[Premium Article] Getting Your Eyelids out of the Way

[2nd_lawl]

2) workshops as an archetype simply rewards running good, winning die rolls, and opening up hands with lodestone Golem, and that among all of the shop players in a given tournament, as long as they understand basic workshop strategy, and have a serviceable list, Of them, whichever ones among them wins rolls, has good shuffles etc will make top8?  I mean why is it that that there are players who consistently top 8 with drains, with dredge, with oath, with storm etc, but no such players running MUD?  Menendian often claims that there are no good "workshop sensei" who are out there showing everyone else what to do.  How much of the "sensei problem" is the fault of workshop players, and how much is the fault of the archetype itself?
 
 

Nailed it.

This is demonstrably false, though.  Come the f on, guys.  There is a resource called "the internet".  Use it to look at tournament results in any given area and you'll find people repeating top 8s with MUD just like you find Chris Pikula repeating with top 8s with Tezz, or Max Brown occasionally making top 8s with Dark Times. 

Ever heard of Raf Forino, or Ashok, or Mike Eisenhauer, or Joseph Brown?

All with radically different lists.  Which is the point.  What are you arguing here? Are you saying that those players are as consistent as you playing oath, or jake with dredge?

[Rico Suave]

I mean why is it that that there are players who consistently top 8 with drains, with dredge, with oath, with storm etc, but no such players running MUD?  

I tend to think that the good players will consistently rise to the top.  I also believe that a disproportionately large number of these good players choose to play blue decks.  There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, so I won't go into detail, but I don't think anybody will disagree in this regard. 

What doesn't happen often is a good player choosing to play Workshops.  There are, once again, a variety of reasons why this is the case.  However I firmly believe that a good player who picks up Workshops will consistently perform well with it if only because that person is a good player.

Roland Chang, in his prime, was one of the scariest if not the most dangerous person in Vintage and he played Workshops almost exclusively. 

[LotusHead]

On the topic of Shops being easy or hard vs say, blue decks.

We have to sit on our bombs, just like you have to sit on your brainstorm/random blue card etc.  We just don't get the luxury of doing it at instant speed.  We also don't get Force of Will/Mana Drain.

The decks that we were built to destroy routinely maindeck 2 or 3 bounce spells that totally ruin our day.

Sure, if things go our way (ie, the opposing player loses the die roll and keeps a hand with no force of will), we might just steam roll over the opponent.

This is Vintage. It hurts my eyes to read about how one deck is easier to play than another. Even Flash.  Or goblins.

A good deck only gets you so far. You have to be a good player too.

[voltron00x]

Probably the most challenging part of conversing is this thread is that many of you are severely misusing the term “Workshop” and for some reason are considering all decks with Mishra’s Workshops to be “Workshop decks” with the implication that all Workshop decks are the same or should be the same – Max in particular.  This idea that Workshop players cannot agree on one ideal build, ergo the deck is inferior or strategically insignificant or simple or luck-based on account of this, is horrendous misuse of language / poor application of terminology that is surprising to see in players I thought were well-versed in Vintage.  

Mishra’s Workshop is a card that enables a variety of decks, which ARE NOT THE SAME DECK, no more than Bob Tendrils, TPS, Drain Tendrils, and Dark Times are the same deck because they all play Dark Rituals, or Trygon Tezz, Bob Tendrils, and Dark Times are the same deck because they all play Dark Confidant.  Workshop decks run a gamut of control, combo, and aggro decks, many (but not all) of which utilize varying degrees of mana denial / control.  They are not all the same deck, and even when you are actually talking about the times where they are – ie, Aggro MUD, for instance – it may be perfectly correct to play Null Rod and Juggernaut in some metas and not in others, or even to make changes in the same meta from tournament to tournament.  

*That is what is known everywhere else in the Magic world as metagaming!*  It is only in Vintage where I find this continual desire to build a singular, “optimized” universal build of an archetype when such activities will often make your deck worse for your specific metagame and retard your development as a well-rounded Magic player; it also helps reinforce this idea that Vintage is stagnant when in fact you should be working on optimizing your own deck or changing decks from event to event to take advantage of other players who, instead of moving forward, engage in circular debates about “optimizing” decks for a universal metagame that does not exist in real-world Vintage.  

This particularly enrages me given Max’s penchant for stepping on a soapbox to proclaim how awful it is that Vintage players complain about stagnation rather than going out and building decks – yet when NYSE builds a Stax deck, and Meandeck tunes a MUD deck, and Europeans play an Aggro-combo Staff combo deck, and I try to create a full-on Workshop Combo deck, now you’re going to say the fact that different groups are developing various Workshop strategies is not a good thing but rather is evidence of the weakness of an archetype?  I have repeatedly joked about how annoying it is to beat Workshop decks because there is no universal Workshop deck, when in fact that is to Workshop players’ benefit, because what beats one of them may not beat another.  When I sit down across from Max Brown, I know exactly what to expect.  Ditto Sam Berse, Mark Hornung, and Jake Gans.  When I sit across from Raf, I have an idea of what to expect – Workshops – but I don’t know exactly what configuration I’m going to face.  When I sit across from his brother, all bets are off.  Could be Shops, could be Icatian Javelineers.  Do you think it isn’t to my advantage that when someone plays me, they have no idea what deck I’m playing and can’t mulligan accordingly?  Do you think I haven’t had some free match wins because people mulligan thinking I’m on Oath, or Dredge, when I’m not playing those decks?

