Vintage...?

[desolutionist]

A lot of people I've talked to are just totally uninterested in Vintage at the moment.  And even I'm not going to tournaments anymore.  What's going on with this format?  Does Gush/Flash really make it THAT boring?

[Methuselahn]

That's hogwash.  Who said that?  Exactly, how many is "a lot"?

Personally, I'm having a hard time deciding which deck to play next because the field is so diverse right now.  Obviously the powers that be would agree with me seeing as how they felt no need to restrict/unrestrict anything.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that you're trying to stir up trouble.

[Glix]

I don't think that its hogwash at all, as I've been hearing a lot of that talk as well.

The problem is that the format is sort of balanced, from an r&d perspective, but its just not fun, for me, anymore.  I mean, you have this sort of dichotomy of dryad/flash on one side (scroll-based decks) and everything else on the other (anti-scroll decks).

I mean, there are a lot of decks, but strategically they aren't very dirverse.  More than that, I, personally, don't have fun playing with or against gat, and there is a lot of gat out there.  I should rephrase that: I don't have fun palying with 4-gush gat.  The deck is just so... "meh", I guess, at least for me.

Obviously this transcends a magical theory argument, and is much more a mater of sociology.  The main decks out there right now, for the most part, are very much non-interactive, often actively seeking to isolate themselves from their opponent.  The gush base of GaT allows the deck to go off in a very non-skill-demanding manner, when that happens, of course, flash just wants to win before an opponent can do anything and uses counterspells a screen against disruption, Ichorid just ignores all but 1 or two cards in the game, and so devout its entire sb just dealing with those, which leaves you with the anti-tier 1 decks, which would be interactive, but since they are forcing interaction upon decks that seek non-interaction, the resulting games tend to lose interest.

Ideally, and this is just my opinion, you want two interactive decks in magic to be playing against each other.  We had just left an era of decks like gifts, which despite its power was a pretty interactive deck.  It changes its game plan based on what an opponent does, it provides the operator choices.  Modern tier one decks lack this, and they minimize the necessity of skill.

Perhaps my argument didn't come out like I intended, so I hope someone else can better convey my emotions and thoughts.  Regardless, I will say that my evidence is that I don't like vintage atm, and it might have nothing to do with the format, but I think it does.  I doubt I'll be playing much if any vintage for a while though, the format is just completely disinteresting to me.  I have been interested in and played almost exclusively vintage in my entire magic career (albeit this is relatively short compared to many other tmders), and this is the first time since I've played competitively that I don't like vintage as a format, and I started in the era of trinisphere.

[Setnakt]

I'm getting back into Magic again, and while before I played 1.5, I'm pretty exclusively doing type 1 now. The only problem is that there are basically no tournaments; it's hard to find anyone to playtest with, for that matter. I plan on driving 3-4 hours to a couple Mox tournaments in October and we'll see if I can get in on some small local things in the meantime, but I think when the only tournaments are in New England everyone else just goes blah.

[Necrologia]

The main decks out there right now, for the most part, are very much non-interactive, often actively seeking to isolate themselves from their opponent.  The gush base of GaT allows the deck to go off in a very non-skill-demanding manner

Seriously? Have you ever played GAT? GAT is highly interactive, running tons of disruption which forces interaction. Going off with the deck is really hard under any kind of pressure. Sure, comboing off with an early Fastbond + Will at 20 life is easy, but every deck gets autopilot hands occasionally. Try it at 7 with a Grunt on the opposing side of the table and tell me it's easy.

We had just left an era of decks like gifts, which despite its power was a pretty interactive deck. It changes its game plan based on what an opponent does, it provides the operator choices.  Modern tier one decks lack this, and they minimize the necessity of skill.

GAT can go combo, control or aggro depending on your hand, and what your opponent is playing. It's also a very skill intensive deck to play perfectly. The worlds final was 2 of the best players in the format going for the title. If there's no skill involved, then are you saying that Rich Shat has just been lucky to make it into several finals in the last month? Skill obviously plays a big part in that.

Everyone has their own style. I don't like playing STAX, for instance. But bashing a highly interactive and skill intensive deck as skill less and uninteractive is uncalled for. It's like the 12 year olds who blame all their losses on mana screw, or the football fans who always blame the refs when their team loses. Hating the format because you hate GAT is fine. Saying it's because GAT is too easy is just a lie and a cop out.

[Jacob Orlove]

I've seen complaints like this pretty much ever since I started playing. My advice is: take a break from Vintage, or from Magic in general, and come back when you're excited about it again.

[andrewpate]

I agree with Jacob, and in fact that's exactly what I did!  I didn't enjoy Vintage at all when the best decks were all Dry Slaver/MDG/Long variants... it felt like every deck was pretty much playing a bunch of broken artifact mana, drawing a bunch of cards, using Force of Will and/or Duress to stay alive, and casting Yawgmoth's Will for the win on turn 3.  I goldfished, I tested, and I ended up just playing PTQs for awhile.  This new format is what has me glad I didn't stop keeping up with Vintage entirely!

