essentially trying to go off in one turn. But in these other style Tendrils decks (TT Confidant, TPS w/Confidant, BHWC Tendrils), it WILL win you the game if left unchecked. From what I've seen, European and Northern California results will confirm this. Confidant is strong against Mana Drain decks, and is also very strong against Workshop decks.

2) No it doesn't.  Almost every Long player knew to expect extract game two and sbs in another win condition.  Its just like people saying that T. Crypt beats Long.  It doesn't.  They just don't know what they are talking about.

That's funny, because in our deck we sided in Extract against a number of combo decks, and beat them with it. While it might not always beat them, it's disrputive enough to usually let us win.

3) again, I just don't agree.  Hurkyls' REcall is infy better against Uba STax since it only costs two (and 3 under 2Sphere).  Both cards are good, they have slghtly different roles and both should be run in most situations where either could be run.

They certainly do have different roles, but Rebuild is miles better, coming from a TPS background. I'll agree to disagree with you, but here's the main reason. Rebuild lets you ignore anything Workshop-based decks do, because you can take time to develop your mana base, and then bounce all of their hate, AND bounce your brown mana, which usually is enough for an easy storm based kill. Rebuild does the same against Chalice. While you have to waste your Hurkyl's Recall against your opponent's Chalice or Darksteel Colossus, I can Rebuild everything and then up my own storm count with my brown mana, which is especially potent with all of the Tendrils. The double duty that it performs is why it's better, to me.

4) Multiple Tendrils isn't very good, imo, unless you are two colors.  In that case, you can't run burning wish.

I spoke to Nick about an hour ago, and he'll attest to this. Multiple Tendrils are underrated, because it gets around hate, and is very surprising to most opponents, and actually can help tempo-wise. Even if I get off a small to midsize Tendrils, it's sets me up for later in the game, is potent with Confidants attacking, and buys me more turns against opposing threats (I have more life, so usually I will have more turns).

5) Pitch Long's mana base looks very little like TPS.  TPS ran 13+ lands.  Pitch Long runs a veyr light mana base of 11 lands - like Grim Long (although Becker and TK cut LED for another swamp, taking it to 12.  The piont is that Pitch Long's base is still importantly lighter than TPS ever was.

The difference in count is usually one land, but the difference in reality is that the manabase is virtually Wasteland-proof. Aside from fetchland + Brainstorm goodness, that's the important thing. This is so much better and stable than a Gemstone Mine + City of Brass manabase. The rock solid manabase is the point, not quibbling about a land or two when you have 4 more Rituals in BHWC Tendrils and Grim Long than you do in a deck like TPS.

I played in the midnight $500 Vintage but after losing to Dan Carp in the sixth round and ending 3-2-1, I ran off to the airport to get home.  Anyone know who won/split that?  I think two unpowered decks might have made the top 8.

I just got off the phone with Nick Trudeau, and he said that there were 40+ people in the Saturday Midnight $500 event, and that he made Top 4 in that as well, splitting the $500 with Ray Robillard (iamfishman) of Waterbury fame, and two other people he didn't know/remember. So for those of you keeping score at home, Nick made the Top 8 of every tournament he attended this weekend. I don't remember domination like that since Rich Mattuzio's GenCon Dragon debut a few years ago, where he took Vintage by storm with his new (at the time) Dragon deck.

[PacmanXSA]

The two other T4 guys for the $500 event were my teamates Morgan and Shawn Cyr (TMD Dirty Hairy).  Morgan was running fish without a Lotus and a Sapphire and Shawn was playing OG Threshold (Our variant of U/G Threshold). 

Pac

[ErkBek]

- No reported thefts of note concerning type 1 power thankfully!

Phil Schmitt, moxlotus, lost his Pitch Long deck. He accidently left it at the table he played at in the 5th round of the Friday evening Vintage event (I believe it was the Prelims). He had just lost and droped from the event so he didn't realize the deck was gone until hours later. It turns out that the man sitting next to him, turned in his deck to the judges table....only to go missing......The judges aknowledge recieving the deck however. Phil's $4000 deck was either stolen or lost by the judges.

I scrubbed pretty hard. I lost 4 of 5 pitch long mirrors on the weekend despite having the best sideboard tech. Everything that could go wrong seemed to for me. In the vintage champs I had about the most unique situation come up costing me a match vs. slaver that I should have won. We had deck checks go okay, but we forgot about the bonus time awarded. In game 3 I was in the perfect situation to win the game with Xantid on the board, but I couldn't draw a land. Upon drawing the game and scooping up our cards, we reached for the match slip and both remembered the extra time awarded. We called over a judge and he told us to go to game 4. My opponent drew the nuts of turn 2 Tinker DSC with double FoW for my turn 1 draw7.