To use some analogies:

This would be like me saying that Mana Drain decks are bad because players can’t agree on a universal Mana Drain build – some play Oath, some play Tendrils, some play Trygons, historically some have played Remora and Repeal and Top and Empty the Warrens; no one can agree on a basic Mana Drain deck, so it must be a bad deck.  Who cares which version you play, they’re all just luck-based decks that play themselves, obviously.  Clearly it is exceptionally hard to assemble the brain-busting combo of Time Vault and Voltaic Key in the format with the best tutors in Magic.

How about Dark Ritual decks, or Dark Confidant decks – obviously Max, your deck Dark Times is terrible because it is a Dark Ritual deck, and you and the people who play TPS can’t build a unified Dark Ritual deck.  Your decks are hardly similar at all!  And how “hard” is it to play Dark Times, anyway?  Oh look, Ritual, Duress, Hexmage, untap, Dark Depths!  I am a strategic master!  That deck is nothing but flopping some cards out on the table and hoping your opponent doesn’t kill you first, since you don’t have Force of Will.  (And on the off-chance someone thinks this is seriously my opinion of Dark Times, please think again before posting)

This thread has revealed, more than anything, that a lot of people have fundamental flaws in their use of terminology relative to Workshops, and further are basing their understanding of this current crop of Workshop decks on one deck among many, or on historical decks not related to these, or are making determinations about skill level / luck / decision trees and so on without even having played any of them at all.  

[chrispikula]

I agree with you on this. I don't think that the lack of a universal build says anything at all about how good the deck is or how hard it is to play. I will say that the printing of Lodestone Golem has made a more "mindless" Workshop strategy more viable than it was previously.

I didn't expect people to get so heated up about this!  I do think that Chapin's original assessment that Workshop-based decks are trash is just silly. 

[2nd_lawl]

Probably the most challenging part of conversing is this thread is that many of you are severely misusing the term “Workshop” and for some reason are considering all decks with Mishra’s Workshops to be “Workshop decks” with the implication that all Workshop decks are the same or should be the same – Max in particular.  This idea that Workshop players cannot agree on one ideal build, ergo the deck is inferior or strategically insignificant or simple or luck-based on account of this, is horrendous misuse of language / poor application of terminology that is surprising to see in players I thought were well-versed in Vintage.  

You are conflating easy-to play and bad, with what I claimed about workshop decks.  I specifically claimed that I thought workshops were good, oppressively good actually, and that they weren't easy to play correctly. Workshop decks, since they have no, or virtually no card drawing, deck manipulation etc, are built for maximum redundancy.  The result is just that: a deck were when you are winning it barley matters what you do, because all of your cards are chosen to do the same thing, and most reasonable lines will get you there most of the time.  While you may point to specific instances that contradict this, those instances make up a very small minority of actual play situations.  A deck built to be redundant naturally has cards that do the same thing (either exactly or practically) in many situations it shouldn't surprise anyone that if 2 cards are similar in a situation then it barley matters which one you play, even if one of them might make the "correct play."  This is especially true if you consider the fact that much of the decision making for workshop players is regarding which order to play their action cards.  My argument is not meant to be offensive or mean or anything to workshop players, its an observation and it makes sense given the nature of the deck in question.  Once again, im not saying that workshops are easy to play correctly(they arent) im saying that the "wrong" plays with workshops are frequently close to as good as the correct plays.

Mishra’s Workshop is a card that enables a variety of decks, which ARE NOT THE SAME DECK, no more than Bob Tendrils, TPS, Drain Tendrils, and Dark Times are the same deck because they all play Dark Rituals, or Trygon Tezz, Bob Tendrils, and Dark Times are the same deck because they all play Dark Confidant.  Workshop decks run a gamut of control, combo, and aggro decks, many (but not all) of which utilize varying degrees of mana denial / control.  They are not all the same deck, and even when you are actually talking about the times where they are – ie, Aggro MUD, for instance – it may be perfectly correct to play Null Rod and Juggernaut in some metas and not in others, or even to make changes in the same meta from tournament to tournament.  

I dont include two-card monte in workshop decks because it isn't a workshop deck, its a combo deck that has workshops in it to quickly resolve combo pieces.  I want to be perfectly clear here,  The disagreements between whether you should play null rod in MUD is one that is held WITHIN threads about MUD which is presumed to be 1 deck.  You can take it upon yourself to deem every variation a separate deck, but this is hardly useful, especially when it isn't even adopted by the MUD players themselves.

*That is what is known everywhere else in the Magic world as metagaming!*  It is only in Vintage where I find this continual desire to build a singular, “optimized” universal build of an archetype when such activities will often make your deck worse for your specific metagame and retard your development as a well-rounded Magic player; it also helps reinforce this idea that Vintage is stagnant when in fact you should be working on optimizing your own deck or changing decks from event to event to take advantage of other players who, instead of moving forward, engage in circular debates about “optimizing” decks for a universal metagame that does not exist in real-world Vintage.  

This particularly enrages me given Max’s penchant for stepping on a soapbox to proclaim how awful it is that Vintage players complain about stagnation rather than going out and building decks – yet when NYSE builds a Stax deck, and Meandeck tunes a MUD deck, and Europeans play an Aggro-combo Staff combo deck, and I try to create a full-on Workshop Combo deck, now you’re going to say the fact that different groups are developing various Workshop strategies is not a good thing but rather is evidence of the weakness of an archetype?  I have repeatedly joked about how annoying it is to beat Workshop decks because there is no universal Workshop deck, when in fact that is to Workshop players’ benefit, because what beats one of them may not beat another.  When I sit down across from Max Brown, I know exactly what to expect.  Ditto Sam Berse, Mark Hornung, and Jake Gans.  When I sit across from Raf, I have an idea of what to expect – Workshops – but I don’t know exactly what configuration I’m going to face.  When I sit across from his brother, all bets are off.  Could be Shops, could be Icatian Javelineers.  Do you think it isn’t to my advantage that when someone plays me, they have no idea what deck I’m playing and can’t mulligan accordingly?  Do you think I haven’t had some free match wins because people mulligan thinking I’m on Oath, or Dredge, when I’m not playing those decks?

