I requested a blog access from Zherbus because I wanted to talk about several topics that I feel won't be best served in the Open forums. I recognize that they may be controversial to some and old news to others. That being said, I invite all to be as critical or positive as they should desire. I wanted this here in order to bring a higher level of discussion so by all means speak your mind.#1: Hypothetically speaking, how theory (and the lack there-of) is destroying VintageIf you've ever done a draft of any sort, you know the importance of keeping an open mind. You have to be prepared to draft whatever archetype or combination of colors is most open in the packs passed to you. You might prefer UB Faeries, but opening a Cloudgoat Ranger can put you on the other side of the color wheel in a second. Similarly, adaption is simply a requirement in T2, as the format sees major upheaval every 4 months. Block changes even faster, and Extended, while not as constant, gets turned on its head every other year.
Yet Eternal is, more or less, eternal. Vintage sees perhaps one or two playables per set, with a couple past exceptions such as the paradigm shifts brought by Urza and Mirrodin blocks, and the occasional toss-up via (un)restriction. Things evolve, but radical change is not the way of things. The lifespans of decks in Vintage are often years and years, simply adapting as they go until crippled by obsolescence or restriction.
So go the decks, so tend to go the players. We once had Rakso and Keeper. Now we have Menendian and GrimLong. With a greatly slowed pace of change as well as a lack of monetary motivation to do so (no Pro Tours or Grand Prix), Vintage has polarized and factionalized far beyond most peoples' realization. On a political spectrum, with Limited being revolutionary and Standard being liberal, Vintage is the far-right reactionary element. We are the religious wackjobs of (ostensibly) competitive Magic.
In fact, the comparison to religious wackjobs is disturbingly accurate on a number of levels. How many terrible deck ideas have been defended on this forum and others in the name of 'embracing innovation?' The cry of "why are you stifling innovation?" sounds eerily familiar to the now comical cries of "why do you hate freedom?" that have been heard in political discourse. In other formats a deck might require hundreds of games of testing against a complete format gauntlet (and a competent test-pilot) in order to be considered even remotely viable for tournament play. Yet how many times have 10 game sample sets or isolated tournament anecdotes been used to defend Vintage monstrosities? Every deck creator claims expertise and this 'expertise' is cited as unimpeachable evidence of his claims of the deck's power. This twisted circular logic is prevalent across the Vintage boards.
The players, of course, are just as guilty personally as community-wise, as stroking one's ego seems to be the primary occupation of quite a few posters. It is amusing to see how many self-proclaimed 'experts' Vintage has. Quite possibly more than any other format, which is impressive considering T1 has around 1% of the player base as Standard. Worst of these are those claiming to be authoritative on a particular subject by grace of having played a deck for a long time. Piloting the same deck over and over no more makes you an expert than solving basic multiplication thousands of times makes you a math genius.
On the note of player problems, two in particular stand out as offenders. I would call these the first two of Vintage's deadly sins.
Deck name and creation debate. Nothing seems to get the community's blood boiling like a good argument over this. Even being specifically banned by the site rules doesn't seem to slow such debates down. Smmenen versus Eric Becker over GrimLong was particularly amusing recently. Why is this such a crime? Because it accomplishes absolutely nothing. There is NO prize to posting the best deck. If someone netdecks your list and wins a tournament, you gain nothing substantive out of it. It frightens me how people will get up in arms over something that means zero.
Simple stroking of the Vintage e-cock. I can sum up how I react to this in only one way:
The sad part is, of course, that the vast majority of us are guilty of it in one way or another. It is only natural to want to be the best, but the fact of the matter is that the number of Vintage players with resumes comparable to what qualifies one as a pro in any other format is probably in the single digits. And yet as I mentioned earlier, the number who claim themselves as experts is several magnitudes larger. It never ceases to amaze me what people cite as justification of their prowess. The more statistically-minded of us realize that making the T8 of a ~25-30 person tournament is almost entirely irrelevant. In fact, winning a ~25-30 person tournament is largely irrelevant. Realistically, anyone citing tournament prowess who has less than half a dozen T8s or wins on national level tournaments is just blowing smoke.
Other facepalm-worthy 'accomplishments' cited as basis for one's 'expertise:'
Being a member of a certain team. I am on ICBM and I can say in total confidence that while it has provided me with opportunities to improve myself, the simple membership in no way increases my stature or knowledge of Vintage in any way.
