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TheBrassMan
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« on: October 03, 2010, 11:26:46 pm » |
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Back in the saddle again! This is mostly just some stream-of-consciousness about Gush, and me getting used to writing again. There's a decklist in there for you non-premium guys to complain about not seeing, so that should be fun. http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/20204_City_of_Brass_Riddle_Me_This.html |
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Team GGs: "Be careful what you flash barato, sooner or later we'll bannano"
"Demonic Tutor: it takes you to the Strip Mine Cow."
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Tha Gunslinga
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Basic User
Posts: 1583
De-Errata Mystical Tutor!
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« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2010, 12:18:32 am » |
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Cool stuff. Sorry to see that Gush is going to be all over once again. Glad to see we'll still have a decent amount of Vintage on SCG even with Steve gone.
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Don't tolerate splittin'
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Marske
Mindsculptor
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Posts: 1209
Go beyond Synergy and enter Poetry
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« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2010, 02:54:23 am » |
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Andy,
Good to see you back... I enjoyed the article a lot. I do hope we get more of this stuff in the future as you stick around!
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Riding a polka-powered zombie T-Rex into a necromancer family reunion in the middle of an evil ghost hurricane. "Meandeckers act like they forgot about Dredge." - Matt Elias The Atog Lord: I'm not an Atog because I'm GOOD with machines  |
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Troy_Costisick
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« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2010, 04:36:36 am » |
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WB Andy! Cool stuff. Sorry to see that Gush is going to be all over once again. Glad to see we'll still have a decent amount of Vintage on SCG even with Steve gone.
I'm not ready to go this far just yet. Take Steve's 1st place for instance. Stephen is among the best GAT players in the world. There are few people who know how to play that deck better than him. His win is a sign that Gush is viable but not necessarily a sign that it will be dominant. It's going to take a lot more than just that. SoM was just released this weekend, so there's going to be a lot of change over the next month before we really know what's going on. Peace, -Troy |
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zeromancer
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« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2010, 06:32:26 am » |
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Wow, that sure is a great article. I completely agree on what is said about Gush and TfK and am happy to see someone paying attention to the combination of Gush and Riddlesmith. Maybe it would be worth testing to replace the maindeck freeze with a Cunning Wish and some Tops with Baubles (as I think they are really good with the riddler).
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"I'm too modest a wizard to reveal the full extent of my abilities." Ertai, wizard adept
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voltron00x
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« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2010, 08:30:35 am » |
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WB Andy! Cool stuff. Sorry to see that Gush is going to be all over once again. Glad to see we'll still have a decent amount of Vintage on SCG even with Steve gone.
I'm not ready to go this far just yet. Take Steve's 1st place for instance. Stephen is among the best GAT players in the world. There are few people who know how to play that deck better than him. His win is a sign that Gush is viable but not necessarily a sign that it will be dominant. It's going to take a lot more than just that. SoM was just released this weekend, so there's going to be a lot of change over the next month before we really know what's going on. Peace, -Troy To reinforce what Troy said, I'd check out the other decks in that specific top 8 before getting too excited. If anything, the early results really make me want to play the MUD deck that I'll be posting in my next article. Andy, great article. Looking forward to reading your stuff on a regular basis. |
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« Last Edit: October 04, 2010, 08:55:54 am by voltron00x »
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“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.”
Team East Coast Wins
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DubDub
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« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2010, 08:58:47 am » |
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Can't wait to read this in a month. Congrats. Also, *complain* about the lack of free access to the decklist. I've been working on Riddlesmith, and enjoying that it was flying under the radar, oh well. Also, Steve's list is a viable Blue deck that doesn't play Time Vault or Jace the Mind Sculptor, isn't that what people wanted? |
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Vintage is a lovely format, it's too bad so few people can play because the supply of power is so small.
Chess really changed when they decided to stop making Queens and Bishops. I'm just glad I got my copies before the prices went crazy.