To use some analogies:

This would be like me saying that Mana Drain decks are bad because players can’t agree on a universal Mana Drain build – some play Oath, some play Tendrils, some play Trygons, historically some have played Remora and Repeal and Top and Empty the Warrens; no one can agree on a basic Mana Drain deck, so it must be a bad deck.  Who cares which version you play, they’re all just luck-based decks that play themselves, obviously.  Clearly it is exceptionally hard to assemble the brain-busting combo of Time Vault and Voltaic Key in the format with the best tutors in Magic.

How about Dark Ritual decks, or Dark Confidant decks – obviously Max, your deck Dark Times is terrible because it is a Dark Ritual deck, and you and the people who play TPS can’t build a unified Dark Ritual deck.  Your decks are hardly similar at all!  And how “hard” is it to play Dark Times, anyway?  Oh look, Ritual, Duress, Hexmage, untap, Dark Depths!  I am a strategic master!  That deck is nothing but flopping some cards out on the table and hoping your opponent doesn’t kill you first, since you don’t have Force of Will.  (And on the off-chance someone thinks this is seriously my opinion of Dark Times, please think again before posting)

If the extreme variation in MUD decks is explained by "metagaming" then you wouldn't know it from workshop threads, where people are constantly claiming their version is the best and the only reasonable option.  Furthermore to compare the differences in MUD lists to my deck versus TPS (which share less than 20 cards and have a fundamentally different strategy) is disingenuous.  Also I dont consider arguing about whether you should play null rod or juggernaut "innovation" or format development. Im also sure that the people who think the format is stagnant(in not one of them) wouldn't hold a different opinion if the MUD players played different builds every week.

This thread has revealed, more than anything, that a lot of people have fundamental flaws in their use of terminology relative to Workshops, and further are basing their understanding of this current crop of Workshop decks on one deck among many, or on historical decks not related to these, or are making determinations about skill level / luck / decision trees and so on without even having played any of them at all.  

The idea that there are 8 different "correct" builds of workshops and they should all be considered separate decks is actually silly and it contradicts what you said about metagaming.  If null Rod vs, no null rod is a metagame decision (and that seems like a reasonable assertion) then MUD with null rod and MUD without null rod arent 2 different decks.  But that still leaves us with a fundamental problem of what metagames are good for null rod, and which arent?  Apparently nobody agrees.  So that seems weird then, to have a "metagame" card that people cant agree when it is good.  If null rod decks are very similar in power level to non-null rod decks then, it barley matters.  In a deck with no card draw and tutors, decks can have fairly significant reasonable variations and maintain the same(or practically the same) win%.  This goes back to my original point: redundancy  If you have mishras workshop in your opener, What cards exactly you are casting with it is not nearly as important as the fact that you are casting cards that cost 3, 4 and 5 on turns 1 and 2.

[voltron00x]

Max:  You have to delve into nomenclature equally.  Thus, you have either:

Tendrils Decks
Drain Control

Or, you have

Tendrils Decks:  Bob Tendrils, TPS, ANT, Drain Tendrils
Drain Control:  Tezzeret (traditional Tezz), Jace (Champs style Jace control), Oath

Similarly, you have:

Shop Aggro
Stax

Or, you have:

Shop Aggro:  brown Aggro, brown Worker/Staff, Mono-Red Aggro
Stax:  5C Stax, Mono-Red Stax, Espresso Stax

Even ignoring Monte, which is wrong as it is a Workshop combo deck, the number of different sub-archetypes within Workshops shows a variety of decks that have similar levels of variation as you see in different decks in the Tendrils or Drain category.  If you can change 12 cards and go from Tezz to Oath and call it a new deck, you can change 12 cards from MUD Aggro to Espresso Stax and they’re different decks.  If you take out Null Rods, Juggernauts, and Crucibles and add Metalworker, Staff, and SoFI, that’s a different deck as much as changing a few tutors to be Bobs makes TPS and Bob Tendrils different decks.

Citing the discussion in one MUD forum as a reference point for this discussion is ridiculous.  Would you not be offended if I referred to some Dark Times threads when discussing your deck with you?

The entire question of deck difficulty is one I want to discuss in a future article, but I would wager that 90%+ of people view it incorrectly.  Workshop progressions, especially G1 in the dark, are extremely challenging (ex, opening 7 of:  Workshop, Wasteland, Mox Jet, Thorn of Amethyst, Sphere of Resistance, Chalice of the Void, Lodestone Golem), whereas most Bob Tendrils plays struck me as quite obvious in their progression.  

I think a lot of people misunderstand the complexity difference between spell-based decision trees (ie, one long and complex Yawg Will turn in TPS) with how truly complex decision trees become when those decisions are based on in-play permanents.

If the extreme variation in MUD decks is explained by "metagaming" then you wouldn't know it from workshop threads, where people are constantly claiming their version is the best and the only reasonable option.

And that isn't similar to every other thread about every other deck on TMD and most other forums about MTG in what way, exactly?