[Machinus]

Phil's $4000 deck was either stolen or lost by the judges.

A very similar incident occurred five weeks ago at the SCG D4D. A players bag was taken by the judges and then "lost" while in their possession.

[M.Solymossy]

Yeah.  That's lame.

[CrashTest]

His deck is definitely missing then? Maybe more posts should be made, so that people who may know something speak up.

[Tin_Mox5831]

They certainly do have different roles, but Rebuild is miles better, coming from a TPS background. I'll agree to disagree with you, but here's the main reason. Rebuild lets you ignore anything Workshop-based decks do, because you can take time to develop your mana base, and then bounce all of their hate, AND bounce your brown mana, which usually is enough for an easy storm based kill. Rebuild does the same against Chalice. While you have to waste your Hurkyl's Recall against your opponent's Chalice or Darksteel Colossus, I can Rebuild everything and then up my own storm count with my brown mana, which is especially potent with all of the Tendrils. The double duty that it performs is why it's better, to me.

This is a fair explanation, but Hurkyl's Recall > Rebuild for one huge reason. The threat density of just about every build of Stax is greatest at the 2 CMC, making it the realistic number least likely to have a Chalice set to it. The 3 CMC is host to a myriad of breakout spells for Storm Combo (Draw-7s, Yawgmoth's Will, Grim Tutor, Tinker), making a Chalice setting infinitely more appealing to a Stax player. (Trust me, I spent 8 months or so on the other side of that game.) Nobody wants to bust their ass locking down the board systematically, only to have a stupid 3cc spell bail the opponent out. Tinker -> DSC is stupid good versus Stax, and as long as that is true, expect CotV @ 3 out of Stax players before CotV @ 2 on most occasions.

Peace,
Dave

[Jacob Orlove]

His deck is definitely missing then? Maybe more posts should be made, so that people who may know something speak up.

Further discussion can go here: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=29618

More information is definitely needed!

[Smmenen]

I am just extremely curious about the build of UbaStax that Vroman T4'ed with.

Vroman played uba stax as normal, but with some new choices: he had Tangle Wires and Rishadan Ports. 

[Smmenen]

1) Jaco that's true, but that doesn't make BOB good.  If Smokestack is in play for two turns, you usually win, but I'm not sure how good Stack is anymore either.

I've read your stance on Dark Confidant multiple times, and frankly just don't agree with it. From what you've written, Confidant slows down combo, in Grim Long style decks. This isn't a Grim Long style deck, and I'll agree that it's not good in Grim Long, because it just gums up your hand most of the time when you are essentially trying to go off in one turn. But in these other style Tendrils decks (TT Confidant, TPS w/Confidant, BHWC Tendrils), it WILL win you the game if left unchecked. From what I've seen, European and Northern California results will confirm this. Confidant is strong against Mana Drain decks, and is also very strong against Workshop decks.

But again, I must emphasize "if left unchecked."  IMO, every single good Vintage deck can win or at least deal with Confidant before that point.  If you play Confidant against a Long variant, it is essentially a joke.  If you play COnfidant against MDG, I would be quite happy as I proceed to Scroll for Ancestral and then aggressively Gifts into the win.

True, Confidant is very strong agaisnt Workshop decks and decent against Drain decks (I would not say "strong"), but extremely weak against Combo.  That's reason enough to leave it either in the sb or at home.

2) No it doesn't.  Almost every Long player knew to expect extract game two and sbs in another win condition.  Its just like people saying that T. Crypt beats Long.  It doesn't.  They just don't know what they are talking about.

That's funny, because in our deck we sided in Extract against a number of combo decks, and beat them with it. While it might not always beat them, it's disrputive enough to usually let us win.

Yes, but I'd wager that happened either before Gencon, or against weaker Long players.

3) again, I just don't agree.  Hurkyls' REcall is infy better against Uba STax since it only costs two (and 3 under 2Sphere).  Both cards are good, they have slghtly different roles and both should be run in most situations where either could be run.