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Sextiger
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Posts: 338
My nickname was born for these days
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« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2010, 05:47:26 pm » |
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Any thought to Nihil Spellbomb instead of Leylines since they synergize with your deck and you can side them in as good 1-2 ofs against combo, slaver, bomberman, etc?
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"After these years of arguing I've conceded that Merchant Scroll in particular can be an exception to this rule because it is a card that you NEVER want to see in multiples, under any circumstances. Merchant Scroll can be seen as restricted in a way because should you have 2 in a hand, only one is really useful (that is, only one can get Ancestral)."
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Juggernaut GO
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« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2010, 06:36:15 pm » |
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Glad to see we'll still have a decent amount of Vintage on SCG even with Steve gone.
Wait what? |
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Rand Paul is a stupid fuck, just like his daddy. Let's go buy some gold!!!
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Odd mutation
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« Reply #9 on: October 05, 2010, 05:29:10 am » |
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Glad to see we'll still have a decent amount of Vintage on SCG even with Steve gone.
Wait what? Yeah, what's up with that? This is the third thread that I'm asking this.  What's going on with Steve and StarcityGames? Robrecht |
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LordHomerCat
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« Reply #10 on: October 08, 2010, 10:07:22 am » |
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Glad to see we'll still have a decent amount of Vintage on SCG even with Steve gone.
Wait what? Yeah, what's up with that? This is the third thread that I'm asking this. What's going on with Steve and StarcityGames? Robrecht The thread literally directly above this as I post. Also, I totally haven't read your article Andy, because I am a lazy bum. But its probably awesome, right? Ok, let's just agree it is in fact awesome. |
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Team Meandeck Team Serious LordHomerCat is just mean, and isnt really justifying his statements very well, is he?
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TheBrassMan
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« Reply #11 on: November 04, 2010, 05:05:19 pm » |
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This article is now free!
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Team GGs: "Be careful what you flash barato, sooner or later we'll bannano"
"Demonic Tutor: it takes you to the Strip Mine Cow."
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DubDub
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« Reply #12 on: November 05, 2010, 08:53:49 am » |
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This article is now free!
A very nice read, thanks! By the way, according to Morphling.de Gush has been legal as a 4-of for 10 events that had 20 or more players since its most recent unrestriction, and has had the following success: -2 wins (out of a possible 10) -12 top 8s (out of a possible 80) Additionally two of those top 8 decks had only a singleton Gush, while the remainder had a four-pack. Again going by Morphling, the three most used unrestricted engines for big-blue had this prevalence in October: -Dark Confidant = 98 copies in 25 decks. -Jace, the Mind Sculptor = 77 copies in 33 decks. -Gush = 70 copies in 19 decks. Do the results so far confirm your claim that "As we all know, however, the friendly folks over at Wizards of the Coast went and unrestricted Gush, the only card that, over the past decade, we have empirical proof is unsafe to unrestrict."? If not, do you expect Gush's prevalence and performance to improve in the near future? |
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Vintage is a lovely format, it's too bad so few people can play because the supply of power is so small.
Chess really changed when they decided to stop making Queens and Bishops. I'm just glad I got my copies before the prices went crazy.
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TheBrassMan
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« Reply #13 on: November 05, 2010, 10:14:39 am » |
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Huh? I use morphling.de when researching articles, and I'm only seeing 4 events with more than 20 players where Gush was legal. There are 11 events total, but most of these are incredibly small - when Gush doesn't top 8 a 10 man tournament, that's not really an indicator that the deck can't win matches. Obviously the converse of a heavy Gush top 8 in a 10 man event wouldn't meant much either. Even these 20 man tournaments are far more influenced by personal deck choices than which decks are better - the top 8 is two players short of half the room.
Note that the largest event (by far) was Alcobendas with 148 players, about 100 players (two whole swiss rounds)more than the second largest. This event had Gush in 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 8th place. I'd say that those results are pretty indicative of what I expected. Gush might be less comparatively degenerate this time around, but this is only because Lodestone Golem is abusive - I haven't seen any reason yet to play a Blue-based deck without Gush.