On metagaming:  

If null rod decks are very similar in power level to non-null rod decks then, it barley matters.

Barley always matters, you have to get your required amount of whole grains.

You are thinking about Null Rod in a vacuum.  In a vacuum, Null Rod vs another card may not matter at all but in an actual tournament it will create huge differences in your match-ups, and also influence your inclusion or exclusion of other cards (Karn, SoFI, Metalworker, Triskelion).

Metagaming will vary deck to deck.  For example, in some metas, maybe you want Worker / Staff; in others, maybe you want Null Rod and Juggernaut.  That’s choosing between different decks, which is metagaming when done correctly.  Say you determine you want to play Workshop Aggro - even at the Workshop Aggro level, you have to decide if you want Null Rod or not; if no Rod, do you play Trike (good against Bob and Jace and Trygon) or is Duplicant better regardless (good against Oath, Fish, Trygon)?  With or without Rod, do you play Karn, and if so, why / why not?   In either version, do you play Sculpting Steel to maximize Lodestone and protect vs Tinker?   Do you play Razormane Masticore to win the mirror?  These are metagame decisions just like any other deck.

It is, in my opinion, the fact that people want to proclaim one singular optimized build that is wrong, just as it is wrong to proclaim with absolute certainty that certain cards belong or do not belong in certain decks, without consideration to the metagame in which they are played.  Deck-building in a vacuum is one of the cardinal sins of Magic players.

[2nd_lawl]

You are thinking about Null Rod in a vacuum.  In a vacuum, Null Rod vs another card may not matter at all but in an actual tournament it will create huge differences in your match-ups, and also influence your inclusion or exclusion of other cards (Karn, SoFI, Metalworker, Triskelion).

Metagaming will vary deck to deck.  For example, in some metas, maybe you want Worker / Staff; in others, maybe you want Null Rod and Juggernaut.  That’s choosing between different decks, which is metagaming when done correctly.  Say you determine you want to play Workshop Aggro - even at the Workshop Aggro level, you have to decide if you want Null Rod or not; if no Rod, do you play Trike (good against Bob and Jace and Trygon) or is Duplicant better regardless (good against Oath, Fish, Trygon)?  With or without Rod, do you play Karn, and if so, why / why not?   In either version, do you play Sculpting Steel to maximize Lodestone and protect vs Tinker?   Do you play Razormane Masticore to win the mirror?  These are metagame decisions just like any other deck.

Results dont bear this out. Why is there no consistency among workshop lists(take a look at the 3 shop decks in worlds t8), while the 75 card blue mirror meets in the finals of worlds?  If any of this stuff mattered then why do such radically different lists seem to top8 every week, while the lists for other decks vary by 2-3 cards?  Is the meta changing that fast?  Of course logically one particular build must be "best" for a given tournament, but how much better is that build then other reasonable builds?  I know people are huge fans of discounting results (especially results of tournaments they did not attend) but I tend to put some stock in the idea that on some level the best decks should make top8.  You can claim they are all different decks, but okay, which one is best then?

[voltron00x]

Max, without a breakdown of all of the decks in the field, the statistical analysis you want is impossible.  You’re attempting to read far too much significance into the results of the top 8.  Even ignoring this, your comments don’t really mean anything, frankly.  Who cares if people can’t agree on a best build – why would you expect them to do so?  Clearly the majority of people didn’t agree with Owen / Dave / Bob that they had the best version until after the tournament, right?  This line of thinking is just a dead end.   If Vroman and I played our Oath decks in Nov 2009 in the same tournament, and we both made top 8, it would’ve meant that Dragon and Iona Oath were essentially the same because the results were similar, or that the decks were both bad b/c there was no unified version people could agree on even though both did well?

That’s all completely superfluous to the comments Pat and Owen are making about Workshops.  If anything, it just means people are reaching different metagame conclusions, or are bringing the Workshop deck they think is best for their meta into the blended meta that is Champs.  That Trygon Tezz deck was the best deck for that tournament, played by some of the best players there, and it won.  This is relevant to Workshops being bad because…?

Furthermore there clearly IS consistency in Shop decks.  Similar decks to the BoM Metalworker deck have won all over the place.  Espresso Stax has put multiple players on nearly identical lists into the top 8 of several tournaments, as did NYSE 5C Stax in 2009.  You’re going to look at the results of one tournament and draw some kind of wide-sweeping conclusion w/out access to the whole field? 

[Smmenen]

here's why pat chapin said workshops are bad:

1) You are playing an artifact deck in a format with far more artifacts that creatures, resulting in tons of artifact hate everywhere, even in the combo decks.
2) You are playing a deck where most of the cards are far too fairly-costed for Vintage unless you have a Workshop on the battlefield. You won't always have a Workshop on the battlefield.
3) You don't have Force of Will in your deck. Let's not even start on the non-mana power cards, like Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Yawgmoth’s Will, and Time Vault.
4) Not every one of your opponents will be a match-up for which you prepared. People will have things against you every time, by accident. You will often be left out to dry when you show up and those in the know are all maindecking Trygon Predators in their Jace decks.

Now, parse out each reason, and see if it makes sense for yourself.

I think it's a load of bulll; but that's my opinion.

[voltron00x]

I fear that most people have similar opinions to what he wrote, and therefore won’t parse each piece out because they take what he wrote as confirmation for their incorrect bias.

Stated another way, I agree with you.