[Demonic Attorney]

There will always be a dominant deck towards which people gravitate.  When I first started playing competitive Vintage, people made these exact same complaints about Control Slaver.  It was distorting the format, it was showing up in unduly large numbers, people had to play it or play anti-CS, Vintage was no longer fun etc.  When that died down, those complaints surfaced again, then about Gifts.  Now people are talking about GAT the same way.  When GAT loses its position of prominence, I am sure that people will complain about whatever deck takes its place; there has never been a time in the history of my involvement without these complaints.

[T00L]

I'm pretty bored with type 1 now too I mean GAT and flash are pretty unfun to play. However i'm obviously just bitter gifts got restricted and i had put so much effort into becoming good at that. So like most people i'll probably just force myself to play gat and hate every minute of it

[LordHomerCat]

I don't understand the people who don't like playing GAT, I find the deck a lot more fun to play than Gifts ever was.  I really enjoy playing GAT (although the mirror can be a little frustrating), and I'd rather play it than any deck from the pre-Gush meta.

[Matt]

I've been bored with vintage ever since blue became mandatory (whenever GAT first got big, and storm combo was introduced), so this is all kind of silly from my perspective. If you've stayed in it this long, might as well go the distance?

[zeus-online]

Was just talking with a friend about how we never really play type1 anymore...to me it's kinda boring, I'm a spike by nature and right now i can't really justify playing anything else then GAT and Flash and none of those decks are fun for me to play.

With mana drain decks pretty much wiped off i have no fun in type1. Sure i had fun for a little while playing GAT, but that didn't last forever

/Zeus

[diopter]

Was just talking with a friend about how we never really play type1 anymore...to me it's kinda boring, I'm a spike by nature and right now i can't really justify playing anything else then GAT and Flash and none of those decks are fun for me to play.

With mana drain decks pretty much wiped off i have no fun in type1. Sure i had fun for a little while playing GAT, but that didn't last forever

/Zeus

If you are a Spike you have fun playing the best deck.
I like this environment where Mana Drain is not viable in everything. It's a refreshing change of pace.

[Mr. Nightmare]

I got into Vintage for a while last year, and enjoyed it, but the truth is, Legacy is AWESOME right now.  Plus, Legacy tournaments are much more frequent and in closer proximity to me than Vintage events, which dictates my focus almost entirely.

[Grand Inquisitor]

When GAT loses its position of prominence, I am sure that people will complain about whatever deck takes its place; there has never been a time in the history of my involvement without these complaints.

I've been bored with vintage ever since blue became mandatory (whenever GAT first got big, and storm combo was introduced), so this is all kind of silly from my perspective. If you've stayed in it this long, might as well go the distance?

QFT.  I would actually posit that although GAT is more broken than Gifts, it's also more susceptible.  There's lots of room for counter-strategies if you don't like GAT; most people just do.

[zeus-online]

Was just talking with a friend about how we never really play type1 anymore...to me it's kinda boring, I'm a spike by nature and right now i can't really justify playing anything else then GAT and Flash and none of those decks are fun for me to play.

With mana drain decks pretty much wiped off i have no fun in type1. Sure i had fun for a little while playing GAT, but that didn't last forever

/Zeus

If you are a Spike you have fun playing the best deck.
I like this environment where Mana Drain is not viable in everything. It's a refreshing change of pace.

No, you're wrong...I like winning, i don't wanna play anything suboptimal = I'm a spike.

If i don't have fun with the current best deck, my involvement with said format fades away.

Fact 1 for me is thus: I got into the format because i loved mana drain decks, so when they are suddenly bad the format ceases to be fun for me.
This does not mean that it's not fun for everyone else, it just means that i'm not gonna play it actively until something changes (Which may never happen, but that's the way things are)

Played gifts before the restriction, because i was confidant that it was the best deck, that deck was moderately fun to play but i was still bored with it....Everytime i thought about switching i reminded myself that gifts was a better deck then whatever i was thinking of switching to.

/Zeus

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

Do I think vintage is boring at the moment?  No.
Do I think 4x gush and 4x scroll should exist at the same time? BIG NO!

GAT does have a huge advantage, but the deck design changes it's causes other decks to make is incredibly interesting. I've become a much better pilot due to GAT, after modifying my deck build to take down GAT, I returned to my original build and have been more successful (and I was not playing crap either).

I also think its funny how T1 hates the legal 4x gush/scroll, and loves 4x scroll. Honestly,I miss meta too, and I never played gifts.

This does explain why there is so few local moxen right now though.

[Smmenen]

there has never been a time in the history of my involvement without these complaints.

Agreed.  I mean, this is the most interactive metagame we've had in.... well, since GAT and Tog was dominant back in 2003.   

The top decks since GAT's demise were: Dragon, Long.dec, Control Slaver, Stax, Gifts, and (Pitch) Long.   Each of those decks are far less interactive than GAT.   

GAT is an honest-to-goodness creature deck that doesn't generally win the game in the first couple of turns.   

I think it it just goes to prove the quote above that people will always complain, no matter what the format looks like.   