They certainly do have different roles, but Rebuild is miles better, coming from a TPS background. I'll agree to disagree with you, but here's the main reason. Rebuild lets you ignore anything Workshop-based decks do, because you can take time to develop your mana base, and then bounce all of their hate, AND bounce your brown mana, which usually is enough for an easy storm based kill. Rebuild does the same against Chalice. While you have to waste your Hurkyl's Recall against your opponent's Chalice or Darksteel Colossus, I can Rebuild everything and then up my own storm count with my brown mana, which is especially potent with all of the Tendrils. The double duty that it performs is why it's better, to me.

This is simply false.  If you were playing against CronStyle stax, you would lose hard to IN the Eye of Chaos.  If there is one thing I've learned about the combo v. Stax match, it's that time is now of the essence.  If you are playing against Uba stax, it's all different.  But Rebuild is inferior to Hurkyl's.  However, I still run one rebuild simply for the reason that they may get Chalice 2 down.

4) Multiple Tendrils isn't very good, imo, unless you are two colors.  In that case, you can't run burning wish.

I spoke to Nick about an hour ago, and he'll attest to this. Multiple Tendrils are underrated, because it gets around hate, and is very surprising to most opponents, and actually can help tempo-wise. Even if I get off a small to midsize Tendrils, it's sets me up for later in the game, is potent with Confidants attacking, and buys me more turns against opposing threats (I have more life, so usually I will have more turns).

5) Pitch Long's mana base looks very little like TPS.  TPS ran 13+ lands.  Pitch Long runs a veyr light mana base of 11 lands - like Grim Long (although Becker and TK cut LED for another swamp, taking it to 12.  The piont is that Pitch Long's base is still importantly lighter than TPS ever was.

The difference in count is usually one land, but the difference in reality is that the manabase is virtually Wasteland-proof. Aside from fetchland + Brainstorm goodness, that's the important thing. This is so much better and stable than a Gemstone Mine + City of Brass manabase. The rock solid manabase is the point, not quibbling about a land or two when you have 4 more Rituals in BHWC Tendrils and Grim Long than you do in a deck like TPS.

Quibbling over land at this level IS critical.

Let's look at original long.  While I was in Europe in 2003, a number of my teammates and other teams were tinkering with Mike Long's original list and the variance I saw in original mana bases ranged from 9 lands to 12.  I tested each and every single variant of those lists.  Death Long and Grim and Pitch Long reflect the same numbers.

If you think about the probability of drawing a land with 11 lands, you realize that you are actually going to see 1.5 lands every hand.  That's the distribution of lands in your deck.  Now, that seems absurd.  How could that be right?  The reason it is rigth is because extensive testing shows that 11 land is the correct number of lands for pitch and grim long.  12 is too many and 10 is too few. 

I played in the midnight $500 Vintage but after losing to Dan Carp in the sixth round and ending 3-2-1, I ran off to the airport to get home.  Anyone know who won/split that?  I think two unpowered decks might have made the top 8.

I just got off the phone with Nick Trudeau, and he said that there were 40+ people in the Saturday Midnight $500 event, and that he made Top 4 in that as well, splitting the $500 with Ray Robillard (iamfishman) of Waterbury fame, and two other people he didn't know/remember. So for those of you keeping score at home, Nick made the Top 8 of every tournament he attended this weekend. I don't remember domination like that since Rich Mattuzio's GenCon Dragon debut a few years ago, where he took Vintage by storm with his new (at the time) Dragon deck.

That's hardly domination.  What that shows is that a great player like Nick will do well with strong cards.  Nothing really dominated this entire weekend.  The closest thing was the stunning performance of Pitch Long in the Vintage Champs.  You said that Nicks 7-1 record was dominating where as 6-0-2 by both pitch long decks wasn't - I hate to break it but being undefeated will always be a better record than having a loss in terms of win loss ratio. 

Nick also made top 8 at the Legacy champs.  Again, further evidence of great player playing strong cards.  Not at all direct evidence of a deck's "dominance."  To make that claim is pretty silly.  I doubt  a single person at gencon felt that "BWHC Combo" dominated vintage.  If Nick was playing Pitch Long, I'm sure he would have performed as well, if not better. 

[Mr. Type 4]

Yeah, I watched Nick play Alana in round 1 and that match was extremly intense.  He's good player for sure. 

Arend's Slaver list is fairly different from Kowal's. I beat up Arend a bunch of times and he's made some solid changes to make his deck strong in the current metagame.  He has wastelands, misdirection and a pretty good sideboard.  That guy seemed totally sure he going to lose after like round 2, and came back to represent Slaver in top 4.  Never count yourself out too early. 