[Smmenen]

In my article on shops i was just going to list out every stereotypical reason why people think shops are bad.   I'll list a few here:

1) shops are bad because they don't take skill to win with, and therefore you can't out play opponents

2) shops are bad because they are inconsistent, and lack ways to create greater consistency, like brainstorm.

3) shops are bad because they rely too much on being on the play

4) shops are bad because they have awkward mana, and the more consistent you make the mana, the fewer color options or card options in each color, you have.

5) shops are bad because they are vulnerale to silver bullet strategies like Hurks, energy flux

6) shops are bad because you can't stop your opponent from going broken on turn one,w hen you are on the draw

7) shops are bad because blue decks are just better

[hitman]

1) You are playing an artifact deck in a format with far more artifacts that creatures, resulting in tons of artifact hate everywhere, even in the combo decks.
2) You are playing a deck where most of the cards are far too fairly-costed for Vintage unless you have a Workshop on the battlefield. You won't always have a Workshop on the battlefield.
3) You don't have Force of Will in your deck. Let's not even start on the non-mana power cards, like Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Yawgmoth’s Will, and Time Vault.
4) Not every one of your opponents will be a match-up for which you prepared. People will have things against you every time, by accident. You will often be left out to dry when you show up and those in the know are all maindecking Trygon Predators in their Jace decks.

1) I think this is true.  Artifact removal is practically ubiquitous in Vintage.  When I played Slaver, I had Rack and Ruin along with Welder and Gorilla Shaman in my mainboard.  That was before the premier combo in the format was artifact.  Everyone's playing Ancient Grudge, Hurkyl's Recall, Nature's Claim, Trygon Predator, Ingot Chewer, Qasali Pridemage and the like.  It's like a prerequisite to playing the format.
2) This isn't much of a point because MUD plays Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors.  The spells that cost more than three are the win conditions and not the preceding Sphere effects.
3) This is very important.  I think Workshop decks are powerful in an abstract sense.  However, like Steve likes to point out power is contextual (I only agree with this when decks are relatively even in a given metagame but that's for another time).  In formats where there are so many powerful things to do, you have to be able to keep them at bay long enough for you to win.  Without cards like Force of Will, it really hampers your ability in consistently interact in the most meaningful of ways.  When everyone can just "Wrath of God" your board for two mana, you lost a lot when you can't interact on the stack (where the other decks in the format fight).  I've pretty much stopped playing Magic except for EDH and drafting.  EDH is much like Vintage in many ways except there are many more strategies you have to hedge against.  Due to the power level and diversity of the format, the best decks, at least multiplayer, are combo/control in nature.  That makes sense because you're able to stop everyone from trying to do what they want to do and just go off and kill them in one sweep.  Workshop decks can't really do that except for Metalworker combo but that's more fragile than the other versions because it's also weak to Null Rod further decreasing its ability to relevantly interact. 
4) This is pretty much the same as number 1. 

1) shops are bad because they don't take skill to win with, and therefore you can't out play opponents

2) shops are bad because they are inconsistent, and lack ways to create greater consistency, like brainstorm.

3) shops are bad because they rely too much on being on the play

4) shops are bad because they have awkward mana, and the more consistent you make the mana, the fewer color options or card options in each color, you have.

5) shops are bad because they are vulnerale to silver bullet strategies like Hurks, energy flux

6) shops are bad because you can't stop your opponent from going broken on turn one,w hen you are on the draw

7) shops are bad because blue decks are just better

1) I think decks that are underdogs take a significantly greater degree of skill to win with.  Whether it's easy or difficult to win with is an irrelevant discussion in my opinion.  Either it wins and you're capable of winning with it or not. 
2) I don't think Workshops are inconsistent.  If anything, they're redundant.  However, because of their redundant nature, they're not always interacting in a way that matters.  They're more linear.  That can be a good and bad thing.
3) I suppose if your opponent were to have a particularly strong hand but this is situation-dependent and doesn't necessarily mean anything.  A Workshop deck is perfectly capable of winning on the draw.  Because of their less combo-oriented nature, this "deficiency" can be more pronounced when an opponent has a strong hand that you weren't able to interact with adequately.  The thing about counterspells is they handle a great number of things.  They are flexible and capable of shining in a number of situations.  Thorns and Spheres are not.  They do one thing and it only matters to the extent a Workshop player want it to if played earlier rather than later.
4) While their mana is somewhat more constrained, it's not like they want to be playing many green or white spells.  There are only a handful of non-artifact spells Workshops really want to play anyway and, as results have shown, can be done without.
5) Every deck is vulnerable to silver bullet strategies but artifact destruction is not really silver bullet since everyone plays it.
6) This is true.  There are points in a game an opponent just knows he's in the clear and throw caution to the wind because there's nothing the Workshop player can do about it.
7) It depends.  Slaver dominates Workshops but Gush, without lots of Viridian Shamans, gets pretty smashed.

I think Workshops can be good but they really do have a lot of vulnerabilities.  For all the context-arguing members out there, I don't see why they're so bent out of shape by Chapin's opinion.  The context in Vintage is and has largely been hostile to artifacts.  I think there are times to play them but they're a fringe player.  Like Ichorid, you have to know how to fight it but it's not hard to beat if you really wanted to.

[voltron00x]

I think there are times to play them but they're a fringe player.

Of the last 60 Vintage tournaments on Morphling.de, 16 / 60 have been won by Workshop decks.

Care to revise that statement?

EDIT:  Mana Drains won 17 tournaments during the same time period.

[Smmenen]

I haven't written about this -- yet -- but Workshops are really just the O'Brien school.  The only difference is that they are brown more than black now.     