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Team GGs: "Be careful what you flash barato, sooner or later we'll bannano"
"Demonic Tutor: it takes you to the Strip Mine Cow."
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TheBrassMan
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« Reply #15 on: November 05, 2010, 11:57:15 am » |
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Haha you're totally right about the events. I got owned by 9.10.2010 as a european date, and thought those were september results.
When I refer to empirical proof, I was specifically referring to Gush's last tenure - that it went from a state of restricted to unrestricted, and was problematic enough to be restricted again. With other cards we have to guess - Gush is the only case within the last decade (that I can remember) that we actually have evidence on. I did not meant to imply that the evidence is 100% conclusive, or that there's no possible way Gush could be safe now, just that for literally every other card, all we have is conjecture. For Gush, we have conjecture + some amount of evidence that it's a bad idea... and it's odd, "strictly worse" almost (though not entirely unsurprising) that Wizards would pick Gush instead of other cards.
In other words, the evidence I was talking about was the last Gush season, and didn't factor in any conjecture about how the card is doing now - note that when I wrote this article there were 0 posted results from Gush being legal, it would have been impossible to reference data that didn't exist yet.
I can understand why this sentence: "I wouldn't be shocked at all if Gush decks find themselves having to contort themselves to compete against Workshops, possibly so much that they lose a lot of their edge against the rest of the field." could be misleading without context. Note that I rate workshop decks extremely highly, and I think blue decks, before Gush, had a terrible Workshop matchups already. I don't think that Gush-based decks have a worse matchup against Workshops than say, Tezzeret.
Perhaps I should have instead said "Gush decks may have to contort themselves to compete against Workshops, losing their edges elsewhere - but no more than every other blue deck already has to"
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Team GGs: "Be careful what you flash barato, sooner or later we'll bannano"
"Demonic Tutor: it takes you to the Strip Mine Cow."
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DubDub
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« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2010, 01:52:05 pm » |
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Haha you're totally right about the events. I got owned by 9.10.2010 as a european date, and thought those were september results.
I realized as I posted the second time that that was probably the disconnect. When I refer to empirical proof, I was specifically referring to Gush's last tenure - that it went from a state of restricted to unrestricted, and was problematic enough to be restricted again. With other cards we have to guess - Gush is the only case within the last decade (that I can remember) that we actually have evidence on. I did not meant to imply that the evidence is 100% conclusive, or that there's no possible way Gush could be safe now, just that for literally every other card, all we have is conjecture. For Gush, we have conjecture + some amount of evidence that it's a bad idea... and it's odd, "strictly worse" almost (though not entirely unsurprising) that Wizards would pick Gush instead of other cards.
It seems like I've made too big a deal of the tense you used then, as most of the rest of the article demonstrated a different position than initially staked out by using present tense. I can understand why this sentence: "I wouldn't be shocked at all if Gush decks find themselves having to contort themselves to compete against Workshops, possibly so much that they lose a lot of their edge against the rest of the field." could be misleading without context. Note that I rate workshop decks extremely highly, and I think blue decks, before Gush, had a terrible Workshop matchups already. I don't think that Gush-based decks have a worse matchup against Workshops than say, Tezzeret.
Perhaps I should have instead said "Gush decks may have to contort themselves to compete against Workshops, losing their edges elsewhere - but no more than every other blue deck already has to."
This is the more logically complete statement I read into what you wrote, I only brought it up because it was at odds with the claim that "Gush is unsafe" that you've now clarified. |
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Vintage is a lovely format, it's too bad so few people can play because the supply of power is so small.
Chess really changed when they decided to stop making Queens and Bishops. I'm just glad I got my copies before the prices went crazy.
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Ten-Ten
Basic User
Posts: 473
Shalom Aleichem
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« Reply #17 on: November 17, 2010, 08:56:26 pm » |
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Great article Brassman!  I was tinkering with your build and wanted to see what you thought of Springleaf drum in this deck alongside etherium sculpter? May not be right but just a thought. Haven't gotten a chance to build or test but wanted to bring that interaction to attention |
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Colossians 2:2,3
That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, both of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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