I've started over analysing myself and the metagame, I need an outside perspective.
Vintage Nationals will be in August (New Zealands vintage nats anyhow).
Myself and my 'team' have been testing a lot, and making metagame predictions.
Given Vintage Nats is run over the same weekend as Standard Nats, the number of players is limited.
That, and the total amount of Power in the country that sees play is fairly small.
Last year saw a field of 14 players, with 5 decks being powered.
That was up from the year previous, both in number of players, and the amount of powered decks.
(I have a tourney report from last year in which I ran Vengeur Masqué to a Top4 if anyone wants to locate it)
This year, I'd anticipate more players, 20, and more powered decks, 8.
I don't think there will be more than 2 Ichorid decks total, I don't know of many Bazaar sets in the country.
I suspect most of the people with power will run Gifts, so 3 Gifts decks. I expect atleast 1 Long, and 1 CS.
I expect some 'Legacy' Flash decks to turn up, maybe 3.
The rest of the field will be crap aggro (Golbins, Sligh, Sui) or unpowered combo (MOM Academy stuff)
The decks we've tested thus far:
Gifts
Oath
Ichorid
Fish (UBW)
Vengeur Masqué
Goblins
Decks that will be given a full test soon:
Doomsday (Post FS list)
Flash Hulk
We need 3 or 4 decks for Nats, depending if our 4th decides to play or not.
My teammates are mich easier to please than I am; one is set on running Ichorid, another was going to play Oath, but now intends to play Flash, the 4th we can give the goblin deck too.
Since I own pretty much the whole card pool and all the power, I get dibs on what I play.
I don't own Grims or Shops, so decks requiring those are out for this year.
Currently I'm thinking either Gifts or Doomsday (pending play testing) would be my best options based on the outright power of the decks.
My love for Vengeur Masqué means I'm tempted to play that given it will trash the aggro half of the field easily.
My concerns are; I can predict the meta to have a number of Gifts decks, - hence we'll run sideboards to deal with combo. The strength of both Ichorid and Flash should force everyone to have serious GY hate in their sideboards also. I have to assume that everyone else can reach the same conclusion, right?
Should I instead play a deck that can ignore this GY hate, and any combo hate, and in general, just ignore hate because of the many ways it can win (Vengeur Masqué)?
Or just play Gifts or Doomsday and rely on the power of the deck to get me thought?
There is definately pressure to do well this year, last year we reached 3rd & 4th, previous year was 1st & 3rd, we definately have to stop the gradual side in performance!
Others less clouded opinions please!
