[Discussion] Clockspinning

[desolutionist]

With the recent drought that has been intuitive/intelligent deck and sideboard design surrounding competitive play I thought it was time to throw my 2 cents into the ring.

No one is going to disagree with you when you look at the metagame and openly declare that TPS is the best deck.  Just this summer it won Vintage Worlds and several of the most competitive tournaments in the United States.  If you just scan a decklist, you'll find it full of so many insane plays!  I mean, Dark Ritual -> Necropotence?  That has to be the best...  Or does it?     

In my opinion, the deck is too luck-based.  I believe it's strong performances are only due to it's attendance.  Data from the August Blue Bell Lotus Event shows that around 25% of the field was Ritual based.  If 15 people would have shown up with Belcher, I'm sure one of them would have walked away with the Lotus. To help illustrate my point, I loaded Allen Fulmer's Lotus-winning TPS deck into Magic Workstation and drew 5 sample hands. (His list can be found here: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=36418.0 )

Sample 1:
Grim Tutor
Polluted Delta
Chain of Vapor
Lotus Petal
Grim Tutor
Cabal Ritual
Dark Ritual

This hand is one mana short of a first turn Yawg Will win and crippled by an opposing Force of Will.  You can either play Polluted Delta and pass the turn, hoping to draw a mana source for the turn 2 unprotected win or play a Grim Tutor off the Dark Ritual, getting either Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall.  Black Lotus would also allow a turn 2 unprotected win and Ancestral Recall would give you a chance to draw into protection for, hopefully, a turn 3 win.  The slightest bit of disruption makes this slow hand A LOT worse.  You'll need some luck to win this game.

Sample 2:
Imperial Seal
Polluted Delta
Lotus Petal
Mystical Tutor
Mox Sapphire
Grim Tutor
Duress

This hand is better because it has an on-color Mox, but still not very good.  The obvious turn 1 play is to Duress and Mystical Tutor off the Sapphire.  Tinker would be the easiest win (turn 4), but definitely not fail-proof.  The other option is Timetwister, which might get you a turn 3 win.  Though if your hand is anything like the next sample, you'll probably just lose.

Sample 3:
Swamp
Mox Ruby
Force of Will
Mana Vault
Bayou
Duress
Merchant Scroll

This hand is awful.  Turn 1 Duress, Ruby, Vault, Go.  Hope you draw something.

Sample 4:
Time Walk
Bayou
Mana Vault
Chain of Vapor
Grim Tutor
Cabal Ritual
Vampiric Tutor

There really isn't much you can do with this hand at all.  I think the strongest play you can make is Vampiric Tutor for Black Lotus and Grim Tutor for Necropotence for a turn 3 unprotected win.  It loses to Force of Will or any kind of disruption and is slow to boot.

Sample 5:
Misdirection
Ancestral Recall
Polluted Delta
Swamp
Necropotence
Merchant Scroll
Cabal Ritual

This hand is the best of the samples.  Turn 1 Ancestral Recall.  Turn 2 Necropotence, which should equate to a turn 3 win.  All protected by Misdirection.  Even though it is significantly damaged by Duress, Sphere of Resistance, or Cursecatcher, the Ancestral Recall should give you a pretty good chance at getting back into the game. 

Against a competent opponent, playing a decent deck, TPS should only win 1 to 2 out of these 5 games.  That has been my experience with the deck so far; every game is a struggle.  Of the 3 tournaments I played the deck, I only top8ed once.  Even World Champ, Paul Mastriano, isn't playing the deck anymore.  And Eric Becker says the deck tested worse than Intuition Tendrils, which doesn't see play.

It's difficult to know what to think when testing reveals data that doesn't shadow tournament results.  I think the deck will begin to see less and less play overtime as more consistent decks with appropriate disruption will trump it.  I've been having moderate success with an Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge version of TPS, but ultimately it will just be too easily defeated by common disruption.

Vintage is beginning to degenerate.  What's the next deck-to-beat?  Suicide Black.

[Nehptis]

I don't think that Vintage is starting to degenerate.  Instead I'd say that it has been stagnating.  Many of us predicted that Slaver was going to be overplayed and that we basically were just turning back the clock to a meta game of the past.

Other indicators of stagnation are the dominace of TPS/ Storm style decks, which as you pointed out are heavily played.  Also, the ever present Sphere based Shop decks to me also contribute to the feeling of stagnation.  Fortunately for the format, I think Shards may introduce some new decks to the meta.

But, to your point about luck based wins with TPS, the format as a whole is heavily luck based.  Decks designed around powerful restricted spells are going to be based on luck (good and bad)!

[hitman]

Since the discovery of Negate, blue decks will start packing it in decks to combat combo better.  With the downturn in combo and rise in Fish popularity, aggro decks might see more play as it should have a fair matchup against blue control decks and crush Fish decks.  Combo will probably return to a Long shell to go broken earlier to outrace blue control disruption and crush aggro decks.  The metagame will probably settle on Long versus Painter.  I'm not excited about Tezzeret because it's slow and I see the format speeding up a little to counteract the resurgence of Mono-Blue Control-like strategies.  Just my opinion.

I'm not claiming to be an expert with TPS but in my testing, you want to play the control role for a couple turns and draw off the topdeck, fix your hand with tutors and go off protected.  It's hard to evaluate an opening hand that looks aggressive.  It looks like you want to keep it but TPS doesn't goldfish that fast.  When you try to push the deck early, you end up flat on your face with your pants down.  I've always needed to fix my hand a good amount before really going for it.  I like to keep hands with a couple pieces of disruption if I can and topdeck business while I try to control the flow of the game with Duress.  It seems like I mulligan a lot, too.  I'll mull into a good disruptive hand 'cause TPS topdecks very well in my experience.  The way I play Necro in TPS is very different from the way I play it in Long.  I won't hesitate to set 9-11 cards aside in a Long build but I'm much more conservative with it in TPS.  I usually set aside 4-6 and over several turns just wear them away.  I think that's a reflection of how this deck plays out.  Anyway, take that for what it's worth.  I think the deck is definitely top tier.  It is different than the Ritual-based decks I've previously played though.

[wiley]

Suicide black exists, it is currently called manaless ichorid/dredge and it definitely is not the current deck to beat.  With the power shift (balancing?) in magic overall between creatures and spells as of late I think that many of the deck design conceptions must also change. 

More and more often we are seeing a spell with an added body like cursecatcher or wispmare, the question is where is the saturation point?  When do we have enough utility spells with bodies that we no longer need to include a dedicated finisher?  Effectively, when does fish evolve to become the absolute best deck?

After all, currently fish has to run spells and creatures to survive, what happens when we get null rod with a body and force of will with a body and standstill with a body etc?  It isn't like we would need to run both force of will and the new force+2/2, and even if we would in the beginning eventually there would be a reason to cut force somewhere down the line because it no longer pulls enough weight.  This is an over exaggeration of course, however it stands to reason that counterparts to older cards like the magus cycle will see print again and it isn't like all the current red decks are running blood moon over magus of the moon.  There are creatures with similar effects to stax's lock pieces with glowrider and braids, cabal minion, as well as other lock pieces such as gaddock teeg and the new ethersworn canonist.  These are lock pieces that can actually kill the opponent, and without dedicating space to karn.

I guess that I predict that the majority of future vintage design space will be midrange aggro with compact combos, just better than normal fish or bomberman.  As for immediate predictions well, people don't like to let go of things they know so change will be slow and hard.