Having designed a deck not universally accepted as tier 1. Innovating something proves nothing more than that you can write a list of 60 cards down and some vague explanations. I built Gilded Claw. That did not make me an expert. I built ICBM Oath. That did not make me an expert. I renovated Meandeck Gifts into Twilight Gifts. That did not make me an expert. Stop claiming that the 5 card tweak you put on some list that T8ed a random tournament makes you an expert.
Expertise is a tricky and subjective thing. It never ceases to amaze me how much people argue against Steve Menendian based on their own 'experience and expertise.' Let me give some great time-saving advice to the majority of the community: if you're going to disagree with Smmenen, do an hour of testing for whatever tiny nitpick you have. Because the majority of the time he is correct, because he is better than you at Vintage. Same reason Flores is usually right at deckbuilding questions and Eisel is usually right about limited. I don't if this sounds dumb or flattering, give the man some damn credit for knowing what's up.
The next deadly sin I would like to address is quite simply narrow-mindedness. Oh how lovely this one is. Raise your hand if you have a pet or rogue deck you like to play. Congratulations, you're holding Vintage back! If few other people are playing your deck, it generally isn't because you know it better than them, it is because they'd rather utilize their skill level on something that is just plain better. Sure I love my Angel Oath and Gilded Claw, but realizing when something is just plain inferior and picking up a better deck is an incredibly simple skill that I see lacking all too much. Standard pros change decks like we change clothes. It is a lesson we would be well served to learn.
The flip-side of this, of course, is what I would call innovation for the sake of innovation. People post new deck ideas with no regard as to whether or not they are actually better than what is currently available. This never ceases to amaze me. People need to realize that 99% of innovation will simply not be viable, and those rehashing outdated ideas over and over again are the worst offenders of these. Barring new restrictions or drastically overpowered cards in new sets, old ideas do not magically become viable for no apparent reason. I think we can all agree that Stompy and Sligh are not contenders in any way. Seeing people bring up things like Stasis and Keeper every time a new set comes out makes me just sigh and shake my head. Let the dead rest in peace.
The last, most important, and by far the most complicated of my deadly sins of Vintage is hard to quantify. I think it is best generalized as the lack of respect for theory in Vintage discussions and the over-reliance on anecdote and inference. This is where (not to beat a dead horse) I continue to have the most respect for Smmenen more than any other Vintage pundit. Every time I read about a new deck on any forum, I am
infinitely more interested in hearing
why the deck is good, especially in strategic comparison to similar archetypes and builds, than in hearing how the deck crushed a field of 15 locals en-route to splitting a beat-up Mox. I find that many of those nitpicking Steve's conclusions fall deep into this trap.
Let me offer an example. If you are facing Meandeck SX, you are likely to be facing a turn 1 kill or fizzle. As such, the vast majority of your deck is irrelevant, with the exception of Force of Will, Duress/Thoughtseize, Chalice of the Void, one of the 9spheres, Mana Drain + a non-and blue source, and to a lesser extent various turn 1/0 graveyard hosers and Extirpate. Therefore, in theory, your deck's matchup with Meandeck SX is almost entirely determinant on your numbers of the aforementioned cards.
Flash was much the same as SX in terms of speed, though more consistent. It was vulnerable to the same things, fully including graveyard hate. Thus in theory your Flash matchup, as with SX, was predicated on your access to these tools. Yet how often did people claim to absolutely crush Flash with high consistency despite wildly varying quantities of these?
I designed ICBM Oath to beat the premier decks of the time: Long and Slaver. I accepted a weaker Fish and Workshop matchup in order to stack myself with ample quantities of the tools to beat both in lethal configurations. Obligatorily, both Long and Slaver players came forward to claim that
they crushed Oath, despite the crippling disadvantages, on the basis that their token test partners crumbled before them. Facepalming ensues ad nauseum. Theory dictates that any matchup should be tested by two pilots of identical skill with their respective decks. Practice shows that this happens about as often as Vintage players admitting they are wrong.
Theory as a fundamental basis for design gets trodden-on and forgotten just as often as the matchup theory. Admittedly it is more complicated than other formats, but that is no excuse to throw it out the window. To put in perspective, design theory for limited holds that decks should contain between 15-18 mana sources and a bell-curve of mana costs that peaks around 3-4. Priority for inclusion as well as pick orders in draft are predicated upon the BREAD model. Bombs, then removal, then evasion, then abilities, then dorks.