I've played against Mark Trogden five times now, and hasn't done anything that seemed cheaty to me, and is a pretty nice guy.  I played a feature match with him, so you guys will probably get a chance to check that out at some point. 

Congrats to Travis for winning.  Steve always told me that Meandeck Gifts is a difficult deck to push through the randomness of Swiss, but a great deck to play all the challenge matches in Top 8.  I guess that's true.  Also, congrats to TK for making second place.  Tommy a real cool guy, but he can't win EVERY event.  Anyone who is just taking notice of this guy now  is living under a rock. 

As usual, I had a blast.  The Vintage community is full of really cool peopleand it was a pleasure to hang out with all of you. 

I'll see you all at the finish line.
 
                 -Paul

[Purple Hat]

Arend's Slaver list is fairly different from Kowal's. I beat him up Arend a bunch of times and he's made some solid changes to make his deck strong in the current metagame.  He has wastelands, misdirection and a pretty good sideboard.  That guy seemed totally sure he going to lose after like round 2, and came back to represent Slaver in top 4.  Never count yourself out too early. 

yeah....but then he freaking destroyed me in round 3....like it wasn't even remotely close...at all.  turn 1 waste, turn 2 strip out of CS was not expected at all.  then again I did make the best play I've ever made in a vintage tournament ever by trying to convince him to conceed and drop and go hang out with the charming female person who came and sat next to him after her round was over.  I got to use the line "dude....she's way cuter than me, wouldn't you rather be sitting next to me looking at her than sitting next to her looking at me?"  and that was total sideboard tech if I've ever seen it.  Fortunately I wasn't able to talk him into it and he went on to top 4, but it was a valient effort.

Hale

[vroman]

I am just extremely curious about the build of UbaStax that Vroman T4'ed with.

same main deck Ive played for like 6 months now. sideboard I dropped orb of dreams for tormod crypt. In my top 4 match, I lost game 2 on one critical play where I had to gamble if opponent had his last remaining force of will in hand, when deciding how to handle a gifts stack. I guessed he did not have the force, and handed him game winning cards, that would have been useless if my next card resolved. game 3, I had solid hand that was thoroughly answered and left me helpless against an early tinker draw. Ill write a report of the whole day.

[Komatteru]

Vroman had insane plays that first game in the semis, like casting THREE SMOKESTACKS IN THE SAME TURN.

Also, it unfortunately seems that next year is slated to be a Meandeck victory.  Thus far, the championships have alternated between Meandeck and someone not on a major team (Carl Winter, Mark Biller, Roland, now Travis).

[JACO]

3) again, I just don't agree.  Hurkyls' REcall is infy better against Uba STax since it only costs two (and 3 under 2Sphere).  Both cards are good, they have slghtly different roles and both should be run in most situations where either could be run.

They certainly do have different roles, but Rebuild is miles better, coming from a TPS background. I'll agree to disagree with you, but here's the main reason. Rebuild lets you ignore anything Workshop-based decks do, because you can take time to develop your mana base, and then bounce all of their hate, AND bounce your brown mana, which usually is enough for an easy storm based kill. Rebuild does the same against Chalice. While you have to waste your Hurkyl's Recall against your opponent's Chalice or Darksteel Colossus, I can Rebuild everything and then up my own storm count with my brown mana, which is especially potent with all of the Tendrils. The double duty that it performs is why it's better, to me.

This is simply false.  If you were playing against CronStyle stax, you would lose hard to IN the Eye of Chaos.  If there is one thing I've learned about the combo v. Stax match, it's that time is now of the essence.  If you are playing against Uba stax, it's all different.  But Rebuild is inferior to Hurkyl's.  However, I still run one rebuild simply for the reason that they may get Chalice 2 down.

Aside from the fact that you just negated half of your argument by stating that you in fact would 'run one Rebuild,' practically no one is playing In The Eye of Chaos right now. Our deck already has a really strong match against Workshop playing with Rebuild, whether it includes In The Eye of Chaos or not (which is just another dead card against UW Fish decks toting cards like Kataki that are pretty potent against Workshop decks).

5) Pitch Long's mana base looks very little like TPS.  TPS ran 13+ lands.  Pitch Long runs a veyr light mana base of 11 lands - like Grim Long (although Becker and TK cut LED for another swamp, taking it to 12.  The piont is that Pitch Long's base is still importantly lighter than TPS ever was.