[Zherbus]

People have been getting "bored" and talking about it on TMD with Vintage since July 2002.

The format isn't one that takes a large amount of time to reach a plateau in development, firstly. It's the simple mechanics of an Eternal format that cause this. Most new sets that come out do very little in affecting the environment, unlike Limited, Block, Standard, and Extended. New core editions have zero effect on the format, unlike Standard. Rotations never shake things up, like in Standard and Extended. Put simply, things just don't change in terms of card availability all that often. There's very little forced-reaction for Vintage outside MAYBE a yearly B/R change.

Secondly, most people who play Vintage are lazy and play stock decks. One could play GaT tomorrow, but the chances they make any meaningful changes are almost nil. Not many people are experimenting with new ideas, or at least they aren't doing it successfully. Those who examine other archetypes, who put genuine thought into such things are either short-sighted and make poor developments or are buried in obscurity by posters who post the 7th thread for Suicide Black for the week. Also, there is a lack of Vintage writers. Menendian only writes about what he wants to write about, which hasn't been anything but type 4 or GaT in probably the last two months. Any other writers are keeping away from actual strategic discussion.

This is futher compounded by even the people who DO make nice decks not presenting them in the same primeresque way as we used to on TMD. This used to create a sense of interest in that people at least wanted to TALK about the deck and, by extension, the format. People post a list, one or two paragraphs and then watch as they get generally poor replies. People are, at the same time, overselling and underselling their decks. Outside of deck help, the main reason one should post a completed project is to get the information out to other players so you can beam with pride in seeing others win. It can make all the deck work more than just winning a mox or two. At the same time, some people are embellishing the effectiveness of their ideas, which tends to create a format of skeptics.

I've seen a number of the newer generation of (sometime) successful Vintage players win a few things and then carry on with a lackadaisical and seemingly disinterested attitude. I mean, it's obviously cool to act like you don't even care about the format but play regulary and read TMD every day. Meanwhile, there are some players who also enjoy success that remain absolutely enthusiastic about the format. I'm thankful for them.

Vintage players, from the newbie who's yet to top eight an event all the way up to the top, need to ask themselves if they really want to be a Vintage player. Or are they just a player who plays/has played Vintage? Everyone should be asking themselves what they can do to help make Vintage better, because we're still a small enough community to make relevant changes in both community and in the format. People should not be lamenting what Vintage isn't doing for them.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Everyone should be asking themselves what they can do to help make Vintage better, because we're still a small enough community to make relevant changes in both community and in the format. People should not be lamenting what Vintage isn't doing for them.

Ask not what your format can do for you - ask what you can do for your format.

-ZFK

[God_Campbell]

I enjoy the format right now, it is fun to play Gat again as it was my top deck of choice when I first started way back when.

Though I do miss a format where a mana drain deck is the top contender ala slaver and gifts but at least I can run a couple in Gat and play with Dr. Teeth again.

[zeus-online]

I really liked vintage back when U/R fish was ruling the roost, with 4cc, slaver, hulk smash and the comming invasion of workshop decks was the top of vintage...back when the format was constantly evolving with oath, doomsday, DeathLong etc.

I feel like the format has gradually gotten worse ever since.

But that is just my opinion.

/Zeus

[TopSecret]

To me, the Vintage metagame is just as awful as it's always been.

I play this format because of the people that are in it.

I used to play Standard.
The standard metagame was more or less like the Vintage metagame when I last played it,
starting when Invasion and Odyssey were legal,
and ending when Onslaught and Mirrodin were Legal.
There'd be one or two good decks that everyone'd play.
These decks would try to be as non-interactive as possible.

For me, the standard metagame was never an issue.
The real issue was that I didn't enjoy being around the Standard players.
When I won, my opponent would often become frustrated, blame luck, or say that my deck was trash.
When I lost, my opponent often treated me like a speed bump, like I wasn't worth his time.
It's like those players thought that victory wasn't something a player earned;
it was something he was entitled to.
Magic was always a one way street for them;
there wasn't an opponent on the other side of the table and there wasn't another player they knocked out round one.
That was fine for them, but it wasn't for me.
So, after a point, I decided that I'd had enough, and I stopped playing Standard.

Later I started playing Vintage, and it's been great.
This format is truly lucky to have so many great people in it.

Yes, the metagame'll probably always be awful.
If you're bored with Vintage, take a break and come back later.

[Zherbus]

If you're bored with Vintage, take a break and come back later.

QFT. When I came back after two years off, it was really fun figuring out what happened (turns out not a whole lot) and adjusting.

[Dr. Sylvan]

(turns out not a whole lot)

This is the key to my suspicion that I won't come back to Vintage, even though I have come back to Magic with as much devotion as ever. From now until the format ceases to be "you can play every card", Vintage will be a long, meandering pendulum swing between Blue combo, Blue combo-control, and---once in a blue moon, ha ha---Blue control being best (with cameos by sufficiently broken bizarr-o world decks like Ichorid). It's not for me. I'm still learning about what makes the game fun for me after all these years, but I know that the "FoW/Leyline or gg?" question is one I'd rather not consider again.