[Free Article]My SoM Set Review

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I give a very brief review of SoM for Vintage.  I'm sure Stephen will do a much more thurough job.  There's also a bit about some really bad news I received over the weekend at the end.  I doubt I'm alone on this.  Anyway, for your pleasure or pain:

http://mtgvintage.blogspot.com/2010/09/scars-of-mirrodin-set-review.html

Peace,

-Troy

[Ten-Ten]

I enjoyed reading this, Thank you for posting this.
I have to say, I was excited at first about Metalcraft but as you stated,

Metalcraft was easy to disrupt. A well placed creature kill spell here, a nifty combat trick there, and their whole plan went down the toilet. It is such a fragile mechanic, that I think anyone playing with Pyroclasm in Standard can take down the strategy easily. Memnites and Myrs just aren't strong enough to rely on to get the effect consistently.

Sad to hear your local Type1 got replaced by 1.5. This happened here at my local shops a long time ago even before Timevault. For some reason people seem to be more interested in Type2 garbage or are afraid to be creative and build new Type1 decks from time to time.

Thank you.

[limitedwhole]

Unfortunately, type 1 has allot of hype around the cards and that hype is flowing into a very small pool.  Time Vault/key is a very easy deck to beat.  Any deck that has maindeck solutions like mana+gorilla shaman is capable of beating it.  Oath of druids has already been a problem card not so much becuase it is good but that it quashes out aggro decks.  Notice Conley woods played an aggro deck that in worlds however that had good game against it.  Finally, Mud is allot more inconsistent that its pilots would like to admit.  All these decks have weaknesses to be exploited.  Frankly Time Vault/Voltaic Key isn't even a good combo by combo standards as it is a three card combo requiring sol ring, lotus, or mana vault to be comboed with it early.  Here is a list of powerful combos.  Many european decklists I look at have multiple ancient grudges to use as mana destruction and time vault kill.  I really dont think this metagame is stagnant so much that the decks are unbeatable, but that everyone in type 1 has a blinding faith in threats over answers.  It isn't difficult to build an aggro deck that has game against MUD and Tez.  Trick it out to beat oath and you have a contender.  Proxies let people slap together a netdeck.  People draw powerful comboes.  They either win or lose.  Its either bad luck or skill.  Its all about selecting the netdeck that best fits the metagame not building a deck that beats them all.  When they win, it was posed to beat the metagame.  When they lose they misread the metagame.  Vault/Key serves only two purposes, to assemble against a defenseless opponent who has a fast clock, or to slip into a gap in a control battle.  Personally I don't even think its that good.  The overreliance on testing results causes people to slap cards in there decks without considering whether of not they are any good.  Objectively vault/key is bad, you really need specific plays at specific times in specific matchups for it to be good, and even then your opponent can merely change his play.

Yawgmoth's Will+Black Lotus: 0 mana
Balance+Zuran Orb: 2 Mana
Dark Ritual+Necropotence: 1 Mana
Vault+Key: 4 Mana

[apocalyp]

It sucks losing a regular T1 Venue.  We had the same thing happen about a month or so ago.  We always had 8-12 people coming out and probably 3-4 of us were powered (These were sanction since the store owner only wants to run sanction events.)  Unfortunately we went 2-3 weeks were the guys who were powered couldn't show up for various reasons and everyone just figured they might as well convert to Legacy instead. 

I've talked to various people during the last couple weeks while playing Legacy or even at the pre-release last weekend, and it's really sad how much people think that a) not having power in a sanctioned T1 event equals auto-lose ,b)T1 is about turn 1 kills and c) it's too expensive to play vintage.

Hopefully we'll be able to get things going again.

And in hopes of not derailing this thread I'd say the top Vintage cards in the set are these:

Ratchet Bomb - As you said it's great and is an all around answer.  Also allows for decks running vault-key to ramp the bomb a turn or two faster.

Steel Hellkite - This should and will replace one of the bots in most lists almost guaranteed.  It can clear to board so easily it's insane.

Leonin Arbiter - This guys is huge,  he slows down te game drastically.

Mox Opal - I figure it might become moxes 6-7 in a few lists but not much more of an impact.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Thanks for the positive feedback, guys, I appreciate it

@ Apocalyp, you're not getting off topic talking about stores ending their T1 tournaments.  That's what half my article was about.  In fact, I believe it's a very important thing to discuss.

@ limitedwhole, I see where you're coming from on combos.  And I definately agree that more Gorilla Shaman would make Vault/Key harder to pull off.  I think Trygon Predator has tried to do that and works to some degree in the mirror.  The major thing I think holds people back from playing Shaman is Oath.  Trygon lets you kill Oath before it's activated.  Shaman can't.  But still, Shaman is an excellent anti-Vault/Key card that deserves a harder look.

@Ten-Ten, I'm sorry we are able to share in our misery.  I'm hoping some day we'll be able to share in rejoicing as those stores return to Vintage when the meta becomes more appealing to a larger player base.  And yeah, Metalcraft is a cool ability, but it just is so insular.  It works, perhaps, in Vintage because we can power out artifacts like crazy.  But in other formats, a well placed removal spell can wreck an entire board space- and I'm not talking about Day of Justice, either. 

Peace,

-Troy

[Marske]

@Troy,
Nice read, although I don't get why people always "bitch" about certain things (more on that later) I agree with most of the cards you suggested here.