The difference in count is usually one land, but the difference in reality is that the manabase is virtually Wasteland-proof. Aside from fetchland + Brainstorm goodness, that's the important thing. This is so much better and stable than a Gemstone Mine + City of Brass manabase. The rock solid manabase is the point, not quibbling about a land or two when you have 4 more Rituals in BHWC Tendrils and Grim Long than you do in a deck like TPS.

Quibbling over land at this level IS critical.
Let's look at original long.  While I was in Europe in 2003, a number of my teammates and other teams were tinkering with Mike Long's original list and the variance I saw in original mana bases ranged from 9 lands to 12.  I tested each and every single variant of those lists.  Death Long and Grim and Pitch Long reflect the same numbers. If you think about the probability of drawing a land with 11 lands, you realize that you are actually going to see 1.5 lands every hand.  That's the distribution of lands in your deck.  Now, that seems absurd.  How could that be right?  The reason it is rigth is because extensive testing shows that 11 land is the correct number of lands for pitch and grim long.  12 is too many and 10 is too few.

Clown, as I have already said, this is a different deck than Pitch Long, just as is TPS. Quibbling over the manabase, of different decks, is only critical to you. You don't just use the same manabase for every deck, just because it's a somewhat similar archetype. The point is that a black/blue manabase with fetches is nearly indestructable (Sundering Titan notwithstanding).
 

By the way, BHWCer Nick Trudeau went 7-0-2 in the Swiss rounds in the Legacy championship Friday, then went 7-1 in the Swiss rounds in the Vintage Championship on Saturday. And that is after placing 2nd in the 2HG tournament on Thursday. Now THAT, my friends, is 'destroying' the Swiss rounds.

I just got off the phone with Nick Trudeau, and he said that there were 40+ people in the Saturday Midnight $500 event, and that he made Top 4 in that as well, splitting the $500 with Ray Robillard (iamfishman) of Waterbury fame, and two other people he didn't know/remember. So for those of you keeping score at home, Nick made the Top 8 of every tournament he attended this weekend. I don't remember domination like that since Rich Mattuzio's GenCon Dragon debut a few years ago, where he took Vintage by storm with his new (at the time) Dragon deck.

That's hardly domination.  What that shows is that a great player like Nick will do well with strong cards.  Nothing really dominated this entire weekend.  The closest thing was the stunning performance of Pitch Long in the Vintage Champs.  You said that Nicks 7-1 record was dominating where as 6-0-2 by both pitch long decks wasn't - I hate to break it but being undefeated will always be a better record than having a loss in terms of win loss ratio. 

Nick also made top 8 at the Legacy champs.  Again, further evidence of great player playing strong cards.  Not at all direct evidence of a deck's "dominance."  To make that claim is pretty silly.  I doubt  a single person at gencon felt that "BWHC Combo" dominated vintage.  If Nick was playing Pitch Long, I'm sure he would have performed as well, if not better.

Steve, while I respect everything you've done for Vintage, I've got an idea. Why don't you stop being a douche bag and trying to argue every little thing? Take a step back from your overzealous lawyer's mentality once in a while, where you feel the need to argue about irrelevant little points, and ultimately attempt to convince yourself that you are in the right. It's OK to come out and play with the rest of the humans out here. There are some other bright minds in Vintage, not on Meandeck.

The context was clearly meant to say that Nick had a fantastic weekend, and that HE truely tore up the Swiss rounds of the events he played in, not that a particular deck dominated (and I specifically mentioned the other formats he played in; not all Vintage). He made the final table/top 8 of all 5 events he entered, so BHWC is happy for him. Is that OK with you?


Getting this thread back on track, props go out to the Colorado crew, MeanDeck, ICBM, and Vroman for a strong showing this weekend. Congratulations all around are in order, as this showed that Vintage is pretty healthy right now, and that it's getting better and better. I can't wait to see how Jotun Grunt and a couple of other of cards from the new sets are going to impact Vintage this year. It seems like we keep getting at least a couple goodies in each new set, doesn't it?

[Smmenen]

Haha!  Of course I feel similarly.  I apologize if I came off harsh.  I think there are a great many fine minds in this format and it is exciting to see them flower!  Too often we see people leaving Vintage.  More recently, I feel like we have seen a resurgence in not only player interest but skill and spirit.