Vintage has its own theories of this type that are applicable to varying degrees and readily ignored by most. For example, the presence of Ichorid means that any deck not choosing to sacrifice the matchup should either have the ability to consistently kill by turn 1-2, or have access to half a dozen or more specific pieces of graveyard hate. Similarly, because Storm Combo exists and can consistently goldfish in the first two turns, any deck not designed specifically to kill on turn 1 has to have at least some form of disruption that can be reliably cast on the first turn.
Another gigantic and oft-forgotten theory is that of the fundamental turn. The two theories addressed in the preceding paragraph are fairly straightforward, but how many of you deck designers keep the fundamental turn in mind when you're building? It is a horrible fallacy to assume one can compete with a strategy that does severely affect the dynamic in the first two turns, when GrimLong will try to kill you in that time-frame and Control Slaver will have Mana Drain or Welder online by then.
Other theories oft-ignored involve the 5-axis metagame principle, the beatdown principle and the concept of momentum, and the relativity of resource advantage its inherent dynamics. The last of those is one I do plan on going into in an upcoming piece, as I feel with the restriction of Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll it has become the most overlooked of all.
*breathes*
To summarize, I consider the deadly sins that are crippling Vintage to be:
-Debating irrelevant things
-Stroking the egos
-Refusing to innovate
-Innovating for the sake of innovation
-Ignorance of theory in testing
-Ignorance of theory in building
Note that none of that is any shot against playskill in any way. I believe Vintage has extremely skilled and dedicated players. I worry, however, that we are simply continuing to build on a foundation of quicksand, and the player and tournament base is stagnating as a result. The
last thing I believe we need is to be focusing on recruiting players by making the format more 'fun'. What we need is to work on these sins to better convince quality players in other formats that Vintage is a driven and competitive environment worthy of their energies.
With all that negativity down, I would like to offer the following, which I will call my Vintage bucket list. I believe this to be the list of things that every serious Vintage player should accomplish in their career, both to improve themselves and to greatly advance and enhance the format as a whole.
1) Netdeck shamelessly for a tournament. If you refuse to pilot something you haven't tinkered to your own needs, you're missing out. Go find a Menedian or Shay list, preferably something out of your comfort zone in terms of archetypes, and take it to a tournament and kick ass. If you've ever thought that something is missing in your Vintage experience, this tends to be it. Learning to pilot a 'pro' deck will take your play to the next level, and having the options available makes you a more rounded player overall.
2) Play a rogue deck for a tournament. The flip side of that, of course, is that one should at some point try their hand at deckbuilding themselves. They say all good things in moderation. You should always have a little fun and a homemade pile to spice things up every now and then.
3) Utterly bomb out of a tournament at no fault of your own. I know players who seem to never fail to make the Top 8 but never can get that elusive first place. Winning all the time is fine, but as with any game involving an element of luck, it rarely happens. Getting obliterated straight to the 0-2 bracket despite (in our own minds of course) perfectly playing a good deck is often the wake-up call we need to get that extra bit of practice in or perhaps give another archetype a try. Anything to pull us out of the tournament rut which ruins the fun and competitiveness of the whole atmosphere. If nothing else, losing is a necessary part of the game because it reminds us that we are only human. The important thing is to accept that losing can just happen, and not automatically look for something else to blame.
4) Playtest the other side of the table. My golden rule when playtesting is to always switch things up periodically and play the other deck. You can only learn so much about a deck by playing
with it, yet this is a trap I see too many people caught in. Until you've played against, lost to, and beaten up on your own deck, you can never truly hope to master it.
5) Play every other format at least once. I don't care if it is one draft and a single game of each other, and this should include limited, constructed, and even casual/fantasy formats such as Type 4. Trying out the many diverse options in the game is not only one of those important breaths of fresh air which keeps the game interesting, but it teaches us new skills and strategies that we don't necessarily see every day in our land of zero-mana counters and first turn kills. Even if you hate every one of them, you haven't truly experienced the game until you've tried them.
In conclusion, I worry about Vintage. I worry about how other players see Vintage and I worry about where we are going as a format and as a community in the future. I hope that this helps people gain a wider perspective on the format and realize that we all may have the smallest player base and tournament scene, but that is no excuse for not being professional in what we do have and working to expand on this.
As stated at the beginning, by all means speak your mind for good or ill. I am a big boy, and if you think I am absolutely full of shit or full of brilliant ideas, I want to hear. Thank you.
Peace, love, and the pursuit of happiness,
Dan, the AngryPheldagrif