[Rico Suave]

I think Workshops can be good but they really do have a lot of vulnerabilities.  For all the context-arguing members out there, I don't see why they're so bent out of shape by Chapin's opinion.  The context in Vintage is and has largely been hostile to artifacts.  I think there are times to play them but they're a fringe player.  Like Ichorid, you have to know how to fight it but it's not hard to beat if you really wanted to.

I find this statement to be inaccurate.

I will quote Soly's performance at Gencon.  This isn't a disrespect for Soly, but rather a demonstration of what Ichorid can do when piloted by a good player:

"I lost to Ichorid despite TEN pieces of sb hate.  I brought in 2 Tormod's, 2 Relics, 3 Planar Void, 3 Pithing Needle, and 2 Nature's Claim for his Leylines."

I asked him if he lost to Mark Hornung.  He says:

"Yep.  Game 1 he mulls to 2 and I roll him.  Game 2 I Pith Bazaar, but he already has stuff going a little, quickly hits Narcomoebas/Ghasts, drops 2 Bridges and FKZ in the bin, then flashes back Dread Return and kills me through the DSC that I Oathed up.  Game 3 he has Leyline of Sanctity, but I have Planar Void and Tormod's.  He Chains the Planar Void, so I Claim his Leyline and Crypt him.  I play Oath and replay the Void, and he bounces both of them with 2 more Chains.  I get Oath back down, but he kills me with a horde of zombies."

How much of a 'fringe' player is Ichorid when it loses game 1, then fights through 10 pieces of hate in games 2 and 3 to take the match?  I cannot help but strongly disagree with your statement that Workshops and Ichorid are fringe players.  I firmly believe both archetypes are strong pillars of the metagame and neither one is easy to defeat even if we really want to do so.

[DubDub]

1) You are playing an artifact deck in a format with far more artifacts that creatures, resulting in tons of artifact hate everywhere, even in the combo decks.
2) You are playing a deck where most of the cards are far too fairly-costed for Vintage unless you have a Workshop on the battlefield. You won't always have a Workshop on the battlefield.
3) You don't have Force of Will in your deck. Let's not even start on the non-mana power cards, like Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Yawgmoth’s Will, and Time Vault.
4) Not every one of your opponents will be a match-up for which you prepared. People will have things against you every time, by accident. You will often be left out to dry when you show up and those in the know are all maindecking Trygon Predators in their Jace decks.

I don't have premium, is that really what he says?  That's very surprising to me, since most of his articles and appearances on 'The Magic Show' are quite insightful, and usually convey the amount of thought he's given a subject.  I think he's sadly mistaken about Shops decks' place in Vintage.  Consider: it may not be a bad thing to be playing a deck for which everyone *has* to prepare.

[2nd_lawl]

Max, without a breakdown of all of the decks in the field, the statistical analysis you want is impossible.  You’re attempting to read far too much significance into the results of the top 8.  Even ignoring this, your comments don’t really mean anything, frankly.  Who cares if people can’t agree on a best build – why would you expect them to do so?  Clearly the majority of people didn’t agree with Owen / Dave / Bob that they had the best version until after the tournament, right?  This line of thinking is just a dead end.   If Vroman and I played our Oath decks in Nov 2009 in the same tournament, and we both made top 8, it would’ve meant that Dragon and Iona Oath were essentially the same because the results were similar, or that the decks were both bad b/c there was no unified version people could agree on even though both did well?

That’s all completely superfluous to the comments Pat and Owen are making about Workshops.  If anything, it just means people are reaching different metagame conclusions, or are bringing the Workshop deck they think is best for their meta into the blended meta that is Champs.  That Trygon Tezz deck was the best deck for that tournament, played by some of the best players there, and it won.  This is relevant to Workshops being bad because…?

Furthermore there clearly IS consistency in Shop decks.  Similar decks to the BoM Metalworker deck have won all over the place.  Espresso Stax has put multiple players on nearly identical lists into the top 8 of several tournaments, as did NYSE 5C Stax in 2009.  You’re going to look at the results of one tournament and draw some kind of wide-sweeping conclusion w/out access to the whole field? 

How many times do I have to repeat myself that i don't think shops are bad.  You keep setting up the strawman that I think shops are bad, when I just said the complete opposite in 3 posts.  I think shops are incredibly good, I think they are so good that it doesn't even matter if you play a good list, what matters  is that you have a land that taps for 3 mana, and your opponents don't.

[Tha Gunslinga]

I will quote Soly's performance at Gencon. 

That was me, my name is Ben.

[voltron00x]

I will quote Soly's performance at Gencon. 

That was me, my name is Ben.

I didn't think that could be Soly, the word "retard" didn't show up three times in every sentence.

[Rico Suave]

Oh wow.  My apologies. 

[voltron00x]

Max: I will refute only your points in this post and ignore those made by Owen / Pat and the people who agree with what they wrote. There is no straw man, you are simply having a different conversation than the other people in this thread.

If all that matters with any reasonable shop deck is running good, winning your die rolls, and opening up hands with mishra's workshop then it stands to reason that none of the players are going to agree about what version of the deck is the best- since it practically doesn't matter.

Here you state that the reason that no one can agree on the best Shop deck is because all that matters is winning die rolls and “running good” which basically means drawing good hands with Shops.  On the contrary, I would suggest that there are different Shop decks developed for different metas and by different teams, and that the fact that some players *do* repeat in top 8s over and over suggests that the right build matters and playing correctly matters.  Further, this statement could be said about almost any deck in Vintage.  Do you think people haven’t attributed the times you’ve won with Dark Times to you just drawing hot hands with Rituals, Hexmage, and Depths?  Do you believe them to be correct?