EDIT:

I also wanted to say that the Carp brothers were hilarious.  Most of what I read online is devoid of the nonverbal cues that give language meaning.  As a consequence, I read and parse sentences with the seriousness with which I generally think.  I now realize that most of what the Carp bros say is more to be entertaining that argumentative.  I've already made their phrase "I'll allow it" part of my conversational vocab. 

I enjoyed spending time with Ray Robillard, Kyle Lieth, meandeckers (obv), Alana, Arend, Brian DeMars, Eric Becker, Mat Endress, 13Nova YEAH YOU SULLY!, Rich Shay (who was on tilt), Scott Limoges (I love this guy!), purple hat, Jdizzle, Fuckin' Lou (this man is hilarious), Mark Trogdon (what a good sport), and many, many others.

Next year I'm going to resolve to just play in the Vintage champs and not the other events if only so that I can chill more with everyone in the community.  There isn't enough time in the weekend!

[M.Solymossy]

Steve, you douchebag!  LOL.  That was HILARIOUS.    Everyone was like "OMG I CANT BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT!"

Man oh Man.  I gotta admit, my performance @ Gencon really put me in the dumps, but having a great time with everyone definitely put the spirit into magic, and showed me why I play this game.

[Smmenen]

Steve, you douchebag!  LOL.  That was HILARIOUS.    Everyone was like "OMG I CANT BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT!"

Man oh Man.  I gotta admit, my performance @ Gencon really put me in the dumps, but having a great time with everyone definitely put the spirit into magic, and showed me why I play this game.

Don't worry Sully, I probably did worse than you!

[Lyle H]

I played magic like a total scrub this weekend but it was great seeing all of you fools.

[M.Solymossy]

I totally SAVAGED my buddy rafe @ the midnight event steve.  You shoulda been there.  I totally said "I just Steve'd you".

My hand (ON THE DRAW):
Mana Crypt
Delta
Twister
Bargain

Yes, I mulliganed to four.

he opens with:

STrand, ruby sol ring.

I draw.

my play:

Crypt, Delta (sea), LOTUS OFF THE TOP!  BARGAIN!

MISE!

[Imzakhor]

If you think about the probability of drawing a land with 11 lands, you realize that you are actually going to see 1.5 lands every hand.  That's the distribution of lands in your deck.  Now, that seems absurd.  How could that be right?  The reason it is rigth is because extensive testing shows that 11 land is the correct number of lands for pitch and grim long.  12 is too many and 10 is too few.

11 lands in an opening hand will net you 1.28 lands... Slightly more than 1. "Bad" hands (0 or 3+) are down to 33%.
0 lands = 22%
1 land = 40%
2 lands = 27%
3+ lands = 11%

12 lands in an opening hand will net you 1.4 lands... Much closer to 1.5. "Bad" hands (0 or 3+) are still 33%, but optimal hand (exactly 1 land) is slightly worse.
0 lands = 19%
1 land = 38%
2 lands = 29%
3+ lands = 14%

10 lands in an opening hand will net you 1.17 lands. Anemic. "Bad" hands (0 or 3+) go up to 34%, which, in my opinion, is worse than the slight gain in the optimal hand department. In addition the "Playable" hands (exactly 2 lands) drops two percentage points, which is significant to me.
0 lands = 26%
1 land = 41%
2 lands = 25%
3+ lands = 8%

Just pointing out that while your math isn't great, your reasoning is correct. You probably could have saved a few hundred hours of testing just by getting out a calculator.

That's hardly domination.  What that shows is that a great player like Nick will do well with strong cards.  Nothing really dominated this entire weekend.  The closest thing was the stunning performance of Pitch Long in the Vintage Champs.  You said that Nicks 7-1 record was dominating where as 6-0-2 by both pitch long decks wasn't - I hate to break it but being undefeated will always be a better record than having a loss in terms of win loss ratio. 

Pointing out that 7-1 nets 21 match points, and 6-0-2 nets 20 points. By Magic tournament standards 7-1 is definitively better than 6-0-2. (We are playing Magic, right?) Any other suggestion is merely opinion/personal preference/what-i-would-do-if-i-ran-magic.

Even in the real world of mathematics and game theory, 7-1 and 6-0-2 both net a win percentage of exactly 87.5%.

[ashiXIII]

Not to dispute your math (because I haven't done it myself) but it doesn't seem to make sense that a deck running 10 lands has an 18% chance to get three or more in the opening while a deck running 11 lands only has an 11% chance to get three or more in the opening. The rest of the math seems to work out fine, but how could a deck running less land be more likely to draw a land-heavy hand?