Sad to hear your local Type1 got replaced by 1.5. This happened here at my local shops a long time ago even before Timevault. For some reason people seem to be more interested in Type2 garbage or are afraid to be creative and build new Type1 decks from time to time.

and

I showed up Saturday with a well tuned Shop deck to find that the weekly Saturday Vintage tournament has been replaced by a weekly Legacy tournament (not surprisingly, the top 2 decks from the week prior were Merfolk). I was shocked and dismayed. The guy who runs the place, a man I have immense respect for, told me that everyone just got tired of the three way battle between MUD, Time Vault, and Oath. Apparently, I was the only one who ever brought Dredge to the table. Anyway, the overall sentiment of the group was that the stagnant metagame- which I still maintain has been largely unchanged since fall 2008- has driven away a huge amount of the player base and made the format un-fun.

You have the power to organize events yourself, it doesn't take THAT much time, trust me I've been doing it ontop of several other very demanding things for the past 3 years now. Find a community building you can play in or ask a store owner if he/she would mind "renting" it out. Get them to sponsor prizes (because they'll make money regardless) and do some PR work.

@Troy again, Clearly it seems to me that the guys at your store never really had somebody work with them to beat you powered guys. Why don't you "lend" them your deck and play unpowered yourself for a change. Make sure they get to participate (best way is proxies but those have their own problems) It takes a bigger man to sculpt and teach then to come in every Saturday and just beat face because you have power and they don't.

Now, I don't pretend to know if this situation was true or not don't get me wrong. But I've seen this behavior numerous times over the years. It takes community builders, people like Nick "Prospero" Detwiler and myself (ok little bit of ego here so forgive me) that lend out 3-4 decks (non proxied if need be) and help people get a hand of staples either by borrowing them, helping aquiring them or whatever. It's hard for players to get their hands on staples. I've talked with numerous people about their decks, what could be better, suggested cards they could add and gave / lend them those cards. This approach has yet to fail me and I'm a part of one of the most stable type 1 groups in our country, singlehandidly responsible for bringing T1 back.

Over the past year(s) or so I've had numerous discussions about the format being stagnant because , GAT vs Tyrant Oath vs Flash, Slaver vs MUD vs Combo, Tezz vs Oath vs MUD, etc ad infinitum.... is stale / lame / should or shouldn't be restricted....If the format's so stale why do teams like R&D, Meandeck etc all come up with new stuff ? (Remora, Terastodon Oath, Two card Monte, Snake and Steel city vault and so on)

Honestly this is going from a pet peeve of mine to a major friggin shitstorm everytime I hear somebody "complaining" about it. You have the power to change this. It only takes one to get it started (maybe two, three to keep it going)

[Troy_Costisick]

You have the power to organize events yourself, it doesn't take THAT much time, trust me I've been doing it ontop of several other very demanding things for the past 3 years now. Find a community building you can play in or ask a store owner if he/she would mind "renting" it out. Get them to sponsor prizes (because they'll make money regardless) and do some PR work.

@Troy again, Clearly it seems to me that the guys at your store never really had somebody work with them to beat you powered guys. Why don't you "lend" them your deck and play unpowered yourself for a change. Make sure they get to participate (best way is proxies but those have their own problems) It takes a bigger man to sculpt and teach then to come in every Saturday and just beat face because you have power and they don't.

You make some excellent points, Marske, and I didn't give a enough background on the situation in my article.  I should have, so I'll do that here.

The store is a 90 minute drive for me.  I pass about three game shops, all premier stores, on my way there.  I'm not a regular since my new daughter, job, and graduate activities keep me pretty busy, especially when the school year begins.  Traditionally, I did play unpowered decks.  Lately, I played Ichorid, Elves, and Christmas Beatings.  I enjoy all those decks quite a bit.  During the Golden Age, I did play powered decks- mainly Flash, Red Stax, and WGDx once or twice.  I had a lot more time to play back then (no child or univeristy requirements at the time). 

The store officially allowed 10 proxies, but that was really only a suggestion.  You could get away with proxying as much as you wanted, really.  Now this dovetails nicely into the whole debate about proxies, and I don't want to start that here in this specific thread.  But I'll just say this, the Appocalypse of '08 demonstrated the dangers of proxies very vividly at store I mentioned in my article.

About me lending my decks, I didn't feel comfortable doing that until recently.  The folks that play there are excellent, welcoming people.  I always have fun playing there, but I don't know them personally all that well.  Since my trips are infrequent, I had been relunctant to lend out my cards.  Just before GenCon, I did lend one player a playset of Wastelands and Null Rods so she could compete in Vintage Worlds.  She had everything else she needed.  All of them were returned to me this week- after nearly a two month absence on my part- in exactly the same condition I lent them.  So, I would feel confident lending cards now.

So, I take your criticism as legit.  I could had done more as far as lending out my decks goes.  My attendance is a separate issue and one that will (hopefully) clear up after February.  Not much I can do about committments like that.  My family and education come first.  I definately believe in "being the change you want to see," so hopefully when my schedule clears up, I'll be able to be just that.

Peace,

-Troy

[Marske]

@Troy,
Like I said, it wasn't "aimed" at anybody in paticular, I understand being busy, trust me. I'm just saying that if everybody is always "to busy" to stepup to the plate and actually change something nothing ever will.

Playing more at the same store, makes you familiar with the folks which makes lending out cards easier which makes them "value" you as a person and member of their community and makes it easier for you to host events. Which is why I still make an effort to attend FNM's and Prereleases and Game Days. Although there's the "hidden" agenda of testing out my new T2 decks for upcoming PTQ's, GP's etc along with networking to gather new players.

Staying in touch with new and old people at my local store has helped me develop a network of players for borrowing/ lending cards, discussing decks, organizing road trips and above all, attending my events.  Just because I put an effort in to help them, they'll come and show up and battle when I organize something. Not necissarily Vintage but I've had side event booster drafts being full to the max on locals wanting to play. This is a way for them to see Vintage in Tournament action etc. Snowballing the overall effect the format has.

I know this rambling is way off topic, but as I said, this is a pet peeve subject of mine.