Oh workshops are obviously good, I believe the deck is practically unbeatable on the play with a good draw.  But its 99% as unbeatable with an average player holding the cards as a good one.

So you believe 1% of playing “Workshops” (inclusive of all the Workshop decks) comes down to skill?  Is this current only now in this meta?  It is easily disprovable historically speaking.  I think it is relatively disprovable now, as well.  I can point to a number of players who have hit top 8 repeatedly with Shops and several who have played them repeatedly and not made top 8, again because many of the better hands have immediate decision trees that bad players screw up.

Well according to menendian, and what sounds like the prevailing wisdom outside of the NY/Philly meta(based on recent articles) is the opposite.

 
Here, you are attributing to Menendian a statement I don’t think he actually made, similarly, the comments by Owen and Pat are simply that Workshop decks are bad on the whole, not that there aren’t Workshop specialists.

My contention is that difference between the win% of a master playing shops and the win% of an average players playing shops is smaller then with other decks.

This was the same charge leveled at Dredge for most of 2009, until the same group of players made top 8 over and over while others did not, and people for the most part have now come to accept that skill does matter with that deck.  I had long thought we had moved past any similar misconceptions about Shops, but apparently that is not the case.  Suffice it to say, I strongly disagree with this statement and I don’t think you’ve offered any evidence or proof to back it up, to the extent such things can even be proven.

All with radically different lists.  Which is the point.  What are you arguing here? Are you saying that those players are as consistent as you playing oath, or jake with dredge?

Yes, that’s what I’m saying.  I’m not sure what’s confusing about it.  For some reason you’re trying to “penalize” Ashok for making, I think, 4 consecutive top 8s with MUD Aggro, MUD Aggro, Mono-Red Stax, and Mono-Red Stax with Bloodghasts.  He switched up his deck’s configuration to stay ahead of the metagame.  This is what good players do.  Further, unless you are asserting he won die rolls and drew Shops and “ran good” in all four tournaments, then clearly skill is a factor.

 This is especially true if you consider the fact that much of the decision making for workshop players is regarding which order to play their action cards.

Action cards, as opposed to the inaction cards in other decks?  What does that mean, exactly?  You beat Workshop players because they play Chalice 1 over Null Rod, or Thorn over Sphere, or Factory the wrong turn, or don’t Port you when they should, or lead in the dark with Lodestone Golem when they have other, better options.  Most importantly, they may mulligan incorrectly.  These are all skill-based decisions that separate good player from bad player.  You think this makes up 1% of playing the deck?

You can take it upon yourself to deem every variation a separate deck, but this is hardly useful, especially when it isn't even adopted by the MUD players themselves.

It is useful, and it isn’t my nomenclature, either.  I’ve hardly just come up with new names for the various Workshop decks, you just insist on referring to them all as Shop decks when they are quite different, and some of the things you’ve said are far more relevant to some builds than to others.

But that still leaves us with a fundamental problem of what metagames are good for null rod, and which arent?  Apparently nobody agrees.  

This proves nothing.  More people think Dark Times is a bad deck than a good deck.  There is no agreement.  What does that prove?

So that seems weird then, to have a "metagame" card that people cant agree when it is good.

On  the contrary, people disagree because they fail to understand how different and regional Vintage metagames are, AND because many people (like you) think it doesn’t matter what cards you play since they’re all similar and it doesn’t matter because the deck is 1% skill.

 If any of this stuff mattered then why do such radically different lists seem to top8 every week, while the lists for other decks vary by 2-3 cards?

This is just you not looking at data.  Go look at the 17 Drain decks that have won tournaments in the last 60 events on Morphling if you don’t believe me.  They are radically different.  Drain decks in Spain do not look like Drain decks made by the Dutch, which do not look like the Drain decks from NE PA, which are not the Drain decks from CA.  You’re allowing for vague use of the term Drain or Tezz to encompass a wide range of decks which ARE different in some cases by 10-15+ cards, but then trying to deny that same quality to Shop decks by stating that in their case, it doesn’t matter.  It stands to reason that Drain decks, then, are also so good that their actual make-up is irrelevant and they are 1% skill, and that you just have to run good and draw ways to find Recall, or bumble into a Key/Vault.  Which, by the way, many people would assert is also correct.

You can claim they are all different decks, but okay, which one is best then?

The point is that there IS NO BEST!  I wrote an entire article about this concept, as have others.  

I haven’t attempted to show that you believe Shops are bad, only to refute your points that:
a)   There are no repeating Shop players in top 8s
b)   The skill differential between players is 1%
c)   All that matters with the deck is rolling dice, drawing Workshops and “running good”, which you believe support a and b
d)   The lines of play in the deck don’t matter due to overlap among the cards
e)   The fact that there is no unified build somehow proves any of your other points

[Stormanimagus]

I'd like to add to this discussion that
any GOOD Vintage deck can have brainless Victories or, even better, brainless BAILOUT victories. This is nothing new. With the exception of perhaps Noble Fish (although even that deck can have draws that are
pretty darn nuts) EVERY top tier Vintage deck can draw the brainless
bonkers and just win. The exact way these various decks do that is different, but the fact that they CAN do it at all is what matters. The fact that MUD can have such draws does not take away from the skill intensive nature of the deck on the far more common "average draws".

