Magic Academy on magicthegathering.com - a brief explanation of Vintage

[diopter]

This Saturday's Magic Academy article on magicthegathering.com contains a brief explanation of Vintage among the formats.

[andrewpate]

This is really one of the better "short answer" descriptions of Vintage I've read.  I don't think that Cunningham's "goldfish speed" statistic is really that useful (possibly even a bit misleading), but on the whole the article is fairly solid.  I like that he doesn't say, "Vintage is a format where stupid things happen and turn 1 kills abound!  Plus you can play with Black Lotus!!!"  Most of these things seem to sensationalize the format a lot.

One thing that might have been nice would have been some discussion of how, despite the fairly static nature of the format, the huge cardpool means that many interactions can be overlooked and innovations can emerge, not to mention the fact that decks or cards can be hated out and then reemerge later.  These things give the format its own unique breed of dynamism, and decks can play very differently despite the large overlap of cards in them.

On the whole, quite solid, I'd say.

[LotusHead]

Wizards gives TMD a plug!  In the article on the various formats of Magic, he acknowledges that Vintage players kinda run their own things and then mentions TMD, despite our proxy ways.