-Storm

[voltron00x]

I'd like to add to this discussion that
any GOOD Vintage deck can have brainless Victories or, even better, brainless BAILOUT victories. This is nothing new. With the exception of perhaps Noble Fish (although even that deck can have draws that are
pretty darn nuts) EVERY top tier Vintage deck can draw the brainless
bonkers and just win. The exact way these various decks do that is different, but the fact that they CAN do it at all is what matters. The fact that MUD can have such draws does not take away from the skill intensive nature of the deck on the far more common "average draws".

-Storm

Well put.

[zeus-online]

I'd like to add to this discussion that
any GOOD Vintage deck can have brainless Victories or, even better, brainless BAILOUT victories. This is nothing new. With the exception of perhaps Noble Fish (although even that deck can have draws that are
pretty darn nuts) EVERY top tier Vintage deck can draw the brainless
bonkers and just win. The exact way these various decks do that is different, but the fact that they CAN do it at all is what matters. The fact that MUD can have such draws does not take away from the skill intensive nature of the deck on the far more common "average draws".

-Storm

I'd actually add that just about any decent deck in any format can have nearly brainless victories where you just straight up beat your opponent regardless of what he does. Standard decks are no different then vintage decks in that regard. (Simply due to the fact that you might just draw the exact right cards at the right time to nulify anything he does)

[honestabe]

I'd like to add to this discussion that
any GOOD Vintage deck can have brainless Victories or, even better, brainless BAILOUT victories. This is nothing new. With the exception of perhaps Noble Fish (although even that deck can have draws that are
pretty darn nuts) EVERY top tier Vintage deck can draw the brainless
bonkers and just win. The exact way these various decks do that is different, but the fact that they CAN do it at all is what matters. The fact that MUD can have such draws does not take away from the skill intensive nature of the deck on the far more common "average draws".

-Storm

I'd actually add that just about any decent deck in any format can have nearly brainless victories where you just straight up beat your opponent regardless of what he does. Standard decks are no different then vintage decks in that regard. (Simply due to the fact that you might just draw the exact right cards at the right time to nulify anything he does)

As a Jund player, I can tell you I got those hands in t2 more than I do in vintage with Tezz.

Turn 1 manland,
turn 2 leech
turn 3 thrinax,
turn 4 bloodbraid

That game is overrrrrrr and it happens a lot

[bb-g]

I have really taken the time to read this thread with great interest and have come to the following conclusion:

It's clearly a fact that here on the Manadrain there is a great distance between members who think before they write and players who write and then start thinking.
If this kind of behaviour is also exercised during tournaments, then I really start to understand why there's a big gap in America between the "good" players and the "scrubs".

Whoever stating Workshopdecks are bad i can tell you: Please pick up the deck and play skillfully with it. This deck is a powerhouse!
The fact is that this deck is experienced as "less consitant" is because it is very difficult to make the right mulligan decissions and the deck has no deckmanipulation to make up for a bad decission. (otherwise try to explain me why 2 Exactly the same MUD decks made Top 8 in BOM V (I consider this tournament more of a word championship then the joke in gencon they call "world champs") if they are "bad" or "inconsistent"? 9 rounds of pure luck followed with some 3 more? -> I don't buy it!)


I even dare to make following bald statements concerning Vintage, it's decks and it's players:

Disclaimer: Please take these statements with some grain of salt because they are only intended to make you think about these. Those statements arent exclusive and defined since there are allways graduations, nuances and exceptions.

1. Every competitive deck in Vintage is good in a vacuum. It's only in a given metagame that a deck becomes "bad" or "superb" or "mediocre".
2. Every deck in Vintage is as easy as it's skillfull. It's just the players perception on the given deck and it's intelligence that defines a type of required skill.
3. Not a deck is difficult or easy. It's the player that has to be defined as smart or stupid.

If I had more time i should write an article explaining these 3 statements, but for now you have to do it with them as is.

[TheBrassMan]

1. "This deck takes no skill" and "This deck is a bad choice to play in a specific tournament" and "This deck has bad win %s" are three entirely different statements.  The strength of the correlation between these statements can vary greatly.

2. Note that "This deck takes no skill" can be a good thing - all other things equal, it's smarter to play a deck that you're less likely to make mistakes with (though all other things are rarely equal).  
     - Consider, 60 lands with "you win the game" vs Meandeck Tendrils.  You'd have to be pretty smart to win with
       Meandeck Tendrils.  You'd have to be pretty dumb to play it.

3. "Shops are total luck, why would you play shops when you could just watch a movie instead?" and "Shops are a strong choice to perform at a tournament," are not incompatible statements.
     - Consistently winning vintage tournaments is not that exciting from a financial perspective.  There are more factors
       than EV that go into deck choice

[zeus-online]

The problem with a deck that is so easy to play that you always make the right play is that in the mirror you will never really have an edge (Your opponent will be able to play it at the same level as you, since there are no other levels).

Pre-edit: Not saying that this is the case with shop decks. Playing your cards in the right order and at the right time is a skill you'd better be good at if you're going to play shops.

[TheBrassMan]

The problem with a deck that is so easy to play that you always make the right play is that in the mirror you will never really have an edge

Is this inherently a problem?  This assumes that you're better than your opponent, which is a pretty gigantic assumption - an incorrect assumption for half of the people in any given match. 

Lets say, hypothetically,that you are a better player than your opponent.  You don't get the edge by switching to the harder deck - that just opens you up to more potential mistakes, even if you're not that likely to make them.  You can only leverage that skill if your opponent switches to the harder deck, which you generally have very little control over (spreading misinformation on TMD aside).